Daniel Cartier (00:01)
Hey everybody! Life is really friggin' hard, but we just have to keep showing up. Let's start the show!
All right, 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 come on here every week and I just kind of share my thoughts on life before I start, I just want to give a plug for calling into the show. So a big part of this show, in case you've never watched it before, is that I take
Well, I don't really take calls. I listen to voice messages that people leave for me and then I respond to them and I've had some people call in saying they love the podcast and they love the fact that I'm, I don't know, a gay liberal atheist. I've had other people call in and say that they, can't believe I don't believe in God so.
Yeah, I've had some haters call in, but you know, I welcome all of it. so, if you want to call into the show and leave a voice message, I would love to hear from you. I don't care if you love what I have to say or hate what I have to say or want to rant and rave or, I don't know, show me a ton of love. I don't care. love me, hate me. I would love to hear from you anyways.
Because I'm fascinated by all of it. I'm fascinated by all the different views that people have. So I want to hear from everybody. the way you do it is you go to speakpipe.com slash there is no God and we're all going to die. Or you can just go to my website, which is danielcartier.com slash podcast. Daniel Cartier, like the jewelers.
cartier.com slash podcast. And then you just press this button and it says call the show. And you can call the show. Anyway, so enough of that. I was actually really depressed all day and then I pressed record and now I'm like,
Acting like I have all this energy. Here's the deal ⁓ I've been suffering from some severe depression lately. I don't even say that lightly. I've suffered from depression my whole life. I'll talk about it in a little bit But yeah, It's been really raking me over the coals lately and maybe some of it is seasonal. I know that
the changing of the seasons and it getting dark earlier and not as much sunlight can really affect people. So I'm gonna talk about that in a little bit, but today is November 20th. ⁓
it is the National Day of Remembrance for transgender people. it is a day to just remember all the transgender people who have been
murdered ⁓ who have been killed by people who are transphobic by people who didn't like the fact that these people were living the lives they wanted to live and so they had to kill them. And it's been a lot of people I know people I know transgender people who've been murdered and they were all beautiful people and. ⁓
if you're somebody like, if you're a MAGA person and you come on here and you want to leave some fucking comment like, well, what about this other group that got murdered or Charlie Kirk getting murdered? You know what? Go fuck yourself right now because we're not talking about that. We're talking about transgender people who get murdered. And sometimes you can have things set aside for specific groups. So that's what this is. Yes, other people get murdered too.
I will give you that. But we're not talking about other people. We're talking about transgender people right now. So you you can leave your little comments like, what about this and what about this group and what about that group? Fucking knock yourself out. But I'm remembering my transgender friends who've been murdered. And I'm grateful that there is a day where we can stop and say, hey, you know what? It's kind of fucked up that people
will kill somebody just for being transgender. And what's even more fucked up, and I didn't want this to be so negative, but it's hard not to be negative, is that ⁓ all the posts I've seen online today, every single one, people posting about honoring all the transgender people who've been murdered on the day of remembrance, the amount of hate.
the amount of hateful comments and laugh emojis. So, yeah, I'll get to those people when I get to asshole of the week, but right now I just want to remember my transgender friends for a second, if that's okay. ⁓ Yeah, I'm gonna take a moment.
It's kind of weird that a train's going by right now while I'm taking this moment of silence.
kinda perfect actually.
I live right by a train track, so...
So many amazing people.
You know, it's weird. I do art and I'm working on 10 portraits actually of LGBTQIA ⁓ people who've been murdered, killed. I'm doing a portrait of Marsha P. Johnson and ⁓ portrait of Harvey Milk, Brandon Tina. ⁓
yeah, it's going to be 10 portraits of people. ⁓ Some well-known, like the ones I just mentioned, some not as well-known, ⁓ who died at the hand of violence just for being who they were. And so, you know, it's not going to change the world, and it's certainly not going to make the hateful people less hateful, but at least I'll know that it's
one more little positive thing, know, remembering them, paying tribute to them, honoring them, honoring their memory, you know, so yeah, I'm excited to do that I don't know when they're gonna be done. A lot of my art is kind of like I throw stuff together and I make stuff out of junk, but these are actually gonna be portraits that I...
I started sketching them, so I don't know how I'm gonna finish them. I don't know if they're gonna end up being like pastel drawings or if they're gonna actually be mixed media things or collage or what, but I'll figure that out. But it's something that I've wanted to do for a while. As a lot of you know, I do a lot of art fairs and I sell stuff.
You know, like this stuff that I make. mean, like pictures of like cows and pigs and horses and stuff. you know, it's cute stuff for people to decorate their house with. Like this isn't that type of art. Like this is actually, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I'll ever even show them anywhere, but I just wanted to make those pieces. So I'm going to be working on those.
Daniel Cartier (08:10)
Well, thanks for indulging me in that little moment of silence. I know that's kind of a weird thing for a podcast to do, but I just, really felt like doing it. So yeah, let's take some calls
Let's see who called the show.
Let's listen to some voicemails, yeah, yeah, yeah. Voicemails, yeah.
Ha!
Alright.
⁓ Ian.
Daniel Cartier (11:23)
As always, wonderful to hear from you, and I love the fact that I have a guy with a accent calling into the show multiple times. That just makes my heart go all crazy. yeah, Nigel, what is his name? Nigel Farrar, I believe is his name. Farage, Farage, yes.
Yeah, he's the one right now. There's all this talk about, guess back when he was a schoolboy, he said stuff like Hitler was right and all this other stuff. That's the big news story that I've seen lately about him. Because believe it or not, I actually read up on global politics because I think we've kind of reached the point where every country affects every country. What's going on in England or in France or in...
China or Japan or Australia. I mean, it all affects everything, you know? so, yeah, the rise of Trump here, we've seen similar...
kind of fascisty. Is fascisty a word? It's not a word. But yeah, we've seen people who are emulating Trump's playbook and Trump's just emulating other playbooks from history. you know, what is the first thing Trump did when he started gaining traction in 2015? The very first thing he did,
and he did it relentlessly, was to get his base to not trust the press. That was the first thing, that's when we first heard fake news, fake news, fake news, hashtag, news, fake news. Everything was fake news. Suddenly you couldn't trust anything. As a matter of fact, I remember him even saying,
Don't listen to the media and like people throwing stuff at the press and the press getting death threats and all this other stuff. That was all Trump, and there was a reason for him doing that because if people did trust the press he wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever getting any traction. He had to get his base to not trust the press. So He could just spoon feed them whatever the fuck he wanted.
And that's what we've been the last 10 years. And out into which is really sad. But I agree with what you said at the end of your message, which is that our job is to keep showing up. I can't control what other people are gonna do. As I've said before, I broke that serenity prayer down.
many times. Now I know it's weird that an atheist is talking about the Serenity Prayer, but there are prayers that I really like. When I pray them, I'm not praying to a god. I like the message behind them. I don't need to attach some otherworldly deity to the prayer, but I will say this, know, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I can't change the fact that there's douchebags in the world.
that lie and are corrupt and try to get people to vote against their own interests and who have, completely selfish motives. And I can't change always been those type of people. There always will be those type of people. Just like I can't change the past, I can't change the future because the future is always going to be out of my reach. can't change.
You know, people's opinion, people are going to think whatever the fuck they want about me. You know, I can be a nice person. can show up and, you know, try to, I don't know, go out of my way nice person to people. you know, people could just be like, no, fuck you. I hate you. You know? And so, the second part of that prayer is courage to change the things I can.
and the wisdom to know the difference. Well, there really isn't much that I can change, because I can't change can't change the future, can't change the fact that other people are going to be who they are, can't change the weather, can't change this, can't change that. The only thing I can change is my response to what's happening right here, right now. And my attitude. That's it. That's the only agency I have, but there's so much power in that because it means that at any given moment,
I still have the power to show up and be accountable and to make my opinion known. And will it change everything in the world? Absolutely not. But at least I'm showing up. And that's what we all can do. We can continue to show up. And when millions of people or billions of people show up, it's powerful. You know, I've never seen a blizzard.
this is very deep. I'm getting very deep right now. I've never seen a blizzard shut down a city with just one snowflake. It takes trillions of snowflakes. But you know what? There's been plenty of cities that have gotten shut down by blizzards. And I actually wrote a song called Snowflake about it. talks about, you you know, when conservatives call me a snowflake,
I actually take it as a compliment at this point because, last time I checked, snow has moved mountains and it's created canyons and it's, created oceans and it's, stopped traffic. So snow is actually very powerful. So yeah, if you want to call me a snowflake, go for it. wear the term snowflake as a badge of honor at this point. So anyways.
I'm grateful that you called and I'm sorry that you're dealing with douchebags like that over in England. You are far too adorable and you have far too sexy of a voice to be dealing with douchebags like that. my hope is that, you know, that guy, I don't know, that all his political aspirations fail and that, both America and Britain and the rest of the countries in the world
wake up and realize that these idiots, don't deserve the power that they have. They really don't, you know? All their platforms are just, you know, fear. Fear and race-baiting and rage-baiting and just playing on people's worst instincts. And humanity can do better. Humanity deserves better. So anyways, let's see who else called. Who
Hmm.
thank you so much for those questions.
God, that kind of gets me emotional.
⁓ there's a lot to unpack there. Yeah, I was gay-bastard really bad. Thank you, first of all, for calling in. I appreciate it, and,
Yeah, I was gay bashed really bad. I had six guys beat the shit out of me ⁓ and ⁓ And they also beat up the guy I was on a date with a first date going on a first date with somebody it should have been a really nice time for both of us and ⁓ And it wasn't it was a horrible horrible horrible traumatic experience ⁓ one that I wouldn't wish on anybody and And it has absolutely shaped who I am
The thing I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast about the National Transgender Day of Remembrance, there's a reason why stuff like that affects me so deeply. It's because, yeah, I'm not transgender, but I am the victim of a hate crime. I mean, and that's just one thing that happened to me. You know, there's been so many other shitty things that have happened to a lot of LGBTQIA people. I know for me,
Being 56 years lived through so much stuff. I'd like to say the only time I experienced homophobia and homophobic violence was that gay bashing, but I'd be lying. So many other things have happened in my life, but certainly that was probably the most dramatic thing that happened, getting the shit kicked out of me by six guys. I still have PTSD from it, ⁓ and it is what it is.
And you bring up a lot of beautiful points because, you know, forgiveness is something we do for ourselves. know, we don't do it for the other people. We do it so we can be free. And I struggled with that for a long time. I still struggle with anger. I do have an anger problem and I know that.
Our society nowadays, like the stuff that Ian was talking about when he called in, like this far right extremist, like this toxic masculinity, like these people who want to do laugh emojis when there's like a news story about transgender people getting killed or gay people getting beat up, and they got to do their little laugh emojis and leave their little fucking comments, man. That type of stuff, it makes me see red.
Like if those people were here, like in front of me when I'm reading their comments, I don't know what I would do. Because anger is immediate. And so, what forgiveness is, it's a process. So although I have a lot of immediate anger in me when I social media and I read hateful, hurtful, awful
ugly comments from these fucking douchebags. I have to remember that I also had that same anger towards the guys who gay-bashed me and I had to really work through it. I did. Because with those guys, with those six guys, I've actually, believe it or not, come to a place of peace. And a lot of it had to do with working the 12 steps of the program that I am in.
to stay sober.
One of the things is to let go of our resentments because if I hold on to a resentment long enough, I will get drunk over it. there's a difference between anger and resentment. Anger is something we all feel. It's bright, it's red, it's quick, it flares up. But then if we're lucky, we can...
you know, let it roll past us and we can calm down and we can let it go. Anger is temporary. But resentment is anger that we don't want to let go of. Resentment, it becomes almost like a prized possession. It's like this thing that we want to keep feeling it, like this hatred we have for somebody.
It's almost like
We create a place in our heart for it and it cherished part of who we are. And I know for a long time, the anger I felt towards the guys who gay-bashed me, like it was always there. It was this part of me that I didn't want to let go of. And so I was walking around I went, if I was smiling, if I was talking to people, if I was having a good time,
somewhere in me that hatred was there and it part of whatever I was doing it was there in me it was in my heart and so
What I realized was had to get to a point where I didn't want to be lugging anger around anymore. It was a very heavy weight you know, you have this big boulder and you're just dragging it around everywhere. And that's what my hatred towards those guys was. And it wasn't helping me and it wasn't hurting them.
were long gone, I never even knew who these guys were. They never got arrested. it was dark when it happened. And when I went into the police station to try and file a report, like they showed me a bunch of mugshots. I didn't know what the fucking guys looked like. It was like pitch black. Well, it wasn't pitch black. It was just dark, So they were just like shadows and they were also kicking the shit out of me. So I was like covering my face So, ⁓
I know this is gonna sound weird, but I actually did pray for them. Because as an atheist, I did my own version of a prayer, which is more of like a wish. Like I had to send a wish out to them, and this is gonna sound weird.
But I had to send a wish out to them that they would find happiness. Because if they found happiness, a happy person would not want to beat up somebody for being gay. Only miserable people do that. A happy person would have no use to beat up somebody. Like, a happy person would be busy being happy. So if those guys found happiness, maybe...
they wouldn't beat up anymore gay people.
And you know, I know that sounds like a really simplistic thing to say about it, but it helped me move past it because what I realized was that...
whether I forgave them or not, the only person that resentment was hurting It wasn't hurting them. I like the expression, resentment is the poison we pour for somebody else but then we drink ourselves. And I do believe that's true. And I also believe resentment is the thief of joy. an atheist, this is it. If this podcast episode,
And then later on I'm cooking dinner and I slip and fall and I bust my head open and I die in a freak, I don't know, salad making accident or whatever the fuck, quesadilla making accident. Whatever I end up making for Cory and I for dinner. You know, if that's how I die, that'll be it. That'll be, finito, game over. because I don't believe in an afterlife. And again, if I'm wrong, great. Like if I get to go to heaven and fly around in a robe and,
glow in the dark or whatever the fuck people do. ⁓ Yeah, sign me up for that. That sounds awesome, but my brain doesn't work that way. It's very literal. So, you know, I kind of think that if I died in a freak quesadilla making accident later on tonight, that would be it. game over. my consciousness would end. So I think joy, running towards joy is really fucking important.
which is why all the toxicity that we have in our culture now.
breaks my heart because What a fucking waste. Like we are addicted. I don't care if it's America or England, like Ian was saying, or I'm sure like a bunch of other countries at this point, like we've become so polarized as a species. And I think, we've become addicted to hating each like red hot hate.
You know, it's not natural for people to go online and seek out news stories of people getting killed. Whether it's Charlie Kirk getting assassinated, or a transgender person, or a gay person, or a person of color. You know, and then leaving these really sad, disgusting, hurtful, hateful comments,
well they got what they deserved it's like what kind of culture is that it's sad i mean it's really sad you know and again going back to that serenity prayer i i can't change that i can't change that that's the nature of people but as the survivor of a very violent attack i know that for me
Each moment is begging me to be the love. Each moment is begging all of us to be the love that we crave, that we long so desperately to see in the world. Like each moment is begging us, begging us to be the joy and the love and the hope. Another prayer that I love, the St. Francis prayer. You know, again, I'm an I pray not praying to a god.
But I think the message behind it is so beautiful, make me a channel of peace that where there's hatred I may bring love, that where there's wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, that where there's discord I may bring harmony, that where there's error I may bring truth, that where there's doubt I may bring faith, that where there's despair I may bring hope, that where there's shadows I may bring light, where there's sadness I
may bring
I mean that's my wish for all of us, that we could aspire to be that. I know for me been times in my life where I fall so short of that. I am the fucking asshole online, telling people to go fuck themselves. I've been that guy. I've totally been that guy. I've been that guy so many fucking times. Because I get very hot headed about
Politics and I get very hot-headed when I see a bigot When I see a transphobic person leaving laugh emojis, on National Transgender Remembrance Day and they're saying those Freaks of nature got what they deserved. I mean the comments that I read today It made me want to go beat the shit out of people that that's how I was feeling
I found myself feeling fucking violent I'm not a violent person. I've never physically punched somebody. I've never done that. I'm 56 years old, I've yet to punch somebody. Which is pretty cool actually. I'm proud of that. That I've been able to restrain myself from actually punching somebody. But man, I see those type of comments
needlessly just hateful. It pisses me off. So, you know, I guess I have to work on my forgiveness of those people, you know? again, it's like I can't control how other people are going to be in this world. There's going to be people who go out of their way to be ugly and hateful and hurtful.
And for me to go down to their level and start rolling around in the mud and flinging fucking mud all over the place with them, what's that gonna fucking solve? It's not gonna solve anything. Instead, just go be loving.
You know, like what does Taylor Swift say like that the haters are gonna hate hate hate hate hate? Shake it off. I mean, I actually think that's a great message, shake it off like Don't give them the attention that they want, Let them wear themselves out It's hard to do. It's hard to ignore I guess you also asked if I could
talk to those guys, if I could talk to the guys who gay-bashed me, what would I say to them?
You know, I would ask them how they were doing. I'd want to know if they were happy I mean, man, that's a hard thing to say. I don't know if I'd ever want to see them again. But if I did, I can't really say what I would do because that's such a loaded scenario.
So instead, I'll just say what I hope would happen. I hope that by the time we were done talking, we gave each other a hug.
I could forgive them, and they could view me not as some faggot that they beat up, but as a human being. And maybe they would apologize. I don't know. I don't know how it would all work out, but if we could come to a place of love, I always talk about be the love I want to see in the world.
Could I have that happen with my gay bashers? I don't know. I don't know, but I mean... Why not aspire to love? You know, There's so much fucking hatred in the world. Ugh, God, this is not the episode I wanted to film, man. This is getting heavy, but I appreciate the call, I really do. It's beautiful call. Really beautiful call. So, I hope you call back.
Let me know what you thought of my I kind of went all over the place and I have a tendency to do that. So I apologize, but Let's see who else called.
Yes.
No.
Yes! ⁓ man! Sarah! That was the loveliest message! Good lord on a bike with a side of rice. I swear to god, that just put a huge smile on my face. Well, all these voice messages are lovely, but that was just...
You are just the sweetest, Thank you so much. That means the world to me because I gotta be honest with you, I'm doing these podcasts and a lot of times I'm just like, God, is this just stupid? that's the other thing I didn't get to. Like, I feel so stupid doing these podcasts most of the time because it's like, I just feel like I'm just some guy who's going on and on and on and on and it's like, does it even matter? But I guess it does because
It's just one more person sharing how they honestly feel. I think honesty is always going to be the way we win the fight against stupidity and corruption and all the bad things that seem to be out there. So, yeah, I think honesty is always the best policy. And so, you know, I'm just showing up and being honest. so I'm glad that it's appreciated, especially by somebody like you who
You think the world of an, my God, if you come to Nashville, definitely, we should get coffee. Or you can swing by Dickson, Tennessee on your way back. You drive right by Dickson Tennessee, because I know you probably go from Memphis to Nashville. You drive on 40. Get off in we have some amazing little restaurants. Can meet up for lunch or dinner. That would be so awesome. And Dickson's a really funky little town. ⁓ So anyways.
Enough about Dickson or Nashville or anything like that. I'm totally getting distracted by the thought of us having a lunch or dinner or coffee or something. But that will be nice. make that happen. news sources. girl. I'm kind of all over the place. I love NPR. And I'm unapologetic about it because conservatives
claim that NPR is biased, I don't see bias with NPR because all they're doing is reporting the facts. You know like when police say just the facts ma'am? That's kind of what NPR does. When they talk about Trump, they don't say anything disparaging they're not like, and then Trump did this and then Trump did that. Like they don't talk about Trump that way.
President Trump blah blah blah and they report the news The reason why it comes across as biased is because Trump is a fucking idiot and he's a Worst president we've ever had so you know
If you were on the right, like it would come across as hateful when all they're doing is just reporting what the fuck he said, And so I do love NPR. I listen to NPR every single time I'm in the car. Like, that's what I listen to to.
Daniel Cartier (36:58)
Honestly, I'll go and read stories from the Associated Press because that's kind of like base reporting. it's very middle of the road.
Granted, I read some very left-wing things like I love Mother Jones and I love news organizations like that. And those definitely can be extremely left-leaning. But as somebody who is left-leaning, of course I'm gonna relate to a lot of
It's kind of a mixed bag, I make a point of going to news sources that I don't trust because I think it's important to see how they are reporting the news because I want to understand.
So I actually do go to Fox News quite a bit and other like they all have names like with patriot in the title or you know Liberty Times or I don't know so I actually Subscribe to a lot of those because I want to see what they're sending people so I'm on a lot of mailing lists for
news sources that I absolutely do not agree with at all. But I think it's very important to see how they're reporting the news because, it's like, I can't know how to interact with people if I don't know what type of information they're getting. So for instance, with a lot of my neighbors around here in my small little town that I live in, I know a lot of them.
watch Fox News. So I want to know, like when they're hanging their Trump flags out, why are they hanging those Trump flags out? What information are they getting that would compel them to hang the Trump flag out? And so, you know, I go to Fox News
There was one day where something really big happened Trump had done something really horrendous. For the life of me, I could not tell you what it is now because he's done so many horrendous things that they all kind of blend into one big horrendous thing at this point,
Everybody was talking about it. It was front page news. Then I went to Fox News not one Mention of it, you know what they were talking about transgender athletes
Transgender athletes, my god, the transgender athletes, which, you know, we know that like, it's such a non-issue, but they've made it into the only issue, transgender athletes. Meanwhile, every single other news source is talking about this horrendous thing Donald Trump did.
for their big thing, transgender athletes. So yeah, I will go and I will read all of them. I will go to all the websites. I will go to all the Facebook pages. I will read all the comments, even though they really hurt me toxically, reading all the hateful, hurtful.
awful comments. don't want to live in denial. I don't want to live in a bubble. I want to live in reality. And the reality is there's so much misinformation out there and I want to be aware of it. I think it's important to be aware of it. So that I can point it out. Like when people start bringing up talking points, I'm prepared. Yeah, you're bringing up this talking point. Yeah, that's bullshit. That's been debunked.
You know, the thing that's crazy is a lot of this misinformation that the far right and like all these like bogus quote unquote news organizations that aren't actually reporting news, they're just right wing propaganda talking points. A quick Google search will debunk pretty much most of the bullshit they're talking about. You know?
And I think it's obviously important to stay informed. we can't be dumb. We can't be dumb. We have to be smart. It's more important than ever to be smart. appreciate the question. It really made me stop and think because
There's times, I gotta be honest with you, for everything I just said, and maybe when we have lunch we can talk about this more. So we really need to make that happen, but.
for everything I just said, man, sometimes there is this wish that I have that I could just turn it all off and just go, I don't know, find some cabin like out in the woods somewhere and just like block all of it out. part of me that would love to just do that, to just be some weird guy living way out in the woods who has no social media, has no idea what's going on in the world.
is like living like a hermit, kind of like Nell from the movie Nell. it requires so much effort now to actually just be informed, properly informed.
It requires work. And so everybody has to ask themselves, am I willing to show up and do my part to stay informed? Sounds like you are willing to do your part, which is awesome. And I know that I am Some days.
I want to just turn everything off maybe I'm not going to like move out to a cabin in the woods. I know I'm kind of veering off course with the subject, but.
I think sometimes it's okay to have a vacation from all the information. I think that it's important to give our brains a rest. Nowadays, it's become increasingly important to have some downtime from the world. So there are days where I have to shut it all off. hopefully nothing catastrophic happens because I'm not going to know about it. I need it to just exit the world for a little while.
And there's nothing wrong with that. mean, sometimes, our mental health is very important too. Anyways, sending you a ton of love and ⁓ yeah, thanks for calling in. We have a couple more calls to get to, First, I wanna do some self
All right, so I do have a little bit of self-promotion. I just wanted to say that once again, yes, if you want to call up and leave a voice message, just go to daniolcartier.com slash podcast and click on call the show and leave a voice message. Luckily, I've gotten a bunch of lovely calls now, but if you want to call and tell me that you hate this podcast, please call in. I would love to hear from you.
I would love for some MAGA people to call in and tell me what news sources they're getting their news from. You know, I would love for some MAGA people to call in and say, what do you love about Trump? I'm curious. I'm actually very curious because I find it fascinating, even though I probably would not agree with you. I would still be respectful in my response. I'm not going to be a douchebag. Trust even if you call up and say you hate me.
and you hate the fact that I'm an atheist or that I'm gay or that I am honoring my transgender friends on Transgender Remembrance Day, yeah, you can call up and let me know what you think about all that. you can call up and just like, give us some cool facts about the universe that you find fascinating or talk about
You know, movie that you just watched that you liked. You could call up and talk about I think my friend Ruben called up once and asked what my favorite breakfast cereal was. So, seriously, you can call up and, you know, say anything, Once we get to the breakfast cereal thing, like, yeah, pretty much anything goes. So, ⁓ yeah, daniolcartier.com slash podcast.
Also, while you're there, check out all my music, check out all my art. I'm always putting new artwork up for sale and all the artwork benefits animal rescue and the care of my handicapped dogs that I am really fortunate to get to spend all my days with. I don't know a lot of times because I've struggled with depression and not to get all dark, but I've struggled with, you know, suicidal thoughts most of my life and
There's been times where the one thing that kept me going was my dogs. Like I would look at them and think, if I actually ended it, what would happen to my dogs? And then I pictured them, you know, being brought to a shelter or something, and that was enough to keep me going. So, you know, I, I like to say that I owe my life to my dogs. They have kept me going during a lot of times when I didn't feel like going, especially when I was drinking back when I was drinking. So
Well, that got really deep. Anyways, yeah, go to my website. ⁓ ⁓ Go to my website and yeah, check out all the art at All Benefits Animal Rescue and the care of my handicapped dogs. We have a lot of vet bills, Anyways, now let's move on to I'm kind of a douchebag when I'm dealing with assholes.
Alright, well, yeah, the asshole of the week that I wanted to talk about again, was just all those fucking people who feel the need to leave hateful comments when they see a story about a transgender person getting murdered or a gay person getting gay-bashed.
just want to talk directly to them. So, you are an online troll and you think it's funny. You think it's just hilarious when a transgender person gets murdered. you actively have to go to pages on Facebook Instagram that cater to the LGBTQIA ⁓
Plus community. And you have to leave your fucking little comments, your hateful comments about, you know, it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. you know, if it's about a transgender person, it's like, that's a dude in a dress, you know?
Let me just say this, go fuck yourself, take your little fucking toxic masculinity fucking douchebaggy fucking self, take your little fucking hateful opinions, go buy some fucking lube at Walmart, the health aisle, lube up your fucking little transphobic or homophobic or bigoted opinions, and shove those fucking opinions up your fucking butt. That's all I needed to say. Alright.
on with the show. I don't really want to spend too much time with them, but I needed to get that off my chest. And there's a reason why. Because I grew up being bullied. And then as we've already discussed, I got the shit kicked out of me for being gay. And I've seen my transgender friends get murdered and you know, harassed. I've seen all sorts of people across the spectrum,
have to deal with racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and like all the other fucking bigoted bullshit that exists in the world. And I've just reached the point where I refuse to be fucking bullied anymore. So when I see people being assholes, I have to be the biggest fucking douchebag back to them because it's me saying, you know what? Fuck you. You're not fucking scary. You're sad. You're sad.
You're sitting in your fucking parents' basement trolling gay pages and trolling transgender pages and trolling gay news stories and trolling horrific stories about transgender people being murdered. And you're trolling posts about a beautiful remembrance day that people decided to create.
to remember people who died of violence, like died violent deaths. People, human beings. And granted, you might not understand why they needed to be the people they were. your mind, oh, a man is a man and a woman is a woman. But you probably don't know anything about biology. you don't know about X chromosomes and Y chromosomes and the fact that
Gender is much more complicated than your little feeble brain can clearly comprehend. So you know what? My advice to you, the one loving thing I will say to you, because I need to end with love. I can't fucking be a douchebag to you forever. So here's the loving thing I'm going to say to you.
After you're done shoving your stupid transphobic and homophobic and bigoted opinions up your fucking ass, slide them out, throw them away, and fucking go meet some people who you don't understand and get know them. you even talked to a transgender person? Like, expand your fucking mind. And I say that with love, because
I know for me some of the most beautiful people I've ever met, some of the bravest people I've ever met, are my transgender friends. Especially now. For them to still show up and be who they are. Under the shadow of all the fucking bullshit that Trump and all his fucking cronies and all his little yes men and all his little sycophants and all his little fucking fascist fucking wannabe hanger-ons. You know.
it's like any single time, Trump gets caught doing something horrible to America, let's just drag out, transgender people and talk about them. let's make them the problem, and not like all the fucking corruption that's actually happening. transgender people have become the ultimate scapegoat and yet, I have transgender friends.
are still showing up and being who they are. And to me, man, that takes a lot of fucking bravery. And so yeah, when I see people being total assholes about transgender people being murdered and leaving laugh emojis, yeah, I'm gonna be a fucking douchebag about it and I'm gonna call you out. And so my hope
I need to end with love. So my loving thing to you, if you're sitting in your fucking parents' basement, leaving hateful comments about transgender people, go fucking meet some transgender people and try to be as brave as them. I dare you to be as brave as them. I dare you to live that authentically. I fucking dare you. I doubt you can,
Because it's much easier to just be like everybody else and ⁓ just put down anything that's different. It's so much easier to do that. But you know what you are? You're a caricature. You're a caricature of a closed-minded person. And if that's what you're aspiring to be, well then congrats. You succeeded. But I think we should aspire to be so much more than that. should aspire to be, yeah, the love we want to see in the world. so...
The loving thing that I'm gonna say to you is like, I hope you find it in your heart at some point down the road to evolve. To evolve out of your... Your toxic masculinity security blanket that you have to fucking cling to. God, it's so important for you to be macho, isn't it? It's so fucking important. That macho thing, it's just, ⁓ God. If you're not macho enough, what are people gonna say about you? my God! Just fucking let it go, dude. Nobody gives a shit.
how macho you are seriously nobody fucking gives a shit. At all. I certainly don't. It's fucking lame. It's lame. L-A-M-E. Lame. It's fucking lame. And it's sad and it's predictable and it's not fucking interesting. So anyways, I let you go with love and to all my transgender friends, I want you to know that I fucking am inspired by you.
every day for showing up and being who you are and you know who you are. If you're friends with me, you know who you are and you know that I love you and my hope is that we can come to a place of universal peace and understanding. All right, enough of that. Let's see what's happening in the news.
Alright, so there's really only one thing to say about the news right now, and it's that Donald Trump basically said that some Democratic senators should be hung. Like, threatened death to people.
So I'm just going to read this. is from the BBC. Trump calls Democrats' message to troops, seditious behavior, punishable by death. President Donald Trump accused six Democratic lawmakers of seditious behavior, punishable by death, after they released a video urging US service members to refuse unlawful commands. This is really bad and dangerous to our country.
Their words cannot be allowed to stand. Seditious behavior from traitors.
So basically, what happened here, and I think it's really important to point this out, is
These six lawmakers were basically just saying, if a president's, commands are unlawful, they're unlawful. Like if Donald Trump commands the troops to go do something unlawful, guess what? It's unlawful. Doesn't matter if it's the president. It's unlawful. That's all they're talking about? So what he's saying actually, which I think is kind of stupid on Trump's part,
not even looking at the fact that they're talking about unlawful behavior. it's almost like he didn't even see, because Donald Trump is unlawful most of the time, I don't even think he sees the word unlawful anymore. That's the ironic part about all this. Because these six democratic lawmakers,
All they were pointing out is that if you get orders that are unlawful, you don't have to follow them. They are unlawful. You shouldn't follow them. You should not follow them if they are unlawful. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, he sees that and he's just like, well, this is bullshit. They should be hung for saying that. It's like, no, dude, you should not be giving unlawful orders to troops. I mean,
do not see the word unlawful in there. It's like, no, he doesn't. He's just thinking like, anything I say should be lawful because I said it. You see, this is a dictator's mentality. the fact that all he sees is that any order he gives, any order at all, whether it's lawful or unlawful, should be followed. And anybody suggesting otherwise,
should be hung! Like this is the thing he's like actually saying like these democratic lawmakers should be hung. It's like, no dude.
take a step back put it in reverse just don't give any fucking unlawful orders to troops i know it's really hard considering you've already like steamrolled over that and you've given them all sorts of questionable legally questionable orders you know like just having them go into cities and round up people
and sending them off to different countries and all this other stuff with no trials or anything, you So yeah, we've already kind of crossed the lawful versus unlawful bridge, but for him to go on the defensive this way, and I think it's pretty fucking crazy because...
You know, ⁓
Yeah, mean,
I don't know how that's gonna all play out, you know, this is what I was talking about earlier. I mean, the level of toxicity that we have in this culture now, this should not be normalized. Like a president actually calling for, people from the opposing party to be hung.
punishable by death. That's not the America that I grew up in. So like whether you're a liberal or a conservative or like a, fan of, Fox News or a fan of some liberal thing, I don't care what your mindset is.
That type of language from the president should bother everybody. And if it doesn't bother you, man, I don't know what frequency you're operating on because to me, I find that extremely troubling. because that is not the America that we should aspire to be. somebody pointing out to troops, hey,
if you get orders that are clearly unlawful don't follow them because they're unlawful like don't break the law don't break the law just because somebody told you to break the law you know you can do the right thing and follow the law
What's wrong with that? Why would anybody find any fault with that? I mean, that's just fucking common sense. Don't break the fucking law. know? Party of law and order, Isn't that what the right claims to be? And yet, it all goes out the window all the time. It's like, it's the same logic that made it okay for Trump to pardon all these fucking people recently, and then also pardon all the people who
Stormed our nation's capital on January 6th if you want to talk about being fucking unlawful There's some fucking unlawful bullshit right there But they all got pardoned and a bunch of them are running for office now you know so Trump can clutch his pearls and talk about you know Sentencing people to death on the other side because they had the audacity to just point out lawful versus unlawful
like it's some horrible thing that they pointed it out. But the world is watching and the world sees him doing this. And you know, I don't know. This is why it's so important that we vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. We have an election right now. We have an election right here in my district. You know, we need to take back the Senate. We need to take back Congress. We need to take back the governorships. We need to
And we certainly need to vote Trump out in a couple years because the world can't afford this anymore. We can't afford this bullshit. This is fucking crazy. This is just like fucking crazy. It's like crazy people running the asylum. So anyways, let's take some more calls, shall we?
Daniel Cartier (1:00:32)
⁓ my god! Paul!
That is my lovely friend Paul. ⁓ I've known Paul for good lord, it's been decades now. And how awesome it is to hear from you. That is just so lovely. ⁓ And yes, it would be great to have Matt on. my god, I don't know if I can get him to do it. He has called in a couple times.
Because I cajoled him. kind of twisted his arm. was like bitch I need some more people to fucking call in so call in Every single time Matt has left a voice message. It's because I asked him to I was like hey I need some more voice messages for my podcast because you know it's still kind of this fledgling podcast that nobody knows about so can you call in and leave a message and he's like good lord all right, and so then he will and he's always left really great
He's always left really great ⁓ questions for me. I think one of the ones he left was, what do I actually think of Christians? And I was like, I love Christians, progressive Christians, you know. It's not so much what somebody believes. ⁓ It's what their values are. You know, people believe all sorts of things and that's great. You know, I don't want to take that away from anybody. I don't want to take away people's faith. You know, I don't share that faith.
But I do share faith in humanity. I do share faith in people with shared values Whatever we believe in whether we believe in a certain higher power or we don't believe in any higher power And we just believe in you know higher concepts You know I think Love is a much higher concept than hate. I think honesty is a much higher concept than Dishonesty, so those are the things I can get my brain around and so when I
give my life and my will over to those higher concepts. I probably am going to be able to get along just fine with anybody who also has the same values I have, even if they believe that Jesus was the son of God, or that they believe in Allah, or Buddha, or, you know, any of the other higher powers. There's a lot of them. and I don't say that facetiously. I mean, there's there's a lot of different names for
But.
Yeah, so I think it comes down to shared values, and so it would be fun to have Matt on. I don't know if I can get him to do it. Maybe I can. Maybe he'd be into it. I don't know. ⁓ I can ask him. It never hurts to ask. I think he'd be thrilled to know that somebody wanted him to, and I think he'll be thrilled to know that I know another gay deacon from a progressive church.
That's actually very cool. feel very cool that I know not one but two openly gay deacons from very cool progressive churches and and I loved the church that Matt is a deacon of It's a great church that the guy who
Overseas it I don't know if they call him a minister or a pastor or a preacher I don't I don't know all the terminology but he's a super cool guy and he has a bunch of pride tattoos and they always have a booth at the pride festival here Which you know for a church down south To be that open and accepting down here in the Bible Belt I mean to me, I think that takes a lot of courage. So I have a lot of respect for that church and for Matt
for showing up and being open in his congregation. I'm so proud of him to the, don't know what you'd call it, the ceremony where they made him a deacon, where they deaconized him. And it was great. I actually got emotional seeing my friend accomplish this thing. I mean, was very happy for him. So as I've said many times, I don't.
hate religious people. I love everybody. I don't hate religious people. I'm so happy that people have things that give them joy. So long as what they believe doesn't infringe on other people's rights like the far right, like this Christian nationalism, to me, that's not Christianity. That's people using religion as an excuse to be bullies.
And to me there's nothing religious or spiritual about that. That's just people being assholes. So I think there's a difference between people living by the principles of what I Christianity to be. like love thy neighbor and, all that stuff. There's a big difference between that and then somebody just being an asshole, anyways, yeah, I can ask him.
Who knows? But anyways, it was lovely to hear from you It just put a big smile on my face. I hope you're doing awesome and I hope I get to see you again at some point I love following you and your family on Facebook and all the updates make me very happy. that was nice. That was really nice. I'm very lucky to have such lovely friends.
I think gratitude is another higher concept. Living a grateful life, ⁓ aspiring to gratitude. Gratitude is something that we have to work at. Nowadays, it requires some effort. here's another thing about gratitude. this is totally off topic and then I'll get to the last couple calls and then we can wind it up. But here's a cool thing about gratitude.
It's not a feeling. It is an ability. And so I can say that I'm grateful for my dogs. Like, I'm grateful for my dogs, but...
Am I actually putting that gratitude into action? Am I taking care of my dogs? Am I walking them? Am I spending quality time with them? Am I loving on them? Am I showing them a wonderful life? I doing things, you know, am I bathing them? Am I feeding them? You know, I think that if I'm just saying, I'm grateful for my dogs, but then I ignore them all the time, well, then I'm not really grateful for my dogs. You know, they're just things. And me saying,
I'm grateful for them. It's just something I'm saying to make myself feel better. No, I think when we're truly grateful for things, we show up with actions. know, like I'm grateful for democracy here in America, for the concept of it. And so I think if you're grateful for the concept of democracy, you show up and you fight for it. I'm grateful for
diversity and equality and inclusion and the different ways that people can be that are just so beautiful. And so I can be grateful for that. But then if I'm not willing to fight for it, then am I really grateful for it or am I just saying I'm grateful for it? So I think that when we put gratitude into action, it forces us to show up and be part of life and to fight for those things.
So again, like even with my friends, I'm grateful for my friends. And so am I willing to let them be who they are and to show up for them, even when they're doing things that may not be like my whole cup of tea, like, you know, religion, but like, they get to be deacon at a church. Like I want to show up for that and I want to cheer them on and I want to be the best cheerleader friend that I can be. And yes, we can also be very bitchy queens.
Yeah, a lot of Mommie Daerest quotes between Matt and I, but you know.
people with, the more we work for things, the more we're gonna appreciate them as well. So I've really worked at being a good dog dad or being a good partner or being a good friend, or if I've really worked at being a good member of the community.
showing up for people in the community and helping whenever I can. And I'm not saying this to sound good, like these are things I try to do.
man, I'm going to appreciate those things a lot more if I put some work into them. I just am, you know? And I know that today. I'm grateful that it's taken me a long time to learn those lessons. It wasn't something I knew when I was like a teenager. these are things we need to learn by just living, you know? And so that's why,
When I see all this hate online, and I need to remember this because I can fall prey to it, like I'll see that the haters online and I get down there in the mud with them and I just want to fucking slinging insults back and forth. ⁓ I need to remember that those people are operating on
They're not operating from a place of gratitude, first of all. They're operating from a place of sadness, I think. I don't think that, that's not happy people. That's not, you're a happy person. Just like I said, like I had to forgive my gay bashers and hope that they had found happiness because if they had found happiness, they wouldn't want to go out and beat up gay people because a happy person wouldn't want to do that. They'd be too busy.
being grateful and experiencing joy in life. that is my wish for everybody. Everybody is that they find true happiness and true joy because if they do, they're to be too busy being happy and being joyful to like fucking waste time being hateful and evil and awful you know? A happy person, a truly joyful person is not
needlessly mean to people. So when I see people who are just like online, and I've been that person too, I've been very miserable certain times in my life. Man, after the last election, when Donald Trump won again, and I was just so pissed off, and I was going onto Facebook every day looking for fights. I mean, I was like one of those guys who, you know those guys who like,
When they go out to a bar, they're looking to get in a fight, like that's what they want to do. I want to go out and fucking get drunk and bust heads. That's kind of how I was. I was like going onto social media and I was purposely going to like these pages, you know, filled with Trump supporters and I was like picking fights with them because I wasn't a happy person at the time. And I'm still not happy, don't get me wrong. There's so much fucked up stuff happening in the world right now and Donald Trump
That whole administration is like a demented clown car driving off a fucking cliff and bursting into flames. I mean, it is just like the worst fucking presidency ever. So there is a lot to be justifiably angry about.
But can I have that anger and still be a joyful person? That's the thing. Can I have those feelings coexist with each other? And that's one of the reasons why I'm doing this podcast is you're basically watching me go to therapy. I mean, this is like me in therapy. This is like, you know, I don't see a therapist. Maybe I should. But like, this is kind of how I work through the desire to be the love I want to see in the world.
and the very red-hot anger that feel towards some people, how I can, I don't know, man, like have all those things come together and come to a place of peace with all of it. It is not easy. Anyways, what was I talking about? Man, I got really sidetracked. You guys, I don't know. I don't know where that all came from. because I was talking about gratitude. Anyways, I'll shut up right now. I'll take the last couple calls. How's that?
And you know what? If that was just a bunch of blabbing, you don't have to listen to it. You don't have to listen to this fucking podcast. If you are listening to it and you've gotten this far in the podcast, I have to just assume that it's interesting to you. So thank you for still being here. All right. What else?
it looks like my significant other Corey called in. All right, let's see what he has to say.
Have fun with your podcast. ⁓ Well, honey, that's a great question. A couple of things that I've let go of. One of the things is destiny. And I've talked about this, and it's one of the reasons why I'm an atheist, because when I still was kind of on the fence about believing in a higher power and I was one of those vague people. I mean, I grew up in the Catholic church. And so when I was little, I did believe in Jesus and all that stuff. And then
When I got older, started questioning everything then for a couple was basically one of those loosey goosey type of things where it was like, well, I'm not religious. I'm spiritual. And I believe that there's something out there. But I don't know what it's called. And so I kind of was holding onto this illusion of a higher power.
You know, I would have all these people talking about, ⁓ you're so talented. You're so talented. Like they would like listen to me sing or they would see me, performing or putting on these shows or they'd hear my music and they'd be like, my God, you're so amazing. You're so amazing. It's just a matter of time. It's destiny. It's destiny. You're destined to be famous. And so I heard all this growing up and I heard it a lot.
And then I even had people like Elton John, you know, sign me to his record label. And then they actually did try to make me famous. Like they sunk millions of dollars into trying to make me famous. so, kind of had this attitude that it was just a matter of time. because all these people were telling me it was destiny. So surely, any moment, was going to be some time in my life where I would get to be
the thing that I always wanted to be, which was like this famous rock star. And you know, it never happened. I mean, they certainly tried, but it never happened. And so as somebody who still kind of believed in God, it actually made me pissed off because it was like, I would see these people who were just like hideous people, these corrupt
you know, billionaires and these alt-right people who were spreading all this hate and making millions of dollars doing it. just these horrible people, Like people like Donald Trump, bankrupting businesses and then... ⁓
not paying people and then still going on to be worth billions of dollars. And then here I was like this guy who, I I thought I was a nice person and clearly I had talent. you know, I know that I have talent for singing. I hear my music. think it's good music, you know? So, ⁓ when it didn't happen, I just thought like God had it out for me.
To me, letting go of all that, that illusion of a higher power, for me it actually
brings me a lot of peace because
I can let go of the whole concept of there's this god and he's going to single this one person out for and fortune and all this other stuff, even like horrible don't really seem to have any redeeming values at all or qualities. And then on the other side, there's some child starving and it's like, wow, you're going to starve to death. Sorry, kid.
To think that there's some God overseeing all to me, that just was not a good feeling. It just made me
I would rather think that it was all just random chaos theory is a much more loving theory to me because when I take God out of the equation and just view it as all being random,
I understand that some of the comfort might get taken out, but for me, it actually makes the world a lot more understandable because I don't need to start thinking like, well, why did God do this and why did God do that? I can let go of all that and I can just be like, you know, no, shit happens. To me, believe it or not, one of the most spiritual expressions is shit happens. Shit happens. Sometimes it's good shit.
Sometimes it's bad shit, but shit happens. Or like that's the way the fucking cookie crumbles And also the other illusion that I let go of was my importance. I'm not important. I'm just one person out of eight billion people. My needs are more important in the big grand scheme of things than anybody else's.
My hopes and dreams are no more important than anybody else's. Everybody has hopes. Everybody has dreams. Everybody has things they want to see happen. Everybody has things that broke their heart. Everybody's heart is going to be broken at some point. And everybody's going to experience loss and sadness and death and were all born, we were all defenseless babies at one point and we will all die. We will all at some point...
not exist. you know, so I look at that and it makes me realize that my life isn't more important than anybody else's. It's not. It's just one life out of eight billion people. However,
I can still take this very insignificant life and I can try to do some good with it. You know, and just try to like get my ego out of the way. humans, know, when we start doing that self-important thing where our needs are the most important needs and our needs are life or death and
You know, it's like that's where we fall into trouble because we're really, you know, our lives are really just fleeting. It's so fleeting. Life is so fleeting. Like in the big grand scheme of things, the world's been here for 4.6 billion years. It's probably going to be here for another, I think they said 7.59 billion years. I think that's the timeline. And then the sun's finally going to, absorb the earth and vaporize it. The sun will expand
And then really it will be like we were never here. Like we'll just get absorbed into the sun and that the whole earth will become particles basically. That will happen. that is what's actually going to happen. And, you know, so we're here now and, you know, if we stop taking ourselves so seriously you know, if I can just be a friend among friend and a
a neighbor among neighbors, a worker among workers, and just try to do my part. Seems like when I stop thinking...
that my is like the most important life in the world and just start viewing myself as one person out of eight billion people. It makes me realize that
Nobody really fucking gives a shit. in a good way. it's like if we stop taking ourselves so seriously and just focus on doing the next right thing each day, life gets really simple, you know, and we're not going to do everything perfectly. we're not, we're not supposed to, we're humans. We're not a perfect species at all. So I don't know. That was kind of all over the place, but
So I guess to wrap that question up, letting go of ⁓ the concept of destiny and then also just letting go of the illusion that my life is really, you know, super duper important. It's not. It's just one life out of eight billion people and that, my job is to not make it a bigger deal than it really is and to just try to just focus on being the best version of me that I can be each day.
You know, and just to also put it in perspective, I'm just one person out of eight billion people and can stop worrying about what people think of me too. That's the other part of it. we become right sized, other people's opinions of us don't really matter anymore because you know, at the end of the day, this is all temporary. Who gives a shit what people think of us? Who cares?
You know, so some people don't like me because I'm a gay liberal atheist living in the Bible Belt. And whatever other reason, like they may not like my music or they may not like my art or they may hate my tattoos. I had one guy once tell me that my tattoos were fucking gay and I'm like, well thanks. Good, because I am gay. So I'm glad my tattoos look gay to you and apparently it's working, know. Thank you, guess. He meant it as an insult and I was like, okay, you do realize that
Telling a gay person that they look gay is not an insult. To me, why would it be an insult? There's nothing insulting about being gay. I'm proud of being gay. So thank you for noticing. You know, it's like, when I approach life that way, you know, I can be happy at least. Anyways, I don't know. That was a bunch of rambling on my part. Let's see. I have one more call.
Yes you are.
First of all, thank you for calling, Daniel. ⁓ What is this fucking voice you're doing? It's like, what are you fucking Columbo? Like, hey, Daniel, it's you, and I'm calling you. Like, what the fuck is that voice? my god. It's fucking ridiculous. ⁓ Well, thank you for calling, Daniel. It's nice to hear from you. Yeah.
So what's going on with me? Yeah, I've been depressed, you know, and I know you are with me 24 hours a day, so you see it. You see that I've been dealing with a lot of trying to navigate, you know, this whole year, the Trump administration has really, I think, been an extremely abusive year for people's psyche. I think that we all feel a little bruised and battered from the barrage of bullshit that we have to
Yeah, it's like every day. It's non-stop. I gotta be honest with you. One of the reasons why and you know because you're with me 24 hours a day You are me and you called into the show. So I'm talking directly to you. Yeah ⁓ It's gotten to the point like even doing this podcast has been difficult because like the in the news segment I don't even know which news story to choose because there's so many to choose from the asshole of the week segment
fucking take your pick. There's like a zillion assholes to choose from. The world is full of toxic fucking bullshit, more than ever. as I said, think earlier in this podcast, and I know I mentioned it in the last podcast, our culture, seems like we've become addicted to hating one another. It's we want to hate each other. We really want to.
And I know I have to fight that urge to hate people. Like I find myself wanting to hate people and it's not gonna do any good. It's not gonna do any good. Me hating people, it's not gonna fucking do any good. So this podcast, seems like every single time we, you and me come on here and do this podcast, it seems like I'm always reminding myself of a couple basic tenets.
One of them being that it is my job to be the love I want to see in the world. I have to remind myself of that all the time. And yes, I've been very depressed. I've been very depressed. And you know, I've even had some fleeting, like, what's the point of living type of thoughts recently. ⁓ Cory will tell me a joke and make me laugh. Or have a really fun conversation with my friend, Matt.
I'll go to a meeting see somebody, celebrate another year of sobriety or I will just lay on the floor with my dogs and cuddle with them. And suddenly it all makes sense. It all makes sense. So, you know, thank you for calling in and expressing concern, but we are fine. We are fine. Um, and, uh, feel free to call back anytime and
you know, ask how we're doing, I will always tell you. And yeah. But thanks for calling and thanks for your concern. But we are going to continue doing this podcast because I think it's important. think it's important to express this. you know, from what we could tell, we just got a bunch of wonderful phone calls from people who seem to appreciate it. So, yeah, let's just keep doing it.
And if it ever gets to be too much, we can stop. Anyways, all right. Now back to the people listening. ⁓ Thank you for listening to this podcast. has been a very all over the place episode, and I'm not going to apologize for it because you know what? It's a friggin podcast. I'm not like hearing cancer or anything like that. This is literally just some guy sharing his thoughts on the world.
but I appreciate you stopping by and I love the heck out of all of you people and and yeah if you want to call in please do just go to danielcartier.com slash podcast daniel cartier slash pod
and then click on the little button that says call the show and then you can leave a voice message and I can respond to it and it'll be really special. ⁓ I love you guys and I'm wishing you a safe week and I will see you next week and I'm sure I will have a lot more to say because it seems like there's always things happening in this crazy world and so I don't think we're gonna run out of things to talk about anytime soon. Alright, love you guys.