Lessons from Baseball, Limits to Liberty, Jackery Review, & Boasting

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Okay, dad. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to Life, Liberty and Equipped Podcasts. I'm Greg Davis, founder of NeoMag and a firm believer that life is worth living boldly. Liberty should be used for good and we all have a calling to be equipped to pursue it. Every week we explore what it means to live with intention and carry the tools and mindset that prepare us for whatever comes. We'll dive into topics around the freedoms we cherish, the gear we trust, and the skills that equip us. This is more than a podcast. It's a mission. Life, Liberty and equipped to pursue it. Let's get started. We're coming to you live on the NeoMag, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook accounts right now and we'll be bringing your live comments into the conversation today. So if you're there with us live, we'd love to hear from you. If you're listening to the recorded podcast, you can catch us every Wednesday from at 1pm Eastern to be part of the live. You can get involved with us on our Discord server. Link is in the chat and show notes. If you're part of the NeoMag Insiders club, we have a discount ready for you later in the show. Insiders Club is free to join and you get access to exclusive episodes, discounts and more. You can sign up using the pop up on our [email protected] also hosting today currently right now is Nate Hills and Michael Billings. [00:01:18] Speaker A: What's up guys? [00:01:19] Speaker B: And Mr. Tiberius will be joining us a little bit later. [00:01:26] Speaker C: Noel with Nighthawk says he's trying to arm all the good people of the world with high end pistols. And I just want to say I think they're succeeding with the people that are buying them. Well done Nighthawk. They are high end. Excellent pistols. [00:01:42] Speaker A: Quality machining. [00:01:43] Speaker B: This segment brought to you by Nighthawk. [00:01:45] Speaker C: We are not sponsored by Nighthawk. [00:01:46] Speaker B: They've not given us. [00:01:47] Speaker C: That would be awesome. [00:01:48] Speaker B: But we just gave them a free plug. [00:01:49] Speaker C: But they are awesome pistols. So go check them out. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Free plugs. It's usually Red Bull. Are you proud? [00:01:54] Speaker B: Usually it's Kombucha. [00:01:55] Speaker C: It's kombucha. [00:01:56] Speaker B: Instead. Give me liberty. No, wrong one. [00:02:02] Speaker C: There it is. [00:02:03] Speaker B: I guess it comes down to a simple choice really. Get busy living. [00:02:12] Speaker C: You'll get busy dying. [00:02:16] Speaker B: I'm ready to live. [00:02:18] Speaker A: You're living with that drink. [00:02:19] Speaker B: I am living with this drink. [00:02:21] Speaker C: It's gross. [00:02:21] Speaker B: The segment also not not brought to you by Liquid Death. I I found this this weekend. [00:02:26] Speaker C: Not good. [00:02:27] Speaker B: I found it's called Deathberry Inferno and they do and maybe it's on purpose. They do a horrible job. Liquid Death does a horrible job of actually explaining what the flavor is inside of the can. [00:02:39] Speaker C: It's called Liquid Death. That tells me everything I need to know. It tastes good. [00:02:43] Speaker B: So the, the original liquid was just water. It was just canned water. And actually I thought it was. It's really good. [00:02:47] Speaker C: The branding is very good. [00:02:48] Speaker B: The branding is amazing. I am, I'm learning from them actually. So, you know, you're a business owner when you subscribe to other businesses emails just to get their emails so you can learn from them. And Liquid Death is one of the ones that I have recently subscribed to that I've been learning from. But anyway, I found this stuff. It's called Deathberry Inferno. [00:03:11] Speaker A: There's a parental warning label. [00:03:13] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a what? There is parental warning. Extremely spicy. [00:03:17] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. [00:03:18] Speaker B: It's not good. They build up their drinks so much anyway, like a Liquid death. Like everything sounds so dramatic. So when you, when you get it, you're like, yeah, it's just like a, you know, just whatever flavor it is. It's kind of like a muted flavor because it is water. But this I found, literally, I know it. What it was, but I thought I would try it and I crack it open and the first thing you taste is like, is like the sweet like berry followed by a punch in the. [00:03:43] Speaker C: Mouth, which is not fun. [00:03:45] Speaker B: By some heat. And I actually, I don't mind heat. It's gross, but it's kind of fun. [00:03:51] Speaker C: I don't want to drink spicy. He's got a party and I'm not in. [00:03:54] Speaker B: I love bourbon. I don't mind spicy. This is like. This is. I don't mind at all. [00:04:00] Speaker C: Zoo7actual on Instagram said, didn't they have a witch come in and curse a line? I don't know if that's true, but. [00:04:06] Speaker A: If so, look at you and your Liquid death. You have your spice in your. [00:04:11] Speaker C: Your witch's brew. [00:04:13] Speaker B: I know, I know. They really play into the whole. Their whole theme, but this stuff's pretty good. [00:04:21] Speaker C: Not sponsored. [00:04:22] Speaker B: Not sponsored. [00:04:23] Speaker C: Not spicy. [00:04:24] Speaker B: We have a lot of product. Product spots today. None of which have any do we have. We received a single thing from. We have personally spent money on all these things. [00:04:36] Speaker A: What? No, it's. That's so Ohio. [00:04:40] Speaker B: Is that what the kids say? [00:04:41] Speaker C: Yeah, we could use. It'd be fun to have a channel sponsor. Who wants to be a channel sponsor? [00:04:45] Speaker B: Nighthawk, this channel brought to you by. [00:04:48] Speaker C: NeoMag currently but could be brought to you by Other things it could. [00:04:52] Speaker B: My plan is not to. My plan is that this whole thing is brought to you by NeoMag and we. If you guys enjoy this live, if you enjoy the podcast, all these things. The reason all of this exists is because of you guys supporting NeoMag. That's true. Supporting the three of us plus everybody else here. We all exist here because of you guys supporting us. [00:05:12] Speaker A: So who is it powered by? [00:05:15] Speaker B: That's why we're not there yet. Not there yet. [00:05:18] Speaker C: You are just jumping the gun. [00:05:23] Speaker B: You will hear NeoMag products push fairly often and stuff like that. But my plan is to not really bring in other other company's commercials because I hate when I'm listening to a podcast and suddenly I have some product commercial I have to fast forward through and stuff like that. So oops. Anyway, if you guys enjoy this podcast we would appreciate your Support. Support via theneomag.com Boom Boom. So what's going on life wise? So we did start our life segment. This is just kind of a segment if your first time catching us here. We talk about life, liberty and being equipped to purs. Each one of those is a different segment. This first segment is life where we just kind of talk life. What's been going on with us. You guys kind of get to hear from us what we're doing. We'd love to hear from you guys if you are live. If you want to share what you've been up to in the last six days since we've, since we have met. We'd love to hear from you guys and we'll throw you guys comments in here. So true. [00:06:25] Speaker C: All accurate. [00:06:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:27] Speaker A: What did you guys do this weekend? [00:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah, throw it in the comments. We'd love to hear from you guys and just what's going on in life. So I mentioned last week that I was taking my son to tech which is ultimate. It's like Ultimate Archery challenge and it was our first time going to it. I really just got my son into archery a couple years ago. I've been shooting archery on and off for probably the last 1010 years but never really all that super serious. I would go to a 3D shoot every now and then with some friends. But this last couple, this year I've really taken things up a notch and really got my son into it more. We found a local place that had like a Wednesday 3D archery course and so we'll go and do that. Invited some other friends to that sort of thing. So anyway, I came across this, this archery challenge. I actually heard about it last year from Phil, a guy I know, I want to call him friend, but we talk like once, twice a year. But he works at Origin. He's kind of the. He's kind of. Yeah, he works at Origin. Found out that they were there last year. I found out about it. So I booked. Me and my son who's 12, we went there. It was in Indiana, it was right across the river from Louisville at a place called the Farm and sporting, sporting something at the Farm. I've actually been there once before shooting sporting clays. But they hosted Tech, which is the last stop of the, of the season. Tech has events all across the country starting in the spring. And what they do is they normally have these events at, at a, like a ski resort and you actually ride the lift up to the top of the top of the mountain and then they have a course. They have multiple courses, a bunch of courses, each of them ranging from 15 to 25 targets on a course. Well, they do. It's called ultimate for a reason. You are not going to see like a 20 yard deer on flat ground wide open. No, no, you're going to see like a turkey at 65 yards. At a 20, you know, like a 20 degree downhill, you know, steep slope that they have to hit. There's usually some pretty good repercussions. If you miss, you're gonna hit, it's gonna be gone because, because they put it like on a horizon or whatever. It's gonna be gone or you're gonna hit something and your area is gonna explode and that sort of thing. So there, there's a cost to it. They also do a really good job of making it feel pretty similar to what it would be like to like stock a hunt where you are the, the best, the best route from point A to B is down a ravine, up a ravine, across a ravine, over a creek, under fallen trees, over fallen trees, those sort of things. So we knew it was going to be tough. But I'll be honest, this, it was probably one of the more physically demanding things I've done. And my son was a trooper. He never complained once. And we just had a really, really good time. We camped out, which I'm kind of a dummy. [00:09:34] Speaker C: Why are you a dummy? [00:09:36] Speaker B: So wait, use your head, right? Use your head. So when I, when I was, when I was booking everything they had on the website that you could book a campsite and they had just like a regular tent site. There's a word that they call that for like a tent tent site. What's word? They Use for primitive. Yeah, primitive. Like a primitive tent site or they had a generator site. Well, I interpreted that as they would have. Like there's power to that lot. They would have power for you. They had generators there and whatever. So there was power for you. That's how I, how I thought about it. So I kind of planned accordingly. I did bring. I have a. I have a jackery that I've only used a couple times. So I decided to bring it. Just to just use it. Honestly, it's kind of an excuse to use it. Even though I was thinking I'm like, I'm just going to run extension cord from the slot into my tent and be able to run a fan and charge stuff, whatever. But I brought it anyway. Well, this is where the dummy part comes in. Yep, yep. We get there and we pull into a gravel parking lot with a bunch of campers. And it hit me square between the eyes right in that moment. [00:10:57] Speaker C: They all have generators. Oh, you don't. [00:11:01] Speaker B: This is a lot where you bring generators. And there was one thing that kind of tipped me off a little before that. So they sent an email like a day or two before and they were explaining the lots. They're like, you know, we did our best to separate the generator lot from the primitive lot, like for noise or whatever. And I thought that was interesting. I was like, oh, why would they do that? Why would they do that? Well, because there's probably people complaining about trying to sleeping in a tent next to a camper. [00:11:24] Speaker C: Why do I. Why? I don't want to hear a generator while I'm sleeping in my tent. [00:11:28] Speaker B: Well, oops. We were in a tent firmly between two generators with generators. And I felt pretty dumb in that moment. And it was also during the day. It was like 100 and 304. Heat index, it was like 90. It was low 90s but with heat index and everything was well above a hundred. So it was gonna be hot at night too. We got there first night. We got there at like 6 or 7 o' clock and it was still 90 degrees. And so I'm just sweating like crazy setting up the tent. I get my. Get the jackery out. Plug a. I brought a fan. Cause I knew it was gonna be warm at night, so I at least thought ahead to bring a fan. So I plug a fan into the jackery and that's blown on us as we're setting everything up. And I just, I just laid there like kind of did. The starfish lay there, try not to move and try to just try to Be. And our air mattress kept air for several hours. And we ended up, me and my son, like, in the middle, kind of on top of. Well, him more on top of me. He's throwing elbows in my face. [00:12:36] Speaker A: Yep. [00:12:37] Speaker B: And I looked at my watch, and it was like 1am and I'm like, oh, cots. We've not been here this long. [00:12:44] Speaker A: Cots. [00:12:45] Speaker C: Cots are better. [00:12:46] Speaker B: So long story short, yes, I went and got a cot. There's a Bass Pro not too far. So the next day we shoot the course. Had a great time, and it was way too hot to still be outside. So I said, we're gonna find whatever we can to do. And we are right across the river from Louisville. There's plenty to do. So we're. We went to Bass Pro because I needed to get a cot and. And just some other stuff I need to get. We went saw Superman, went. Went watch a movie, went to Buffalo Wild Wings, and just perfect sat. We got, like, out of the heat. We got, like, one appetizer. Our waitress was very annoyed that we stayed there for, like, an hour and just got one appetizer. But. Yeah. [00:13:27] Speaker C: So you got something, though. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I tipped her 100% of the time. It was a $10 appetizer. I gave her a $10 tip. I'm like, fine. [00:13:36] Speaker A: How was Superman? [00:13:38] Speaker B: It was pretty good. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I've heard mix. [00:13:41] Speaker B: It was pretty good. I mean, I don't expect a lot. I'm just. I'm not a huge Superman fan to begin with, so I didn't really go into it expecting a lot. [00:13:51] Speaker C: It's because DC is poopy. [00:13:54] Speaker B: It was better than I expected it to be, put it that way. [00:13:57] Speaker A: Okay. Wait for it to come out on. [00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd wait for it to come out. Yep. I'd wait for it to come out. But it was wonderful just to. I would have watched anything, to be honest. To be. So. Who. We went to a Cinemark, which has, like, the Lazy Boy chairs. I told my son, which I slept, like, four hours the night before. I told my son. I was like, I'll just be happy if I. This could be the most amazing movie ever. Whatever we were to go see, I said, it could be the most amazing movie ever. If I can make it through it without falling asleep. Will be. It would be a miracle. And frankly, what I thought about doing was just finding every movie that I could throughout the night and just buy tickets to all of them. And we just sleeping. We just sleep in the Lazy Boy at the movies the entire night. I was like, wonderful. They have any like, 1am movies. And I don't think they do that anymore. [00:14:46] Speaker C: I don't think they do that anymore. [00:14:47] Speaker B: But it'd be way cheaper than a hotel room, which I did want to give some credit to this podcast. So we talked a couple weeks ago. I think it was the last one a couple weeks ago. Just about being uncomfortable about raising our sons. Being uncomfortable. It was two or three weeks ago. And so I'm there with my son. It's just him and I. It's really the first time that he and I have done anything like this. And I went into this. It's like, this is going to be a good learning opportunity for both of us because neither of us had done this event before and it was extremely hot. We are extremely dirty and gross. We use. I don't know how many. Use how many. Like the dude wipes, cold shower wipes. We went through bags of those because we're just. We got sunscreen, bug spray, sweaty. We're climbing up and down these, you know, these. These ravines. We're just. It was gross. And so. And with as little as I slept the night before and I just started doing math. I'm like, by the time I buy a cotton. By the time I buy, you know, like, you know, a couple of things that I needed, I'm halfway, if not all the way to what a hotel room would cost. [00:15:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:57] Speaker B: So I'm just kind of doing some basic math. I. Sex with my wife. I was like, do I go get all this stuff that I'm gonna use a couple times a year or just get a hotel room? We could have a shower. We could have air conditioning, have all these things. But I thought about this podcast and the conversation that we had about proud of you about being uncomfortable and kind of suffering a little bit. But to learn from it, whatever. I learned what generator lots are. [00:16:22] Speaker C: Yep. [00:16:24] Speaker B: I learned a lot about my jackery, which we are going to. Mike was kind of alluding to. [00:16:29] Speaker C: We're here. [00:16:30] Speaker B: I got to talk about that in our gear segment today. But I purposely did not go to. I pulled it up. I pulled a hotel room up. I looked at it. The reserve button was glaring me in the eye. As it's 103. As it's 103 degrees outside. But I'm like, you know what? We're going to do this. And I'm glad we did. I now have. I now own a cot. [00:16:52] Speaker C: There you go. [00:16:52] Speaker B: A very nice cut. I'm a big cot believer now. [00:16:55] Speaker C: Cots Are great. [00:16:56] Speaker B: Cots are great. Honestly, one of the best things about the cut I didn't really think about is just you can actually fit things underneath it. [00:17:03] Speaker C: You can store underneath it. If you don't store things underneath it, you know what else happens? The air moves underneath it and cools your tuchus at night. [00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's nice. It was pretty wonderful. So now, proud owner of a Cabela's cut. It was on sale. [00:17:18] Speaker C: Was it low? [00:17:18] Speaker A: Steals and deals. [00:17:20] Speaker B: It's probably knee high. Okay. [00:17:22] Speaker A: It's not bad. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Because there's low ones, like, you're only a couple inches off the ground. [00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:28] Speaker C: Versus ones. I mean, yours is probably about an average. Average height. [00:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:33] Speaker C: I've seen ones that are. I've never seen one waist height. [00:17:36] Speaker B: No. [00:17:37] Speaker C: But I've seen ones that are decently. [00:17:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say it was average height. I don't think I saw anything that wasn't the same height as this at Bass Pro. Yeah. Yeah. They did have a. The bunk bed one. [00:17:47] Speaker C: I've seen those. Those are terrifying. [00:17:49] Speaker B: If they had one set up a little bit. If they had one set up and we could have actually, like, tried it and see what the spacing is and everything, I may have got it. [00:17:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:57] Speaker B: But they didn't, so. [00:17:58] Speaker C: So you didn't. [00:17:59] Speaker B: I didn't. [00:18:00] Speaker C: There you go. [00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was my. My awesome weekend, just in a nutshell, but it was great. Nate, how about you? [00:18:10] Speaker C: Well, the weekend was pretty. Not eventful, really. It was just doing some stuff around the house, mowing the lawn. What did we do? A little bit of that. Now I'm blanking. [00:18:27] Speaker B: Blinking. Yeah, we say here practice skills. [00:18:31] Speaker C: Yeah, we. Well, that was Sunday afternoon. We did other stuff. I don't remember. It was mostly at home. It was not a busy weekend, really, is what it comes down to. But Sunday evening, my son wanted to go out and practice some baseball. He played baseball for the first time. Well, T ball. This year was his first experience with a team sport, and he wanted to go out and practice some hitting and some throwing and everything. And we got to go out and do that a little bit. He loves to hit because who doesn't love to hit a ball? He doesn't love to practice throwing and catching as much. We spent more time throwing and catching, to his chagrin. But I told him when he actually gets to playing baseball, he will do more of that than he will hit, and that's the skill that he needs to work on more. So we spent some more time doing that. He had talked about one of the boys that is on his team is really good or was really good. I assume he's still good. The season's over, and he had said that he just wanted to play as good as this other little boy. And I told him the only reason that little boy is as good as he is is because he has an older brother that plays baseball, and they play baseball together all the time. And so he's always practicing, he's always working on his skills. And we had a long conversation about how you're not just going to be good at something. You're not just going to pick up the bat or pick up your glove and immediately be better than everybody else to do that. That's something you're going to have to practice and work on your skills. So we got to have a little life lesson as we worked on it. He did get hit straight in the face on, like, the third or fourth throw, because he's still trying to figure out that you have to move the mitt to. To catch the ball. So I threw the ball to him, and instead of moving the mitt to catch the ball, he simply held it and then the ball smacked him in the face. So there was also some tears involved, but he did fine. Uh, we. Then we also got to go to see your point as a family. We actually did that yesterday, which was a hot day. It was a hot day, but it was. It was a good day. It was a lot of fun. Both kids got to ride rides. My son did jump on stuff that he was unsure of. He took the leap to jump on rides that he would be scared of. He didn't particularly like them. I didn't push him to do it. He did it on his own. He just wanted to try again. He's like, I didn't like it last time, but I want to try it again. So that was really pretty neat to give him a chance to try something that he wasn't looking forward to, that he knew was going to be stretching and challenging, but he chose to do. [00:21:08] Speaker B: It on his own. [00:21:10] Speaker C: So I really liked that he made that choice. He's just like, I know that this is scary, and I want to try and do it again. I was like, all right, let's go. Let's do it together. So we rode a couple of big rides, which was cool, but overall, it was. It was a good weekend. John, one of our employees, John, just jumped on and said, give him a brother. No, John, I will not be giving him a brother. But, yeah, so it was. It was a neat couple days. With, especially with my son, just working on life skills. Right? Working on, hey, we got to practice things if we want to be better at him. We can't just expect to be better than everybody else when we pick something up. We need to work on our skills. And then he was also stretching himself by doing things that he knew was gonna scare him. It was not a big deal that he didn't like it. It was just something that he had to. He felt like he had to do without being pushed, which was cool to see him do. [00:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So I bet that same. I think it's just. It's just the human condition. We are kind of lazy. We just want. We just want things we just want to be good at. We just want to naturally be good at things. We want to naturally be wealthy, just, you know, all those things. And it starts at a very young age of, okay, I want to play baseball and I want to be the best kid out there. And there's always going to be one. There's always going to be somebody better than you and at everything. And then just learning. What practice is that? Oh, yeah, you gotta put work into this. My kids have. All my kids have had that lesson in multiple things, whether it's playing an instrument or a sport or in school and all those things. [00:22:48] Speaker C: Well, and you and I have talked about this. There are some people that are just naturally talented at things. There's some people that are just naturally athletic. There's some people that are naturally just better coordinated, which make them better at some of these skill sets and everything, and it makes it easier for them to pick them up. But they don't become proficient, they don't become excellent at it without practicing as well. Everyone has to put practice in to be good, to be excellent at anything. So in the case of my son, he wants to be good at baseball. We need to just go out and practice and do the thing. Even while we were throwing the ball, he had said at one point, he's like, why are you so good at this? I said, but I'm not. I've just been doing it a lot longer than you have. I said, you're going to meet a lot of people, especially if you continue to play this, that are much, much better than me. And there's a very, very good chance that you're going to be better at me than this very soon just by practicing and playing. Because I never played. I just played for fun in my backyard. I never played competitively in any baseball type sport. So I never had practices. I never had all that stuff I just played with my friends. So I told him, if you actually spend time working on this, this is something that you'll probably be better at than me at some point. And that's great. I hope you are so just neat, neat life story or neat life lessons worked on in the last few days, which was cool. [00:24:12] Speaker B: On Point on YouTube here says that's what I try to instill my kid all the time. If you want it, we got to work for it. And I just responded. I was like, yeah, the feeling of earning it is so much better than it being given to you or just, or I guess not working for it. But you know, like when you, when you work towards something, when you've practiced and you've worked really hard and then you win, it's so much, it's such a great feeling knowing that all the work that you did led up to that, up to that point. Like I did that because of all the work I've done. All the, you know, there's stories of, you know, of Michael Jordan and, you know, and Sidney Crosby and just, you know, some of these, your top stars in these sports, you know, Tiger woods, there's stories of these guys. They're the last ones there. They're the ones shooting free throws, hitting their last ones off the, off the putting green and the just, just all these things. They're the last one off because they're putting the most work. [00:25:08] Speaker C: First one's on, last one's off, putting the work in. They're not being lazy. Yes. Do they? Maybe they had a natural proclivity towards things, but they, they were there. Oh, hey, guess what? [00:25:22] Speaker B: Is Tiberis here? [00:25:23] Speaker C: Tiberius has arrived. [00:25:25] Speaker B: 1:30. I was just picking up my phone to check. Hi, Tib. Sorry I'm late. Hey, buddy. [00:25:30] Speaker C: Well, for everyone listening, Tiberius Giblin has just arrived. [00:25:34] Speaker B: Famous YouTuber, famous friend, fellow bald guy. [00:25:39] Speaker C: Fellow bald guy has arrived to the live. [00:25:42] Speaker D: What did I miss? [00:25:44] Speaker B: Well, I gave the update on my tack event Nate was talking about. What we were just talking about is just. He's talking. Well, you tell them what you're talking about. [00:25:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I was just talking about the fact that I got to talk to my son about the fact that life takes practice, skills take practice. You can't. You're not just good at things by picking things up, that it takes effort and some just time to get good at things. You're not going to be good at it without putting effort into it. And he also stretched himself and got on rides that he would not have otherwise done. On his own or let me rephrase that. He knew he was nervous about at Cedar Point yesterday. Things that he knew were scary, that he wasn't sure that he wanted to do, but he chose to do on his own. So stretching himself a little bit, which was. Which was cool. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're talking about how good it feels to earn. To earn stuff. Yeah. Work for it, Earn it. [00:26:41] Speaker C: Yep. [00:26:41] Speaker B: It's a good feeling. It is. Michael, what's going up with you? [00:26:47] Speaker A: So I had a long drive Thursday morning. I left at 1:30 in the morning, so it's about a seven hour drive to Knoxville. But we had gone 20, 25 goals for year number two in Knoxville, which I'm Tennessee boy born and raised, so love the area. Super excited to get down there. Got there, was fortunate enough not to have bad weather going down. We were fortunate enough not to have bad weather throughout the weekend because it looked like it was going to thunderstorm and rain the entire weekend. The range day kicked off, got to the range day, got to see all the familiar faces, all the companies interact with some old faces, interact with some new faces, shoot some newer products out in the industry. So always enjoy a range day. Had a couple mag dumps, which I love, full auto mag dumps when it's not your ammo or it's your gun, so you don't have to clean it either. [00:27:40] Speaker C: Both of those things are great. [00:27:41] Speaker A: Yeah, easy shout out to all the guns that were at range day. But Gokhan was another great event in my opinion. There's a lot to do. There is a lot. In a short amount of time. You are from one spot to the next, between speakers, between the events, the post events that they have, the internetworking, the marketing events. They really put a precedent on taking care of those in the community that are either starting out or have been doing it for a long time, but are still learning new trades. So they had classroom portions. For me, it's just super humbling. You know, we talk about the community and we talk about earning things. My business is going on four and a half years old now and to get a media pass, you start to be recognized, to go see faces and companies say, oh, who do you work for? And it's like, well, hi, you know, myself, nice to meet you. But when you mention the name, they recognize it. Or they're like, oh, I've seen your art, your photos and your content, which is super humbling to see. I got to see Tibbs. So what up, Tib? We got to go to Stock and Barrel, which you would absolutely love Best burgers in town. I stress yummy. We have a funny story to taking about a block walk back to Tibbs Hotel because we picked that restaurant and I went the wrong direction. So we walked an entire block, maybe a little bit more, just to go back and decide not to eat there. So Sock and Barrel was wonderful. So it was great. I got to see a good friend from college and got to see, again, good people. I got to see a lot of the companies that we with NeoMag work with and go shake hands, kiss babies, you know, do all that jazz. Got to see some new products coming out with Victo's. The guys, they're doing some great things. So it was just a wonderful weekend, all in all. And again, I don't want to give a shout out, but I do. So there was a bourbon company that I found, and you kind of got me on the bourbon kick. I loved a smoked old Fashioned. I don't know all the ins and outs of bourbon. I haven't even had a sample of this yet. They wouldn't allow us to sample it there. However, the owner has brother committed suicide. So he started this company to honor those in suicide awareness, whether it be military, law enforcement, first responders. And from talking to him, he hasn't taken a penny in his company. Most of it's volunteers. And he has like, one. I think he said, one employee, that salary. So I was in the most beautiful, artistic, historical district at an Airbnb, and I was like, I was touched by it because I have some stories that relate to suicide awareness. So I was like, please let me do something for free. So in turn, I took my business and took some professional photography for his company and gave him those shots absolutely free to give back to the community. Give back as a service to them, which is super humbling because they ended up giving me a bottle. I was like, hey, I'm gonna buy a bottle and I'll do this for you. And they're like, do it, please. Go ahead. So we've got some bourbon. I don't know if we're gonna do it on a Wednesday, since you boys have the wad. [00:30:44] Speaker B: We do have to wad, but at. [00:30:45] Speaker A: Some point, we're gonna have to try our bourbon and give them some feedback. [00:30:48] Speaker B: Post wad. Postwad shots. [00:30:51] Speaker A: Bourbon. [00:30:52] Speaker C: Nope. [00:30:53] Speaker D: What could go wrong? [00:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah, everything. [00:30:56] Speaker C: So I will not make vomit noises on the podcast, but that's what will happen. [00:31:00] Speaker B: I need to add that one. [00:31:01] Speaker A: That'd be a good one. So all in all, great event. It's Always good to see good people. It's always good to network and see how we were taking the right approach and steps forward for the two a community, whether it be being a voice, whether it be an advocates or just standing up for our rights and defending our constitutional rights. So good event all. [00:31:23] Speaker B: Steven wants to know if skydiving happens. [00:31:26] Speaker A: No, I just ran out of time like I really wanted to. Thursday with the weather was busy. Yeah, the clouds were so overcast I wouldn't have been able to jump. [00:31:35] Speaker C: So cuz Tib said no, isn't it? [00:31:37] Speaker B: It's cuz Tib said I have all my gear. I asked, I got scared. [00:31:42] Speaker A: I asked so many people. I was like, y' all want to skydive? We were 12 miles from the place and everything was within a couple miles distance. Um, but I am either if I can't make it to the range for the seal match today and the weather's what right. I'm probably going to scoot out there and go get a jump in or wait until this weekend and jump. I have the itch. So do you want to shoot with me today? [00:32:04] Speaker B: I got a meeting after the come after this. [00:32:05] Speaker A: Today I have a meeting at 3:30, but we can totally go shoot some steel. [00:32:10] Speaker B: Um, yeah, very good tip. What's going on with you? [00:32:15] Speaker D: Uh, like Michael, I went to goals as he said, and it was a fantastic event. I went with a little different goals for the event. [00:32:25] Speaker C: Ooh, look at you. [00:32:27] Speaker D: Um, so I did not go to the range event. I have zero interest in and pretty much any public range event which a bunch of strangers and guns in full auto, I don't want to be around it. So I avoid range of. Yeah, I've had too many guns pointed at me. I've. I avoid public range days as much as possible. But we got in on Thursday, we left on Saturday night. We had, you know, almost two days to walk the show and I didn't want to go to any of the classroom presentations and the speeches, even though I heard they were great. I was there just to make connections. And I walked around and like Michael, met a ton of new people, improve relations, current relationships with people I already knew, see a bunch of new products, support Goa, hung out with a bunch of my buddies from Brownells, so. And a bunch of fellow YouTubers. So it was awesome, awesome event. And I go home really late on Saturday and it was good. The reason I was late today is my boy is doing flag football and it's amazing. Like Nate was just saying to see how skills and talent are earned and how you have to practice and get better. And over the past three years, this is his third year doing flag football. It's amazing to watch him improve and be better at catching, better at throwing. More importantly, a lot more aggressive. He was always a little timid. And watching him out there, today, he's pulling flags and he had two touchdowns and he had a two point conversion. He had a interception and he batted a couple balls. And I'm like, man, just to see the improvement and the comfort and being more aggressive, it, you know, feels good. And there's been a lot of driveway street yard practice sessions, conversations about that. [00:34:18] Speaker B: So it's good to see. Awesome. Good. [00:34:22] Speaker C: That's really good. [00:34:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Heck yeah. Go Tip. [00:34:27] Speaker B: All right, are we ready? Let's get into the next segment. [00:34:30] Speaker C: Go to Liberty. [00:34:31] Speaker B: Give me liberty. Oh, give me death. Yes. Well said. [00:34:42] Speaker C: I still don't have a powdered wig. [00:34:46] Speaker B: Still gotta get you a powdered wig. Saying the whole thing with, like a big, big frilly collar. [00:34:51] Speaker C: Well, if we're going to do the frilly collar, just give me the full coat. Wear the whole thing. Look like George Washington sitting here for a podcast. I'll do it. [00:35:00] Speaker D: So he was dressed up that way at goals, the whole outfit. [00:35:04] Speaker B: I'm sure. [00:35:04] Speaker D: Musket and all. [00:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Say they better had a musket. So in our Liberty segment, we like to just talk about how we navigate using our liberties in today's world. And today I've got a topic that I think we could be here a while talking about this potentially. I've had conversations. Me and my wife had conversations around this. It applies to so many things in today's world. So I got a would you rather question. It's kind of on the nose, I'll be honest. So would you rather live in a society with unlimited personal freedoms but no shared moral code, or a society with fewer freedoms but strong community, responsibility and ethics? Oof. Ooh. [00:35:53] Speaker D: There's so many questions I have. [00:35:56] Speaker C: Go for it, buddy. Yeah, kick us off. [00:35:59] Speaker D: I didn't want to go first on this one. Well, I guess it depends to what extent that was my. To what extent is there people don't have the same moral values? And what extent do you have less freedom? There's so many, like, am I living in, like, China, North Korea lack of freedom, or am I living in, like, Rhode island lack of freedom? You know, so that was my first thought. [00:36:24] Speaker B: Very close, right? Aren't those two, like, China and Rhode island similar? [00:36:28] Speaker C: Couple years away. [00:36:28] Speaker A: Couple years away. [00:36:30] Speaker D: My first instinct was to say, Bring on the freedom. And I think I have a good moral compass for myself. And obviously it depends where everybody else stands. I'm very hesitant on that answer because it's just so many, so many variables. [00:36:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think, I think this. Before I add anything. What do you guys think? [00:36:57] Speaker A: So I. To keep it simple, I put a couple of notes in here. But without a moral framework, liberty turns to lawlessness. So for me, again, if we painted the scenario or where we are, what country or what rules or not, when I say unlimited personal freedoms, I think of both the positive and the negative and what that can entail. So if there's no moral code to society, it's like the purge, because there's people out there that like evil. I have this saying when I teach. Evil knows no face, no place and no time. And there are people like that out there that have nothing but ill intent to do harm to others. And it. And there's people out there that are held back by a moral code. So I think if you don't have that moral code in this society and you say everything's free, that doesn't say. [00:37:53] Speaker B: There'S no moral code. It says there's no shared moral code, which I guess could. Could be. Could be. [00:37:59] Speaker A: But you're more code to mind. Right, right. It's very much one of those. I think it leads to lawlessness or chaos because as an individual, there's only so much freedom that we can have in our own moral ethics to the point that it's crossed. [00:38:16] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:16] Speaker A: Whether it be to defend ourselves, protect ourselves, or defend our loved one versus someone else's. So not having a common ground with that or having that moral code. [00:38:26] Speaker B: So are you saying because if there's no shared moral code that we need to have less freedoms? [00:38:32] Speaker A: It's hard. Right. Because I'm trying to keep it so simple to say that I don't want to eliminate freedoms. But I think the. That's why I put in the laws that society puts on us are an attempt to define the boundaries, to protect the vulnerable, promote order, and encourage behaviors that benefit the community. Some laws are absurdities. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:54] Speaker A: And I think that's where we're finding that fine line of what can we define as a spiritual freedom, a moral freedom and a birthright freedom or God given freedom or just natural liberty to where we're at today with some laws. Like you can't turn right on red. Why? It's an open lane, like something like that. But yeah, and that's the simple answer. [00:39:26] Speaker B: Nate, what do you think I said. [00:39:29] Speaker C: This before we started. I feel like we almost live in option one already to a certain extent. We may not have unlimited personal freedoms, but we're pretty close in the US Anyways to having. Pretty close to having unlimited personal freedoms in a lot of ways. I mean, there's. [00:39:58] Speaker B: In comparison to other countries. Well, that's what I'm saying. [00:40:01] Speaker C: That's what I'm saying. [00:40:02] Speaker A: We're close. [00:40:02] Speaker C: I'm not saying we're unlimited, but we're not too far off. And I would say that there isn't much of a shared moral code at this point across the board. There's going to be pockets of society that share moral code. Sure. And Michael was touching on. Our society has put laws in place to keep people safe, but I wouldn't put that as a moral code. That is societal norms being put into place. They may have historically been based on a morality. May have had some kind of moral code to create those laws at some point. [00:40:37] Speaker A: The intent behind it. [00:40:39] Speaker C: Correct. I don't know that that's the case currently. [00:40:43] Speaker A: Agreed. [00:40:45] Speaker C: So I feel like we're living in option one to a certain extent at this point. Right now it's fuzzy, but I'd say we're closer to number one than we are to number two. [00:40:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we're probably somewhere in between, but yeah, I would agree we're probably closer to the first year in the US And I think that's. I mean, so I've had this exact thought line come up, I guess, kind of talking point come up in conversations about abortion, about gun control, about. You can apply this to turning right on red. You can apply this to everything from the most hot button topic to the most menial thing. [00:41:28] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. [00:41:30] Speaker B: And you're gonna have multiple sides to this. Right. [00:41:33] Speaker C: By the way, I don't think I answered the question. I will say that I don't know which one I'd rather live in. By the way, I didn't answer that saying I prefer number one over number two. I actually don't know the answer. I'm just saying I think we're living more towards option. [00:41:46] Speaker A: I didn't answer the question either. [00:41:47] Speaker C: Than option two. [00:41:48] Speaker B: Same so well, so I did have. Anything else. I feel like it's hard for you to get an award in since you're not here with us. I just want to make sure I leave. [00:41:57] Speaker D: I'm still sticking with number one. Yeah, within reason. I'll stick with number one, so. [00:42:02] Speaker B: And I think. I think if we were to gather, you know, our. Our customer base, our line, you Know, we're, we're in the firearms industry. We are, we are very much give us our freedoms. Right. And part of our, if we were to have a gun control conversation, part of the things that. One of our talking points on the pro gun side of things is if the question comes up of well what about all the, just all the murder, just all the gun violence and all this stuff, if we could just go round up all the guns and take all of that away, if you could get every single one taken, you know, why don't we do that? You know, and we don't need to get into that conversation because honestly be very one sided with here right now. But it just like that's kind of where this goes is like, do you sacrifice freedom? Especially as moral code declines? Should we be more willing to give up our freedoms because moral code is starting to slip and we need more laws? [00:43:33] Speaker D: I think the big assumption though is if you're giving up more freedom, you're going to be safer. And as we all know, that's not the case. [00:43:41] Speaker C: I was going to say, I think we're the slippery slope. The struggle with that discussion is that we're assuming whoever is setting the societal norms, how is this worded, the strong community responsibility and ethics, who is setting what those responsibilities and those ethics are? So we have no shared moral code in option one, but we have this community responsibility and ethics. But who's setting that and do we agree with it? Because there's plenty of community style things of this nature throughout the 60s and 70s, people setting up communes and group living situations that were trying to set up strong community responsibility and ethics that then we're trying to grow that as a society. And I don't know that we would step into that for a variety of reasons because we don't agree with it. Not saying that they shouldn't be able to do that, but we wouldn't necessarily want to sit in that if they're the ones that are setting that. Do we want to be a part of a place that they're saying, well we're taking your freedoms and now you have to follow this code that we're setting up for you. I'm sitting there not agreeing with it. I think I would rather live in option one in that scenario. It's very dependent on who's the victor. [00:45:13] Speaker A: I think that the moral code, the morality behind it is what our moral code is. We take into consideration the responsibility of what it's going to do when it, and how it, what it's going to do. And how it's going to affect others. [00:45:26] Speaker B: Right. [00:45:26] Speaker A: And that's good. We need that in the world. But I would agree with you, Nate. [00:45:30] Speaker C: Like. [00:45:32] Speaker A: Number two, seems like the world that we live in now. I mean the government that we have now, not to go heavy political, but there's a lot of restrictions. Although we may foresee us having a lot of freedoms, there's a lot of limitations set against us. And in certain states. Tips. They don't have the rights that we do in regards to firearms or suppressors or anything of that. [00:45:59] Speaker D: The tinted windows on my car or tinted windows. My car inspected and it got denied. Declined. Because it has a tinted window. [00:46:06] Speaker B: Wow. [00:46:06] Speaker D: Tinted windows. [00:46:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Absolute freedom. Sounds powerful. [00:46:12] Speaker B: But. Yeah. So I. I think the other side of this though, it just. I'm thinking about like what would imagine a country. I was going to say world. But let's just imagine a country that has such a strong community, responsibility and ethics that you're actually okay having fewer freedoms because everybody's closer to being on the same page with what's right and wrong, with what's ethical, what's right and wrong. That I don't need to have these freedoms because everything flows because everything's. Yeah. Like you're in this kind of utopian state where. [00:46:59] Speaker D: Fairy tale. [00:47:00] Speaker C: That's what I was gonna say. I think you're painting a picture. That sounds lovely. [00:47:04] Speaker D: Sounds lovely. [00:47:04] Speaker C: But I don't think it exists. [00:47:06] Speaker B: No. [00:47:06] Speaker C: And that's the problem. There's a lot of. We can make a argument that. That sounds lovely. Sure. I wouldn't argue that. If that was possible, that would be great. I would rather have my freedom and live by my morality then have it being put into place and trusting that the folks putting it into place agree with the same thing and don't have an ulterior motive. [00:47:40] Speaker B: So I think we also need to. If that's the case, we also have to understand that this also applies to people that have the complete opposite 100% right moral code. They might. [00:47:53] Speaker C: Does. [00:47:54] Speaker B: Yeah. They will have 180 degree different moral code. And so they also deserve the same freedom as us with our moral code. Right. So that's just kind of the flip side of that coin is this. I think it's also easy to side heavily with option one if you don't think about all the other sides to the moral code itself. [00:48:18] Speaker C: I've had to have that. I'm gonna actually just call it an argument with my mom before in discussing some of the more recent meaning last few years, recent moves in the political spectrum on things where she was very upset with decisions made by the Supreme Court siding on things. And I said, it doesn't change your moral look at it. That doesn't have to change your perspective on it just because they did. She's like, well, it's not what our country is based on. I said, actually our country is based on freedom. It's not based on your morality. Now I agree, actually agree with what my mom's perspective is. It's not that I don't actually agree with her, but her being upset about it. My point was, to her, we are a country founded on freedom, personal freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of politics, freedom. That's what we are supposed to be. And those that is what has been ruled upon is that they are provided that freedom you can't get upset about. Also doesn't infringe on your belief that that isn't correct morally. And you don't have to agree with it morally. You don't have to hug it and kiss it and say it's okay. Yeah, but they're allowed to do it. [00:49:46] Speaker B: Yeah. That's why I have moved. I used to be much more, I'll say, you know, right wing, but I've definitely moved much more central. And you and I have had this conversation. I moved much more central and largely because of this. Like, if I truly believe in personal freedom, that means I also need to allow others to have personal freedom. And that means people are going to have the freedom to do things that I don't agree with, but I also want the freedom to do the things that I agree with that they don't agree with. And so in order for that to happen, you kind of got to meet. You have to meet in the middle. [00:50:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:20] Speaker D: Kind of sounds a little libertarian though, doesn't it? [00:50:23] Speaker A: Yeah, kind of neutral. Well, here's a follow up to that, right? So if, if we say that everyone, if we kind of can agree on, number one, that everyone has their own moral code. And I guess I could equate that to the freedom to choose as Americans. You know, here in the usa, if everyone's pulling in a different direction, doesn't the weakest still end up paying the price in the end? And that can be based on the weakest moral code, based on everyone else's perception of that moral code. [00:50:55] Speaker B: Right? [00:50:55] Speaker A: Because there's, there's, there's like evil. There's good and evil. Right. So there's the good moral code that can say, not crime, murder, that's wrong. You know, eating humans, that's wrong. But there's somebody out there on that opposite end of the spectrum that is of that degree that probably says that's my moral code or equates that to their morality. So it's hard, right, because it goes back to saying, well, even if we go off of moral code, then the weakest link gets eaten at the end regardless. [00:51:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean whoever. Because there's always going to be a larger. [00:51:36] Speaker A: And is that freedom group of whatever. [00:51:39] Speaker B: The belief is, there's always going to be a larger group of that. And so that's going to overpower the minority in that for sure. Right. [00:51:49] Speaker A: And then that's the, the question that the first part of it is unlimited personal freedoms. Like is that, is that truly freedom or is somebody always going to be on the opposite end of the. [00:52:01] Speaker B: And that's. It's an interesting segue into this. So this question comes out of a quote that I found from, from Lord Acton says liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought to. Hmm, Say that again. Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought. I thought that was an interesting quote. And so I came up with some questions based on this. So how does this definition differ. Different. I'm sorry, how does this definition differ from common understandings of liberty? What does ought imply about moral responsibility? Right, so yeah, let's talk about this quote. So what thoughts come to your mind on this and kind of based on the conversation we've had so far. [00:52:57] Speaker C: Stop using Old English to confuse me. Forward acting. [00:53:02] Speaker B: Ought to do, ought to do the right of being able to do what we ought to do. [00:53:11] Speaker A: So I made some notes on this one. I think this is a really good one. I had to look, look up all two and Lord Acton, who, Who are you, sir? So the first one, right. I have. Liberty isn't about self indulgent indulgence, it's about having the ability and responsibility to do what's right. Less about personal whim and more about moral duty. So that's my two cents and mic drop. I'm putting it in there. But I really do believe that. [00:53:42] Speaker B: In. [00:53:43] Speaker A: This case liberty can be selfishness. Right. So it ties back to my moral duty or my moral obligation to say, I'm at the convenience store, I want that candy bar, I don't have to pay for it, I can walk out. [00:54:02] Speaker B: Right. [00:54:02] Speaker A: Well, my moral code goes out the window. That's my liberty to do so. Right. But from the Bible it says thou shalt not steal. So simple. There's my morality clause right there that says shouldn't steal but I want it and it's a choice. So there's my freedom, but I have the right to choose and with my moral code backs to liberty behind it and it's not the selfishness that follows. Does that make sense? And I love my analogy of the candy bar because my sweet tooth. [00:54:34] Speaker C: Be better if it was Red Bull, but that's fine. [00:54:36] Speaker A: No kidney stones. [00:54:39] Speaker D: I made him drink the water this weekend. [00:54:40] Speaker A: Real quick. [00:54:41] Speaker C: I'm proud of you. Good job tip throwing that out there. [00:54:46] Speaker D: I don't think my opinion changes. Give me the freedom. I know it's not going to be perfect. I think we do need a basic set of rules and laws. But we see what happens when we allow government, and not just here and in certain states, but you know, throughout the, throughout the world, throughout history, when we allow the government total control and no recourse and they can do what they want. There's going to be evil people who go overboard and do evil things. It's tyranny 101 has happened a million times. So freedom isn't perfect. We do need some rules out there. But it gets abused every single time. [00:55:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Absolutely. [00:55:27] Speaker B: Yeah. You got any thoughts on that? [00:55:29] Speaker C: Nope. [00:55:32] Speaker B: I know that's not the case. [00:55:35] Speaker C: I don't have time to. There's so much. This is hard. [00:55:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:39] Speaker C: Truly it's hard. I did just look up the definition of ought. O u G H T ought Ought. And the Googles says the definition of ought is used to indicate duty or correctness. Typically when criticizing someone's actions, they ought to respect the law or used to indicate something that is probable. I don't think that applies in this case. So Lord Acton, I believe is giving some kind of indication that you are applying right through. You're using your liberty with a proper application of law, proper application of your moral ethics. [00:56:27] Speaker A: Ethics. [00:56:29] Speaker C: But I don't know. [00:56:32] Speaker B: I think in this perfect world where there's no where you can, you have the freedom to do whatever and no shared moral code is that. And actually one of the questions here was can true liberty exist without moral framework? This could be a whole two hour conversation too. But I think that's kind of an important question. And kind of going with this quote is like if we all have, we all have complete freedom to do what we like. And as Mike was bringing up, there's going to be people that are going to suffer because of that freedom. But if we're always Looking to do, being able to do what we ought to do with that freedom, then unlimited personal freedom is a great thing. But if we don't have some sort of moral code, then there's nothing that we ought to do. Because ought to do something implies that there is something that we ought to do and that's based on some sort of moral code and some sort of. [00:57:49] Speaker A: It defines boundaries of ethics. [00:57:51] Speaker B: Of boundaries. Yeah. [00:57:52] Speaker C: Well, and that's what I think your next question, number four with how do laws reflect the ought in society? I think that's exactly what that is. [00:57:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Protect the vulnerable. [00:58:01] Speaker C: It's societal recognition of. We may not all agree on where our morals and ethics come from, but we're gonna generally agree that murdering other people is probably bad, so we shouldn't do that. Stealing other people's things is probably not cool. So let's not do that. You know, generally setting up that structure. [00:58:22] Speaker B: But Texas theft. [00:58:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. [00:58:26] Speaker C: There's another two hour conversation, but I think that's where you can have that discussion of that even goes back to our formation as a country. People will say that we were founded on a particular religion. The reality is we're not. They did their best to not found it on a religion, but on freedom with some kind of. We have society and there is societal rules to be a civilized society, otherwise it'll be anarchy. That is a reality. [00:59:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:59:06] Speaker C: So what are the shared basic things that we know to be true? We don't steal from each other. That's probably not cool. We're not going to murder each other. That's not okay. And continue and extrapolate from there. And that's the ought to, I think that Lord Acton is talking about. They're not trying to infringe upon rights. Now does that mean we haven't with laws, tried to infringe upon rights? I'm not going to say that's not true. Obviously. We actually believe that is in fact the case that we're infringing on rights in places. Like we have been joking about it. But Rhode island, we do believe that there's some infringements upon rights there. Couple with laws. Right. That is a thing that we believe. Where those came from we would say is not shared any moral framework shared there. But overall that's what the ought is in society. [00:59:56] Speaker A: It's an attempt to put the law into action. [00:59:58] Speaker C: Correct? Well, it's putting. I'm not going to say morality because it's not true, but it's putting some kind of rule in place that we can at least generally agree that this is a good rule, that we're all going to say that we agree that this is okay. We all agree that stealing is not okay. We don't like it. As a society. We're just going to say, generally speaking, we shouldn't do it. So let's make that a thing, and then we can all agree to that. Now, mine might be saying that because I have a moral that says do not steal. You're talking about the Bible. We believe the Bible has said that we should not steal. That is a sin. We shouldn't do it. Other people would just say, well, that makes you a bad person, so you shouldn't do it. The society says, we don't care whether you're saying it because it's religious or because it makes you a bad person or you just think it's kind of scuzzy. Whatever. As a society, we're going to agree that this is not an okay thing. It's not based on an ethic. It's not based on a moral. We're just agreeing to it as a society that it's not okay. And that's where those laws are, the ought in society, if that makes sense. [01:01:01] Speaker A: Yep. Protect, promote, and encourage behavior that benefits the community. You know, protect the vulnerable, promote the order, and then encourage the behavior for the community that falls in line with the law. [01:01:12] Speaker C: Tib, you had a thought? [01:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:13] Speaker D: I was gonna say it's interesting how this country was founded on Christian values and morals. And if you look at the founding fathers, all but like one or two of them were very, very active and religious. And there was even laws in the beginning that you couldn't serve in the government if you weren't a Christian of some sort. In certain states, they had those laws. So the country was founded on Christian values and morals in a lot of ways. Not all, but a lot of the laws, they are, like you said, thou shalt not steal. And it's interesting how as a society, we've slowly moving away from that. And how is it going to go forward as a society if we're less and less advocate, though? [01:01:58] Speaker B: That also. That also almost sounds like there's less freedom. Like you have to believe this certain line of thing in order to serve. Because if you don't believe this, then you're going to give too many freedoms. We only want people to have these freedoms that fall in line with our Christian beliefs. So only people with Christian beliefs can be in power. Does that not? [01:02:19] Speaker D: No, I don't think that was the. I understand why you're saying that, but I don't think that was the case. I think it was more like don't steal, don't kill, don't murder, don't, you know, the basic values that were in society, they weren't saying that you have to be a Christian to come to this country or anything like that, or you have to be a Christian to do this or do that. Certain states started doing that, but obviously that's not the case anymore. But the values were all founded on that. Especially if you look at all the founding documents, there's a lot of things in there from, from scripture that they, that they, they sewn in there. So, you know, the country was started that way and it'd be interesting to see how we become less and less those values as a society, how freedom will play with that. [01:03:11] Speaker B: Yeah, this is. I would love to actually keep this going and even apply this to some more, some more, more topics. But I thought it would be an interesting thing for us to kind of dig into. This is very much a 10,000 foot view of this topic and how it applies to things, but I think it's something that we can all kind of reflect on. And I have kind of one last question, just kind of like a reflection question. This isn't for us to answer out loud, but just for us to think about is when must we limit our own freedom so that we do what we ought for others? I think that's. I think that's a compelling question and one that we can definitely apply in a lot of different ways. So we're going to kind of leave it on that note, and we're going to head into our equipped segment. Gun and a radio. What? [01:04:17] Speaker C: Not exactly Christmas, is it? [01:04:20] Speaker B: You expecting an exploding pen? Always. Yeah, we don't really go in for that anymore. Good luck out there in the field. [01:04:30] Speaker A: And please return the equipment in one piece. [01:04:39] Speaker C: Brave new world. [01:04:41] Speaker B: Brave new world. [01:04:42] Speaker C: Are you ready? [01:04:42] Speaker B: Yep. Go ahead and bring it up. [01:04:44] Speaker C: Here it goes. [01:04:46] Speaker B: I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that I had brought my jackery. It's large on my camping trip, so if you're watching Nate, just, just put it up on the table. [01:04:56] Speaker C: We are trying not to unplug things. [01:04:58] Speaker B: We're actually powering this podcast from the jackery. We've had our, our board plugged into it, our lights, except for the one lights behind me, but our lights over here. Everything has been run off of this. The computer's being charged from it and everything. [01:05:14] Speaker C: It's large. [01:05:17] Speaker B: So I bought this, I think, last Christmas. Last Black Friday on Amazon, they had a deal on it. And first time I saw one is actually from Michael Hand model. He has one or two. I thought it was kind of neat. There's a good deal on it, so I picked it up. I've used it. I've used it a couple of times just for just some little things. I don't. I'm learning much more about it, especially after this past weekend. So just kind of recap real quick. I thought I was going to be on a camping lot with generators. [01:05:48] Speaker C: He wasn't. [01:05:49] Speaker B: Wasn't actually. [01:05:50] Speaker C: You were just not one you could use. [01:05:51] Speaker B: Not mine. Yeah. But thankfully I had brought this and I kind of brought it because I. One of the reasons was I was like, oh, I'll use it and maybe I can do it for the gear segment like we're doing right now. But it turned into a much more dire need. Dire need of a piece of equipment. A survival of being able to sleep because it was. I was so hot. So I ran. I brought like a desk fan. I've had this fan since college. This thing has. It's. [01:06:25] Speaker C: And he's old. [01:06:26] Speaker B: Pretty old. It's a fan and I use it. I use it. I was gonna say it. I used. I use this fan every night. This thing has a million hours on it. So anyway, I brought that fan and charge a couple phones, you know, my phone and my son's phone. So the first night, I set my fan up on top of it, turn it on full blast, and we plug our phones into. Wake up the next morning, like eight hours later, and the battery is at 61%. And I was going to be the two nights. So I'm like, well, use approximately 40. 40%. I should have plenty for the second night. However, there was still a little. Little bit of this, like, not sure. This kind of like power panic. Yeah. This kind of anxiety of like, if that thing dies in the middle of. [01:07:13] Speaker C: The night, I'm going to die. [01:07:15] Speaker B: I will die. Oh, gosh. Or I will not sleep. I'll go. Or I'll go. Oh, yeah, exactly. I'll go sleep in the truck car. [01:07:20] Speaker A: I peg. [01:07:21] Speaker B: And so this thing saved my life and my son's life. I owe my life to this thing. [01:07:29] Speaker C: That is quite, quite the statement. [01:07:32] Speaker D: And this segment is not sponsored by. [01:07:36] Speaker B: Again, I bought this. I bought this with my own money, actually, before I could go, Nate, you want to throw the. [01:07:43] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:07:44] Speaker B: The discount code in there for everybody that stuck around this long. We appreciate you. Our discount code this week is bullseye 20b u l l s e y e. 20. Bullseye. 20 will get you 20%. No, it's 20%. Yeah, 20% off. 20% off for the next approximately 36 hours. It looks expire Thursday at midnight. So you guys can use that. Make sure you're signed into your insider's account. If you're not an insider, hit the pop up that comes up on the. On the website. Or you can just search Insiders Club, the little search bar at the top of the website. Sign up for that. You'll also get a 15% off discount code when you sign up. So you'll say what? You get two codes and. Yeah, so you guys can use that not in the jackery because we don't carry them on our website, but on any of the other gear that we do have on our website. So I thought I would just. I thought I would kind of give my experience with it, maybe some pros and cons for it. Mike has some input. He's been using jackery for longer than I have. Tib also has some experience with Blutie. [01:08:50] Speaker D: I actually have a jackery and a Blue Eddie. [01:08:52] Speaker B: Okay. Bluetti. [01:08:53] Speaker D: That's how you say it. [01:08:53] Speaker B: Blue Eddie Bluttie sounds better. Nate, do you have any experience with anything like this? [01:08:59] Speaker C: Not anything big like this. I've used generators before. Yeah, but not. Not power banks. [01:09:07] Speaker B: So I have several generators. I bought a champion power equipment. 2500 watt ultra. Yes, it is. I love that generator. It is so quiet. It's dual fuel. Uses gasoline or propane. If you have multiple of them, you can actually kind of. You can, you can like daisy chain them. But I've brought it. I brought it to Ord the last couple years, and you can have it sitting next to you and you can't tell that it's. That it's running. [01:09:37] Speaker D: Those small inverters are amazing. The Honda one, too. [01:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah, it weighs 39. Well, it's 39 pounds dry. 2500 watts. So it does have more wattage than what this does, but. [01:09:50] Speaker C: Which isn't surprising really. [01:09:51] Speaker B: No, you know, I think we're probably all more familiar with generator. You know, the nice thing about a generator is you can look in the tank when it's empty, you put more fuel in it, you close it up, and you're good to go. Right. So you could, you just, you know, as long as you have fuel, you're gonna have power. The, the anxiety that I had with this was, is I'm like, I don't really have any way to fill this up now. Well, kind of. I plugged into my truck for a little bit, but the problem is I'm not gonna run my 6.2 liter V8. [01:10:23] Speaker C: Nope. [01:10:25] Speaker B: To charge up my jackery. That's just. That doesn't make any sense. So I immediately had buyer's regret. And it's funny because I had just told Nate probably a couple weeks earlier was the Amazon prime days. Yeah. And this is, I don't know, the 10th time that I've put a solar panel in my cart. Yes, I put it in my cart, looked at it and gone. When would I ever use this? When am I really going to use this? Why would I buy one? I immediately in as I'm laying an 80°10 at night. I would have paid $1,000 for. For a solar panel right now just. [01:11:00] Speaker C: To make sure I don't run out of power. [01:11:02] Speaker B: I would have paid so much more for it. So that said, I have one on the way. I came back and I ordered one because. [01:11:10] Speaker C: Because could have had 20% off like three weeks ago. But you know that's fine too, right? [01:11:14] Speaker B: Oh, it is tax free. So yeah. So deals and steals and. And again, this is not a commercial. Well, it's kind of a commercial jackery. This is my experience with it. [01:11:23] Speaker A: Thank you, Jack. [01:11:23] Speaker C: Sponsor us jackery. [01:11:24] Speaker B: I paid for it. [01:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I bought Monty. [01:11:28] Speaker B: So I do have a 200 watt solar panel on the way, which I'm actually really excited about because you can actually just. You can even just use that to charge things up as well. So I will have less anxiety about using this more often now. But here's, here's some of the great things about it. We had this in our tent, right? Like you're not gonna put a generator in your tent and survive. So I had this in our tent. Zero noise at all. Running a fan, charging things. That was so awesome. There is a screen on it. What's that tip? [01:12:03] Speaker D: A little night light on it? [01:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, there's a light on it. So that on this model there's a light and there's like a low high and strobe to it. So if you needed help, you could take this thing and sit on the side of the road and turn the strobe on it. That would run for days, Days and days and days. So I actually did a little more. A little more research on it recently. You know, I've had this for almost a year. So this thing will run a refrigerator, which is actually kind of crazy how little power refrigerator uses these days, but it'll run a refrigerator for days. [01:12:35] Speaker C: Yeah. It doesn't surprise me. I bet the refrigerator it. Once it's cool. It probably doesn't take much of any. [01:12:42] Speaker B: Because they're insulated so well and. Yeah, so it was like. It draws like 200 watts. The nice thing about this is there's a screen on it. You can see how much power it's using. If you're charging it, you can see how much power is charging it. There's an app for it. So you can look on the app. You can turn things on and off from your app. You can see how much power's on it on the app. The app's really cool. Yeah. [01:13:03] Speaker A: I need to get the app that's. I didn't know about the app until it's. [01:13:08] Speaker B: I am. I'm even more. I thought it was just kind of like a cool little piece of kit before. Now I'm looking at this as a much more viable thing. Like you can use this to run a microwave off of a coffee machine. So this is this. This one will go up to 1500 watts, which you're coming pretty close on a microwave and coffee. Coffee machine wattage wise. But like a fan, a refrigerator, all those things you could. You can run off it for days. If you have a solar panel or some way to kind of charge it up, it will. It has like an emergency charge mode. You have to turn it on from the app. It'll charge faster. If you turn like the emergency charge thing, it'll charge to 100% in an hour, which is. [01:13:52] Speaker A: Well, that's kind of the leading. Which is crazy to why I have my jackery. I mean, it was. It's designated in the vehicle. Every now and then it comes out of the vehicle to get charged, but it stays in the truck for an emergency in case the truck broke down, I had no power. I'm on the side of the road and I'm one to always have my. I'm at 20% on my battery right now. So it's. It's that necessity that you need when you don't think you need it. [01:14:15] Speaker B: Right. [01:14:16] Speaker A: My240. I'm shopping on Jackery's website now. Look. [01:14:20] Speaker B: Yes, this is a good deal. This is the Jackery 1000 explorer and. [01:14:24] Speaker A: Mine still for what I needed did everything. Now we were talking about it before the podcast. I borrowed a 500 to power a fridge and I had to run the solar panels during the day to keep it going or connect both jackers at once and power both of them, which was phenomenal and lasted me A week in the Florida sun. But yeah, they're phenomenal. Like, they. I haven't done the Blue Eddie. I've seen some reviews on them, but once you go to Jackery, you don't go back. Except for Tib. [01:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah, Tip. What's your experience with the Jackery versus Bluetti and stuff? What's your input on these? [01:14:54] Speaker D: So I had a very small Jackery, their smallest one they made. I think it was like a 160 or something was the model number and it was great. Laptop phone emergency. I had the solar panels with it so I could recharge it. I would bring that to, like. I haven't done it this year, but in the past few years I'll take my laptop and I'll go work at a coffee shop or I'll go work by a beach with a nice view or something. And I would bring that just in case my laptop battery died. I plug it in and I get a nice place to work for the day. It didn't have a great battery if we were going to do like a weekend thing. That's why I upgraded to the Blue Eddie. I don't remember which one I have. It looks to be about the same as your jackery. And again with the solar panels, like you said, it's fantastic. You use it at night. If you're throughout the day, leave the panels out there and. And just let the. The unit recharge. Yeah, we've used it camping, we've used it at the beach. We've used it a decent amount of time. [01:15:54] Speaker B: Yeah. With. With 1, 200. So I got the 200 watt solar panel, which is. Looks pretty big. It's not a little thing. It folds up pretty small, but when it's out, it's pretty big. So it'll charge from. Now, this is from 0, which. The chances of this being at zero and needing to be charged is very slim. But from zeros it was like eight or nine hours. And that's also with full sun. Yeah, with Ohio, they're not. That's just two weeks. Not gonna happen. Two weeks. These last couple weeks, we've had plenty of sun. [01:16:25] Speaker C: If you were at Cedar Point yesterday, you'd have it in about five minutes. Just sit on top of any of those roller coasters, you would have had it in five minutes, no problem. [01:16:34] Speaker B: But I was kind of laughing because it was Jackery's website said, you know, for the solar panel to charge this unit up the -thousand, it said 6.6200watt solar panels. You basically have a solar field farm. In your. To charge this thing up now. It was also. It would also charge it up in like an hour and a half. Which is ridiculous. Which is ridiculous. I have no interest in doing that. I would just like to be able to top it off because chances are like in any trips I'm going to do, I'm going to have power adjacent opportunities. At least every couple days I can go somewhere and plug it in. [01:17:14] Speaker C: Well, even what you did, what the trip you did this weekend, you could have had the solar panel outside of the tent with it routed into the jacket. [01:17:23] Speaker B: That's what I would have done during the day if I would have had that. And we would have been. [01:17:26] Speaker C: And it would have been. It may not have been at 100% by the time you got back, but it would have been in the 80s, 90s. [01:17:31] Speaker B: No, I think it probably would have been completely charged because again if it was, if there was a 61% after the first day, it only needed to charge 40%. Well, but regardless, it would have charged up that day. [01:17:41] Speaker C: But yes, you would have been fine for overnight, no problem. All of your power anxiety would have been gone. [01:17:49] Speaker B: So I think the question is for some people is, does it make sense to do this over a generator? Because you can get. I meant to write down the, the cost that I, I could look them up real quick. The. So the, the. I'm just going just by what I have. Yeah. So that champion 2500 watt, which again is another league above this, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, this is 1500 watt. So a thousand more watt. I think I paid 3, 400 bucks for that little Champion dual fuel. A thousand more watt. So cheaper. Because I think, I think these are like closer to 5 or 600. You can get them with like a. Just know they're constantly on sale, even on their website. Sunday was on the website, there's like a little, they kind of have like an instant coupon thing there. So you can get these for. It's going to be more, you're going to get less wattage. So I think the kind of question it comes down to is like use case. [01:18:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I think is really what it comes down to. [01:18:53] Speaker B: Do you want to be able to take this. The great thing about this, I can have one of my kids say hey, go grab it. It weighs 25 pounds or no. Yeah, 25 pounds. Say go grab the jackery, bring it in and plug the fridge into it. Because we lost power. They can do that and it can come inside. I don't have to Run an extension cord from my back patio through the screen window, which I've had to do before. [01:19:12] Speaker A: You don't have to have gas or anything like that. [01:19:14] Speaker B: There are some really great pros to it, sure. But there are some cons. So recharge versus refill. You know, your best case scenario, you have an hour to recharge it to refill takes 30 seconds in a gas can. Yeah. The cost, it definitely costs more. However, you could probably. Easily. [01:19:38] Speaker A: Long term, it's probably gonna. [01:19:40] Speaker B: Like you're not buying fuel for it, you know, like you can easily justify that cost difference. I don't have to buy fuel for it at, you know, three. [01:19:46] Speaker C: Correct. [01:19:48] Speaker B: Three bucks a gallon. One of the biggest things is with as often as I have used my generator, I'm changing the oil pretty. Pretty frequently too. In the generator. They. I know I don't change oil in my. In my lawnmowers, but I do. But I work. [01:20:05] Speaker A: There's some good lawnmower stores. [01:20:06] Speaker B: If you want to go back to one of the first episodes. I talk about how I didn't change oil in a lawnmower and it exploded. But. But in my generator, I did change oil. So there's just. There's a maintenance to it. There's moving parts. I've actually had my generator. So we went. We went camping once. Brought that. Brought that champion generator. For whatever reason, I could not get it to start. I could not get it to start. I don't know why I went back home. I changed oil in it just because. [01:20:35] Speaker A: I'm like, I know what's wrong with it. [01:20:37] Speaker C: No gas in it. [01:20:38] Speaker B: Had gas, it had oil. I don't know. I went home and tinkered with it and eventually I got it to start again. I don't know if it's gonna be bad gas or something like that. I don't know. But this will start every single. As long as it's charged, we'll start every time. And then also the power limitation. If you want the same power as what a generator is going to be able to offer, you are gonna have to get a pretty big jackery or multiple of these in order to get the same. [01:21:03] Speaker C: Just different options. It really depends on your use case. I think there's so this speaking from somebody who doesn't have one. I'm not gonna say don't have a use for one. I just have not had one. There's definitely. I would. So the camping weekends that we go down to our friend's property, usually for hunting and that kind of stuff, he doesn't have power run down there. He just literally brings a car battery for some lights. There's heat in the cabin, but there's no power to the cabin. So I usually bring a couple battery banks just to plus up my phone to make sure. Because I always bring my phone when we're hunting just in case something happens. And I don't ever want my phone to not be plussed up in that case. So I bring a couple battery banks. But having something like this would be super convenient where it's. Everyone has power. No one has to worry about charging anything. We've got something like that. That'd be super convenient. And the ability to recharge it with a solar panel would be awesome. There's definitely a use case for that. A generator is just a different application. I don't think it's bad. It's just different. [01:22:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we should have all our jackeries out at Ord. Tip Bring yours. We'll have our solar pangs too. [01:22:12] Speaker B: You gotta fly with your. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how well these fly. Sir. [01:22:16] Speaker D: What is that in your suitcase? [01:22:17] Speaker B: Do you have any batteries in your suitcase? [01:22:18] Speaker C: Nope. [01:22:19] Speaker B: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. [01:22:21] Speaker A: I got one. [01:22:22] Speaker B: I could power this airplane. [01:22:25] Speaker D: I would have to carry it on. You can't check that. [01:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I do plan on getting a smaller one. Like there's like a 250 or 500 or something like that. [01:22:33] Speaker A: The 250. [01:22:34] Speaker B: Cuz I'd like to leave one in my. In my truck. And this is. This is a little bigger than what I want to leave in my truck. So I like to get. Get a smaller one to leave my truck or prefer it. I'm hoping that the. I'm hoping that the solar panel folds up small enough that it would be able to easily hide somewhere in my truck. [01:22:52] Speaker C: If you get the solar panel and fold it up, don't put it on the hood of your truck. Forget about it. Drive away and run over it. [01:23:01] Speaker A: I plead the fifth. [01:23:02] Speaker C: Like Michael did with the solar panel that he got. [01:23:08] Speaker A: I don't know what you're talking about. [01:23:09] Speaker C: Where he put it on the hood of his truck. [01:23:12] Speaker A: They do have some solar panels now that actually you can fold up and they can collapse. Throw it into a bag. [01:23:17] Speaker C: He ran over. The one that he had. [01:23:19] Speaker B: I got that. I was able to clean that from you. [01:23:23] Speaker C: The one that his felt folded up too, unfolded up. [01:23:26] Speaker A: But you couldn't run over the end the connection port. But it's. It's great for, you know, throwing it in a Pack and everything else. The one downside. Well, one of the caveats to it, it's like backpacking. Jackery has some of the small portable chargers which are great and plus up your, your gear. But like, I would not tote this in the woods. Even my 250, it's tiny. I can throw it in a bag. But four hours in with an extra five, six pounds, that's very than what you would need, right? Yeah. So for the purpose of how I'm using my jackery, it's always there for an emergency. But when I camp overland or anything like that, I've got a constant power supply outside of cranking up the truck, burning the gas. But when it's hot like it is at times, what do we end up doing? We get in the truck, crank it up in the morning, brush your teeth, change our clothes in the truck if you we can. So I do utilize that in the morning time if I'm going to run the truck or if it, heaven forbid, it's cold, it's coming. If it's cold, I'll crank it up then and charge it. [01:24:22] Speaker B: They do have, I'm sure other companies do as well, but I saw on jackery's website that they, they do have a, like a car starter thing you can plug into this, which that makes keeping one of these in your truck much more obvious as well. You can use it as a starter. [01:24:38] Speaker C: So my, my dad has. [01:24:40] Speaker B: It's not. [01:24:40] Speaker C: I don't know if it's a jackery. I don't know what brand. He has a battery. It's much, much smaller than this. It's a battery bank that can charge your phone or anything like that, but it also can jump a truck battery. He also uses it from time to time on his tractor when he's down at the property as well. It's great. That's something that 100% makes any of these things worth it. If you can put one of those in your vehicle with a pair of jump jumper cables that can hook to it, you don't need another vehicle. You don't need to rely on anyone else. You can just jump it straight from that battery. It's huge. [01:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty nice. All right. Yeah. This episode is not sponsored. Literally, it is not sponsored. However, it is completely powered by Jackary by Jackary. Sponsor us, all of us. [01:25:27] Speaker C: No. [01:25:27] Speaker B: You say you've been walking for 30 years. [01:25:29] Speaker C: Right? Right. [01:25:31] Speaker B: Have you ever thought that maybe you were lost? No. No, no. How do you know that you're walking in the right direction? I walk by faith, not by sight. [01:25:39] Speaker A: What does that mean? [01:25:40] Speaker C: It means that you know something even if you don't know something. [01:25:44] Speaker A: It doesn't make any sense. [01:25:45] Speaker B: Doesn't have to make sense. It's faith. It's faith. [01:25:47] Speaker D: It's the flower of light in the. [01:25:49] Speaker C: Field of darkness that's giving me the. [01:25:51] Speaker B: Strength to carry on. You understand? I don't think she does. [01:25:54] Speaker C: I'm pretty sure I had that discussion with my kids walking out of Cedar Point yesterday. It's the faith. [01:26:00] Speaker A: The faith. [01:26:01] Speaker C: The entrance is that way. There's faith. Just follow me. [01:26:04] Speaker B: Trust me. [01:26:04] Speaker C: Trust me. [01:26:05] Speaker A: Now. Are we there yet? [01:26:07] Speaker C: No. [01:26:08] Speaker B: Our fourth and final segment, Faith and Fuel. We just, I like to grab a verse that. There were plenty of verses that I could have picked that actually would have perfectly fit into the things we talked about today. But this verse was actually in one of our little flip book things yesterday. If you guys have been, these guys here with me have been keeping up with it. At least part of this is I took a bigger chunk out of it. So I'm going to Read out of 1 Corinthians 1, verses 26 to 31. If you are listening and you want to flip to that, go ahead and flip that to. So the context of this is Paul is telling the people in the church that their belief looks foolish to the world by the world's standards. And so, yeah, so I'll go ahead and read this. So for consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you are wise according to the worldly standards. Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing, things that are so that no human might boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. So, yeah, what sticks out to you guys in this verse? [01:27:44] Speaker D: No, I'll go first again. [01:27:46] Speaker B: Go for it. [01:27:46] Speaker D: I think I, I, the first time I read it, I draw a connection. I don't, I don't remember what book it's in, but when Jesus talking about, you know, if you're fasting, don't look like you're fasting, and if you're giving, donating, don't, you know, sound a horn before you do it. If you're if you're doing things to get attention, if you're being boastful, then you know it's not going to help you out. You've already received your reward is, I think, what Jesus, what he said instead, you know, do the right thing. To do the right thing without, you know, making a big scene and let everybody know that you're doing it. So that's the thing that stood out. [01:28:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Just what are we. What are we chasing in this world and what are we trying to be known for and seen for? Yeah, yeah. [01:28:40] Speaker D: Do it because it's the right thing and you want to help people, not to let everybody else see you do it and try to get some sort of recognition or whatever. [01:28:48] Speaker B: Use your liberty to do what you ought. [01:28:50] Speaker D: Freedom of choice. [01:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah. No, to kind of follow up with what Tib's saying. That's kind of what I put here in my notes too. And this is even in a degree, in a positive aspect, but something that I'm aware of for myself is self reflection. Right. But a lot of us are chasing a status, whether it be a bigger bank, nicer Tories, recognition, and none are bad in themselves, but when they become a measure of our worth, they're empty in God's eyes. So that's what I look at this one and kind of leading into the question that follows is like, we can see where it says here, God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. And it's like taking the person, the homeless person off the street to make an example and a positive example in the world to fool the wise that has everything that they need, all the commodities. Because maybe that person that was homeless put their belief or their faith in God. And that's kind of how I'm seeing it. [01:29:56] Speaker B: So when I think of this, I think of. I just think, well, just in recent news, there's a CEO that was caught cheating, right? [01:30:09] Speaker A: You'll never go to a Coldplay concert again. [01:30:15] Speaker B: What he did was foolish. And this guy who thought that he could get away with making poor decisions eventually found shame. And he thought in his own eyes that he was being wise in his choices. But it was foolish. And not just to shine a light on him and what he did, but there's so many things that I can pull out of my life that I spend time and energy and, and chase after. Things that in the end I've found no, no lasting joy from or anything. It's really just. Just all it does is take more from me. And I'm not any wiser from it. I'm not any stronger from it. It's actually, actually done the opposite. Nate, what do you think? [01:31:28] Speaker C: There's been a lot of thinking in this, this podcast. [01:31:30] Speaker B: I warned you guys, this episode is going to be a lot. [01:31:33] Speaker C: It's dead. [01:31:48] Speaker A: The suspense. [01:31:49] Speaker C: I'm just trying to think out a word, my thoughts, that's all. Not sure. I'm trying to order thoughts. Well, so you pose a question below. What are we chasing with our time, talents and money that brings us gain in this world, but is foolish in God's eyes? What do we need to let go of? I think back to a situation one of my pastors talked about years ago. A gentleman pulled into church and he was in an insanely expensive sports car. I can't remember what it was, the brand is immaterial, but it was a six figure sports car. He comes driving into church and our pastor overheard some folks off to the side making some silly comments about, oh well, if he'd used that money for the good of the kingdom type of thing, you know, he spent so much money on this car and how dare he do that, you know. And pastor walked over and was like, hey guys, I would not normally have a conversation with someone, but I just want to let you know he has chosen to live on 10% of what he makes. He donates 90% of what he makes to charitable giving, to ministry, to the church, and he lives on 10%. So he bought some insane sports car on his 10% living and has been giving 90% of his income away. And in his case, this was so he was able to buy this and it was fun, it was something cool for him to do and he enjoyed it. But it's not, he wasn't doing anything untoward in the world's eyes. Even some people that believe the same thing, same things we do, he did something wrong, but he was blessed. God has blessed him. And I don't think he's looking at that in any other. It's not a status symbol. It's not something like that because he could have so much more. For him, this was just, I got to buy a cool car because I can, but I've been. [01:34:07] Speaker A: Fruits of the labor. Yeah. [01:34:08] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:34:08] Speaker A: In his small 10%. [01:34:10] Speaker C: Correct. And I just, I think of that story whenever I think of something like this. If we're chasing all of that status and everything, what more could we be giving? What more could we be doing or concentrating on? Maybe not giving, that's not the right word, but what could we be concentrating our energy on? That would be of value. Not even so other people can hear it, but just that we can better the kingdom and better our relationship with God. Right. You said, what do we need to let go of? There's so much. [01:34:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's kind of to that somebody I was talking to yesterday, a great friend of mine as a personal trainer, they struggle with the pride, with getting out there, having the conversations with people and the approval. And sometimes we're always. Not always, but there's a lot of times that we're chasing the approval in things. We're chasing our own pride or our own ego in the sense. And that's kind of to follow up with the question of what are you, what are we chasing our time with? Or what are we willing to let go of? And that's for me, in my own is let go of chasing approval, let go of envy and let go of pride and hold on to what matters. And the question is, what do we need to let go of? But also I follow it with what do we need to hold on to? And for me, it's faith, service and integrity. And I put in here that says use what we were given to make an impact that lasts beyond this life. So that's a hard one. It's not something that we live by in a perfect manner, daily or flawlessly. But for me, that's. Those are the things that I related to a friend, but also in self reflecting, reflecting on all of this podcast. It's one of those things we let go of envy, let go of pride, stop chasing the approval of others. If that's an inspiration to others, please do that and use that. But hold on to the faith, the service and the integrity, because I think the integrity always falls back to your moral code and your moral compass. [01:36:16] Speaker B: Just to kind of go back to the end of the end of Scripture section here it says, and because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God. So Jesus came to be, to be wisdom from God and righteousness. Sanctification, which sanctification means to be, to be set apart. When you believe in God and you follow in God's eyes, you are set apart. You've been sanctified, you are set apart and redeemed. Redemption. So you've been redeemed, you're made righteous, you are set apart and you are redeemed in God's eyes. So you now have all these things. [01:37:00] Speaker C: What's left? [01:37:00] Speaker B: Yes, what else matters? [01:37:02] Speaker C: What's left? [01:37:04] Speaker B: Who cares what you're driving and how much money is in your bank account and stocks and just all these things that we seek after because we're trying to find the world's approval and we're trying to look good to the world by what we. But by the things we own and the places that we travel to and all these things. But when we have God, when He has made us righteous, he has set us apart and he has redeemed us and made us new, none of that stuff matters. And it ends with, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. The only thing that. If you are a follower of Jesus, the only thing to boast about, the only thing that matters, is what Jesus did for you and how he has made you righteous, set you apart, and redeemed you. So when we. When we're looking at life through that lens, when we look at our life and what we are doing with our time, when we look at what we're doing with our liberties and our life and doing what we ought to do for others and how we're equipping ourselves to do those things, when we look at all those things through this lens of what God did for us, it should change completely how we look at all these things. And when we ask ourselves, what do we need to let go of that list in this lens, that list of things that we need to let go of and the things that we need. [01:38:36] Speaker C: To, it comes a lot longer to. [01:38:39] Speaker B: Stop boasting about on our own, because anything that we try to say, we do on our own. Also, this is a whole other set of verses and podcasts. There's nothing that we have that has not been given to us by God. So what we boast in, if we take credit, we boast in our. In ourselves. We're stealing. We were talking about stealing before. We're stealing that glory from God, who gave that to us. [01:39:06] Speaker A: It's just noise. [01:39:07] Speaker B: It's noise. And it's so easy for us. I am so guilty of this. So guilty of this, of trying to take, of feeling like I've done any of this and then wanting to boast about it when that should not be my mindset. [01:39:28] Speaker C: So. [01:39:31] Speaker B: Yeah. You guys have any other final thoughts? Tidbit? No, nothing to add. That was a lot of food for thought. Yeah, this episode was very heavy. Almost two hours, so the longest one yet. I knew it was gonna be a long one. Yeah, there's. There's a lot to chew on this week. I hope that this verse, that this. That these thoughts. If you were to go back and listen to this podcast and think about the things that we talked about under this lens of, of what God has given us and who we boast in is going to be big. So, yeah. All right, you guys ready to wrap this? [01:40:14] Speaker A: Let's wrap it up. [01:40:15] Speaker B: Let's get back to work. Got things to do around here. Thanks for tuning in to Life Liberty and Equipped Podcast. If today's conversation challenged you, encouraged you, or helped you get more equipped to pursue your mission, share with a friend, drop a comment and please, please, please leave us a review. [01:40:37] Speaker C: Don't forget, we go live on the NeoMag YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you can be part of the next live show. [01:40:45] Speaker A: And if you're not already part of the NeoMag Insiders club, now's the time. Get early access to NeoMag gear, exclusive content and front row seats to everything we're building. [01:40:56] Speaker D: Until next time, live, boldly stand for liberty and stay equipped with the Jack 3. [01:41:01] Speaker B: See you soon. [01:41:03] Speaker C: Thanks, everybody. [01:41:03] Speaker B: Thanks everybody. [01:41:04] Speaker A: See you later.