What's up, everyone? This is Anthony papiano. Most of you know me as pomp. You're listening to the podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off Zu B is a rapper author speaker and Coach. He graduated from Oxford and has quickly
become an international
sensation in this conversation. We talked about zeebee decade as an individual Creator how he sees technology empowering creators what it takes to survive profitably on your own why the
see media has created the vice of society the importance of seeking truth over consensus and why he continues to be a fan of Bitcoin. I really enjoyed this conversation with zubi and I hope you do as well. But before we get into this episode, I want to talk about our sponsors. Our first sponsor today is athletic greens. This is a new one. So listen up they're all in one daily drink to support Better Health and Peak Performance, even with the balanced diet. It's difficult to cover all of your nutritional.
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On various aspects of each industry you can subscribe at pomp letter.com again pomp letter.com. All right, let's get this episode with zubi. I hope you guys enjoyed this one Anthony pump Leon. Oh is a partner at Morgan Creek digital all opinions expressed by pomp or his guests on this podcast or solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or
Oh a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion this podcast is for informational purposes only. All right guys bang bang. He's back Zu B. What's up, man?
How's it going, bro? I'm good, man.
All right. The first time that we did is we did it in New York on your epic trip around America. We're just joking that as Ubi you'd never been to the US came for a number of weeks and literally went to every single American city. I think I met all three hundred thirty million Americans while you're here.
Yeah, so I had been to the US before but it was my first time going for a career reasons and I was my first time going for such a long period of time so I was out there for nine weeks in total and yeah, I went to I went to how many different cities did I go to wait did I say I was there for nine weeks I think was longer than that wasn't it? I think it was 12 about yeah, maybe
he's like I was watching it. So you went you did The Joe Rogan podcast. You did one of these podcasts come with City by City And then all of a sudden
On Instagram you were the White House. I
was like, yeah, I was like what is going on right now? Yeah, man, that's the that's the power of Twitter right there people tell me that Twitter is useless and I'm like man you just you just don't know how to use it.
Tell us the story. How did you get into the White House?
I tweeted on a couple days before saying it can anyone get me into the White House and then I got two invitations.
Miss people who work there who follow me on Twitter. I didn't even know that. Yeah, that's all I've got fans in the white house when I was in the white house. I got recognized in there. Like people are like, oh, you're zubi. Yeah. I was like, wait what? Yeah. Yeah, where's the Oval Office? Right is crazy, man. I mean I got I went to the Pentagon a couple days before that because yeah, one of my one of my fans works in the Pentagon and he just DM me and was like, hey man, I can give you a tour of the Pentagon if you're if you're around and I was like
You know, I'm like man if you get invited to the Pentagon if you get invited to the White House go you so
what was the a so I didn't you did while you were in the US?
Oh, wow. So many things man so many things so yeah, I went to like ten different cities in total. So I started out in California went to LA and San Francisco, you know La obviously got on some of the some of the biggest podcast in the country and in the world. I did The Joe Rogan Experience the Rubin report the Ben Shapiro show did a whole bunch of podcasts over there.
And then, you know, I went to San Francisco after that. I was in Texas for a couple weeks. And the coolest thing was just being able to connect with so many people man. You know, of course I met yourself in New York. I did a Michael malice is podcast when I was in New York and I did meet ups in different cities as well. So I first experimented it with it when I was in San Francisco. So it was like 6 p.m. And I was just hungry and I just put out a tweet saying hey, I'm in San Francisco. If anyone's around wants to go get some food. Let me know and
Got like a whole bunch of people DMD me and were like, yeah, like let's meet up and stuff. So that what I did it sort of as an experiment and that was really cool. So I think I had like, you know, like end up going out for dinner with seven or eight people which was cool. And then I was like, okay, this is something I can do. So I did the same thing in Nashville. I did it in Atlanta in New York in DC. I mean New York and DC had a lot of people came like a lot of people came and I didn't even sort of publicize it I'd just told people like DM me and I'll work something out and find the details, but
but it was amazing. Just seeing you know being the online world is cool. But as we all know like connecting with people in the real world and just seeing the fact that that was even possible the fact I can just drop into a city. I've never been in my life and just post up and say hey who wants to meet up and then I'm next thing. I know I'm out for dinner with 30 people. That's just awesome and the amount of love. I received the amount of support everything like that was just was just fantastic. So I'd say
Yeah, I wouldn't be able to sort of just say one experience, but sort of the general level of love and support I received out there was
just awesome.
And it feels like all of this is made possible by this idea of like an individual Creator, right? So you recently had this tweet that said I've never signed with a record label never had a manager nor agent, but I've gained 450 plus thousand followers 10 million plus video views sold 25,000 plus albums 2,500 plus books six figures and merchandise and performed in eight countries Screw The Gatekeepers do it yourself which like of course everyone on the internet loves like that's just like the ultimate like middle finger to the man.
Talk a little bit about kind of like what is this been like in terms of really being what I think the question show examples of like what is possible as an individual creators?
Yeah, man, it's been hard and you know, like a lot of people don't realize how long I've been going for so I released my first album in 2006. So 14 years ago, which it does it doesn't feel like that but I released my first album 14 years ago, so it's kind of weird how because so many people who now know me just discover me in the past 18 months. So a lot of them sort of thing.
If my whole career started with a viral tweet and it's like no, I mean even on Twitter. I've been on Twitter for it since 2009. I've been on Facebook since 2004. We've been using these things for a long time. I've been going out there. I put out eight albums and EPS. I've been every city in the UK done loads of Tours and stuff just been grinding and hustling and I was doing it all before it was cool in the music world. Now, it's sort of cool to be perceived as an independent artist. But when I started out it wasn't cool. Everyone wanted to people wanted to get signed everyone wanted to be with a label, you know, it was then it was you know,
Unsigned or signed now people say independent. I was saying independent from the beginning because I was like, I'm like, I'm not even unsigned suggest that I'm trying to get signed and I'm not trying to get signed. I'm independent. I want to own my own stuff in terms of the business in terms of the creativity in terms of the direction. I want to go in with cetera and I think so many things are made possible by that and you just are able to maintain the control which is ultimately important and the more a lot of people ask me if I'd signed to a label or why I didn't etcetera and
people who tend to ask me that tend to be people who people who don't know that much about the music industry and the ends of outside people who know about the music industry tend to intuitively understand why someone may not want to take that route. It's just a very shady industry in a lot of ways and in I don't know how many thousands of artists have been screwed over by signing that deals and just getting caught up in things that they have no control over and I never wanted that to be me and I also realized with the tools available with the internet with the
Ready to you know have CDs printed with the ability to get your music out now on we when I first started it was pretty much just physical copies right CDs and then you had the you know iTunes became more popular and then shift things shifted to streaming and you don't need you don't need anybody for that. Right? It's the same with them. I wrote and released my first book last year strong advice, which is now sold a couple thousand copies and I didn't I just wrote it and I just put it out there. It's not even on.
All right, that didn't go through any publisher. I just did it and that's what I do. Like I don't ask for permission to do things that I want to do and a lot of people seem to be sitting around waiting for some kind of approval or permission or something recognition something like that. And I'm always trying to tell people like you don't you don't need that right? You don't need permission to start a podcast. You don't need permission to start a YouTube channel to release an album to make a book whatever just just create it and then you can also
Find the audience and you can reach them often for free and you will if you can find your audience, then you're kind of good to go. You're just beholden to them.
So I think part of this is one you have to have that mindset, right? So you got to understand what the advantages are to you've got to kind of be a self-starter right in terms of its really your effort your time everything. But the other piece of this that I think is interesting is this is the ultimate kind of filter for Value, right?
Because there's a whole bunch of things that the Legacy system can do in terms of marketing and it may be a shitty book but it ends up actually being successful right because it's put a lot of dollars on it, whatever when you're doing stuff yourself be the music good and people like it or they don't the books good or it's not right and so it really is kind of it lives on its own to some degree. And so does that apply more pressure do you think or is it actually kind of freeing understanding that like the value you create is ultimately going to be determined by the on
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I don't think about pressure a lot. I'm not someone who really deals with a lot of feelings of stress or pressure or anything like that. I can't I kind of just do what I want and create what I want and I believe that hey, you know, everything like everything I do I know it'll be successful to some degree. I don't know how successful it's going to be. I don't know how many people will like this song or want to buy this book or want to listen to whatever but I know that you know hundreds will
Thousands will and that's fine. Right not everything needs to be a blockbuster. It's not like, you know, a lot of the mainstream Industries, especially in entertainment right there. They're reliant on block but Blockbusters. So I think that the majority of movies that Hollywood puts out lose money, but then they make it back up with interest on the ones that are super successful same goes with a lot of record labels and things like that. That's why they care so much about first week sales and second week sales like
Me that's yeah cool. I want to get a good launch, but I don't plan to sort of just push it really hard for a couple weeks and then stop. It's like no like I wrote my book. I released my book just over a year ago, and I'm still promoting my book. It's still selling at the same rate that it was selling when I first in fact, it might be selling faster now because more people know me etcetera so and it's Evergreen content, so just keep going and yeah, I think a lot of pressure is sort of imagined. I think a lot of
people psych themselves out you get this with some people who want to start things but they never do it because they're worried that they don't have all the information or it's not going to be perfect or they're worried about people judging them etcetera and I'm always trying to just give people that push of like look just just do it put it out there and at the worst no one's going to care because no one sees it but even if you get a little bit of negative feedback or whatever, it's like cool just keep it moving like you can keep improving and you can you will grow and develop over time because you get
Better at things by doing them, right? You're not going to step foot and anything new that you do you are going to suck it right? That's just the reality right you need to get to get good at something. You have to go through the stage of not being good at it. But staying at it and then over time you develop your confidence you develop your ability and so on and there you go. Now you're you know in a long enough time scale. You actually become an expert at the thing that you initially suck that you can take the best the best guitar player.
In the world the best anything in the world right the first time they did it. They probably saw like there's no one who just picks up a guitar and intuitively knows how to play guitar. Like if you see someone amazing it guitar drums or some instrument or whatever. They also went through that stage of being terrible. Any person. You see any YouTube channel. You see a man. This guy's got 10 million subscribers this podcast has millions of downloads this it all started from zero everyone starts from zero. So yeah.
Sort of Psych themselves up too much by comparing where they are now to where someone else's but not considering how much experience and effort and time etcetera that person has put in I can use a gym analogy here. Like I get people who see me lifting in the gym and if it's someone who's like new to it, especially teenagers, they'll come up and be like man. I wish I had your genetics and I'm like, dude, you know, if you saw me when I was like 15 or 16, you wouldn't have been you wouldn't have been saying that right? I mean
I weighed more when I was 15 and I weigh now 18 years later. So I wasn't just sort of born jacked or with a six-pack or anything. It's like a lot of work has gone into it. But once someone reaches that level it looks it looks like luck or just innate Talent when often times there's a crazy amount of hard work that's gone into it.
Yeah, and one of the things that you take podcast for example or any sort of creative Endeavor where you're putting content out a lot of people who are willing to work hard.
For
a month or three months or six months, they don't really have kind of the dedication and persistence to go years and years rice you're talking about how you started, you know, 2007-2008 and kind of been doing this for a very very long time. If you go and you look at the top podcast, you know, Joe Rogan started in the late 2000s, right and look at the Tim Ferriss like all of these folks have started very early on and so kind of 2007 to 2013 time frame and they worked hard for a decade or more. Right? And I think that's part of it is like it's the hard work, but it
Then is also the persistence to stay with something for a long period of time and you've done that over and over and over again. So where do you think that comes from
his because I know why I do it and beyond that. I enjoy it. So those two things so I've got a very clear Vision. I mean my goal in life is to have a positive impact on over 10 million people through my words and my actions and you know, 10 million people on an ongoing basis. I want to have like 10 million people I can consider fans and so that drives everything it drives my music it drives my
My podcast doing interviews like this or writing books doing public speaking. Whatever it is each time. I'm reaching new people and it's like, okay cool. I was impacting a hundred people now, it's 500 over now. It's 5,000 now. It's 50,000 and cool. Like now millions of people have at least heard of me and you know hundreds of thousands are following and getting the message in it. Hey, they're tuning in to see what is going on. Even if that's just on social media that's a sign they're interested to some degree. So that's what drives.
With me, it's I don't know exactly where that sort of innately comes from wanting to have such a such an impact on the world. But I know that that's what motivates and drives me. So it's very easy. Well relatively easy for me to get over any obstacles or difficulties and I look I've had them I mean I would left I left my full-time job in November 2011. So I've been full-time self-employed since almost nine years now and I used to be a Management Consultant and I literally
Quit being a Management Consultant to go and become an independent full-time wrapper, which is like, you know by a lot of people's ideas. Probably be a terrible idea, right because you're taking something that's very stable and has a clear career progression to go and pursue something. That's so out there and keep in mind like, I'm an Oxford University graduate. So people are like what you ate you you could have gone to like Silicon Valley and you know join the sort of you know the startup world.
Or you could have done this or you could have done that or whatever. I've got friends and family, you know Investment Banking or you know, you could do this. There's all these options and it was like, you know, I want to be a rapper like this is this is what I want to do and I know I can't reach this goal of impacting millions of people doing what I was doing before. All right, if I'd stayed in that career line you would know who I am that White House trip wouldn't have happened. I would have never been on Joe Rogan. I would have never had all these cool opportunities to do what I'm doing now and impact all these people. I'm impacting now. So for me personally, that's
Drives me and also the things I do. I genuinely love like I genuinely enjoy making music. I enjoy having conversations with people. I enjoy Fitness. I enjoy putting out content Etc. So that also helps because if you enjoy then it doesn't really feel so much like work
and I think the secret to your success we talked about hard work and kind of the longevity of it. But also you tell the truth, right you're super authentic and you're willing to say things that you believe it's very obvious you believe them. Sometimes those are things that are kind of
Consensus and society and sometimes those are things that go against the consensus. And so how do you kind of get comfortable doing that and kind of what was the impetus for you to say? Look I'm just going to be super transparent and kind of honest with people regardless of how the audience feels.
Yeah sure. So you get used to doing it by practice just like everything again another gym analogy, right you put in you put in the Reps you put in the sets you keep doing sessions. And first time you walk in the gym. You probably can't, you know deadlift 500 pounds are
Bench, press I don't know 250 pounds or whatever unless you're a freak, but you put in the time you keep doing the Reps and over time you get stronger and you get stronger and you get stronger and you become resilient and you get to a point where it's like, okay, I've actually, you know, I've met if I were to estimate how many people I've met in real life. This is not online. I've probably met in real life and had conversations with four hundred five hundred thousand people. Alright, so I've sold 25,000 albums.
And that's how I used to sell my CDs so you can imagine to sell that many albums how many people you need to actually speak to and engage with so I developed a really really really thick skin over those years, right? And anyone who's ever done direct sales or direct promotions you develop a thick skin because you know you deal with constant rejection you deal with people being rude people not understanding what you're doing people not caring about what you're doing. So when it comes to online stuff, I'm like man whatever, you know, people are like, oh, how do you what if you tweet something and someone gets angry online?
Think I care like I don't you know, and and I don't go out of my way to Raw people up. I don't consider myself a provocateur. Sometimes I know some things I say like it's going to get a reaction but it is rooted in authenticity. It's rooted in its rooted in kindness and compassion. It's rooted in wanting people to know the truth and to tell the truth and not be deceived Etc. And also just wanting to put my own opinion out there and if if people disagree that's totally fine, if people agree that's totally fine. We can have conversations. I enjoy sparking.
Patient's so and and this is interesting as well because I didn't used to do that. I used to keep my views and opinions especially on anything contentious. I used to keep it very very private and I just have these conversations with friends and family and private and the reason I say actually stepped out of there, which is not something a lot of people know it's because in 2018, there was actually a situation that sort of happened which just made me realize how far things were going in a certain direction.
And I just thought okay. I need to I need to speak up because stuff is getting its getting it's getting gnarly out there and the world needs more saying voices another reason why I didn't use to do that is because I thought that I never used to think that my views and opinions or my thoughts were particularly interesting. All right, even now like a lot of the stuff I say, I think it's relatively common sensical and somewhat mundane and I feel like I shouldn't really have to say it but the weirder the world goes and the more that other people are
lying and deceiving people and stuff the more refreshing people find it to just have you know individuals out there who are just willing to have conversations and share their honest thoughts and not be wanting to I don't know silence people or you know, just sort of fit in these weird boxes that people think they're going to be in or whatever and again you get this a lot of music and entertainment in the it seems like every single person in music has the exact same views on everything which is quite a clear sign that
Somebody somebody's lying, you know some of these Li how does every celebrity have the same view on everything like that? Doesn't that I don't really buy that and yeah people get locked into these positions. And as you saying, you know, a lot of these people are beholden to others so with me being independent it right, you know, someone has a problem sometimes I jokingly say that they should speak to my manager if they if they have a problem talk to my boss and it's like, you know, and that's not to say that's a great feeling.
And it's cool to just not have not to be beholden to you know, I mean, I don't know. I imagine if I was signed to a label or if I had a manager or something. They'd probably be calling me three times a day asking me to like delete tweets and social media posts and do we delete that one? Delete that one? I'm like no like that's that's what I think that's what I feel
and I feel like that that's the power of what you've built right is I joke all the time and I say that like these will call personal media companies.
Independent artist you call whatever it is, like you essentially build this fan base of people who subscribe to you, right? And so you create a book. They want it you create music. They want it. You say something on Twitter. They want to hear about it. Right? Like they are all in and they align with you whether it is on your perspective on your creative taste, whatever but it also adds this element of making it much harder for somebody to kind of cancel an individual braids because you but you basically have this Army of people
People who now you've almost set your own consensus, right? Hey us. You know for you for her 50,000 followers on Twitter like these half a million people are ride or die like we're in this and what do you do cancel all of us raised like that's not gonna be possible. And so it feels like that is something that more and more people are figuring out you figured it out a decade ago and have kind of spend time building it but maybe talk a little bit about how you've seen those times where you have tweeted something that you know, some people take his controversial or they disagree with and it kind of how they
Interact with you that might be different than let's say somebody who just got you know a hundred followers on Twitter.
Oh, wow. I mean my Twitter, I mean this in the past 30 days past 28 days. I check my stats. My Twitter has reached over a hundred million impressions in the past 28 days, which is absolutely Bonkers. It's on track to hit over a billion this year, which is just absolutely nuts. The engagement on there is just crazy like three million plus every single day. So yeah.
Man, you know majority is positive of course, but when you're reaching so many people and so many of them are outside of your sort of sphere of your fan base or your follower base Etc. Of course, you get the negativity you get the misunderstanding you get insults etcetera, but like I said, I mean
You know, I don't really I know why I do what I do and I know why I say what I say. And so the thing I can't deal with is being is feeling like I'm being inauthentic or feeling like I'm a hypocrite or feeling like I'm saying something that I don't truly believe or I'm wearing a mask and I'm putting on a facade Etc. That's the stuff that would keep me up at night. That's the stuff that would bother me if it's like, you know,
Someone with some random, you know Cartoon Avatar with eight followers and you know wants to send me some message telling me how awful I am. It's like, why would I care about that? Like I don't I legitimately don't care like the opinions that I care about or people who I care about the opinions of people who know me right like someone who knows me right if my if one of my siblings or like my parents or something was like, oh, you know, that's a, you know checks me on something or
Critical or something like I'm a lot more on my okay. I'm gonna listen right? I won't always agree, but I'll listen because it's like, okay, this is someone who actually knows me and they're giving this perspective from a place of love and I know that or even if it's you know, my fans and my support is if I put out a I don't know if I put something out and like my actual fans are action. My supporters were like like I don't you know, I don't like this or whatever then like, okay that's you know in this doesn't happen often. But if it did then it's like, okay. Well I actually care about these people's opinions, but you know, it's just like, you know,
So if there's some I don't know there there are 300 million active users on Twitter and everyone's got an opinion and everyone wants to throw that stuff out there or whatever. But if you are walking down the street, I mean you don't care about the opinion of like a random stranger who has never has never met you and doesn't know anything about you or whatever like, you know, you don't waste any any negative or any harm or what it was like, yeah, you don't you don't know me so it doesn't really matter but then someone close to you who you know, it's like, okay. Well I care about your opinion.
And I also don't want to hurt your feelings Etc. So there's more of a relationship there. So that's kind of how that's kind of how I view
so you are one of very few independent thinkers on the internet at this point. There's kind of this pursuit of consensus over truth, which is you know, I probably agree on is pretty stupid. Help me understand kind of the view of the world from somebody living outside the United States right now given the pandemic that's going on and kind of the economic crisis. What's
generally the view of the United States from your seat or or kind of other people that you talk to over in Europe.
I think the consensus is I think I think the narrative I think the narrative is the some countries including the USA. I think there's a narrative is that they haven't handled this very well and you get that from different angles, right? You have the you have the people who are you know think there should have been more lockdowns and things should have been you know, people should have grabbed the reins of
Troll and forced people to wear a mask and forced lockdowns instituted fines and stuff and then you have the people who are you know more libertarian minded who are like the lockdown was a disaster destroy the economy unnecessarily for virus with a 99.9 percent survival rate. It didn't make sense to do this to make all these people unemployed etcetera. And you know, there's I can understand both of those perspectives and but I think what we're witnessing this year is just a lot of I think we're seeing sort of every
every interesting phenomenon in human psychology taking place right cognitive dissonance mob mentality confirmation bias, like every you know, pop the politicization of things that shouldn't be politicized people forming teams. Tribalism Etc. We've seen all of this play out so much over the past few months and I think that there are there are there are some things that are
Really obvious when it comes to the whole pandemic situation and the response to it that no one wants to even be honest about and I can understand why certain people don't want to be honest about I think one of those things is that nobody nobody had a freaking clue. Right? No one wants to just admit that light look a like, you know, ingest in January in January. They were saying there's no human human transmission, right? They said masks don't work don't wear masks don't buy masks and then they said,
Absolutely wear a mask. If you don't wear a mask, you're going to kill my grandma. They said that you can't go out and protest. But remember they have the lockdown protest and people were clamping down on them a couple weeks later. You've got thousands out in the streets black life matters protest and you even have health experts saying that it's okay because racism is a bigger virus and then and the goalposts they said flatten the curve and then we flatten the curve. I just a couple weeks to slow the spread. That's how they got everybody to comply that was months ago now but the gyms are still closed the churches are still
Etcetera they just keep moving the goal posts and no one wants to admit. Okay, we didn't know what was going on and no one wants to admit. Okay, perhaps we overreacted and you know, this wasn't as bad as we thought it would be at the beginning they were saying the death rate could be 3% to 5% Now. It turns out that if you are under the age of about 50 and you don't have big underlying conditions your chance of survival is virtually 100%
Sent right, you can look at the figures you can see who this is impacting if you're over the age of you know, 70 or so 6570. Yeah. Absolutely. You want to be careful you want to take more precautions it would make sense to perhaps self-quarantine yourself, you know take additional measures but no one wants to just admit any of this stuff. So people are still pretending that you know, children are just as RIT edit at risk has 80 year olds, which is not true. They're trying to pretend that people like yourself and myself were just as it risk and need to take the same precautions.
As people in nursing homes, which we know is not true. We know so many things but no one because so many mistakes have been made and everyone's trying to score political points and do this and do that. I mean, even when it comes to the medical advice, even when it comes to the so-called experts how many times have the experts been wrong? Right there are no experts because it takes time to become an expert. It takes years. There's no coronavirus experts not for a covid-19 because it's new and it takes time to become an expert. So whatever is said needs to be
taken with a massive grain of salt and there are just so many people just have different dogs in the fights and no one wants to be honest and everyone is lying from the media to the politicians to this to that. There's too many there's too many conflicting opinions and Views and everyone wants to win and that's the that's kind of the problem and so like I don't talk about the pandemic a lot because it just gets people people just get so freaked out and amped up and you asking
For the call, like what the situation is like where I live and I was saying that the, you know the amount of cases and stuff throughout this whole thing has been, you know been very low and it's not an I don't live in an area that's been heavily impacted. I live by myself. I don't like ice. I've been socially distancing for a while regardless for the most part and then like I had one day where I tweeted something about the fact that I don't wear a mask and I got like people you would have thought that I like admitted to like being a serial killer or something.
Way people responded and it's crazy because people don't even factor in the fact that like things are different in different parts of the world and in different places, so someone might be in a place that's heavily affected and everyone's wearing masks and what I'm like no one wears a mask here like it's not it's not a thing like I can go out so I can go to the part of this thousands of people are out people know people aren't even social distancing those that's like, well it's not a heavily affected area. So the precautions here are not going to be the same as in New York City or even in London Etc, but the mask itself has
In become like a tribal symbol has become a political it's become politicized now. It's you know, if you don't wear a mask you're a bad person and you know, we must Force these people the whole things just it's just become farcical at this point. You know, I think it's I just kind of removed myself from the conversation and it's just like look, I'm just going to use common sense. Like I've been doing the whole time good to go about my business look after my health not try to put other people unnecessarily risk, which I haven't been doing regardless of what people want to say and
Yeah, that's a little bit of a rant. But that's that's kind of know
but what you're really getting at here is everyone wants to talk about the extreme ends of this, right? So, what do you see mainstream media on both sides kind of pulling and pulling and pulling to the extremes get all the divisiveness all kind of stuff. I do think that there's this group of people who are emerging right and I think yourself myself in this is just like it's common sense. Right and you keep you keep using that terminology like that's ultimately what ends up being. It's like look, you know, I joked I sent this tweet before and I was like,
Basically believe that like police brutality exist racism exists, you know, the virus is bad but doesn't affect everyone equally and like I went to the all the Nuance tries it and you can actually believe this position and this ties like everyone together in a common sense perspective and you get people who are literally, you know, the again they act like you're murdering somebody in the street on camera and like and they caught you they're like, all right guys, but I wonder how much of that is people trying to appease certain groups.
Soooo, rather than have this like independent thought right? Oh, yeah, like when you think about it, I think one it's obvious that like you're able to critically think about some of these issues to you've got kind of the courage which sounds ridiculous but you got the courage to say it out loud. But then three is you become a magnet for other types of people who have this independent thought right and so like it kind of feels like the extremes of the political Spectrum, or the way that is informations talked about they have a head start, right? They've been doing this for years and years and years now all of a sudden there's just like
Since group that there's an hey, wait a second. Like I'm not cool with either one of those extremes like find me in the center. Find me with common sense and like that group is actually building in size.
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think a lot of people want look it's natural and it's human to seek approval of others and it's also natural to want to appear to be a good person. And so you see this will all these different narratives, you know, if you want to talk about things that have happened with this year. Why why on one?
Day where people posting black squares on Instagram, right? It's because they think that that makes them a good person. It's not because it doesn't do anything. All right, it's not going to it doesn't stop racism. It doesn't help police be doesn't do anything but people want to appear to be a good person and it's very easy way to signal that you are a good person and then you can also admonish people who and demonize people who didn't post the black square right? I had white women on following me onto on Instagram because I didn't post a black Square
Like, you know, that's by me. You're racist to be racist. Yeah, it should be kind of obvious that I agree with that, you know my life matters and those of my family Etc and I don't need to post a black Square on Instagram. It's a sort of signal to the rest of the world that I believe that and I don't like the sort of performative virtue signaling or similar would like I said, you know with the with the whole mask thing and the way people responded right people feel like good people, you know, they've created this sort of
Narrative of like good people want masks and not only do they wear them but they want to force everybody else too. And you know bad people don't write there's been this whole kill your grandma line, which is sort of almost become a meme at this point. No one has explained how someone who doesn't even have the virus is going to pass it on but you know, that seems to be details to have two people. So I think yeah that that's what's happening. It's very performative. It's people wanting to fit in with their tribe and signal to their tribe. It's people wanting to you know show that they are virtuous.
Citizens and that they're behaving. Well, not only are they behaving well, but other people are behaving poorly. So I'm going to point out I'm going to you know, you getting a lot of seeing a lot of these videos people running around with their cameras and you know shaming people for not wearing masks or trying to shame people for this or that and I'm just like this is really this is really silly. You know, it's really silly. It's not productive. It doesn't unite people either and also it's just ineffective. I mean if you if you want to like look at the facts and the data, but people are more
Emotionally this whole year has been emotionally driven. It's very everything is very emotionally driven. There aren't a lot of people who are like, okay. Let's just be let's be reasonable. Let's be fair. Let's not be like super partisan about this. Let's just look at what works and what doesn't work and let's also just use common sense, but people don't want to do that and once someone has dug into a position then there's that sort of sunk cost fallacy where they feel like, they need to just keep doubling down and doubling down and doubling down. No one wants to just
It and say okay, you know like with this whole virus thing, right? You know, it's been it's been bad and it's been very bad in certain areas, but it's also true. All right that can be true and it can also be true that in many ways. And in many places. The reaction was very old was there was a huge overreaction right? Was it necessary for 42 million was it was a 42 million Americans lost their jobs so
far the latest number as of today is 52
Two million Americans the last four and a half
months 52 million. So what I mean, what's that? That's like maybe a quarter of the working population. I'd guess.
Yep. So one in three
basically. Okay one in three, so
That's what that number and then as we know with the virus of the data come out from the countries strongly suggest overall that seems like the the chance of someone, you know a random person dying if they catch this virus is less. I believe it's under ninety nine point. It's their survival rate. I think is over 99.9% right? This doesn't mean that you want those 0.01% to die.
Die, but for 42 minutes for 52 million people in one country to lose their jobs over over the response to something with a 99.9 percent survival rate.
Does that logically sound does that sound reasonable and this is not this is not considering the long-term effect. Even in terms of health, even in terms of people's livelihood survival Etc. Right. There's people created this false binary which it which was like, okay completely kill the economy and save lives or save the economy and kill everybody and it's like neither of those was those weren't there true positions. It's like then you can you can have a response.
That is moderated and is not necessarily one size fits all and you can keep the economy going cause you have to remember when I think when people think of economy a lot of people think of like the stock market or they think of some tries. I know the economy is people like I'm the economy. You're the economy. If no one is working then nothing like everything stops working.
You'll notice that in the US. What do you think of the federal government's budget every year? So the money they spend
What percentage goes to support people over the age of 65?
Oh boy.
What percentage I have? I have no idea. I'd guess it's pretty insignificant though. 40% Oh 40. Oh,
so 40% of the US government's budget. Every year goes to support people over the age of 65. So how here's how that number is interesting to me? Because it basically is showing that the economy in terms of running. Those are the people who are most kind of susceptible to the virus are also the people who get majority if not almost
Under percent of their livelihood coming from the government, right? So whether the economy is open or closed, they're still getting Financial kind of benefit. It's everyone who's basically on the lower end of the age brackets that are least susceptible to the virus. They're the ones who get hurt the worst by the shutting down of the economy. All right. So you have kind of this weird thing where the people that you're trying to protect could actually go into like very hard quarantine and leave us the economy open you could save lives but not hurt. You know, the
30 40 50 year olds, right? Yeah. So when I saw that said I was like I was with you. I thought it was a very small number of assaults. Yeah be per sec. I guess it I guess that makes sense. That's
like is I was that like pensions and
pension is all the security. I mean, it just all kinds of different government programs, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so again, I think part of this is like there is not a black and white world, right? There's this gray area where there's probably a pretty intelligent solution that can address both problems Switching gears a little bit on the economy itself.
Like how how do you view that right in the sense of every government in the world seems to just be printing a ton of money and basically running crazy trying to deal with this and who knows if they know what they're actually doing or not, but they sure are trying on different things. Yeah. I'm no I'm no
economic expert but I think again, I think a lot of stuff is running on emotion and short-term thinking I don't think that a lot of people are thinking clearly
And thinking of long-term consequences of things. So if you're talking about governments printing money, we all know what that leads to write that leads to inflation that leads to debts and things that you know, I'm potentially my future children and your future children. Our future grandchildren are going to be paying off and no one wants to think about that because in the short term, it's expedient even politically right you guys are in an election year and is an elections coming up in November. So every single thing that has happened,
Happening and everything people are saying it's also being tainted by the idea of okay, is this going to help or hurt us and our opposition, right? So and that's a terrible situation because say for example, if Donald Trump or the Republicans have a proposal or a bill or something that's going to genuinely help Americans.
There is an incentive amongst people in the media and the political opposition to Railroad it right and to block it even if they knew the in fact because they know that it would help right. They don't want that because they know that's going to increase the probability of people voting for Trump and him being re-elected and everything. And so once people are thinking in these lines it the what's best for people is totally sidelines, right? They just start thinking. Okay what's best for our
Litical strategy, how can we increase our chances of election Etc? Right. There are people they probably won't say it out loud, but there will be people who are really really hoping that stuff does not recover because they don't want them to be re-elected. Right? They they're so opposed to him that they would rather America suffers and Americans suffer just so they can get this guy out of the White House. And as soon as you're thinking that way and and this could run in either direction, I'd say this the same if you know if you know, whoever was in power and the
Addition. I just think that this is very very clear right now that people are just so partisan and tribal that they just kind of they just want what is expedient in the short term and that's a shame. It's a shame and it's actually it's actually a big problem and yeah in terms of the economy, I don't I don't know. I don't know what the long-term repercussions are going to be. I think it's going to be pretty bad. I mean here in the UK, they've had this furlough scheme, so there hasn't been
The unemployment numbers haven't sort of hit as hard as they have in the US.
What is the scheme?
So the government so people are being furloughed. So essentially the government is paying millions of people eighty percent of their salary during this whole period right? So the government is paying people 80% So all the people who are not working vast majority of them. They've been furloughed right instead of just losing their jobs out, right but what this means is of course, I don't know how much
That's costing the government. But also it means that a lot of the impacts are delayed. So in the US you guys kind of got hit like straight off the bat. Boom 17 million this week 20 million this week Etc. But in the UK, we don't even know what those long-term unemployment numbers are going to look like because it's all being sort of propped up, but it might come to sort of september/october Etc when the furlough scheme ends and then you know, some of these businesses have shut down some of them are going to lay off a bunch of people some of
them are going to convert more to remote working Etc. So we don't yet even know here in the UK and perhaps in other European countries what the sort of impact is going to be even just later this year. It could happen that okay millions of people by December are now out of work, even though they sort of feel like they're still being paid right now, but they might go back and sort of get that bad news Etc. And then of course the long-term damage, I don't
I don't know. I don't know and taking kids out of school for so long. And there are a lot of things that again. I just don't think people have really really people don't really sort of sit down and consider and think about there was the panic and you know the panic and the freaked out was it was initially Justified right? If the thing if the virus really had a 5% kill rate then okay going on super lock down and waiting until you've kind of got more data and more information and more.
The thing was because they didn't want the hospital's be overwhelmed etcetera, but it's like okay that happened. The curve got flattened hospitals were not overwhelmed. There was enough PPE all these things that they were worried about came to pass but then it was just like no more lockdowns more lockdowns more lockdowns and it was like even now people are literally calling for the lockdowns to keep being extended and when they get close it and it's just like there's got to be a that has to be a transition plan here, right it can this is not this is not something you can just carry on indefinitely without consequences.
What?
It feels like almost as the government saw this coming and they were like, hey, you know what, we're going to step in and intervene if we're going to provide a bunch of programs and ideas and even mandates in some cases to like bridge the gap, right. So if we're going to shut it down, there's a bunch of people who may lose their jobs, but if we go on lockdown it'll be over in four weeks and then we can kind of bridge everybody and then like the economy or reopen and everything would be fine. Right but I think to your point nobody thought that this was going to still be going over time at the end of July there and we're you know, we're four and a half five months into this thing.
But he thought it was gonna go this long and so you can see most of the programs and you know, the u.s. They have like this beefed-up uninsured unemployment insurance. It ends at the end of July, right the the PPP loans, which basically they gave to businesses to not fire employees. You can't fire anyone before the end of September but on October 1st, you can start firing people. It's okay. So like kind of all these programs that they had first put in place back in March actually end in July August or September and so, you know, my thought was like, that's probably when they thought this was gonna be over by
Bye but now like I don't think this is going to be done. Right? And so in that case, what do you did and you know, look there's no right answer but it just feels like you know in the UK in the u.s. Like everyone everywhere is dealing with it and your point earlier about just like just say, hey, we don't know right we're doing the best we can with the information we have today. You almost set yourself up for better response later on because people don't say well you were acting like you knew what was going on earlier and you were wrong right when you said you kind of approach it as
I don't know but here's the information we have and we're going to make the best decisions we can I think people are less mad later on because they understand this is a human process that really built on just the information you
have. Yeah, and the thing is and you know telling the truth is not incentivised. It's not incentivized. I mean, I remember you know when Boris Johnson fairly early in the situation. He said he said people are going to die. Some of us are going to lose family members of the and he was shellacked for saying that even though it was the truth. It was the truth right? Some people will die that.
That is literally the truth on you're not supposed to say that as a politician. You're not supposed to say some people are going to die, but it's the reality and it's also a reality that we implicitly accept every single day. And when people you know don't understand that I say, okay, why don't we reduce the speed limit on highways to 20 miles per hour. Why don't we do that that would save more lives that would save more lives than all of the stuff we're doing right now, but we know that that is not feasible.
You want to save lives ban alcohol been cigarettes ban sugar, right that'll save lives. You want to talk about saving American lives saving British less. I'll save way more than any coronavirus, but people understand. Okay, you have to we all implicitly accept certain risks in society. And so every time you get in a car and you drive on the highway every time you do this every time you do that we are taking risks and not only is it for us right because we're also putting other people are
if I go and I drive my van on the motorway, I'm putting I'm putting other people at risk, right and I'll drive I'll drive my best, but I could be a hazard to somebody right so we all do this all the time and we've been doing this forever, but suddenly
People are have like sort of lost the plot and aren't understanding that look, we all take risks. Even when it comes to this mask thing, right 60,000 people a year in America died of the flu 60,000 a year. That's half of the Coronavirus.
And the response is zero percent of what the response has been right and that also kills children by the way, right? Coronavirus doesn't really affect kids flu does kill children and no one like flu season. You don't even know it's flu season. I no one's wearing a mask. No one's social distancing people are just getting on with things and taking normal precautions and nobody thinks about it because the media doesn't Spotlight it and highlight the fact that 60,000 people. He does no running, you know flu death count on the news Etc. So people
And in a very different way and it's if you have the power of the media and you know how to sort of use data and statistics to your advantage is very easy to make people freak out over things. Right. I mean and you see this with so many things. I mean right now, you know, you have people running around talking about how there is an epidemic of police brutality and police killings. No, there's not
No, there isn't right. They and a video online. Look what we all agree. What happened to George Floyd and what's happened to Sim in similar cases is absolutely terrible and should never happen. But to say that it's an epidemic to say that this is like every day. This is everyday life for black and I'm like, no, it's not right. That's hyperbole. That's emotion that's feelings that's taking an anecdote and extending it across millions of millions of people where it doesn't make sense and again you're not
Supposed to say that because it upsets people and it's not PC and it hurts people's feelings and you're supposed to say yes, I agree. There's an epidemic and we must do this and we must we must defund the police and all cops are bad etcetera and it's like no that's just not it's just not it doesn't reflect reality. And I don't know I got it's easy to sort of have this conversation on a one-to-one basis or like with a small group. But if you try to do that on any type of public platform let alone if a politician came out and said some of the things I'm saying. All right, they'll be
calling for their heads tomorrow just because you're not supposed to say the
truth. It will gets back to consensus over truth. Right is everyone wants to pursue the consensus via the truth and and the part to me that I think is just hitting me over the head is how much Society lacks good grounding in science and math. Right? I mean if you really think about this by the way, I'm not an epidemiologist. Neither. Are you right? I'm not a mathematician. Neither are you but there's some basic things that everyone should
Armed with right and being able to kind of see a problem and be inquisitive enough or kind of intellectually curious to go get the data look at the data and be able to make very very clear distinctions between is this statement or this consensus directionally true or not. It feels like we just haven't armed people with that science and math kind of understanding to do it because you literally see your my favorite is they keep showing the aggregate amount of cases in countries, so they
compare, you know a country that has nine million people with a country. That is 330. Oh, yeah, and all those say is you know, will this cost is a hundred thousand case in this country has the only 1000 it's like hold on a second time at home.
Like yeah, dude taking one step further. We have no Flippin idea. How many cases there are we don't know we have no idea. Like we literally have no idea. How many cases there.
Are you like your earrings if you're in Europe, so you probably didn't see this but in the United States there was an article that went.
Viral across a lot of these kind of non mainstream media, but basically it goes in Florida a guy died in a motorcycle accident. Oh, yeah, literally motorcycle accident covid death. Yep, and now look I understand the financial incentives at the hospital or whatever gets paid. If it's a covid it like makes complete sense when you understand what the incentives are because that's the type of stuff where that one kind of anecdote. I come out and say we don't know. I don't know if it's overcoming your undercounting because there's a whole bunch of data you can look at
That can tell you both stories. But what I do know is that guy probably didn't die from covid. He probably died from Mexico
accident. Even this is the thing. We don't really have proper data even right? We don't have proper we have no we literally have no idea how many people have had coronavirus. Have you been tested?
I have not have you know, yeah. Yeah, we could have had I don't know. Yep.
I could have passed through me. All right, I don't know. You don't know most people have not been tested and certainly haven't been had the antibody test. So we literally don't know right half of New York could
It right five. I don't know four, five six million people could have already had it. We don't know, you know, it could be we literally do not know. So even when you're talking about you're trying to do these calculations and you know, even if you're talking about like death rates or Hospital them basically made up numbers because it's all based on the more people you test the more the cases they're all right. So, so if you test if you tested all 330 million Americans then the number of cases inverted commas would probably spend
Bike like 20x you
guys here actually tested people you want to get even crazier one. So my brother recently started writing a bunch of about the business and money behind sports, right? So he creates this thing and when I first started I was like, you know, what's he going to write about his to write about the contracts of somebody or whatever but earlier this week you put together a piece on covid testing a professional athletes in the State of Florida. And what ends up happening is these professional sports are all restarting their leagues in that specific State and they're doing things like
10,000 test a week for the players to trainers the coaches the support staff all this stuff and trying to make sure inside of these like bubble like areas. Well Dee professional athletes get the results back in 12 to 24 hours, but the general public is supposed to get it back in five to seven days and could take up to 10 days. And so he basically was like look you can't make a direct comparison but there's definitely this like, oh one group gets to get the results faster and has better access to testing versus another group. And so
so when you start to test the public in that scenario all that number that gets reported is here's how many people tested positive. Yeah, but it could be that the percent of people being tested is going down. But again, it's just this aggregate number and it's on CNN and you know these places and it's like hey, here's how many people got tested or in the NBA's case. They say nobody has tested positive in the last two days. Yeah. Hey, that's great. But there's like 300 people. I think we don't know what the data is.
Is and it requires people to just say that but that's not a bad thing to say is we don't know and actually that's probably more intellectually honest.
Yeah, but that the incentives are messed up. This is the problem. I think everything we're saying it comes back to incentives whether you're talking in an individual Level Society level sort of science level politician level. It all just comes down to incentives and the incentives are not people are not incentivised to be honest and tell the truth. People are absolutely not in.
Sent devised to admit making mistakes people aren't even incentivized to do the best thing for the students citizenry and some situations because you know, and it's it's a shame and I don't know the I don't know the solutions to all these things but I think that being trying to be rational and clear thinking into it at least be willing to discuss them without trying to demonize people is normally a good start to fixing anything.
You're making too much sense. They're my
friend to
finish up. What a what's next.
This year you got kind of half a year left in 2020. What do you
working on? Yeah, man. Well doing more of everything. I'm already doing so got more episodes of my realtalk. We do be podcast coming had a some appearances on some fairly big shows which are coming out. I am going to start writing my next album. I do want to release a new album 2021. So I want to get back in my music Zone and just spend a few weeks, you know, maybe a month. I'm not just getting Airbnb in some random City and
Just Vibe out and make a bunch of new music so new music is coming it's something my plans have been stifled. Like I said, I until the travel situation goes back to normal I was hoping to spend a lot of time out in the States this year, but that won't can't happen until the travel ban is is lifted. So just kind of doing more of what I'm already doing and continuing to develop and grow and do it better. I already do all the things that I want to do. I'm just trying to do the more and do them better and reach more people with them. So
Yeah can expect more of everything you love about ZB.
I'm a fan anyone who who is not listen to the music or read the book. You're an idiot go do it. We're can we send people Twitter and well she want to send them. Yeah. Sure.
I'm at zubi music Z UB y music on all social media platforms. And if you go to if you want to check out the book or music or anything, you can go to Team Zoo b.com and all of my all my stuff is available there.
So for those
Are only listening to this. He's got a Bitcoin shirt on and this is might be one of the first times I've seen zubi not we're a team zubi hat or shirt or anything. So go he's got hats of the background. Okay. All right Fair go go go pick one up because he's not lying when he says that there's there's a lot of people walking around in the United States and elsewhere that are that are rocking the gear so
it's nice.
All right. Listen. Thanks for doing this. We'll do it again soon.
No doubt, bro. Have a good one.
