Danny Rensch Chess, Cults & the Game of Life

(0:03 - 0:26) Can you pronounce your last name for me real quick? It's normal Wrench, just felt weird, just like the W, but just yeah, just weird spelling. Sweet, let's go. Denny Wrench is an international chess master, published author, and chief chess officer at Chess.com. After a successful scholastic chess career, Denny joined Chess.com as a co-founder in 2009. (0:27 - 0:47) He directs the company's content, media partnerships, and professional chess events. He's an accomplished commentator and broadcaster, which he used to establish Chess.com's streaming and creator programs. He has channeled his lifelong passion for playing and teaching chess to advance Chess.com's mission of growing the game and helping people enjoy their lives through chess. (0:47 - 1:00) With over 225 million registered users, Chess.com is the leading platform for playing and learning chess. Denny, welcome to Here for the Truth, man. Thank you for having me, guys. (1:01 - 1:04) Grateful to be here. You caught me right as I was taking a sip of coffee. Sorry for that. (1:05 - 1:17) That's all right, that's all right. Pleasure's all ours, man. One way we always like to kick off these podcasts with first-time guests is we really kind of want to get deep and extrapolate on your personal hero's journey a little bit. (1:18 - 1:40) So wherever you feel called to dive in on some of the major catalyzing rites of passage in your life that led you down this path of being, I guess, so devoted and such an advocate to the game of chess. Yeah, well, big question. I will try to maybe not make it too long of an answer. (1:41 - 1:46) You also did write a book. You did write a book about this, too. So people can get that book after this. (1:46 - 1:53) Yeah, but we're not here to promote the book. We're here to have a good conversation. And I would say that the book does have a lot. (1:54 - 2:32) I'll start with the phrase, TLDR, too long didn't read my memoir. Here's the version of that answer, which is I learned to play chess when I was nine. But the unique part of my story and the reason I wrote a book, or at least, I guess, the reason I was asked to write a book was because if we go backwards to forwards, co-founder of Chess.com, a guy who oversees, in many ways, the growth of the global chess community, at least as it's been in the last couple of decades, as there's been a digital revolution. (2:32 - 2:55) There's been just a massive, I think we have changed people's expectations for what chess can be in the modern era. It is played more globally than people probably ever thought it could be. And one of the guys who was a big part of that, I guess myself, is only there because he learned to play chess while being raised in a cult. (2:55 - 3:31) And he was taken away from his mom by a cult leader who was chess obsessed. And ultimately, that path, which as weird as that sounds, probably destroyed my chess playing career, but also put me on a path where I was right where I needed to be as the internet, as we know it, was happening. And so I was sort of picking up the pieces of my life at the time and my very young and barely held together marriage and the remnants of a spiritual collective that was sort of imploding from within. (3:32 - 3:47) I was lucky enough to pivot the idea of being a chess player into being a chess businessman. And so, again, those are like the really high level beats that we can dive into any of them. I know that that is kind of a thing that sounds like a movie. (3:47 - 4:13) And that's why I was lucky enough that Hachette was like, hey, we're going to write you a check to tell your story because it kind of writes itself when you say, wait a second, the guy who's leading the chess world is only there because he was abducted and taken away from his mom by a chess obsessed cult leader. Where do I sign up? And that is that is literally my story. So I'd love to double click and zoom in on that story, man, if you feel cool, especially regarding, you know, this kind of cult that you were raised in. (4:13 - 4:52) And some of them were nuances around what that experience was like. Yeah, so the the next questions come, well, how could something like that happen? How could you be taken away from your mom? What sort of justifies that action? And what is what is sort of the framework required for such a play to take place? Right. And I'm glad you asked that, because one of the things that as I explained in the book, but also have been explaining, I think, in even more detail going well past whatever I was able to to get within the word count of the book, you know, the the unique belief system that was the Church of Immortal Consciousness. (4:52 - 5:21) So that was the name of the of the church. Church of Immortal Consciousness had a lot of spiritual underpinnings that before we get into how those underpinnings may have been weaponized or not used appropriately, given that I have I have come to name it as a cult, which took me many, many years by itself. And anyone who was ever raised in a cult will know what I'm talking about, that this was not a this isn't something you just wake up one day and realize, like, oh, this has been a cult the whole time. (5:21 - 5:28) And all of these things really didn't make sense. And this behavior was never OK. That's really not how it goes, or at least that wasn't my experience. (5:29 - 6:15) And so to get into what the Church of Immortal Consciousness believed in and what sort of seeds had to be planted to allow that to go down, here's what I would say. The Church of Immortal Consciousness fundamentally believed that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience, not physical beings trying to remember that we have a soul. Sounds pretty good, right? Nothing too, you know, out there in terms of at least what I would say in terms of the idea that, you know, there maybe is life after death, maybe consciousness is fundamental, whatever it is you want to go into the idea that that you have a soul or that maybe you actually are a spiritual being first and foremost, nothing to, you know, at least not, it sounds pretty benign. (6:17 - 7:04) Then what ends up happening from there is you start to get into some of the specifics of the teachings. So if we are spiritual beings having a physical experience, then fundamentally biology and the embodiment you have chosen is more temporary than your ultimate self, right? So now you're in a belief system where we practice this and believe that in general we were here to learn lessons from others. Everyone to some degree is a mirror and or reflection or, you know, call them some sort of tiny Buddha or Christ handpicked by you as the creator of the universe to become the best version of yourself and that when you are embracing that the world is sort of a play and that your spiritual being is here for some sort of bigger purpose to not just to learn lessons but to maybe achieve a purpose. (7:06 - 7:21) Again, I would argue or at least I have come to be in a world now where I have worked very hard not to throw the baby out with the bathwater in my own views. I don't personally believe that anything I've said so far could potentially be good for someone. We all want to believe we have meaning. (7:21 - 7:56) We all want to believe that there is a chance for us to have purpose and maybe this idea that there's something bigger than just one embodiment is okay. But then what ends up happening in this group is if your soul is older than your body, a lot of rules can quickly go out the window. For example, one of the concepts of soulmates in the group was this term called like vibration which the idea was that everyone is emanating from the same center source of the universe and we are all moving back toward our center core on vibrations that have emanated out and pull back in. (7:56 - 8:30) Kind of like expansion and contraction, the laws of the universe. Again, sounds interesting, right? But in the idea that you have a like vibration, that soul connection is more important than a body connection and so if your current relationship may not be working out, it might be because you're actually not supposed to be with that person. You should have a different like vibration which may be okay but then it can also be a justification for much older men marrying younger women because their souls are much older than their body, right? In terms of how that might look. (8:30 - 8:47) So obviously, I was planting a lot of seeds here to get into some of the structures that went down. So my dad actually left my mom and married the oldest daughter of Stephen and Trina Camp who were the leaders of this group and my dad was 38. She was 19 at the time. (8:47 - 9:05) A pretty big thing to do and he wasn't the only one to kind of engage in this kind of idea that he had a different like vibration than the woman that he came to the group with which was my mom. So Steve Wrench, my father, Debbie Sampson, my mom, they came to the collective together. They divorced. (9:06 - 9:51) My dad marries a younger woman under the auspices of like vibration and the next big thing to appreciate, so like vibration is a core premise based on this spiritual belief and then purpose is a core premise which is that your soul has a purpose on the planet. That you are here to achieve a purpose and that that actually is more important than any of these biological relationships that have sort of been set up for you, right? And so framing a little bit of the fact that my mom and I were kind of at the bottom of the totem pole in this group which the group also very openly practiced like hierarchy and actually you would rank people. Everyone knew kind of where they stood in relation to like the spiritualness of their status. (9:52 - 1:45:11) My mom and I were very much on the bottom. My dad was now married to the daughter of Stephen and Trina Camp and he was the number two in the collective as far as rankings go just behind the leader of the collective, Stephen Camp. But then I learned how to play chess so we were sort of on the bottom of the totem pole but I learned how to play chess one summer the summer of 1995 and I got really good at it really really fast and what became a game was very quickly ordained as my purpose as my spiritual reason for being on the planet and so the seeds I have planted as long-winded as that answer may have sounded and you know as we go I'll maybe try to be a little more succinct if you're like no no let's just ask the answer the specific question but I figure this is helpful because this is the initial framework it's a little bit easier to dive in and out of the specific so we've got this like vibration framework you are a spiritual being having a physical experience you are a spiritual being having a physical experience in the purpose bucket now my purpose has been ordained as chess and so already at the age of 11 I was I was one of the top chess players in the country in just a couple years I had become an all-american I was I was on path to breaking records and Stephen Camp who I have mentioned briefly now who's the leader of the collective along with Trina Camp he's he's very much involved in my chess like has basically become like my dad right he's very very excited not just for my personal chess but we've started now a broader chess team within within the the the commune within the community the the cult and so this young chess team is experiencing a lot of success I'm one of the I'm the best player but there's a lot of very good players and we're all doing very well and we end up in a spot where my mom's relationship with me was sort of put under the microscope anytime I wasn't doing well at chess under the idea that hey like are you standing in the way of this kid's spiritual purpose do you think you're enlightened enough to support this type of calling like he could change the world in terms of you know in terms of bringing our teaching to the planet if he becomes the world chess champion or or a great chess player and so I was also being sort of you know indoctrinated with this as well and we ended up in a spot where my mom and I were both sort of on board with this idea that my spiritual purpose came before our relationship and you know for again for TLDR reasons for too long didn't read versions of the memoir essentially this all came you know down when when Stephen Camp kind of pulled the trigger and basically said hey we're taking Danny away from Debbie and he's going to go live with his dad in Marlowe but I didn't know my dad at all in fact I wasn't even allowed to consider my dad my father because that would have been considered a sin in the teaching because that would have been a biological claim not a spiritual claim so I had my whole life been told one I didn't even know my dad was my dad until I was like seven or eight years old then I was told don't ever think about him as your father because that would be spiritual lust literally lusting after like the spiritual hierarchy which I was not a part of because I'm on the bottom of the totem pole but then I get really good at chess and it's like actually we're gonna have you go live with your dad in Marlowe which was sort of used as the justification to take me away from my mom but I was very quickly sent to live alone in the valley as we called it because this whole group is is in Tonto Village Arizona which is a very small suburb outside of Payson Arizona and so I was sort of orphaned in broad daylight of the collective with Stephen Camp as my acting parent my dad in Marlowe as like my claimed pretend parents not allowed to talk to my mom and I spent my entire adolescence and teenage years being a top chess player who traveled the world that many saw as one of the best young talents in the country but actually an orphaned kid in the middle of a of a cult who had been taken away from his mom and one of the craziest things that happened then I'll be quiet and let you ask another question was that I had already become an all-american with the last name Daniel Gordon Danny Gordon and so I think I'm still like maybe the only all-american in history to change their name after already having achieved like some sort of like status in chess which definitely took a lot of people in the chess world by surprise and caused some double takes but um you know no one knew enough to double click hard enough and figure out what was really going on but but okay so I've given you a basic framework of what is a pretty crazy childhood again without getting into even more of some of the some of the rated r details which I'm sure we can do if you if you want yeah yeah well um well the Gordon name came because your mom married someone someone else that's where that name comes from yeah um well real real real quickly can you talk a little bit about because in the book you you reference the channel that Trina channeled Duran yes yes can you talk a little bit past that no can you talk a little bit about that yeah sorry um this is a lot to get into um but so um we described the fundamental belief system as you are a spiritual being having a physical experience two major concepts that kind of governed the teaching were you have a like vibration our term for soulmate you you are using this relationship as a tool to move back toward your higher self and you have a purpose your purpose is your reason for being the planet which is ultimately also a tool not just for you to help the world but for you to learn your lessons so these are the two major things where did this teaching come from this teaching came from a named Dr. Paul Balderran who spoke through Trina Camp so I definitely skipped past the major foundings of the collective so thank you for calling me out on that which is that this group came together initially because Trina Camp herself was a trance medium a phenomena mediumship for anyone in that world you will know that there are differences between how people would describe themselves as psychics people who would describe themselves as channelers and then people who would describe themselves as phenomena or even the term dead trance medium and a dead trance medium is someone who fully leaves their body and are used as a voice for this other entity to speak through there are there are people who claim to have this type of practice right as a phenomena medium or a dead trance medium Trina would meditate in a dark room sometimes we would sing music um sometimes you would just sort of you know be there and and kind of kind of wait but at some point Trina's voice would change and she would be speaking with the voice of Dr. Duran which had a slightly different accent and and and a different sort of approach to to conversation um and I grew up in this I grew up in trance circles this was just was second nature to me right there was nothing about um this experience that was that was necessarily foreign uh really um but Dr. Duran's teachings um while there are sub bullets of everything right any any you know you get the high the high level of a teaching and then there are ways that that is practiced by the people within the group on a daily basis right sort of the sub bullets of the main bullets um but as far as how the the collective went Trina Camp was a trance medium and her and Steven were traveling uh the world actually for many years before they decided to start the group um and there's all kinds of debates about this from their own children to early early members of the of the church um it's not something I get into too much detail in the book because because it wasn't my experience and also like I only kind of know from hearsay I think there are some that would say that um it truly was a bit of a practical thing that they had been traveling a ton and that um their initial intention was just for people to come to them to hear Duran because they were trying to raise their kids and have a little bit of a different life and then there are those that say you know the intentionality was there all along and that the idea of starting a a group um I don't think anyone starts out to say I'm starting a cult I think their idea of starting a group was that people would come and that they would financially merge with them and that they would basically set up the structure that allowed them to to govern and have massive say so in power over a bunch of people's lives right what I do know is that Steven and Trina Camp and you can look this up on the internet people will you can google them um she tranced in a courtroom she tranced on national television there are there are lots of different records of what she was doing in the 70s and early 80s at this time um but when they started the group initially in Mesa Arizona and then eventually it relocated to Tunnel Village Arizona that is when my parents and a lot of the earliest sort of joining members moved to Arizona and my mom and dad had heard Duran I think they first heard Duran in LA at a trance circle um again Steven and Trina had had sort of been traveling uh at least the country um and so yeah that was that was what the collective was founded on this idea that you have a phenomena medium who is delivering messages from a spirit that have never really been heard before and it's pretty out there in terms of awesomeness at least that would be what my mom would say in terms of how she felt about it um and so a lot of people packed up and moved and were willing to give up their not just their money but give up their lives to some degree in service of and in pursuit of their best selves right and um again I'm describing it in its most objective kind of benign sense without even getting into like okay well you know why do people join cults what is missing in their life what are they not able to see at the time how can someone not understand that what they were doing was already signing up for a term I've used many times a covert contract where you you sign something you don't even know you're signing in terms of giving your agency away and that your relationship with God your relationship with evolving toward your higher self now is really in the hands of someone else right and they are the ones who are ultimately judging and deciding whether you are spiritually yeah you know up to snuff right and I think there's obviously a lot of conversation to get into in terms of people's relationship with a divine with any type of religion in terms of when those types of things you know can happen I think I think in a lot of cases but but yeah so that was the fundamental reason for the group to start was that people came to hear Dr. Duran speak through Trina um and I was a part of a generation of people who were born into this group right I was born in 1985 I would say that I was kind of around the first generation of kids within a couple years who knew nothing else who were literally born into the community thank you so much man really appreciate the detail here yeah we've hosted previously on this podcast uh Mark the sensei who became one of the high up members of the Nixxiom cults an incredible filmmaker we went into the psychology of cults a fair bit in that episode which is an incredible one for people to check out a couple questions that came up for me was this Dr. Duran a real previous living person that she was channeling and how did you eventually exonerate from the cults like what was the collapse and the separation like yeah um so the claim was that Dr. Duran was real that he lived in the 15th century for you know somewhere in the mid 1400s um that he was a doctor in in um the kind of uk england sort of um area england ireland sky i i don't know exactly um Trina also tranced other spirits um there were other voices and spirits and messages um there was there was a trance uh she changed the spirit named flying eagle who was a an indigenous native american um there was there was a trance um there were chances with others but Dr. Duran became like the main and only spirit and it was his teachings that the that the group was sort of founded on um and so the again there's like there's two discussions right there's like what was the claim Dr. Duran was claimed to be a real person in the 14th century these were his teachings and then there's the question of what do i believe now and we can get into that in a little bit if we want to as far as my experience of what went down where do i land ultimately if you want to ask those questions um you know i think there's there's there's there's a bigger discussion regarding that but in regards to the the cult as far as one of the things i i explained in the book is that my perspective was less that the that the cult fell apart and or sorry it was less that i escaped and it was more that it fell apart and what i mean by that is like i think as different things happened in my life um i know your osmos has has has read the book so ultimately as i as i healed my relationship with my mom which again we're doing the tldr versions here of just how crazy traumatic that was and and and how long it took i did i was estranged and taken from my mom i didn't speak to her for 10 years which is crazy to think that you could be living in the same sort of group and that that would go down there were all kinds of things that started happening in the group um it was it was literally turf wars people were turning on each other because of the things that tend to drive the worst of human behavior always which is money power and sex right so fundamentally i would say that disagreements turf wars bad marriages bad divorces inheritance that was coming in and people like i'm getting inheritance and now i don't want to give the money away like the kind of shit you would imagine that might go down when when the real world starts to hit on a group that was based on a lot of kind of idealistic bubbles started to happen you know when you when you do have your kids grow up often you end up realizing you maybe don't want the same life for them you do look at money differently if you if you have more of it than others these are kind of basic human things like marriages do break down and what happens in those dynamics where both are still wanting to be loyal to duran but there's but there's weird stuff going on in pecking order and and and and unfortunately a lot of i would say toxic people who weren't weren't weren't the models of how to how to handle divorces and make the kids feel good about it that's what i'll say right so you have a lot of stuff going down the collective basically starts to implode on itself and i think my perspective of it was as i healed my relationship with my mom and kind of came to terms with this incredible trauma we had been through my mom then you know the very sad twist ending is i i spent years estranged from her and then um at when i was when i was 26 and and she was 64 my mom had a massive stroke and passed away very quickly so suddenly here i go from not having a relationship with my mom having the grief and the pain that comes from making sense of a lifetime of trauma in a cult that kind of justified this and then she dies tragically and what i didn't see was the type of support from the leadership of the collective and people that that maybe you kind of think would be there and so my perspective was i feel like i had a very clear sense of this was not all it was cracked up to be even while i was living in it right i i think i used the term in the book that i found myself living in the eye of a hurricane right which is like the eye is supposed to be the calmest part of the storm but you're very aware that you're in a storm you know what i mean and so it was like i came to terms with or was trying to come to terms with my own life make my marriage work raise my very young kids i had started having kids very young because that's also something that was encouraged in the group and so my perspective was that it probably wasn't even till i moved to utah like six years ago and really found myself in a new and safe environment i mean i was still having panic attacks upwards of just a few years ago i mean i i i have i have and will be working on my my mental health and and and how i handle stress and and what triggers my my neurosynapses that are very you know traumatized from from things you know i would say that i'm still i have still been dealing with the remnants of this group falling apart i guess that's my answer right and so it wasn't like i woke up in the middle of midnight and was like i gotta get out of here although there were some people who had that experience jill just like there actually were some people who woke up and literally left in the middle of the night and you woke up the next day and were like oh man um i won't say her but that woman just left last night she just took her kids and left um and so there were things like that that happened but it was those were much fewer and far between i think most people were around for what ultimately was sort of the implosion of the group not the like escape of the group hopefully that makes sense yeah you talk about you talk about in the book too that like that moment when you were taken away from your mother acted as like this explosion that other other mothers were like whoa yeah if this could happen to yeah to you then like they could just take our kids away and that acted as a bit of a catalyst for people to maybe you know think about things differently or leave the collective um i'm glad you brought that up because it yeah so we'll bring it back now to kind of the initial frameworks of you are a spiritual being having a physical experience okay like you know we can get into like goodness of that or whatever you have a vibration okay i think a lot of people who are in monogamous relationships or trying to make a marriage work and get behind that wanting to believe they have a soulmate or they're making it work right i kind of go back to it every time because my brain is always processing where did the good go bad so it's like spiritual being having a physical experience like vibration relationship the idea that you're trying to make something work as a means to like the best version of yourself in in compromise and connection and love and all these things you have a purpose but what you also have is a like vibration family and a like vibration uh experience meaning there are people in like your soul pod or your soul group right because if you think about the idea if like vibration is is built on this concept that as we all go back toward the center of oneness we are all merging slowly with others and so you start to have lifetimes and you start to have experiences with the same types of people the same types of souls and you have this moment of we are all going back towards something so yes there's an ultimate like vibration the one person i will be with before we before we dive back into the cosmic sea of the universe um but there's also like vibration groups and so if you have a like vibration family the idea would be that they are they are the best family for you to become your best self well now on to this point about children part of what was justified through my relationship with my mom was this idea well maybe she's not my vibration mother maybe she's not my spiritual mother in all time and space and while that had been like said many times to different kids and and families it had been used to you know maybe at its healthiest help them work out a conflict they were having but at its least healthiest it allowed you know steven and trina to sort of be the parents of everyone and to kind of relationships and so um that had been used but most of the time it was with older kids there had never been like an outright this kid is being taken from his mom because like she's not his spiritual mom and so to your point when that actually happened with me and my mom it literally and again this i was told later by a woman who's a very good friend of my mom who i i won't say her name here but she lived in the collective for many years she actually left the collective earlier than my mom did before my mom had her had her stroke and passed um but she was very close to my mom when i was taken away in fact they lived in the same house um and and she was like it was like a bomb went off literally when you were taken from your mom for all the single women who by the way had been left by their husbands under the guide of like vibration and had often married younger younger women not always but often and they were single women living in a collective in some ways sort of trapped by the infrastructure because of their you know your inability to get out and you're sort of stuck in this world hoping you get a new like vibration but the idea that your kids could actually be not just threatened anymore that maybe they'll go with the dad and the mom and these weren't like healthy divorces like oh see your dad on weekends kind of thing this is like no no they spiritually belong to them now right and so the idea that it could happen in broad daylight and the idea that it did happen was like i said it was like a bomb went off and you know the other woman i already referenced who left in the middle of the night you know i a lot of a lot of evidence would be that this was one of the catalysts for that that there was a lot of things that just started being discussed as like hey this could actually happen like this idea of having a like vibration family or what your spiritual blood is was a term that was used is not just a concept like it might actually go down and so for me to be as young as i was and for that to happen the way it did definitely was i mean i write about in the book i mean i think as i've reflected and talked with many i think that it was maybe one of the first real sort of overreaches in terms of power in terms of what what steven and camp were steven and trina camp were doing to sort of flex their power because obviously it's brutal that it happened and and you know i i bear the scars of it and and my mom and i you know dealt with it for years but but i think it was also something that um people saw and were and were no longer willing to kind of sit and kind of pretend what's okay yeah yeah what how did how did things pan out with your father so i i still have a relationship with with my dad um he actually still lives in tonto village um and it is a very complicated one um to say the least the there's there's there's pain on both sides and even as someone who um you know wrote the book and anyone who reads it will will will say that you know um my dad is definitely not a good guy in in the book he's definitely not a good guy in my story and i and i um did not hold back in terms of my truth about our relationship but i also um i definitely didn't also go out of my way to tell a lot of other stories about my dad to me i was focused on just our relationship because that was what mattered but the truth is like my dad was not a good guy not just in my story he wasn't a good guy in many people's stories in the collective um you know steven camp was number one married to trina camp the deity the trance the trance medium my dad in many ways was like the enforcer he was like the lieutenant of the teaching and you know my dad is is very sad about this that he that he engaged in this behavior um but my dad was the kind of person who they called in when a single mom was having trouble with her unruly son because he would come in and provide the discipline right my dad was also the person who um in many ways um was the one ruffling feathers in people's marriages and willing to say the shit that no one else was willing to say which again you could say never should have been said right that's the other way to look at that right my dad was my dad wore this like badge of honor that he was the bull in the china shop that was really what he was called right and so for many many years he was on the top of the food chain i guess of the collective as the cult fell apart i think there are many people who would say that my dad did more damage than steven camp did to them in their life right and and that's um that's pretty rough right and and so all of that said i obviously have done the best i can to maintain my relationship with my dad we have been to hell and back many times and i've also come around to my dad is not a victim my dad was a perpetrator in the collective and i think he has responsibility to take for that and he will for the rest of his life as long as he's on the planet that said i think my dad definitely has been more open and humble to the parts of him that felt manipulated that felt used and that felt sort of pushed in ways to do things that obviously he now feels you know very very deep remorse for is what i would say right and so it's it's it's weird when you have a choice to make at all times with people who've done bad things and or did you wrong according to your kind of sense of justice and and i think that you know i've maintained the best relationship i came with my dad while while being honest about the fact that he was never really my dad never really cared for me until i was forced into his family which he has now admitted took him and marlo years to admit that they didn't even want me that the whole thing was kind of steven cam's plan in fact one of the things i learned in the process of writing the book literally in the process of writing the book just a few years ago was that steven camp initially wanted to adopt me himself and just take me and like make me see a danny camp i would have been daniel camp instead of daniel wrench well and that the only reason that didn't happen is because my dad and marlo were like that's really messed up you can't do that right like even though we understand this spiritual kind of premise of what you're doing and again they were on board with it even though they shouldn't have been and so like just understanding what went down in terms of that dynamic and then the fact that i was in my dad's family as a wrench but in many ways like i was abused and tortured by them because they didn't really think of me as their own kid and in many ways my dad resented how close i was to steven camp because really i was steven camp's kid not my dad's and now my dad has also talked about how angry and sad and heartbroken he's been about the fact that steven camp like never let him in there and i get to say well okay i'm sorry you're sad but i was the kid and i was your kid and you didn't do it dude right and so there's many times where like when you're dealing with like adult victims it's very hard and i'm sorry i'm going to go to therapy land because this is my life and i've done a lot of work to kind of understand like the type of person who was already emotionally immature enough or operating with enough sort of like victimhood about their life to kind of enter a community like this and then give away their agency to the way that they did and then maybe embrace the part of themselves that has power in a group and then ultimately come to the other side of it falling apart like i don't really i don't really like believe my dad is is not telling the truth when he does see himself as a victim even if i can very clearly point out to him the hypocrisy in such a belief right in such a statement and so it's weird because when you're dealing with people who did a lot of damage but also feel damaged you just have a choice to make about the type of relationship you wanted to have and so i love my dad i actually have an ongoing email thread with my dad um because we don't get to see each other in person very much at all um he had a very hard time with the book but he has also now come around to feeling without putting words in his mouth i would say he has he has been very complimentary of my my courage and definitely doesn't doesn't doesn't debunk anything i said and in fact as i told him i'm like dad i understand you might be upset about this but there are a lot of stories about our family dysfunction and some real violent shit that went down that i didn't include in the book so in many ways my goal was not to spray a machine gun of anger and hate my my goal was to tell a story of healing and ultimately hopefully inspiration that we are not what happens to us we are what we choose to become carl young's quote has been a bit of a north star for me in my life and like that was why i needed to tell this story because you don't get to have the payoff that a protagonist wants to provide you if you're gonna skip past the hard shit so you gotta tell the hard shit in order to get there and my dad like you know a big part of my goal here was to was to do that and and i think he's understood as best as he can but to be fair like i love my dad and he has his own sort of karma to reap to use a phrase from the collective about what he did and and that's not really mine to to shield him from wow danny i just want to say thank you for your open-heartedness for your vulnerability for your authenticity like i just know this is going to just support so many other people man just in hearing this this truth and hearing your story the way you've delivered it like just thank you yeah yeah i echo that man and and you're 100 right it's like where you where you were and where you've come from and especially going through and reading the book like it's pretty incredible like are people still in the village like in some sort of collective or like following the teachings or is that kind of all faded away and no one's like an adherent to the immortal you know yeah it has faded away um so to to wrap a ribbon on the the logistical timeline um one of the things that held the collective together even longer than the actual collective was still happily together was the school that was in the middle of toner village the shelby school was a private school that eventually got a charter it was the school i went to the school that was known for winning a lot of chess championships it it was in many ways in pace and called the school for the cult kids which is what it was referred to behind our back and and sometimes openly so it was the cult kids school became a school that was a charter as the collective was less popular people leaving like i said it's imploding and being dismantled on its own the school became a place where people went to school not just people who were in the collective but when covid hit and the pandemic literally shut down the school kind of one of the last centerpieces that was sort of i guess you could say the pretend glue holding a dysfunctional harry potter castle together you know what i mean i think that when that fell apart during the pandemic that was one of the last straws that that broke the people who were maybe still kind of lingering and holding on to the community and then the next thing was that in 2022 trina camp herself passed away and so when she died and even though she wasn't trancing very much at all in fact in the last year of her life i don't think she tranced at all before that um there's a lot of people that would say even the most devotees devotees of dr duran who would who would say they were not skeptical for the majority of their relationship with the spirit i think even for them it was like toward the end like hey this doesn't sound so much like dr duran anymore this kind of just sounds like trina's opinion about stuff so i think her trance the quality of her trance whether it was ever real or not up for up for discussion deteriorated your regard like regardless right it was it was it was not as good and so when she died in 2022 and the school had shut down whatever was left fell apart uh stephen camp himself still lived in the village i think until very recently i think he just moved um but um people who still lived in tunnel village i think where they sit to answer the the question that is kind of within that question is like where do people sit on their experience with it now i mean i think i think there are all kinds of extremes on the viewpoint there are those who are living the life that i would define as the definition of drinking hatred is drinking poison and expecting other people to feel sick that they are incredibly angry and also not just to say that i don't think it helps them i would also say that in many ways rightfully so right there are a lot of people who went through things that were um that were truly horrific in the collective and i i um i did not share everyone else's experiences or stories in my book because that wasn't the goal of my book right um but i think there are people who are still coming to terms with and probably will be for the rest of their life about what their experience was in the church of immortal consciousness and are angry about it and then i think there are many who are on the side of whether it ever should have come together or not the fact is that it did and they try to focus on what they can to not throw the baby out with the bath water about some things they may have learned while in the group right and i think there are people everywhere in between right and um as i share in the book i think one of the things that most people don't want to acknowledge is that a big part of often why it's hard to come to terms with something like this and how it went down especially for i would say the older generation my parents is that in many ways like they spent so many years as it fell apart kind of being victims to steven and trina who were the initial people they signed up with and gave away their agency to that i think for a lot of them it took a long time for them to see that they also played a big part in in keeping the group together right and then ultimately the buy-in um that is required for a group like that to operate is there right and i think um and i'm you know i've i've again if i can if i can give my father grace and compassion to the part of him that feels manipulated and or um was taken advantage of even though i would argue that along with stephen camp my dad did the most damage of any of any men there if i can pervade if i can hold the opposing truth for him which is both hold him accountable in whatever way is meant to be held accountable that i'm at least i am not my dad's maker i am not the ultimate person who decides justice but i also will not deny the truth of my experience and but if i can do that while also holding space for love and compassion and have kindness for someone who in many ways was caught up in something that they now would acknowledge they wish hadn't happened if i can do that for my dad i can do that for anybody and and so i think that i think that that's you know something that a lot of people are still figuring out to answer your question joel as far as how they feel and a lot of it comes down to just what they now believe about life you know about what's important or or what their spiritual or or kind of religious views might be if they find such a thing to help them or not you know yeah yeah let's look at chess yeah i want to talk i do i do want to go to the deep stuff yeah i want to get no i want to get into chess but i do want to bring up this what is your view in terms of who what duran was was trina connected because there's a part in the book where you talk about you were having this dream and then someone came and said that duran like talked about white horses and you had white horses in your dream or something of that nature and like you know i think there are people in the world that have certain powers and connection to things that are a little bit more um you know from a pretty wild phenomena nature but like where do you stand like how do you how do you feel about that experience where do your views around spirituality and deeper connections um now generally yeah yeah yeah it's it's a it's a it's a great question it's a it's the million dollar question to some degree that i have now been now been asked more than a few times and i i i will first start by saying that my journey has been a wild one right i have also been hiding on the side of it was all bullshit um super angry and hurt and skeptical about anything that went down and also just unable to reconcile what happened in my human to my human being and to a lot of human beings as something that ever could have been allowed if spirit was real right so i've been fully on that side at the same time as as you sort of like deconstruct anything that happens to you in your life i think if you are willing and wanting to the hard work through therapy through your own just self-reflection of asking yourself some bigger questions regardless of your hurt or your experience i have kind of come around through let's call it on the one side it was extreme you know atheism or at least agnosticism out of anger and heartache to where i sit now i think as i deconstructed or let's say the scaffolding fell and i decided what parts i was going to stand back up i think a big part of my journey um has been one where i have i have taken such a scientific approach to the miracle of life where i have focused less on what i think most religion does which is the why we're here because why is essentially storytelling you are you are deciding why you're here or providing some sense of dogma if you're uh if you're in a religion of you know whatever whatever the rules are to christianity or or or islam or whatever and focusing less on the why which is man-made meaning and actually rebuilding a lot of my spiritual belief on the how meaning the undeniable miracle of life that at some point something came from nothing existence is here i am that i am and i'm aware of it somehow some way whether this is the matrix in a simulation experience or some version of something at what point did either space-time come from nowhere or awareness of space-time come from nowhere right because in all things in life we know there is the material there is the material act that brings something to life like a house and then there is the will everything in life has material and the will behind it and as i've jumped in pretty deeply down the where science meets spirituality and kind of coming to this sort of existentialist point of view which is that i think therefore i am at some point something came from nothing i can't deny whether that was awareness of an initial big bang or some other version that i'm unable to fully comprehend in this sort of you know ego embodiment i do believe that if i'm choosing i do tend to lean that consciousness is more likely to be fundamental than space-time awareness of existence would be the foremost requirement again labeling this word god or the universe or oneness or cosmic consciousness and truth is actually less relevant to me because i would argue that for anyone who kind of dives down that road language is limited in terms of whatever you would really try to think of in terms of what existence is so i know i'm giving you a big answer but it's because for me you asked a very big question and i can't answer it without describing how i arrived there which is that if i believe in the miracle of existence regardless of the framework that may be a single lifetime existence a simulation experience many lifetimes some idea that there is a journey to a oneness that existed has kind of put me on the path of believing consciousness is fundamental and if i believe that consciousness has the potential to live outside the material body then i do not inherently debunk the idea that a spirit could deliver messages through a physical body i don't inherently debunk the idea that phenomena and or the the concept of reincarnation the idea that we are spiritual beings evolving toward some sort of higher self is inherently crazy i actually don't believe that the idea that we could be evolving back toward whatever this initial oneness was that i described something came from nothing is inherently a crazy concept and so what's weird for me is that as much as i also saw how concepts like you are a spiritual being having a physical experience can be weaponized concepts like a like vibration as we go back to the oneness of the universe can be weaponized and used in an ego human way of younger younger women marrying older men as much as i have seen the idea of purpose and meaning be misused and abused right i actually have come around to holding space for the fact that what a lot of people want to do is be black and white and angry or sad or or or whatever about their experience when i think it's possible to hold opposing truths which is maybe trina camp was trancing a spirit and that didn't mean that she wasn't running a cult maybe she could be a toxic narcissist who was raised and abused by alcoholics and a lot of that became the worst version of herself as she got older but that doesn't necessarily mean that that everything duran ever said was was untrue right and i think that i think all you can do is have your own experience and i and i did have the experience that i shared in the book which was a dream that i have to this day been unable to explain i had other you know experiences of sitting in trance circles where i felt not just moved but like like sort of undeniably like i think um reached by like something that was said in a way that even if it was coming from a faker trina camp or a spirit it definitely made a difference from my life right and so i think um you know it's it's it's difficult because i do not inherit here's what i would say as a human being cults are real i was raised in one and people should be very much aware of the dangers of giving away your own spiritual relationship with any divine power you believe to anybody else and i think any religion has the potential to become a cult when they stop helping you ask life's big questions and start telling you they have all the answers and i think every religious infrastructure has the ability to be a little bit culty that said i do believe that consciousness is fundamental which if i start with that i how do get to say that and then deny the idea that a spirit and or spiritual beings and that i am a spiritual being exists right and so i actually feel like holding space for both of those is not intellectually dishonest at all and in fact it's probably more honest to the nuance that is a very complicated life that none of us really understand than one where i pretend to be like oh because this person did bad things he's just evil the real mind f is that sometimes people do bad things and they actually did mean well and then even more mind f it ended up being the best thing that could have happened for you right and the thing is like that's all we can actually do and that was the main thing i wanted to share in terms of where i've arrived on that because forgiveness is not you know rewriting the past it's freeing yourself from it i don't have to make excuses for my abusers to tell the story which is that i no longer feel angry at them about what happened because i've done the work now to make sense of it and if you're not going to change the end of your life you don't get to cherry pick the middle of the beginning either it's just not how it works and so that's that's sort of my philosophy on a lot of this stuff and and that is my spiritual existential answer to the question of i had very real experiences with dr duran whether duran was real or not is not up for me to crawl inside trina camp's heart and see what she did i do believe in the idea that consciousness is fundamental as as a more plausible framework for the miracle that is existence than i do that space time came from nowhere even if that's hard for us to fully wrap our brains around and so if i do believe that i would find it hypocritical to dismiss the idea that phenomenon mediumship or cosmic consciousness might be able to reach humanity through human beings so there is my answer like it or not no it's it's a great answer i appreciate it i appreciate you embracing the nuance and the complexity of being human and the mystery of being alive and what this place is so i'm sorry if that got a little long-winded but it's people ask that question and it's very hard for me to answer because i feel like i'd be a hypocrite if i just go well duran is real and he did a bunch of fucked up shit in a cult like that's not real for me i have to explain how i arrived at that so hopefully that's okay it is man i mean we're here for the truth the truth of your experience you know it's complicated it's nuanced like i um yeah i really appreciate it that you that you shared that in the way that you did um but i guess we could go to joel's question yeah about chess and i like i want to start this off with what do you love about chess oh man i i love i i love the game itself in that um i i always start with it it is just a game obviously it's been my life's purpose and someone who has you know seen it both give me and give me everything and take everything away at different times so it's clearly that the game of chess has has represented a lot more for me than just you know wooden pieces on a board but to me like the game itself is is kind of perfect and that like it is simultaneously unsolvable we still have the most powerful machine learned ai in the world unable to solve the game of chess we can put human beings on the moon or maybe mars at some point and yet we haven't solved a game of complete and defined geometry and information that's kind of fascinating when you think that there are more positions in chess than there are atoms in the universe it's it's a cosmic game that is unsolvable and yet in every position there is subjectively like a best move and or at least as far as our ability to like see we we we believe we see a best move and and there's something about that that is like it basically is is is probably the reason why chess itself has has been um has been considered its own religion and have its own cult following because i think people can worship at sort of the feet of the unsolvable nature of the game and the idea that i could still play a perfect game if i keep trying right um so it's it's a great game it's just a great puzzle it's super rewarding and that like you literally never play a game of chess where where you don't learn something and you know i think now nowadays i tend to appreciate you know even more about the game from like the lessons it provides i mean chess is chess everybody should be playing chess especially at a young age because every other game that is like rolling a dice is like oh you either got lucky or you didn't or you pulled the card that you know helped you win like every game like has this like sense that your success is outside of your control chess is the opposite chess is like you only are successful in chess based on your contribution to the board right and also your ability to kind of self-reflect about where things might have gone wrong is the only way to improve and so i think chess is um a perfect game for you know things that inherently teaches people without trying yeah um and just from an enjoyment standpoint it's just fun it's just awesome and obviously like i don't play like i used to i don't play at the levels i used to i play on my phone like everybody else these days on chess.com um but um but yeah chess is um just amazing man and it's it's it's like i think it's the perfect game of unsolvable yet there's always something to learn because you could have you could have played a better move if you look at it afterwards yeah well it kind of kind of sounds you know i learned playing chess at an early age i love playing chess um when i was younger i definitely don't play anywhere near as much but it's almost like a microcosm of the self-development process like you're always learning something you're always enhancing your reason you're always enhancing your rationality you're taking feedback from the gameplay from your opponent from whatever it might be and then visiting the board again you know and kind of testing where you're at um what are the origins of chess so chess in its earliest forms was started in india it was um the game shadarunga is sort of the farthest back we can go to like where we saw like you know we have like you know the idea of like limited limited um squares rotating black and white or dark and light um and and chatarunga itself was taken by alexander the great and the persian army as it was con as it was doing the thing it was doing and um conquering different areas of eastern asia and as it moved as alexander the great moved back west he actually brought chess from india to the west wow so the earliest the earliest stories of chess making its way into eastern and eventually western europe all start with the persian army after sort of the the conquests of of east asia and where it went from there is is interesting because chess bounced around europe and there were different variations of it being played but the modern game that we played today took form 100 percent in the 14th century when queen isabella who you could argue so 15th century sorry in in the 1400s 15th century um you could argue that queen isabella was the most powerful human being on the planet at the time and spain was spain was the most powerful country they were sending columbus on adventures and they were sort of dictating the rules of europe at the time and she literally dictated the rules of chess to change it at the time the king and queen were actually both weak pieces as royalty and you actually had this piece called the duke that was a little more akin to the modern queen that we now know she changed the rules to give the queen the ultimate power and the queen became the most powerful piece because of queen isabella a lot of people don't know this story which is fascinating that she in in her own uh likeness right in her own image made the queen the most powerful piece and that game is the game that we now play today um with only one other smite rule a small rule change that happened around pawn movements which was en passant which means in passing in french there was a there's a rule that is played today um in terms of governing a pawn's initial move which i won't get into it's a little bit too deep for the non-chess players but essentially the queen's movement and en passant all took shape around the late 1400s early 1500s and we've been playing that same version of chess ever since that is that is the version that um that has stayed and you know to add a little bit that i would say one of the coolest things about chess is that for whatever reason whether you know i i think about this a lot as like a bit of a chess philosopher these days in terms of where i sit and and one of the goals i had in writing the book was i wanted to tell the story of the game in sort of an accessible exciting way so i'm curious how you felt about the chess parts because i tried my best to make it interesting and make it accessible for people who maybe don't know um you know our history i think that chess for whatever reason has always been directly tied to like highly influential people high society and it might be the you know the origins of moving west at the time with maybe the most powerful human being on the planet for better or worse settling into europe as sort of the royal game and a game that was really only played in kind of the upper echelon circles right the elite uh whether actual royalty or or those with influence and money right and what ended up happening was chess became sort of like a benchmark for a lot of things in terms of creative expression during like the romantic era and the renaissance and then eventually like it became sort of a symbol of you know intellectual strategic proud power during the battle of ussr versus versus you know the west you know there are these things where chess has always been sort of revered as this like those who are good at chess are like the most intellectually elite that our species can summon whether it's true or not that was sort of the thing and even nowadays you look at how it's used in media right there's a reason they say it's a chess game out there bob between the coaches right there's a reason it's used in mercedes-benz commercials because it's like there's like a sex appeal to this like this feeling of these like really you know intelligent people sort of battling and and again this has been historical as part of chess has been a part of this sort of like part of human culture forever and then of course it was directly on the front lines of the battle of man versus machine with gary kasparov in the 90s and the battle against ibm and and even now you know chess is chess is you know being often associated with kind of the next breakthrough of the neural nets are doing and how the machine learning project of alpha zero with deep mind you know made major breakthroughs so it's just fascinating chess is the oldest game like this incredibly old game but consistently on the front lines of what people are looking to like emulate in society and culture and how they refer to the best performers you know they're playing chess not checkers right so it's just fun i don't even know it's just like been so amazing to see that you know we've obviously been trying to break down the idea that it's a royal game meant for the elite with a wrecking ball i mean chess chess.com's goal has been to democratize and bring the game to to the masses um and i would say that i've been called an evil chess popularist on the internet and it's a badge i wear proudly i added it to my twitter profile for a while by the old guard who was like what are you doing making the game more accessible and faster time controls and fun and in your face and so i think chess is much more than just a game for the elite but it is also that it is also a game that represents this really kind of high minded achievement that we want to have and so i kind of i kind of appreciate that it can be both dude i do i love chess and i have to be honest i haven't played in a long time i played in my teens into my early 20s and then i just stopped playing um and so like this is kind of reinvigorating my desire to get online get on chess.com you got a free membership waiting for you i'll just give you a diamond membership 150 bucks a year i'll save it to you just give me your username and i'll send it to you it's two of us here man it's two of us here both of you guys well it's funny i know you talked about dice before but joel and i like to play backgammon battles with each other you know because we enjoy the game of backgammon because you know it's there's some luck there's luck in there but obviously there's skill there's a lot of stress and i wasn't trying to disparage all dice games there are there are definitely games that are both a mixture of lock and skill i would say poker is like that poker is very much luck and skill but it's a different game when it is not complete information the accountability you feel afterwards is not the same unless you kind of choose it right a lot of people you have to you know you know what i mean you know i i agree with you you know and it's like chess is one of those games where it's like i mean i don't know it's like it feels like a hundred percent skill versus zero luck it's just like you're playing another person and unless like if you're if you're if you're a different color like how does that work like is the are you more likely to win if you're white versus black like how does that play out so the data speaks for itself to some degree statistically white wins 50 percent of 56 sorry 56 of the time black wins 44 of the time um but i would say at the higher levels it's a little closer to 60 40 because the better a player is the more they know how to use the advantage of the first move and i think there are other games like that too like backgammon and there are games where like if you know the right patterns i.e and chess openings as we call them if you are executing openings at an extremely high level and you are providing that kind of grandmaster level of preparation the advantage of the first move is more valuable in your hands than it is for amateurs right so the closer you get to beginner level chess the closer it's basically random 50 50 there is no real advantage for black or white the higher levels you get the closer um you are to to about about 60 40 i think at the at the highest highest levels um but also at the highest levels you get more draws anyway so even if white is winning 60 of the decisive results you also at the higher levels see more games that end in peace because people make less mistakes so both are true at the same time right um white is more of an advantage when you have a decisive result white tends to win more often more often than black um but you also tend to have more games end in draws yeah yeah just i recently watched the queen of chess netflix documentary oh it's so good right it's so it's so good man especially those there's kasparov battles and how she finally became him at one point in time but yeah very often she's she played white first and she would just get dominated by him like for 40 matches or something before it's so good man what are the ways in which you view chess as a microcosm of life the you know the metaphors of of chess to life and chess to business are um are many um and i you know i kind of already gave gave one which is like i do think it's ultimately better to choose self-reflection than it is victimhood and i think that even if i didn't know that chess was sort of forcing me to think this way at a young age i think i have personally experienced sort of the power of well like it or not this is my position arguing with how i got to this position deciding whether or not it feels fair to be in this position are all essentially irrelevant because this position has a few options and probably the best option is to move forward you know and i think that there's a a larger metaphor there that is both you know it sounds abstract and a bit kind of you know airy fairy at its core yeah we all have to just choose to move forward in our life but the reality is like when you think of that carl jung quote i am not what happens to me i are i am what i choose to it sounds inspiring until you sit with it when you sit with it you realize it's a call to action it's a responsibility and that you are actually responsible because regardless of your spiritual metaphysical or any lack thereof beliefs as long as you are still on the planet and conscious no matter where you where you were how you got here like you are responsible for where you go from here and i think that there are like lessons in chess that are just and you don't even have to try to pull these lessons out they are like within the game it is they it is a truly intimate experience when you lose a chess game there is no teammate to point to no referee to blame a bad call on you face the music and self-reflect or you don't it's that simple there are there are things about like literally i mean if we're talking about planning and strategic thinking i think chess is such a good balance of both are required to do to do good high-level decision making which is a holistic view of the entire picture the pawn structure the strategy that is sort of inherent to this particular position but also ultimately you have to roll up your sleeves and do the calculation with the tactics that ultimately will move you forward in a safe way and i think that there's a lot of balance to a lot of people want to have big ideas they don't want to do the hard work sometimes people can stay stuck in the world we live in now which is like you know everything is demanding your you know we live in the attention economy and and dragging you around and not many people take the time to maybe do the type of you know whether it's self-reflection or just meditate for a minute and think about the big picture of what it is they're trying to accomplish i think that you actually need to do both in order to to be successful in a lot of areas and i think that chess sort of demands that you have those muscles in ways that other games don't um yeah you know and i could probably continue down the different chess metaphors i mean there are literal just like considering your options before you move ahead right also recognizing that chess unlike a lot of other games requires you to think about what your opponent wants it takes two to tango in life to make anything really great work what's funny is like you have this if you want to have a great plan most people lose because they're so focused on their ideas that they missed the checkmate over here like literally that's what amateur chess is is until you build the muscle to acknowledge that someone else is just as important as you in life you will not be a successful chess player and i think probably that's the thing that is most useful for young people about chess is that so many games are just rewarding of of selfish thought which is like i have to roll the dice and move my piece around the board and what everyone else is doing is kind of in their own path right it's not really i don't really have any say so nor do i really have any sort of control and it doesn't affect me chess is like this massive lesson in like why did they go there what do they want to achieve like what do i need to be thinking about to anticipate what's coming here and the best chess players i think almost go so far that they become paranoid human beings in life and i've said this i've said this on record many times i deal with the best players in the world sometimes i think that their best skill of being prophylactic in nature trying to defend against the threat of the future prophylaxis is actually something that hurts them in life where they tend to be more distrusting and more paranoid than they should be about other types of things or opportunities or relationships and without calling or putting any of them on blast let me just say that as someone who has been in the business of growing chess the amount of times i feel like i have to literally lead a horse to water and make them drink to help us do things that would be good for the game when everyone wants to be treated like mike but no one wants to do the work right and i'm like guys like let's work together here so i think that chess players can sometimes take that particular skill too far but overall i think that you know chess players are critical thinkers skeptical in healthy ways because no one should just accept someone else's truth as as their reality unless they've double clicked more than a few times but also they are objective and that they understand that they have a position they have to make the best move with what's in front of them beating themselves up about the past is often counterproductive and the only real time to do it is after the game is over anyway to take some time to learn and at that point we only review the past to be better for the future anything else is just masochism you know and so i think that those things are really great about chess players and in terms of what the game teaches yeah um the one thing i loved reading the book was that we share a favorite movie which is searching for bobby fisher and i absolutely love that book and i love how that like put you on the journey of like becoming obsessed with the game of chess and also just like the incredible characters granted it's in a movie but like what you talked about in the book these characters at like the chess emporium egor well egor too and then like the chess emporium guys that like went off on the kid or like it's just amazing the types of people that get drawn to chess and also like the journeys that they're on you know but um yeah it's pretty cool well we we skip past that part because i was i was joking that there's a you know a too long didn't read version of the book but as i described learning chess in the summer of 1995 uh what you're awesome most just mentioned is i learned chess because i watched the movie searching for bobby fisher and was just like enthralled and fascinated um and um there's there's more to that i'll just quickly say because um you know anyone who has their interest peaked several things came together you know sometimes you hear stories and you go like was it lightning in a bottle or was it just this sort of you know the outliers theory that malcolm gladwell talks about the unique circumstances that had to come together for a kid being raised in a cult to become obsessed with chess there were three things that happened in the summer of 95 i saw the movie searching for bobby fisher which had come to hbo i think it came out like in 93 whatever but that was when i saw it was i saw it um on tv 95 the collective itself was under attack from a lot of local i mean i would say this openly now even naming it a cult a lot of bigotry you had literal rednecks running i was ran off the road by a pickup truck and people were yelling you know fucking freaks and like kids were like unsafe someone showed up at the at the shelby school with a gun like threatening to kill trina there was crazy stuff going down and essentially kind of like redneck backwoods arizona that this spiritual group that for many for all respective reasons like we weren't we weren't practicing anything crazy violent again it was a cult for a lot of reasons but there was nothing there was no drink the kool-aid agenda no one was stacking firearms like waco there was nothing going on here that justified the way we were being treated that summer and steven and trina had hired a bunch of bodyguards to protect everybody and so we were on house arrest this is the funny thing is i watched this movie and all of the kids are literally on house arrest normally we're just outside playing in the woods but we weren't allowed to that summer so what else am i going to do besides play chess and then the third thing that happened in 95 was the match between gary kasparov and vishwanathan anand the world championship match was in new york this was the first time the world chess championship had been on western soil in literally decades right so that meant that western media actually cared about chess again for the first time in a long time so the three things that happened were this match was everywhere on the news and caught the attention of steven camp the movie searching for bobby fisher inspired a bunch of kids to play chess and we didn't have anything else to do because we were under house arrest because of this crazy shit that was going down so like i think about it now with clarity and go oh my god like that like how lucky am i that that was my experience in terms of jumping into chess um but then you know then we quickly started traveling and to your point we met a lot of the characters in the chess world that are just absolutely legendary um i would say this now the chess world today is not the chess world i grew up in it is way more mainstream i mean literally just the numbers are there there are tens of millions of more people playing chess around the planet um which is great um and again the technological digital revolution that has been made making chess easy and accessible on your phone or computer has completely changed just the amount of people within the global chess community and so when you get more people you get yes you get i guess by definition you'll get more on all ends of the spectrum both the extremes but also you get more normal people too so to your point i would say i i now visit chess clubs your awesomest and i go man these people are way more normal than the guys i grew up with i visit chess clubs now and go oh my god this is like a totally normal environment like there's no one there's no one super crazy here and and um it's not the chess emporium of the of the mid-1990s um so that's my how i'm answering that is yes the characters were crazy but i would say the chess world nowadays is actually a lot more balanced than the one that i that i was raised yeah i know i know you're not here to technically promote your book but i want to promote the book so for anyone listening you have some amazing stories and even just igor's story of how he you know what he went through when he came from and how he ended up being your teacher like was this just incredible so crazy yeah igor is igor's life is its own memoir movie and he is he is no longer uh here he he eventually got um cancer and and died but um igor defected from the soviet union literally ran across like asylum lines like during an emergency stop in newfoundland with kgb agents like chasing him like literally some crazy crazy spy movie shit somehow makes his way eventually over the next decade to the southwest and bumps into a cult leader who's building a chess team and then ends up moving to town or village arizona and at one point was probably the most um the most visible and present male role model in my life which is not saying much because he was a raging alcoholic who i would show up to at 9 a.m as he was sprawled out naked and and he would ask me to make him a screwdriver i knew how to make a very good half oj half vodka drink at the age of 11 um or sorry no igor didn't come into a little agent age of 13 um so yeah igor igor is quite the character and um do you have the chessboard anywhere that he gave you because i know you talk about it in the book yeah it's um so it's it's actually downstairs here at my house it's not behind me i've one of the funny things i get given a lot of chess boards now so you can see this room is like full of chess decoration which i would i would say is is half intentional half like i have no place else to put stuff at this point so like i've got all these uh but you know several of those chess boards behind me are like um are known in the chess community but um so uh yeah igor igor set is near and dear to me i still have it um the pieces have been a little banged up at this point but i still have the initial the initial chessboard that we did all that training on yeah are you in chess um so what's funny is right now they've gotten obsessed with it again they go in and out the high level answer is no none of my kids got super into chess um you know we skipped past kind of the early days of of barely making my marriage work but i'll say that um i had my first kid at 20 um basically 19 because he's he's born like a month after me i was 19 during the pregnancy i turned 20 in october he was born in the beginning of november um so i now i'm i'm 40 years old with a 20 year old a 17 year old a 14 almost 15 year old and a 10 year old of a boy boy girl girl um all the same marriage we we we somehow made it work um and of all of my kids my youngest daughter talia is probably the most into chess and we've done chess lessons and coaching i ended up doing tons of sports with my boys they just weren't that into chess and hazel my my middle girl i always joke she doesn't have a competitive bone in her body like she just like she just doesn't like she's not into like sports or games of any kind um and so it just was never her thing and so um how it works out is funny because if they had gotten into chess they had a perfect dad for it but when they weren't going to get into chess organically it just wasn't going to be something i was going to push very hard all of that said they have been on this wild ride like everyone else as the pandemic hit and our business boomed and then the queen's gambit on netflix came out and our business boomed and we continue to be the beneficiary in so many ways of this massive chess revolution so they have gone from their dad being someone who runs this really obscure small little chess business to being like they have friends who go like your dad runs chess.com like i love chess.com so like chess has completely changed from what it was it's no longer the nerd thing that it was when i was little and so um they go in and out of playing just like with their own friends it's way more of like a casual thing than um than anything else yeah what um what lessons can you share with the audience about your relationship because that's the one thing reading the book i was like man your your wife shauna i think her name is like a saint like what you guys went through and gone through and uh just yeah pretty pretty amazing to like stay together stay connected and to go on your journey obviously all relationships have their challenges and problems but you also you both also met in the collective yeah yeah it's uh also also a very big question um to provide a little bit of background um so people can appreciate that i really did intend to share with full vulnerability and full authenticity of what i went through um getting to the other side of this very traumatic experience and one of the goals with that was that i wasn't going to tell a hollywood version of my life i wasn't going to say i went through all this super traumatic shit and started having panic attacks at the age of 13 dealt with real anxiety and depression and was like abused and traumatized and then snapped my fingers now i'm in my mid-20s in a happy marriage right i wasn't going to tell that story i wasn't going to sort of hollywoodify the story arc i wanted to share what it was to to be a damaged individual right because wounded people wound people until they don't anymore hurt people hurt people and i was i was not you know i was not a healthy person i was i was an alcoholic in my early 20s i was abusing opioids um you know taking klonopin and xanic to this extreme degrees that my wife didn't know i was not the best husband or father um in my in my book my wife actually had to back me down a lot because she was like you know you need to be kinder to yourself too right it wasn't like i was a bad person or in their ways did i ever you know was i ever physically violent or anything but i wasn't i wasn't great right and i wasn't treating myself well let alone anybody else right and i think i wanted to share you know what i feel is required to do the work of self-reflecting and acknowledge that often often to really start dealing with your pain it starts first and foremost with no longer being okay with the pain you're inflicting on others or yourself now right and i think you know it's just the work for me has been around like coming to terms with the fact that even if i went through really hard stuff i no longer wanted to to live sad angry depressed or abuse the things that i was abusing i wanted to start making changes and a lot of that did happen around my marriage as i shared which was really one her almost divorcing me to me just appreciating that um that i uh that i that i wanted something different for my life and for my kids and to explain kind of what i've learned in that i mean with my wife i would say that i mean wow so many things i would say that first and foremost as i shared i think she helped me unpack why i had gotten into this type of behavior you know when you're engaging in self-deprecating actions of any kind there's a reason why right and a lot of my spiritual self-worth was wrapped up in this idea that i had failed to achieve my purpose on the planet because i didn't become the world chess champion and you know a lot of what um what she kind of got you know her hands around me to realize is that hey like i had a lot of purpose with my wife and my kids and that purpose is not the thing you do it's why you do the thing right and that you can choose to have purpose in anything you do no matter what it is and i think she was the first person to really start unwinding the um you know the the fact that i felt like it's almost like child actor syndrome like i felt like a failed child actor or child prodigy right and so a lot of the things i had developed about myself and just how i just didn't feel like i um was worth was worth anything like started um and started with all of that with all that stuff and she kind of helped me unpack it you know as far a marriage goes there are many many lessons i would say i have learned that agreement and commitment are not the same thing i think when people say they're looking for their person their soulmate they expect that that person will check every box and fit into every vision or the pictures they have for it when the reality is like you make it work right you make the picture work you make every aspect of your relationship work out in the end because nobody is perfect and that's sort of the goal right the whole thing is like you're making it perfect for each other because because you're because you're both damaged individuals helping each other figure out your shit right and i think um i think that getting to the other side of thinking that you have to agree on everything versus you can be committed to the goals of of having a healthy happy relationship and raising your kids the right way and that the ideals of what you want can be the main north star driving you even if you know that the roads are going to be bumpy and you might have disagreements along the way on how to get to those goals i guess that's what i would say and i think a lot of young relationships struggle with with clarifying that they want everything to be perfect or they don't want to play and in reality that's just not how it works you know um so you know yeah i didn't expect to come with life lessons of my marriage off the top of my head but i'm going to think more about that one for next time so hopefully that was somewhat helpful in terms of at least being honest that like it wasn't easy and she gave me a lot to think about in terms of the damage i had brought into the relationship wrapped up around this thought that i had failed spiritually which just wasn't true and um you know giving me a new sense of why in my life is what she and my kids are like they're the reason i i exist and i find purpose every day and like and serving them and and and really i think anything we do as far as how we find purpose should be based on the why we do it the service it brings to others because whether you're a lawyer or a chess player or whatever the thing you do is less relevant than the why you do it and i think that she really gave me that um perspective and um changed changed my whole kind of way of how i felt about myself yeah yeah it was very helpful to to hear that you know i'm reading the book because you guys got together really young like how often does a relationship last or people to get get together so young especially in your situation what you were going through and so to like persevere and to stay committed like um you know you don't see that as often especially in today's day and age where you talk about attention like people are distracted all the time what's the new shiny thing as opposed to sticking with something and making it work uh so yeah much respect there i'm sure it wasn't easy but you know here you are now yeah well i think a lot of people just think of they confuse like compromise for like resignation meaning like at the same time like you should never resign to the parts of your partner that one aren't good for themselves let alone like maybe good for you and what i mean by that is i think a lot of marriages you start to like use the label of compromise all right if she doesn't mess with me on this stuff i won't mess with her on this stuff and so now you're seeking satisfaction stimulation outside of your marriage in the same way that she is and you sort of are growing apart in terms of what's filling your cup and you use this term we compromise for what each other wants versus like really challenging each other on the damage you brought in i mean she brought in a ton of damage from her life and i brought in a ton of damage from mine and creating the space seeing it as your glory to be the person who helps someone heal something that doesn't belong to you meaning i think a lot of relationships so now i'm now i'm thinking about what i've learned here's what i would say my wife and i have learned something really important which is that a lot of marriages say stuck and like your anger with your daddy issues belongs with them instead of seeing that it's your glory and your opportunity to be the most important person in this person's life because you allow them to work out something that actually isn't your fault you allow them to bring it up and to talk about it and to share the parts of their life where they're like projecting the shit that doesn't belong to you and you create the space to sort of heal that for them even if it wasn't your fault i think that i had a lot of issues in my life with my with my mom i had a lot of issues with women and my anger and heartache over not being protected to some degree and i think i brought a lot of like initial sort of projection and misogyny and anger toward women and motherhood because of my own heartache and experience right and so her ability to kind of create space and in fact push me to bring that up and to poke and to prod and to bring my pain to the table was like a service we provided for each other back and forth and i think again there's like you can't have your cake and eat it too you can't want the type of marriage that really is not isn't just healthy and monogamous and faithful and full of love not just saying those things but actually is those things a lot of people say it and it's not true right but if you really want those things it comes with an expectation of the level of truth and the level of you know space and the level of compassion you bring for the other person's truth and damage as well you get what i'm saying and so you kind of have to create the space for for for the real things to come out and see it as your opportunity to to be there for the other person even if you know that issue isn't totally your fault it's been it's been great for her to help me deal with my issues and for me to help her deal with hers and i think that's one of the things that has really made our marriage strong with time is we no longer scorecard or keep track in a way where like if my wife is hurt and angry and frustrated about something i'm not saying sometimes it isn't my fault we work through our stuff and you deal with each other and you and you listen and you and you and you try to you know you try to be the best version of yourself you can but sometimes the deep issues that someone brings aren't your fault and rather than shutting that down you create the space for them to work it out with you and that only makes you closer in the end right so that's the thing that i think we we really had to do for each other with time because we were basically super damaged traumatized kids who barely made their marriage work as a cult fell apart around them and both of our moms died super young so we didn't really have a lot of other options um but to kind of work out some of this really deep stuff with each other and um you know in the end i guess that's paid off but you've got me thinking now i need to think of i'm gonna think of more stuff that i'm you know because i appreciate you being real man i just appreciate it like uh again i'm fresh off reading your book uh i still have 30 pages left i have to have 30 pages but um yeah just great to hear your story great to connect with you personally um i yeah i know our audience is going to really appreciate this i don't know if y'all give me if you have any other questions you want i'll get a couple couple trivial questions before we wrap this up who is your favorite chess player of all time alexander al-yohan alakine the american annunciation of the of the spelling he uh was the fourth world champion um after jose raul cabal blanca but he he is in many ways the first real super grandmaster meaning chess for for the early part was sort of defined as like this guy's style is positional this guy's style is is is tactical and overly aggressive but modern chess is about is about playing everything the best chess players in the world understand that you don't play the position you let the position play you and he was the first one to like really emulate like high level holistic approach to the game he could beat you in a brilliant checkmating attack or beat you in a long drawn-out end game not to say that there weren't brilliant chess players before him but to me alexander alakine al-yohan um was uh was kind of the godfather of like how modern modern chess is played which which has to be fluid and and and objective and holistic um and um so that's my very specific answer i'm not one of the big names um that people would think of in the modern era but that's my that's my favorite no i love it um do you have a favorite chess piece and why um not not really i i think i think i have a love hate relationship with the knight because the knight is the trickiest piece and you know some of the tactics that occur with a knight are beautiful and and really fulfilling and they speak to like the you know is chess is chess science or art but the knight is is a very tricky piece but also when you get forked which is where a knight attacks two pieces at once and it's like often a blunder it's like the worst thing in the world so the love hate relationship with the knight is very real that's what that's what i'll say well the knight also has like the most peculiar movements compared to exactly because it's like oh straightforward diagonal but it's like okay a little bit forward to the right to the left like yeah the knight gives chess a lot of its geometry geometrical beauty in some ways because otherwise it's really a game of like horizontal you know diagonal straight lines but the knight dynamic creates um creates all kinds of just difficulties um it's often often you know night night tactics like forks and and and sort of tricky maneuvers with the knight are some of the hardest things for um for people to anticipate even at the highest level even at the highest level of chess these days in fact you'll hear us commentate it we're doing like the world bullet chess championship bullet chess is only one minute per side so you've got the fastest players in the world with only one minute total like it's just lightning speed and you'll hear the commentators when there's like a trade dynamic where someone gets the knight the other guy gets like the bishop or the rook or something they'll be like oh my god he's got a knight like this is so hard for the other guy to anticipate because in bullet chess the knight is just so tricky in terms of its ability to create traps and and just like you know literally like pitfalls that the knight is such a it's such a dynamic advantage um because it's just harder for the brain to compute at a high even at the highest levels like the the quick tactics and and and um just all kinds of stuff so so so in bullet chess it's one total minute per player for the entire yeah the entire game and then if like you run out of time is like you lose or how does that lose wow okay because i've never played chess with a clock you know even in my teens when i played you just sat down and you played and so like these like blitz is a different style and then freestyle like i haven't even delved into like the differences of the game but yeah it's fascinating real quickly what's your favorite style to play so and then how many styles are there yeah for for me personally like i still love just playing like classical chess which is the slower chess i think that chess is a hard game and i think that the dopamine you earn by playing a good chess game is really healthy dopamine this isn't like candy crush you know stuff here right and so to me like personally playing a game that you know that takes a couple hours where you're really in a in a mentally grueling you know arm wrestling match with someone is like is the best chess but i think as a fan i like watching fast chess like blitz chess more than anything else i think when i'm when i'm observing as a spectator there's just no denying that you know seeing the best players in the world you know make hundreds of moves in in just a couple minutes and on and be on the edge of your seat the the speed chess championship for example is is our biggest event we just held it in london um last weekend i just got back and magnus carlson won again um he tends to win a lot of chess events um i think magnus carlson is the greatest player of all time mostly because of his ability to dominate across every discipline to your question magnus is the best in classical the best in rapid which is a little faster the best in blitz a little faster and probably the best in bullet maybe not so much anymore there are there are some younger faster players who've kind of overtaken him there but um magnus has is is undeniably the most dominant world champion in history across every one of those disciplines and chess is very much like i guess it's like running in that way that like you don't ask usain bolt to be the best marathon runner you don't ask the marathon runner to be usain bolt in like a 100 yard dash right but magnus is somehow the best in like all of them right and so um that's that's pretty special to see we're living in an era where um you know i don't know if we'll ever see someone like him again i guess we probably will because that tends to be what happens with evolution but um but he's pretty special yeah so the the general consensus is that carlson is like superseded kasparov as with that title the goat title yes there's a bit of like a jordan lebron debate yeah in terms of in terms of who the goat is and it is you know as you know it's hard to compare eras because until we have a time machine we don't really necessarily know um but we have our own way to measure this which is that kasparov's dominance against his peers is is undeniably like incredible and there's a reason that dominance puts him in the conversation with magnus but magnus's dominance over this era is is just as much and by our measurement at chess.com where we have invested very heavily in the data side of the game partly because of anti-cheating measures you know we're very much on the front line of making sure that no humans are ever using computers illegally during a real game which takes a lot to sort of tease out the data and find the the patterns of inhuman play i'll say so there's a lot that goes into our secret sauce but one of the benchmarks we have used to establish the secret sauce is really analyzing the dna of all the greatest players in history and what i can say without getting into more of what that algorithm looks like is that magnus compared to chess perfection meaning ignore the results result blind because there there's an argument that results are subjective in in and of themselves the ratings of your opponents can also be based on the era and and that's where it can get confusing but when you compare the quality of magnus's moves to like the best computers in terms of how they have looked at all the games in history magnus carlson is the most accurate chess player to have ever lived he makes the least amount of mistakes compared to like chess perfection wow and what's what's fascinating on this is we've done this study and you'll love this is that by this measurement chess.com's measurement of who the one gary is number two which is already giving a great nod to gary because there was there was a world champion in between magnus and gary which was vishwanathan anand who's also great so i'm not taking anything away from vishy i love him anand is the indian world champion and literally gave birth to like the india chess revolution now that's happening but it goes magnus gary was was according to this better than than anand and then it drops to fisher the american bobby fisher which says a lot for bobby fisher in terms of his just pure talent because there were multiple world champions in between fisher and like and and and kasparov and magnus so for fisher to have been that good and that dominant it's i don't know what it is it's like it's like it's like trying to get someone like will chamberlain in the thing he was so dominant and so talented that that's where the time machine conversation gets interesting because what if fisher had the same resources and the same knowledge that magnus has now right there are so those are the discussions that are fascinating because talent is different than greatness i think magnus is undeniably the greatest chess player ever by our measurement and i and i think it's a good measurement but talent is something that is is very difficult to put your finger on yeah and the players back then they didn't have the technology that i think is helping educate i think players these days too like they're seeing the perfection of let's say these these these engines and then it's like there's a lot more to analyze and play against and to learn so it's almost you're always standing on the shoulders of giants yep uh to some degree and it's interesting to see how things evolve but yeah by the way jordan but jordan's the goat did you okay well my kids would disagree with you my kids would say lebron's the goat you know um so there you go and dude that's a whole other cover i love both of them it's just it's tough to argue with like the six mvps but like the longevity of lebron you know you know it's it's yeah we have a whole another podcast it's a whole podcast and my boys you know walk around debating all the time and they you know it's i love that i lived both so i always can play the card like if you guys had seen jordan you wouldn't have denied you wouldn't deny his greatness like you just have no idea what you're talking about and um at the same time you know obviously lebron is a is a pretty special athlete um and you know i i understand arguments both ways so and then you gotta throw kobe in there too yeah you gotta throw some we might i think i think the person who always gets overlooked is duncan because tim duncan has five rings and he played against the kobe shack era and he played against you know toward the end it was toward lebron and others but like tim duncan is also like very quickly overlooked as like a guy who should be in the discussion as well so there you go i love watching him play listen we might have to have you on again in the future just to have an all-around chat let's do it let's do just basketball man any man thank you so much for your time your openness your vulnerability and like dude the the depth and the complexity and of the life that you've lived you know and all that you've lived through like for what it's worth where it's led you to the man that you are today for what you've created for what you advocate for for who you are man like what an incredible fucking journey and just blessed to have this conversation and blessed to connect with you thank you so much man thank you joel thank you you're awesomest yeah dude well i guess i guess in closing like chess.com obviously well how how would you like to direct their audience you got the book you got the business where where would you like to lead them at this point in time i you know i i um and i'm not just saying this like to because no one likes no one likes opening up their coat and being like let me sell you my own watches i'm not going to this is the time this is the invitation of the um you know the you guys have a diamond membership waiting for you i can't give all of your audience a free membership you should sign up to chess.com and i would say the thing we're very proud of with chess.com is obviously there's a lot that's happened in growth of the game and how we feel we've invested in making it more accessible more fun more diverse just chess is not the game you thought it was um and it is a lot of fun to play on the phone but our north star has always been like why did i lose that chess game why did i lose that game how did that happen we are not a company that is you know data farming your you know your information we are not we are not an advertising driving a high cpm company our whole business is getting people to ask a question how do i get better at chess and so we feel very good about that and i think that chess generally is a game that is good for human beings i think that chess makes people smarter and smarter people make the world a better place so from my perspective i feel very fortunate that chess.com's mission is an infinite one right i mean i think that chess makes people better and better human beings are better for the world so there's a lot of things about chess that i think are good for you there's been studies that show it's the best game for you know improving cognitive development in kids there's been there's been studies that show it fights off memory loss so i'm not here to even sell chess.com just the game of chess i think is good for human beings and i'm in a very lucky position like i said that the the business mission was infinite long before simon sinek was using that term right we were we were really in a great spot because chess is just so good for for the world so that's my chess that's my chess pitch and you know my my my book is i will say this like i didn't intend to to tell my story to you know to close the chapter i was i was starting a new one and i appreciate the opportunity to talk about this not out of any anger or blame or as you've heard me say even even really anything like but to give some to give some interesting clarity about how these things happen and what we can choose to do when we're faced with these types of obstacles right and like so my book is ultimately hopefully like like any of the other great stories we want to hear which is a bit of a story of alchemy right we all want to believe we're the hero of our own story that we can transform our hardship into something magical but no one likes to say the obstacle is the way when they're in the middle of the shit right you like to say that after right and so to me i'm like trying to share a story of like hey like you know we can we can do some hard things and so that's my pitch on the book of why i did this and and um and you don't have to buy it you probably should um but you know listen i've read a lot of books in my life i think people should read the book i think also too man like we're living in a world where there are a lot of wounded damaged people wounding and damaging other people and like to say like oh you were in the only cult that ever existed like no it happens all the time in different ways and so the more people get eyes on something the more people read something and see and see the behaviors that play then they can kind of tune inwards hopefully from self-reflection and see how maybe some of these patterns are playing out in their lives or in their relationships or the groups they're part of and so it's it's so educational it's inspiring uh and it's a fun it's a fun book too to read you know because it's just like your story the chest the history of chess like where you where you were and where you've come it's it's um it's a powerful read man and i'm just grateful that you that you uh read it and i'm grateful that mark connected us and um yeah man yeah shout out to mark by the way yeah shout out to you mark over we love you shout out to the great mark over he was actually the episode the episode just before you um all right man we we've said enough here appreciate you everyone else thank you for listening take care y'all