YouSaid · the spoken record

Oliver Anthony

lines on the record: 152
first: 2025-05-20
most recent: 2025-05-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Tom's like, well, they've never had live music in here. He's like, you could be the first one. And I was like, whatever. And so we only had one guitar, and I had my guitarist Joey with me. So Ron White was there. It was Tom Sagura and then Ron White that night. And Ron took Joey in his car, drove him across town to his house, and grabbed another guitar and came back, and we got up there and we did like two really silly songs and then Richmond in between Tom set and Ron set. And I was like, again, that was one of those moments in my life where I was like, what? Like what?”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a couple funny ones that I'll never ever, ever probably play to the public. But I played him at the mothership only because nobody has their phones in there. But right after we did Rogan, I got a chance. Somehow I got connected with Tom Sagura right after Rogan. And we went over to the mothership and I got to meet him. I love Adam Maguette. You know, he was on the thing with Norm McDonald is how I got introduced to him that show Norm McDonald had. He's an awesome dude. And so we ended up at the mothership. I think it was the evening after the Rogan podcast.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've got this silly one about this guy in West Virginia that, um, Like the most He's the most laid back because I always get in my head and go over analytical about stuff and get real serious sometimes about things. And he's like, buddy, you just got to take a drag off this thing and he'll, you know, he was the one he'd always like peer pressure me into taking a hit off a joint or something, like just try to cheer. And he just didn't take life so seriously. So I've written this song about, it's called Dr. Dan, and it's about. He's a doctor, but he's not like a conventional doctor. That's a silly one that I'll put out. So I do have some silly ones like that”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The emotion, I guess the words. Sometimes it's a phrase like, um, One thing I will do is, especially out in the country, people say the craziest People say the craziest things, and so sometimes I'll like jot down a little bit of something. Like I will sometimes on my phone take a little note. If somebody says something real crazy that I've never heard before, and then maybe one day it'll just pop in my head like, oh, you know, I don't know. It's very random, though. Like, I don't sit and just try to write songs. That's why I haven't put out. Even though I have been writing a lot of songs, I haven't just been like dumping out all this crazy music. I don't want to force it. I don't want to do truck beer girl songs or like, you know, I don't want to force. I don't want to like.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like perfect. Like, it's all right. It's like it's almost like given to you, like just perfect, like parts of it or the whole thing or whatever. And then you get into this flow state to where you just like, it's all there in front of you and you just figure it all out. And it's like you've, it's like somehow you've like unlocked this little part of your brain that you don't even really know how to get to, but you just get to and it's all there and you figure it out. But man, if you don't get it, it's gone. Like you'll never, you'll never get it again. Like you'll never even be able to replicate that song ever again. It's like it'll just go away. And typically it's like, it's only maybe the first half of the first verse is what I'll get. Or it'll be like the chorus line I'll get. And then I'll build the rest of the song around that if that makes sense, I guess.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, alone in my head, I could be anywhere in it. Know some of them I'll just be in the shower and they'll just like and I'm like scrambling because the thing is like it's a certain part of your brain I guess that creates that stuff or picks it up or does whatever but they come just they come and they go just as quick as they come it's like when you wake up it's exactly like when you wake up you've had this crazy vivid dream in your head and you wake up and it's all right there and then you stop thinking about it for like half a second and then it all goes away and you'll never remember it again you know like you can't remember your dreams like that it's exactly like that it's like it'll be there”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of people that do these writing rooms and stuff, and these co-writes will have people sit down and they sit on the couch and smoke a joint and they're like, all right, let's write this song. And they just start plugging away. To me, that's like, I can't do that. I have to just. It's like almost a lot of times the songs come when I'm not prepared for them.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I've got my old phone. Well, like even just that old phone that I recorded all the stuff for TikTok and all on, it's got loads of little, just like the way that Richmond one was where it was like in the bathroom facing this, and I had like that. You know, that's all that, even that one I showed you on there, it had been sitting on my phone probably a couple months before it. That's why I said I have too many unfinished songs. It's exactly what I meant. I've got all these little snippets of things like. A little blip here or there, but the writing process is well, it's a lot different than I thought most people write because like in the”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I do have some lighter hearted ones too that I I mean, the thing is, it's like I've only put out, I'm a little funny about. God, I don't have any songs I have written that will probably never do anything with. I mean, probably at least 20 or 30 of them that are just like, they're just not, I just don't know why I don't want to put them out.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of musicians talk about that kind of thing, though, right? Like about this, I don't know, I've heard about that with people, like about hating to play songs because of the... Side of it”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, dude, like, think about how. You know, I'm not going to just sit around and play I've got to get sober for fun and like, you know.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dude, I have no self confidence about any. I mean, just about anything. But when I say that, I'm not being funny. Like I'm like.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People talk about money not making you happy, and it's like easy when it's easy when you're broke to think, man, if I had some money, and of course, financial freedom is what you're really looking for, not like an abundance of wealth, but the things that we talk about that make life worth living aren't things that you can buy. They are things that you obtain through relationships and love and life. And so It is just an infinitely complex and crazy thing to think about, but it's like that human component of us is what? Is what's so important to our long term existence, like our ability to have connection with each other and the joy we find in that, the purpose we find in that is It's not anything that's replaceable with anything”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even the best of us have terrible parts of us, like we are all flawed inherently because we're human, and so There'll never be another garden of Eden on earth figuratively where were we all just live harmoniously and everything's great and happy and wonderful, but it is those basic principles that you talk about, like love and those relationships and those connections that we have that make it all, because think about it, I mean, like in a lot of cases, it's like what even that's the position you get in when you get to when you get so depressed and you get so low is like, what's the point in even doing all this? Like it is, it is just for anyone. It's just so crazy overly complicated and exhausting to live. Isn't it like even in this modern society where we have all these wonderful little conveniences and we can just have food delivered right to our door if we want and all this kind of crap? It's like people are still like more depressed now than they've ever been and like all the mental anxiety and all the mental health stuff is just probably just as prevalent as it's ever been.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, man, of course, like I said, in all the experiences I've been through, I'd be a fool to deny it, but like I do think there is God there that's always there if you're, but you certainly can self-isolate yourself too, even from that.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've had good friends of mine I've seen get in destructive relationships and like they'll start to date a girl and then like within a year they're just like a shell of what they were because sometimes I do think you have to be careful with like your self-validation and the way you perceive yourself and making sure that it's you giving yourself that and not somebody else because I do think too it's like yeah like you're How are you supposed to, if you can't even keep a woman around to love you, right? Like, how are you supposed to love yourself? It's easy to think about that. Like I've seen a lot of men get wrecked in bad relationships and stuff too. It's tough, you know”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's plenty of other people out there that are in the same position. I think that's, again, I think that's why it's so important for us to try to get reconnected on a personal level and not just through digital communication because like we don't real we don't, all we see of each other online is the good stuff. Very rarely are people posting on Facebook talking about how could you even, it's like all you see is the best of people, but I don't think we realize that we're all going through a lot of the same things anyway, you know, the low points and stuff.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're able to escape this shell of all those terrible things. And even if you are still in a bad position and you're still, you got 30 grand worth of credit card day and you work in some shit job and your car doesn't start half the time and like, you know, your girlfriend left you for some other dude. And like, don't matter what it is. That little glimmer of hope that faith that there is a chance at something greater, like that can that'll push people. You can push it, you can push a mountain aside with that, you know? Like you can do anything with that. And I think it's also good. I think it is important to have a good support structure. Like when you get to that point, I don't think anybody should have to face that stuff by themselves.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More than anything. Like I said, that's certainly where the motivation to quit. Once I quit the drinking, it helped a lot because I was able to, even though it was difficult, I was able to actually be able to be honest with myself and reflect on a lot of things that were, and you know, you got to think, like I said, we watched the, I mean, it was like with, of course, in my case, it was a little unfair of an example because within a month, all this stuff had happened, like after I quit. But, you know, I see it in my friends that have quit and have tried to turn things around. And it, you know, it's like it is the most beautiful thing in the world to see somebody like come to life again after being in one of those”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jane and eat decent food and try to take care of yourself. It's like how on earth are you going to go face all these things that you need to face to get your life better if you can't, you don't even care enough to do that. It's just like, hey, but it is. It's a long, tragic road to get to that point, I think. At least in my case, the idea that there was something bigger than me that loved me even despite I had all these flaws and problems and just that I was just such a wretched person. That's what at least in my situation, that's what I think helped put, you know”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot more likely for somebody to keep their dog on their medication schedule, but not themselves. You know, you love your dog and your dog like is just this great little thing and you just, you don't see the flaws and the faults and the sin and the disgust in your dog that you do yourself. So it's much more likely for people to make sure their dog has their medication every day. But like there's this alarming statistic with just the amount of people that don't even fill their prescriptions they need filled or take care of themselves the way they do. And then that also like over time, you know, like if you quit taking care of yourself and you're not in good health and you're not in a good routine, you're not like a long series of doing enough of those things. Like you do, it's easier for you to just think that your self worth is zero. Because if you're not even willing to have basic high.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Without like trying to get to open up too many doors, I think that's probably the best way I would describe it is just a series of really Just a series of negligent decisions and also just misperceptions, you know, like I think this was an Andrew Huberman thing where he talks about medications and how”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why blue collar workers have such a high suicide rate in all two and why it is so important to talk to those people.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was what was so powerful for me about just beginning to open my mind back up to reading just a little bit of stuff, like a little bit of stuff from the New Testament that Jesus said and some different perspectives and teachings. An apostle would be in prison, like basically being tortured and facing death, but like just overjoyed in writing about talking out. It's all about your perspective of things. Like I said, like that's why I never could understand why, you know, like celebrities or professional, I mean, giving one example of many, like a Kurt Cobain type scenario where you have a guy that's just immensely talented. Will always be loved by plenty of people. Like, I never could understand why that guy.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Putting your big toe on the trigger. And it's like, which one of those? I don't know. Like, they both seem, but at that point, your perception of reality is so distorted that you don't. All the things that would normally compel you to move along like you're Like love and joy, and like your drive to be that none of that really, it's not there for you to even contemplate, if that makes sense. It's like that part's, it is almost like, at least for a little while invisible. And all you see is. Fear and responsibility. And just this, like I said, I just envision it like a mountain that you don't really know if you're even able to climb. And then the other option is just I think that's probably where a lot of people go. And that's probably where I was, was just like, you know.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stuff, for lack of a better word, like this mountain that you have to climb back up in order to fix all these things that you should have been doing all along. And then on the other side of it, it's like, well, I could just die. Like that seems, like, it's almost like, for I think from a man's perspective, maybe the friends that I've had that I've lost, it seems like. Of times you just think you'd never see it coming. I don't know. Maybe that's a general thing. It seems like a lot of times men mask that better and you don't pick up on it as much. I think it's like you just dig yourself into a point to where it's like you have a mountain of responsibility in front of you that you haven't faced, that you don't know how to face, and you haven't been able to do so for a long time. But there's this really easy detour and it's just, you know.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A very overwhelming sense of numbness. Like nothing really, nothing that mattered before really matters anymore. Like, I guess that's probably to me the definition of depression is when all the things you love and care about are just meaningless. And you can't find, you really can't find meaning or purpose or excitement in anything. Like, I think, especially with men that commit suicide, it's a prolonged period of that. It's not like they just wake up one day and they have a bad day and they kill themselves. It's like. You self reflect negatively about yourself and your life, and you don't do the things that you're supposed to do every day for a long enough period of time. And it's like pretty soon you've built this whole mountain of... Mismanaged, neglected, and”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The pressure and the fear of failure, like I think maybe even my own fear of failure is what drove me. Yeah, you just think negatively about yourself for so many days and weeks and months and you like, you don't even have a real self-awareness of what you're doing or how destructive you've become, but you always have that discernment in you, that like, right? That conscious, you know, that little voice in your. Your spirit Letting you know you're messing up, you know. I was almost like, I was wrestling with myself, you know And so, I don't know. I just got to a point where it was just like, Yeah, just a very”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just to get drunk and you know, just do the bare minimum you can to keep everything sort of kind of moving along, but you don't really care if you live or die, you don't really care about much anything like your whole you know, I don't know, life is just so beautiful when you're a child, you're so imaginative and exploratory and you're learning all these things and you just can't wait to be an adult because you're just going to go out and do all these incredible things.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just got to a point where I guess I just quit believing in myself and I knew that I wasn't doing, I just knew I wasn't doing, I wasn't filling my purpose and I wasn't being the best version of myself I could be. And so the alternative to like facing yourself in the mirror and accepting that. I'm not a shitty person. I've just let myself fall. You know, it's like it's so hard to accept when you've had that fall that it's just easier to just.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes it's not even, you know, it's funny, but it's almost not even where you're at in life. It's where you perceive yourself at in life and what your goals are moving forward. And I think like. I dropped out of high school at 17, basically ran away from home. I have always had this authority problem. And so I just didn't want to listen to my parents. I didn't want to go to college. I just wanted to go moving to the mountains. I was running away from responsibility, I guess, is what I was doing, you know? And so got this girl pregnant, had my first kid when I was 18 or just about to turn 19. And like I said, I'm working in the air conditioning factory with a bunch of convicted felons. And so from there, everything was just reactionary. I never really had a plan. I would jump from job to job, just like most everybody else. I don't know. I just”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my mind, that's what the church is supposed to be there for is like. But obviously, it doesn't fill that role anymore.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That fixes what you describe like the people who fall in despair and are isolated in. It's a terrifying world to live in. It's that principle, again, this is, I need a phone, a friend thing where we can just keep calling Jordan for all these things, but like he explains, there's this principle in the Bible about those who about the more you have, the more you'll receive and the less you have, the less you'll receive kind of a thing. And it's just a universal law in society where it seems like the lower you get to the bottom, it's almost like the more resources you have available and the less friends you have. And it's like you just, the further you go snowballs into where it's like people just hit rock bottom. And then what? It's like when you get out of prison, what are you supposed to do when you're a veteran with mental health? Like, what are you supposed to do?”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We all are at least chasing the same common goal, which is probably that we don't want to starve and we want to have decent health, and we want to be able to provide a decent life for our kids, or at least we just don't, you know, we just want to live a decent life. I think somehow that fixes like.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take all the people that fill that role and organize in them and empower them and protecting them, it's rebuilding the community but in a real way, not in like this fairy tale bullshit everybody's going to love each other and we're all just going to be one big happy family. Like everybody's still going to get mad and hate each other in certain ways. And that's good. Like we need those tornadoes. Like you said, we need people pissed off and angry and we need people to feel like they can be angry and open about things that are wrong. People should be able to speak their mind and we shouldn't all just kiss each other's ass and we shouldn't all just pretend to be overly polite and say, hey, Debbie, you have a good weekend. Like you said, like we need all this controversy and this turmoil and like we need the hell of what that side that the internet brings out in people, but it just needs to be in real life and it needs to be in a way where we're all like.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet it doesn't have to be that we don't all have to be that decentralized either. Like if there is that much commonality among people, which I do believe there is, like just innately in suffering. Yeah, like there's a guy in West Virginia that I talk to that he's got a piece of property beside a mine that he was interested in selling. But the reason he's got this dream of opening a, like putting some cabins there and renting them out for people to come Airbnb. He works at Lowe's full time, but his son's got this like 19 and he's got this heart surgery. He's got to have. And so he's trying to sell the place for that. And just like just that guy and all you'd ever see him as is the guy that works at Lowe's, like pulling lumber or whatever. But he's got this very insanely complex life he's trying to manage. He doesn't want to lose the son like he's just going to sell everything. And like at one point in time, maybe the church served that role of like when people really fell off track and they didn't have a support system and they were like on this tiny boat out in the ocean they figured out some kind of way to rally it. In my mind, that's like the dream of all this if I die and there's any like legacy left or anything done. It's like finding a way to.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And a lot of those people at Perfect Air that I worked with, they almost all were in some form of legal trouble. Like there was a lady that worked on the assembly line beside me named Denise and her and her husband had been manufacturing methamphetamine and he took the fall for most of it. She only had to go on probation. He was still in prison. But man, like Denise was a very sweet lady. And like, aside from the meth manufacturing, like she was like”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was another one of the things early on that I had an idea about and I thought was getting done and it wasn't that I've got to go back and try to figure out is doing. Prison shows and doing rehab shows and all that. But I am really intrigued with like going into those places and trying to immerse myself in just the more. The mental state that those people are in and like. Not talked about a whole lot”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And those are trades that are in many cases dying because they aren't popular in culture anymore. Everything from an agricultural to plumbing and electrical, it's like those are all areas I think if you were to go out and talk to some of those people and shed light on it. You could change the entire landscape in America of how it's perceived.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The people, the accents, the culture. And so I feel driven in the same way. Like I would love to find a way to try to bridge that cultural gap, to make those people relevant and to make, because they are like some of the most. And it's funny because we emulate a lot of those people modern country music is a bunch of people emulating those people.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those people are far more interesting than many of the people that we consider to be celebrities. Like most people who are celebrities are just pretty boring and airheaded and don't really even know what real life is about. They're pretty unrelatable to the rest of the world. And so it would be really cool. I mean, that's the whole reason that I want to go out and do these shows in places that haven't had music in them in 10 years because those people, like that is America to me, you know, how many people in Pittsburgh have been an hour outside of Pittsburgh and even in Virginia. If you lived in northern Virginia and you drive two and a half hours southwest, you're in a whole nother planet.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Commercial air conditioning and factory, which is, I think, closed now, but they didn't pay very well. And so everyone they hired was either people that had criminal backgrounds who couldn't get jobs elsewhere or idiots who dropped out of high school and couldn't work elsewhere like me. And so I was 18 years old working in this place with people who were mostly in their 50s and 60s. But you want to talk about being exposed to just a whole nother world of people and just the stories and the just.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of us will be too terify to do like how many people are going to go underwater and weld. But if we didn't have underwater welders, like one of my best friends whose name is also Jocko, funny enough, the dude worked seventy, eighty hours every week. He's on the Chesapeake Bay tunnel job now. But the dude's gotten up on heights that I couldn't get on. He's went underground places I wouldn't go. Nobody will ever know like nobody even knows those people's stories or what they went through or like the kind of lives they lived. And they're like the people who create the fabric of society and even the waitresses and the waiters and like all these factory jobs that I worked in, all those people like you talk about the craziest place I ever worked and the craziest people ever met was this little place called Perfect Air in Marion, North Carolina. And it was this.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And preserve and maintain the structure of society that we all comfortably live in. Those people have the least amount of representation. They're ignored just because of the way the social hierarchy exists, but some of the most dim witted, irrelevant, terrible people are put here and are idolized and spotlighted and they're all over television and they're all over the internet and we act like they're kings and queens and like that they're royalty. And then all these people who do jobs that”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I got all those messages, we were talking about early on earlier in this, like so many of them. And even now, even since in the last couple days, I've gotten some where they start with, hey, I'm a nobody, but like that's how a lot of the start, you know, like the nobodies of the world, if you want to call them, like that's, it's frustrating that the people who Literally have built”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Taking that leap forward really took a lot in an age and a time when it probably sounded, and it's not like they just made a statement and put it on Twitter. Think about how much just think about the insanity. I can't even conceptualize the insanity of what took place from the time that Even from the Revolutionary War until now, to try to preserve that idea, you know, so like so much has happened and so much sacrifice has been made and just so many hours of labor and thought and intensity”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Country, their multinational corporations. And it's just the ideology behind them and their structure is what the problem is.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's like think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country, like people who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking. So many different people came together to even create this place now. And like we've just forgotten about all that, they didn't all come here because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their whole lives to go to live in some crazy jungle, essentially, that had no structure, like no infrastructure, no medicine, like they didn't come here for like some glorified camping trip. It's because they were tired of generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not being allowed to practice their, you know, it's not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn't want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two shoes and they love going to church every Sunday. It's because they weren't allowed to believe in what they believed in because some asshole king or some hierarchy told them they couldn't. And they were just tired of it. That's what we're losing now. It's like we forgotten that we're those people. Like the same structures that have plagued this.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that inspiration that created this country was from years of people living under tyranny. Like, we forget the story of the people who really created this country. Like, it's funny. One of the statements I made at the very beginning, they got taken way out of context, but I wasn't in a position to even begin to have a conversation about as I made this comment early on at one of the shows about how our diversity is a strength. But that term has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means.”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, like, let's just, why are we living in a country where are we living in a country where half of us are obese and eating shit food and don't know any better? And then the other half of us don't have like how just it's just, it's lack of leadership that's caused dysfunction. And so if we're tired of that, then let's just fix it. Like we don't need anybody's permission. Like, that's the whole beauty. That's the whole beauty of what America is, is like we don't need some greasy-haired corporate schmuck to give us permission to go fix all these things that are wrong. Let's just go do it. And if they don't like it, fuck them, you know?”
2025-05-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source