All channelsEffortless English · Sun, 23 Oc

The Corporate Cult | Preface | Rich Zubaty

Vocabulary

  • Corporation A specific type of company, often large and powerful.
  • Propaganda Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular political cause or point of view.
  • Brainwash To influence someone’s thoughts or behavior in a manipulative way.
  • Traditional cultures Established customs, beliefs, and values passed down through generations.
  • Billion dollar corporations — Companies with assets and revenue exceeding one billion dollars.

Full Transcripttap the text to seek

Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hoag, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A.J.

with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. I'm A.J. Hoag. This is the Effortless English Show. You speak English fluently.

You speak English fluently. Speak English powerfully. You speak English effortlessly. Today's topic, a new book club. We're starting a new book. I'm choosing a very interesting book, I think, and a book that is not well known.

So a lot of the books we have done, we have read, we have studied, we've learned... In our book clubs are fairly famous books. Brave New World is a very famous book.

Animal Farm, very famous. The Alchemist was a bestseller. Paulo Coelho. Tony Robbins, his books are bestsellers. So these are all quite famous books. Very, very, very well known.

So I decided to choose one that I read quite a long time ago. It's a very kind of red pill book. But I mean, I read this book at least 10 years ago. I don't remember when it was published.

I'll look when we start it, because today we'll do the preface, the very first part. But it's called The Corporate Cult. The Corporate Cult. And I was thinking of new books, like what book should I do?

I have a lot of suggestions from you all. Thank you. But I thought, let's do something different. Let's do something that maybe none of you know about.

My guess is none of you have read this book. You probably never heard of it or know about it. So, I think this is a good one because it talks about our modern world. And again, kind of along the lines, kind of similar to Brave New World and Animal Farm.

But... more recent, and really more focused on our modern day life now and how these corporations, these giant companies, these giant corporations rule over us, which we all know this. We all know that.

We all know that these giant companies, these billion, multi-billion dollar companies have all the power. They control the governments, not you and I. Voting doesn't matter. None of that matters because...

It's all controlled by these giant companies and, of course, these kind of banking, tribal banking families behind the companies that really control those companies. But that's a topic for another day. In this book, though, the author, the writer, he writes about the power of corporations and how they have taken control of everything. They control our media.

We know this. Social media, internet media, television media, it's all controlled by just a few giant companies, corporations. A corporation is a specific kind of company.

And we know they control the financial system, right? All these giant banks, it's not some little individual family that has a bank, it's these Again, billion-dollar corporations. Corporations control the military.

They control everything. So we all know this, but what's interesting, why I like this book, is he talks about how this affects us in our daily life. How does it change us? How do these corporations brainwash us and kind of destroy our happiness, destroy our families, and brainwash us with propaganda?

And also what I like is he also has some solutions. How do we go against that? And again, very practical. This is like for just regular people. So this is not some big political thing like he's trying to organize the world for a big revolution or something.

It's just what can we do individually to recognize how these companies have changed all of our cultures. All the traditional cultures around the world. I don't care where you live. Russia...

Europe, America, South America, Africa, Asia, it doesn't matter. Our traditional cultures have been attacked and mostly destroyed by these giant corporations.

And of course, there are real people controlling these corporations, but we'll just talk about the corporations for now. So he talks about how they've done that and how they have destroyed, and indeed they've attacked our religions and religions. Really weakened and corrupted many of our religions and religious groups. They have attacked and destroyed our families.

So you've got divorce, especially when you look at the West. What a disaster. But this is now coming to everywhere in the world. Everything you see that's terrible in America and Europe

is also happening in Asia and Africa and South America and Russia and the Middle East. All these things are also happening there, but just maybe not as much yet.

But it's the same things are happening. Religions are under attack everywhere. Families are under attack everywhere, right? The brainwashing is everywhere.

It's just, if you want to see how bad it can get, look at America and Western Europe, and you'll see how terrible and horrible it will become. And indeed, Europe and America continue to get even worse. You think it's not possible for it to get worse, but it does.

The cultures are completely destroyed and corrupted. So, you know, if you live in a country that's better... That's nice. I live in a country that's better.

But you have to realize, you probably look at it in your own country and you see that things are getting worse, right? And it's the power of these companies and how they use it. And it's not just about money. These companies are really trying to change our societies, change our psychology.

They're trying to control everything. It's not just about making some money. So it's a very interesting book. The writer, let's talk about the writer, and then we'll do the first part of the book, and you'll see what I mean.

The writer, his name is Rich Zubati. Rich Zubati. I don't know much about him personally, but his writing style is very emotional, passionate. So this is very different than Brave New World, very different than Animal Farm, because those writers, George Orwell was a professional writer.

and kind of political philosopher, and, you know, he had a very, I think he was a socialist, actually, so he, he had this kind of, you know, more intellectual, I would say, mindset when writing. And the same with Aldous Huxley, very philosophical, and again, very intellectual. So those two books, very philosophical, very intellectual. This guy, Rich Zubati, he's intelligent, but his writing style is not

is much more emotional and poetic and passionate, I would say. He's just passionate because he sees all this evil and all these terrible things happening. And so his writing style is more like an essay. And sometimes he jumps around different topics a lot.

And it's very energetic, which is great. I like it. But it's less kind of philosophical and organized. So I think it's a nice balance, actually. It's a nice comparison or nice contrast to Animal Farm and Brave New World, which are more philosophical and rational style.

So this one's going to be much more emotional. So you can get these books. I think it might just be an e-book only if you want to find out. Let me type it in the comments on YouTube here, and I'll say it slowly if you're just listening.

It's called The Corporate Cult. The Corporate Cult. Okay? So The Corporate Cult is the name of the book. This is our new book club. I'm going to start with the first part today.

Okay? Okay? And the writer is Rich, R-I-C-H, just like the word rich. And his last name is Zubati, Zubati, something like that. Z-U-B-A-T-Y. Z-U-B-A-T-Y.

Rich Zubati. The corporate cult. So I found this on Amazon. You can find it on Amazon as an e-book. I don't... I don't know if you can find it in other, you know, like Rakatan or, what is it, Kobo, you know, one of these other booksellers.

You could probably find it. But it's a small book. It's not well known. It's not a bestseller. Most people don't know this book. So that's why I think it may be kind of interesting for you all.

Interesting to me, too. This guy's just a regular guy. He's not some big, super famous writer. The Corporate Cult. All right, let's start it, guys. Let's start the first preface, and you'll see what I mean.

We'll start it, and then we'll come back and discuss it. All right, let me change my cameras. All right, there we go, and boom. Let me do something real quick.

Cancel, all right. All right, so we're just going to do what's called the preface today. The preface is before the introduction, okay? So there's the table of contents, right?

It tells you what it's about. Let me see. There are only four chapters in this book, plus a conclusion and an introduction. So that's six, and the preface is seven.

So we'll probably only need seven shows to do this. It's a pretty short book, and that's also nice. Okay, the preface. Corporate vampires. Okay, so basically in this section, this little short section, he compares corporations, these giant companies, to vampires.

You guys know vampires, right? They suck the blood and, you know, the monster movies, right? Not the nice vampires like... What was it, Twilight? You know, the Twilight movie.

But like, you know, the evil vampires that kill people. All right, so he's comparing them and then he discusses how are corporations like vampires? How are they the same?

See what I mean? It's a much more emotional, poetic style here. Okay, number one. Vampires see no reflection in the mirror. Neither do corporations. What does this mean?

So, you know, if you've watched some vampire movies or read some books, you know, the kind of traditional idea is that a vampire, if a vampire looks in a mirror, they don't see anything, right? The light doesn't come back. It's like they're invisible in mirrors.

I don't know why, but that's the story of vampires. So he says, neither do corporations. What is he talking about? Let's continue. We can track their existence on the evening news according to unintelligible numbers.

We can identify properties they own, but in actuality, there's nothing there. Just a legal fiction of corporate persons with all the legal rights of personhood who cannot be held accountable for criminal wrongdoing.

Okay, here's some heavy vocabulary. Probably hard to understand that. Let me explain it. First, I'll just explain it with more simple words and we'll get the idea.

So what he's saying is that corporations, it's kind of, they're not real, right? We talk about corporations control the world and corporate power and these corporations are doing evil things and these corporations control the government. These corporations control the media.

But what is a corporation? It's just a legal piece of paper. Right? Because the truth is, corporations have people in them. There's no actual corporation.

But legally, a corporation is like a person. This is kind of a... It's a trick. It's a trick. These corporations, these organizations, have all these rights.

Governments have given them rights. The rights to free speech, for example, in America. Right? Although it's more limited than individuals, but anyway.

And they have all these rights and they're treated legally like people. Even though it's actually an organization with thousands of people possibly as employees. And the employees come and they go and they change. But somehow this thing, like let's say Google...

Somehow Google is treated as like an actual person. We talk about Google like it's a person. It's not a person, right? And yet Google is allowed to do all these things and is never punished.

They get to do censorship. They get to lie. They get to cheat. They get to do all kinds of horrible things. And so it's a way, what he's kind of saying is that, you know, corporations, this legal papers, these organizations, it really just protects the actual evil people who are doing these things, right?

The evil people, we never even know their names many times, the people who really control the companies. They can hide and be secret and let these companies do all the evil stuff and the bad stuff and let the companies have all the power. So he's saying it's kind of like a vampire.

You try to look at them, but then there's nothing there really. If you really look closely, it's almost like they're kind of invisible. Interesting idea.

Okay, part two. Vampires suck the life energy out of people, and they don't care. Aha! So we know this, right? Vampires suck the blood, right? They bite people on the neck in the movies, right?

They bite their neck, and they suck all the blood out. They suck out the life energy. And the vampires are evil. They don't care. They don't care. They're hurting people.

So he's saying, so do corporations. They suck the life out of their workers, right? They suck the life out of our land and our air and our water. They suck the life out of our government and they don't care.

They can't care because they are already dead. Interesting. Very interesting. So again, and he's right about this. I think we've all seen this. We all agree now.

You know, these corporations, right, they just keep sucking, they just try to get more power, more power, more power, more power. If you work for a large corporation, you know what it's like. I've worked for a large and maybe medium, small corporations.

And in both cases, it was terrible to be a worker there, right? They do. They suck the life. They suck the energy. They suck the happiness out of their employees.

Very few employees at large companies, large corporations, are happy and relaxed people. I don't know any. I never met any. I worked at IBM just as a student, like nothing serious, but I did it for three different summers, and every person who worked there, they were okay.

They weren't bad people. They were nice enough, but... They were kind of half dead. I mean, you know, they would joke and they would pretend to be happy, but there was just like something missing from their life.

Like they just seemed kind of like they had no real joy or great happiness or passion or faith or devotion or anything deep in their life anymore, right? Working at that company itself. Year by year, right? The longer they go, it just sucks their life out.

Just the schedule and all the going through the traffic to get to work and come home and following the rules and all the bureaucracy. It sucks the life out of the workers.

right we see this and it's and it's factory workers blue what we call blue collar right guys working with their hands more and it's the white color guys the guys working in offices and women men women men it doesn't matter i was working you know in offices and it was terrible oh my god horrible they suck the life out of our land and water and air indeed they cause a lot of pollution we know this right

not individuals not like some you and me and or some little small family business that usually is destroying the environment it's right it's typically these giant large corporations doing the worst stuff and they suck the life out of our government who controls our governments really democracy is a lie come on guys your vote doesn't mean anything nothing it's just a show right who really controls these people

We know. It's the corporations and the people who control the corporations. Okay, next one. Number three. Vampires hate sunlight. So do corporations. Aha.

So we know, again, from movies, the vampire, if they go in the sun, they die, right? They burn up and die. So here he's talking about sunlight. Again, it's kind of like I said, it's poetic.

Sunlight... also means honesty and truth, seeing everything, not hiding anything. So if you have something and if it's in the dark, it's hard to see. But if you put it in the sunlight, you can see everything.

You can see all of the truth. So what he's saying is corporations hate the truth. They do not want everybody to know what they're doing, all the details of all the stuff they're doing, all the terrible stuff they're doing. They're always trying to hide things and keep everything secret.

So he's saying corporations build legal, media, and military fortresses around themselves. A fortress is like a, we just say fort, or like a castle. It's like big walls, basically, big walls. So he's saying these big corporations, they make these walls around themselves.

What is he talking about? He's meaning they get all these laws passed so they can hide what they're doing. They buy the media, so the TV, the newspapers, they don't tell you what's really happening. They don't tell you what Google's actually doing.

They don't tell you what the banks are doing. They don't tell you what the... military, you know, like, I don't know, Blackwater are doing these companies that they don't tell you, right? It's all kind of kept secret and hidden.

This next one I really like, and it's so true. Number four, let's see, one, two, three, four, yeah. Vampires cringe at religious artifacts. So do corporations.

Cringe means to move away. They're scared. So vampires, like if you watch, again, the vampire movies, that if you show them across, for example, in the American-European tradition, You show them a cross, right?

What a symbol of Christianity, of Jesus, of God. You show them the cross, they like, ah, they hate it. They kind of, they have moved back. They're scared of it, right?

So they're basically saying that vampires are afraid of God and religion. So are corporations, right? So in other words, he's saying corporations are anti-religious.

Corporations are anti-God, against God, against religion. He says they openly, corporations openly reject religious values of love and cooperation and truth.

He's right. They reject, right? They won't, they, you know, if you work in a big company, they never talk about love. They don't talk about cooperation very much, working together to help people.

You know, not much, maybe a little bit in team building and stuff, but it's Nothing serious. And truth, for example, absolutely not. As, you know, number three, we just talked about corporations like secrets.

They do not tell the truth. They hate the truth. Because they're doing bad things. All of them. They advocate means they support, they like, rabid competition.

Rabid means crazy, uncontrolled competition. It comes from the word rabies, which is a disease that makes animals act crazy and attack people. So rabid competition means not just normal, healthy competition. Competition can be healthy.

But rabid competition means just uncontrolled, unhealthy, terrible competition to just destroy the other person or the other people. He says, corporations care nothing for the welfare of people. They don't care about people at all who can't find jobs. In fact, they cheerfully, they happily deport our jobs overseas.

Oh, yes, this is true. So, corporations, they don't care about people who are unemployed. They don't care about people who lose their jobs. In fact, they will happily...

cut jobs and move their jobs somewhere cheaper, right? So like America, a lot of the jobs were moved over to China, for example. The corporations did this. They didn't care.

Did they care about all the Americans who lost their jobs? Nope. Did not care. They cut older people. People work for the company a long time and they say, oh, now let's cut them.

We can save money. They'll cut them. Do they care if the older person is going to suffer? No, they don't care. They do not care about humans at all. Just power and money.

Mostly power. Alright, next one. Vampires cast no shadow. So, again, in vampire movies, they don't make a shadow. So, if they're inside a room, there's a bright light, like a candle or just a light.

They don't make a shadow on the floor. So, in some movies, they don't make shadows. He says, neither do corporations. What does he mean? They are nothing more than a figment of our imaginations.

They do not really exist, yet they can kill us or turn us into one of them. So this is again repeating this idea that We talk about corporations like they're real people, but it's not a person. It's just some piece of paper.

A judge could say, okay, this corporation's done, and it dissolves, and it would just disappear, right? Because it's actually not a real person. It's actually just groups of people.

It's like a team or something like that. Next one. Vampires are charming shapeshifters. so are corporations. This is a nice one, too. Charming means, you know, friendly, like, you know, they seem like they're nice, right?

And you'll see this again in a lot of vampire movies where the vampire, you know, he's trying to get somebody, and he seems like he's this very intelligent, very kind person, and then at night he attacks and bites them, right?

And they can change shape, meaning like in some of the movies they can become like a bat or a wolf or some other animal. So he's saying corporations are also charming. He says, thanks to billions, billions of dollars or whatever, spent on public relations, they come at us all smiley-faced and green-friendly on TV.

Then they spread their dark wings and flee from the misery they cause. You see how I mean? This is very emotional, poetic language. So I'll help you understand it.

So this is true. What do corporations do? They spend billions, billions, billions and billions of dollars on PR, public relations. It just means they get the media to say nice things about them, right?

And they all pretend to be like pro-environment, right? Which is sickening because they're not. But, you know, they're all like, you know, oh, climate change is so, oh, which is just a nonsense issue. But the real issues are like toxic waste.

They're dumping poisonous chemicals into the rivers and the ocean. They're cutting down trees and destroying huge areas where animals and others live. They're poisoning our air.

They never talk about that. They just donate some money to Greenpeace and pretend like, oh, we care about the environment. And they put advertisements on television and newspapers and, oh, we're such good people. Oh, we give money to charity.

So they're always smiling and always pretending like they care so much. And it's all a lie, just like a vampire. The truth is they're evil. This next one I have seen myself many times.

The next one, vampires bite you and you become one of them. So it is with corporations. employees learn to shut down their hearts, their emotions, and sell their souls to become good company men. And this is where we're now getting to real people, okay?

And he's right about this. Why do these corporations, how can they be so evil? Well, because the employees inside them are the ones actually doing the evil.

They, the employees, become corrupted, right? They become changed, little by little. I saw this at IBM, I've seen this at a large hospital I worked at, I've seen this in the school system, everywhere.

Someone joins, they start a job, yeah, they're a normal person, but after years and years inside this system, they, little by little, you know, become more corrupt.

They will follow the rules of the company more and more. They will do things that are really not that good. They will lose their compassion, at least in their work.

They'll stop being human. They start acting like just robots in a machine. And this is how they do evil. How do they do evil? Well, because it's not a piece of paper doing evil.

It's the actual employees who do these evil things. And they're inside this company. They become part of it. And especially as they go higher, and this is a really key thing, but not always.

Even the low-level employees often will do these terrible things. But to go higher and higher and higher, they must become more and more and more evil.

That's how they get promoted. Okay, next and last point here. Vampires hypnotize us in the guise of love and concern. Then they bite our necks. So do corporations.

Interesting. Okay, vampires hypnotize us. Hypnotize, right? It's like when you're getting sleepy. It's kind of mind control. So again, in the movies, what do the vampires do?

Maybe there's a woman the vampire likes. So he pretends to be really nice. He looks into the woman's eyes and she becomes kind of like magic, like hypnotized.

And she thinks she loves the vampire. She thinks the vampire loves her. So she relaxes. And then he bites her neck. Sucks her blood. So he's saying this is what corporations do.

Someone buys one of their happy products. Then they die from using the product. The corporate vampire disappears in the fog. It cannot be held criminally responsible.

We see this with the drug companies, the vaccines all the time. that they produce some drug or vaccine that hurts people, kills people, kills kids. But they don't really talk about it in the media very much. Everybody just ignores it and forgets.

And then they do it again, and they do it again, and nobody's punished. Nobody goes to jail. Nobody's executed. Nothing. Nothing, right? They just run all their happy commercials, you know, oh, do you have knee pain?

Then take this drug, right? Then they use media to hypnotize us, to mind control us. Okay, now finally, this last two paragraphs is kind of a little summary. He says, we live in a society where 20% of the people own 94% of wealth.

So these numbers are old. It's much worse than that. The other 80% of us are fighting over just 6% of the wealth. And again, I think it's much worse than that now.

So in other words, he's saying there's this tiny little group at the top of primarily families and their servants, their corporate employees, who have most of the wealth.

And this is just getting worse and worse and worse. And the rest of us, all the rest of the world, all the regular normal people, lower class, working class, middle class, upper middle class,

even lower upper class, we're all fighting for the tiny little bit that's left over. Right? He says, what kind of people continue to create these values which make these super rich, quite evil people more rich?

And then he asks, are corporations cults? And this is the the main idea of the book. A cult. What's a cult? A cult is like a fake religion that mind controls people.

Right? Like the famous one is Jim Jones. Some of you guys, this happened a long time ago when I was a kid. The guy that made his followers, they all drank poison and they all killed themselves.

It was like hundreds of them. Women, children... Adults, all of them, they all killed themselves down in Guyana, I believe it was. And it was a religious cult.

It was some crazy fake religion. And he's saying corporations are cults. He's asking, but really he's saying that they are. They're cults. They're kind of brainwashing, mind-control groups.

And then he asks, he says, have they driven religious values underground? Meaning, have they... have they kind of like taken control and now religious, real traditional religious values are disappearing or less powerful but these corporate values, this fake evil religious mind control is what really is controlling everywhere in the world. Have they hypnotized all of us?

Yes. That's my answer. Now the positive part. Can we snap out of their trance? To snap out means to wake up. It means to break it. So can we break their mind control?

Can we wake up? Can we get free? Yes, we can. I'll answer the question. Can we immunize ourselves to brainwashing? In other words, can we prepare our brain so they cannot do it?

So if you watch TV, you don't believe the lies. You don't believe the propaganda. Can you make your brain stronger, your mind stronger, so you can resist it, so you won't, you know, you'll wake up from the Matrix, right? The movie The Matrix, right?

Can we create a society of awake people, real people, who are beyond the Matrix, so he's talking, right? Who cannot control us. And then he answers the question, yes, we can.

this is why I like the book I like the emotional part of it I like this is a regular guy and I like that he's very positive because he's super honest and passionate right you can tell his language these are vampires they're evil he doesn't use soft weak language I like that he's being really honest about what corporations are like and I like that and number two I like that he's also very positive he's like yes we can break this Yes, we can be free of them.

We don't need to be controlled. Even just as an individual, you can break out of this. And can all of society do it? Maybe it would, you know, but that's beyond our control.

But certainly you can do it and I can do it. All right, and that's the end of the preface. I recommend get the book. Try to find this book. So it's The Cult of

The Corporate Cult. The Corporate Cult. By Rich Zubati. The Corporate Cult. C-U-L-T. All right, let's get into our topics. What's the word? Our comments.

Fuguri says, does sunlight stand for transparency? Yes, that's another way to say it. When he's talking about sunlight, he's talking about, and this is a general English thing. We talk about sunlight or light.

Shine a light on the situation. It means transparency, openness, honesty. In other words, let's see the true situation. Let's see all of the truth. Shine a light on this.

Shine some sunlight on this. This is the idea. The idea of darkness means secrecy and hiding the truth. And light and sunlight means showing the truth.

All right, let's go back. Anna Grigori, hi from Russia. Hello to you. Hi from Peru. Lots of people saying hi from different countries. New Jersey, Morocco, etc.

And it says, I watched all of your book lessons, all of them. All these books teach us much more than you've ever told us. There's so many ideas we'll never hear from TV or something else. Yep, I try to choose books like that.

And this one's a good one. I like this book. I like it. It's a nice style. It's very short, direct, energetic, honest, very honest. You're talking very fast.

If you struggle to understand everything I'm saying, repeat this again. Watch the video again. Listen to the audio again. Maybe four times, five times, ten times, twenty times.

You'll understand more. Repetition is good. Hey, Vladislav's here. Vladislav says, Hey, I just caught your live stream. Good to see you again. It's been a while.

Usually it's early in the morning Moscow time. Yeah, good. Good, good, good. I'm glad this is a good time. Is this a good time for Russia and Turkey and Ukraine and Eastern Europe?

I'm not sure. Middle East? Koi says, you said elections are a show because corporations decide the politics. Are you sure? Yeah, I'm sure. I thought voting is the only democracy countries make it change.

Democracy is a lie, guys. Have you not figured this out yet? Please, wake up. Okay? Everything America is selling is a lie. America is a lie. America is not a democracy.

It's not even a republic. Okay? And Neither are the European countries, as they are finding out right now, who really controls them. It's all a lie, guys.

Come on. Wake up! Amina says, the book you're talking about right now, is this our new book club? Yes. This is our new book club. We're starting. I just did the preface.

This is like the first introduction. The next section is the introduction, the normal introduction. We'll read the introduction in the next show. The introduction is part two and it's called Things I Want My Kids to Know.

Things I Want My Kids to Know. It's kind of a Long essay here. It's pretty long, the introduction, actually. I'm just looking at it right now. Wow, it's quite long.

We might have to do two... Well, maybe this will take a little longer than I thought. This book is longer than I thought. Yikes. That's a long introduction.

Crikey. Did I miss something? Surely this can't be the introduction. He jumps around a little bit, which is fine. It's a different style of writing. So I imagine we might need two, possibly three shows just to do the introduction.

So each chapter, we might need a couple. We'll do part A, part B, you know, introduction A, introduction B, introduction C, chapter 1A, chapter 1B, chapter 1C.

No hurry. I think it's better to go slowly and... You know, just get as many of the good ideas and interesting ideas as we can. We don't have to agree with everything.

You'll never agree with everything. But it's quite interesting. I guess... Yeah, Victor Gonzalez says, I guess America is a representative democracy for big companies.

That's a better way to put it. Yeah, like I guess you could say a corporatocracy. It's an oligarchy, I guess is maybe the... the most general word you could use.

Oligarchy means ruled over by a small group of people. And, you know, on the face, it's corporations. We all know that. But then you have to, it's a little more tricky to find out who controls all these corporations.

Of course, you can look and you see who the CEO is, but who really controls the corporations? If you look into it, you know, I think you'll agree that it's mostly certain banks and investment companies.

because they own most of the stock. Therefore, they control all these companies. So they can tell Google what to do. They can tell any company what to do, right?

So that's why you'll see all these companies doing crazy stuff. It seems crazy, because it would cause them to lose money, but they're doing it for social control, and they're all doing exactly the same thing. Why is that? Because they're all controlled by the same groups of people, the same banking families...

You know, obviously there are different levels of this, but yeah, America, normal people in America have zero power. None. So, you know, I know a lot of you realize America is pretty dang evil right now, but you know, I mean, there are a lot of average Americans who believe all the propaganda. That's the sad part.

And they are actually participating in much of this evil and supporting it, and that They'll pay a heavy price, I think, but there are also lots and lots and lots. I don't know the percentages, but there are lots of Americans who don't, but they got no power. What can they do?

They tried to, you know, the voting, they steal the votes. It's all, it doesn't matter. Voting doesn't mean anything. So, yeah. Anna says, I'm taking care of my little babies now.

I'm definitely decided not to work in my company again. You did brainwash my mind in a good way. I'll never come back in my company. Yeah, hopefully I broke it, you know.

Free you from the matrix, I hope. I had the same. Oh, my God. I worked, you know, I just did it for money as a summer job. When I was in university, I worked at IBM, the big, I don't know what they do now, computers, something.

But yeah, Yeah, I worked, but it was enough. I saw enough of it to know that it was horrible. And I was working. They didn't do anything terribly evil where I was working.

I was working in probably one of the most interesting departments. They made videos, training videos. Not too exciting, but nothing evil or anything, but just boring videos.

I mean, just suck the life, suck the energy out of everybody. The schedule, the boredom, the rules, the bureaucracy, even just the offices, the way they're designed, all of it.

Inhuman, depressing, artificial. And there's, of course, there are many companies and departments and jobs which are much, much, much worse. I'm not joking when I say this I'm not exaggerating I'd rather work outside digging holes or doing construction like an honest somewhat honest job just doing hard work than to do that ever again

A lot of stuff, no worries. What is the name of the book? Someone's asking again, Jessica. The Corporate Cult. The Corporate Cult. The Corporate Cult.

Yep. John Holko says, I'm very glad I'm a student of your VIP program. As I already wrote, I'm 68 years old. It's fascinating for me. I'm happy to hear you.

Thank you. Awesome. See, age doesn't matter. 68. Fantastic. Fantastic. Okay. Ladovsa says, I'm concerned about what America is doing in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

If they hadn't supplied Ukraine, this conflict would have been over. Yeah, well, this is a war between America and Russia now. Let's not be foolish. I mean, we know that's the case, right?

Russia is not just fighting Ukraine. They're fighting NATOs, but really it's America because the poor Europeans have no power. They're just doing whatever they're told to do, and they're destroying their economies because America's telling them to do it.

Yeah, I'm concerned too. I'm concerned too. But I think America's going to lose. So just hopefully they don't lose and get us all killed. We'll see. Hi from India.

Hello. Great. Yep, yep. Scorpion says, Hi, AJ. I've been watching you for a long time. I want to say thank you. I never was on translation. Great. Awesome.

You're welcome. So, again, I'll get it. The Corporate Cult by Rich Zubati. He's got another book about men and the war against men and the war against boys.

Really, we could say the war against masculinity is maybe a better way to say it. which is also very good. It's the same style. So very poetic, very honest, very emotional, passionate.

I like it. So if you like this book, you might check it out, especially if you're a man. Andy Bice says, AJ, I really look up to your videos since last year. You teach amusingly.

Like, I'm not bored. My boredom will be vanquished. My boredom will be defeated. Nice vocab word. I would say I'm fluent, but I still have a lot to learn.

Oh, great, Andy. That's fantastic. And you're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah, you'll never be perfect. None of us are ever perfect. I'm not even perfect in my own language.

So Coy is surprised that America is not a democracy. Well, first of all, it's not a democracy. It never was a democracy. It was supposedly a republic, but not even that very much.

Certainly after, I don't know, it's hard to choose dates, you know, because these things kind of gradually got worse and worse and worse. Probably two important dates in American history would be 1865 through the Civil War,

destroyed, that was number one. America became an empire at that point, right? The North invaded the South and wouldn't let them leave. That's not much democracy if you're not allowed to leave.

So 1865 and then the next one would be 1912 where the sort of Rothschild, Rockefeller, Warburg, banking families took control of the American economy.

Created their bank and took control of the whole banking system and the U.S. dollar, the so-called Federal Reserve. That's really the end of all republicanism in America. At that point, America was totally under control of corporations.

Which is why shortly after that, we had World War I, World War II. Americans didn't want either one of those wars, but it didn't matter. Vladislav, I listened to Gonzalo Lira. Yeah, I've listened to him some.

He says Russia's going to win. America and NATO will lose. I think so. I mean, the American and the European economies are like the Titanic. I laugh about it.

It's depressing, but what could I do? Idiots are killing themselves. Or are the idiots? I think it's planned. Honestly, I don't think they're that stupid.

But yeah, Russia will be fine. Yeah, and this is a very excellent comment. Let me see if I can pronounce your name. I'm sorry, I can't pronounce your name very well.

Abul Qasem el-Husin, I think the petrodollars will be the death by the end of the decade. Right. If you want to get into the real details of this, right, the petrodollar, meaning the oil dollar, that's kind of what's dying. I think we're seeing the death of the American empire, global empire.

which is based on this control of oil, right? The dollar and the oil being connected. And what this war is doing and speeding up is the end of that, breaking that up, you know.

But, you know, I'm not a military expert, but what is interesting is I did study quite a bit about the history of the Eastern Front in World War II. It was just a hobby. I was interested in it. I used to play these war games, these

And I would always play the Russians against the Germans. And I would always play the Russian side, almost always. So I started just, I got so interested in it, I started reading about it. It's really fascinating.

Anyway, so it kind of gives me a different perspective on the military thing happening now. Cool. Anna says, I'd like to use all your pieces of advice to start my own little business, no more company jobs. Good luck.

I agree. I agree. I mean, this is the part, the really personal part for me in this book we're just reading now that I feel is very powerful is, you know, just pull it up here. where he's talking about how you become one of them.

And that is what I've seen. I see this. This is all bureaucracies, I believe. So it's not just corporations, like a large profit company. But I've seen this in large government jobs, too, and large school systems.

Like I said, hospitals, where you have these big bureaucracies. And all this money and power. And like they do, they change the people. The employees become changed by being in that system.

And of course you do. Because if you spend 40 hours a week in this system, around these people, with these rules, with this mindset, with these values, which are not human, not humane...

you will become changed little by little by little if you don't leave. There's no way to stay a really good, happy, moral, decent person and stay in that system long term and succeed. I guess some people stay in those systems just to make money, just to survive because they have to.

and they hate their jobs, and, you know, that's pretty common, too. They know it's evil, or they know at least it's boring, and they hate it. They know it's not human, and they just go and get their paycheck because they got to eat, you know. So that's also very common, and I think very common, in fact.

That's what I was doing every day and going to IBM. I mean, I hated it. Every day I'd wake up and just like, oh god i gotta go there again uh i just dreaded right i just just the idea of going there every morning was horrible and i monday i'm already dreaming of friday i'm like ah i just can't wait till the end of the week just get me out of here and i would try i would come to work late and i would try to leave early like sneak out early and

Many times I did. I'd arrive late, I'd leave early, and then Friday would come, but it was always so short. The weekend felt so short, especially because I was exhausted.

Because I just wasn't getting enough sleep. And so, you know, I would like just crash. And Saturdays, I just kind of, you know, maybe try to do something. But one of those days, I would just do kind of sleep late and try to rest.

And then there's one more day. And then, ah, back. And it starts again. Two days off is not enough if you hate your job. If you hate your job, just a weekend is so short.

So it was horrible. It was the same when I worked in a large hospital. I worked in an emergency room and another part of it. And the same feeling every day.

I had to go to work. Just this horrible feeling. And then every day I was off. It never felt like it was enough time. Even my day off, I'm thinking, oh, I've got to go back to work in two days.

So that feeling of dread is the perfect word. Dread is this feeling of unhappiness and worry. Worrying about you know something bad is coming. right? You know something bad is coming and you have that feeling.

It's called dread. Like, oh no, it's coming soon. That's called dread. And there was always that feeling of dread even on my days off because I knew I'd have to go back to work again soon.

It's a terrible feeling. There are millions and millions, maybe billions of people who have this feeling working for these, you know, companies of various kinds.

Um, And that's a terrible thing. It affects you after a while. You do that for several months and you become more depressed and less happy. You do that for many years.

It changes who you are. You do that for more than 10 years. You become a very different person and not a better person. So that's why I always say to you all, I don't care how old you are.

If you really hate your job, I understand sometimes we have to work to eat, pay your rent. So I don't mean quit today, but plan on quitting. Get out as soon as you can. Better to make less money.

Better to work in a happier place. Better to have a smaller apartment. Better to have a smaller car or no car. Better to have cheaper clothes and be happier and not feel that dread all the time.

It's not worth it. It doesn't matter how much money. A lot of those guys, when I worked at IBM, a lot of those guys made a lot of money. I mean, at that time, I was making good money.

It was... I look back, I think it was only $6 an hour or something. It wasn't that much. But at the time, it seemed like a lot. But it was not worth it.

Not worth it. The money's not worth it. So if you hate your job, get out as soon as possible. That's my best advice to you all for a happier life. Get out.

Yeah, like Vlasov brings up another brainwashing. During the pandemic, quote, quote, I went to stores. Many clerks required to put on a mask. They were brainwashed.

All of them were just doing their job. Exactly. Some didn't require that, and I respected them. This happened to me two days ago. Still doing it in Japan.

I went to an ice cream place with my kids. course, everybody's wearing their stupid masks, and, uh, I'm in line, and we're at the end of the line, we're just getting the ice cream, so it's, and this woman holds up a mask, you know, do you want to wear a mask, and I said, no, like, I'm just leaving now, I'm not wearing a stupid mask, you idiots, so, you know, she's just doing her job, I don't know if she believes the, I don't know if she believes the, uh, brainwashing or not, she probably believes it, because here in Japan, so many people seem to believe it, but, uh,

On the other hand, maybe she doesn't care. She's just doing her job because that's the rule. So many people, like you said, and you'll go to so many places. All of you have had this experience where maybe you have some problem in a business.

It's a small problem. They could fix it easily. But instead, there's some rule and they won't do it. And they create this big problem and they make you really upset and they...

And they just, they're not human. They just, they won't, they can't think. They can't make their own decisions. They just, oh, the company rule is this.

I can't help you. Sorry. Right? Even though they made a mistake. It's so common. Right? And it, you know, those employees doing that every day, they become powerless.

Right? Imagine how powerless they must feel. Because they know. Right? They know how stupid and ridiculous it is. And yet they're following... Constantly following stupid, ridiculous rules like they're little children instead of just being an adult and making a decision, doing what's right, right?

That's probably one of the common things is so many employees in big companies, they're like children, right? They're treated like kids. Hey, Sri Racha, good to see you as well.

Benito Estabaya Jr. says, what is your opinion about the Vietnam English accent? I don't have an opinion. I'm not sure what you mean by that. What is my opinion?

Yes, there's nothing special about it. Every country will have some kind of accent that's connected to the native language. So, some sounds may be more difficult.

intonation, all these things, right? So if you're Thai, you're going to have a little bit of a Thai accent, maybe a strong Thai accent. If you're, you know, Mexican, you might have a bit of a Mexican accent, right? I mean, yeah, of course.

And so nothing to worry about. Just you can work on your pronunciation just so you're more easy to understand. That can be important. People from some countries, meaning coming from some languages, it's a more important problem because if the sound of English is very different from your language, you might need to work more on pronunciation.

Like, for example, tone languages. This is very, very different than English. So, Thai, Vietnamese, different Chinese. These can be speakers from those countries.

That can be a little tough to get the English, especially like rhythm and intonation. But you can do it. I know a lot of Vietnamese speakers who really, really have very clear, excellent pronunciation. So, it's just sometimes got to work a little more on pronunciation, a little extra effort.

Right. And it goes the other way. Right. If I try to learn Vietnamese... A big challenge for me would be pronunciation. The tones would be very, very, very tough for me, right?

So, I would have to work extra compared to maybe, say, Spanish, Spanish or let's just say Japanese. Japanese pronunciation is quite easy for me. For English speakers, generally, Japanese does not have difficult pronunciation. It's quite simple.

So, pronunciation is no problem. But if I was doing Vietnamese, it would be a big challenge, right? So it depends. What's your native language? What language are you learning?

How close is it to English? Sometimes grammar is a bigger problem. Sometimes it's pronunciation. It just depends how close it is to your language. But nothing to worry about.

Oh, I know about this one. Nodutu Loa. You're describing someone in my family also. He says, I tried to educate my sister's daughter on the evil in this world, but it's not helping when her mother wishes she lived at the Disney castle and was a Disney princess herself.

I have a family member who they're also big into the Disney stuff. Disney is powerful brainwashing. That is a... You know, you have to understand... They have their little cartoons and stuff, right?

But that is a massive, super huge, incredibly powerful corporation. billions and billions and billions of dollars they have in control. They have huge amounts of power. Their propaganda power is overwhelming.

And what do they do? They target children. They target children, people when they're young, and they create these strong emotions in them, and people become crazy about Disney, right? More than quite many other companies, right?

Like people, maybe they like Amazon, but they don't. want to, you know, grow up and live at Amazon. But Disney has that power, right? Media, because they're a massive media company, and through their movies, cartoons, and all this stuff, they get people when they're, they get these little kids when they're very, very young.

Start programming them and building these connections to their characters and their brand. Yeah, I hate it. My kids are not allowed to watch that. Never, never, never, never do they watch it.

People give us Disney stuff, and most of it gets thrown away. Hey, Shiracha, thank you for the Thai bot, 39 Thai bot. Thank you. That was very sweet. Thank you for the super chat.

That's very, very nice. Farasov says, do you think about moving to another country? Japan is under American influence. Japan is controlled by America.

Not just influence. They are controlled. What is going to happen to Japan? Good question. I don't know. Maybe you should go to a country which is not under U.S. control.

This is the problem. Where, though? You know, it's not so easy getting visas and... residency in other countries, and large parts of the world are under American control.

Like, let's say I wanted to move to Russia. Could I do that? I doubt it. I doubt I could get a visa. or residency in Russia, for example. Russia's too cold for me, though, so I wouldn't do it anyway.

So, you know, while Japan is under U.S. control and influence, they do have a little bit of independence compared to the European countries. The European countries are, like, Germany is just America's slave.

They'll just destroy their own economy and cut their own throats, if America tells them to. They're leaders. I'm not talking about an average German. I have no idea what the average German thinks of any of this, but the leaders, clearly.

They've got no power. But Japan, I think there is some resistance at the top, but they always hide it, which is kind of the Japanese way, and it's probably smart. So I don't know what's going to happen here. If it gets really bad, I probably will try to move somewhere.

Maybe I'll move to South America. Maybe I'll move to Panama or Costa Rica or something. We'll see. Spanish will be much easier to deal with. But, you know, I say Panama and Costa Rica, but they've, you know, they've had problems with being controlled by America, too.

So, or at least, you know, they're They're close to America, and America has, as all Central and South American people know, America has overthrown governments constantly down there, and American corporations have had a huge amount of control over the Americas.

And it's a long, ugly history. So it's like, well, would that actually be better? I don't know. I don't know if there's anywhere to escape it. All right, a couple more and then I'm going to go.

Liketa is asking, what books can I read in English? Well, there's lots of them. Read the book we're doing now. This is our book club, so we're going to go through this book little by little.

Maybe challenging to understand. I don't know, but give it a try. Go to Turkey. It's a lovely country. I've been to Turkey. I've been to Istanbul. It is a lovely country.

Again, though, I doubt I could get a long-term resident visa there. It's not easy, as all of you probably know, right? Just, you know, a lot of people want to go to America, and they have To do it legally is not easy all the time.

It's all these rules and things. Well, it's the same going to other countries. It's not so easy. Japan's easy because my wife's Japanese. So other countries would not be so easy for me.

So I'll do the best I can. Nibu says, Hi, I'm Nibu from India. Hello. Hello. Where do I live now, asks Mahmood. I live in Osaka, Japan. Osaka. Anna says, I'd like to suggest one thing.

If I succeed in my business, I hope you'll visit my country. I'll show you and your wife the most beautiful lake in the world, Lake Baikal. I would love to visit sometime. That would be great.

Olga, good to see you. Kalashnikova. I'm sorry for asking about this question, but the interesting necklaces you're wearing, does it mean something for you? Oh yeah, these are japa.

These are japa. So these are Sanathana Dharma beads. It's for meditation. So you count, and as you chant a mantra, each time you move it. Kind of like a rosary, right?

I don't know if Orthodox do rosary, but like Catholics, right? You have a rosary. the same idea it's a beaded necklace and you would say like the I don't know what I think there's different ones Catholics use but chant a prayer or something and then each time you do it you move the bead so it helps you count because you can't count and chant at the same time right so the counting is done by this it's 108 beads so yeah that's what this is and any of you who follow Sanatana Dharma probably know what it is

especially if you're Vaishnavas. Anna says, I definitely changed your mind about company job. I guess I was blessed to really hate that kind of work very strongly when I say blessed at the time I felt like a curse I want you all to have some hope because when I was young let's say 17 I had my first job and then for the next well until I was 38 let's just say

I had so many jobs and hated almost all of them. There were a couple I didn't hate, but I got bored with eventually, didn't like that much, but they weren't terrible, right? But most of them I just hated, hated, hated, and it made me very unhappy.

So that's why I felt like it was a curse. I felt like, oh, this is terrible. Like bad karma, right? Like this is horrible. I thought maybe other people were enjoying their jobs so much.

I don't think so. But I felt it very strongly. But on the other hand now, I think it was a blessing because it made me so motivated to get out of that, to do anything. to do anything to avoid working those kind of jobs.

And like you all know, I lived in my car. I lived in a van. I eventually started this company. I've done all kinds of... I did fairly extreme things to escape full-time work in a corporation or even just full-time work at all, anywhere.

And I'm glad I did. And eventually, it made a much happier life for me. So sometimes in life, that unhappiness, that dissatisfaction, you're not satisfied, you're so frustrated, you're so unhappy, you're so just making you crazy.

And we can feel really bad about this. But sometimes in life, that's actually helping you. Because it's giving you this great energy and motivation to change.

Because I've seen it. I've seen other people who are unhappy, but it's not as strong. They don't feel the pain as much, so they never change. So they just stay in this bad situation.

They stay in this terrible job 10 years, 20 years, or terrible career, 30 years, their whole adult life unhappy, becoming more and more miserable and bored and boring. But they never change because it's like the pain never becomes enough to motivate them to just do something crazy and get out.

So sometimes in life, and it might be a relationship, you know, you're crazy about some person, some boy, some girl, some guy, some woman, but it's all this pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, and at the moment you feel terrible, your life is over, but years later you'll look back and you'll say, oh, I'm so happy for that pain because it made me change, right?

Same thing you'll see with alcoholics and drug addicts. They always talk about this. The ones who get out. The ones who change. They say, what do they do?

They always say, I hit rock bottom. You have to hit rock bottom. Rock bottom means the very bottom. And it means in life, it means maximum pain. So the alcoholics, a lot of times alcoholics, guys, are addicted to alcohol, right?

And their life is getting worse. Their health is getting worse. But it's not bad enough. So they keep drinking. They just keep drinking and slowly their life gets worse and worse and worse.

And then maybe they just die early and they live a pretty terrible life. On the other hand, you'll see sometimes their life will get worse very fast. They lose their job. Their husband or wife leaves them.

They have a bunch of terrible health problems. And because the pain is so much and it's fast, faster, they wake up and they realize, oh my God, I've got to stop drinking.

I have to stop. And they get this strong motivation and they stop drinking and then their life turns around. Maybe they become more religious. Maybe they start exercising more.

They find other things that are positive to do and they create a much healthier, happier life for themselves. Why? Because the pain, the pain motivated them. So sometimes in life, I know it's hard when it's happening.

It's very hard to understand, but sometimes that Pain can be a very good thing if you use it. Use it for motivation. Use it to change. Use it to take action.

And then later, maybe many years later, sometimes, you'll be grateful. You'll say, thank God for the pain. Thank you, God, for giving me that pain. You helped me change.

Right? Right? But you won't feel it immediately, okay? In the moment when you're feeling the pain, it's not very fun. It's not enjoyable at all, but just try to use it.

You don't need to enjoy it, but try to use that pain and those difficulties as motivation. Yeah, like Vladislav gives a couple examples from his own family. He says, two of my uncles are alcoholics.

One is 48 years old. The other is 61. They still live with their parents. They were divorced. They have daughters who don't connect to them. This is a very sad thing that happens where they'll have children and the children get sick of all their crazy stuff from being alcoholics or drug addicts.

And they lose connection with their children. I mean, life becomes so terrible, and yet they don't stop. Right? So sometimes it, like for me or you, you think, oh, that should be enough pain.

Right? That should be enough pain. Why don't they change? But somehow it's not. Sometimes it's too slow. Maybe... If all that happened to them in one month, right?

If they got divorced and their kids stopped talking to them and they lost everything in one month, maybe that shock of all the pain suddenly, it would make them wake up. Maybe. Sometimes they don't. I don't know why.

But sometimes it happens so gradually, so slowly, right? One bad thing happens, but then they get used to it. And then another bad thing happens, they get used to it. And another bad thing happens, they get used to it.

So slowly over years, their life just gets worse and worse and worse, gradually, gradually, gradually. And they just accept it, so it never is enough suddenly to cause the change.

And of course, other times, they just never change. It doesn't matter what happens. And this is what's so crazy about addiction, is that, you know, they

Every possible horrible thing can happen and they'll still do it. I don't understand it. That's why I used to work with those people as a social worker when I was younger. And it was one of those jobs.

I won't say I hated the job, but I found that job super frustrating. And I realized there's nothing I can do to help these people. I can't help them. You can't help them.

If you have a family member who's an alcoholic or a drug addict, you know this, right? And it's one of the most difficult things. You want to help them. And you can't.

Everything you try to do, nothing helps. Right? Because only they can do it. And it's a sad thing. Like Vladislav says, it's a steady process like a frog being boiled in slowly heated water.

Yes. Max Prault says, sometimes it's hard to admit you have to change. Yes, and this is true. It's not just like alcoholic and drug addiction is obvious, but it's also something like a job you hate, a career you hate.

We can get stuck, right? Like I said, I used to be a social worker, and it was much better than being totally broke. and but uh you know little by little year by year it kind of got worse and worse and i enjoyed it less and less and uh it was more and more stressful and more frustrating but it was it's easy to get stuck like i could still be a social worker now right you just if you just like ah because it's hard to change it's hard to just to say ah you know i went to grad school and i have all these jobs and experience and If I change, I have to start again.

It's hard, but luckily I'm kind of crazy that way, and I make changes very fast sometimes. But it can be hard. It can be hard. So that's right. Sometimes the hardest part is just to make the change, just to take the first step, just to say, this must change.

I've got to change. This is not good. It's not acceptable. I'm not going to do it anymore. Enough. Ah, right. So, Wardan C says, this necklace is like, is it tasbi?

In the Muslim prayer tools. It's used to dzikr. Right. Similar idea, right? So, you'll see. So, Islam has something similar. Sanatana Dharma. Again, Christianity.

At least I know Catholics definitely do the rosary. So, all these are similar. That's right. Prayer is a prayer tool. Raman Samal says, pornography addiction is another example of this.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Exactly. Exactly right. Exactly right. This is an interesting question. I don't know if I can answer it. Bulent Faut says, According to you, who is the American president who has the most clear pronunciation?

American president with the best, the clearest pronunciation. I mean, they all have clear pronunciation. All the modern ones of my lifetime have clear pronunciation, for sure, because otherwise they would never get elected. This is a requirement.

I would say they're not necessarily good speakers, because they're just reading. They're all just reading. Well, not all of them. Trump was a little more relaxed about it, but

Most of them just read, right? They're reading a speech that's on a teleprompter. They're not... Someone else wrote it, usually. But in terms of just the pronunciation, I mean, they're all...

I think you'd be fine to copy, really, any of them. Obama was good. He has good, clear pronunciation. Trump was fine. Trump a more relaxed, emotional style.

Bush... He's okay, which is okay. He has that little bit of a fake Texan accent sometimes, but okay. Clinton had that slight Southern accent sometimes, but again, very clear.

So they're all pretty standard. Reagan was really good because he was an actor, so Reagan might be a good one if you find some old Reagan speeches, actually. Reagan, pretty good.

because of his acting experience, I would say. Yeah, maybe Ronald Reagan. Carter also had a southern accent, a real one. But again, mild, not so strong.

He was fine. Nixon, fine. Kennedy had a bit of a Boston accent, but again, not too strong. So I'm going way back. Eisenhower. Also, I think, I can't remember where he was from, but pretty standard accent.

And then when you get earlier than that, I guess you could find radio stuff with Roosevelt and Truman. They're all good. In terms of pronunciation, they would all be fine.

So I would just say find ones that you like, their style, their energy. If you're trying, for some reason, if you're trying to copy an American president, any of them would be fine.

Yeah, Vlasov says, I think Donald Trump has the clearest pronunciation among former presidents. I would say Donald Trump has the most natural... because he was not always just reading. He would speak more, I won't say spontaneously, because he planned his topics, but more naturally.

He wasn't just reading mindlessly all the time. So Trump, definitely the most natural, the most conversational. And I would say Reagan, maybe, in terms of just clarity, nice performance, again, because of his acting experience.

I'm not talking about the politics now, guys. I'm just talking about the English. Mahmoud says, I think Trump had clear speaking. I understand him more than the others.

Again, yes. And I think that's because Trump's was very natural. James Smith says, my uncle smoked weed and drank alcohol. Then he started to have heart problems.

But he didn't stop smoking and drinking. He died at age 51, looking much older. That's sad, right? When they just won't stop. They just won't stop. James Smith says, Taylor Swift is better than any president.

Her pronunciation is perfect. Yeah, you know, anyone who's fairly famous. Well, I won't say anyone, but most of the people like that who are public figures in the media where they have to do a lot of speaking. They're doing a lot of interviews.

they're going to have clear pronunciation usually, right? Almost always. Actors. Musicians, you've got to be a little careful with musicians. It's less true for musicians.

Actors, definitely, almost always have good clear pronunciation because they train to do it. Anyone who's famous for giving speeches. You'll find a lot on YouTube, you know, people who do public speaking, maybe for companies or motivation. Those guys are going to be really good.

You know, Les Brown, Tony Robbins, any guys like that, right? They'll have good pronunciation too. Some of them may be kind of fast, but they'll have good pronunciation.

Yeah, this is tough. BT says, I'm from Tigray, East Africa, which has an active ethnic war right now happening. Imagine how hard life is. Yeah, I can't really imagine because I've never experienced it, but it must be horrible.

Do you have any advice for me to handle this at all? You know, that's different levels, and I can't say that I do because I've never experienced anything at That horrible.

You know, compared to that, my life problems are very small. And probably for most of us, our life problems are pretty small. So, you know, do what you have to do to survive is what I say.

And if you have to move and get out, just don't get stuck. If you have to be ready to move, if you can find some books about people who have survived this kind of thing,

I read a good book about a Syrian guy, Serbian, sorry, not Syrian, Serbian, who survived that Serbian, I can't remember which city he was in, but he was in a city during the NATO attack on Serbia, and he survived, I can't remember how long it was, a year, it's a horrible book to read, it's really, you know, terrible stuff happens, but he survived, and he gives his sort of advice on how to survive that kind of situation. I wish I could remember the name. I'd give you the advice.

But anyway, just going to have to research it on the Internet. You know, do like war survival, Serbia war survival. Search like that and read the guy's book if you can find it and read other books like that. And I think that might help.

It won't hurt. Vladislav asks, what's your opinion of Elon Musk? Is he a good or bad person? It seems he's independent from the U.S. government, but who knows?

You're right. Who knows? I can't tell. It's half the time he seems like he's supporting the lies and the nonsense. The other half the time he seems like he's independent and telling truths and I don't know.

That's why you got to be careful with anyone who's like public and famous and getting a lot of media time, a lot of media attention. You got to be careful because it's hard to know, you know, how controlled they are or not.

So I'm cautious with him. Coy says, I don't like the way Tony Robbins talks. Feels too pressured by yelling. Right, and this is fine. This is totally fine.

I like Tony, but some people don't. So it's totally fine if you feel, if you have a certain speakers that you feel too much, too fast. You don't like the pronunciation. You just don't like the style.

You don't like their personality. No problem. There's lots of speakers. So just choose a different one and listen to them. And you can even copy their pronunciation if you want.

All right. Zen in Mozilla says, AJ, everything you say about America is negative, but I still want to go there just to have the experience. Yeah, go there and have the experience. It's fine.

I'm negative because I know the deeper issues. As a tourist, you probably won't notice a lot of it. You know, so... You know, just like as tourists, we can go to a country and you don't maybe see some of the deeper problems.

So it's easier to enjoy things. Like I'll give you an example, San Francisco, the city of San Francisco. As a tourist, you could go there and just go to some of the famous spots like Fisherman's Wharf and I don't know what else is famous, Alcatraz, that kind of stuff. you probably wouldn't.

You'd probably think, oh, San Francisco's great. But if you leave those neighborhoods and you get out into other parts of the city, you will see that, oh my God, San Francisco has some serious problems.

Huge amounts of homeless people, huge amounts of drug addicts, huge numbers of crazy people. And then if you look into the politics and the culture, it's a disaster.

Okay, so... Will you notice that as a tourist and just visiting a couple of days? Probably not. So that's fine. Just like in New York would be the same.

You could go to New York and have fun for a few days and probably not notice many problems, maybe a few homeless people. But if you have to live there, it's a very different thing.

Yeah, like Vladislav's following up on Elon Musk. He's not just famous. He's one of the richest people in the world. Is it just hard work or is he financed by the government?

A big question. Government or other groups. Corporate, money, banking, powers, right? My guess is he's... Someone's supporting him. I don't think people become...

super billionaires just from hard work anymore i just i don't think it's a corrupt system so it's just a matter who's supporting him which groups are supporting him are they less evil i don't know we don't know because we're no we're not in that group are we so it's hard to know all right that's it guys time to go it's oh i've gone a long time today hour and 30 minutes

All right, I'm going to let you guys go for now. So again, just to summarize, our book is called The Corporate Cult. This is our new book club, The Corporate Cult, by Rich Zubadi.

Rich Zubadi. I'm going to write the name of the writer. I'm going to write it again in the comments here on YouTube. The Corporate Cult by Rich. It's going to probably be an e-book.

I doubt you can find the real book, but see if you can find it. If not, you can just join the videos and learn from me. But it's a very interesting book. I think it's kind of a fun book because you can see his language, like talking about vampires compared to corporations.

He's got kind of a fun... I think, somewhat funny way of communicating about these things, which means it's less depressing. Sometimes some of this topic can be depressing, like George Orwell in Animal Farm, or even worse was Brave New World. It can become depressing.

Getting deeper into the book, and you're like, oh, this is so horrible. So he's talking about some things, but I like he mixes the negative and the positive.

So yes, he talks about the evil things with corporations. He talks about a lot of the terrible stuff we all know about from The Matrix, Brave New World, Animal Farm. But then he also talks about the positive side.

How do we break out? What should we do instead? How can we focus? How can we have happier lives? How can we have better families? How can we break free of all that?

And that's what I like about this book. And he does it in a passionate, emotional way that's kind of fun. So... It's a different way of approaching this topic.

I like it. So please get The Corporate Cult. The Corporate Cult. If you want to read it yourself, you can get that book, The Corporate Cult. If not, you can just do the book club with me and learn here on audio or video.

By the way, our audio podcast, they're all uploaded now. They're all uploaded. I know I was way behind on that. I finally put them all up. All the audios, all my shows are on the audio podcast.

Or you can follow me here on YouTube or Gab or wherever. So join my VIP program. Lots of love to you. We'll continue with this book next time. Read the introduction next.

EffortlessEnglishClub.com EffortlessEnglishClub.com