[00:00:00] Luke Storey: I'm Luke Story. For the past 22 years, I've been relentlessly committed to my deepest passion, designing the ultimate lifestyle based on the most powerful principles of spirituality, health, psychology. The Life Stylist podcast is a show dedicated to sharing my discoveries and the experts behind them with you. Over the past 20-plus years, I have managed to wean myself off almost all of drugstore remedies. However, there has been one that was hard to let go of, and that was cough syrup.

[00:00:41] Now, I rarely get sick because of the lifestyle I lead, thankfully, but every once in a while, cold or flu will sneak in. And when that happens, I do not like having to cough, so I've often been put in a position where I've got to go get some of that super toxic cough syrup from the drugstore, because I just want relief. Well, the good news is for me and possibly for you is that our sponsor, Beekeeper's Naturals, the ultimate bee product company, came out recently with their incredible B.Soothed Cough Syrup.

[00:01:10] So, as a result, I've officially ditched the old school drugstore stuff and I'll just keep my natural medicine cabinets stocked up with this particular product. Unlike the pharmaceutical cough syrups, the only downside I can see at this point to B.Soothed Cough Syrup said it tastes so damn good. It's actually kind of difficult to not just drink it as an elixir, and you could, because it doesn't have anything other than amazing byproducts in it.

[00:01:33] The reason B.Soothed is so badass is because it's naturally powered by potent natural ingredients like pure buckwheat honey, elderberry, chaga mushroom, bee propolis, and olive leaf extract, so it doesn't have any drugs, dyes, dirty chemicals, sugars, none of that stuff. So, I recommend taking at the moment you start to feel run down or get that little tickle of a sore throat. So, to get your hands on some B.Soothed cough syrup, here's what you do. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com. 

[00:02:00] That's B-E-E-K-E-E-P-E-R-S-N-A-T-U-R-A-L-S. Beekeepersnaturals.com/lukestorey is the site you want to visit. Because if you use that link, you're going to get 15% off your order at beekeepersnaturals.com/lukestorey. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that just about everyone that listens to this podcast on a regular basis understands the importance of getting nutrient-dense foods and herbs into your body. We also probably realize that this can be inconvenient and/or expensive.

[00:02:48] That's why I'm really happy to keep it simple for you today and to present an amazing product called Athletic Greens. You can find it at athleticgreens.com/lifestylist. Let me tell you a little bit about what this incredible product does. One tasty scoop of the Athletic Greens contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole-foods-sourced ingredients, including a multivitamin, multi-mineral, probiotic, and just about every green superfood you could imagine.

[00:03:18] These guys have been around for over a decade, and in that decade, they have produced 53 iterations of these products. So, they keep innovating and innovating, making it more digestible, more delicious, more nutrient-dense. So, if you're someone who wants to support your health, and not necessarily have to change your entire lifestyle, and spend tons of money on all the biohacking gadgets and supplements, this is a really easy way to get your foot in the door, and to really support your health with convenience, and also, with a product that tastes great.

[00:03:50] I mean, I use this stuff. I just chuck it in just about any smoothie I make. I drink it by itself in cold water. I have one of those this morning. It's just something that's really easy to habituate into your life. It doesn't require an incredible amount of discipline or money to get this nutrition into your body. It's also keto, paleo, vegan-friendly, dairy-free, gluten-free, contains less than one gram of sugar. So, this is a really great product I'm so stoked to share with you guys. 

[00:04:19] If you're ready to check it out, here's what you do. Go to athleticgreens.com/lifestylist. That's athleticgreens.com/lifestylist. Go to that link. They're also going to hook you up with a free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs of the Athletic Greens yummy goodies, but athleticgreens.com/lifestylist. This is Episode 338 of The Life Stylist podcast. This is a solo show where I talk about why we decided to move to Texas and the process of biohacking the eco-home renovations.

[00:04:57] Let's start off by talking about the reasons that we decided to leave California. Now, as someone who spent the vast majority of my 50-year life in California, it was not a decision I took lightly. And after living in Los Angeles for over 32 years, I spent the past few years trying to find an exit route and a destination. In that search, my goals were open space, a bit more freedom, less smog, EMF pollution, and hopefully, some great nature. So, of course, I thought about different places like Oregon, Arizona, Texas, Florida.

[00:05:35] I even considered my former home state and place of birth, Colorado, and places like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, places where it's beautiful. There are rivers, springs, nature, mountains. However, as I started to narrow that down, I realized that I do have a career, and I need to sit down and have in-person conversations with people, which is my job. Today, I'm just talking to you, and myself, and the walls, but normally, I really enjoy sitting down and having in-person conversations.

[00:06:05] So, the likelihood or feasibility of getting someone to fly out to the mountains in Montana could have been problematic, not to mention neither myself nor Allison appreciates snow at all. Like zero, maybe for five minutes, haha, play in the snow, throw a snowball, this is cute, and then we're done. We like to be warm. So, in the past few years, as I was exploring, I thought about Ojai, which is a great little town just north of Los Angeles.

[00:06:35] Lots a hippie folk like myself there. Great community. Beautiful nature. Close to Santa Barbara and the ocean. And then, I thought about Topanga Canyon, which, of course, is where a lot of my friends have lived for many years. We were living in Laurel Canyon, by the way, which is in the Hollywood Hills. However, when the COVID situation hit, California became much less attractive, even the beautiful places like Topanga and Ojai.

[00:07:01] Now, one of the good things about Ojai is that they have temporarily put a moratorium on the installation of the 5G network. They have that going for themselves. I think perhaps, even in Santa Barbara, they might have slowed it down. But in Topanga Canyon, man, it's an EMF disaster in there. Sorry for those of you that still live there. I love my Topanga people. But man, they got a lot of damn cell towers in there, and I'm doing my best to get away from them.

[00:07:25] So, California started to just look less attractive. So, we set out to explore a few other places, keeping in mind community, accessibility to airports, podcast guests, and of course, reasonable weather. Also adding to the urgency of wanting to get out of Los Angeles specifically was things like the homeless crisis, which has nothing to do with not wanting to be around suffering people. It has to do with the corrupt and inept local and state government who have really not taken very good care of those people, especially in Los Angeles.

[00:08:04] Anyone that's ever been to Skid Row or anywhere near it knows what I mean. It is seriously an epidemic. And it makes for not a great place to live for the homeless population or the people around for a number of different reasons. Add to that the rising crime. I want to talk about crime. I'm no stranger to crime. I lived in LA in the early '90s. I lived there in 1989. And in that time, Hollywood specifically, well, really, all of greater LA was just rife with crime and gangs, which I liked at the time, because gangs sold drugs and I was a great customer.

[00:08:43] More on that later. But seriously, I mean, that was the LA riots, it was the Northridge earthquake, and a very corrupt police department centered around the Rampart division, specifically. And so, there were gang bangers all around Hollywood. Back then, you had a lot of cholos running around, a lot of gang activity. And so you had a lot of crime, which, as I said, at the time, didn't really bother me any, because I was joining them in many of the crimes of the non-violent nature.

[00:09:13] However, I'm a grown-ass man now, and have put those days behind me, and have lived in a fairly legal and clean life. So, a few months ago, my car was broken into in my driveway. We've had two attempted break-ins on the house we lived in, in LA, one of which occurred while Alyson was upstairs sleeping and I was out with a friend. And so, that's not fun. And add to that the authoritarian, unconstitutional firearm laws in California where you can barely defend yourself from said attempted or successful break-ins.

[00:09:53] If you shot an intruder that was trying to kill you in California, you would probably be sued, and perhaps, even end up in prison yourself. And no joke, they would likely let the intruder go. I mean, that's how crazy California is. I'm barely exaggerating. Then, of course, the air quality. I'm only talking about the things that I don't like about Los Angeles, by the way. If I didn't like that city and the people of that city, I never would have stayed there for 32 years.

[00:10:34] I'm pretty activated when I want to make a move, so I'm just giving you the reasons I left. Not so many of the reasons why I stayed for those 32 years, which would be a whole podcast unto itself. There are, of course, amazing qualities about Los Angeles and all of the West Coast, frankly. But the corruption of the politicians in California at this particular time in history has made it, for me, unlivable.

[00:10:47] The high taxes, the COVID crazy population there, the mask, fanaticism, the lockdown mandates, the encouraging of the mayor of Los Angeles to snitch on your neighbors if they broke the curfew or the having people over mandates, which I never voted for, by the way. That's a tricky thing that government agencies can do. They can declare emergency measures or orders that they act like laws, but you didn't vote for them as a member of the population.

[00:11:27] That's a whole other can of worms. And I've covered a lot of that on prior podcasts. The distaste I have for the general attitude in Hollywood, California, specifically as it pertains to virtue signaling fake environmentalism that ignores chem trails and the destruction of our energy systems via 5G, and all of that madness, and the cover up, and enabling of pedophilia and general abuse of people. Not to say that everyone that works in Hollywood is part of that, obviously. 

[00:12:03] I worked in Hollywood for 17 years in a career in fashion there. I never stumbled across anything like that, but I have many friends in the industry that are very familiar with the dark side of Hollywood, and it does exist, my friends. So, that energy is not obviously appealing. And you just watch something like the Emmys or the Golden Globes, these award shows that I used to dress people for and I'm just [making sounds] it's not my scene. God bless them.

[00:12:34] I love film, and I love music, and the arts in general, but there is definitely an underbelly to that world that I found to be quite unpalatable. So, those are some of the reasons, but really more than anything, guys, it's just, my time had come, and I can't live in a city anymore. I just can't do it. Any time for the past, I mean, 10 years that I would just leave LA, and go even to Joshua Tree, or Idlewild, or Big Bear, or drive out to Sedona, or go to Big Sur, even not leaving California, just getting out of the city, I felt so good physically, emotionally, mentally.

[00:13:13] The weight of the energetics there just became very heavy, very hard for me to carry. And so, as I said, I had a Zillow search going for a while, and I had a number of different states and cities. And then, when I got together with my fiancee, Alyson, she had just moved from 15 years in New York, in Brooklyn, and was really excited to move to LA, and be in the sunshine, and all of the career opportunities that were available to her in Los Angeles and relationships that she had built there.

[00:13:47] But I was able to get her to go along with, hey, you just moved to California, we got together, and guess what, I've been wanting to leave for a long time. And so, she was cool enough to be on board with moving somewhere, but definitely not to the middle of nowhere. And so, thus began our search. And where we finally ended up is where we are now. We bought a home in a small, quiet lake community called Lakeway outside of Austin. It's about 25, 30 minutes away from the city. 

[00:14:19] It's in Hill Country. It's very quiet, which was one of my main goals, just to find somewhere with less noise, just noise pollution. Noise pollution is a thing. So, we spent two weeks here in the Austin area over Christmas 2020. We looked at a grip of houses with our amazing realtor, Johnny Ronca. By the way, we'll put a link to his site in the show notes. I highly recommend it. Amazing guy. He's worked with a lot of people that I've had on the podcast, a lot of our peers.

[00:14:48] He's kind of the go-to guy for the conscious entrepreneur scene here in Austin. And we looked at a bunch of houses, and we would put an offer, and there were too many offers, and we didn't get it or we had just missed it. There was one house we found we really loved down in an area called Dripping Springs, which is kind of out in the country, similar distance where we ended up finding a place, and nothing really panned out. Now, there was this house, the one we ended up getting in Lakeway that I had been stalking on Zillow.

[00:15:15] Zillow was like the equivalent of Tinder for me, you know what I mean? I'm like refresh, refresh, refresh. I really wanted to get out of Los Angeles and get myself into the country. And so, I saw this house. I really liked it. Alyson was kind of lukewarm on it, no pun intended, but the backyard had a weird layout and there were some things she wasn't thrilled about, but it was gone by the time we got out here over Christmas.

[00:15:38] So, lo and behold, one week into our two-week trip, I saw that that house popped up again, and I thought, man, babe, let's go look at this. So, we grabbed Johnny. We go out and look at this house, and it was actually really cool. It was a bit dated. It needed a little—well, frankly, a lot of TLC. And I'll get into the details of the TLC that we're currently in the process of working out. But when we looked at it, we're like, this is pretty cool. And really, we were—I mean, it's not like—it felt urgent. 

[00:16:09] After the riots in LA, the boarded-up buildings, just all the craziness, we just wanted to get out. I mean, to me, it felt pretty urgent. So, I wasn't being that picky. And we like this house. We thought, alright, let's go home and sleep on it. So, we get back to our Airbnb, where we're staying at this time. We had two different Airbnbs. One out in the country to test out, and then one more in the city in an area called Barton Hills, which is lovely if you like to live in a city, which I don't.

[00:16:34] So, we're there. We get home from looking at the house in Lakeway that eventually became our own. And I get home, open my laptop, check my email, where I get an email from our Los Angeles landlady, where I've lived for two years, and Alyson and I have lived together for one year, and it was an eviction notice, saying that she had some issues with her primary residence and needed to move back into the house. And so, we were kicked out. So, we took that as a pretty good sign.

[00:17:01] And along the way, also, let me just add, I have notes here that I'm going off, but of course, things come up that aren't in the notes as I hopefully deliver this report in a more spontaneous, engaging way, but we also did a lot of vision work and a lot of prayer circles. Alyson is a really great orator. And any time I feel like we need to get centered and unified around a goal or an idea, she's really good at pulling that together, and pulls out all of her shamanic tools, and things that, frankly, I don't quite understand, but they work and they feel great.

[00:17:36] So, she casts her angelic spells on the situation. We wrote a very specific vision of what we wanted our home to be. I mean, down to minute details, in the micro to the macro of just the general energy of the place, and really, the purpose of us finding a home for ourselves, future family, friends, loved ones, to really have a hub where we can create communities. So, we had a really powerful and very clear vision, and did a lot of meditating together and individually to bring forth the perfect home for us.

[00:18:11] And also, of course, along my journey, which I'll get into a little bit, just really working on my own sense of self-worth and confidence, and that, yeah, okay, I can finally, after 50 years, many of those spent as a productive adult, can afford to buy a home, can handle buying a home, can take on the responsibility. There was a lot of inner work just on that. And when we went and looked at the house, and then came home and we're evicted in LA, I mean, if you want to talk about like, hey, God, give us a sign, that's a pretty clear sign.

[00:18:48] Like you don't have anywhere to live in a month. So, the next morning, we put an offer in on the house that we got, and then we waited all day with bated breath, and found out they had a second offer, which at this time in Austin, you got to understand, in the whole Austin area, really hot real estate market, very low inventory, especially over Christmas. I mean, it was, for all intents and purposes, and just in practical terms, probably the worst time to come to Austin and look for a home, Christmas 2020.

[00:19:18] But anyway, we put a second offer in, a little bit over-asking, and we waited. I think a few hours or maybe until the next morning, they accepted our offer. And that was the beginning of the journey. And prior to that, actually, I'll back up a little bit, we looked in a lot of different places and did a lot of other research, but that's kind of how we ended up where we are now to the story I'm going to get into. 

[00:19:42] And the original goal was really to get further out in the country, on the Hill Country here and a larger piece of land, but we found this house, and got kicked out of our place in LA, and made an offer, and it was accepted. And so, one of the principles that I follow in my life is looking for open doors. Not trying to force my will onto the outcome, but rather setting the intention and doing the footwork and leaving the outcome to God, frankly. And this was one of those situations. 

[00:20:16] We did our due diligence, put ourselves out there, looked at some places, did our best to not get emotionally attached to any particular house, property, outcome, but this one seemed to check enough boxes where we felt comfortable exploring it. And so, we put the offer in, the second one, it was accepted, and the rest is sort of history. Now, I'm going to back up a little bit and talk about a couple of the other experiences along the way here and why specifically we ended up choosing Texas over a number of other wonderful places on Earth.

[00:20:52] Number one, as I said, is we wanted somewhat reasonable weather. Now, nowhere has perfect weather except Los Angeles. And for reasons that I already explained, our time there was done. So, my first inclination was to go try Sedona, Arizona, which I've always loved. I've been there are a number of times, always had a great time, just incredible landscapes. I mean, it's literally that town, it's in the middle of a park. I mean, it's just idyllic and beautiful.

[00:21:19] And there's a great spiritual community there. It's very new agey and far out, which I dig. And one of the unique things about Sedona is that there is water, unlike some great places and desert like Joshua Tree that I also love. I just feel weird when I'm somewhere where there's no water. And Sedona is green a lot of the year. They have a nice little green belt there with Oak Creek coming down through town. And there are some beautiful homes there.

[00:21:46] And I just thought, that would be the most logical next step after LA, because it's also drivable to so many different places. Sedona is situated so that you can get to Phoenix, Colorado, Utah, California. It's somewhat central in terms of drivability, and also, access to a decent airport in Phoenix. So, I thought that was a no brainer and I thought, for sure, we'd get there, find a house, and love it. Well, it turns out a number of different things prevented us from landing there.

[00:22:16] A, the real estate in Sedona is quite expensive. And it's not as expensive as California, but it's a close second. I mean, it's a travel destination. It's a retirement destination. It's quite expensive. And the houses that we looked at there, and we looked at quite a few, they would have needed a lot of work. They weren't my steez. They weren't Alyson's steez. Some of them had decent bones, as they say. But, man, there were just no real homeruns. They were just not really our style.

[00:22:47] So, there was that. And then, also, we were in Sedona for two months. I mean, if you listen to the show, you know I did a number of podcasts there. We made some great friends. I mean, there's some great community there. And of course, the beautiful nature. And we really enjoyed that. But I got to say, especially in hindsight, in contrast to how we feel here in Texas, we just both felt very, very ungrounded in Sedona. I mean, Alyson, more so than I at first, and I was like, okay, maybe she's just not feeling well, maybe she's going through something, who knows?

[00:23:20] But she was just not feeling at home there at all. And it was weird, because I wasn't really either, but I was trying to convince myself, that's where we're supposed to be and I was hoping she would kind of warm up to the idea, no pun intended, as, of course, Sedona can be quite hot. Little did I know, we moved to somewhere, which is probably hotter, because it's humid. I'll get to that later. So, the first half of that trip, I was having all these vertigo issues and I just felt like shit in Sedona.

[00:23:51] I mean, physically at first, then I got the flu or my corona. I don't know what was happening, but I did not feel well there for probably a month. And I'm generally a really healthy, energetic, happy person. And another thing interesting about Sedona was neither of us could get any work done. I mean, it was just so difficult to sit down, and focus, and do task work, and work that requires your undivided attention, like preparing a podcast, or writing a book, or doing different things that I'm working on and different projects that Alison is working on.

[00:24:23] She was prepping the launch of her incredible podcast called Ceremony Circle, available where all podcasts are available. Seriously, check it out. Ceremony Circle with Alyson Charles. She was in the prep phase of launching that. And I don't know, we just did not feel right, and I feel right almost everywhere. Another interesting thing about Sedona is, I would say, as far as us enjoying each other's company less, that was more prevalent there than it has been anywhere.

[00:24:55] Now, we're not, thankfully, a couple that bickers or fights. I mean, honestly, and this is going to sound crazy or like a, what do they call that, the honeymoon period, we've never had a fight. I mean, we've been annoyed with each other, for sure, and that's natural. And I'm sure it's natural to have some knockdown, drag-out fights eventually, too, but it's just not been part of our experience for whatever reason. I think we've both perhaps been through enough shit before that we're kind of just not willing to go there.

[00:25:27] I know personally, I would much rather be happy than be right and win. Peace over victory is always my motto. But that said, obviously, things come up that couples need to address, and you grow, and grow individually, grow together. I mean, there's a lot to be done there. But in Sedona, I think we got in each other's nerves, frankly, more than we ever have. And the minute we left there, we were totally back to normal and get along great. Nothing near like, oh, we need to go to therapy or should we break up?

[00:25:56] Nothing like that. It was just, there was contrast, because we have such a good time. We just laugh and just screw around together. We just have the best time. We're just the best of friends. So, there were a lot of reasons why Sedona, for us, was not a fit. So, next, we thought about, okay, Florida. And in fact, after we came to the Austin area for Christmas 2020 to look at houses, we went to Miami for our friend, Sahara Rose's, birthday. And our friend Rosie Acosta was there. 

[00:26:26] And we had a great time as far as Florida goes. I love the fact that it's warm there. I love that the governor seems somewhat sane, at least to my way of thinking. There is much more personal freedom there, a little less authoritarian. What's that word? Authoritarianism, is that even a word? Less fascist kind of behavior there in terms of mandates, and also, very low case numbers. Not that case numbers mean anything, because the testing is so fraudulent. 

[00:26:59] Anyway, another show on that, of course. But my folks live in Florida in the winter—or my mom—or my dad and stepmother live there, rather, one set of folks live there on Marco Island, where we went to the Joe Dispenza retreat. But again, man, call me crazy, I do not like cities, not the least of which Miami, Florida, just not my scene. God bless anyone that enjoys it. If you want to visit there, live there, like I get it. It seems fun for a certain type of person.

[00:27:32] Not at all for me. Not my scene at all. So, for me, Florida is a no. Now, I have friends that live up in the Panhandle and different areas like that. They love it. They send me pictures and they're rolling around without their masks. Perfectly healthy. Getting lots of sun. Living the dream. And it might be great, but I just haven't been there. And again, I didn't want to move and nor did Alyson want to move somewhere too remote. And I feel like the other, more subdued remote areas of Florida might be a little too far out for this first move.

[00:28:04] We need to find something kind of in the middle. And those other ideas like Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, et cetera, not only too cold and snowy in the winter, but perhaps, just a bit too remote. And frankly, probably a culture shock for me, if not both of us, after living in the middle of a city for so long. So, I went to Florida. And love our friends there. A nice place to visit. Wouldn't want to live there. Next thought was, well, hey, why do we even need to stay in the United States? 

[00:28:31] I mean, this place is basically on its way to a path of complete self-destruction, because of the lack of adherence to what made America the wonderful place that it is, which is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which our political "leaders" seem to completely decimate more and more, day by day. So, we thought, well, if we're going to live in a third-world country, maybe we should just go to another one that has better weather, like Mexico, or Bali, or Costa Rica, somewhere tropical. 

[00:29:00] Alyson loves tropical weather and I do as well. We love Cuixmala in Mexico. It's probably both of our favorite places on Earth. So, we thought maybe we just bounce, where we just out, and then figure out a way to get passport, work papers, et cetera, things that one might need to exodus from the United States, even though, of course, if you go to live in one of those other countries, you still have to pay your taxes in the United States if you're still a citizen.

[00:29:27] So, it gets a bit problematic, but the main issue with that was just the difficulty of flying with looming, oh, God, I don't even want to say it, but with the looming probability of people to be injected with experimental gene therapies in order to get on planes, and come in and out of the United States. That sounded a little sketchy. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get stuck in Bali or Costa Rica, and not be able to get back. But despite all of that, more than anything, I wouldn't really be able to do my work in those places.

[00:30:02] I could do Zoom podcast, but there's much more that I do. I do public speaking and I work with tons of different brands in the health and wellness space. And I do a lot of shipping and receiving, and I need to be able to get mail to try products out that my sponsors send me, and things like that. And anyone that's lived in Mexico or one of those other countries, as awesome as they are, due to tariffs, taxes, and probably, theft, and corruption, in some cases, it's difficult to just ship things back and forth. 

[00:30:31] Like you live in Mexico, your ass ain't ordering something on Amazon and getting it the next day, you know what I mean? It's problematic. So, that kind of eliminated those options. Although, God, I love the people in those countries. I mean, Costa Rica has the coolest people. Mexico has the coolest people. And I just enjoy visiting those places so much. And every time I go, I go, God, these people got it figured out, man. They're living their best life, and more so, I think, than many of my stressed-out comrades in the United States. 

[00:31:05] But wasn't meant to be at this time. Perhaps at some point in the future, you make an escape in the winter and live in Mexico or somewhere warmer. We'll see how it goes. I'll tell you what, though, if there is a requirement for me to be injected with something from a company that has no liability and that I have no indication is safe for my body, I won't be going anywhere. Hello, road trips. Next was, of course, the ability, as I mentioned before, to do live podcast.

[00:31:38] I really don't like doing the Zoom podcast, man. I'm just spoiled from living in LA. Call me crazy, but sitting down, and having a human-to-human connection, sharing some air together, giving a hug, that social closeness. I am not a fan of social distancing. I like social connection. And so, you don't get that if you live too far away from people. And one of the other things that was important was finding an incredible community of existing and new friends, conscious entrepreneurs, and thought leaders, and people that are inspiring and doing great things in the world, which Austin has plenty of.

[00:32:17] Also, of course, just wanted to live a country, rural life man, and being near some creeks, and mountains, and trees, and animals, and just being able to be outside as much as possible. Now, I will say, one of my—I mean, it's not a disappointment, because I knew this to be the case, but they don't have any mountains in Texas, folks. And that is a little strange to me. I've never lived in my life anywhere where there weren't mountains nearby. And don't have those here.

[00:32:44] One thing they do have here is more adherence generally to the Constitution, and specifically, the Second Amendment. And as a result, you have a lot less crime. Go figure. When everyone's packing and everyone, for the most part, has a firearm in their home, you get a lot less break-ins, you know what I mean? If I was a criminal and I wanted to go commit an armed robbery, I would love to do that likely in a place with very strict gun control, because I would want to live somewhere where only criminals like me were carrying, not hardworking, honest folks. 

[00:33:20] And so, feels very safe to me. To other people, they might feel very unsafe when so many people are armed, but I feel more safe the more legal arms there are. And that is the case in Texas. After we moved here, there was also a statewide mask mandate retraction. Now, everyone was celebrating and I thought that was cool, too. But let's face it, that's like celebrating something that never should have happened in the first place, in my opinion, based on a 99% survival rate and a number of other completely ludicrous ideas around what I consider to be the greatest crime against humanity by the governments and the media of the world.

[00:34:08] But it was a good sign that, at least, perhaps this particular state of Texas is on the right track. Now, I know in downtown Austin, where people, I would say, are generally more in line with the perspective of people in Los Angeles and California in general, people were actually upset, because they wanted to keep wearing their masks. And of course, I think that's wonderful. If people want to wear a mask, wear five masks, if that makes you feel good. So, I found that to be strange.

[00:34:37] But I'm all for a governor that uses logic and follows the science. And the science indicates in my review that there is no reason for me as a healthy person to be cutting off my oxygen, and breathing in carbon dioxide and bacteria all day long. I don't know, call me crazy. It doesn't sound like a healthy strategy to build a robust immune system. So, that was kind of good news. But again, not really, because the shit shouldn't have happened anyway. But there's less insanity around all of that issue in general in Texas. 

[00:35:17] Again, like Austin is sort of its own bubble. And for that reason, I don't really go into Austin. I'm very happy to be as far away from Austin as possible, to be honest, though, there's a lot of great people, great food, music, culture, art, creeks, parks. I mean, Austin is an awesome city. Don't get me wrong. I'm just not a fan of cities, and especially cities where people are really excited to cave to authoritarian government overreach.

[00:35:48] And Austin's culture is more like that. But I guess that's what makes Texas sort of unique and awesome, is that you have kind of a more conservative state in general, and then you have all of the wonderful things about a more liberal culture in the city, which were the things I mentioned, interesting architecture, and food, and music. And people care about the environment, and keeping the parks around, and stuff.

[00:36:13] But along with that, you have policies that are very similar to California's, in that there's an exploding homeless population and they aren't being treated very respectfully or intelligently. And I'm not going to begin to think that I know what the answer to the homeless crisis is, but it's definitely not encouraging them to camp out under the freeways, and put up porta potties, and create tent cities everywhere. There must be a better way than that.

[00:36:41] What it is, I don't know. So, digging it out in the country, not so much in Austin. One of the other things that's great here, in addition to just more freedom, is, of course, lower taxes, and really, just a more affordable everything. I mean, the house we got here would have been at least twice, if not, realistically, probably three times as expensive in California, especially in Los Angeles and especially in the neighborhood we lived in Los Angeles, which wasn't even all that. Laurel Canyon is nice, but it's not Bel Air.

[00:37:17] There are some less expensive properties for sure in our old neighborhood. But if you transplanted our house into the lot, well, it wouldn't even fit in the lot where our old house was, but if you put it there, three times as expensive easily. And then, no state taxes here. Everything just seems to be less expensive here, too, just from hiring workers to come do the yard work or general contractors. 

[00:37:52] Just for example, I go to register my car here, so I want to get my Texas plates, so I can get my Texas ID. I want my Texas ID, so I can go exercise my right to purchase things that require ID that go, boom, which I couldn't do in California for a number of reasons. So, I go to register my car. I did have to wear a mask when I walked in.

[00:38:14] They were very uptight about that. Well, they pretty much demanded that I use some incredibly toxic hand sanitizer, and I just told them, my hands are very clean, thank you. And even if they weren't, I don't believe that germs cause disease. It's a whole other topic. Look up germ theory, if you don't know what I mean. Germ theory versus terrain theory. I've done a podcast about it with Zach Bush, my most popular podcast of all time, actually. We go into great detail about that. 

[00:38:44] So, I'm all for washing my hands, but I'm not going to put that stuff on my hands, certainly. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I always just kind of gauge how easily I'm able to do my thing and meander through the world based on the sanity or lack thereof of rules, mandates, laws, et cetera. Anyway, I get through the whole COVID screening situation there, as is common in any government building, I suppose, especially in Austin. They made up their own rules, by the way.

[00:39:17] They decided that they're going to have a citywide mandate on masks and all that, even though the state doesn't, which I am totally baffled by. But, hey, they can do the thing. I'll just avoid it whenever possible. Anyway, love the DMV here. Actually, they don't call it the DMV. That's what we call it in California, where you have to go get your plates, your license, all that stuff. They call it the tax office or something. Had an appointment, went in there, dealt with the mask stuff, and then was in and out of there in 15 minutes.

[00:39:45] Everyone was incredibly nice and helpful. No one's pissed off. I mean, I'm used to DMV in Hollywood, California, guys, and you go in there and like you have PTSD afterward, basically. They are so pissed off, and abusive, and grumpy, and just on a power trip. I mean, it's really an experience that's hard to explain. Anyone that's done it knows, you'll know I'm not exaggerating. But I sat down with the sweetest little lady. We had a great chat. She was just super kind, super helpful.

[00:40:14] I had all my paperwork in order. And she hands me my plates and asked for $195. That's right. $195 to register my car for a year. In California, it's $875 to register my car for one year. So, that's just one expense. But think about that and everything you're taxed on, all these hidden taxes, right? I mean, think about the end of the year we're in California, we're probably paying 60% tax if you add them all up. I mean, it's very close to servitude.

[00:40:48] Well, it is servitude, really. It's just a matter of, you get to keep some crumbs of what you go out and earn. So, I'm noticing everything here is just less expensive, which is wonderful, because I'm a hard worker. I like to work hard. I mean, I work all hours of the day. I take breaks, I go have fun, but here I am, it's 9:21 PM. I started working at about 10:30 AM and been pretty much going ever since, apart from a couple of breaks, which I like to do. Meditated this afternoon, did my thing.

[00:41:17] I mean, I'm very fortunate and blessed to have the job I have, and I'm grateful for it. But man, I'm going to be 60 in ten years, like I don't want to be grinding like this forever. And having a place to live where it's a little less expensive and draining feels good. I might be able to end up with a little more cash for retirement, and investing, and things like that that you think about as you get older.

[00:41:44] More than anything, though, I think what is so incredibly different here—and again, nothing against my brothers and sisters in California, we're all doing the best we can. And I'm sure I was a total asshole for most of the time I lived there, at least earlier in life. I would like to think much less so for the past 24 years or so. But people here in Texas, man, are shockingly kind and respectful. Everyone. 

[00:42:17] I have literally not interacted with one single, and I'm not exaggerating at all, and I've been here, I don't know, three or four weeks, I have not interacted with one person who was short-tempered, dismissive, passive-aggressive, aggressive, angry, combative, argumentative, nothing. Every single business I go into, every person I've hired, and I've hired a lot of people here from doing home inspections to repairs, to contractors, to getting insurance, to having the internet installed, all the things that you do, going to the mechanic, going to get my license, going to buy equipment at the sporting goods store, going to buy dog food at the special natural dog store, all of that.

[00:43:04] Actually, you know what, I just remembered something. Everyone, without exception, has been kind, respectful, and just so friendly, and down to earth, and humble, and awesome, except the employees, especially the management at Canola Foods, which some people call Whole Foods. I call it Canola Foods. And it's great to have a health food store. There are worse grocery stores in terms of your health. But I'm always just annoyed, because I go in there to get some food, and I'm like, well, it's all canola oil. 

[00:43:36] But more than anything, they are real uptight. I don't know if it has to do with their evil overlord over at Amazon setting policy or company culture, or just because I'm someone that doesn't like to put a diaper on my face when I go buy some carrots, but yeah, the bee cave, that's the area we live in now. We're in a temporary apartment. We just rented a furnished apartment nearby the house during renovations, because it's a complete renovation, complete demo, which I'll get into. 

[00:44:08] Yeah, Whole Foods here. I went there twice. And I was like, and I'm done with Whole Foods. So, that was the end of that relationship. But apart from them, just people here are so nice. And I'll tell them that, and they look at me like I'm crazy. Like I'm always telling my contractor. 

[00:44:25] I mean, imagine this, like you call a plumber and you want to ask a few questions, hey, I got this thing, it's doing this thing, can you guys come out? I mean, they'll just usually hang up on you or just not answer your question and they're just not helpful. People don't show up. It's really difficult to just book anyone to do anything in the municipalities or service kind of industry. It's much more difficult. And I was used to that. And I just thought that's the way the world was, because it's been a long time since I lived anywhere else.

[00:44:55] And so, God bless the people of Texas, man. Again, I think it's part of the culture. It's sort of the Southern hospitality thing. And it's also the blend of people in this particular area in Austin and around Austin, where you have a blend of people that have complementary values. You have the more artistically, socially, liberally minded people, and then you just have the salt of the earth working folk that tend to lean more on the conservative side. And I'm using political parameters there, but it's not really. 

[00:45:32] I wish there was a better way I could say it, but I think it's really just based on someone's hierarchy of values, right? You have people that value family, that value the rule of law, that value the Constitution, they value their freedom. And then, you have other people, and I value those things, but then I also value great art, and food, and music, and social issues, and equality, and things of that nature. I'm not talking about fake social justice warrior stuff.

[00:46:00] I'm talking about like really caring about people, all people, not just the ones you agree with, which I think is a problem in our sort of quasi-neo liberal culture now. So, people in Texas are freaking awesome. And if you're from Texas or you live in Texas, God bless you, man. Thank you so much for the warm welcome. And I'm so honored to be here. And I know I can say it's the same for Alyson. And you have our word that we will not turn your lovely state into another California, or at least not the bad parts.

[00:46:35] We'll bring the best parts of California with us if we can. We'll do our best. There's also zero traffic here in the areas where I live and chill. Now, if you get into downtown Austin, there are people from Austin, they'll be like, oh, my God, the traffic is horrible. We wish the Californians would stop moving here. But what's bad traffic here is like a light traffic day in Los Angeles. So, to me, it's chill. We'll be right back at you after this brief but important announcement.

[00:47:07] Well, 2020 was a wild ass ride, wasn't it, folks? Wow, what a challenging year for so many people, and I would say, the human civilization at large, right? Without taking any positions on that, you know what I'm saying. Shit was crazy. So, in 2021, I'm focusing more and more on my mental health, and physical wellness, and energy than ever before. In fact, one of my non-negotiables when it comes to making sure that I keep myself on track is getting my daily dose of healthy light.

[00:47:38] So, I spend as much time as possible safely, of course, in the sun. But in addition to sun, for years now, I've been using Joovv red light therapies to make sure that I'm getting as much of that healthy light into my life as possible. So, you probably heard me talk about Joovv before. It's spelled J-O-O-V-V. I'm using this technology all the time and I've seen some incredible benefits over the years. 

[00:47:59] So, when it comes to skin elasticity, collagen production, mitochondrial function, stress and work out recovery, improvement to circadian rhythm, melatonin production, testosterone production, red light therapy, when done correctly, like Joovv is doing it, has some incredible and absolutely scientifically validated benefits. So, this is not like speculation, woo-woo, shine this red light on you and magic happens. There are literally thousands of white papers to support the efficacy of red light therapy in your life.

[00:48:33] So, if you're ready to check it out, here's what you do. Very simple. Go to joovv.com/luke. That's J-O-O-V-V, .com/luke. If you're going to hook up some of the Generation 3.0 devices they just put out, you can get yourself a discount by entering the code, Luke, to go to J-O-O-V-V, .com/luke. Enter the code, Luke. Check out and enjoy that red light. And now, back to the interview.

[00:49:03] Now, another reason that I'm not huge on the downtown Austin area, again, you could give me any city and I just don't want to be in a city. It's just maddening, but very 5G-heavy. There are just cell towers every 10 feet. Man, it is out of control. So, the EMF levels in Austin are, I would say, not as bad as Los Angeles just because of the size of the city by comparison and the population density, but it's pretty draining for me as someone who's pretty sensitive to the EMF and all that. 

[00:49:34] Pretty draining to be in the downtown area. However, out where we live, there's no 5G, because it's too rural. The towers wouldn't go far enough. There are a few towers around. They tend to be those really tall ones that go greater distances. And so, yeah, EMF for sure, but it does not feel as oppressive as it does in any major city. By the way, I think Phoenix was one of the worst that I've ever been. And there are many 5G millimeter wave towers all over Scottsdale and Phoenix.

[00:50:06] It was brutal. But there was a lot of nice sun. So, I always try to find the things that I like, but I'm not going to ignore or deny the fact that there are things that I don't prefer. And being in a lot of electro-smog is a bit hard on me at this point in life. Alright. So, back to current times and how this all came to be. Now, owning a home has been a dream come true for me and for Alyson. She's owned property before. I have not. And man, I've been working my ass off since I was 16 years old.

[00:50:34] 1986, got my first job as a dishwasher in Basalt, Colorado, a little town outside of Aspen. And there was a stretch of my 20s where I was up to a lot of no good. And I wouldn't say that I worked my ass off in my 20s, because I was very riddled with addiction issues and things like that. And so, the work that I did during that period from '89 to '97 was largely outside of the legal system. Let's just say that. And I wouldn't say it was hard work, maybe dangerous in many ways, but not hard work.

[00:51:10] I dropped out of high school the day I turned 18, and everything I've learned about business, I've learned the hard way, through trial and error, whether I've been an employee, employer. I've tried a lot of different things. I had a lot different jobs. Most of them, not very glamorous. And some of them, not worth mentioning here. But I did eventually find my way to doing what I do now, five years ago. And I really feel as though I'm living completely in my dharma and purpose now. 

[00:51:39] I feel that the work I do is of service to people in a special way. And I reach just the amount of people I'm supposed to reach. And if I reach more someday, that's great, but those of you that listen to the podcast, those that follow the work that I'm doing seem to really benefit from it. And that is what fuels me. But the fact is, when it comes to home ownership, I've been really horrible at managing money most of my life. Now, a lot of that earlier on had to do with just extremely low self-worth and childhood trauma.

[00:52:11] And from the time I was 30 years old until just a couple of years ago, probably three years ago or so, I might even have it on my calendar somewhere, I was consistently, for that whole time, let's just say 30 years old to 46, 47, into as much as $100,000 in credit card debt. There were years where all of my credit card debt was over $100,000. I was paying an excess of $1,000 per month just in interest for years, and I knew it. It's not like I ignored it.

[00:52:46] I just had problems with spending, and impulse-buying, and I was very compulsive. I quit doing drugs and drinking. And when I did that, I found other ways to feel better. And the rush of buying things that you can afford on your credit card, and then the rush of shame that you get afterward, it's sort of like—I never got into gambling, thank God, but I've known people into gambling and it's a horrible addiction, because you do it to get out of the shameful and negative feelings that you're experiencing, and then you compound them by going and losing all your money, and then you have to do it again to make yourself feel better.

[00:53:26] That's kind of the cycle that I was in with debting, and just overspending, and just totally ignoring all my numbers. Now, I've never been one to not pay my bills. So, even all those years when I was in credit card debt, I mean, I never missed payments or paid them late. I was just paying off a lot of interest and I just felt like such a loser inside. Actually, I don't think I've ever even publicly talked about it.

[00:53:49] But I've certainly talked about more intimate details of my life on this show in an effort to help other people who are so encumbered with struggles that they might be able to find a way out. And I'm here to tell you that there is a way out. A lot of the debt that I went through also was having to do with not only just the compulsivity of my nature, but also spending 17 years as a fashion stylist. And that made debting really easy, because your whole business runs on credit cards.

[00:54:20] You put up all the money for all the supplies and clothes, and then your client pays you back. So, it was really hard to keep track of that. And that's how I originally got myself in the deep debt. And then, also, I'd have friends maybe that made more money than me, and they'd say, hey, dude, we're all going to Brazil in two weeks, or going to India, or wherever, you want to go? I'm like, sure. And rather than checking my bank account balance—this is how screwed up my thinking around money was. 

[00:54:46] Rather than looking in my checking account, seeing, okay, this trip's going to cost $10,000 or on a budget of $10,000, do I have that money? Rather than doing that, because I never had any money saved ever, just enough to pay my bills hand-to-mouth. I would look at my available credit on my credit cards, and if I had available credit on my credit cards, I looked as that as having the money to do the thing, or buy the thing, or take the trip, which I would not advise.

[00:55:13] It's not the way money works, turns out. And I learned that the hard way. Anyway, eventually, I took responsibility for my spending and my debting behavior. I had to have some professional help with that and work on all the underlying issues that were causing me to be so destructive to my mental and emotional health and livelihood. And little by little, I chipped away at that debt, and then again, I don't know, between two and four years ago, probably three or four years, I think, I was able to eventually pay off all of that debt, that $100,000, or actually, it was more than that at the time.

[00:55:48] And I did a lot of listening to Dave Ramsey. If you've heard of him, he's got a great podcast and he's like a very down-to-earth, sort of simple money manager teacher. And I listen to a lot of his stuff and I listen to his podcast. And at the end of every podcast, someone would explain their journey with debt, and at the end, they'd scream, we're debt free. And I was like, goddammit, man, I want to be one of those people. And these are people that, at that time, many of them on the show made less money than me and they paid off their debt faster.

[00:56:18] So, I was like, goddammit, if they can do it, there has to be a way. So, I prayed my ass off. I worked my ass off. And eventually, I did it. And it was a celebration indeed. And when I did, I vowed to never let that happen again. So, I cut up on my credit cards. And from that moment—well, it wasn't just that moment when I paid it off, but when I made the decision to really kind of get sober around my finances and deal with those underlying issues, I stopped debting.

[00:56:42] And to this day, other than secured debt, I just took out a loan for this house, so that's secured debt, but I do not play with unsecured debt. I do not borrow money from people. I don't borrow money on my credit cards. I don't buy anything unless I have the cash to buy it, whether that's a trip, no matter how bad I want to buy something, or go somewhere, or do anything, if I don't have the money in my checking account, I don't do it.

[00:57:07] And it took a lot of pain for me to get to that place and to arrive at the respect for that fundamental universal law. It really is. It's like a biblical law, don't borrow money from the money changers. I mean, we've been warned about this and it took me a long time to listen. So, once I stopped spending money that I did not have, which to any sane person sounds like a, duh, of course, you don't do that, but I didn't know, I had to learn the hard way, I started saving. 

[00:57:37] And finally, this year, I'd saved enough for the down payment on a home. Well, at least one probably outside of the California market. So, Alyson and I pooled our resources, and pulled the trigger on this place. And that's how this all started to happen. And I'm just so grateful, man, that I was able to overcome many of the issues that I had earlier in life. And of course, there's always more work to do, but I feel like a lot of the heavy lifting of just the dysfunctionality of my life around finances, and relationships, and drugs, and all of the things that I struggled with and worked through. 

[00:58:12] The times where I was homeless, and had nowhere to live, and was sleeping in garages, and on couches, and just bumping around. I mean, that went on for a number of years off and on. I mean, it wasn't on Skid Row, but if I had less kind friends, that would have been my next stop. And this is after I got sober and quit doing drugs just because I was so dysfunctional and incapable of handling my life like a responsible adult. And thankfully, I started this business, School of Style, 12 years ago.

[00:58:46] That's an online fashion school. I don't talk about it a lot, because it doesn't really relate to the topics of this show, but I still own that business. And that was really the main way I was able to start my podcast, and fund the launch of that and the team that I hired to help me with the podcast, and the new brands that I'm doing now that you're listening to, all of those things. And also, put some cash aside to pay off the debt and get this house. And I'm going to back up into the story here. 

[00:59:15] So, when our offer was accepted on this house, we flew to Florida for the Joe Dispenza retreat. And then, the inspection period took place during the retreat. And Alyson and I did a prior podcast where we did a live report, sort of immersive journalism from the hotel in Florida where this retreat was. And during that whole week, I mean, I was having a great time, and I was going to really deep places in the meditations, and learning a lot, and all that stuff.

[00:59:47] I mean, I love the Joe Dispenza events, but I had to keep leaving in the middle of lectures and stuff to go out and talk to the pool inspection guy, and the septic person, and the propane company. Looking back, I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I didn't jump off the roof of that freaking hotel. It was quite stressful, to be honest, but it had to be done, and we happened to be there at that time. So, I was able to get through that inspection period.

[01:00:13] And by the way, for anyone that's owned real estate, and bought and sold houses, I mean, you get it, and you probably think, whatever, it's not a big deal, but being a first time buyer, I mean, I had no idea how any of this works. Like I don't know what the title company is. I don't know what any of these people do. I don't understand the loan, the mortgage broker, all the documents they need from the bank. I mean, this is all uncharted territory.

[01:00:35] And all of that territory was charted in the middle of like a seven-day meditation retreat. It's just funny looking back. I can't believe it all got done. And there was a point at which I walked back in the room to Alyson, I just found out, we had the mold inspection and we had a fair amount of mold in the house. And I don't play with mold, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm Mr. Biohacker, like rule number one, no mold. I walked back in, I'm like, babe, we've got to pull the plug.

[01:01:01] I was all freaked out. I'm like, no, we're out. We're out. I'm going to tell them we don't want it anymore. And she's like, slow down, slow down. Okay, wait. Anyway, you'll find out the rest of the story. But it was intense, this whole process. So, after that, again, we went to Florida, and then not really so much at that point to check it out, because obviously, we're already under contract with the house, but we did want to visit our friends there and just see, would this be a place we would ever want to live if it doesn't work out in Texas or whatever?

[01:01:30] And we got back to LA, we started sewing up all the loose ends, getting in the period where you close on the house was a while. We just started preparing, and booking movers, and doing all the things. And when we got all our stuff together, and had planned to move out of LA, it was crazy, because we had a U-Haul, we had movers that were taking a semi-truck with all our stuff, right? But one thing they wouldn't take was the house plants and any perishable food.

[01:01:59] And I just happened to have about a half a steer of beautiful, amazing, grass-fed beef in the garage that I bought during the beginning of all the riots and stuff, because I'm like, huh? I've been here before with the LA riots. I'm not trying to be trapped without food. And I also just was interested in getting my food from one animal from one ranch, rather than supporting any kind of factory farming. And I also had a lot of meat from Belcampo, who is also an amazing ranch and not a factory farm.

[01:02:32] So, I had all that meat and I had these great houseplants. I've managed to keep some really beautiful big house plants alive for over two years in this house. So, I was not going to let them go, either of those. So, we rented a U-Haul. Now, the day we're supposed to leave was February 15th, 2021, which was very auspiciously also my 24th sobriety anniversary. It's a very special day to me. I mean, I was really reborn in 1997, quite literally. Same body, new person, new experience from that moment on. 

[01:03:01] As it turns out, our U-Haul wasn't there. It wasn't there the next day. There was all these delays. And we just kind of trusted the process and kept surrendering what our plan was supposed to be. We were out of our former rental house, so we had nowhere to stay. So, our friend, Rosie Acosta, put us up. And we kept having to extend another night, another night, because we couldn't get a U-Haul, because guess why, so many people are moving out of California for the reasons I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, I imagine.

[01:03:29] And as it turned out, as that delay was happening, that storm hit Texas. And I was like, huh, once again, it's an indication of how important it is to trust, trust the divine intelligence and order in the universe. Call it God. Call it what you will. But we were protected from being on the damn road when that happened. Now, we finally get on the road, maybe on the 18th, I think, it was, three days late, or something like that. And one of the stops, the first stop was Phoenix.

[01:03:59] We get to Phoenix. And the storm was just full on in Austin still, going all of Texas. I mean, people here were just tits up, not doing well at all. So, we decided to just hang out for like four days in Phoenix. It was 80 degrees. It was sunny. I found a place called Optimyze out there that my friend, Steven Jaggers, turned me on to. The ice baths, and saunas, and the whole thing. And so, I just went there every day, and we got work done, and hung out with the dog, Cookie.

[01:04:28] I got a hotel there that I found by looking on antennasearch.com so that I was kind of on the outskirts of Phoenix, where there weren't a lot of cell towers. I know I sound like a nut, but once you interview enough physicists, biologists, doctors, scientists, experts, et cetera, you wouldn't want to stay by a cell tower either, trust me. But if you do, just think positive and make the best of it. I'm sure you'll be fine. But I wasn't trying to do that.

[01:04:53] So, we had a really nice hotel kind of out in the boonies, hung out there, and just kept waiting for the snow to melt. We waited and waited four or five days. I would have to plug in the freezer of meat I had in our U-Haul trailer to keep it from going bad. And goddammit, I made it out here with that meat and it's in our garage of the house that's being renovated. Now, the other day, I go in there and I open it, and they're turning kind of soft, all these beautiful steaks and stuff.

[01:05:17] And I'm like, goddammit. The construction workers, the guys working in the house had unplugged the freezer. Thank God I caught it in time. So, I still have this gorgeous meat that I'm so reverent of for the reasons I explained earlier. So, man, what an adventure getting out here. Then, we stopped and stayed the night in El Paso, Texas. Had a really cool little hotel in downtown. Driving the U-Haul, man. I've never driven one of these things or towed one of these things. 

[01:05:44] You can't back up. So, if you go into something, you got to be able to come out the other side. So, I almost got stuck in the hotel. Luckily, they found a place for us to plug in my stupid freezer. And it was a wild ride. It took us a very long time to make it to Texas. Anyway, finally made it. The snow had melted. It was not very pretty here, I got to say. It's just starting to get green. And I got buyer's remorse there for me, and I was like, wow, this place is depressing-looking.

[01:06:12] There is not a tree alive for miles. There's brown everywhere, cloudy, cold. I was not impressed. But anyway, we got into our little apartment here in Bee Cave, and so began the process that I'm going to describe now. And in the interest of time, I'll go ahead and just kind of whiz through this. But this is really what I wanted to get to. Wanted to cover why we left California, why we chose Texas, why we didn't choose downtown Austin, et cetera, but really, I want to talk about what we're doing to the house, because there's going to be a lot of content created around biohacking the house, and making as eco-friendly for the environment, and for our personal environment, and in our environment as possible.

[01:06:54] So, I want to encourage you to follow us on Instagram. You can follow me @LukeStorey, S-T-O-R-E-Y, LukeStorey, and @IAmAlysonCharles is the fiancee. We're both posting stuff constantly on Instagram, like tons of stories, and lives, and before and after photos, because we're both just huge fan of renovation shows. And I'm obsessed with renovation. I mean, like I listen to interior design podcast every day now. I'm just totally obsessed, because I kind of have to be in order to do this right or do it the way that I want.

[01:07:30] But more than anything, we not only want a beautiful home, we want a safe home, to have a future family. And as I said, to create a really beautiful healing sanctuary for friends and family to come visit and just be restored. I mean, that's really one thing that I love to do, is to just help people feel better and to alleviate suffering. And having a really balanced space energetically that looks and feels beautiful is just a dream come true. And that's what we're getting.

[01:07:59] And what we're doing is I had no idea how substantial it was. You walk in a place, you're like, okay, the kitchen and the bathrooms need updating. Pretty standard, I think, if you move into an older house like we did. And then, of course, you start finding more stuff, then it's like, well, might as well do the laundry room. And, you know what, these old yellow bamboo floors are pretty beat down, we should probably do those.

[01:08:20] So, essentially, we're doing four bathrooms, the kitchen, laundry room, painting the whole place, installing eco-friendly-engineered hardwood floors, and also decided to just go ahead and biohack the house during renovations, because once you renovate, paint, decorate, move all your stuff in, it's very difficult to go back and fix things. So, the first thing we did was deal with the mold. We got Michael Rubino, very recent podcast guest. Actually, let me look at my calendar.

[01:08:48] This show's coming on a Friday. Oh, yeah. It's Friday, the 26th of March when this will come out. So, this past Tuesday would have been the 23rd, where our guest, Michael Rubino, came on Episode 337, and you'll learn how I met him and how that happened, another very fortuitous event, and that I heard from him as I found out that we had mold when I was at the Joe Dispenza retreat. So, he comes out, we do a podcast. He worked with my GC to ensure that the mold was dealt with properly, sealed off the affected areas.

[01:09:22] He used a special HEPA vacuum. It's called the Euroclean GD390 canister vacuum to remove all the dust. And then, once all the mold-covered drywall, and boards, and things have been removed and replaced, then you go in and spray with this stuff called Benefect Botanical Decon 30, which is sort of a natural alternative to bleach. And they used that on all the studs and anything that could have been exposed to mold. It's a whole process. And I don't know honestly that at the end of the day, we did it 100% perfect, but I'll tell you what I do know.

[01:09:59] When we called a mold remediation company to come in and do it rather than having our contractor do it by our specifications, they gave me a very vague quote of between 15 and $30,000. And I'm like, well, which one is it? And they said, we don't know. We'll tell you at the end. So, that, needless to say, was not in our plans or budgets, but I feel that our contractor did a great job of following Michael Rubino's dictates. And so far so good. All the moldy stuff's out of there.

[01:10:30] And it's not like black mold going up a whole wall. It's just kind of typical stuff. There was a leak under one of the sinks here and you see a little mold. And if you see some mold or even water damage, as I learned from Michael in last Tuesday's episode, there's a lot more mold that you can't see. So, we wanted to deal with it, but also, we need to keep it moving. So, I'm sure we did a great job, and the house is going to be fine. And frankly, it's getting painted.

[01:10:55] The floors are getting torn out. The whole freaking house is basically going to be brand new, gutted from the inside out. So, I don't see how any mold is going to have anywhere to live in there if we missed any spores, or mycotoxins, or any of that. So, you can learn all about mold on Tuesday's show. Next thing we're going to be doing is exchanging all of the lighting in the house to flicker-free, incandescent, full-spectrum bulbs for daytime lighting to mimic natural sunlight. 

[01:11:24] So, it has all the colors of the rainbow, just like the sun. And then, installing a second set of lighting for the nighttime in the red to amber spectrum of fire. No blue light in the house. Of course, we'll be covering every blue-light-producing technology or appliance with those great little red stickers from TrueDark. And then, Brian Hoyer, my good buddy, who's the EMF specialist from Shielded Healing, he's going to be coming in and assisting in building out the lighting system.

[01:11:58] So, as soon as we do that, I'll be sure to do some post with the brands, and links, and things like that. But we haven't gotten to the lighting yet. That's kind of in the plan. Of course, for the painting, we'll be using no-VOC paint, volatile organic compounds. That's the stuff that smells really toxic in paints. So, we'll be using the greenest paint we can, and of course, avoiding any cabinets or furniture that are that pressed wood made with the off-gassing formaldehyde, and various chemicals that fill the air and make you less than well.

[01:12:19] And then, for the water, something I've been wanting to do forever, a lot of this stuff is just a dream come true, because I never could do this kind of deep dive renovations, because I was renting, and it just would have been dumb, but for water, we'll be installing a custom whole-house filter that's being designed by my friend, Robert Slovak, from Water & Wellness. He's been on the show a couple of times. And there are a number of other systems. 

[01:12:54] Ophora Water out of Santa Barbara make a great whole-house system, a couple of other companies I found along the way. I think PristineHydro might even be working on one. But we're going for a custom one because it's a larger project that we're doing with Robert, and we're making it specifically for the water quality and the constituents of the water in Lakeway tap water, which we got a report of and sent to Robert. And he's a pioneer in the reverse osmosis and filtration industry, so we're just going to work with him personally on that.

[01:13:29] In the meantime, we're using an incredible RO system called AquaTru that I actually learned about from Robert and we're also drinking Mountain Valley Spring Water delivered in glass. And I got to say, I mean, let me just add this caveat first, okay, I understand that the vast majority of the human population doesn't even have clean water to drink, okay? And I think that is a shame. And that needs to be stated, because what I'm about to say is like super spoiled, but I really do miss my Alive spring water back in LA.

[01:14:01] I mean, when it comes to drinking water, to me, there is nothing that beats the taste and the feeling energetically of drinking completely unaltered, natural, high-altitude, hard rock, meaning like granite rock formations, filtering that water, getting all the schwag minerals out. Nothing beats that. And if you live in California, you're stoked. You can get Alive spring water delivered like I used to. And I used to go collect my own for years too.

[01:14:32] So, I kind of miss that, because no filtered water, no matter how great the AquaTru is or any other system, I mean, you can recreate spring water by kind of reconstituting and restructuring water. And I'm pretty good at that, and have done a lot of content about that, and we'll continue to do so. But man, I miss that rocky mountain spring water. We don't have it here in Texas. You know why? Because they don't have anymore. I mean, they don't have any rocky mountains.

[01:14:57] It's kind of a problem. You got a lot of limestone here. The softer the rock, when spring water travels through that rock, it picks up a lot of inorganic minerals and becomes crappier, kind of like Mountain Valley Spring Water. But hey, as I said, there are people all over the world drinking muddy water out of a dirty, polluted river, so I'm stoked to be in the position that I'm in. And the AquaTru and Mountain Valley is great for now. In fact, I might even run the Mountain Valley Spring Water through the AquaTru just to get rid of some of the useless inorganic minerals in that water.

[01:15:29] It's very high in calcium. And it's not the kind of calcium that you use for your bones. It's the kind that calcifies your body and makes you stiff. It's less than awesome, less than ideal. For air filtration, we have the Air Doctor for the bedroom, which we love. We've got it here in the apartment. And then, we have a couple, ironically enough, Austin Air HEPA filters for the other rooms. However, eventually, we will be working on a whole house air cleaning system, but that will come a bit later on.

[01:15:58] And by the way, hit me up on Instagram if you have a recommendation for a great whole-house, legit, superpower, supercharged air cleaning system. Now, the air here where we live in the sort of boonies of Texas is much cleaner than in any city, Austin, or definitely, Los Angeles. But we still get the odd chem trail day here. Unfortunately, that's kind of a worldwide attack. It's definitely much less here than anywhere in California or Los Angeles, but the air is not ideal here.

[01:16:31] And so, I'd like to have super clean air inside the house eventually. Now, for the EMF, we just did some extensive testing with both my aforementioned friend, Brian Hoyer, who's been on the show a couple of times, and a new guy I met here in Austin named Dr. Ritter from a company called EMF Knights, a local EMF remediation company. And they both came and did some testing. Dr. Ritter does some incredible work, because he is an MD that became aware of how his patients couldn't get well. 

[01:17:04] And then, eventually figured out, the ones that couldn't get well had really high EMF in their houses. So, he actually went and got a degree as a physicist in order to understand the interactions of not only EMF with the human body and all biological organisms, but also, the physics of how different frequencies of EMF interact with each other. So, his inspection was very thorough and awesome. I definitely would recommend him as well. But in the end, we're going to be doing all the shielding work with Brian, as I made my EMF masterclass with him.

[01:17:37] And he has a whole team of people coming here to begin the process. And we're going to make a lot of videos, and contests, and things like that to help educate people about how to do that. And by the way, my EMF class is pretty awesome, and it's about five-and-a-half hours' worth of content. So, if you want to learn how to test your home, and different ways to shield, and all the different technologies, you can go to lukestorey.com/emfmasterclass. That's lukestorey.com/emfmasterclass.

[01:18:06] It's super affordable. It's $149. I did not make that class to try to become a millionaire. I made it because it's useful and I wanted to make it as affordable as possible. Straight up. That's lukestorey.com/emfmasterclass. And you can see kind of the whole process over the course of a lot of really great videos. Now, the plan for the EMF is to, of course, completely shield the bedroom, which essentially means turning the bedroom into a Faraday cube.

[01:18:34] So, all walls, ceiling, floor grounded and shielded from all outside EMF. That means when you're in your bedroom, your phone won't work. You don't get Wi-Fi from the other room. You're completely safe and secure in what Brian likes to call an ancestral environment, or at least as close as we can get to what would have been an ancient human sleeping space. Because when you sleep is when the EMF is really important, because that's when your body recovers from all the EMF and other oxidative stress that you encounter during the waking hours.

[01:19:09] So, definitely shielding the bedroom. And then, we'll be doing the floors of a couple of the upstairs room, the downstairs likely future baby room, and kind of getting them prepped, so that when we want to finish shielding them, the floors will already be done. We'll probably shield a couple of the walls for electric fields, the wiring coming out of the walls behind the couch in the TV room, and the wall where our desks will be against in our individual home offices, et cetera.

[01:19:41] So, we're going to do a little kind of spot check shielding here and there. But the main thing is making the bedroom just a complete EMF dead zone, which I am so excited about for many reasons, not the least of which being, forgive me if you're sick of this story, so it's like the origin story of my obsession with fixing EMF, but I lived unknowingly for three years in an apartment in Hollywood that was right under, and I mean right under, about 100 yards away from two massive cell towers.

[01:20:10] And I lived there for three years and I got really sick. And this is when I already have my podcast. I mean, I was doing my thing, being the health and wellness advocate that I am. And I got really sick and I couldn't figure out why. Anyway, eventually I figured out, holy shit, I'm living under two cell towers, promptly moved out immediately and never looked back. But since then, I've been doing a lot of work on educating people and helping people prevent that from happening to them, because it was a nightmare.

[01:20:35] I mean, I can only imagine how sick I would have gotten if I was a regular person, right? I got sick, and I'm still someone who spends a lot of time, energy, and a lot of money to be as optimal as I can, because I spent the early part of my life so sick, so dysfunctional, so mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually ill, that I'm just really committed to feeling good and being happy. And even with all the work that I do, I still got so sick. So, that's why I always harp on about the EMF.

[01:21:05] It's a very personal issue for me. And the thing about EMF, too, you guys, whether or not you think it's affecting you, and this is not to put fear into you, it's just stating a fact, and you can live your best life, and be around EMF, and probably be fine, but it does affect you even if you're not one of the people like me that's quite sensitive to it. It's not good for anyone. So, I really do my best to educate people around that without going into fear and a full fight or flight limbic system paranoid fit, because that would probably be as bad or worse for you than being around EMF. 

[01:21:44] So, it's a delicate balance there, building awareness without fear. Try it out some time. It's not as easy as it sounds. And the great thing about this spot is that it was built in 2001. So, the whole house is wired with ethernet cables and wired speakers in every room. So, that's going to make losing the Wi-Fi, and the sonos cancer speakers, and all that wireless "smart" technology easy to let go of, because we don't have to wire the whole house. It was such a boon to have started to dig some things open and find that the whole house was wired.

[01:22:24] I'm like so stoked, because that's what I would have had to do to have the kind of house I want to have. We will also remain on the FLFE, EMF mitigation service. That's an incredible service. It's called flfe.net/luke. You can find it there. It stands for Focus Life Force Energy. I've done two podcasts about it and it would be too long-winded to explain it now. But one of the features of that amazing service, which really harmonizes the energy field of your living space remotely in some very woo-woo ways, is that it works great for mitigating EMF.

[01:23:02] That's flfe.net/luke. And in fact, they've got a really great 15-day free trial. You can try it out by using that link. And you don't even have to put your credit card or anything, and then it just stops after 15 days and you never even hear from them. But if you like it, you want to keep it going, then you can sign up for really, really great people, very integris, very, very cool company, and amazing service, FLFE. And I'll also, of course, continue to use things like the Somavedic, the Leela Quantum Tech devices, the ComoSystems, the Blue Shield. 

[01:23:41] What am I missing here? The BioGeometry system from a gentleman in Egypt named Ibrahim, forget his last name. He'll be on the show soon. So, I'm really into the things that harmonize the environment and help mitigate EMF from things in the House that still make EMF. You try to get it all out, you can never really get all out unless you don't have electricity and the things that are coming in from neighbor's Wi-Fi and stuff like that. But I just love the energetics of all these things plugged in my house.

[01:24:10] It just feels different. I mean, people come in my house, and they're like, dude, it feels great in here. I'm like, yeah, it's because I got a freaking little device plugged in every corner of the house, or many of them aren't even plugged in, they're just energetics that work in similar ways of system like feng shui, right? You walk in a building or in a home, it's like, God, it feels good in here. Well, there are things you can do to actually facilitate that harmonious environment.

[01:24:36] So, even though the house is going to have some shielding and we'll have much lower EMF, I'm still going to have all that stuff in there, trust me, because it just makes the house feel great. Also, I will be installing the Power Perfect whole house dirty electricity filter and the Pure Power dirty electricity filters that go on each internal circuit of the house. So, every outlet controls a circuit. And so, you shield the dirty electricity. 

[01:25:04] And what I mean by dirty electricity is a chaotic AC current that comes in off the city power lines or the municipal power lines into the house. So, you filter that. It also protects against EMPs, and surges, and all of that. It's really cool. But then, when you're inside the house, even if you don't have bad, or chaotic, or dirty electricity coming in from the mains, when you plug in poorly designed technologies, and devices, and appliances inside the house, they dirty up those filters—or I'm sorry, they dirty up the circuit, which is the circuit of the plug that they're plugged into, the power outlet.

[01:25:40] So, if you have one badly designed technology plugged into an outlet, it dirties, for lack of a better term, that whole circuit. So, now, any other devices plugged into that circuit, like the outlet across the room that has a lamp next to your couch, now, you have this massively gnarly, dirty electricity field coming out three to six feet, blasting you in the head while you sit and watch TV, or sit there and nurse your baby, or whatever. I mean, I'm not nursing a baby currently, but you know what I mean.

[01:26:09] You mothers know what I'm saying. At times when you don't want to get blasted, you'll be getting blasted. So, I'll be fixing that with those dirty electricity filters. And I also will be removing, and don't tell Alison this, she hates this idea, because she loves them, but I will also be removing 100% of the dimmer switches, because unfortunately, they create an incredible amount of dirty electricity for whatever light that they control.

[01:26:38] So, if you have like a chandelier coming down in your dining room and you have it on a dimmer switch, I'm so sorry to break the news to you, but that makes that light create really bad and very prevalent electric field around that space. Now, I'm working on finding a way to hack it. There's got to be dimmer switches that don't suck like that. I'm working with Brian Hoyer. We're probably going to figure something out, because I love a good dimmer switch, you know what I mean? 

[01:27:02] I like dim lights. What's the song I love by The Flying Burrito Brothers, dim lights, thick smoke, and loud, loud music, yeah. But I like quiet music these days. So, yeah, the dimmer switches, bad news. We'll be pulling the crappy ones out. I'm trying to find a solution for that, that makes the lighting nice and keeps my sweetheart happy. No, I already did this actually. We called the power company, and had them come out and remove the smart meter to our house, and replace it with an analog meter.

[01:27:34] Now, a lot of power companies won't do that, they'll just hang up on you, and tell you to piss off, and some will. Now, it turns out, the one that services Lakeway, Texas will do it. But guess what, they charge you like 50 bucks to come do it. And then, it's an extra $45 per month, yes, that's right, on top of your bill for the first year. And then, after that, it goes down to, I don't know, maybe it's 20 or something like that, because they really don't want you to do it.

[01:28:01] It's a pain in the ass. But I guess there's something in place. I don't know exactly how it works, but somebody must have lobbied the power companies to allow citizens to retain their right to opt out of these very dangerous, and unreliable, and fire hazard things known as smart meters. You ever notice that double speaker, or like smart technology, smart appliances, smart meters, they're actually incredibly dumb. And I think they use the word smart just to trick us in wanting them.

[01:28:31] The reason I don't want a smart meter on the house for those of either unaware or don't even know what I'm talking about is they turn all of the electricity in the house dirty, which creates insane electric fields all through your living space. And that is no bueno. I mean, it just gives you headaches. It makes you feel like shit. It's just not a harmonious way to groove. We will also do, what? What's next? Yeah. So, that's kind of it for the EMF. The area in which we live in Hill Country here is fairly low EMF, as I said. 

[01:29:04] There's no 5G out here, but still, you always want to sleep, if you can, in a zero or very low EMF area. So, we're going to be concentrating on the bedroom and also shielding the windows of the bedroom. There's a shielding film that you can put on the windows. It's clear. You can't tell it's there. And then, there's also shielding fabric that you can have sewn onto the window treatments. 

[01:29:30] And I'll figure out what we want to do when we get to that part, but the idea there is, finally, my dream is coming true, and we'll be able to have a very harmonious and safe house. Now, once the house is renovated, EMF-proof, got out of the mold out, got the air filter, the water filter, all that stuff, we will take all of our belongings from the garage, where they're currently stored. I mean, it's like a huge storage unit at the moment with all our boxes and wrapped-up furniture. 

[01:29:58] We'll move that all into the house. And then, when the decorating and all of that begins, which for me is the most fun and creative part. I mean, it's a lot of work, but I actually like that, oh, what goes here? Let's put a plant here, a nice piece of art here. I really enjoy that process. But once the garage is empty, then we're going to finish out the garage and build our new podcast/video studios out there, which will be incredible, because we'll finally have the space to really build a proper studio.

[01:30:30] So, you can count on the future of not only the Life Stylist podcast, but also, the Ceremony Circle podcast as looking like a legit talk show. It is going to be awesome. Great video, great lighting, great sound. I love high production value. And if you listen to the show, you know I always talk about working on improving it. And much of the cash that I make from my podcast sponsors and things like that always go back into better equipment, and hiring great, competent people to help it look and sound wonderful.

[01:31:01] So, we're going to have the opportunity to do that in two-thirds of the garage. And then, one-third of the garage will be reserved for the home gym and biohacking lab kind of situation. So, there, we'll install the float tank, the Joovv lights, the Bulletproof Vibe plate, hyperbaric oxygen chamber, the BioCharger, all of the toys like that. And then, the Morozko Forge ice bath and the barrel sauna will go in the backyard by the pool, but the inside of the garage will have the things that can't get wet, right? 

[01:31:34] By the way, if anyone listening knows what the best and lowest EMF barrel sauna is, the kind of sauna that's obviously shaped like a barrel that you put in the backyard, shoot me a DM on Instagram @LukeStorey. I've been trying to find a good barrel sauna and it's really difficult to search for them. I have a Clearlight sauna inside the house, a great infrared sauna. And I have a couple of the light panels, the red light hot panels from SaunaSpace. I don't yet have their little cool EMF-proof enclosure, but I do have their lights.

[01:32:09] And I kind of made a mashup for the indoor sauna of kind of a combination of the SaunaSpace lights and the Clearlight sauna, and that'll go in indoors. But I am looking for a badass barrel sauna to put in the backyard once we get to the landscaping and all that stuff. As far as inside the house, we're going to have an incredible healing/ceremony lounge in the loft, where we'll have the sauna, the AMP coil, the Halo PEMF machine, the higher-dose infrared PEMF mat, like all those things that are great for relaxation, recovery, and meditation. 

[01:32:45] We'll have sort of a Moroccan lounge vibe going in there, complete with a massage table, all the sound healing tools, a gong, some of the bowls, and lots of cozy spots to lay around. I think that's where we're going to end up spending a lot of time with friends when they come over to do breathwork, and prayer circles, and group meditations, and things that are really my favorite ways to hang out with people. So, I'm excited about that particular room, the upstairs loft. 

[01:33:14] And it's just cool, because it's got a lot of natural light, and it overlooks the rest of the house downstairs, and open floor plan. And I finally get to put all my healing tools in a place where I can really invite people over to come use them. That's the thing. I've spent so much time, energy, and money collecting all these things, and studying about them, and vetting them for all these years. And in LA, I don't know, it's like everyone is so busy and so much traffic to get around town and stuff.

[01:33:38] It was not that often that people would come by and take advantage of all these amazing healing tools. And so, I'm looking forward to interfacing with the community here more and opening up our home for people to come in and just rejuvenate. And that's really what this place is all about, just a sanctuary to get away from the city, and get away from stress, and just to heal and recuperate from life.

[01:34:06] And I'm so grateful to everyone who has been supportive over the past five years of this brand that I'm creating in the podcast here, and for everyone that supported the story—I'm sorry, the store at lukestorey.com/store, and support my sponsors, and all of that. All of that. And the work I've done in the fashion industry prior has enabled this to happen. And it's happening little by little. And it takes a lot of patience and hard work. And just knowing that I'm going to find a way somehow to see it to fruition and just taking it step by step.

[01:34:41] But I appreciate all the support and so many people on Instagram have sent me messages congratulating us, and just being so kind and loving. And that feels really good. Sometimes, when you have achieved something in life, you get pushback from people that are triggered through their own insecurities or jealousy, and things like that. And I really had none of that. It's just been like, oh, my God, finally, dude, because people that know me or know my work know that that's been a goal of mine for so long, to just create a really beautiful, safe, healing home, and it is finally happening.

[01:35:16] So, thank you if you're one of the people that has supported me. Even on an energetic level of just sending me goodwill, man, I really appreciate you. I appreciate you sharing the podcast with people and continuing to tune in. And I look forward to sharing with you, my friends, the play-by-play of all of their innovations and the design. We just hired an incredible interior designer here that's going to help us kind of work with the contractor, and doing all the finishes and the layout.

[01:35:45] And I was getting pretty overwhelmed with all the other work going on in life, as is Alyson. She's just turned in her book, and her card deck, and is working on another one. I'm working on my new book and all of this stuff, so it's just like too much. So, we hired a great woman named Anna Kidd. If you want to look her up, Anna Kidd Design. I'll give her a shout out, too. Don't hire her yet, though, because we need her. No, I'm just kidding. Please do. She's incredible. 

[01:36:09] So far, we just started the process. Actually, today, we've had a couple of great calls and I feel like I'm in really good hands there. And everyone's just been wonderful. I've met so many incredible people, not just that I described earlier in the world out here, but the community here is just amazing, man. Preston Smiles, and Aubrey, and my friend, Mansel, and I haven't seen Kyle Kingsbury yet, but he's out here, and I'm probably going to forget a lot of great people. 

[01:36:46] Ton Cole, and who else is there? I know I'm forgetting someone. Oh, Christine and Stefanos, a lot of people that have been on the podcast, anyone that's been recorded with Austinites, you've heard them. And all those people are as lovely and brilliant as they sound on the show. I mean, they really are. There's just an amazing group of people out here. And I never really mentioned that earlier, but that was one of the major draws, too, in closing, just to get out here was just the people that are either from here or have migrated here have a very special frequency.

[01:37:19] There's something really magical happening within the community here. And it's very inclusive, very open, and people are just doing great things in the world. It's like people are building careers here based on service and based on making a contribution to the consciousness of humankind in a very authentic way. And that's really inspiring. It inspires me to keep going with my work, and to get even better at it, and to up the quality of my content, and the diversity of my content, and everything that I'm doing.

[01:37:52] So, it's just really great to be in a place where there's so many people doing similar work in very unique ways. And so, with that, my friends, that is the celebration and the explanation, as so many people have asked, why the hell did you move from California to Texas? That's the story of why and how, and to let you know that dreams can come true. And I know for Alyson and myself, our dream is coming true. Not only in having a house, having a house is just a thing, right? 

[01:38:22] I mean, when you see a house demoed, it's just a bunch of stuff. It's like wood, and concrete, and nails, and drywall, and glass, and it's just junk that's going to end up in a landfill someday or buried by nature when nature takes back over, right? But it's the home. It's the energy of a home, a place to have a family, a place to have friends, a place to share love, and connection, and beautiful meals, and to help one another, to support one another. And community is a huge part of that.

[01:38:50] And I'm so honored and blessed to be part of such an amazingly conscious community here in Austin. And I hope everyone listening is able to find a community like that wherever you live. And if you live somewhere that you don't like and you feel like you could thrive elsewhere, I'm here to tell you, man, with intention, dedication, commitment, and hard work, and a little bit of luck, anything's possible. I'll be back next week.

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