Andrew Tate vs Therapist (Round 2)

Ready to break the internet, friend? How are we going to break the internet? You said you wanted this to be impactful. What's, what would that look like to you?

That's a really good question. I think a lot of people are interested in my journey. I think a lot of people are interested in how it feels to go through what I'm going through. Yeah, I think there's a lot of people who want me to martyr myself. A lot of people are living vicariously through me. Yeah, there's a lot of people who say, "Yeah, Andrew, keep going," but they don't really care. They just enjoy the drama of it all. And, uh, I think I've already broken the internet. But you're a very interesting man to talk to, and with your insights, I think together we're going to have quite a large audience.

Yeah, I mean, that's a question that I have for you. Why, why did you want to talk to me?

Because I'm a psychotherapist. You have your skepticism about psychotherapy, and yet here I am.

That's true. We had a conversation before, and it was, I've been told by many people, it was our, my most interesting podcast ever. So I think it obviously varies from the norm in terms of the normal things I'm asked about. You have some unique insights, and, uh, I thought it'd be an interesting conversation. A lot of people are asking me, especially about my mental state and those kind of things post-jail. So I thought, well, my most interesting podcast ever, people seem to be very interested in that side of me, so perhaps it can be a good conversation.

Does it make you nervous that there may be things that you don't know about yourself that I'm going to try to reveal to you?

I know everything about myself. You know everything about yourself? I believe that I have an intimate grasp of all the things about myself which matter, which allow me to compete, right? So there may be things I don't know, but I'm not sure if I particularly need them. So I'm not that interested, right?

What's, what's useful is more important than what's true.

Absolutely right. And you've developed a framework of thinking about yourself and thinking about reality that's been incredibly effective for you.

Completely. What's useful is more. You nailed it. What's useful is more important than what's true. This is an old argument of mine, but I think we discussed it in the last podcast, and I'll say it again. When I say I don't believe in depression, nobody convinced me to, can convince me to believe in depression. That's not a matter of discussing whether depression is real or not. That's a matter of me accepting that my mental model for going through life is more, is more effective if I don't believe I can become a depressed person. I don't believe in depression, so I can't be depressed. So that allows me to be more effective. It's not a matter of sitting there going, "Well, maybe it's true, maybe it isn't." I don't believe in it, so I can't catch it.

You shape your own reality through the conviction of your thoughts, your beliefs, and the words that you use. Why else would you adopt any kind of mindset unless it's designed specifically to make you competitive and make you win? You install the software in your mind, right?

So if I'm going to install software in my mind, well, I've tried very hard to create it, right?

Because wasn't it installed by your upbringing? Wasn't installed by your, uh, mother and your father in some way before you were conscious, while you were just developing child-like? Something got programmed into your psyche that has to have an impact on you, and those things can't necessarily be known because you were such a young age.

Absolutely. We're all programmed to some degree. I agree with you on this. So far, I don't think anybody can escape programming, whether it's society, whether it's a television show, whether it's the people around you, peer pressure, whether it's a religion. We're all programmed to some degree.

That's absolutely not really true. What I have done, and what I think most people do not do, is heavily analyze why I hold the beliefs I hold. Why, why they help me. If I don't, if I don't hold the belief personally, or if I didn't learn it from personal experience, I know where it came from, who tried to teach me that, whether their intentions for me were good or bad. And I've tried very hard to have my mindset rigidly analyzed and make sure that it's put together in a way which benefits me.

Completely and absolutely. And I do not believe in things that take away power from me. I refuse to do that. I would rather say that they are not real. And people will sit here and argue to the end of time that they are real, but they're not real in my world. And I live inside of my mind. So even if you throw me in a Romanian dungeon, the idea that I become a depressed person is not a framework that my mind works within. So I can't become depressed. I can feel a little bit sad, sure. I can feel depressed, but I can't be depressed. They're very different things. So that's just the mindset I've installed, and it's allowed me to be competitive. And I believe personally, my personal beliefs are that life is a man is hyper-competitive, and whatever software you have in your mind should be designed to make you as competitive as possible. And you shouldn't be believing in absolutely anything else. So I've, I've tried very hard to make sure all of my worldviews and all of my experiences and everything is created and aimed in a direction which is going to allow me to be a fearsome competitor in all realms of human endeavor.

Has, have there been some of your beliefs or convictions that have been challenged through the experiences that you've had, particularly in the last, well, recently?

Well, people challenge me often. And what a lot of people don't understand is that I will never adopt the thinking of somebody who is sad. And I will never adopt the thinking of somebody who is less competitive than I am or less successful than I am. If someone comes along goes, "Andrew, you are wrong. The way you see the world is wrong," but they are suffering from an affliction, why would I adopt a single iota of what they say? So if it's kind of funny when I talk about depression, the number of people who defend depression. "Depression ruined my life. It's super real. And my loss, my wife, and my life is over, and I want to kill myself. It's real." I'm like, "Surely you should, like, my worldview, if depression is so terrible and has destroyed your entire existence, you should be listening to me tell you it's not real." But instead, they're defending it and sticking up for it, which I find very interesting. So that's the first thing in regards to whether I have had any of my convictions challenged. It's kind of amazing. Maybe it's just a semantics trick. And maybe it's that simple. Maybe it's as simple as saying, "I feel a little bit depressed today," but "I am not a depressed person," and "I cannot become depressive." "I'm not gonna have depression." Maybe it's just a semantics trick. And by saying that alone, I understand that it's a temporary state of mind which I can alter and I can affect. And I've never struggled with long-term depression or long-term negative thoughts because I don't believe in that mental model. I think that your mind, like I said, it's software. It's programmed in. And they say inside the Matrix, or in every single video game, there are boundaries and there are limits. There are certain things you can and can't do. And I don't believe my mind can be put in a state of permanent negativity. I don't believe in that. I don't think it's possible. So it just doesn't happen.

You said you experienced depression, some form of depression or depressive feelings and sadness in prison. What, what were the thoughts that were coming up? What was happening?

Well, there's a lot of uncertainty, which is the first thing, which it has to be scary. It is scary. It's scary. And also, because you're a man who's totally in control of your world, of your life, and that's almost like an imperative for you, and that gives you power. And all of a sudden, you're thrust into a situation where you're essentially helpless.

Well, you just nailed it. You, you completely nailed it. Because I was exactly about to say, it's the uncertainty that I struggle with the most. Because in my life, I'm in charge of everything. I know exactly how everything works, and I'm the boss, and I get to control absolutely everything. And this is the first time in a long time I'm in a scenario where I have no power whatsoever.

Yeah, no influence, basically. I don't know what's going to happen. Nobody else knows what's going to happen. And also, in my worldview, in my world, I'm the hero, right? I'm the head of the clan, not just my family, but of a lot of people. A lot of people rely on me. Lots of women rely on me, children rely on me, etc. So everyone comes to me every time there's a problem. So they continue to do that while I'm in a jail cell, expecting me to have some kind of answer, right?

Right. And I'm like, well, I don't have an answer this time. Every other time I had an answer, but this time is a bit unique.

How did that feel? You don't have the answers? You can't help?

Yeah, I mean, it was frustrating. It's very frustrating. And it's the uncertainty that would bother me. I don't think I felt sad very often, but I certainly felt extremely frustrated. I would sit there and think, "There has to be a way out of this room." Not breakout, but like, "There must just be some words I can say, someone I can talk to. There must be a way. It's only a door. Like, I can't just be stuck in this room." And it was, it was hyper-frustrating. Yeah. And the uncertainty of it is also scary because in my situation, every 30 days, they decide if they hold you longer or not. And I was encountering people who had been there for years in my scenario. So the uncertainty is a form of torture, really.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's torture. It is torture. It's a, it, and it's designed to make you break. You don't know how long you're going to be there for. Nobody knows. You hear horror stories. You see other people getting out who've done worse things than you after a week because they've signed a piece of paper or admitted to something or whatever they've done, done a deal. And you're sitting there. And yeah, it's hyper-frustrating. And I, I think you have two choices as a man, often when bad things happen. I feel like you can maybe get depressed and sad about it. But the other outlet is usually anger, or a form of anger. I felt like anger was more, in many cases, anger is more effective, I guess, is more useful.

You were angry in there?

I wouldn't say I was angry, but if I started to feel negative, I could turn it into frustration or anger, which I could at least alleviate with 2,000 push-ups. It's better than feeling sorry for myself. I feel like if I had to choose one of the two outlets, deciding to use controlled anger was more beneficial than sitting around feeling sorry for myself. I don't ever believe in moping or feeling sad. So when I was at my worst, perhaps I was a little bit angry. But then again, I also think I do that in my normal life, if I'm honest. I don't think anger is a necessarily bad thing. I think that misdirected anger is a bad thing. I think if you get very angry about scenarios and you put it in the correct direction, you get unlimited motivation and you get a lot done. The war, or behind the dam, it can be destructive, but it's pushing through the turbine, it powers the town, right? So if I wake up and I go, "I want more money," if I can get pissed off enough about it, I can do 36-hour work days, right? So there's nothing wrong with being angry in my world, as long as you are putting it in the correct direction. It's uncontrolled anger, I think, is a problem.

Right. Anger, anger can be used as a fuel, and it's necessary. And from my framework, anger sometimes is a mask for pain.

I'd agree with that. So did you experience pain in there? I know that's a, pain is a, you know, a kind of an abstract word. But was it painful for you? Like, I want to know about your pain.

Yeah, it's strange because I'm being as honest as possible. It's strange because I had this instilled sense of duty where even though I'm in a jail cell and I can't leave, and even though I'm cripplingly bored, I don't feel like I had time to feel pain, or I didn't feel like I had time to be a victim.

You had nothing but time.

No, I didn't have time. What are you talking about? Because everyone outside still relied on me. So I, when I would get on the phone, people...

Is that avoidance though? I don't know. Do you keep busy? Do you avoid your feelings by keeping busy?

Being on the computer all the time. All the things I had to do still had to be done. Just because they threw me in a cell, it just made it more difficult, which means I have less time than ever because the difficulty has been increased. And when I would get on the phone, we wouldn't discuss how I'm feeling. I'd be worried about how everyone else is. They'd be like, "How are you?" "Yeah, I'm in jail. What's going on with this? Are you okay? Are your bills paid? Are press hassling you?" I was worried about fixing everyone else's problems from jail more than I was concerned about myself or my own mental well-being. And when, if I felt particularly, when I say pain, pain is an awkward one. I don't know if I felt pain because I don't feel sorry for myself. And I've developed this mindset of such absolute accountability that even though what happened to me, I believe was unfair, and even though I'm completely innocent, I didn't think, "Ah, why? I didn't, I didn't think, why is this happening? I didn't think, why me? I didn't think, oh, this is unfair." Like, none of these things crossed my mind. I was like, "This is garbage. However, you can't become the most Googled man in the world without, uh, with every light has a dark, right? Like, let's be realistic about this. Yeah, I'm thrown in a jail cell. Do I belong here? No. But am I here? Yes." I was pretty logical about it and I was like, "Okay, I've got a lot of things I need to get done." And I would feel angry if I couldn't get them done. But I don't think I felt pain. Now, I'll admit, I don't sleep very well since I've left. Why? I could admit. You know why?

I heard you say in one interview that you have nightmares.

I do have nightmares.

What are your nightmares about?

I don't think they're about anything. I just have like, almost like an adrenaline rush out of nowhere while I'm sleeping. And I, I'd chew up, I ball awake. No thoughts, no memories, no, no real thoughts, no real story. Fear. That's fear, I guess.

It is. Yeah. So there's, there's, let's just, you know, you're uncon, we would, let's, you know, the dreams are a reflection of the unconscious. And if you're having nightmares, there must be some unresolved fear that wants to get worked out.

I believe so. But then also, I love the idea of that, of having unresolved fear. That sounds like the most interesting thing in the world to me. If some were to say to me, "Andrew, take this pill and your unresolved fear will vanish," I would say, "Absolutely not." That's not fun. The fun is there's something in my mind which I don't have complete control or complete understanding of yet. And it's not detrimenting my day-to-day life, really. Okay, I lose a bit of sleep. But this sounds like an interesting journey. It sounds like I'm in a new level of the video game. And I've been thrust into a dark forest, and I get to do something brand new. And I'm, I'm, I'm really genuinely not worried about it.

You're not?

Yeah. You shouldn't be worried about it. It's just where you are.

I'm not worried about it. And I'm also not like, "Oh, I need to fix this." I don't care. I'll have nightmares and I'll wake up and I'll either go back to sleep or I'll continue to work. And that's life.

Maybe life will keep giving you situations in which you'll have to confront that fear to resolve it.

Why would I want to resolve it?

Well, because, I mean, if I'm really that tired, I'll sleep.

No, but, but, but fear creates distortions in our mind, right? I mean, fear is the seed of evil, yeah, right? And so we want to know what we're afraid of, because if we block our fear, we're susceptible to bad actions, right? And fooling ourselves about what they are, rationalizing. So I would argue that it's, it's actually vital for you, in the position that you are in, and the responsibility that you have, to can actually confront your fear in a very real way, which probably goes back to your childhood. I mean, your dad was, I mean, I'm, you know, the haircut story, and I, I don't know if you want to talk about that, if you're willing. But that's a, you know, when I read that, I'm thinking about that little boy, they must have been terrifying.

It is. But I do think I had the best father on Earth. I'm not, I'm not disputing that. I mean, there's a lot of good that came from your father.

I'm not disputing their father was a good man. When you say he could go from zero to a hundred like that, like that for a little boy, it's scary.

It's scary. It is. But that fear has to be in you. You don't know what he's going to do.

Yeah, completely. Yeah. But that's, I think that's prepared me for life fantastically. And I also, and I also think the fear. But have you reached a limit? Have, have you? Well, of the video game. I mean, you're, you're, you're facing all these charges, yeah, right? So something, and maybe this is what you need to go through. I mean, you're on the hero's journey, and this is inevitable in some way. But also, along the hero's journey, you have to die to be reborn.

That's true. And I agree with all of that. But if I'm genuinely, I mean, I psychoanalyze myself all the time, which is one of the main reasons I don't believe in therapy and psychology.

Psychoanalysis, of course, you can. I do. I do it myself.

You don't think that's hubris?

No, you can know your own mind. That you don't need reflection from others to to see yourself. You can see yourself perfectly.

I think that, no, I don't think I can see myself perfectly. But I think that life is a perfect reflection.

But why not get help? Why, why not?

Because, because then it becomes a crutch. I like the idea that I can rely on myself to fix myself.

Well, you have a coach. Is that a crutch?

No, it's not. Because he's teaching me something different.

That's fine. But like, if I had an affliction, I would like to be my own doctor. And I think with your mind, you can do a lot of it yourself. And I think if you have a very strict framework and how you measure how successful you are as a human, and I do it through competence and achievement, I say, "Which mindset do I need to achieve as much as I can possibly achieve?" Right? And I can measure that in real time. I can measure that in literally dollars and world championship title belts. I could literally measure the success. I'll say, "Okay, well, then this is the mindset I need to have to be as successful as possible." Anything that's deviating me away from that needs to be addressed and concerned and dealt with. And I can do that myself. And I think the fear that if I, if it's fear that's waking me up from nightmares now, it's just because I understand there's a very big apparatus, a very big enemy, which I cannot destroy and I cannot be coming to get me. So I do think that wakes me up. I think the fear is healthy. I think I'd be stupid to not be afraid. But I don't necessarily want the fear to go away because I have no problems feeling bad.

Well, it's not about going away, it's coming into deeper relationship with it. And and and understanding there's fear that's happening in real time, but there's also fear that may be in your psyche somewhere in your body that's connected to your history and that may need to be resolved because otherwise you're projecting things out that may you may not be seeing reality totally clearly.

That's the thing, right? Like, is there a way that you're not seeing things perfectly clearly? Well, then we go back to my, what I just said about perhaps that's true. But if I measure myself purely on competence and purely on achievement, whatever I think and whatever I'm doing is obviously fantastic. So I'm very happy with the mindset I have. And then we go into the argument, which is a level deeper, is do, am I supposed to be happy? Am I supposed to feel good?

No, it's not happy. No, of course. But this is what I don't understand about people, especially men in the world today. Why are they so worried about being afraid? Why are they so worried about? I was afraid every time I fought. Yeah, I fought anyway. Yeah. Like, I don't let fear guide what I'm gonna do. I do what I'm supposed to do regardless of how I feel. So I don't see anything wrong with feeling fearful. I don't see anything wrong with feeling stressed or under pressure or anxious. All these things men are trying to get rid of. And I talk about men specifically. I gender this because I'm a man. I don't know how it feels to be a woman. But all these things that people are trying very hard to get rid of from their brains, I don't see why they need to leave. I will argue the point that if I feel anxious and pressured and stressed and fearful, I will get more done than if I was happy. I think if I was happy, I'd just be hedonistic and just wasting my time. I think that you get a whole bunch done with these negative connotations and negative emotions. And I think that life is suffering and pain, and you're here to go through it. And you're, and the sooner you get used to the taste, the more successful you're going to be. I have no interest in trying to change the flavor, my friend. The flavor of life is pain, and I will eat all of it. And it doesn't matter if they put me back in jail or not. I'm not sitting there going, "How can I be happy in jail?" I will sit in jail and say, "Yes, this sucks. It's supposed to suck. Yes, I'm not enjoying this. Yes, I'm anxious and paranoid, and yes, that guy might stab me, and yes, I can't sleep, and I miss my family. And this is what's supposed to happen to me, and this is how I become the best man I can possibly be, and I'm going to succeed regardless."

You're very convincing. You're so good though, right? It's almost like I feel like you can rationalize anything, right? It's almost like a trick, a magic trick.

Well, you're really good at talking. You're really smart. And it's almost like any question you can turn and and make it work for you, which is great. It's a skill. But there's also a place where there's the potential, yeah, for self-delusion.

Oh, absolutely. And I'm not even going to sit here and say that I'm not delusional to a degree. I'm not saying that self-delusion doesn't exist. We all are, right? Let me give you a very simple example. Let me try and use an analogy. I think the only thing better than having everything you want is not wanting anything, right? So I have every car on this planet. I have 40 supercars. Most people want a supercar. I have 40. But there's that unique 0.1 percent of people who genuinely don't want one. And I think that's more freeing than having everything you want, right? So the, the true mindset is not wanting anything. Most people, the best they can do is having everything they want. And I feel like you can kind of do this with the emotions as well. I guess my general consensus is that I don't think I can change or affect the world to the point where pain and suffering and bad things are not going to happen. So isn't it best if I just enjoy all of that? Doesn't that make me as powerful as possible? If I say, "Oh yeah, okay, this is gonna suck. Good." I mean, I do it when I fight. Yesterday I was fighting, right? We were doing 12 rounds, and all of us were destroyed. And the more he hurt me, the more I wanted to hurt him back. The more he hurt me, the better it felt. The more powerful I felt. The more he hit me, because then it's my turn, right? So if I can't stop him from punching me, and I'll do my best, but if I can't, then surely you should learn to enjoy it, right? And I don't think you can stop life from hitting you. And I don't think you can stop life from giving you unexpected surprises. Another thing, you can stop yourself from feeling sometimes sad or anxious or upset. So I think the best mindset you could adopt is finding that engaging and exciting. I'm not going to lie to you, although I am facing very serious charges, and although they are trying to destroy my life, and although I cannot sleep the same, and although they're out to get me, and although I've suffered, part of me is excited. Part of me is like, "Okay, why?" Because it's a war.

You like war?

I think all men do. I do. Yeah. Of course. Everyone does. So it's about, it's exciting. Yeah, it's exciting. So I'm not saying I'm glad it happened because I'm certainly not. And I'm not saying I'm gonna win. But I'm saying I'm saying that I've trained myself to the point where if I were walking down the street and 10 men would have pulled knives on me, I'd be intimidated. But 20 of me would go, "This, this is going to be..."

Because we want to remember. Do you have a belief that you could take 10 men with knives?

I have a belief that, yeah, I do. Because that's...

But that's delusional. That's delusional.

Yeah, but it makes me, it gives me a best chance of possibly winning.

No, running away would give you the best chance of possibly winning. And then coming back and being safe and then serving out your mission.

Of course, I would run away in that scenario. But if I, but if I had to engage them, if I had...

If I had to engage them, right? If I had to fight them, I believe I'd be the most capable. If I believed I could win, of course. So for that reason, if I have to self-delude, then I will self-delude. And I will convince myself that I am here to destroy all 10 of them. And I will say it in a way where at least seven of them believe me. And that's the most important part sometimes about all of this self-delusion is that a lot of other people start to believe what you say. And I'm not saying that I say bad things. If a man were to sit in front of you and say, "I can rip your head off with my little finger," and he said it in the right terms, and he truly believed it in his heart, you wouldn't want him to try. As ridiculous as that sounds, you'd be like, "In a big maybe." You know, it crosses your mind. So I think that, yeah, I have psychoanalyzed myself, even though I'm not officially, you know, certified. And I've decided that I can't stop bad things from happening to me. So instead, I'm going to enjoy bad things happening to me. And I'm going to build a mindset that makes me fearsome enough to succeed regardless of how stacked the odds are against me.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I appreciate your mindset. And it's well thought out. And it's useful to you. And so I'm not, I'm just pushing up against the places where I think there might be contradictions. And I like to hear it. Yeah, I like to hear it. But I like, like I said, right now, I'm not a coward. And I want to make this very clear. I'm not a coward. I don't care if I don't sleep again for the rest of my life. I refuse to take any pill. And I refuse to sit and have my mind altered by anything I do not control. I don't care if I have nightmares for the rest of human time, right? As long as I'm in charge of my mind, I'm in charge of my life. If God decides that I don't need nightmares anymore, I'll fathom out how to stop it. If God decides I need to wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat, fearful or afraid they're coming to get me, then that's God's plan for me. And that's what I'm going to deal with. I'm all coward. I'm not afraid of any of these things. I'm not afraid of feeling bad. I'm not afraid of anxiety. I'm not afraid of panic. This is one of the things I think a lot of men out there struggle with is they're so worried and afraid of bad feelings. And, and to me, that's just showing that you've had an easy life. Like there's real people out here who are trying to kill you. There's people I ever put a knife in your neck. You're scared of us feeling sad? Who cares? Like, there's real problems. Were you worried about feeling sad for? Who gives a? I could feel sad for the rest of my life, and I guarantee one, nobody would know. And two, I would be monumentally successful regardless. So why are we even talking about it? I have no fear for a negative feeling. I have fear for me not being able to provide for my children. I have fear for people who rely on me not being provided for and cared for. But I don't have a single, I don't wake up and go, "Oh, I'm really, I'm worried if I might feel sad today." Who cares? Who cares? I can be happy or sad on the same day. Nobody knows this. And the same things get done. The exact same amount of work gets done. Nothing changes.

How are you making sense of what's happening to you? Is it God's will? Is it, uh, a co-creation in some way? Did you co-create this?

Oh, no. Or are you a, just like a victim of of the Matrix?

No, I'm not a victim. So absolutely everything is...

I believe you're a victim. Completely.

But I believe in self-accountability. Sure. I could have prevented this.

Well, how did you co-create this if, if, let's presuppose you did?

I co-created. I created this by being monumentally successful, right? There's no light without dark, equal and opposite force.

But you said you were excited about it. So maybe there's some way you actually wanted this.

I didn't want this. In fact, I had conversations with Tristan for a long time, and I kept saying, "Icarus," when I would decline, I would decline certain podcasts, I would decline meeting certain famous people, I would decline talking about politics, I would decline things. And I'll keep saying, "Icarus." And he would say, "Why are you doing this?" I just apply "Icarus" because I knew if I got too big, that they were going to come for me. I knew that. So I tried to balance it. And I felt like I did a pretty good job. But unfortunately, I got it a little bit wrong. My fault. I got it wrong. I put myself here. But I also don't believe that there's any light without dark. It's yin and yang for a reason. I don't think that I can just become the most Googled man on the planet and become monumentally successful and make hundreds of millions of dollars and nothing bad is going to come from it. I think that would be hubris.

You just used the word hubris. It's a fantastic word. I think it would be stupid for me to sit there and go, "I should be able to do all of this good and have a fantastic life, and there's going to be no repercussion in any form." I knew this was coming. To the point where I literally sat with Tristan about three weeks before it happened and said, "We're so..."

Why did it happen?

It happened because I became monumentally successful and I became monumentally influential. And the world is about...

You did, you did create it in some way. You co-created it. Like, you knew this was going to happen. And so there may be some way, and unconsciously, you wanted it to happen. Like, if you're on this hero's journey and you're living this big life and you have a big vision for yourself. I mean, you know, you bring up guys like Genghis Khan. And I think that I think that's kind of appropriate because in another area, you probably would have been one of those cats, right? So now we're here, and maybe you need this in some way. Need this test to really feel yourself, to know how strong you actually are.

I mean, I know what you're saying. I, I don't think I need the test. I do feel like I need to tell the truth. I do feel like I, the truth is, well, the truth about the Matrix. Yeah. What, what I believe. And I do believe that I have a responsibility because of my massive platform. Yeah. And I do believe that the responsibility is for me to do my best to educate people in a way that's going to make them happy. And I know I could have sold my soul a thousand times. And I know I could have avoided this. I know I could have not said certain things. And I understand all of that. I wasn't looking for a war this large. I wouldn't say I was looking for it. But I wasn't ignorant to the fact that it might happen. And I wasn't afraid.

You didn't do anything to avoid it though.

I did. I did a lot to avoid.

You did. Icarus. I must have said it a thousand times.

I could have made it much worse. Yeah. But I was never afraid of it happening. I think, I think there's a difference between knowing something bad might happen and taking the calculated risk and going, "This is my journey for truth, and this is what I believe is what I should do." And being afraid of something. Like, I understand if I go into the ring, I might lose. But I do believe 93% chance I'm going to destroy him.

Well, and you want the fight either way, I guess.

So because how else do you matter, right? That's that's my point. And I'm not saying that I'm glad I'm being persecuted for false human trafficking, side of Romania. I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying that yet, on the other side of this, how strong will you be?

Stronger. Stronger than you could be otherwise.

Good. For sure. And have more power and influence otherwise. Absolutely. And it's in Nelson Mandela, completely. Now, so I wouldn't want to spend whatever amount of time in jail. That sounds scary. But it's not uncommon for heroes.

Well, exactly. And if you, if you take the lessons from it, and if we want to once again talk about being as formidable as possible, then I don't think jail, okay, it's given me nightmares. But I don't think it's made me weaker. No. And it could have easily made me weaker. I could have gone through the exact same experience with a different mental model and emerged weaker. I believe I've emerged stronger, regardless of the fact that I have nightmares. I didn't have nightmares before. Now I do. But I still see myself as a stronger person. That's one more thing. I no longer have to fear from an unknown perspective. I know exactly what it's like. I know the best ways to deal with, which I developed within the three months. And if they put me back, I know what I'm going into. So that's an unknown area of the map explored. Yes. And I don't want to go. But I do believe that I'm more powerful than ever. And you have to find the good in it. That's absolutely not for sure. But I don't think I was, I want to be very careful. I don't think I was looking for this fight. I'm finding the good in this fight. I believe that my fight actually has far-reaching repercussions for society now. I think that however this plays out is going to affect society in real time. I wasn't looking for it, but I was never...

Did you attract it in some way?

Well, if you, if you are a force for good, then the evil is going to attack you, isn't it? And I do genuinely believe this is the battle of good versus evil in the world today. I believe that truth is always going to be on the side of good. I am religious. I believe the things I say most people knew were true only 10 to 15 years ago. I don't think they're radical, radical ideas. And I think that there is an evil force in the world which is extremely deceptive, and they are out to try and silence me, not because what I say is wrong, it's in fact because what I say is right. I believe the reason I have so much influence and the reason so many young boys listen to me and pay attention to me is because I say things that are true. That they know intrinsically, evolutionarily, inside of their bones, as true. That I say things which work. People often wonder why my fan base is so feverish, why my fan base is so dedicated. Well, if they listen to me, it's the first time they ever feel good. The first time they ever train hard and start to feel better physically, and they start to feel better mentally. And they adopt my mental model, and now they're not stressed or depressed anymore. And then they may start to make some money. And they go, "You know what? I started listening to Tate a year ago. I'm in the best shape financially, the best shape physically, the best shape mentally. Tate's the man." So they're hyper dedicated to me. And yeah, I mean, there's, there's going to be a negative to that. I, I've been, I want to make something clear. I've been brutally aware of the fact that all of this might blow up in my face for a very long time. I'm not, I've not been ignorant to that. And I think that's why jail didn't cause me pain because I wasn't in jail like, "How did this happen?" I was in jail thinking, "They got me. I knew it. They've been after me for a long time. I knew they were coming." And, uh, I mean, I don't know if that's a coping mechanism, but I was saying on every single podcast before I went to jail, "They're gonna try and put me in jail." I knew it.

Right, right. You said there's a light in the dark. What, what's the, is there darkness in you? I mean, there must be. There's darkness inside of everybody, right? And do you, do you know that part of you? Are you in relationship with it? Do you think about it?

That's a good question. First, I have to identify what would the darkness in me be.

Well, let me, let me present something to you. Because I stood up for you after you, uh, got canceled off social media. And I have a lot of female clients, and they had questions about that. I mean, they know me and they trust me, so they're curious. But one of them said, "Well, you know, Andrew, he's, he's out there saying that he's helping all these young men, but in the beginning, he made his millions in, in some level, exploiting these very men." Okay? That's the frame that they were thinking about it. And is there validity in that? And what they're saying? Because I didn't know how to answer that question.

I don't think I exploited the men. I think I exploited, maybe I did exploit the men. But let me change my answer. I don't think me not exploiting them would have prevented them being exploited. I think these men were out to be exploited regardless, whether I did it or not. So, but you can see how that sounds cynical to somebody where you said, "Well, they're going to be exploited anyway, so I'm going to make money off them. And then once I make money off them, I get this platform, then I'm going to champion them completely." I mean, it's a, I guess that's probably one of the most logical arguments against me I've heard. Then we have to argue whether I was really exploiting them, which is another argument, right? Because a lot of these men, the only reason they didn't kill themselves is because they had an online girlfriend. Sure. So I actually think webcaming and girls as a whole is closer to this therapy than it is porn, truly. These men are completely miserable, and the only joy they have is logging into that website. So I don't think I did exploit them. The reason I said the fact about the fact they're going to be exploited anyway, it's very similar to having an alcohol store. Let's say there's three alcohol stores in a row, and all of your customers are alcoholics. Well, if you close your alcohol store, what happens? They just buy at the next door. Next door. They're still going to be an alcoholic. You're not saving anyone's life. But I don't think I necessarily exploited. I, I didn't see myself as exploiting them or exploiting the girls. I don't think that. I think it was a business opportunity, and I approached it the way I approach everything, which is extremely professionally. And I was good at it. And we had a very successful company. Everybody was happy, including the men at home, and including the women who all became millionaires. I've turned more women into millionaires than I've turned men into millionaires. So maybe that's the reason they're coming after you because they, they feel in that a contradiction, and they're not buying your story, right? They don't believe it. They're like, "Oh, this is an act. He's not genuine. He's actually out for himself." Right? And so that's the place that they want to get you because there's definitely an energy out there. They want to get you.

Oh, no, they're out to get me. Yeah. And it's, but it's, I don't think that's the reason why, though.

Well, depends what we're talking about. Yeah. But we're talking about the Matrix. I understand why they're. And you've talked about that a lot in podcasts. We could talk about that, you know, uh, because you are speaking a lot of truth and you're confronting all the lies in the culture, and you're, you're speaking against the most powerful forces in the world. But individual women, let's say, uh, they're gonna look at what you're doing. A lot of them, and, and a lot of them, you know, it's, it's they're completely insane. And they're looking at these little clips and they're, they're distorted in their own feminism. And maybe unconsciously, uh, they can't reconcile to the fact that they would actually want a man like you. I think that's a lot of what's going on. It's like projection.

I'd agree with that. You know, nevertheless, there is an energy that's like, they want to get you. They want you to be punished in some way. Yeah. And so like, how do you, like, what do you do with that? How do you deal with that? Like, how do you answer to that? Like, if that woman was sitting here, what do you say to her?

Yeah, I would, I would say that her argument, to a degree, is a logic fail. Let's, let's take it away from webcaming. It's a female logic. There's your blind spot right there. Don't be a misogynist.

No, no, of course. But that I'm, that's like saying because you're misogyny. No, no, of course. But that I'm that's like saying because you've ever eaten a steak, you don't care about animals, right? Effectively, that's what she's saying. Is because he had a business in which some man may have felt exploited at some point, he doesn't care about humanity, which is a logic fail. Yeah. So that's not valid. What I have found in my experience often is that many women who seem to dislike me after they meet me, don't dislike me anymore. I think the energy which they find repulsive over a screen, or affects them emotionally over a screen, they end up liking in person. I think hate and love are actually very close to each other. And I've had women who who scream how much they hate me at the screen, and then they meet me, and they're literally...

In love with me? Well, you're a nice guy, of course. So, I've yet to meet a female person who dislikes me, and I would love to talk to these women. I think that'd be the best conversation ever. I think it'd be the best podcast on Earth. Yeah, but they are out to get me. They're certainly out to get me. I think that the fact that I'm so assured in a lot of my convictions, they find very threatening. People in general now seem to find it threatening when you're the kind of person who says, "No, it's this way." And they say, "Oh, but the news said it's that way." "Don't care, it's this way." And they find that ignorant. But it's not ignorant. I think it's just assured in your convictions, and they find that threatening, very threatening. I think that there's a lot of people who find me threatening, not because of necessarily what I say, but just how sure I am in my convictions and the way I present myself and in my monumental success. They find that overall threatening. The same way a rabbit will find a tiger threatening. It doesn't know why. It's just like, it just wants to run away from it.

So, is it incumbent on you then to change the way you're delivering the information so more people can hear it?

No, no, no. Because there are some, no, because there are some people who cannot be saved. And it's not my intention to save everybody. I have no intention of trying to convince everybody to like me. My intention is to try to speak to the people out there who know what I'm saying is the truth and who like the way it's being presented and said. I, once again, have no concern with being disliked by X percentage of the population. And I want to make this clear. I've spoken to a lot of people who have talked about how their mental health has been affected by, you know, online bullying and media campaigns and smear campaigns. I don't think anybody's been attacked by the media in the last two years harder than me. Every day, there is something in the media trying to paint me as a bad person on, on TV channels from Ulan Batar to Utah, across the entire world. And I can sit here and say categorically, I've never read a media report and been like, I've just been like, "Clowns." Don't care. That's a lot of energy coming at you. I mean, psychic energy coming at you.

And like, have you reconciled to this idea that you, you're, you're Andrew Tate? You know, you were born, you have a life, you have your own inner world, just doing your thing. And then there's an Andrew Tate that's out there, and people are projecting their love and hate onto you. And it's not, none of it's really real. But you have to hold all of that, that mass projection. Correct?

How, how is that? Yeah. But then let's psychoanalyze me, right? You're the professional. I'm the amateur. But let's do it. Why don't I care that the media continues to attempt to slander me continuously? And, and they don't do it to anybody else. And it's unfair that they're doing it to me. Because if I was a genuine sexual predator, or like the people they defend, I'd be protected by these people. You know, we can discuss this, right? If I was, if I was going into girls' toilets, they wouldn't say anything bad about what I was doing. Yeah. So why are they? The fact that it's so unfair, and it's so pervasive, and it's so aggressive, why doesn't it bother me? Am I ignorant?

It doesn't bother you. I don't think it does. You block it out. I mean, you must read these things and you see your name associated with these horrendous crimes. But it's not real. It's, it's, it's, it's false. But your age, if what they were, if what, if what, if what they were saying was true, it would bother me. Yeah. But genuinely, because I know it's all garbage. It's all lies. It doesn't, it's water off a duck's back. And maybe my obsession with truth is, obsession, I don't know if that's the right word. But because I believe I'm talking the truth, and because I believe the current war we're in is genuinely one of truth against deception and lies, that's their only weapon. Sure. That's their weapon is deception and lies. So everything they say is a lie. So it doesn't really affect me.

And I, I will sit and say that. But I know for me, it's painful when I'm not seen, like my goodness isn't seen, right? Like it's painful, or people misrepresent the things that I say, or judge me because of my association with you. Like, it's, it's painful. I'm not seen correctly, right? And that can make me angry. And, and maybe cause, I don't know, some, some kind of negative reaction within me. And, and I guess I, I'm just curious, like, isn't it painful in some way? Like, people, because there's a lot of people out there, they don't see you. They don't see your goodness. They only see this, the dark part of you. Or they project their own darkness onto you, or their father's darkness, or Trump, whoever the, it is, they project that onto you in some way. Isn't that like?

But those people, those people are already paying the price. Because, but, but those people, but for you, I'm saying, for you, your inner. It doesn't bother me because those people are already paying the price for their ignorance. Their minds are not free. Anybody who sits and watches the news and believes what the news says about me is the same kind of person who believes everything the news says. And if you have two choices in this world, people are talking about the battle I'm in. And yes, I may be spearheading it. I may be at the front of it. But I believe that this war cannot be avoided. You are either at war against the injustice and against the lies, or you're at war with your own mind. When you believe their garbage, it is impossible for a man to believe the crap they want you to believe and be a happy, functioning adult. It's impossible. If you believe that's on the television, as a man, you're going to be miserable. So you're either at war with your brain, you're at war with them. Anyone who's going to sit there and go, "I believe Andrew Tate is a human trafficker." I have 25 vaccines. I believe in Ukraine. These people are already paying the price because they're already miserable. And I can guarantee everyone who dislikes me is an unhappy person because their minds are enslaved.

So I don't feel like, I don't feel when someone sits to me, when someone sits across from me, which has never happened in person, but let's say someone on the internet, right, makes a video about me, right? And these happen. "Andrew Tate's the worst man ever." I can load up the video and just look at him for a fraction of a second and go, "He's paid. He's paid the price." Right? He's already, he's already missed. If I, if then, depression would be real. Trolls, losers who have no, who can't compare to me in any human metric. They know it, which is why they dislike me. Because anybody who genuinely gets out in the world and looks for truth and looks to be successful and is tenacious and is brave, agrees with everything I say. So I don't feel pain when someone sits and says garbage about me because I believe that their mind is already suffering because they're not free. Their mind's not freed. Anybody who can listen to what I say long enough and not be emotional about it and actually understand it, well, those people aren't paying a price.

So maybe that's a coping mechanism. But every single time I see a woman who hates me, or a man who hates me, and I compare them to the people who like me, there's a massive contrast in overall physical attractiveness, success, financial success. Like, it's amazing. So it's like, okay, well, my haters are way down here, and the people who agree with me are way up here. So let them hate.

Maybe they just resent you.

Of course. No. Maybe. I think, I think a lot of the reason this is happening to me is, and maybe this is arrogant, but are you? I'm with the therapist, so I'm allowed to be arrogant, right? A lot of the reason this is happening to me is because I'm, I'm, I'm tall and built, muscles, and cool cars, and, you know, smart people don't like me. There's people look at me and go, "He thinks he's too cool. Teach him a lesson." There's a massive amount of resentment involved in all of this. Yeah. For even, for even from the Matrix itself. Even from the, we talk about the Matrix and I talk about it and people, you know, of course, we compare it to the movie. But at the end of the day, there are moving parts in all of this. There's a prosecutor, there's a, a judge, there's a lawyer, whatever. Someone is sitting in an office who gets a piece of paper saying, "Destroy Andrew Tate." And that person looks at my life and compares it to theirs, and they feel resentful. And then they go, "Okay, let me use every power I have to try and destroy this man." Right? If my life wasn't so aspirational, as a word you can use, but it also didn't tick nearly every single box in regards to every teenage boy's dream, I think that they would be a lot less interested in trying to hurt me. Right? They're trying to hurt me because of the things I have and what I can do. So there's a massive level of resentment in all of it. And I also think the people who dislike me, a lot of it's resentful. It's either weaponized virtue or resentment. Right? Especially weaponized virtue.

Let's talk about that. Because whenever I have a hater online, it's funny. People who hate me in person are very respectful to me. It's very strange, isn't it? Weird how the bottom line of humanity is always going to be physicality. When they meet me, they shut up. Sure. Warriors are very tough, of course. But online, it's very hard to say I'm stupid. It's very hard to say I'm not successful. It's very hard to say I'm fat. It's very hard to say I'm ugly. It's very hard to say I'm not charming or I'm not charismatic. It's very difficult to attack me with anything other than the fact I'm a bad person. He's all these things. He's perfect in nearly every metric, but he's a bad person. Yeah. Right? So how do you do that? Well, you take a virtue and you weaponize it. Misogyny, homophobic, whatever it is. They pretend they care about the subject when they don't. And they put it into a bullet and they shoot at you. And it's weaponized virtue. It's not genuine virtue. These people who are saying I'm a misogynist don't care about women or care about combating misogyny. They just want to try and hurt me with it. Yeah. That's the first thing. Or the second thing is genuine resentment. Yeah. I remind him of the guy who picked on him in school. Yeah. Or the guy who their girl took the girl off them. And, and they don't like me for it. But that's not my problem. That's their issue.

Are you defensive? Is there, is that, like a defensive posture? Is the way that you can be?

I don't, I really want. What are you open to these people? No. And when I talk to you, I don't want you to be open. This is, this is what I think it is. It's like, you are the man. It's like, you are the daddy. It's just like, why are you being so mean to me? Why are you yelling at me? I want you, I need you, brother. Like, show up in a good way. Where are you? Like, that's what's going on for them emotionally, perhaps. Yeah. And so, do you have a responsibility in that place to transcend the place you are in to really fully realize your leadership? You know what I'm saying?

That's a very good question. And when I'm talking to you, I want to be as honest and vulnerable as I've ever been. I'm trying to be as vulnerable as I can be. But also, so let's, let's talk about these people who resent me the most. Are these people who disagree with my message?

What's it like for you to be vulnerable? What's that word even mean to you? How do you relate to that word of vulnerability?

That's a really good question. I don't know. I don't know how I relate to the word vulnerability.

Well, you are vulnerable. You can't put yourself out in the world like this to be seen. That is an invulnerable act. Getting into the ring with another fighter where he might kick your ass, that's vulnerable. That's that's intense vulnerability. I think. But I think emotional vulnerability, nearly at every form, at every level, is basically a form of manipulation. So I, maybe that's just how you experienced it growing up, perhaps with your mother? Emotionally manipulative? No. But if a girl cried in front of me, I believe she'd be trying to get an out. I don't think it's just because she feels bad. I think it's because she's trying to get a reaction from me. And I think when men cry to their wives or whatever, a lot of it is trying to inspire sympathy from her. I think a lot of emotional vulnerability, to a degree, I would argue it's all manipulation.

Like that. That, that then, that would indicate that in some way that you are manipulating. We all manipulate each other. Well, that's what I'm saying. So if you're seeing manipulation in others, that must also exist in you. And I guess that's the question. Is there a way, right? Like, can you actually not be manipulating? And manipulates a strong word, has a negative connotation. But like, in some sense, trying to control? Because one of the things that I find in this conversation, right? It's like, I mean, you actually think you're, you're going along with my line of questioning really well. Like, it's, you're not trying to control everything. But there is a way, right? That you're, you have a tactic. You're trying to control things. You're trying to get away from something. You're trying to control the conversation on some level.

Of course. But what if you gave that up? Well, okay. I'm like, just the idea of it, right? Like, what would happen if? Let's do it. I'm trying my very best. Old habits die hard. Just, but, but don't worry about the result. Just ask yourself a question. Like, what would happen if, yeah, you let go of trying to control everything? Just feel in. Just feel into what that would feel like. And, and, but that goes back to the point about what vulnerability is. Because I don't think humans are as emotionally incontinent as they pretend to be. And I believe that when you truly feel pain, or truly feel trauma, or something really bad happens to you, the result to that is usually silence. I don't think you talk very much at all. So people, you ask me, what is it like to be vulnerable? Well, to me, that's not crying. That's not. I think when anyone's doing that, 99% of the time, it's a manipulation tactic. I believe personally. Maybe that's just my personal experience. But yeah, maybe. But I think especially with men, especially with men, I think it's a manipulation tactic when they try and show too much emotion. And women do it as well. And I don't react very well to it. If someone were to sit in front of me and start bawling their eyes out, it's very hard to elicit sympathy from me for that reason. I feel like you get sympathy from me by sitting and explaining to me why something bad happened to you in a logical, calm, stoic manner. If someone starts crying in front of me, I feel like they're trying to manipulate me, and I don't buy it.

Or maybe you judge it in them because you judge that in yourself, perhaps?

I mean, it's my human experience, right? And it's my bias, right? But I'm trying to think of the very few scenarios in which I would ever cry. And I'm thinking, would it genuinely be because I feel so much pain? Or if I think it could benefit me or help me, would I be trying to manipulate somebody? Now, that's not something I'd ever do because it's not my personality and mental frame. But, but crying is just a physiological reaction to express pain and grief that allows us to release this and to come back to homeostasis.

Well, it can be. It's, don't attack me. But it's also a physiological response.

Oh, completely. But it's, don't attack me anymore. It's, I'm the victim. Don't attack me. Yes. I cheated on you. Ah, don't live. It's, it's a shield. And so when we talk about what does vulnerable mean, I feel like I'm being vulnerable now when I'm explaining things extremely logically. That's as vulnerable as I can be. I cannot be the kind of person who's gonna cry. But once again, this is my mental model. I haven't instilled. Is that what it means? Vulnerability? Cry? I guess vulnerability. What about admitting your weaknesses?

I'll admit my weaknesses. Then this is, see, this is so interesting because I will tell you, no, it is because I will tell you. I'll admit my weaknesses. And I will. But now I have to try and identify some. Because in my mental, in my mental framework, I don't have weaknesses. Right? So now it's like, okay, I am prepared to admit where I'm weak. Where am I weak? Well, I've tried so hard for so long to make sure I'm not weak anywhere. And if I am, I've compensated so heavily in some other way. I don't fail. So I was like, where am I weak? I'm that guy who does not fail. It doesn't matter what scenario anybody's life is in. It doesn't matter if you get dumped into jail. It doesn't matter if you're going into war. Doesn't matter if you're bankrupt. Whatever it is, if someone says, "Tate's on your side," you feel good. "Andrew Tate's here. God, Tate, okay." Yeah. You can't even, he can't even swim. But he's here to, he's the lifeguard. Tate doesn't fail. I can't swim. But it's an example, right? So I, I do not fail, ever. So it's very hard for me to identify weaknesses because I feel like they've all been ruthlessly, I think I've rooted out any weakness, or I've compensated so heavily so long ago, I don't see myself as a weak person. I don't see myself as a person who can fail. People said to me in jail, "How did you handle that?" What else can I do? Not handle it? What does that look like? Am I gonna bang my head on the wall like a dummy? Am I gonna have a breakdown and just be a, be a pile of mush? All you can do is handle it. So I've, we're talking about vulnerability. I'm being as vulnerable as I can. But I can't even, I can't even honestly sit here and tell you a weakness I have because in my mind, I have no weaknesses. And perhaps that's delusion. Perhaps that's, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps it's delusion. Yeah. But that's, but a useful delusion, is what you're saying. It's, it's brutally useful. Yeah. And when I teach this, or when I talk about this, there's a lot of men who perhaps want to adopt it. But the mistake they make is they don't have the real-world experience to back it up. I don't want people to be completely lose their minds. Yeah. We're not talking about that. But we're talking about the fact that I can name so many scenarios in my life where I was supposed to fail, and I did not fail. I am, it's brutally realistic. It's brutally logical. It's built on competence. It's built on real-world accolade and achievement. Everything I've ever wanted, I have achieved and I have gotten. I have never failed anything I've ever wanted, ever. So how am I going to wake up and say, "Oh, I've got this weakness, that weakness?" When I have 100% success rate, 100%. There's never a girl I wanted I didn't get. There's never a car I wanted I didn't drive. There's never a scenario where I said, "I want to get through this," I didn't get through it. I've never failed. So of course I'm going to sit and say, "Yeah, I, I would love to tell you my weaknesses. I can't think of any. I don't know." Right?

But are you being humbled right now? Is this whole series of events, of events, humbling you?

It's, it's taught me things I already knew. I know you can't be bigger than a justice system. I was saying Icarus for a reason. I knew they would come for me. I know I'm only human. But you're not. And do you? I do. I'm just a very good one. I'm just a very good one. Is there somewhere inside your belief that you're invincible? Like, you, you can't get got? Because that, that is a dangerous distortion.

No, no. I wouldn't have been saying Icarus for that reason, right? I'm actually far more cautious than most people would believe. I err on the side of caution. You're tactical. I'm very tactical with all of my life. Even the security I organize, the places I stay, where I go. I'm extremely tactical. I don't believe I'm super. I just believe that I do not fail.

And because you have no weaknesses doesn't mean you can't lose, right? You, you can be strong in all realms and still lose. There are world champion boxers who are, who have no weakness. They do everything right, and they lose fights. Right? So I'm not saying I'm invincible. I'm just saying if you ask me to name my weakness, I can't think of one.

What would you ask the guys? Sure. You can, you can, you can ask people. You can ask people around me. I would love to hear it. And I guess I can tell you what people say about me. Well, do, actually, that's a good question. Do you feel like, uh, you get, I mean, I guess Tristan, but you get honest reflection? Can you trust the reflection because you know you're at the center of this kind of empire and, and you have all of these friends and, but, but can you trust the information that's coming to you from anyone? Because everybody's got, I mean, I'm here in some way from my own self-interest. And the fact that you trust me is, it was interesting to me. You let me in your house. I, I assume that you have some kind of instinct about it. But that must be hard, like, to trust.

I get a lot of feedback. And it all goes into a big pile. And I, and I listen to every word that's said to me. I'm not the person who's beyond reproach. Everyone I work with, a lot of people have said things to me. And I, I'm told about myself quite often, yeah. And I put it all in a pile and I analyze every single word carefully. I ignore most of it, but I do listen to it. And I guess the number one bad or negative thing that people will say about me who know me is they may say I'm very insensitive. I hear that sometimes, usually from, usually from women. They're insensitive. I'm insensitive because I think once you become a ruthless problem solver, you come across to a degree as insensitive. We have this big issue. Issue when everyone's crying, "Okay, stop crying. Fix the issue." Right? It's, it's, you have to be insensitive. Okay, what are you crying about? Let's fix that. Right?

Well, you know, you know that's wrong. Well, a lot of people want to vent. They don't want to fix the problem. They want to, "I just need you to be with them and understand." "Here you are, baby. I love you. Complete." You're rolling your eyes. Yeah. But, but I'm important. That's what I'm saying. So when you become a ruthless problem solver, right, you become to a degree insensitive. Now, there are some scenarios where that doesn't work, right? There's some, some problems you can't fix. The death of a loved one, that's different. Yeah. But if people are crying about something which is very fixable, it's very difficult for me to be in interested in their crying. And I'll tell you why. Because if I have a set standard for myself, if I wouldn't allow myself that luxury, it's very hard for me to give it out to everybody else. If I don't allow myself the luxury of being incompetent because of an emotion, then it's very hard for me to look at others and go, "Well, you're allowed to be incompetent because of your emotions." And you're allowed to be incompetent because of your emotions. And I'll just deal with the struggle of never being incompetent ever, regardless of how I feel. If I have a standard for myself, I'm going to implore my standard, or imply my standard on others. If they don't meet that standard, then they're going to call me insensitive.

What would you have to give up to become more sensitive, particularly to your women?

I'm very, I'm a very sensitive, romantic, nice man. Yeah. In general, I'm actually a romantic man. I get called that a lot. No one calls me cold. Right? It's different. You're loving, completely. But I, when it comes to problems, especially right, I am insensitive. I am, can be insensitive. Default to problem-solving. Absolutely. Not what they want. What's the issue? They want to cry about the problem a while. And time is expense. Time is money. Time is money. I'm like, "Okay, yeah, yeah. Boom, boom. Fixed." Right? No, but you don't understand. I do understand. Now it's fixed. Next. Like, right, right. I think that's just, but I think that's just competence. And I think that's genuinely, I think most men are kind of like that. Perhaps I'm just hyper like that. Yes. Um, so I get called insensitive sometimes. What else do people say negative about me? This is interesting.

Are you arrogant?

Well, the difference between arrogance and reality is just competence, isn't it?

Say that again.

The difference between arrogance and a healthy grasp of reality is only going to be the competence of an individual. There's one way of looking at it. But if I can kick the out of everybody, for example, and I say I can kick the out of everybody, am I arrogant? Not necessarily. It depends on the, the kind of energy of it, right? But I mean, one might say that arrogance hides insecurity. Like, are there places where you're insecure?

That's another very good question. But let me think about this for a second and answer it. Because these are questions I've never been asked before. But I don't. Okay. So where am I insecure about? I, this is another point, and maybe this is a personality characteristic which is interesting. I don't do anything I'm bad at, ever. Like, sing. Yeah. Like, saying, I cannot sing. So I will not sing. And I'd love to hear you say, I'm sure you wouldn't. But maybe that once again shapes my reality because I refuse to do anything I am bad at. If I'm bad at it, I hire someone else to do it, or I find someone else who's good at it, and I offer value for them to do it. I don't do any, my entire reality.

Why? Why? Because you don't want to. I mean, there's the things you're incompetent in, and you have time. But like, uh, because you're scared to look, uh, foolish or not be good at something and people are going to see, "Oh, Tate's not so great at everything."

Oh, I don't think it's emotional. I think it's purely logical. I, I'm thinking about my day. Every single thing I do are the things I am absolute best at. If I, I'll put boxing gloves on after this and I'll go fight, and I'll be everybody. I'll destroy everyone. And I think I only enjoy things that I'm good at. And I also think that if I have X amount of hours in the day, the way I can be the most competitive, most fearsome predator is to spend all of my waking time doing things I'm the best at. And leave things I'm not good at to the other people who perhaps are good at them. If you're an accountant and you want to become as rich as possible, then what you do is as many hours as possible accounting.

But you're rationalizing. I am correct. So let me rationalize it. I'll rationalize it. Yeah. But that's what you do. And that's it. That, that can be a defense. I mean, rationalization is a classic defense. Yeah. But that's my racket. And you're really good at it. But, right, right. But it's like a sword you have that's super sharp, and you want to use it all the time. All the time. Yeah. But what if you set it down and realize there's other tools available in your toolkit? Maybe you need to develop those.

But rationalizing is how I built my mind. It's all you have to give it up. The sword's right there. You just have to use it all the time. But, but it's, but it's all my entire framework and how I view the world has all been one massive rationalization. And it's lent, it's let me build a reality which is exactly what I want it to be.

No, you must know that that has limitations because you can't rationalize everything. That's not what life is, isn't it? Right? There's any, well, there's, there's other layers of reality that the mind does not understand.

Okay, well, right. You're right. And just because I rationalize things doesn't mean I don't feel things. But, yeah.

I know you feel things. Yeah. I feel things. And I know you're, I actually know that you're really sensitive. Like, I feel, I wouldn't be here if I thought you were some, you know, maniacal psychopath. Because I'm here because I can. And that's what I think a lot of people saw in the interview. Um, they felt your sensitivity. They felt your vulnerability. And they were really attracted to it.

Oh, I'm a lot more sensitive than people know. And this is one of the things I like to say when I talk about depression not being real, or how life is pain and suffering. That doesn't mean that I, I'm not saying those things because I've never felt them. Yeah. I'm saying those things because I know them intimately. I'm saying those things because I know exactly how it would feel to label myself a depressed person. Yeah. I know it very well. I just refused to do it. Right? So, yeah, I'm absolutely not only a sensitive person. I would label myself sensitive. But maybe, but maybe one second. I just want to go back to my original point. Maybe my worldview is affected by, and we're talking about arrogance, when you wake up and all you do are things your world level at. Yeah. Everything you do are things you're fantastic at, right? All of the time. And you beat everybody all of the time at all of it. Yeah. Aren't you gonna have a degree, a tinge, perhaps, of arrogance?

Of course. Of course you are. So, but what I label myself an arrogant person? Well, I'm not going to sit down and say I'm good at something I'm not, right? So I don't think I'm unrealistic.

Are you, are you taking on the full responsibility that you have, given all of the gifts that you've been given by God? Yeah. Do you, do you, is there any place where you're, uh, not taking on responsibility for that?

No, I think I take care of absolutely everybody I love in every single way. I think anybody who's ever needed me, I've been there for them if they've deserved it. I think anybody who listens to my message is becoming a better person overall. I genuinely believe I'm fixing and helping society. I don't know what else more I'm supposed to do. I mean, to a degree, I'm almost martyred myself. What else more can I do? My options at this point are either to continue to help people and explain to men why I became so successful, which is all I'm basically doing. I'm saying, "You're a man, and you're upset, and you want to be X." I'm telling you how I became what I wanted to be. This is what I did.

Is there anything beyond the things you just said that you're responsible for? Like, what is your responsibility here?

My responsibility? Well, I guess ultimately to yourself, is to your family first, right? To, what is your responsibility to God? I think God wants me to be the best possible version of myself. I think that God dislikes people who are lazy. I said this to somebody once, and he got very offended. I said, "God doesn't like lazy people." God has created you, and he wants to see the absolute best you can be. I think that if you don't take care of yourself, God has no interest in taking care of you. If you have a Ferrari on the drive and you don't take care of it, who's going to take care of it? Nobody. I think that taking care of yourself and being the best possible version of yourself you can be is how you please God. I think that's one of the best ways to praise him is to wake up every day and say, "I need to be the strongest, smartest, fastest, most fearsome, most stoic, most capable man I can possibly be." This is how I please God. So I think your duty to God is also these things. And that's another massive source of strength that I, that I get. When I'm alone in a jail cell, I understand that God is still watching, and God would be unhappy if I couldn't handle it.

I, I don't think, maybe we can, we can talk about God, or we can also talk just about basic cosmic balance. I don't believe you can become the most famous man on the planet, calling yourself the Top G, without the universe testing you. If you're really about it, I don't think it's, you're going to get to a point where the universe, whatever you want to call it, is going to say, "Is he really the Top G?" And you're going to have to prove it. If you walk through life and say, "I'm, I'm made of iron. I'm Mr. Tough Guy." Sooner or later, someone's going to check you, right? And find out if you are or not, right? So when I was doing this for a very long time, I wasn't ignorant to the fact that something's going to come along and see if I am who I am. So when I'm sitting in a jail cell by myself with cockroaches all over the floor, I'm like, "Okay, this is my chance to show I'm not full of..." Was I full of? No, I wasn't. Am I going to allow everything I've ever said in my last name and my duty to God and everything to go down the pan? Or am I going to just man up and win, right? So I saw it, I guess, to a degree, as an opportunity. But there was a massive burden of responsibility on me on how I had to perform. I didn't have time to be depressed or sad. This is what I'm saying to you earlier. I didn't have time. I had, I had things to do. Top G's kids can't eat. Top G's women can't pay the bills. Top G's business is over. Talk to... No, I had to fix all of it from jail. And fix myself and get out. I was very busy inside of my brain, staring at a wall. So I didn't have time for this. And, and this is another thing I try and explain to people, and I don't understand about. And I talk about men specifically because I understand how to be successful as a man. When men say to me, "They're depressed with unlimited options, with the capability to become anything you desire, with God giving you a full and able body and mind, how do you have time to be depressed?" You have so much you could do. There's so much that you need to do to be your best self. And you're competing against men like me. And you're finding hours a day to be sad. No wonder you're going to perpetually lose forever. That's suicide. So how do you find time to do this? It's it's brutally ineffective. You have a brain, you have a mind, you have a mental model. You can't think of everything. You can't do everything. You can only have certain frameworks instilled inside of your mind. As a man, you should be hyper-competitive. If you're trying to be the best version of yourself you can be, you're competing against every other man on Earth for the girl you want, the car you want, the house you want, the watch you wear. It's all competition. You should be as competitive as you possibly can. Anything that's inside of your mind which doesn't allow you to be competitive should be erased. This is why I can't name a weakness. I can't name a weakness I have. I've compensated so heavily for any weakness that may exist. I don't even see them anymore.

Is your belief in God tied into this concept that we talked about that what's useful is more important than what's true or better than what's true? So we don't, do we know that God exists? I mean, we don't know, correct? But it's useful to believe in God.

That's a very good question. I think that believing in God certainly makes you more powerful. Yeah. Which is proof for God. If God makes you more powerful, then God is real. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe that's very simplistic. But if I believe in God and I'm a more powerful version of myself because I believe in him, then he must exist. Yeah. God has made me more powerful. Well, it's the act of believing him that makes him exist. Which is another way of saying, correct? Yeah. So this is why I believe faith is such an important thing. But I think everybody has a God in any way. Yeah. There's no such thing as atheists. If you look at the people who say, "I don't believe in God," they worship a flag and a vaccine. Yeah. So everyone believes in something. Yeah. So you have to decide what your religion is. And I, once again, refuse to believe anything that takes away power from me. I believe in things that may be more powerful. And I believe that believing in God gives you a new degree of strength. And I also think everybody, to some degree, believes in God. I don't care what anybody says. If you put anyone in that submarine, just before it imploded, everyone would pray. Yeah. Everyone. Yeah. So it's ignorant to even say you don't believe in God at this point.

It's interesting that you chose Islam. And I heard you talk a little bit about how you see God in Islam as kind of, you know, I don't know, harshness, but like firm and directional and clear. And this is right and this is wrong. Which sounds a lot like your dad.

Well, it sounds a lot like life. Yeah. Like life. There's there's right and wrong in life. All this complete subjectiveness, this mush they're trying to create, yeah, is done on purpose to confuse us. Yeah. I like the idea of right and wrong. I, I like the idea of not having a choice. If you walk in, if you're hungry, and you walk in to buy a sandwich, and there's 100 sandwiches, it takes 10 minutes. If there's one sandwich, isn't life easier sometimes? Yeah. So all this subjectiveness and all this choice and all this garbage, sometimes when I'm like, "Okay, I want to be a good person. I want a framework to adhere to that makes me a good person." Well, this is very clear. Yes. No easy.

Have you had, do you have like embodied experiences of God? Like, do you, do you relate to God in that way? You know, I want to say supernatural, but, um, like, do you feel God?

I absolutely feel him. And there's certain times where I may feel particularly energetic.

When do you feel God?

So usually when I'm feeling powerful. Uh-huh. There's been times I was in jail and I just got up and I just felt like, you know what? Yeah. Like, just shadow boxed a bit. I don't know. It's like, you just felt it. Like, "I'll be okay. I will win." I don't feel God when I'm sad or something like that. I think that the whole idea of spirituality, and I believe God himself, he wants the best for you. And it's interesting, yeah, how we're tying religion to to my worldviews. Because my worldviews were the same before religion, I guess. Before it was to cause moss, or just the way the universe works, or light, dark, yin, yang, etc. I still say these things, but now I attribute a lot more of it to spirituality. A lot more of it to God. And, yeah, I chose Islam because it's firm. And I believe that I'm a person with firm principles. So I'm obviously gonna like in myself, or I'm going to feel the affinity to a religion that has firm principles because that's who I am as a person. I'm a person who's principled. Yes.

No, and I have no problem with people sitting with me and saying, "What you're saying is bigoted," or "What you're saying is wrong," or "What you're saying is insensitive." I think Islam also has a similar issue. Yeah. I think you also chose the winning team.

Oh, it's completely the winning team. I mean, it's the winning team because, and it's the winning team. And I didn't choose it because it's the winning team. It's just, it's just the winning team because it has principles. Yeah. I agree. And unfortunately, when you have no principles, if you stick up, if you don't believe in it, if you have no hard line, if you'll accept anything, then you don't believe in anything. As soon as you'll accept anything, then you have no hardcore beliefs. You have, if you have any set of principles, or you have any things you believe in, there's going to end up being a barrier. Or the people who fall outside of those barriers are going to be offended by it. That's the reality of it. If you have a religion or a belief system that doesn't offend anybody, that it's not a religious or belief system. That's my view. So, yeah, I chose the winning team because I think more and more people are starting to understand how important God is in society. We're, this is the first time in human history we're testing society without God. And what do we have? We have evil. Yeah. We have Satanism. We have degeneracy. And I think that most people are starting to understand that God is really needed. When I was young, I used to make fun of what Bible Bashers. Let's make fun of them. Yeah. And now I'm like, "We need more. Where are they? We need more Bible Bashers." So, uh, yeah. And I, I guess I certainly feel more powerful since I've reverted. But I always felt powerful anyway. But I guess now, instead of just believing it's the cosmic nature of the universe, or let me change that. I always felt a strong affinity to my last name and my ancestors. So I always had, to a degree, a spiritual aspect to where I got my strength. I always felt like, well, my dad is watching me, or my ancestors tried very hard for me to be born, so I can't disappoint them. So I've always had this spiritualistic side. Like, I can't, imagine the disappointment my ancestors would feel if they fought saber-toothed tigers and survived World War II and went through all the garbage they went through, just for my father to be born, and then he suffered like he suffered to raise me, for me to be raised and become the most famous man in the world and call myself Top G and then cry when I went to jail? No. I go to jail with my head held high. And if they put me in jail for the next 20 years, I'll walk in with my head held high. And if anybody sees me, I'm not gonna be a broken man. I refuse to be a broken man. It's disrespectful to everybody who ever died or tried hard for me to be raised, for me to emerge from this difficulty as a broken person. That's absolutely not the least selfish. When a man sits and says to me, "He's broken," or "He's depressed," or "He's sad," etc., that's selfishness. You have to do. And you have people to be respectful to, including people who are no longer here. I don't have time. They can put me in solitary confinement for 20 years. And when I walk out of there, and the first podcast I do, I refuse to be called broken. I refuse. And that's because I feel like I had to do it to my ancestors. And now I feel like I have a duty to my ancestors and a duty to God. So I've always felt that.

And I assume you feel like you're fulfilling your duty? That your father would be proud of you?

I absolutely believe he'd be extremely, powerfully proud of me. I think I'm doing the best I can possibly do. And there's something that people say, "You tried your best." And that's true. But a lot of people overuse it. People say, "Oh, well, you didn't get it, but you tried your best." 99% of the time, they didn't try their best. People don't actually try very hard for things anymore. I am truly, genuinely trying my.

Best, I don't waste a minute of my day before this podcast. As they set up cameras, I'm working. I don't waste a minute of my day. I do not miss a training session. I do not miss an email. I do not make mistakes. I no longer like I'm on it, so I'm trying my absolute best. If I fail for the first time in new ministry, then I failed. But at least I get the satisfaction in my heart of knowing I actually really tried my best. Most people don't get to get that satisfaction because they know deep down they could have tried a bit harder. Whereas if I end up in jail, I'll be like, "Andrew, you did everything you could have done." So, that gives you a level of peace. I did my best. My ancestors are proud of me. God is proud of me. I did my absolute best. I couldn't have possibly done better, and I got hit with a lucky punch, and that's life. And all I can do is just smile.

Regardless, are your oration skills an art? Do you think? I think that if you don't have the ability to make other people understand exactly what you think, that you're going to struggle. But is it, is it, is it an art? Like when I watched you with PBD and you got in the zone, you did. You do it all the time, and you're doing it right now. You get in these zones where it's just like you're just flowing. I mean, that's, it's almost, you can say it's a god state, right? It's a flow state. And it must feel really good. It does. Yeah. Like it feels good that you never run out of things to say, and it feels good that I already have 10 things I want to say lined up before I say the first one. And you know how to say them perfectly, and your voice is clear and resonant, and you're, you're embodied in it. It's a skill. It's a skill. Well, it's, but it's almost like an art because I was watching it and I was thinking, this is like watching, you know, Charlie Parker play the sax or Michael Jordan play basketball. I mean, you really. And and people might say, oh, those are exaggerations, but I don't, I don't think so. I don't, I don't know that I've seen somebody who's able to do what you do.

But that's emotional. So we'll talk about how I'm actually quite a sensitive person. Yeah. I think the reason people believe what I say is because they can feel it. I feel when I talk. Yes. And it's because I feel things. Yes. So I'm not a cold person at all. I'm just a person with a lot of emotion that I try and control and channel in the correct directions. But I think that, yes, it's a superpower to a degree. Well, I think that's why people are, one of the reasons that people are so drawn to you, because you let whatever wants to come through, come through. And it's also why so many people hate me. Yeah, of course. Yeah, because there's no light without dark. Yeah. There's no, you know, there's no joy without pain. You can't have a rainbow without a little rain. That's how it goes. So I think that it's definitely a super powerful life. It's something I'd encourage every man to learn how to do. Yeah. It's certainly something worth practicing. It's the reason I don't learn another language because I haven't mastered English yet. Right. So I refuse to learn another language. I, I can't imagine me and my personality, Andrew Tate, stuttering in Spanish. It just be like, what is this garbage? So I don't have time. So I will only speak English for the rest of my human years. That's it. Because I've not learned everywhere in the dictionary yet. Yeah. But yeah, I guess to a degree, it's a superpower. It's extremely beneficial in all aspects of life, especially relationships. I'm not gonna lie. It's very. I don't argue with women very often because any woman who respects me and listens to me, I can very quickly and compendiously explain exactly why I'm correct. It's maybe the most powerful skill. The most powerful thing about it is there's two levels to it. One, making people understand exactly what you think. Yes. And the second one is making them think what you think. Right. Right. And if you can do the second one, do you like to make people think what you think? You like, like what? Like, because you have a lot of influence. Yeah. And that's got to feel good. You're influencing people. You have this worldview. It's a powerful worldview. It's got, you know, all these things. And so you want to influence other people in some way to to adopt that.

I think that charity, even of itself, I think charity is probably one of the most selfish things you can do. Which most people say, I'm giving money. I give 25 million a year. There's a website, takepledge.com. You can see it. And I feed children all across war-torn countries, mainly in the Islamic world and in Africa. Am I doing that for the children? Yes. But I also feel great. I feel good for doing that. Of course. So this, it's not a selfless act. No. Nothing selfless. Nothing self. And it shouldn't be. And it shouldn't be. That's right. So when I'm helping all these people out here, I'm not doing it because I'm some philanthropist. I feel good helping people. And people sending me emails saying, "You changed my life." I feel good about it. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm just Mr. Philanthropist and I just care about the world. No, I like helping people because I feel good about doing it. It makes me feel good inside. Yeah. Which is why I do it. So yeah, I use my power to feel good. And I think the best, the easiest way to feel good is to make others feel good. I believe that humans exist that way. And I think that's why we're societal animals. Even in jail, when I felt my worst, my goal was to make someone else smile. Because if I can make someone else smile, I would smile. So if on my worst days, I was my most charming, my most energetic, my most interesting, my most talkative. Yeah. I was happiest on my worst day because I decided that's how I have to be to stop myself feeling bad. Because I decided.

I also feel like, you know, it's kind of interesting. No one's emotionless. And I certainly feel things. And I'm going to come up with a theory which you're going to call complete garbage because I am not qualified. But this is my theory. I go for it. I believe that emotional energy is a lot like a bucket of water. You have all this emotional energy, right? You have a bucket of water. And then you have a bunch of different holes you can pour it down. So I believe if you wake up one day and you feel particularly depressed, you don't feel depressed. You just have a lot of emotional energy that day. Some days you don't have that much emotional energy and life's pretty calm. But some days you wake up and you have this big bucket of water. And the superpower is deciding which emotion you're going to put it in. Not to not feel the energy, but to decide which emotion you're going to put it in. And I think that's my superpower. I don't have the superpower of being able to stop myself feeling things. I have the superpower of being able to choose how I use that energy and what I decide to feel. And then if you want to be hyper successful as a person, you have to be very careful to avoid the happy hole. Because happy is what everyone thinks they would choose. If you had this emotional energy and could choose any emotion, you'd choose happy. But if you choose happy, you don't get much done.

What do you choose? I choose. If I had to choose how I wanted to feel all the time, I would choose proud. And proud means you have to work. Proud means you have to do things. You have to achieve things. If you want to be proud and be realistic, you have to do fantastic things. So my default favorite emotion is proud. Right. That's how I. I'm happiest when I feel proud about anything. Well, in the organism releases dopamine in the brain where we do hard work. I have to win all the time. I I love proud to feel good. I don't like happy. If I feel happy, diddish happiness like a child or like a female is usually default to happy. They don't care how they get there. They just want to get there. Right. They just want to feel happy. I avoid the happy hole because I think people who are desperate to only feel happy are the ones who are addicts. You know, gambling addicts, drug addicts, drink too much, do dumb. It's all temporary, no delayed gratification. That's how you destroy your life, choosing the happy hole.

So we're talking earlier about jail and how what I felt particularly bad. I'd wake up with a whole bunch of emotional energy. It's unchanneled. It's a bit wild. So I guess that can be perceived as sad or depressed. You're out of your routine. So I would sit and go, I have all this emotional energy today. Where am I going to put it? And I put it in a place where perhaps on that day, I might feel happy, or perhaps I choose something else. But I would try my very best to take all the energy and put it into a place where the feeling, that emotion was the most competitive emotional, or is the perfect emotion for me to be as competitive as possible in that particular scenario. So yeah, on days where I woke up and I felt a little bit sad, I'd be like, okay, I'm going to turn the charm on today. I'm going to make everybody laugh. Right. And by the end of the day, I felt fantastic.

Do you think God wants to break you? If God wants to break me, he's going to do it. Because we said, right, the hero's journey, there must be death and rebirth. So what, like, something you have to be broken at some point? You must be broken. You, you can't fulfill your mission without being broken. And whatever that is, it has to terrify you. But can't I be semi-broken or semi-close to broken and back from the edge? Back from the edge and rebirth? That's, that's the archetype, right? And what does that require? It goes, it goes, means going into the cave and facing your dragon, which is your deepest fear, and feeling like it's going to kill you, and then entering into the void of nothingness, and then coming out the other side reborn. And in that place where you're reborn, you're going to know things that you did not know sitting right here. But you're gonna have a much bigger perspective, right? I mean, you agree with that template, right? I agree with it, but I feel like I can just, I don't feel like around that, not get around it, but I don't ever have to fully die. Like I can just come close enough, enough times. Like I'm not gonna, under no. Of course, of course. But I'm not gonna underplay how significantly difficult my jail experience was. Yeah, because you, you do talk about like how tough you were, you managed it. And I guess I'm, and which is, I believe that I'm not. But I, you know, there had to be moments where you're just like, it was terrible despair. No, it was absolutely. Or fear. Or like, but this is very interesting into your death and rebirth point because when it felt completely terrible, I do have the emotional control to not feel that. But I decided to let myself feel it because I felt like I wouldn't learn as much if I turned my brain off. That's right. So we, I've talked on PBD about Tristan. Tristan and I have the same superpower. Tristan didn't care about jail. He didn't care. You didn't. Or he, he acted like he didn't care. He acted like he didn't care. But that's it was his coping mechanism. Don't care about jail. I decided, no, I'm gonna care. I'm gonna feel everything. I'm gonna allow myself to feel these negative emotions because I feel like I will learn more. I could have done what Tristan did. I could have woke up and said, one day, or later, they let me out, still rich. Give a. Could have done that. I didn't do that. And Jay, that's why he sleeps. That's why I have nightmares because I don't believe his jail experience was that traumatic because he, he was very, he turned his brain off to it. And and that is a superpower. Yes. And and I do have that power. If I went to war, I could go to war and watch all my friends be blown to pieces and still fight. I would still be capable. I can turn my brain off if I have to. But I decided not to because I felt that feeling things would teach me more. Which is why I'm kind of arguing your point about death and rebirth because I feel like I don't have to fully break. I just have to get close enough to the edge to learn something and come back.

Why not break? Because if I break, then there's too much. My empire might fall, man. You don't know. Exactly. You don't. I don't know. Not scary. It is scary. Yeah. So why would I? That's why you don't want to break completely. Scary. I don't want to lose what I have. Yeah. Mentally, physically, financially. Yeah. But that attachment. What would God say to that attachment? I don't want to lose what I have. But okay. I don't want to lose what I have because I also have a responsibility for others. Uh, let me tell you something. If my mind broke and I couldn't come back from that, what's more important? Your family or God? Does God want me to break? I don't know. You should ask. You asked the question. And if he does, I will break. Right. Right. But you don't have a choice. I won't have a choice. But but jail itself was was terrible. Like we're talking about vulnerability. I can sit and explain all the things I struggle with in jail. It was absolutely terrible. And I think a lot of people who are watching this, I think they need to keep in mind. I wasn't in jail. I was in Romanian jail. Which is what's the difference? Well, it's the poorest country in Europe, and it was built during communism, and it's basically designed to torture cockroaches. Yeah. I mean, it's not like jail like we imagine jail. I don't want to insult the Romanian justice system. I don't insult any Romanians. I'm still within the confines of Romania. But I think most people at home understand what I'm talking about. I didn't have yard time. I didn't have any friends. I was in a room for 93 days. I did not leave that room unless I was being dragged to court in a language I didn't understand to be sent back to the room. Yeah. It was hard. I did a four-day vision quest, four days, four nights, no food or water, out in the mountains, like in a restricted area, like just like a prison cell. And that was took me to my edge. So I can't even imagine. And yeah, 93 days. Yeah. I mean, it's terrible. And you don't know how long you're gonna be in there for. Yeah. And you have no control over anything. And, uh, you don't sleep very well. People think you just sleep it off, but you can't. The jail is very loud. There's a lot of distressed people in there, a lot of upset people. The energy is sad. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's a bad place to be. But I knew that my only option was to deal with it. So I knew that not handling it wasn't an option. So if not handling it, it's not an option, the only option left is handling it. So you just have to find the best way to do it. And I certainly allowed myself to feel a lot of emotions in there that I could have probably blocked out, so that I could learn as many lessons as possible. And I've learned a lot of things. But I would say that, I mean, all in all, I understood as a man, you need to have a strong body so you're not attacked by anyone else, and a strong mind so you don't attack yourself. And I think jail in many ways is just pressurized life. And if you feel a little bit angry outside of jail, you'll be very angry in jail. It's pressurized life, and you can't distract yourself with anything. Most people, if you feel angry right now, you'd like, oh, that pissed me off, and then you got your phone and talked to someone else about something else. You distract yourself. But you're left alone with your thoughts, and you can't distract yourself. And, uh, God decided to put me in there to learn some things. And I think it just confirmed a bunch of things I already knew. And I think it was a chance for me to prove to him and to prove to myself I'm not full of it. And I think that that was.

Did you worry that you were full of it? Never. But it's good when you get tested. No, but this is actually the truth. I, I said Top G, right? It's the name, nickname, blah, blah, tip top G. The basic premise behind it, and why I'm idolized by all these young men, especially, is on Top G, the number one G, the guy who can do anything. He's the guy. I never for a second when I was saying it didn't mean it. I never for a second when I was saying it thought I was full of it. So God was like, okay, let's find out if he's full of it, right? And I was placed there. And I said, all right, this is a chance for me to prove to myself, and prove to God, and prove to the man watching on the, to the prison guards, and prove to everyone else, my ancestors, that I'm not full of it. I had a sense of duty in there. And I feel like I performed it exceptionally. And it doesn't matter if they kept me in there for three months or three years or 30 years. I have to perform. That's who I am. And I will default to rationalizing, as you said, whatever it takes. I will come up with any rationale and I will say it in any way which is interesting and engaging and convincing enough to the outside world and to myself to install it in my brain. That allows me to compete. That's just what I'm going to do because I don't want to lose anything ever. And yeah, life, perhaps if we want to extrapolate this out, perhaps God's trying to break all of us. Maybe life is a big competition of who breaks last.

I would actually argue. I would argue, and I said this before, that the number one indicator of a man's success is his ability to deal with stress. I don't think it's IQ. I don't think it's physical capability. I don't think it's anything. If you take a man who can deal with a bunch of stress, he's going to be more successful than a man who can deal with less stress. How much stress you can put up with has a direct correlation to the kind of life you're going to live. Most people who want my life don't have my life because they couldn't handle my life. Yeah. That's why they go, "I want to be like, hey, I want fast cars and private jets and all these girls and all these kids and Allah." But they couldn't handle it. They couldn't deal with the pressure of it, which is why they'll never get there. Because even if they get anywhere near it, they'll have a mental breakdown. So how, how big your life is and how successful you are in the physical realms, directly linked to how much stress you can deal with. And perhaps God's trying to break all of us. He's trying to find all of our limits. I think most people at home watching this probably have something going on in their mind right now or something going on in their lives that might break them. Yeah. To me, it would be nothing. To them, it's a big deal. Yeah. So God's out here to break all of us. And I want to be the guy who breaks last.

Well, he's trying. Maybe he's trying to make us stronger. Give us, give us tests to help us evolve, to help us grow, to help us know him more. Absolutely. So let's assume that's what God is doing to a degree. He's trying to see where all of us would break. You have two responses to that. You can either be intimidated by the fact that God is out there trying to make your life difficult, or you can be excited by the idea of it and saying, "This is my chance to prove myself to God." Right. Which is what I was saying earlier on the very beginning of our podcast. Why I have adopted the mindset where struggle is semi-exciting to me. God is out here trying to ask me questions or put me through scenarios where I get to prove myself to him. And perhaps that's why all the bad things happen. Maybe that's why that girl left you. Maybe that's why he made you love her so much so that she could break your heart. And your best friend on purpose so that you to see how close you could come to breaking. Maybe that's what it's all about. Maybe that's the fun of it. The mantra that I use is, "Yes, thank you. Whatever comes, whatever comes, yes, thank you." And yes, is an acceptance to God, and thank you is gratitude for what's happening. And that mindset is is a kind of surrender to God's will. Yeah.

Do you struggle between, I mean, your will is very strong. Yeah. And I, I can feel the place where you like to impose your will in the world. So your will versus God's will? Well, he'll win. Are you in? All right. But you enough? Are you in a fight with God on some level? Like, not, not literally, but unconsciously, uh, between his will and your will? No, I think I'm doing. I think I am doing his will. Which is, is what it takes to, uh, be truly successful in the world. I do believe that the moral arc of the universe does bend towards truth. And that's not my saying. I think that's Martin Luther King's. But I think that it bends towards truth and justice in the end. I think that the battles we are currently fighting in society, which look hopeless, in the end can can be won. And I feel like I am doing his will by standing up and telling the truth. I think I'd have to be a complete coward of a man to end up having all of the masculine youth of a planet paying attention to every word I say and then say, "Oh, but if I tell them good things, if I help them and help the world by extension, I might get in trouble." That made me a. And that's not who I am. So if I think, if you give any man worth his salt that degree of power and influence and responsibility, he's going to stand up and say, "Okay, this is how you should live as a man, and this is how you can make the world a better place." Unless he's afraid of the repercussions by the evil people, by the people who are on the other side, who are genuinely evil and satanic or about to destroy good and truth. And I'm not a coward. I've never seen myself as a coward. And in fact, we're going to talk about vulnerability. The number one thing I could never exist as is a coward. I think that's, you won't talk about my biggest fear. It would be knowing I'm a coward, seeing myself as a coward, and being very realistic and knowing I was actually a coward. I couldn't, I couldn't accept that because I feel like I would be disappointing all of my ancestors and God, and I would have been full of it all the time I was talking now. I'm a fake. Now I'm a liar. And I'm none of those things. Right. When I say to the camera, and I sit here and talk about depression not being real, I mean what I say because I've lived enough to tell you that if depression was real, I would have been depressed. And people know that, which is why they listen to me in the first place. I would hate to be to look in the mirror and know I acted like a coward on that scenario. I can't be that person. So courage is the highest virtue. I think.

You think so? Courage? Love? Well, I like to think of myself as a man with plenty of love in his life and a very loving man. I also like to think of myself as an extremely brave person. I've never been a coward. And even just the idea of being a coward is enough to motivate me to do nearly anything. So if you were to try, and here we go, vulnerability, if you were to try and manipulate me, how could you manipulate Andrew Tate, one of the smartest people on the face of the planet? Well, you would have to try and convince him that it was the only brave act. That's how I could be manipulated. Interesting. Now, I allow manipulation to find out where my enemy wants me to go, use my mind to break the trap, punish the perpetrators. I will allow them to manipulate me. And at the end of their attempt, I will decide whether I agree with their attempt or I destroy their attempt. Right. But that would be give you the best possible chance. And I give you a perfect example of it. COVID went on day one, when everyone got locked in their houses, and they were talking about Italian hospitals being full and people were dying on the street in China. When everyone believed because it was brand new, day one, me and Tristan decided to fly to Sweden and just run around nightclubs because it's the only open country. Did we do that because we have medical expertise? Did we do that because we were guaranteed to not get sick? Did we do that because we knew something other people didn't know? It was the brave choice. The brave choice is to go do something reckless. We might all die. Let's die in a nightclub in Sweden instead of dying in our house. So we always have chosen and defaulted to the brave choice. And part of me, maybe when we talk about excitement, I love when God or life or the universe, or whatever you want to call it, gives me a chance to be brave. I love when he gives me an opportunity. Here's your chance to be brave, Andrew. Here is your chance to show you are that guy. Here's your chance to have another story where everyone else would have failed, you would have succeeded. Here is your chance to win. I love that because you know it's easy to fly around on private jets and stay in five-star hotels with a bunch of beautiful women and drive Bugattis around. Cool. But where's the point where I get to actually prove I'm, I mean every word I say, right? So God gave it to me. So yes, thank you. I agree. We agree. Thank you. And if God decides I have to go back, then the best mental model I can have is not the Romanian system of justice is unfair, it's corrupt, I got too big, the Matrix got me. You know, the best mental model is God wants me to learn something here, and he's going to teach me that through suffering. He's going to make this difficult, and he's going to make me feel pain, and he's going to make this as hard as he decides it needs to be so that I can sit here and learn things. So I'm going to go and sit with my cockroach friends, and I'm going to learn. I learned. I already learned things. I can tell you a bunch of things I learned. Even even physical things. I would hunt cockroaches in the dark at night. I would stand to kill them. I'd stand near the wall and I'd measure out a palm strike, directly exact measurement, so I didn't hurt my elbow or my hand to the wall. And I just sit and just wait. And I'd hear them crawling. And then pitch nearly pitch black, I could, I could hear one in front of me. Bam. I tore it. I go up to the point where I could kill the ninja for real. I was like, I'm learning in here, right? So that was fantastic. I, uh, yeah, I learned anything about yourself. This is again, new, new information that's all. I mean, you must have, right? I mean, you had, you had a new experience. So you must, there must be new information. You got tested, right? You're in jail for God's sake. Like, something must have popped into your mind. There must have been some revelation, some edge that you came to. It had to be. No, I'm exactly who I thought I was. I am zero percent full of it. I am exactly who I thought I was. If you would have told me, if you would have told me before I went, like, point one, before I went to, before I went to jail, before they put me in that dungeon in the dark with the cockroaches, if you would have told me how I would react to that scenario, I would have said to you, I would have suffered, and it wouldn't have been nice, but I would have refused to break. And I would have been the kind of person who sat there and endured and emerged more powerful than ever before. That's what I would have said. Yeah. And that's what I've done. That's exactly what I've done. So, but that's not the question. There may be, no, it's not. There may be a side order of nightmares. I, I learned. I've never had nightmares before in my life. That surprised me. That surprised me. But they're here now. That's life. I learned that I guess I learned that when I got out of jail, I didn't have nightmares in jail, which is strange. I had nightmares when I got out. Maybe it's fear of going back. Don't know. Yeah. But what else did I learn about myself? I had already pre-decided, and I'd already told the universe how I would act in said scenario. This scenario was not a scenario I hadn't discussed or didn't believe could happen to me. I had already analyzed, if this happens, what are you going to do? It was a pre-designated plan, and I just followed the plan I had already laid out for myself when I had already psychoanalyzed myself without my qualifications. I had already decided what I must do. So I did it. Yeah. Yeah. And and I was and I and I was able and capable of following the plan and following through. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not a liar. I'm zero percent full of it. Right. I hear you. I hear you. And and and if I was full of it, I would sit here at Mary's though. But then there's something. And that's not full of it. But just the, the something happened. Oh, completely. Right. Because you're having nightmares now. So something is going on. Yes. That you don't like. Understand. That's that's all I'm getting. That's completely true. I performed exactly how I needed to perform and how I knew I would perform. So when I talk about being Top G and mental control and depression is not real, everything I say is true. I performed exactly as I could and I should. There is a side effect which happens to be these nightmares. But my attitude towards the nightmares is, yes, thank you. Good. I don't want them to go away. They will go away when whatever needs to be dealt with is dealt with by my own mind. And like I said, if anyone else could fix them for me, I would not allow them to because I believe it is my lesson and it's my pain and my trauma and it's mine to deal with. And if I have to keep them forever, I'll keep them. I am not afraid of feeling negative. I'm not afraid of it. I'm not afraid of having nightmares. I'm not. I don't. I don't wake up going, I want to feel good. I don't care. So if I have to feel miserable, it doesn't bother me. I don't see why. In fact, I'm going to change that. I don't see how you can put such importance on how you feel as a man because it makes you non-competitive.

Well, but it makes you, what it does is it brings you into presence. And presence is the most powerful quality that you can have as a human being. And if you are not in touch with your feelings, if you disown them or you rationalize them in some way, you're not fully present. Completely agree. Right. So the, the reason we want to connect with the places we have fear or pain or sadness, right, or anger, whatever it is, it's not, it's not to feel it and let ourselves be a slave to it. It's just to let it come into our conscious awareness to know what it is. There's information there. It's data, right? And if we can be present with all that we feel, right, we're much more powerful beings. Now, it's super interesting you said that because you're right, because I wouldn't consider myself a present person. I am always thinking about what must be done. I'm thinking about. Interesting. Always. That you would make, you would confess that you're not a present person? No, I'm not. Person. If I'm present in the moment, I'm either on my computer or talking to someone else millions of miles away or dealing with something else, or I'm doing this podcasting about how I have to spar afterwards, and then I've got a friend coming at 8:15 tonight I have to see. I'm not present because things must be done and they must be organized. That this is, I am not competitive if I'm present. I need to do things now. I, I'll agree with you. You're right. I'm not. I'm very rarely present. But here's my frame for presence, right? The reason I'm not all the way present, which is all the way here, is because there's something here that I don't want to feel. No, I would say there's two. There's two scenarios in which I am very present, and we'll talk about them in a second. But I'm not a very present person. But I have sacrificed the idea of feeling presence and feeling happy in the moment for, let's say, absolute capability and legacy.

But would you agree that being more present would give you more power in certain scenarios? Well, look, I think that might be the reason I love fighting so much because that's the only time I feel present, right? Because I have to be right there because one, I'm in pain, and two, if I'm going to be asleep, are you not present right now? I am. Are you present with me? I'm paying attention. My my brain's on. I'm paying attention. Stop thinking. Stop thinking. You can't stop thinking. Stop thinking. You can't stop thinking. If you can't stop thinking, you don't have control over your mind. All right, cool. So I stopped thinking. But and just be in the place where there's no thinking. Sure. And just feel yourself, who you are, and see what happens. Yeah. And I believe I am. But I'm saying generally in life, I wouldn't consider myself a present person. I'm not the person who is enjoying the moment. But I am now because I'm focused. No, but but now I'm focused. But do you see the difference in the quality of the interaction we just had? But what's it, okay, let me ask you, do you see the difference though? Yeah. And how did that feel? It felt fine. But what's the difference? Fine. What's it? There. But what's the difference between more connected in some way? Isn't there more possibility to get to something deeper or something more truthful there when your mind is not constantly running? But I haven't lied to you. I'm not saying you've lied to me. Yeah. I'm not saying you've lied to me. I just said there's other levels. There's other layers, right? Is there, is there? You get to it. That's why you fight. You see what you said? Because it gets you out of your mind, fully in your body. And and when you're fighting, you're in that zone. Some of their intelligence opens up though. Yes. You're doing things. You can feel that guy. And you can miss the punch by doing. You don't even know why. Correct. Right. And so that is available all the time if you're willing to get present. Does life require that degree of focus? Not focus, presence. I know they're they're slightly different. Maybe I maybe I see them as the same. I don't see myself as a particularly present person. I do enjoy the presence of fighting. I do enjoy the presence of driving fast cars, very fast. I'm thinking of it. Just so you understand my mental model. When I think of guys, and I do know some who are like enjoying the moment, I very rarely enjoy the moment. Does that make sense? I don't ever. I'm sitting around. I'm like, yeah, I look around and go, I'm having fun. That's just not how my brain works ever. That feels sad to me. Yeah. But this is the thing. Perhaps it is. I don't know. I'm not going to say it is because I don't feel sad about it. But let's imagine it is sad. I have no fear of feeling sad. If some were to say to me, Andrew, you're going to enjoy the moment less because you're constantly preoccupied with running an empire that most people wouldn't believe is as large as you say it is, even if you told them, and you're going to have unlimited offspring who adore you, and you're going to have unlimited female interaction from women who truly would die for you, and you're going to be one of the most respected men on the planet, and you're going to have street cred in every city from Baltimore to Berlin, and you're going to end up going through all these trials and tribulations, and they're going to talk about your name after you're dead for hundreds of years, but you're not going to be present in the moment. Would you take that? And I would say, "Yes, sir. I would give that to me." I can't be present because there's too much happening. How can I be present? How could I be present with hundreds of millions of dollars and the decal trying to put me in jail? And then how can I be present? I've got things happening in my brain. I can't be present. I've got things to deal with. I've got problems myself. So I've sacrificed. Maybe you have a mental model that says I can't be all the way present and do all of those things. And maybe that model is incorrect.

Well, presence is, if you're truly present, then you're not worried about anything outside of the moment you're in. Not necessarily. How does that work? This, I'm interested. I mean, because you, the presence, right? You can let your consciousness go out, right? And you're kind of, you can be aware of everything, right? I'm perspicacious. It's one of my favorite words. I am aware of what's happening. Yeah. I'm just not particularly interested in it. So I will sit at a table where everyone's having a conversation, and I'll sit on my laptop and I'll chime up once every hour. I hear every word. I've analyzed every word. I know who's right. I know who's wrong. I know what I could have said. I know whose brain I could have changed, what mind I could have affected. I've already considered if it's worth doing. But if I'd rather do my work, and I'll ignore it all until I pop up and say three words and control the entire conversation and go back to my laptop. Yeah. I'm aware of everything. I'm just not particularly present because I feel like I've built a life which is so large that it's hard for me to be present in the moment. I'm present with my children for an hour or two, and then it's like, okay, right back to work.

So was your father present with you? No, but I don't think. But then this again, I'm just saying it's a psychotherapist. When somebody said that, you said that very. He wasn't present with you. That must have been. That didn't bother me at all. It didn't bother you? No. He had things to do. He's a full-grown man. I mean, you know, like, we could talk about the, the haircut tweet. But I, I didn't, I didn't understand. You know, your history that you, you were raised by a singer mother. Your father wasn't around. Yeah. So you see him once a year. About that. Yeah. When we lived in America, up to the age of 11, I saw him more often, once or twice a month, maybe. And then when did they split? I was 10. When they left. But I always understood he's very busy and has a lot to do. So I, I never. Did you see how the boy might interpret that as my father doesn't care about me? No, no. You can see how I understand you sitting here right now. But you understand like a little boy. I think a little boy might think, why isn't, where's Daddy? I want Daddy. I'm here alone with Mom. And he might be right. Because some fathers may not care. But my father did care. Right. He was just very busy. But it must have been confusing for you. No, not for the little boy. No. Like, like, bring, I'm being honest. I'm being, I'm being honest. I'm being honest. It wasn't. I never. Forever or you cut off or those feelings were so painful, overwhelming, you cut off from them so quickly and then created this mindset to deal. I never for a second felt like he didn't care about me. Ever. I, I never felt that. It didn't cross my mind. Like consciously. Consciously. But is it possible that unconsciously you might have a different belief? Some. And that on some level, some of what you're doing in the world is motivated by that, like wanting to to win the love of your father? I think that is semi-true. But I'll tell you, I think that's fine. No, no, that's semi-true. Because I believe I have a duty to my ancestors. I don't think it's coming from a place of I'm broken trying to fix myself. I think I have the last name Tate. It was bestowed upon me, and I have responsibilities to live up to the last name Tate. Yeah. I do believe I have a duty to my ancestors. So is that trying to win the love of my father? Perhaps. I never felt unloved by my father ever. In fact, I would argue I had the best father on Earth. I never felt like I was owed all of his time. I was, it was very clear to me as at a young age that he's extremely busy and extremely important, and that I can earn his time, or that I can't have as much of it as I want. You have to earn his time. That was the, yeah, a son should have to earn his father's time. Yeah. Why not? Because he's a boy. True. And, and so my father's love should be at least for a boy, unconditional in some way. Love and time are not necessarily the same thing. If I told my father, I want to play chess, I want you to teach me chess, he could find two hours. If I said to Dad, I want to play video games or let's watch TV together, he'd say, "No, son, I have things to do." Right. So to a degree, I, during his time, his time was valuable and it could not be wasted. I feel like I have a duty to my ancestors. I don't feel like, and when I'm in jail, I feel like I can't disappoint him. And I feel like I do good for the world. I don't think this is me being some kind of broken secret. This is where we're going to disagree. You're gonna think I'm some broken child inside or something. Okay. Okay. Well, the inner child, or I'm guessing. But okay. I don't think it's, I don't think it's anything to do with that child. I think it's duty. I think I have duty, and I'm honored. Yeah. I understand you have duty as a man. But that doesn't mean the inner child is not there. And I guess that's, if the inner child has been disowned in some way, or his feelings have been, you know, relegated to the unconscious, like that that's impacting you. That's affecting you. And knowing what those feelings are and how they impact you, I think would be important information for you. But I was never sad. I, I can't say I had a hard childhood. I can't say I was sad. I can't say I wish it was different. I once again, and once again, let me psychoanalyze myself. Once again, this might be rationale. I might be rationalizing. Yes. I might say, well, whatever happened made me the person I am today, and I love who I am today, so I'm glad it was the way it was. Perhaps. But once again, I.

I think that puts me in the correct mental framework to be as capable as possible. I'm not going to sit here and say I wish my dad did something else. What's the point? That's astronauts. Both things can be true though. I wanted to see my father more. I wish he was there and he wasn't. And now I'm here and I'm going to make the best of it. And this is, this is the result of that. I've turned myself into this, uh, beast because of it.

I mean, you made the most of the situation, but that doesn't discount the place where you may have wanted more from you. You may have wanted more love, more connection, just more time.

I think, I think my father did the one, the best he knew how to do. And second, he did what, exactly what was necessary to make me the person I am.

Would it be okay for you to be angry with your father? No. Absolutely not. Disrespectful? Why not? Why? Because he's my father. But, but I'm not saying that you would have to confront him. I mean, obviously he's not here. But it's just like, uh, that's selfish. But, but if it's just a feeling, right? If it's just a feeling that wants to come, ungratefulness. Um, well, you're judging the feeling. Yeah. I am. Yeah. For me to sit and say to the man who made me the man I am today, who I, once again, never felt unloved by, who tried his very best to raise me, who sacrificed for me to exist, who gave me my last name, who bestowed upon me the honors and principles of morals I live by today. For me to be angry at him because he was busy some days would be brutally ungrateful. No, I'm not allowed. No, I'm not allowed. I'm not allowed that feeling. It's ungrateful. I refuse to accept it. I refuse to feel it.

I truly believe I had the best father on Earth. I truly believe it. I don't believe even now, if, if I have sons, I don't talk about what children I have publicly, if I have sons or when I have sons or my sons, I have, whichever one it is, they will get my time. Sure. They will get my dedication. Absolutely. But I have expectations of them because of their last name. And they're going to have my time while we're working towards something fantastic. I'm not going to just sit around with my kids just for hours because they just deserve it. There's no participation trophies in the Tate household, right? And time is, and time is a trophy, and it must be earned like everything else in life. So I'm not going to sit and have sons and go, well, he's my son, so we're just gonna all day do nothing. No, we're gonna all day do something important, for sure. Or I'm gonna go do something important, and he can sit around do nothing by himself, for sure.

But you can also imagine if you saw, if you, if you had sons and you saw them once a year, that would have an impact on them. Like, would you, how would you feel about that? If you had sons and you only saw them once a year?

I think I'd miss them. Of course, they'd miss me. I bet your dad missed you. Oh, completely. Absolutely. I bet he was sad there. Oh, completely. And I wonder if he had self-judgment about it. I wonder if he questioned himself.

Well, I think as a man, because you would, I don't think, would you do that? Well, as a man, you have to make a choice. And I think it used to be more binary than it is today because of the nature of money and empire and how things work. But as a man, you have to make a choice. You either go to war and come back with stories, or you sit at home all day and be a second mother, and then you're not a man. It's, you have to find the balance between the two, right? My father was away a lot, but he wasn't away a lot because he was doing nothing, right? So if you have a soldier as a father, okay, he's not there, but he's doing something. He's coming back with a story. And I think that that was typical in a lot of households for a very long time. Maybe it's changed a little bit in modern times, but typically the man went away. Yeah. Did whatever he had to do, and then came back with a story or a hunt or whatever. For sure. So that's how I saw my father living his life, and that's how I want to live my life. I'll do the same thing. I don't think I would be the same man if I decided to say, okay, I have a son now, so I'm just going to stay at home. And I think that I need to be a kind of man my son wants to emulate, which means I have to be a hero. And I don't think you can be a hero sitting at home. So I think that I need to, yeah, in his time, of course, he does. But he also needs an example set. And the example must be set out there in the harsh, brutal realities of the real world. So, yeah.

It's time. You could. Now the argument is quantity of time versus quality of time. And I would argue that the quality of time I will give my sons is going to be much higher.

Want to give your sons more quality time than you had with your? I'll give them the exact same amounts he gave me.

Will you? But if I'm happy, would you not want to give them more? I may want to wanted more. I meant, I didn't say I wanted more. That's, that's smart. I didn't say I wanted more.

You didn't? No, you must. No, I'm saying that who wants time with his daddy? How can I mean, it has to be, if I wanted it, I could have earned it anytime I wanted.

Well, are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I mean, when we go, I mean, I don't know if we need to read the tweet, but it's like, um, uh, your mom was pretty upset with him. So there was a, he was like, I'm not coming back here. I mean, what is just about you? It's about your mother. Oh, completely. And I think my father sacrificed his marriage for us boys. He sacrificed his marriage and his relationship with my mother to ensure that us boys were taught the way he believed we should be raised. My mom was very unhappy with certain things he did, which he insisted on doing anyway because he saw his legacy in us is more important than his marriage with my mother. But I'm, I'm not saying, look, if my son calls me and says, I'm really upset, I need to talk to you, I'm gonna say no, you can't talk to me. I'm not, I'm not psycho. Right. I understand all of these things. I'm just saying, and obviously, we're talking about a very general scenario. The general scenario is I'm a man, I'm away at war, I come home with a story. Or if I'm spending time with my son, and wants to be building him as an individual, I believe that the mother does a lot of the day-to-day keeping the child alive, changing diapers, feeding them, etc. And the man is the one who instills a lot of the mindset. And the man is the one who grows them in very important ways. And I think to do that, I need to be a man of genuine capability. And I would argue that the two hours a month or two hours a week or whatever I spent with my father, him being the man he was, was worth more than the 200 hours a month that most men spend with their fathers. That's why I am the man I am.

So there'll be some fathers who sit and say, I could never do that to my son. Well, what can you do? You can go do basically nothing with your life, pay your taxes, come home, be bitched at by your wife, be quiet about it, and be with your son all the time. Sure, you win in quantity of time, but who you are as a man and what the lessons you can really teach, you lose in quality of time. So I believe my father was such a fantastic figure that it's the quality of his time that made up for the quantity. And the only way to do that is to go out in the world and be fantastic. And we can actually extrapolate this out to other things. Let's look at relationships, for example. I see men who spend every day with their woman. That's fantastic. That's fine. That's how he elicits her love.

Are you intentionalizing? I'm completely. That's how my brain works. Yeah. I see men who spend every day with a woman, which is fantastic. He wants to, she wants to. That's great. They're happy. She feels loved and she feels respected and she's glad she has all of his time. When you reach a certain quality of man, a certain level of man in terms of competence, a certain echelon, I don't have to spend all day with a woman. I can see a woman one hour a month, and she'll be loyal to me because I'm me, right? Because the quality of who I am and the quality of my time outweighs the quantity which can be offered by a lesser being. Yeah. So you can put this in nearly any dynamic. You put it in a romantic relationship and also in a, in a family dynamic. Once you reach a certain level of competence, once you're at the highest echelons of human achievement, your time is by extension more valuable. And extrapolates out, an hour with the president is worth more than 100 hours with a guy at McDonald's. It's the same. So I think my father raised me by not being there. He raised me by being out there and doing so many fantastic things and being such a fantastic individual that I understood I had a duty to him and a duty to my last name. And I can't be his son and not be fantastic. So I think he raised me in absence. That's what I think he did.

You're proud of yourself that you got there. Yeah. You won that one. But I think. All right, that's good. No, that, that's actually a fair argument. That would be the argument about God's will. That was God's will. Correct. Yeah. And so I have to surrender to it. And this is what it is. And, and my task is to, is to deal with it. Maybe, maybe there are feelings you have about it that you don't fully understand. But that's okay. You know, you're here now, and you're doing your thing, and you're living your life, and it's all good. Yeah.

So let me ask you, and maybe, maybe this will be the last question. I can go forever. You tell me. And, and I am. And the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I genuinely didn't want to learn about myself. Yeah. I know. And I, and I do like discussing these things. And like I said, I'm being as vulnerable as I can be. I'm not, I, if you feel like I'm shielding, I'm truly not trying to.

Well, you would. When we shield, it's so habitual. It's so quick, right? Our defense, our defense is, I mean, we become identified with our defenses. So we don't even know when we're doing them. That's true. But, but I also feel like the framework that I've instilled, the rational mind, everything is going through this filter. This is how my brain operates. My filter is brutal rationality. That's the filter. So no matter what we're discussing or any conversation we're having, it has to go through this filter. And I end up rationalizing because that's the way I've always functioned. Of course. And so I can't turn off that. I can't start saying things that don't make sense to me. Yes. And what I'm also aware of is that I am bringing my own filter. And you're open to it. You're not, you're not closed off to it. You're listening. You're curious about it. So I, I sense that too. And I appreciate that. You know, um, you identify, you talk about yourself as a man of capability, correct? Man of courage, right? Man of action. Yes. Are you a man of love?

I think a lot of those things come from love. Hmm. Let's, let's analyze this. I think a lot of those things come from love. I think it's very difficult to do nearly anything important if it's not, perhaps to a degree, driven by love or the desire for love. Even, I think the reason a lot of men want to become rich is because they want to feel loved or feel important or to matter. I also feel like the reason that a lot of men do the things they do is is for love, either of themselves or of someone else. I think the reason men go to work is because they love their family. The reason you go to the gym is because you love yourself. I think that love is a very powerful driving force. I certainly feel love. My world is full of love. Like, I would argue I'm one of the most loved people. Like, if I check my phone, it's just love. Yeah. It's endless emails to people I don't know who love me, endless females who do know me love me, endless pictures of children saying they miss me. Like, my, I'm a very loved person in a very loved world. I love a lot of people. You love? I absolutely love. But because I believe in myself so strongly, I feel like the way I love them is to have a degree of authority over them. Not in a crazy psychopathic way, but in a, I love you, so you should do this, right? I love you, so act this way. I love you, so don't do that. Almost in the same way a parent loves a child. You love your child, so you don't let them eat candy all day because you love them. Yeah. I'm like that with everyone in my life because I see myself as the most competent person on the planet. So I'm like, I love you, I care about you. You shouldn't do this this way, right? Because you may think you know better, but you don't. You don't know better than me. I know best. And this is how it should be for anyone I care about.

Um, I guess the reason I asked the question is, can you defeat the matrix by fighting it, or can you only defeat the matrix through love?

Absolutely. Very. That's a very astute question. And you're asking because you already know the answer. And you already know the answer. Of course, only love can be, only love can win. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the most powerful driving force on the face of the planet. It always has been. And it's only when people are going to wake up and have a true love for themselves and love for their community and love for their children and love for these things that we're going to start to resist to evil and the Satanism and the insanity which is coming in the world today. But I believe as a man, at least, your love only has value when you're capable. Which is why my mayor, perhaps I'm so obsessed with capability, because I want my love to have value. We talked about how time has value when you're at a certain echelon. I would also argue that love has value in a certain echelon. If I'm in love with a girl, she can get a lot more from that love than if a Joe Schmo's in love with her, right? So my love has value because I have value. So I have to build myself. And especially as a man, if you want to feel loved, then you want to give love. The more capable you become, the more valuable your love is going to be. And that's, that's certainly how we're going to fix the world. So, yeah, the answer is love, of course. But it can't just be blind, empty love. It has to be love that is backed by a brutal, harsh capability, right? Which is born in the, the worst scenarios you're going to endure as a man. And the world at its baseline is a very brutal place. It can be. And I think that becoming comfortable with those scenarios and becoming capable in those scenarios is how you give your love deep, true value. But I think that, yeah, love is the answer. Right. Love is the answer. But I don't want to, I don't know, make the funds. No. Yeah. Love it. Love it. But, but we have to make this clear because most people misunderstand what love is.

I understand. No, because you say love is not coming from you. I don't think they're going to misunderstand it coming from you. And I guess this is it. Like, maybe this is it. Maybe this is what people want more from you. Yeah. Right? They want your love. They want to feel your love. I see it, right? Like, I can feel it coming off you. But I'm not, like, I see your sense of humor. I see how you work. So I'm not, I don't feel threatened by you, right? I feel like I understand you in some way. But a lot of people can. I think that's, that, to me, is the problem in the world right now, is that people cannot feel the Father's Love.

I agree with you. And if they could feel that, and also the firmness, also the direction, all the things you're talking about, the discipline. But if they can't feel the Father's Love, I mean, that's God's love coming through. And the father is the embodiment of God on Earth. If they can't feel that love, then we're going to have a lot of problems. But that's super interesting because they've hijacked the word love now and they've confused the word love with tolerance and a complete lack of boundaries. And they're saying, if you love, if you're a loving person, you accept all this garbage. No.

I disagree with that. You just said a very important thing. You said Father's Love. A Father's love comes with tests and trials and tribulations. What does a dad even traditionally do for his son? Take him out there, push him in the pool, let him struggle a bit, get him out, put him on the bike, let him fall over, help him get up. Yeah. You have to go through the bad things to be rewarded. And the bad things to learn. That's how a father typically loves. And a father also loves by saying, no, no, you cannot do that. So you nailed it by how society needs a Father's Love. Completely true. And society has actually hijacked the word love and tried to convince you that you don't need the Father's Love. Perhaps you need this unconditional love, which is more like a mother's love, if you want to gender it. Perhaps. So it's unconditional. You can act without honor, you can act without courage, you can act without discipline, and you'll be loved anyway, just because you exist. I don't believe that for myself. I believe if I start, if I remove all my morality, I will not just be loved by default. Not by my family, not by God, not by society. I don't believe that. And the people who do believe that, who think I should be loved just for how I, just for existing regardless of how I act and what I think, those are some of the most evil people on the planet. I truly believe. They're also some of the most unsuccessful and unspectacular. And they're the people who are out here genuinely trying to change society in a direction which has never been tested, which I believe is going to lead down into the depths of hell, truly. I think it's evil. So, yeah, I agree with you. Father's Love is important. But love in and of itself has boundaries. Love is strict. Love is hard. Love is, love is a hard emotion. Love is fierce. Love is not an emotion of, oh, do whatever you want. It's the opposite. Love is, no, you have to do this. I believe love is a very hard, very strong emotion. And if I think of how, let's say I have two women, one I love, one I don't love. And I enjoy both of their company. I'm harder on the one I love. I expect more from her in terms of how she acts. I expect more from her in terms of how she speaks to me. I expect more from her and how she presents herself to the world. The more I love her, the more I expect of her. The more parameters I want to put on her in regards to how she should behave because I love her. Love it. Love is a hard emotion. So, yeah, love wins. But not in the way that people think. Love, they've hijacked the word love and convinced people that love means, oh, I tolerate everything. That's, that's not love.

I agree. And it goes back to this, uh, what we're talking about with presence. I wonder, and I'm just having this thought now, that if we come all the way into presence, if we allow ourselves to be all the way here and feel everything that's here, that is actually the thing that we would feel love, like, like God, which is, you could say God is love. And maybe, maybe that's the scariest thing. That's the edge. Because if we're fully surrendered to that, like we're in that flow state, that, with the disillusion of the ego, letting go of all the things that we have, and we have to be in that place. So maybe that's, that to me is like, you know, if you want to defeat the matrix, right? Like, if you want to become Neo. Yeah. I think that's what it is.

Interesting. And what I will do, and I will take away from this conversation is, I am, I will, I will def, definitely have moments of presence. I mean, I'm human. I do have like a couple minutes where I sit and just look around and go, you know, life's not all that bad. Of course. But I will perhaps try and dedicate a little bit more time, maybe I can turn two, I'll see if I can allocate three minutes instead of two towards presence and see how that makes me feel overall. It's interesting that you said when you're present, you feel love. I actually completely agree with that. I can't think of a time I've been present and felt anything other than gratefulness, just to look around and go, you know what? Yeah, everything's fine. Yeah. In fact, in fact, even in jail, that happened. Even in jail, I had moments of presence and I looked around and goes, this is not nearly as bad as like the media is saying it is. And the woman on the phone are crying and everyone's panicking. You know what? I'm not in a trench. I'm probably not going to get blown up. If a fire started, could I get through that steel door? If anyone could, it's me. I'm not on a submarine in World War II. There's no depth charges. Yeah. I'm not in a car crash. Yeah. It's fine. A cup of tea. I did have those moments, right? So when you come to a moment, yeah, when you come to a moment of presence, even in a terrible scenario, it often ends up love. You're right. And I certainly have felt them. And I certainly could do it. My rationality, my argument would be, does that make me more powerful? You're arguing it does. And maybe perhaps I need to try it. Whereas I would typically, up until this conversation, I would say, I don't have time for that. I have things to do, right? So that's where it all comes down to. And then it comes down to, like I said earlier, am I here as a human to enjoy my experience as a human and enjoy being in this vessel and have as much fun as possible and be as present as possible? Or am I here to make the biggest impact I can possibly make and and build a legacy? And of course, probably like most things in life, the answer is somewhere in between the two. Is probably some balance. Perhaps I'm slightly out of balance. And that's why I am living the life I am. But I'm not unhappy with it. And if I was unhappy with it, it wouldn't change anything. But I, I actually do consider myself, I do genuinely consider myself one of one of, because I put no importance on emotion. And when I say that, I try and make people understand that when I say no importance, it doesn't affect how I act. So I don't see the point in talking about it. Or I don't see the point in even acknowledging it because it doesn't affect what I'm going to do for the day. So who cares, right? It doesn't matter if it's sunny or raining. If you're gonna go to work, you're gonna go to work. So why talk about the weather? So I don't put any importance on emotion. But I would actually call myself one of the happiest people on Earth. Not because I'm particularly happy, but because I'm just never sad. So if it's never dark, it must be light. If it's never cold, it must be hot. So I'm, I don't, when I say I will say I'm one of the happiest people on Earth, and people think, oh, he's happy all the time. No, I'm just never sad, right? Never. So if you're never sad, you're always happy. Another thing I'll actually argue. Okay, now this early. Look at all this easy. Oh, that got away with a win there. I would actually argue that.

Why are you arguing? What are you arguing? Because you maybe, maybe you won't disagree with me. Okay. I'll, I would also like to, I will just explain, uh, when we were talking about how I built my mental model and how I rationalize everything, one of the things I've done when I rationalize is I've changed the boundary of what I believe happy to be. So let's say happiness is this line on this table, right? Most people, this is the full spectrum of human emotion. This is absolute distraught because your parents just died. And this is extremely happy and getish and you're laughing and jumping around like a child for whatever reason. Most people would probably put happy somewhere up here near the top. Yeah. Whereas I've just changed that bar and I've just said, unless I'm truly distraught, unless I'm actually at the point where I can barely speak, let's move happiness down to here. Unless I'm truly distraught and something really bad has happened to me, I've already passed the threshold. I'm just a different level of happy now. I'm, I, the more I talk to you, the more I realize that a lot of what I've done are just simply semantic dreams, tricks. They're language tricks. Yeah. I've changed language tricks. If I'm not absolutely distraught, I am some version of happy. Therefore, I am the happiest man on Earth because I'm always some level of happy. It's semantic tricks. But if it works, I mean, it could be a cheap language trick. But if the cheap language trick works, then it's more than a cheap language trick. So I, I've also changed what I believe happy to be. I think that there's probably five or six times in your adult life you're going to be unhappy. And the rest of the time, you're just a different level of happy, maybe less happy, more happy, but you're all at some point of happy. If you can speak, you're happy enough. Because when you're truly upset, you can't even talk. That's what I believe. Is that enough? Is that all I have to say?

It's interesting. Yeah. Because you're so here. I'm gonna. You want me to tell you what I noticed? Sure. It is hard for you to stay present. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Like you come present and then you, you go to a thought, you go to idea, and you talk, you talk, you talk, you talk. And it's very convincing. And it's very persuasive. And you're asserting your worldview, your, your frame of reality, which you know. But like, sometimes like I lose you there. Like I'm like, where are you? Like, I'm, you're, there's words, but I can't feel you entirely. I understand. You know what I mean? And I want to like, feel you more.

I understand. You know what I mean? I, I understand. But, but I don't think. But just stay, just stay with that. Just stay in that. Like, don't, don't let your mind go. Just stay in the feeling. Yeah. Don't go off with a thought. So what am I feeling right now? Let me just stay with me. Okay. Just stay with me and be present in the experience with no words. And see what happens. Sure. Like, something will change in how we relate to each other. Something will soften. Like, if you let yourself soften and just be with me. Yeah. Right? Which is kind of a weird experience for two men to have. Yep. Right? But it's actually what children long for with their father. So it's actually what we long for is deeper levels of connection. Yes. We just let yourself be here with me. And just see what happens.

But then what are we going to talk about? We don't have to talk about anything. Isn't it, doesn't it feel good to feel another man? Like, just to feel the strength? Like without the words, without, without that layer of thought and and dialogue and discussion?

Come back. Come back. I'm thinking. Come back. Don't think. Don't think.

But I have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. Just be here. This is the place you get to when you're fighting. Feels good. It's true. But doesn't it feel good? Yes. But there's an action involved. Like I can feel. I can feel everything about the person I'm fighting. Whether it's good or bad. I can feel if I've hurt them or not. I don't get to punch you, my friend. You know, it's been good fun. And, uh, I feel like I've learned some things. And I feel like we need to do it again. Absolutely. Yeah. That was fun. I appreciate you, man. Thank you, bro. Yeah. Thank you.