Monday Morning Wake up 6. Host Cole Smithson talks about the housing crisis and whether or not he will ever own a home in this economy. Florida is trying to ban parts of AP psych being taught in their schools and Cole wraps the show by talking about his continuing awakening. Let me know what you think. Follow me on Tik Tok @ talk_smith. Follow the show @wideawakeatthree on instagram and @wideawakeatthr3 on twitter. Subscribe, rate the show 5 stars and share with your friends.
Monday Morning Wake up 6. Host Cole Smithson talks about the housing crisis and whether or not he will ever own a home in this economy. Florida is trying to ban parts of AP psych being taught in their schools and Cole wraps the show by talking about his continuing awakening. Let me know what you think. Follow me on Tik Tok @ talk_smith. Follow the show @wideawakeatthree on instagram and @wideawakeatthr3 on twitter. Subscribe, rate the show 5 stars and share with your friends.
Hello and welcome to Wide Awake at 3 a.m. I am your host, Cole Smithson, your reticently optimistic host for people that are missing the adjectives at the beginning but thank you for joining me on the Monday Morning Wake Up. This Monday, August 7th, man, the summer is flying by. I feel like I barely had any time to enjoy this nice, horribly hot weather. It's like 106 here every day. in Austin, Texas. But yeah, thank you for joining me. Check out what I'm doing on social media. I'm wide awake at three. That's Instagram and Twitter. Talk, underscore Smith on TikTok. And yeah, we are back in the studio, which is just my apartment. Always super fun. but we are back in the studio, just my apartment, but I kind of set up my place to have a little studio right in the middle of it, not a ton of space here. Guys, we got a bunch of stuff to talk about this week. I got a couple of news stories, one's like kind of an ongoing news story thing, got a little bit to talk about Florida, a little bit more, a little bit more Ron DeSantis heat on this podcast, and then I'm gonna talk about myself and my awakening, my journey. to this point that I'm at now, a point that I'm feeling better than I've really felt in the past two or three years. I'm really getting to this point with myself where I feel like I'm coming into my own. I'm becoming the person that I really want to be. And a lot of that has been hard work, a lot of dredging uphill. But let's talk about the news stories first. But let's talk about what I wanna talk about before I dive in to that stuff. I'm gonna start with, I saw Oppenheimer this week. Really, really interesting movie. And I thought it was overhyped actually, visually overhyped and then also at the same time. It just wasn't that interesting as far as plot in the movie goes, except for the end, I thought the political part of. Dr. Oppenheimer basically being eschewed out of US politics because of the Red Scare and his ties to communists and how they're willing to turn on anyone who does not serve them in the moment, like any corporation or government is going to use people when they need them and then they'll turn their back on them when they don't need them anymore, when it is convenient for them. I thought that was very interesting part. The Truman scene towards the end of the movie was incredible, painting Harry Truman in that light, Truman saying to Oppenheimer, nobody cares who made the bomb. People care who dropped it. Taking credit and being callous in the fact of how many people he killed. I'm sure that was at least some way representative of the Harry Truman that really did that horrible, horrible thing. But just fascinating snapshot of history and a guy in history. But I thought the movie was a little over-up. Just a bit. Like the IMAX thing, I didn't think. that visually was as stunning as I was led to believe. But what are you gonna do? I enjoyed myself. Still haven't seen Barbie yet, but I'll get on that soon enough, I suppose. What else is going on? I've talked about I bartend and manage at this pizza place. One of the bartenders is missing right now. Really hope we find her and hope this is, she's just left for another job or whatever and didn't show up to work. Nobody can get in touch with her. That's really, really freaky, so really hoping we find her. But what am I going to talk about first? I think I'll talk about the housing crisis. And I think everybody kind of understands the housing crisis to some degree. It's turned into a meme format, like, oh, millennials will never own homes. Gen Z's will never own homes. Like only people that own homes have generational wealth, that kind of thing. And obviously that is true in a lot of ways. And a lot of the reason that it is true is because companies like BlackRock, Blackstone, those might be two different companies or two... arms the same company. But these giant financial firms are buying up real estate and buying up single family homes and then renting them out to people essentially creating a market and rents going up, housing prices is going up. There's essentially creating market where you'll never be able to stop renting unless you have a certain threshold of wealth. And I see it with my friends. I see it with, you know, people that are entering the adult world and realizing that this might be the case for them. And I'm hoping that, you know, people in my life and myself obviously are able to break that mold and kind of break out of. Wide awake at 3 a.m. Of course brought to you by Gatorade riptide rush Looking like an athlete is easy being one is hard Gatorade But that one was funny, all right so apparently back to this housing thing I this there has to be a breaking point. There has to be a change. You cannot just live in a society where no one is able to climb up through the ranks. I always talk about this podcast like they can push the lower class, they can destroy the middle class as much as they want, but they will create a situation where nothing else is reasonable or nothing else is possible other than some sort of massive. violent revolution and it's just unfortunately where we're getting pushed. If people don't own homes, can't afford rent, rent keeps going up. The same homes values are just artificially inflated to this ridiculous price. And one of the reasons I was reading an article, apparently in 1910s, the US put in housing zoning laws, essentially factories over here, apartments and homes over there. And the argument was that a protected home value. Obviously, who is going to buy a home that they're building a factory right next to? So say someone buys a home, they build a plant right next to your house. You can never sell that home. You can never move. You can never go out and prosper. And that would make sense. But of course, because it's America, it's American politics in the 1910s, which I envision far worse than it was today. Like, people, side note, people always talk about, oh, things are so bad. Things have never been better. And I know that sounds crazy. And as we kind of, you know, dip into the climate disaster, like I've talked about on last Monday, last week's Monday morning wake up or. You know, you kind of see the uprisings around the world and the unrest and the Russia, Ukraine situation, India, Pakistan and go, how could it play? We never had videos. So like all the brutality done by cops. you know, was never captured on video, they never got in trouble. Now, at least sometimes they get in trouble in some regard. I'm just I'm not saying it's good. But I don't think this place has ever been some sort of utopia or some thing like people yearning for the 50s. Like they're like everyone owned a home and factory workers own a home. Why pick a fence and yada, yada? Not to mention that the best time in the US was when we implemented, you know, heavy socialism. under FDR, but shh, don't talk to people about that. But in the 50s, of course, like the civil rights movement was starting out and, you know, black people were oppressed and horrible, horrible things were going on then. So like, anytime people, you know, look back at a time that was some fantastical version of itself, of course, it's nostalgia, of course, it's like anything else. It's just colored by your perception of it. You're telling a story to fit your narrative that you've already created. You're not telling the story. as it is. And so critics of these laws said they ended up being, and maybe it was intentionally done, but they ended up being exclusionary, reinforced racial and class segregation in America? I don't think so. Buster. But of course that happened. Of course that's what happened with these laws. They limited housing supply, artificially raised prices, blocked families from moving into neighborhoods with better schools and better job opportunities. So this has just kind of always been going on, but because of these laws, um, if you look at today, now roughly 75% of housing in these zoning is for housing, um, for private single family homes in some suburbs, it's illegal to build apartment buildings in nearly all residential areas. So this is creating a system where it's basically, we can't build, we have a housing crisis. We rent is too high, rent is going up, but we can't build anymore. We can't build affordable housing because of these zoning laws. And now there's a big fight going on. Joe Biden is calling for zoning reformation. Cities are trying to roll back. There were some examples in this article I was reading where cities are rolling those zoning laws back. and creating more affordable housing, creating these apartment buildings in these areas, but it's obviously not going across everywhere. And there's giant pushback to these zoning laws. And we have a situation where these companies, these massive financial companies are buying up all the housing. you need to have some competition. And this is the whole point with America and capitalism in general, is people love, that love capitalism, love, love to talk about, oh, it makes competition. There would be no competition without capitalism. There would be no competition. There is no competition. Do you guys realize that there are six to eight major companies in the world that own every other thing? They own everything under it. It's all shell companies, subsidiaries. It's like competing cereal brands will be made by the same fucking company. There's one company There's eight company whatever it is. Like there's far too few. There is no competition Actually, the endpoint of capitalism is monopoly like these giant financial institutions Owning all the housing and running it out to people like that is the endpoint of capitalism. That's winning, right? like that's what the Realistic and If you really, really sit down and think about it, what the end point of capitalism is, would be one guy who, and we can do the whole, they created a product that people needed, like Amazon or whatever the fuck, right? But the way Amazon grew is, we all know the stories about people having to piss in bottles and working way too long and yada, just so people can get next day shipping. And that's the only way. to create the kind of wealth that Jeff Bezos made is the step on so many people along the way and crush competition. Amazon started doing that thing where they basically saw what sold well on their marketplace. They would sell other companies' products and then they would make the exact same product and just make it like two bucks cheaper. And why are you not gonna buy it? It's the same product. And now Amazon's making it. They made their own brand. I forget the brand name is called, it's on the tip of my tongue. It's not nice, that's Walgreens. Anyway, that is what capitalism does. That's what the competition, because if it's competition, someone's gonna win, right? Like that's the thing that these people are forgetting about competition. And technically you could look at the financial institutions buying this housing and be like, that's competition. Just compete with them. You have to beat out financial institutions that have trillions and trillions of dollars in asset share. Well, why aren't you winning against them? Why aren't you winning against them? You know what you sound like? You sound like an idiot. You sound like a cuck to these corporations. Like you, what is this mentality that because someone won in some, you know, stroke of luck in the game of life we all play, that they are now allowed to decide all of the rules for everyone else? What is this mindset? Why do people not care about themselves and their own advancement? And that's my thing with these like pure to heart capitalists is. Competition is not necessarily a good thing. Like I love the argument innovation, innovation. If you listen to my episode with Tim Rickard, very, very smart guy, I'd come on, talk about a lot of this political stuff with me a while back. Talk about what are we innovating towards? Like if people are living to 120, but 80 to 120 is still terrible, all your bedridden and you're just taking pills. So I don't wanna innovate towards that. I don't wanna just live forever with my quality of life not improving in that back end. Like what are we innovating towards? Everyone living in 500 square foot apartments like me paying fucking $1,500 a month to have no space to say, to work all the time just to afford this, to what? For what end? What are we innovating towards? What competition is breeding isn't necessarily a good thing. And of course there's pushback to like zoning reformation where it's like, okay, we have a housing issue. We need to fix this. How do we fix this? It's like, don't fix it. Don't fix the problem. Just just live in a tiny shitty apartment on the bad side of town next to a factory. Why would you not want to do that? What would you know? Are you not grateful to your capitalist daddies who allow you to buy overpriced products in their store that they own? Put overpriced gas in the gas station they own and drive to your job and work for them and toil for them. and then go home to your no space? Well, they live on 50 acre properties in the middle of fucking nowhere, counting their money and laughing at the idea that they're homeless people. Is that what we want out of our society, out of our life, out of like the world we live in? I think not. You know, and people might look at this and look at what I'm saying and be like, oh, you're just being nihilistic. Oh, you're just being. you know, a worst case scenario. No, it's not worst case. It's the only scenario. It's the only thing that exists. I know how people work. You know how people work. If you're listening to this, you get it. Like this is what would happen and we'd probably do it too. And that's the thing that I'm willing to admit more so than a lot of like leftists is if I was in a lot of people go over a billion dollars, it's like you like to think about it that way. But if you were a type of person that were able to, you know, gain or I don't even like saying like they earned it, able to finagle your way to billions of dollars, you would not be the type of person that would give it away to other people. People always go, oh, rich people don't spend money, that's why they're rich. And it's like, no, they're fucking dragons. That's why, yeah, like we should not be applauding the people that care the least about the other people around them in society and people my age should not. I have in the back of their head, and I think a lot of people do, I'm never gonna own a home unless I really hit it big, say I do this for a while and it grows and I build some sort of independent wealth through creating content, then maybe sure, possibly. And that's why so many people are creating content on the side or doing some sort of working at home. And it's not for, I wish I could just make this and not worry about making money. I wish I could just make this and. for the art form of it, for the love of the game. And I'm sure a lot of artists out there, my sister's a really talented artist. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way, but then they need to make money, they need to support themselves. Like we live in this fucking hellscape that people can't own homes because of housing zoning laws made in the 1910s. Before they had plumbing, is that before they had plumbing? Now I gotta look it up. But like this indoor plumbing invented. Oh, I guess it was invented in India, in the BC. Maybe... It wasn't until the 1920s that our houses gave way to indoor toilets and bathrooms. So before they had fucking toilets in their houses, they're deciding things that matter for people in 2023. And this is an opinion I've always kind of had. I think there's good parts in the Constitution. I think there's good parts in the founding of this country. And it was a really cool experiment that worked. But people in the 1700s do not have the capacity to understand. what it's like for someone in the internet age. So I do think, and Thomas Jefferson said this, and it is a real thing, like every 50 years, every generation, you should rewrite the constitution. I firmly believe in that. And I firmly believe that like we should not be governed under rules created so long ago that they cannot encapsulate or understand the future that we are living in now. That's my take on housing. I just hope that one day I can own a home and that all my friends own homes and we'll see. I don't know. I'm working hard for it. All right. Um, smaller story, just kind of silly. Another dumb Florida thing. Uh, I talked about it. Rhonda Sands's campaign was flailing last week and it looks like he is just down and out bad, but, uh, Florida banning. I don't know how involved in this. He was probably pretty involved. Florida banning AP psychology, you know, and they've come out and said they're not banning AP psychology, but they are banning Or they say they can't teach parts about sexuality and gender including gender dysphoria and homosexuality and Here's another I love Duncan on conservatives on this podcast conservatives love Love to preach small government, even though they all they try to do is have the government go into your home, into your bathroom, control who you have sex with, control like the internet porn you watch, control like who you love and what you do with your own penis or vagina. But obviously abortion, huge one. Like they love to tell people what to do, but be like small government. So small government for small government when it comes to corporate profits, but large government when it comes to your personal life. Like they always, like the people that love to go, I'm fiscally conservative, but I am socially liberal. It's like, so you want the government out of corporate profits. And that's the whole thing. And out of, you know. someone's bedroom. That at least is a principled stance on, because I do think there is like, politics isn't a left right thing. I mean, some people have taken this test where it's like the quadrants and it's up down, left right. And it's left right is obviously like political leaning, like how we talk about it. And then up down is authoritarian and non authoritarian. And I am just as mad at authoritarian lefties as I am like hardline. authoritarian conservatives because they don't realize that they're so much closer. It's classic core shoot theory. They're closer in ideology to each other because they want to control people's behaviors and movements and like what they can say and do and talk about and, and read about and learn and all of this stuff. And they and this is all being conservatives want to control mass control the schools because they know their ideology doesn't stand up on its own. And they know if they build a free thinking society that they'll never outlast. leftism in the end. But the best way and the best way they've continued to have as much power, even though they're a tiny percentage of the country relatively, is by doing this, making people dumber, making people not care about politics, making people not learn about sexuality in their classrooms in high school. The 17-year-old is going to hear about gay people and become gay or hear about gender queer people and become gender queer. These things aren't happening. They're not. It's all fear-mongering and it's just classic conservative talk out of both sides of your mouth. I am firmly, firmly in the belief that there should be some redistribution of wealth, that people at the bottom of the... in the bottom classes of society should be at least not have to worry about like shelter, food, water, healthcare, basic necessities. That makes me a lefty, right? But I am even more so against any form of authoritarianism, especially in what people can learn about, especially what people can do inside of their own home in a way that harms nobody. AP Psych, I remember, Psych was my minor in college. A large part, dude, I loved the psychologist teacher and psychology class I took in high school. It's so interesting. I love the way people work. I love learning about human behaviors and stuff like that. I don't even remember the parts about the homosexuality and gender and stuff, because it was just rolled into the class. It wasn't like some special day or some special thing. It's just a... normal part of human psychology and it's on the AP tests and they want Florida students not be able to learn stuff that's going on the nationally standardized tests and it's just as opposed and they want politicians deciding this shit as opposed to educators who spent their whole life creating, you know, the syllabus for this class or the rubric or the guidelines that they follow and the subject matter that is to be taught. Why do these conservative politicians think they are experts in any field? Experts in convincing dumb people to vote for, and most of them are just corporate shills they don't care of, they don't give a fuck about their constituency. Conservative politicians give no shit about their constituency, and I'm not saying that Democrats are that much better. But... It's just dumb. Get out of my personal life. Get out of my fucking way. Get out of, like, you're not, you will never be able to control my thoughts, my actions, my behaviors. I can smile and wave at you, and we will do whatever we want here on Wide Awake. Now time to talk about me. I suppose the rest where I'm not even mentioning myself. No, thank you to everyone out there that listens. This podcast supports me, tells me they like it. Remember to rate the show five stars. Send to your friends, subscribe, check out the YouTube in your head media on YouTube. All right. I'm really, really feeling... not the end point, but I'm feeling like the start, the beginning of the beginning of the waking up process. I'm feeling myself inching closer and closer to the person that I wanna be, inching closer and closer to the life I wanna have, inching closer and closer to the acceptance of the world around me and also like, the love in the universe in a way that I really was never capable of doing before. Like I... I'm getting to this place where I can just feel like the sun shining on me in a different way. And it's, and I talked about a couple of weeks ago, the living in the moment, the Alan Watts stuff. I'm really trying hard to live in the moment, live in these moments to realize that the only time we have is now in the present. And the only life I'll ever live is this moment that I'm living right now. And I can just feel the universe opening itself up to me. And I've done all the things, I've done all the writing down, you know, my intentions and my goals. I've done all the affirmations I've done, but the, the biggest thing for me is living a meditative life and not just meditating for five minutes a day or whatever. Like I always meditate in the shower in the morning, but, um, turn the lights off, get a nice meditation in for, you know, wash myself, whatever. But I was listening to more Alan Watts love that dude. talking about like living in the moment in sort of a meditative manner. So like you can be doing things you can be talking to a friend, you can be, you know, going on a walk, you can be active at doing your dishes, whatever, active, and also living in a sort of meditation. I think there's something like really beautiful to it. Think about that, like really truly like, existing. Meditating, you know, doesn't mean blocking out all thoughts, or it just means living. presently feeling all of the emotions, feeling all of the things. And there's so many things that I've like tried to run from or hide from or mask. And recently I've just been like completely unmasking so many, you know, sort of things from the past or, you know, demons or repeated patterns of behavior that I felt trapped in, in a lot of ways. And I'm just, I'm loving this. Awakening process and thank you to the universe for accepting me and loving me and showing me and Thank you to everyone out there for listening I've been taking a break from dating and relationships for a while my last relationship just kind of really messy will end to it really messy in a lot of ways, but it was beautiful for a long time. And then both of us became very selfish and hardheaded. And there was no turning back from when we got to a certain point, I really feel like. And I have been intentionally so saying no to women and just like not pursuing them in any regard. And I kind of feel the universe opening itself up back up to me a little bit more. I had a woman come in to my job on Friday and she asked to give me her number, which I thought was really cool. We're going to date tomorrow, I believe, or today. Actually, it'll be Monday. I'm recording this late Sunday night. I think in some ways like some other women I've met, I just feel the universe opening itself up and saying it's okay, you've gone away to better yourself. You've gone away to be a person that does not make the same mistakes again. You've gone away to be someone more worthy of the loving relationship that you do seek. And I was a person that I was incapable of taking care of myself. So there's no way I was going to be able to take care of a relationship and another person in the way that my ex needed me to. And I've really gone a way deep into myself. I used to explore myself through psychedelics alone. But recently I've just been exploring myself. Like this past year I've just been really diving deep. I still use psychedelics sometimes, but not as much. But I've just really dove into myself like, why do you do this? Why do you keep doing this? Why are you so fixated on this thing? And just like worked on repeatedly calming the nervous system, not being so scared and feeling like I have to create a protective shell for myself to the world, not, you know, just doing these things, I just kept doing it. I was like, I'm doomed to repeat the same mistakes forever if I do not become a person. that is at least capable of catching myself in the act, catching myself before things go downhill and snowball out of control and. A big part of that has been acknowledging my flaws, acknowledging my wrongdoings, acknowledging the person that I was, the person that I am in a lot of ways still. But I do think people have the ability and the right and should feel the comfort in changing and being honest about who they were, being honest about the life they were leading, being honest about the way that they were impacting themselves and the world around them and others and people they loved. why is it what thing I'm going to end on? But why are people so scared to acknowledge their flaws and wrongdoings in an effort to truly get better? There's no getting better if you do not fully, fully acknowledge the person that you are being. Because if you do not acknowledge that, I don't care what you do to run away from the truth. I don't care what you do to hide yourself from the fact that you were that person that you did those things, they will always come back up. You will always reap the karma that you sowed. And I didn't allow myself to walk away from it this time. I didn't allow myself to numb myself from the things that I needed to feel to numb myself from, the person that I pretend like I'm not or that pretended like I wasn't. And. I'm really seeing progress and it's taken time and it's taken a lot of hard work and I'm really, really seeing progress. And like I said, I'm back to being open to the possibility of having someone else in my life, someone that enhances it, that I get to spend time with, build something with. And I don't know if this first date is going to lead to anything, but I do know it's going to lead to the rest of my life and being that person that is capable. of selflessly giving to another person. Maybe it won't be this girl, maybe it will. But it will be someone because I went inside myself, I found the muck and I dug it out. And I, you know, there's a lot of hard nights, lot of not feeling good, a lot of being scared of the beast within me. And everyone out there that's dealing with a similar thing and I think... most people go through this to some degree. Like don't be scared of the beast that's in you. You are love, you are passion, you are... amazing you are. strong and smart and capable. and you are you and you are that person that did those things, but you are also the person that has the ability and is going to put in every ounce of effort to change, to be better. You can be both things. You can be that asshole and you can be a better person for it. Both of these things can be true. Acknowledging your flaws, your wrongdoings, is not a cry for help. It is, you know. It's not the end of the road. It's the door opening to the room you didn't even know was possible, the room that you needed to be in to be the self that you want to be. Things don't end, they go on forever and ever. They never end. And you can always be better. Y'all, I love you. Thank you so much. This is when Monday morning wake up. Y'all have a great week. Peace.