James Parris edition #182 Ken Cox

On Spotify.

Now I've not.

I've just recently started promoting it, so.

And very small promotion.

So.

So.

So how many podcasts do you have?

Because I was doing some research on you and you have quite a few things going on.

You know, I'm an eccentric fellow, James.

I like to keep busy.

I like to stay moving.

And in a time of AI, I can actually get out of my brain and share it with people in a way that I've never been able to do before.

So just having as much fun as I possibly can.

I'm only right.

Right now I'm working on a second one for my comedy.

So I've got my business podcast, Clicks and Bricks podcast, and I'm working on a concept for maybe a comedy podcast as well, but we'll.

That's in the works.

Okay, so.

So what was the first podcast you ever started, though?

How did that go?

How.

How did it go?

Or how did it start?

How is it going?

How did it start?

That's what I was kind of saying.

Okay, I'll tell you how it started.

I've been a data center operator for 25 years.

In 2017, we had a really rough go.

I lost my share.

I lost my partner.

My business partner.

Not my life partner.

Oh, okay.

My business partner, my co founder for the data center company that we have lost him in 17.

I got liver disease.

And our claim to fame was that we built data centers for the.

The coal industry.

And the coal industry filed bankruptcy that year, like all of it.

We built Peabody Energy's data Center back in 2012, and they filed bankruptcy then.

And we lost that contract.

And it was a huge contract for us.

So we went way upside down a couple years later.

And then I became the president of the company.

I was sick for a long time.

I had liver disease.

I was overcoming that.

I was overcoming that.

I don't mean to cut you off, but liver disease.

So were your eyes, like, yellow?

Did you have the whole.

The jaundice.

Yeah, was turning jaundice.

And I ended up in the emergency room almost dead or thinking I was dying from withdrawal.

Cause I had strep throat one week.

Thank God I had strep throat because I got strep throat.

And I didn't drink for a couple days because I just.

Because I was sick from strep.

And that put me into withdrawal, which then put me in the hospital and the doc.

And that.

That's what prompted the liver panels.

So.

So.

So how did it start off with the liver disease?

Did you just wake up And I don't really know the side effects or how that would work.

Well, I mean, I've been drinking my entire life, right?

I've been a heavy drinker since, you know, I mean, I've been drinking since 3.

Lived in bars growing up, so I've literally drank my entire life.

My first time at AA, I was 13.

You know, on and off my whole life, struggling and, you know, at that point in time, I had gained a lot of weight.

I was back up to, you know, almost £300.

Um, couldn't shake the weight, was miserable, wasn't happy, and just about.

I mean, you know, I could put on a really good mask any time of the day.

Um, so, you know, I probably appeared happy to a lot of people, successful and all that, but I was miserable in life and just walking through the days, gained a whole bunch of weight, couldn't lose it.

Irritated, snappy at everybody, just not a.

Not a nice person.

Sick a lot, right?

Just tired, sick and couldn't find comfort in life.

And luckily, you know, I had strep that day and that put me in the hospital.

Then they found the liver disease, and that's really what, you know, the doctor's like, you got two years to live if you want to keep drinking or we can quit now.

So I'm like, well, let's quit now.

You know, I had a wife and a kids and stuff.

You know, I had a house and a business and life was tough, but, you know, at that point when it was like, hey, do you want to live or die?

Like, well, let's go ahead and try to live, right?

That was the decision we made and.

Which then immediately put me on Xanax, which was a horrible.

Another two years of, of just hell escape.

I got addicted to Xanax.

I was popping bars like they're candy bars.

You know, hated life, hated life, but didn't realize I hated life, right?

I just kind of, I had no desire to do anything in life, right?

Just kind of, I lost all desire for that time.

It was miserable.

Um, went through a jaws of Xanax.

Almost as bad as alcohol.

Not fatal, but damn, that was rough to get off of that.

And they put me on some other crap and then it was the scale down system of back and forth.

Then I tried this nifty thing that us addicts like to call moderation.

Um, you know, I, I'd convinced my doctor that, hey, you know, I want to feel normal when I go to happy hours, and I want to feel normal at dinner and order a beer with my dinner.

And, um, you know, I've also got a lot of eating disorders from my neurodivergency.

Uh, so alcohol has always helped me at dinners.

Um, you know, I'd go to dinner and I'd be able to drink and I'd be able to stand the smells and the clicks and the.

The crunches and the gooey and all that stuff that's sitting at the table.

I could withstand that with alcohol.

It's challenging without.

But I'm.

I'm managing it now.

Fasting has helped me tremendously get through that piece.

So, yeah, it's been just a.

A wild ride.

Um, when I was.

I guess now, about four years ago, I was heading home from Pod Fest.

And I. I use cannabis to help me, medical cannabis to help me with my addiction.

Now.

It's the only medicine I take.

I don't take any other medicine except for cannabis now.

But the state of Georgia doesn't appreciate that.

Right.

So I was driving home from Podfest and I had my medical cannabis with me.

I got pulled over and.

I was going way too fast.

96 and a.

In a 60.

Right.

I shouldn't have been doing that.

I got pulled over.

He found my cannabis.

He thought it was fentanyl.

And.

And I caught some felony narcotics charges in Georgia.

Got arrested for two weeks pending trial.

Why do you think it was fentanyl?

Because it was tar.

Just uneducated.

Do you think a cop would be educated on that type of stuff?

Why would you think that?

Yeah, I mean, I.

There, you know, they.

You know, they have the monopoly on violence.

That's what I assume they have.

And I don't think they have any education on medical cannabis at all.

Especially a state that's as backwards as Georgia that believes that owning a flower should be permission to put somebody in a box.

But, you know, this is the world that we live in, so we had to learn how to.

If we want a modern society, we have to learn to live by the rules, I suppose.

And, you know, I'm just thinking from like, a deeper perspective here, because what's going on in my mind is, you know, and again, I'm just very ignorant on this topic because I didn't.

I've never really been the alcoholic type of guy, so I've never really understood that culture yet.

Once in a while I might go to a bar, have like a cider, but I'm just thinking, you know, how does that occur from.

Is it sort of a cultural perspective?

Because I know, again, I don't want to Say it like that.

But I was just thinking, you know, in my head, okay, is this a.

A French family?

Is this an Irish family?

Like, how.

How did.

Oh, yeah.

So I'll.

I'll tell you my beliefs, and I'll finish this story.

That night, I got arrested.

You know, I got out of jail, and I had to walk, like, two miles with no belt and, you know, missing from my life back to my rental car.

And it was super late at night, and I got.

I stopped and I got some tall boys, and I started and I drank one drink, and I was like, oh, this is not who I am anymore.

I poured it out, and that's the start of me being.

Owning sobriety.

I own sobriety now, right?

I'm a sober man.

That's who I am.

That's who I identify as.

Until that day, I identified as an alcoholic struggling with alcoholism.

That's who I.

It's who I was, right?

It's who I.

And that's who I believed I was.

So as long as I believe that I was an alcoholic struggling with alcoholism, guess what?

I was going to be struggling with alcoholism until I said, poured out.

I'm like, this isn't who I am anymore.

And I owned that.

I'm sober as.

And that was my new identity.

That's when I started finding joy and happiness on this planet.

But as far as where it comes from, you know, I was born homeless.

You know, when I left the hospital, my mom was able to hustle up enough cash to get us an apartment at my cousin's bar.

Above.

You know, above the bar, we got a little room.

So I was very sick as a child.

I had a hernia.

Born with a hernia.

But they didn't have the money to give me the surgery.

So for this first six months of my life was just, you know, in a.

In a bar, in significant pain.

So.

You know, my therapist believed that's where I learned to transcend and disassociate.

And I'm.

And I'm phenomenal at that particular skill set.

So, you know, basically, I lived my first six months under loud music.

Constant distress, and constant pain.

And, you know, I have zero claims, but the bar owner of that particular bar is currently in prison for infant mutilization utilization.

So.

In prison for what?

Infant what?

Pedophileism, I guess.

Okay, so there's that whole process, too, that I've had to deal with and.

And overcome.

So.

Living in a bar.

And then my mother married an alcoholic, right?

She was a bartender, and he was a baker.

He Would go to the bar and sit there and drink after, you know, he'd get third shift.

He'd get there at six in the morning or whatever, drink all day, go home and pass out.

So that was the community I lived in.

Then we moved to this boy, James.

You're letting me just dump it all out.

I lived in St. Louis 1972, 1973.

We were south St. Louis.

This is the time of what they called in St. Louis white flight.

The.

This white people from St. Louis City were moving south, right?

This was.

And we moved.

My mom married a racist.

And we moved to a racist community, which is so bizarre.

And I stayed there, you know, until I was 16 years old.

Didn't understand it, but I was taught to be racist as a child and just is.

Is this wild thing to, you know, being taught to hate things is just weird to me.

And I was taught drugs, alcohol, rock and roll, sex, drugs on rock and roll, biker community, criminal community, union boys, right?

Like there's a strip club down within walking distance from my house.

Kind of men I identified.

To be a man, you had to have a truck, you had to have a motorcycle, you had to have tattoos, you had to sleep with lots of women, you had to do drugs, you had to drink beer, and you had to fight.

That's what a man was to me.

That's what I was taught a man is.

And that's what I brought it to the world.

At 16, I started leaving, I started DJing, traveling the country.

Realized really quick that the city that I was living in was as backwards as anything that I could ever imagine.

So I separated myself from that community as much as I possibly could at the age of 16.

As soon as I could drive, right?

So I'd skip school on Fridays, I would leave town.

I DJ a gig somewhere, stay in that city, you know, know, hustle cash wherever I could.

That's, you know, kind of what I've been living my life ever since.

Got married at the age of 31, had a couple kids.

That's not the lifestyle for me.

So we're exploring new avenues now.

You know, that, that is, I. I would just say thank you for opening up that much because that is definitely a lot to.

To a lot to happen.

And.

And you probably have really.

And I could tell you really.

Look, I don't know, but I was just listening to you, and it was just the way you kind of brushed over the.

Well, I wouldn't say you brushed over, but you just graced over that idea of.

I was born homeless, so Quickly.

It slightly alarmed me a bit when you were, when you move through that so quickly, I'm like, am I listening to this?

I was born homeless and it just moved so quickly and I was like, wow, know this.

It almost felt normalized, you know, like, oh, you know, that, that just happens.

So what I realized is living in a community like that, you normalize a lot.

You normalize violence, you normalize, you normalize rape, you normalize addiction, you normalize all those.

These are just things that happen.

You, you normalize criminality, right?

A kid that lives in a criminal home is guilty, feels guilty for not stealing.

So just the way it is, right?

We, we, we are in our tribes and you know, now.

Stepping back and looking at the tribes that I, that I grew up with, bikers and gangs and you know, the guys at the strip clubs and the union boys and all of those things and you know, the way I see how fractured society has become and I've seen that, you know, that community on the, on the negative side.

I am now seeing that community on the positive side, right?

I'm part of that one agency and I, we go to these quantum events with amazing people that, filled with positivity and energy and it's contagious and you know, just negative people, you know, or I don't even know if I could say negative people that we perceived as negative.

You know, we keep them outside of the bubble and.

That'S a beautiful thing.

And I think with.

We've seen our society fracture down to non binary ism, right?

Which is just another word for Gen X in my mind, right?

Just don't label me.

So we've gone the full, the full circle and I think, you know, I think we're going to be identifying what non binary means as a don't label me movement, right?

Just like we did with Gen X long term.

And I think we're going to see these hopefully, you know, humans coming back together with AI and technology instead of this social network being able to fracture, fracture us, right?

I feel like we're getting ready to start.

I think we're getting ready to start an inhale through our nose, I hope, I hope.

Okay, so I'm noticing now, you know, okay, so the conversation is beginning to shift more towards the business angle here.

And it's got me thinking now, you know.

Where did this mindset of an entrepreneur eventually begin to stem from?

Because from that livelihood, I think you conveyed a lot of the, the difficulties and the struggle.

But do you think that's so I, I could easily Imagine.

Yes, it definitely played a role in, you know, your resilience and your drive.

I know exactly where it comes from, James.

Exactly.

So, as I said, you know, there's a strip club right down the street from my house.

I defog the windows and peek in to see my old man sitting at the counter.

But next door to that, there was a slot car track, right?

And to give you an idea, I was born Kenny Schneider.

The adoption process started at the age of seven.

I got in some trouble.

They lost custody, got custody back at the age of 13, and my name changed to Cox.

About that time, they lost custody of me again until I was 18.

So I was a ward of the state until the age of 18.

I got to live with them, but I was on probation until the age of 18 again for flowers.

I just had too many flowers in my possession, and they didn't think that that was proper for me to have.

So I'd.

I couldn't hang out with the guys, the friends that I had anymore.

I wasn't allowed to hang out with anybody my age, really.

Right.

And the police saw me in my community hanging out with anybody else who was on probation, I would be the one that got arrested, right?

Always.

Luckily for me, they did this.

It wasn't a bad arresting.

It was like, hey, we'd bring you to the station, kind of harass you.

I mean, it was really good ribbing, now that I look back at it, right?

It was.

They were, yes, aggressive with me, but I. I believe that they saw something in me that other people might not have.

They would just get me out of the situation.

They bring me to station, like, okay, walk home, you know, six mile walk.

But I would.

I was out of trouble, right?

I wasn't doing anything else.

So I'd find myself in that stock car track room and talking with the owner.

And, you know, he's trying to kick me out all the time, but I just keep bugging him.

And then he's like, well, here, start doing this and soldering parts together, right?

And then he taught me, oh, if you solder these parts together for the old guys that can't see, you can charge them a little bit of money, right?

Then I go over next door to the pool hall and he's like, I'd harass him.

He's like, oh, if you clean my pool tables, I'll let you shoot pool and foosball for free.

And I'll teach you tricks to hustle the old guys out of some cash so you can buy some new shoes, right?

I go down to the pizza place and he'd teach me, you know, he'd hire me and we'd sit and talk about religion until 4 or 5 o' clock in the morning.

I guess one of the other benefits, I grew up at a time that they had this concept of tough love.

And I'm a, I like to do what I like to do.

And there was this concept of if your child shows up home late after curfew, just lock the door.

So I would always just show up two minutes late and so I could do whatever I wanted all night long.

Right.

Because I knew that they, I mean, the police told them to lock the door if I was past curfew.

So I was basically a transient kid, even so tough.

I mean.

That'S interesting.

Do you think I, I, I would consider you a leader to some degree now that you do, now that you're an entrepreneur, do you think you incorporate some of your, I'm just, you know, this is just my curiosity, but do you think you incorporate some of those philosophies into your entrepreneurial ventures or maybe something like that?

I'm just thinking of maybe some things that, that, you know, people could learn from.

Yeah.

As an entrepreneur, I have definitely it, it gave me some toxic traits that I had to uncover and some entanglements that I had to figure out.

Right.

I have this romance with the underdog.

Right.

So if you give me an underdog that shows me a little bit of scrap, I'll back that to detriment to myself.

Right.

Which is, which is something that I've had to figure out.

Right.

Creating boundaries for that kind of environment, you know, saying, hey, if, if we're going to work on this together, these are the commitments that I need you to do.

And if you're doing those, then I'll continue working with you.

So I figured those boundaries out and, you know, if they're not willing to stick up to their commitment part, then I have to let them suffer the consequences of no longer being in my presence.

Right.

And that's just the way that it is.

I figured that out.

So I'm, I'm moving past that now.

But the, I know firsthand that that violence, I wouldn't say that it cures autism, but it definitely removes the symptoms in public.

It teaches an autistic person how to put on a mask that looks like everybody around them.

Right.

However, nobody teaches you how to take that off and be comfortable and stretch and do those things.

So not stimming in public, those kinds of things have been beaten out of me.

And now I work with autistic kids a lot or, or neurodivergent kids of all different kinds.

I own a boxing school is one of the things that I do.

It's so important for me to have one of those Main street businesses for the goofy kids to come into and have people there for them.

That I have a boxing school in our community and we have these kids.

And I was talking with our coach last night.

We have a new triplets.

One of the boys is wildly talented, great boxer.

The other two boys are talented in other ways.

And we had to make a deal with the mom to get the really talented one in the gym so that you can train and compete.

They'll let the other two boys in as well and let them train.

And I, I have a lot of autistic boys on my team.

They don't.

They compete in exhibitions not.

But an actual competition.

And one of the brothers, we realized last night that you just have to tell them three times everything.

And I talked to him afterwards and I'm like, you know, you want me to give you pressure to get out to, to help you get to one time telling you something.

And he said yes.

I told him, like, you know, it's going to be challenging.

I'm not going to hit you ever.

But I'll be really aggressive.

I'm going to get in your face, I'm going to tell you, you know, straight up exactly what you need to do.

And I'm going to push you really, really hard to get there.

And I promise it's always out of love.

And if you ever need a hug, I'll give you one.

And afterwards, we'll always have the conversation of, hey, we did this to make you stronger, sharper, faster, not better, different than you are right now.

So you can fit into this society and live in the society in a way that's productive.

So I think that there's a way to teach these things other than violence.

Takes an extreme amount of patience though, and understanding.

Interesting.

And what do you think is your biggest goal when it comes to your community?

I'm just thinking like, did you ever sort of go back to that old place that you were in and try to.

Because I don't know if you would do that.

I do go back.

I only live about 50 miles, about 30 miles away from there.

Now I live, you know, and funny, I moved to one of the most diverse communities in Missouri, Maryland Heights.

And I put my school, my daughter, and the most diverse school in the state, Remington.

So you Know, these are things that I, that I look for.

My role in the community, in that community, I think, is to just be a voice.

That community's come a long way.

First of all, right?

They just tored.

I remember one of the bars, I'm not going to say its name, but they just tore it down about three years ago.

And I recall no colors allowed signs, you know, in my lifetime.

This century, on the door of that bar.

Right.

They just tore it down.

So, I mean, it's, it's coming along and it's getting better, and there's, you know, there's getting more diversity in that community.

But I think my, my job is to be a voice.

To show everybody that there's pathways, there's many paths.

Right.

You know, I believe I don't have better language for it that society understands.

So we'll use God and Satan.

I think Satan finds him what his, finds his way into everywhere.

And I think that his biggest trick is saying that there's only one path for anything.

And, you know, if I can do that, that I create division, I can sit back and relax.

So there's many paths in this world to take, and I think our job as humans is to explore and enjoy.

And that's the message I'm trying to give.

Yeah, you know, I, I just find that really interesting because, you know, I, I, I don't want to say it like that, but in the back of my mind, I was kind of thinking, you know, there's a chance you could come back, or there was a chance you wouldn't have come back if it was sort of the same area.

Because I think on a deeper level, this has a lot to do with, with growth.

You know, I would personally have a hard time.

Again, I think most people would have a hard time going back to a place that they initially grown from.

You know, if you're a hermit crab, for example, if you grow out of one shell, it's kind of hard to go back into that same shell again.

So, so.

But there's always a pool.

Like, we've been connected.

Right.

And anything that you've been connected to, there's always an attraction to in some way.

You know, I still romanticize the banker, the biker culture and the gang culture and all that stuff.

I romanticize all those things.

Right.

The loyalty, the, the ride or die loyalty that does exist in those communities that I've never seen anywhere else.

Yeah, I have never seen that loyalty.

That amount of grit and that amount of brotherly love for each other.

They hate everybody else but they are willing to die for each other.

They are willing to give up tens of twenties of years of leather lies for each other.

And I can't say, other than my wife and children, that there's anybody I'm willing to do that for now.

But when I was younger, there was definitely a lot of men that I.

That.

That I would have done that, you.

Know, and I don't.

I don't.

I don't blame you for that because, you know, there were certain crowds in my high school I would gravitate towards, too, that weren't exactly the most astute.

I wasn't really a part of those crowds, you could probably tell, but that type of brotherhood, it was.

It was quite fascinating.

And it.

It becomes intoxicating, especially since, you know, you're a younger.

I don't want to bring it into this, but if you're a younger man, that's something that, you know, you kind of crave.

It's instant collaboration and instant power for and for a man.

For a young man that is told, you know, power is everything.

You've got to be powerful.

You got to be overtake, got to be able to overcome.

Aligning with the most powerful group in your community is a simple thing to do, right?

And that.

That gave you instant power.

It gave you instant clout and, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll and women are fun.

They're dopamine producers.

What's the point of two.

It will kill you, though.

Too much of it will kill you and break your soul and your body and everything else.

All right, so, you know, and that's.

Interesting because a lot of times, it's usually gangs that I usually saw, but with you in particular.

So there were bikers.

So there were biker gangs.

So you're probably very familiar with the Hells Angels and that whole scoop.

The.

The two bike gang.

The two clubs in my area were the Saddle Tramps and the Statesman.

Hell's Angels would come through.

They did not have a clubhouse near us, and if they did, I was unaware of it.

You know, I've.

I've had brothers and uncles in the clubs, you know, bled in and bled out, so it's.

It's a wild world.

Luckily for me, the.

The.

The gang that I was in was, as a kid got disbanded and.

And is.

Was no longer.

So we didn't have to.

The.

The government disbanded us, so we didn't have to think about it.

Good local government, not.

Not like FBI or anything.

Okay, okay.

So.

So what were your experiences like in that?

Would you be Allowed to talk about that.

Oh, they exiled people from like the, the, the people that were, I mean, we got a little crazy as kids.

We called ourselves the LA Boys, the Lower Arnold Boys.

And I think we were 1400 strong at one point.

Yeah, we, we created these, this fractured system where we could.

You know, get groups of kids in other areas and call them LA Boys and feed them ways to make money and they would, we would facilitate that for them.

So we learned how to do that.

Right.

And that.

We learned how to do business very early.

So.

Business.

Yeah.

So was the business a bit more of a physical business or more of.

A. I mean, yeah, I mean, we learned how to garden, we learned how to install and uninstall car stereos.

We learned how to, we learned how to, you know, locksmith vehicles and all kinds of cool stuff.

And there were gladly teach us how to do these things and gladly show us how to monetize.

I would never picture a gang gardening.

I mean, marijuana has to go somewhere.

I do gardening.

I wouldn't expect a gang to do gardening, you know.

Well, they don't really garden.

They protect the, the property that guarded that.

Gardens.

Guards.

Yeah, okay.

Gardening, I missed.

You have to learn how to garden because if the guy's not there to water, you got to do stuff.

Right.

And in those kinds of communities, the more valuable you make yourself, the faster you rise.

Right.

There's no concept of.

That's not my job.

Right.

You're there for the community and those in that kind of world, you do whatever it takes.

The more valuable you are to the community, the faster you rise.

Which is.

Yeah.

So if you're put on a guard, but then, you know, somebody doesn't show up to water and you water and then you report back say, hey, the water didn't show up.

So I just went ahead and handled it.

I've been watching him do it for the three months and I knew it needed to be done.

Now, on the same fact, if you did it and didn't report it, you were in a lot of trouble.

Right.

Cause now you're doing stuff that's not that you're not supposed to do, you're not directed to.

But if you learn that, hey, I'm going to step up, I'm going to take the risk, I'm going to bring it to my management, I'm going to tell them what I did and why I did it.

I'm going to hold strong and, and all of those things play true in corporate America.

But people don't realize it like How'd you learn how to do this?

I'm like, well, this is how I grew up.

But the consequences were way worse.

The consequences were violence, not you lose your job, that's an easy consequence.

If I, if me standing up to my boss because he's doing something stupid, it's going to lose my job.

Oh, well, I'm going to get another job.

Not going to get beat up, not going to die, I'm not going to get humiliated.

Just going to lose a job.

Who cares?

Okay.

Okay.

So.

So Game Guy turned corporate.

That.

That's what I'm getting here.

I wouldn't call myself a gang guy.

I was around them.

But okay.

I mean, I was like 14 when we were doing the LA boys.

Okay.

Child didn't know any better.

I was 14 when it was gone.

I think we started when we were 10, building clubhouses and doing that kind of stuff.

Oh, so you were younger.

So if you, you wouldn't have gotten in as much trouble doing it too.

Right.

The last time I got significant, well, I got arrested at the age of 13 for the charges were grand theft auto and possession over a pound.

Wow.

And we got them reduced to.

We didn't know who's possessed, who.

The flower.

There was three of us in the car, so we didn't know whose flower it was.

So those charges got dropped and the, the grand theft auto got removed.

We intended to bring the car back.

So that was tampering in the second degree.

That's what I got.

Probation for five years for that.

After that I was 14.

And I got.

The last time I got arrested, other than that time from.

In Georgia, I was 14, I was at a girl's house and we broke into her mom's liquor cabinet and she got drunk.

So I got.

She was 16, I was 14.

I got arrested for contributing to a minor.

And then by 18, the pizza place that I worked at, my manager's name was Ben.

And my favorite thing to do from probably 16 to probably 20 years old, if I wasn't DJing, I would be at that pizza joint and I would close it down and we would sit and talk about Jesus and religion until the sun came up.

And that was, you know, where most of my time went at that time.

And I think that's really what, you know, those men and those small businesses and the local police versus, you know, as backwards as they were.

Seeing something in me and keeping me out of trouble, even though it was annoying as hell to me at the time.

Are what saved my life.

And I mean, most of the men that I grew up with are dead or in prison and for very long periods of time.

And, you know, you definitely change my perspective because, you know, I never would have thought, you know, a lot of these gangs would be focused so much on community work and.

Definitely.

Gangs and their culture, right?

The, the skulls and stuff, right?

The skull means when all our flesh is gone, we're the same.

Right?

But the posturing is just to keep people out of the community.

A lot of these guys are vets, right?

They've got ptsd, they're angry, they just want to be left alone.

So a lot of this is posturing to keep other people, the community out because they don't have the communication skills to create boundaries in a way that aligns with how they identify with themselves.

Right?

They identify.

A man is, I don't ask for help, I fight.

I have lots of sex with random women, I do drugs, I drink.

And if any one of those things starts missing that I'm not a man.

If you start losing your identity, man, you go quick, that a man without identity is a lost man.

And my big fear right now and why I'm doing these podcasts so frequently is because I feel like a lot of men on this planet today identify as accountants, as lawyers, as these jobs that are not going to exist anymore.

And I've seen what happens in communities that when that flip switches and, and you start to group up and you start seeing other groups as we have communities of over a hundred people because we look at people that are different than us and we make the assumption that they're not going to be violent towards us or anything else.

Right?

We know that there's a risk, but we make the assumption that it's not going to happen.

The, the man, you know, the other primate world, they make the assumption when they see somebody from another tribe that there is going to be violence.

And I think that's a big difference in us.

And I just hope that we don't digress into that as humanity is.

Losing self identity.

So how do you identify yourself as a gladiator?

That's how I teach my kids to identify as.

That we have worked through.

We understand the armor that we can put on, our emotional armor.

We understand that we can put it on, we can block out everything.

But it's a much better life to walk without that armor with just a shield.

It's lighter, right?

We can block that bad energy if we can recognize it, we understand what our emotions are, we can sit in them, we can accept them.

You Know, yeah, it's going to hurt.

We're going to get cut, we're going to get bruises, we're going to get hit.

But then we'll sit through that and we'll go through it and we'll be stronger at the end of it, right?

And then I like to think of our swords as our masculine or feminine energy, and we keep it sheathed throughout the day and we bring it out for special occasions.

And understanding that, that concept, I think, has helped, you know, taking a kid.

This is where I got it all right?

Taking these kids from.

A kid that's knocking on my door with his mom from Palestine and saying he needs to know how to fight, he needs to know how to fight.

And he's soft and he's scared and he's never been in front of anybody.

And I've got to teach this kid now.

To stand in his underpants and in a.

In East St. Louis, one of the most violent communities in the country, bunch of men that he doesn't know stand in his underpants and get weighed, put on his uniform, walk into a crowd where half the people are yelling yes and half the people are booing him.

Get in a.

Get in a ring, lose, get beat up, hug his opponent, shake the coach of the other opponent and walk out with his head high.

I had to ask myself, how do I teach that I have to change who they believe they are.

And once I figured that out and that that morning, or that whenever it was leaving Georgia is when it all clicked for me that, oh, I can skip all the bullshit coaching everything else, if I can get somebody to identify with something, it's the fastest track in the planet.

And that's what I'm doing with comedy.

Right?

I made the decision on July 1st of this year to say, I'm going to test this theory at its.

At its absolute best.

I've never done standup comedy in my life.

I've never written comedy.

I'm going to become a comedian.

I'm going to call myself a comedian.

I'm going to start doing it and see what happens.

And three months later, I would think most people will call me a comedian at this point, including myself.

So I believe I have a very strong belief that self identity, if you can figure it out, that you can do anything on this planet that you want to do.

How does being a comedian help to fulfill this identity you have being a gladiator?

I, I went into this not knowing what was going to happen.

What I found out is that writing a joke that's personal about me, right?

And all of my stuff is my stuff.

Like, I, I. Plagiarism is something that I just can't even get my head around at this stage of my life.

Taking anything from anybody else on this planet is something I can't wrap my head around in this life, at this point in my life.

So originality and authenticity is important to me.

And learning how to take the most vulnerable topics, make them funny, right?

Rewrite them, reposition them, make them humorous to a large group of people, and then perform that.

It's harder than boxing.

At least in boxing, you have another ref and another fighter in the ring.

With comedy, you're up there by yourself, totally raw, telling stuff about yourself.

And I think that is, for me, has been the ultimate challenge of being pure and raw and showing up authentic.

And, you know, I. I do share a ton.

I share a lot.

You know, practicing vulnerability, something that I do.

There's still, you know, a whole chasm of things that I don't talk about so that are mine, that will stay mine forever, and, and I. I like that.

So what comedy has shown me how to do is manage those masks a little bit better underneath.

When I get home, I can be that gladiator, but I know that I gotta be a boardroom executive, I've gotta be a comedian, I've gotta be a dad, right?

And all of those Personas, masks, armor, whatever you want to call it, need slightly different approaches.

And comedy has shown me that in a way, in a more profound way than anything else has.

On top of that, writing comedy puts me in a mindset that I have to look for funny, whereas normally I'm looking for danger or, or where the, where the downfalls are going to be, you know, because I'm an engineer by heart at heart, and I'm a process engineer by heart, really.

Optimization is my.

Is one of my favorite things to do.

Stupid enough, but so it helps me a ton in that.

And when I'm, you know, working with AI in a new world and my world has gone, I can type 60 words a minute, right?

So that was as fast as my input creation could go.

I could talk two to 300 words a minute.

And now my computers can understand me at that, at that pace.

So, you know, a lot of people are like, ken, you're doing so much.

And I'm like, no, I'm.

I'm doing the same as I've always done.

It's just my input machine is now accepting my input in a way that it couldn't before.

So the world's caught up from my fingers to my mouth.

And it appears that I can create more faster now.

Well, no, I can create more faster now, but it's no more work than I've ever done.

It's actually less work, so.

Well, how is this shift like?

Because being a person that grew up in all of this trauma and all this difficulty, only searching maybe for reasons, searching for maybe other things.

But now for the first time ever, you're taking your narrative in life and searching for funny.

How did that feel?

For the first time ever, searching for that.

That funny and trying to, trying to drive the joy out of that.

Did it change you as a person after a while?

What?

It expanded my emotional bandwidth on both sides.

So.

And I don't recommend the journey to enlightenment for any other human.

Like, unless this is something that you're called to do, because it is.

When you get to that extreme high, you're going to have to also process your extreme lows.

Right.

Maybe the fact that I've learned how to process those extreme lows means that I can do these extreme highs.

I don't know.

Right.

I don't know the, the reasons why.

You know, I've had a couple comedians come up to me and ask me, you know, how are you so comfortable on the stage?

You've never, you know, this is your third, you know, you're a month into stand up.

How are you so comfortable up there?

I'm like, well, I just don't like.

My job is to get them to laugh.

If they've laughed, I've done my job.

And if I didn't, then I just got some information on what didn't work.

Right.

So I know what not to say next time or what do you say next time?

And this is just the process.

And I'm, I'm loving that.

The Rubik's Cube of, you know, social sociology, the sociology that is comedy and stand up comedy specifically.

Right.

You, you don't have the crutches of.

Well, I guess I could have crutches if I wanted to, but I'm really enjoying this raw jeans and a T shirt approach.

I do have the big beard.

That kind of helps me a bunch.

Right.

Like, but it's, it's feels really good to stand on a stage raw, tell your story and have somebody laugh at it and, and like, and relate.

It's a, it's, it's a way to connect with people that I've never felt before.

Do you ever get any hecklers?

Have you ever experienced that before?

Yes.

I got my.

I got my.

I got my first FU on stage last week.

I was so proud of it.

My opening.

I changed my opening line for it, right.

My opening line was, man's getting hard out here for white or getting hard out here for middle class white guys.

I saw one cutting the crass the other day, and he wasn't even on the rider.

He was the one pushing.

And I got an FU from the back of the crowd.

This is inner city St. Louis, right?

So.

And I laugh.

I was very proud of that.

I touched the nerve and I got it.

I got some of these emotions up and we were able to talk through it, right?

And say, hey, you know, it's hard out here for everybody, right?

This is my point.

And I like the kind of topics.

But I changed it now and I just said, man, it's really getting hard out here.

I saw a white guy cutting the grass the other day, and I think the joke works better, Right.

If I could take that kind of stuff out and still say the point and take the.

The sharpness out of it and still get my point across, it's.

It's still fun and it's still.

Still resonates with people.

And I think that's what we really gotta see.

We're all the same.

Like, we're.

People say that, but I don't think people understand how.

How that we are the same.

So hurting others is hurting you?

I mean.

Yeah, because really?

Yeah, you know, we tend to hate, you know, and it's funny because a lot of times when we lash out at people, it has more to do with how we feel about ourselves.

So it does.

There is that carryover.

Yeah.

We are beautiful mirrors.

Most of us are broken mirrors.

Easier to look into a broken mirror than it is as a whole mirror.

And the more hole you get, the lonelier it gets in life.

But you find people that they're where you're at and you meet them and it's.

Those are the remarkable moments in our life.

So for you personally, what would you have considered your high point in life?

What would you have considered your remarkable point in life would be?

Because you sort of talked about this.

There's sort of a gap in my brain when I'm interviewing you because there's this stage in your life that was very difficult, you transition out of that stage.

But now we need to move towards the entrepreneurship stage.

And I'm noticing a gap, because I'm thinking that probably was the point in his life where things really began to climb up again.

I'm Just thinking out loudly.

I don't think it's happened yet.

I honestly don't believe that the greatest things that I have to offer this planet have happened yet.

And what's happening right now globally is, is what I think is being is calling me.

I spent a lot of time with my head down, you know, for the, at least the first, until I met my wife, I believed that life was a punishment.

I did not want to exist.

I did not want to be on this planet.

I didn't know how to leave it, but I didn't want to be here, right?

And I met her and then we had our daughter.

And that changed me a lot.

Then we have my son who's non verbal autistic and that changed me profoundly.

Learning how to communicate with a nonverbal boy that I have a connection with that is unexplainable by any, anything outside of quantum physics doesn't explain our relationship mentally.

Well, I guess there's some spiritual definitions that could explain it as well.

You know, that changed me a lot.

And then realizing that my, me and my wife love each other dearly.

And we believe that our souls have been intertwined for millions or billions of years.

And but for this time in our lives.

We needed to redefine our relationship and that was okay.

And I think that's what.

The, the last part of my entanglements in this with my perceived outcomes.

Is, is finishing up now.

You know, we're doing some really cool stuff with the data center right now and my responsibilities are going to be lowered for the data center over the next 12 months and I'll get to explore more things.

So I think as we exit this stage of my data center career or at least reduce its my reliance, the data center's reliancy on me, I'll be able to stretch my arms and explore more and help our planet move into this world of a symbiotic relationship with technology.

Because I think that's what's going to be required.

I mean our cars are driving themselves in the west Coast.

As you drive along on the west coast, you're seeing delivery bots now on the streets, see cleaning bots mopping the floors in our quick trips.

Right?

Well, somebody had the identity as janitorial last year and they're proud of that.

They kept the place clean, right?

What are they going to identify tomorrow as?

And that scares the hell out of me.

And I don't see anybody championing, championing saying hey, this is a way you can create your own identity.

And this is a way that you can be proud of yourself without earning this fiat currency that we put such a great value on.

You know, I'm already thinking, because those clean bots can really play a massive role in things like conservation as well.

Because those things could be utilized for things like litter picking, cleaning up the garbage, cement control tools that could be used for some level of good.

You know, again, you know, moving further and further, I mean, when did you first start seeing these clean bots?

Oh, I've, I've known they were coming for about three years.

I've started seeing them in the last six months escalate.

At a pretty great rate.

You know, I know the economics behind the WH os.

I know the economics behind the cleaning bots, I know the economics behind the house building bots.

I know the economics behind the long haul trucks.

Right.

And that, that's the first one that's going to fall and, and they're the closest to biker community that there is.

Right.

So I definitely see Hell's Angels and those guys like growing really fast over the next five years.

Really?

So you see the Hell's Angels growing.

Low or that kind of, that kind of community?

Yes, because we're, we're, we're going to come to a spot in the transition.

I mean we, we're at a point now that there's no job on the planet that a computer and a machine together can't do.

Right.

At cern they're turning energy into matter.

At X, they're turning thoughts into digital.

So all the components exist on our planet right now to manifest matter.

It's just a question of how much electricity we need to do it.

Right.

And, and some more tech and, and tie those things together with some APIs in reality, right?

That's how, that's what we're headed towards.

And I think we're, you know, thousand years away from that.

But you know, 150 years ago we didn't have a car or a TV, right?

So the, the, the rate of escalation is hockey sticks at a rate that we don't even understand.

We have the first shot in documented human history for Utopia.

If we play our cards right, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

It's going to be a lot of pain in that transition.

And I just want to help that transition as much as possible.

Utopia, I believe I don't see any reason why we have to work if we can harness enough energy and, and we can make enough robots and we have enough AI.

I, I believe in a world where we can go back to, you know, hunting it.

And I don't know about hunting, but just gathering or the.

Where our resources are just there for us.

I don't think that.

I think we can have a world where food is just provided for every human on the planet or available.

Right.

Just, hey, here's, you know, have robots out gardening.

We.

I don't know why we told people to start throwing pesticides in their yards and killing their fruits and their vegetables.

Society.

I love society.

I love where we're at.

But I also believe in sustainability and sovereignty.

I like sovereignty.

And something's been lost on our planet.

And I think in a lot of communities it's going to come back.

You know, sustainability and sovereignty, I think they go hand in hand because as people, the same way we try to maintain what's good in there, the sustainability element is maintaining what's good in there in the environment as well.

You know, I. I don't want to go too deep into myself, but I do a lot of citizen science and a lot of.

I don't know if you're familiar with birding, but a lot of that is very focused on looking at the natural populations, looking at the natural environment and making sure there's a level of sustainability and maintenance of everything.

And I think it carries over very well to us as people, too, because we need to ensure that in our lives there is a level of maintenance, too.

But that's just something I think goes hand in hand.

And I feel like.

I don't know when this is going to air, James, but right now it's October 28th.

And I know in the state of Missouri at this point they're saying that food benefits are not going to go out on November 1st.

I live in one of the most violent communities in the world.

I don't live in that community.

I live 20 miles away from it.

Right.

But I mean, this is the home of the Ferguson riots and a lot of stuff.

We're murder cap, one of the murder capitals of the world.

It's a time to be talking about this stuff at.

I don't care if you're Democrat or Republican.

I don't care if you're communist or capitalists.

If people are not eating, they will.

They will get together and they will find a way.

And I promise you, your suburban home will does not serve as chance against a group of four people that are hungry.

And we've demonized our police department.

We've right, wrong or indifferent.

I'm not a big fan of the Blue Line.

I think it's just another way to, to say I'm a part of a gang.

I, I believe in shepherdship, I don't believe in authoritarianism.

And I just don't think that the ego driven fear systems are going to work in a world of AI and robotics and utopia.

It works in a ego and fear and violence.

Work in a robot AI dystopia for sure.

It manages that very well.

Very easy to do.

It's the easy path.

But we can have a utopia.

We can have it, but we gotta work for it every day.

And I don't hear enough people yelling for it.

Excellent.

This is, this was, I think this was a really good way of kind of ending off our discussion here with that conclusion.

And I would like to hope too.

We could possibly do a part two as well, going in deeper depth into maybe some more topics.

But if you're going to ask an old man to talk about the philosophies of technology and humanism, I'm there.

Thank you again, man.

Are there any additional closing words you'd like to give to the audience before I let you off here to your busy day?

If you want to follow my comedy journey, it's just Cox Out.com, if you like Freud, Nietzsche, Young, all those guys and you want to hang out with them.

In my mind, I put them on paper every night, almost every night.

And it's been a ton of fun and you know, and, and it's, it's all of those really thought provoking people, you know, and about a 13 year old voice.

So it's a lot of fun, a lot of f bombs.

If, if you, if you're more than.

If curse words offend you, it's not the place for you.

But my creator doesn't care about vowels and consonants.

He only cares about vibration.

All right, well, thank you again, man.

It was an honor to have you here and I want to thank the audience here for watching and I will be giving you some more great content soon as well.

You know, obviously after listening to this, hopefully I got you all excited, but yeah, see you all next time.