Daniel Cartier (00:21)
Hey everybody, welcome to There is No God and We're All Gonna Die. I'm your host, Daniel Cartier, a gay liberal atheist living in the Bible Belt. And I'm happy to be here. I hope you're happy to be here. I hope whatever you're doing in life, I hope ⁓ it's great. ⁓ Before I get started, if you want to call the show,
and leave me a voice message because that's a big part of this show is answering people's voice messages. It's one of my favorite things to do. I love to hear from you guys. So if you want to call up and leave a voice message, it could be about anything. You could talk about how you hate me. You could talk about how you love me. You could talk about how you hate the fact that I'm an atheist or that I'm gay or that you think it's great. Or you could talk about
Just, I don't know, some cool thoughts you're having about the universe, or you could rant about Donald Trump, or if you're a MAGA voter, you could talk about how I'm full of shit and that I don't understand how brilliant Donald Trump is and I should be ashamed of myself for calling him a douchebag. I'm totally not ashamed that I call him a douchebag, but anyways, you could call up and you could be like, how dare you? So anyways, if you wanna call the show,
just go to my website danielcartier.com. D-A-N-I-E-L-C-A-R-T-I-E-R. not Daniel Carter. I'm not Jimmy Carter's cousin. Daniel Cartier, like the jewelers, it's fancier. So, although I'm not related to the jewelers, but that is my real name, danielcartier.com. And then click on podcast.
It's right there in the menu, danielcardier.com, then click on podcast and there will be a button and you can press it and you can leave your voice message and I'll listen to it and I'll play it on the show and I will just be so happy to hear from you even if you're screaming at me and you're saying that you wish I would drop dead. I will be really happy to hear from you because you know what? You took the time to get involved.
You're not apathetic. You are taking part in something. And I love that. And plus, like if nobody calls my show, even if they hate me, if nobody calls, then I wouldn't really have a show. It would just be me talking. And I like to hear other voices. I don't want it to be just me.
So anyways, I hope you're doing well I'm gonna take a couple calls in a second. But first I just want to say yes
This was a great week for me. I was ⁓ really depressed last week. You could probably tell from my mood last week. I was very dark. I didn't even bother setting up my lights. I was like in a dark room and like I didn't bother putting up my green screen. I was just like, you know what, if I'm going to start doing this podcast again, I need to just press record and start talking. And so that's what I did. And honestly, to my credit,
I have to say it was a pretty good episode. I found it engaging when I listened back to it. So I was happy about that. But ⁓ then Tuesday night happened and the elections and ⁓ yeah, the Democrats kind of sort of kicked ass. You know, we won back a bunch of seats and we flipped a bunch of things
I think people are
like they want real change. want real change. don't, you know, it's like this system we have right now, Elon Musk, I'm just going to save this for like in the news, but Elon Musk just got awarded this $1 trillion payday from Tesla, even though, you know, sales are down and they're, laying off all these people, but he's getting a $1 trillion payday.
So he'll be the history's first trillionaire like the richest person the world's ever seen and You know, this is the same guy who disowned his transgender daughter and is is kind of it's just a fucking douchebag and I was thinking about it, the thing about all these people with all their money I Just keep going back to a really simple thought that I've had
The income inequality gap has really become a big problem. mean, there's people that don't have their SNAP benefits right now, they're losing their healthcare, pet surrenders. I look at stuff like pet surrenders when people start just bringing their pets into shelters or just abandoning them because They have to choose between their pet.
or groceries for their kid. mean, they're going to choose groceries for their kid. And that breaks my heart because as you know, I'm an animal lover. I rescue animals. so, you know, I look at stuff like that. Car loans defaults on car loans are getting to be a record high again. So these are the type of things that I see the cracks in the wall before the wall crumbles down.
and meanwhile, the world's richest people have amassed so much more wealth since Donald Trump's been elected. I mean, it's like an obscene amount of wealth that they've added to their stockpile of wealth that they already had. And I mean, that's even what all this is about. Like with the government shutdown, like, you know, basically, healthcare was going to go up and become unaffordable, you know, because
Donald Trump, if you look in the fine print, it's because rich people want to get richer. That's really what it is. And so...
Yeah, so the elections on Tuesday, they made me happy. They really did, because I needed some hope. I think we all needed some hope. And this is just the beginning, though. mean, I don't want people to get complacent we need to keep going and we need to look at all of these elections as vitally important.
They all are important. Every single one of these elections, I don't care how small the government seat looks, they're all important and we all need to show up. They are so important right now more than ever because, you know, this is our democracy at stake. And I don't know about you, but I'm 56 years old. I don't have a lot of living left. Like at best I have like 20 to 30 years left depending on how, how good my heart is and how
what kind of health insurance I can afford. So yeah, like, you know, maybe 30 years, let's say. I don't want to spend that 30 years trying to get back rights that I had when I was younger. And then I lost them. And then I have to spend my last 30 years trying to get them back. Like, that's not what I want for the rest of my fucking life. I don't, you know? So anyways, enough about that.
seeing these elections, and also the no-kings protests I think people they're really fed up and they're just like, okay, enough with this fucking bullshit, enough. Let's fucking get back to reality and start taking care of people because this type of shit where there's just a handful of people with a gazillion dollars in their fucking bank accounts,
and then the average person can't fucking afford to live anymore. It's just, it's not sustainable. It will not sustain itself. Eventually the whole thing's gonna like collapse. you know, I don't wanna see that happen because when it collapses, regular people are gonna be the people who get hurt. And then the other thing that sucks is when it does collapse, these fucking rich douchebags, what they're gonna do is they're gonna come in and like buy up everything else. Because to them it's just gonna be like a fire sale. Like when
when like tons of people lose their homes and they lose, you know, their cars get repossessed and all this other stuff. ⁓ Who's going to be, yeah, like people with money are going to come in and snatch it up like for pennies on the dollar. because that's what happened actually, ⁓ it's happened during a lot of the other crashes and I don't want to see that happen to people. so, man, this is not the type of stuff I wanted to talk about. I kind of...
See, this is the problem with me doing this podcast is my brain never stops. It really doesn't, you guys. Like it just keeps going and going and going. And so I'll start, I'll start talking about one thing and then like, it'll remind me of something else. then before you know it, like I start talking about, you know, like, I don't know, like cookies, but by the time I'm done, I'm talking about, you know, I don't know, like.
Nazi Germany or something. I don't it's just my brain just keeps going and going anyways. I'm gonna take some calls. again you can go to Daniel Cartier calm and Then click on podcast and you can leave me a voice message
and then you could be on the show, let's see who called. Let's listen to some voicemails. yeah. That wasn't very good. ⁓ Let's see.
Well, that is my best friend in the whole world, Matt. And he called. That was a nice surprise. Matt is, I've alluded to him before. I know this is an atheist podcast, but I don't hate religious people. If you came on here thinking that if this is your first time listening and you saw the name of that podcast, there is no God and we're all going to die. Well, I'm an atheist, so I don't believe in God. So that's the first part. And we're all going to die is just a fact.
We are all gonna die. ⁓ But I don't hate religious people. I'm not doing this podcast to ⁓ change anybody's religious views. I don't have time for that. I already have enough stuff that I'm doing in my life. If you listen to this podcast and you decide that you don't wanna believe in God anymore, that's your business. I'm not gonna take responsibility for it because I'm not that powerful. This is just me sharing my views. So anyways.
Back to what I was saying, that is my best friend, Matt. He's one of best friends I've ever had in my life. I talk to him every day. He's the guy I call on the phone when I'm walking my dogs and I'm like, hey girl, what's going on? He is ⁓ a devout Christian. ⁓ He ⁓ loves his Jesus and he's a deacon at his church and I'm very proud of him. I even went to the little ceremony that they had when they...
I don't know, is it called deaconize? When they deaconized him or I don't know what you call it. When they made him a deacon. ⁓ And I was really proud of him, even though I don't believe in any of it. still like everybody. His church was really nice. It's a very liberal church. ⁓ So, so yeah, anyways, that's my best friend, Matt. And it's always nice to hear from him. ⁓ So, yeah, well, Matt, that's a great question. What is my hopes?
What are my fears for 2026 and what are my hopes? Well, my fears are that all the horrible things that have been happening up until now, like, you know, with Trump being just so fucking deranged that they're just going to get worse and worse and worse. Like that's my fear. I think that's everybody's fears. ⁓ But then my hope, my hopes is that
what happened on Tuesday night where we saw this real like promising thing of like people showing up and showing up in like record numbers to some of these, you know, elections that normally wouldn't have a lot of people showing up them a lot of times like these like midterm or like these like special elections. They don't get a lot of traction, but people actually are starting to show up at them.
like much more because they're seeing how important it is. And so my hope is that that energy will continue. It can't be a fad. It can't be like the margarina or a friggin' pet rocks or, you know, the spice girls. It has to be like something that people want to continue to do and grow and cultivate and cultivate that passion for changing this broken system. can't.
fucking have it be the way it is. we need to elect new people. We need to bring people in who have progressive ideas Yeah. So that's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping that we see more of that in 2026. And on a personal level. I'm hoping that I get a little better about managing my time. That's my personal thing. Like I do way too much.
with my life and I'm seeing that. Like, so I'm doing this podcast and then I'm work like a zillion hours and then I'm doing art and I'm doing music and there's so many other projects that I want to do. I've started writing a couple of books and I mean, it's all good stuff. but I would like to
get little bit more focused. I've started kind of losing the plot as to who Daniel is. Like I'm, I'm, I feel like I've put my feelers out into a lot of different areas and I'm, I'm trying to see like what the plot of this movie is that I'm living, you know, like, like who, who is Daniel actually? Like, is he like the angry atheist or is he like this sensitive singer songwriter or is he this
wacky artist guy or is he like this? don't know. Maybe I'm all those things. but I'm trying to find a way to take all those things and make them make sense to the rest of the world. Cause right now I think it's just been confusing to people Anyways, so
I'm excited, I guess, to, ⁓ get a little bit more clarity in what I'm trying to do with my life. So, yeah, anyways, it's awesome to hear from you and you know, I love you and, And I had so much fun handing out candy at your house on Halloween. That was what we did. we all went over mats and
Matt has like one of those Halloween houses where like literally hundreds of kids, because just the way the street is, it's one of those streets where it's safe to run up and down the sidewalks. so the whole street like has houses with tons of decorations. And so we were out there and man, was like, there was like a line of kids. Like it was kind of like working at the mall or something. Like there was just kids like, and they just kept coming and coming and coming. And ⁓
Yeah, so that was really nice. It was really nice to be out there handing candy to kids. And I don't know, it kind of made me miss trick or treating. ⁓ Anyways, ⁓ what are you going to do? ⁓ All right. Who else called? Who else called?
Okay, ⁓ well, dude, I don't know who you are, but I think I think that you probably didn't have a good connection when you called whoever that was. You may want to call back ⁓ because I have no idea what that was. That was just a bunch of like static. ⁓ All right. Well, let's see who else called. All right.
Okay.
Well, that's good question. What would it take for me to believe in God? You know, aside from God literally coming down and appearing like in the sky and being like, Hey, I'm here. Here I am. I'm God. Hello. How are you doing? Like, ⁓ like until God does that, I don't think I'm ever going to believe in him because
I believe in what I can see. That's just how my brain is. I'm very literal that way. To my own detriment sometimes, because it means that I have a hard time trusting things I can't see. Yeah, so I don't think that—I don't see me ⁓ anytime soon hearing something that somebody said, like another person, like, well, you know, the Bible said this, or this other book said that, or what about this?
I mean, it's just people giving me their opinions like well, I believe in God and then they'll have some personal antidote. But it's like my thing. Here's the thing I keep going back to. This was a thought that I had the middle of last month when I took that time off. And so I'm actually glad that I'm thinking about this now, because it's something I wanted to talk about. OK. God. OK. If you're God,
Right? And you see this planet that you created. And you know the planet's there and it evolves and then, you know, suddenly there's this species called humans and this species that creates gods and then they over the gods and they kill each other and they do things like the Spanish Inquisition and the holy wars and
you know, all these different, you know, like blowing up buildings and suicide bombers and, persecuting this person and persecuting that person and like tons of people dying and everything, all because they can't agree on what God is, right? And then if you're God up in the sky and you see all this and you don't just fucking like, I don't know,
just show up in the sky like hey news flash I'm God here I am you can stop fighting over me because this is who I am I'm this guy I look like this this is with the color of my hair these are the clothes I wear
You she, it, whatever would do that, right? a gay has been whole life that I'm going to hell and I'm a sinner and I'm a pervert and I'm this and I'm that because I happen to be born gay.
And, you know, of course that's a bunch of fucking bullshit. I was born gay. It's just fucking biology. Like, get over it. Like, it has nothing to do with me being immoral or anything like that. I happen to like dudes, you know? When I see a dude, and if he's like a really handsome dude, I'm like, yeah, that's what I like, you know? ⁓ But, you know, it has nothing to do with me like being a sinner or a pervert or anything. But, you know,
the people who have a fucked up version of God. mean, of course, there's like very progressive people as well who are totally for gay rights and therefore, you know, women's rights and transgender rights. And they're awesome. I have no problem with those people. The only problem I have is hate and bigotry. it always comes back to that. I'm not anti-religion. I'm anti bigotry. I just don't happen to believe in religion. But anyways, getting back to my point, you'd think that if God
saw all this stuff. Wouldn't it make sense for him to just show himself like for just even like a couple minutes?
And then there would be no more fighting. You know, he could say, look, I'm God. This is who I am. This is what I believe. All the people thinking this, you're fucking crazy. I never said, you know, hate the homosexual or I never said, you know, woman couldn't control their bodies. I never said
transgender people were evil or I never said that interracial people couldn't marry. Like I never said any of that. They could just set the record straight and then we could get on with it. You know, and then, you know, there'd be no more religious fighting because everybody would see this is God and then everybody would come together and like just worship this God. And then I guess I would find God then too, because I would see, you know,
I think he would have to, because you know, anybody can show up on a TV show. So I think what he would have to do is to probably have his face just appear in the sky. I think that would be pretty believable to everybody. Like we're like, all of sudden we all heard this big booming voice and we all like run out into our front yard. Kind of like the Independence Day, like when all the movie Independence Day, when all the spaceships land and they're like, whoa. And then, you know, the spaceships.
blow everything up. ⁓ you know, so then we hear this big booming voice and so we all run outside and there's fucking God like up in the sky, like just there, like, hey guys, I'm God. That would make me believe. Then, yeah, I wouldn't even, like the word atheist would be meaningless to me at that point, but.
I keep going back to this. Okay, if you believe in God, but then you see all this wars and, you hatred and ⁓ people like judging people and because of God and the God that you claim to believe never comes and sets the record straight or just like shows themselves. To me, it's kind of a dick move where it's like, dude, just literally one minute of your time.
to like fucking clear up all this historical violence and bloodshed. Like just one minute would solve everything. And the fact that no God has ever done that just kind of leads me to believe, okay, yeah, you know what? It's probably because there is no God and it's just us making shit up. So I appreciate the question, but that's my answer is like to me, I see scientific evidence about evolution
I mean, there's discovering stuff about the history of the world. Like, we're constantly discovering more and more stuff, but I don't really see any God in it. I just, you know, I see...
Cool facts about the world. Like, you know, that the world's been around for about 4.6 billion years. Like, all these different species have evolved there's been mass extinctions and then other things have evolved and, you know, there's already enough incredible stuff for me to believe in that I don't need to, like, put some, I don't know, like, imaginary figure on top of it. That's just me. To each their own.
But this is my podcast and you know, so that's what I believe but I appreciate you calling it if you have any more Questions about that that you want to ask, please call back Maybe you have some other way of looking at her or call back and say You know, it'd be interesting if you want to call back and say What it was that made you believe there was a God if you do believe in God like what was it
Anybody could call. I invite anybody to do that. I always find it interesting. Like I'm willing to listen to anybody talk about their their personal journey. So, Daniel Cartier dot com, click on podcast and then leave a voice message. And yeah, I'd love to hear how you came to believe there was a God would be interesting to me.
So anyways, but just be nice about it or not. You can be a douchebag about it. I don't care. I'm not the boss of you. I'm not God. I'm not God. I know that. what else? Who else called? Who else called?
Huh. Well, that's a good question. ⁓ What worries me? God, so much worries me. Man. ⁓
Yeah, a lot of stuff worries me. ⁓
I think the thing that worries me a lot lately is, and I alluded to it earlier in the episode, I think, I'm kind of losing track of what I've talked about, but ⁓ I really worry about the safety of things. Let me explain. ⁓ I've always wanted to protect everything. I've had this thing in my, I have this thing where it's like, ever since I was a little kid, I've always wanted to make sure everything was safe and nothing got hurt.
So like if I see like ⁓ an animal, just like an animal out in the wilderness, whether it's a deer or a cat or a dog that for some reason somebody's letting run around loose, my first thing is worrying that they're gonna get hit by a car. that, I am kind of obsessed with animals getting hit by cars. It scares me because I love animals so much and I hate the thought that when they get hit by a car,
that they might suffer and I hate suffering. I really hate suffering. Suffering is, you know, it's one thing if like something dies really quick and it doesn't really feel much pain.
if death is sudden and quick, like okay, you know, that still sucks because you're dead, but at least you didn't suffer. And so when I see an animal, animals like running all around, it's weird, it's like,
I try to appreciate them, you know, because they're animals and they're awesome and animals are awesome. the first thing I think is, my God, stay away from the road. Like, that's my first thought. And I'm trying to get better about not focusing on that first because the first thing I should be thinking is, my God, look at that beautiful animal. I shouldn't be like worried about like their safety like immediately.
So I don't know. I worry about that. And then I also worry about what I alluded to earlier. You know, the whole thing about people running out of money and the implications of that. I think about people who are already struggling. And I know a lot of people here in Tennessee, like here in Tennessee.
Where I live, there's a lot of paycheck to paycheck. So many people I know, they're living paycheck to paycheck. And I see how they have to make these decisions every day about like, well, I could buy groceries or I could pay this bill, or I could pay this bill or I could deal with this tooth that is hurting. Or,
I could just not deal with the tooth and I could just have it pulled and then I have one less tooth in my head and then that means that I can afford to buy groceries. You know what? And so I see people doing this mental gymnastics about just basic necessities. so then, you know, when like things like that, you know, what's going on right now with SNAP benefits and with people ⁓ really being scared about, mean, that people are very scared around
here where I live about their health care going up or losing their health care altogether because they just can't afford the premiums when they go up. ⁓
And ⁓ so I worry about the decisions that people are going to have to make, you know, that are going to be really difficult. And one of them as an animal lover, and I think I alluded to this earlier is, you know, people, ⁓ getting rid of their pets because, you know, when you're dealing with like, can't even afford to feed my kids and we love our dog, but like, there's just no money.
You know, there's not even any money for us to eat, let alone like paying for vet bills or dog food. you know, so already I've heard reports that, shelters are already getting, you know, there's an uptick in people surrendering their pets. And so like, I worry about stuff like that because, you know, shelters, you know, they can only take in so many dogs. so then, I mean, what's going to happen is people may just
drop their dogs off somewhere and then the dog is just a stray, you know? And so I worry about stuff like that. I worry about, when people, can't afford stuff and their back is against the wall. worry about people taking matters into their own hand and like maybe, you know,
I said it last week, desperate people do desperate things. It's not necessarily that they're bad people, but when you haven't eaten for a couple days, and then what, are they just not supposed to eat? I worry that people are going to start, crime's going to go up, and sometimes it's just going to be people who normally are very good people, but they're being forced into this situation where
They don't know what else to do. And then we're going to blame them and we're going to judge them. And then some fucking rich douchebag is going to make more money because, you know, they own stock in a privatized prison and now they have another client, you know, who is just trying to survive. And again, I, not all criminals are wonderful people. I'm not saying that there's truly horrible people who should be in jail. I get that. But I think it's sad when people
who are would normally be good people, then the system is just so broken that there's there's nothing left except for them to, know, they eventually people have to eat, so I don't know. That's the thing I worry about. And you know, and I worry about my own life. mean, you know, I'm 56 and I worry that
You know, there's all the day-to-day worries. I mentioned teeth. I actually have to have a root canal. You know, so that's going to be friggin' $6,000. I don't know, like I'm kind of freaking out about it, but you know, it is what it is. It's life.
So I worry a lot about like unexpected things like that. you're kind of going along your coasting and then it's like as a homeowner, I have a lot of fears. we actually just had a wonderful thing happen where our HVAC did not work for God. I'm getting really personal now. ⁓ Our HVAC did not work all summer long. So we had to buy the cheap ⁓ window.
ACs at Walmart and I'm grateful. I mean they worked fine. We bought four of them and they ran all summer long and they cooled our house. So kudos to them. Now they're all out in the shed. ⁓ But when it started getting colder out I'm like okay we need to get this fixed and there was a couple parts that they couldn't find and it's kind of an older ⁓ HVAC unit.
Whatever. And so we finally found the parts and the guy came over and we were really worried because if these parts did not fix it, it would have been like, it would have been a lot of money. It would have been like $12,000 or $15,000 or something. It would have been very expensive. Well, thank goodness those parts did work. And so it ended up being like $500. So, you know, all homeowners can relate to that. Like when you own a home, like this home,
This house was built in 1899, so it has a lot of quirks about it. It's not like this brand new home. see, I go to people's houses with like that, like they're new homes, like new homes, like brand new homes. And man, it's just like they're temperature controlled and they're like, they're really, this is like living in a barn a lot of times. in the winter, you really know you're living in a house that was built in 1899. We're always.
Like in the dead of winter when it's like four degrees, we are walking around and we're looking for drafts and like, know, where it's just part of living in an old house, you know, it's, it's not a new house. And so there's fear that comes with that, you know, because you always worry that you'll be going long fine. And then like some major thing will happen and it's like, ⁓ no, like how are we going to pay for this? And so definitely, I think a lot of my fears,
And I know this doesn't make me unique. I definitely can have the same financial fears that a lot of people have. ⁓ So, OK, so how do I deal with that if I don't believe in God? I talk about it. I call up friends. I share very openly. I don't believe in suffering in silence. I'm not a fan of that. I used to feel ashamed when I was struggling. And so I was one of those people who
If I was really struggling with something, I would have shame about it. Like if I was struggling financially or if I was struggling with some, with depression or with ⁓ being consumed with like suicidal thoughts or whatever it was. How I would handle it for a long time was people would be like, hey Daniel, how are you doing? And I'd be fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.
I'm fine. And then I would go home and I would be freaking out and I would feel like the world was ending. But here this person just asked me how I was doing. had an opportunity to actually share openly with somebody and be like, well, actually, to be honest with you, I'm kind of freaking out right now. I I don't know how I'm going to pay for this thing. I've been dealing with a bunch of depression.
Do you have a second to talk? really need to talk to somebody, you know When people say that to me I always take it as a huge compliment like wow like they actually trust me To listen to them talk about their feelings like that is such an honor like I'm always honored when people want to share What's going on with them with me? Like I never view it as an imposition Now granted I'm an amazing person, but no, I'm just kidding but
⁓ no, I never view it as like an imposition at all. Like I'm always just so honored that they would trust me with their feelings, you know, and I don't always have the answers for them. And I don't think people always need answers. I think sometimes we just want somebody to listen, you know, like when we're hurting a lot of times it's I don't need people to like solve my problems for me. sometimes we have a tendency to do that. Like, I know for me, I've I've had to
move from the mindset that it's my responsibility to solve people's problems when they share them with me and move it more into no, it's my honor to just give them room to share their problems so that they're not carrying them all on their own, that they know that somebody else is also there with them.
So they're not just, you know, and if I can offer insight, of course I'm going to offer insight. But sometimes, you know, we don't have anything. But, you know, it still helps to get it out in the open. I learned that from going to my, I can't say the name of the organization, but I do belong to an anonymous organization that helps me stay sober. ⁓ I won't say what it is because it's anonymous, but.
I gotta tell ya, there's been so many times that I wanted to fuckin' drink. I'm an alcoholic, like I'm a hardcore alcoholic. Now, granted, been sober now for almost seven years, and I'm very grateful for that, but it took decades for me to get those seven years. I had so many attempts. I mean, I don't even know how many times I've tried to get sober. Like, literally like,
maybe a hundred times. And I kept relapsing and kept relapsing and kept relapsing. And then, you know, there was suicide attempts and like all this other stuff and, you know, blackouts and crawling around on the floor, throwing up and all this other stuff and breaking people's hearts. And I'm grateful that that's not my life today. And, you know, for the past seven years, I've learned a lot about myself. And I think one of the things that I've learned is that everybody's struggling. I don't care who you are. Everybody in the world struggles.
We all struggle. My job as just a member of the human race is can I be the love that I want to see in the world today? ⁓ Can I be the space that somebody can come to and share what's bothering them? So I guess that's my other caveat to your question is like, well, if I don't believe in God, how do I deal with my fears? ⁓
By getting outside myself and listening to what's going on with other people, nothing will help me more. Like if I'm really in my own depression and in my own craziness and crazy fucked up thinking.
To have somebody else come and be like, hey, do you have time to talk and listen to what they're going through, you know, it puts things in perspective for me. The other thing that really helps is I focus on my smallness. I love to focus on my smallness. meditate, like I meditate quite a bit. And when I meditate, one of the main things that I meditate on is how small and insignificant I actually am. Now that may sound like I'm dissing myself, but I'm not.
yeah, I'm just one person out of eight billion people. My life really is not that fucking important. ⁓ I mean, I'm grateful to be here and I think I'm a cool guy. I love myself today and I think we all should love ourselves. And if we don't, then that's the thing we need to work on first is learning how to love ourselves. Cause what a tragedy to be here and just get our one shot at existence. And of course,
For me, I'm an atheist, so I believe this is it. This is the only time I will ever get to experience consciousness. And I want that consciousness, I want as much of it as possible to be a consciousness where I love the person that I'm stuck with 24 hours a day. I am stuck with myself 24 hours a day, so I better start loving myself, or else my one shot at consciousness will be with somebody I hate? Fuck that! No, I want to be spending my life with somebody I love.
So that means I need to love myself first and foremost. And ⁓ it's taken me a long time to realize that. And it's taken me a long time to realize I'm allowed to love myself. It's OK for us to love ourselves. We should love ourselves. And if and if there's things we don't like about ourselves, well, we can work on them. So anyways, ⁓ yeah, when I when I ⁓ meditate, I think about my small.
And I think about how small and insignificant I am and then I think about the smallness of the earth in comparison to the huge infinite universe like the earth is just this little speck and that the universe goes on forever and ever and ever and we're just like this little speck
and maybe there's other life. I'm sure there's other life out there, but you know, it's so far away. And so, you know, we're all just kind of like here right now, these tiny little specs. And so I don't know, like when I think about how small I actually am in the big grand scheme of things, like just this microscopic blip that's here for just a not very long in the, in the big cosmic timeline.
It puts everything in perspective and like all the stuff that I'm stressed out about like, you know, I don't know money or,
political differences or my thoughts on religion or whatever like in the big grand scheme of things none of it really matters I mean You know a hundred years from now. I won't be here anymore like it'll be a whole new generation I hope there is I mean the way mankind's going sometimes I worry like well will humanity even be here a hundred years from now like I hope they are but you know I Won't I won't know cuz I won't be here. So anyways, ⁓ I like the question
I think it was a good question. ⁓ And it's, yeah, like how do we deal with fear if we don't have God? Well, I think there's, I think I answered, I gave a bunch of answers. I'm sure there's other things that I could, ⁓ I think having hobbies, like having things that we love to do, like occupying our time is also a great way to deal with fears and worries. Like I know for me, sometimes when I'm really freaked out about something, I'll go into the kitchen and I'll just start cooking.
Cooking really calms me down. ⁓ Or I'll go do yard work, or I'll clean the house, or I'll take my dogs on a bonus walk, you know, and they love that. And it seems like every single time I change my focus, new thoughts come into my head. New thoughts come into my head that make me look at things a little differently. And so, you know, I think staying busy, just like doing things that we enjoy.
A lot of times it'll like, it'll help us get the focus away from these things that are terrorizing us. And then when we start thinking about them again, we may like be able to look at them from a different angle and be like, you know what? I never thought about it this way. it's fine because I can do X, Y, and Z. And yeah, I don't need to be freaked out about this thing. it's fine. You know, talk people, share.
Don't walk around trying to solve everything on your own. Like ask for help. Yeah, all of that stuff works. All of it works. Anyways, I had all this stuff. I had like news stories, but I've already talked for like 52 minutes. ⁓ So I guess I'm just going to keep taking questions.
Why not?
Take mark. ⁓ and you want to know what? You want to know what? Lord, have mercy. Look who it is.
Well, that was my Cory calling. What am I grateful for in our house? There's so much that I'm grateful for. ⁓ I love the fact that it's a really creative house. I feel so fortunate that I get to live in a house that is full of art and full of music. ⁓ Cory has his art studio.
And he's always making these amazing paintings. He's a brilliant artist. And then he's writing novels and he's editing videos and he's doing all this creative stuff. It's like he's just creative all day long. And then I'm in the back of the house and I have my art studio.
And I have my, music studio. I'm doing music and art all day long. And then of course, you know, I have, ⁓ even the work I do for clients is creative. You know, it's a lot of it is like, problem solving for them and doing a lot of, ⁓ online design, like web design and stuff like that. and then of course I'm doing stuff like this podcast, so we have a house that we have.
Because we live out in the country, you know, I do miss the bright lights of the city and everything, but I love the fact that we live out in the country and we have space. We have space to have dogs. ⁓ So our dogs have a yard that they can run around in. you know, this house is, I mean, I have a love-hate relationship with the actual house. I do love the house.
I wish sometimes that it was in better shape. mean, it needs so much work, you guys. my God. needs, I mean, it literally needs thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of work. ⁓ there's, it's one of those houses where everywhere I look, there's like things that need to be fixed. But I mean, it's a house, it's a happy house.
I mean, it's a house with a lot of love in it. ⁓ And I don't know, I also love the fact that we have like a really comfortable place to like watch TV. And I know that sounds silly, but we work so much that our time as a family where we get to just sit down in front of the TV and like we always have like some show we're watching. Like we just watched the last show we watched was ⁓ The Walking Dead spin-off where Daryl goes to ⁓
I'm making it sound like Beverly Hills 90210, where Daryl goes to Paris, but of course in the apocalypse, and then Carol, ⁓ if you know The Walking Dead, Carol's one of my favorite characters, but she goes over and tries to rescue him and everything. so we basically were calling it Daryl and Carol's Comedy Hour, but yeah. ⁓
I will like pick a show and like that and then we'll watch it. And so every night we'll watch a different episode and, ⁓ you know, I'll make us food and, I love to cook. And so we have a really great kitchen actually. And so I love that. yeah, you know, someday I would like to live closer to things, but you know, right now we live kind of out in the middle of nowhere, you know,
We live in this little town that you have to drive through a bunch of woods to get to it. And so the road to our town is just like these windy wooded roads with like deer running across and stuff. it's so like when it gets to be the winter, I don't want to go anywhere because I'm so paranoid about hitting animals that I kind of just want to like stay in one place. So that's something I'm trying to work through. ⁓ But yeah, I do love our little.
And so thanks for calling and reminding me that I have a lot of gratitude for this house and
Yeah, this is this house is the longest house I've lived in in my adult life. I lived like a nomad for a long time. I I actually did the math of, know, of course, like my parents had a house. So I grew up in a house in New Hampshire. And when I became an adult, and I moved out on my own.
from the time I was 18 to the time I was 48 or 47, I lived in like 40 different places or something. Like I moved like 40 different times. Like I was constantly moving and then of course touring and sleeping on people's couches and stuff.
it's nice to be in one place for a while. anyways, I'm getting distracted. It's lovely to hear from you, honey. And let's see who else called.
⁓ again!
That's my last call and it's Ruben asking what my favorite breakfast cereal is. ⁓ Ruben, you're calling up every week with these wacky questions. Last week you called up and asked me what the last meal I would ever eat would be if the world was ending. So what's my favorite breakfast cereal? ⁓ I'm going to give you a really boring answer. Oatmeal. I like oatmeal.
And here's the thing, I like oatmeal and I eat it uncooked, like what's it called, mucilai or something? Like I'll just put some oats, like some oats, regular old oats, like the rolled oats, not the quick oats, but the rolled oats. I will put those in a bowl and I'll put some frozen blueberries on top of them.
And then maybe like sometimes I'll put some other stuff. I like stuff. I like stuff. I like complicated. Like I like bowls with like lots of stuff. So like maybe if I have some dried mango, I'll cut up some dried mango and I'll put it in there. But basically the base of it is just like raw oatmeal. Like it's just oats that haven't been cooked or anything. Like they're just rolled oats. get, I get them actually from the, we have a Mennonite market like, ⁓
the Mennonites, they have a market and they actually have their oats. So I buy their oats and they're lovely people. really are. See, so I don't hate religious people. I love the Mennonites. They're great. they have all this great stuff at their little store. And we go in there all the time and one of them just had a baby and she's a sweetheart. Anyways, yeah, so I don't hate religious people. Anyways, I'm getting distracted again. ⁓
So anyways, I will eat the cereal like this this bowl of cereal. But basically, it's just oats with frozen blueberries. And I eat that a lot like that's pretty much one of the like I eat that probably once a day. And I love it. It's and it's healthy. It's really good for your heart. The blueberries have antioxidants in them. And yeah.
no sugar, ⁓ and I put some, you know, either almond milk or some oat milk on it. And so, because I don't do regular milk. I never, I grew up drinking regular milk and then when I tried to drink it again and now it just tastes like syrup to me. It's like so heavy tasting to me. So I do all the other type of milks like the milk substitutes. So.
Anyways, you guys, I think that's it. mean, I had all this other stuff I was going to talk about. Look, like I'll even put it like I had notes. I had all this other stuff. I was going to talk about Kim Davis bringing her fucking stupid lawsuit to the Supreme Court. I was going to talk about all these Republicans who are kissing Donald Trump's ass. I was going to talk about the elections. I was going to talk about ⁓
the White House website. But you know what? You've heard enough. I've just been blabbing now for how long? Okay, you guys, I've been talking for an hour and three minutes. I think that's quite enough. I think we get the point. I have a bunch of thoughts. Yada yada bing bang. I will ⁓ be back next week. Please call up and leave me a voice message because I want to hear from you. I want to hear what you think.
of life of me of your own life of the universe of religion politics art music whatever leave me a voice message again danielcardier.com d a n i e l c a r t i e r dot com and then just click on podcast it's right there in the menu
right there in the menu. And then you can press the little button that says leave a voice message. And then you can just be like, hey Daniel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'll be like, my God, thanks so much for calling. That's the best message I ever got. And then I'll answer it. And then you'll be like, my God, like I'm a podcast superstar now because like you'll hear your voice on my
podcast and it'll be great like your your voice will be going all over the place like Spotify and YouTube and Apple podcasts and all the other places where podcasts you will suddenly be broadcasted everywhere because you called up my podcast so yeah and I don't care you can call up and like leave a voice message like that I don't agree with like you can
be a MAGA person. I invite everybody to call up. I don't care. I am an all-inclusive podcast and I will answer. I will respond even if you call up and start screaming at me. I'll still answer your, I'll still listen and I will respond to it. So.
All right, you guys, I'm going to go do something else now. I'm going to, I don't know what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to, you know, I might actually cook something. I might go and bake something. I might bake something. Yeah, maybe I'll bake something. All right. Love you guys.