Akira the Don (2:51)

I like coffee.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (2:52)

And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine end of the day thing that makes everything better. It's called the Simultaneous Happens.

Akira the Don (3:00)

Now go.

Dale (3:33)

Join me.

Sergio (3:51)

I hate this song.

Dale (3:53)

Shut up, Dale.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (3:58)

Join me.

Dale (3:59)

Sing along.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (4:04)

You know what.

Dale (4:15)

Okay, I freaking love this. This is from Akira the Don. Akira the Don D O N. You'll find him on Twitter and all over the Internet. I guess was nice enough to make this auto tuned version of my theme song. And I have to say when I first saw it I was like, this is gonna be, you know, I'm not gonna like this. I actually can't stop listening to it. It's really good. It's got levels to it. It's. That's pretty awesome.

Erica (4:56)

Akira.

Akira the Don (5:01)

That was so confusing. I wasn't expecting that. And in case you didn't notice, like I didn't have audio initially. I've never used Rumble Studio before. I'm an incredibly tech savvy futuristic genius and I couldn't figure out that the audio controls were at the bottom of the screen, but it's working now.

Erica (5:19)

Akira. Akira, welcome. Welcome to the Scott Adams School and it's so nice to finally get to meet you face to face, per se. And first I want to thank you for making Scott so happy and making one of his ultimate dreams come true, which was to be basically a recording artist, to have a song. And he has many and it's all thanks to you. So welcome to school.

Akira the Don (5:47)

He has so many that will exist in the future because he wrote so many, you know, he wrote so many incredible bangers. He would do a livestream and he'd be chatting about the news, then he would drop what to me is an incredible banger just casually in the middle of it actually, often towards the end, but just like perfectly formed in like little sort of like two, three minute chunks that are perfect for songs. It was incredible, really.

Erica (6:13)

Were you a Scott Adams listener? A sipper? And is that how you came to him? Because I know you also had have clips with Jordan Peterson and other folks. So tell us how you came to find Scott.

Akira the Don (6:26)

Well, I always knew Scott because Scott was always around in the world. You know, he was one of those sort of, sort of omniscient beings of a kind in the human realm. So I was aware of his cartooning work because I, I liked cartoons and I drew my own comic books. And then I was aware of him as a blogger when he was blogging because I was kind of in that world. I was blogging and putting mixtapes and things online from sort of 2000 or something. And I read his book how to Lose Everything, Almost Everything and Still Win Big. And that was very, very influential on me in lots and lots of different ways, which I could talk about for hours and hours and hours and around that time I think I was reading his blog and then he started doing those periscopes and I would watch those. So yeah, I've been. I've had Scott Adams in my life for a long, long, long, long time. And he was very influential on my life.

Erica (7:22)

I love that. Owen.

Owen Gregorian (7:26)

So how do you think Scott did influence you? What did you take away from how to fail at Almost everything in still win big?

Akira the Don (7:33)

Well, that one specifically, there was quite a lot in that. One thing that was specific to what I'm doing here was him talking about affirmations, which I was doing. And so here's the thing. So I was aware the concept of affirmations, which is essentially communicating a desire or will or what have you to the subconscious. I had previously experimented with that as a young child via means of things like prayer, which is one way of thinking about it. And in earlier years there's a thing called chaos magic, which I was aware of through a friend of mine, well, a guy who I was a fan of, he became a friend of mine, a writer called Grant Morrison, who was a chaos magician. Within chaos magic, there's a practice where you take a desire or something and to communicate to the subconscious mind, you turn it into a sigil. And a sigil would be, say you would take your desire, I want my cat to go to the moon. And you would remove all the repeating glasses and you would remove the A's and the E's and so on and so forth. And then what you're left with, you'd make into a little squiggle, little glyph. And that would be your sigil. And then you would sort of meditate upon that in various ways. And the point of that was to communicate to the subconscious mind. So I was aware of that kind of concept, but Scott's sort of quite simple version of it. One of the things Scott was really good at was taking sort of esoteric ideas and making them seem very use normal, accessible to a regular human being. Things that would seem woo to some people he could make seem just quite practical. That was one of his superpowers. Anyways, the affirmations thing I was trying that I was like, writing is quite difficult. And I was like, huh? I could put this into music. I could put things that I wanted to sort of brainwash myself with or communicates my subconscious mind very, very specifically and deliberately into music. I make music, that's what I do. I know that music is very, very sticky. I know it's a very, very powerful delivery mechanism. Everybody can remember the jingles of their childhood, the themes from their favorite cartoons. Everyone learned to learn the Alphabet from a little song. You know, we know it's not talked about much because it's mostly used by sneaky people without understanding to sort of hold power and influence over us. But music is the most powerful delivery mechanism that we actually know of. We know this because prior to the written word, the way that people would remember books, entire books. People would walk around with entire books in them. And they'd recite them around the campfire to each other. And they would do that because the books were written with a certain kind of rhythm and melody to them that people would be able to remember because of that odyssey, etc. Anyway. So, yeah, one of the main things was that affirmations idea. And then thinking about putting it into music, which is one of the things that sort of led to me creating Meaning Wave, which led to me putting Scott into songs. Because I wanted to brainwash myself with lots of Scott's ideas. And then that led to Scott being able to hear himself in those songs, which was a beautiful thing.

Owen Gregorian (10:44)

That's great. So how did you get started with music? Were you always a musician from when you were very young, or did you learn instruments first, or how did you get into that?

Akira the Don (10:53)

I always loved music. We always had music in the house. My dad had great taste in music. My mom loved music. The things I loved the most from as far back as I can remember were music and comics, cartoons, anime, animated stuff. So I always knew I wanted to do something in that area. I didn't play. I never. I wasn't. I didn't learn to play any instruments when I was a kid. What I did do was weird experiments with cassettes. So I had cassette players and recorders. And I would take one cassette and copy it to another. And then I would pull the tape out and chop a piece off of it and stick it back with Sellotape and record things off of videos or ambient noises or bits of audio. One of the first songs I made in a music lesson at school, I. I made a kind of loop beat thing. Then I sampled a news broadcast that was on the television in the staff room or something. Where they were talking about war breaking out in Eastern Europe or something. And I sort of looped that. I think it was. Must have been six or seven or something when I did that. And then computers came along and there was a thing called Windows Sound Recorder where you could sample like, I don't know, 20 seconds or something of some audio And I started doing experiments with that. And then eventually I taught myself how to make music and record it on a computer.

Erica (12:14)

All right, so my question is, are you. Is that you singing on them, like, the best part of my day? Is that you. Well, you're making me want to cry with that one. That one just. Oh, it's so soulful. And your voice is also beautiful. And what about the illustrations that are happening? Where do those come from?

Akira the Don (12:38)

Yeah, like I said, I always did.

Erica (12:41)

That's you.

Akira the Don (12:42)

So I was. Yeah, I do everything.

Erica (12:44)

Wow.

Akira the Don (12:45)

For the most part. Sometimes. Sometimes I work with other people. There was the first Scott album. I hired a comic book artist to do that. That was Tommy Patterson, who sadly passed last year. Drew the Game of Thrones comics, if anyone ever read those. He was great and he loved Scott. He was a big fan of Scott and he really. He was really excited to work on it because he was a big fan. But I tend to do most of the stuff. I write all the music, produce all the music, play all the music, record all the music, all the singing, do all the artwork, font layouts, video editing, all the stuff. As Scott said, you know, it's a sort of unique talent stack I acquired, which meant that I could do this very specifically at a very high level. And only I could do it because it was only me that had got the specific interests, the specific skills, the specific background, the training. I was a rapper producer. All this stuff all combined to being able to do this meaning wave thing and waves.

Erica (13:46)

Your.

Akira the Don (13:46)

Your.

Erica (13:47)

Your brand, your company.

Akira the Don (13:49)

Yeah, that's the brand. That's the name of the music. That's the style of the music, which we worked out. Someone worked out, it wasn't me. That it's technically a psycho technology, the kind of technology that interfaces with the mind, essentially.

Erica (14:04)

Imagine that in the clubs. That would be amazing.

Akira the Don (14:08)

It works. It's good in the clubs. I was. I was a DJ on Hollywood Boulevard for many years until Tom Hanks Disease hit. And I would play, you know, high level club places. You'd have like the Jenners and the Weekend and all these people hanging around, and I would sneak in. Meaning the early meaning wave songs.

Erica (14:26)

What's Tom Hanks Disease? Akira.

Akira the Don (14:30)

Yeah, there you go.

Erica (14:31)

What is it?

Owen Gregorian (14:32)

It's Covid.

Erica (14:33)

Oh, because he got Covid. Gotcha. Okay.

Owen Gregorian (14:35)

I was like, what was the original name for it? It was.

Akira the Don (14:37)

Yeah. Norm MacDonald named it, like, the Rollout. Tom Hanks, who did the rollout? It was like, you know, people seen a few videos of people falling over in the street, coming Out China. And then suddenly Tom Hanks steps up and he's like, I have thing. Yeah. I was like, oh. So Norm was like, tom Hag's disease.

Erica (14:58)

Oh, Norm.

Marcella (14:59)

All right, it looks like you want to play some songs for us. Are you. Are you gonna play a few songs for us?

Akira the Don (15:07)

I mean, I could technically, that wasn't okay.

Marcella (15:10)

You just look like you were prepared to.

Akira the Don (15:12)

I'm always. It's important to be ready. What. What was it play? So luck is when opportunity meets preparation. So I'm always ready.

Marcella (15:22)

I love that.

Akira the Don (15:24)

This is where I hang out. This is my studio.

Marcella (15:26)

Oh, okay.

Akira the Don (15:27)

The bit that's got a camera facing it is the DJ set up. Because normally when I do live streams, it is in the context of doing this and talking.

Erica (15:38)

I have a question actually for you, Shelley. Did Scott play these for you? Was he running around?

Shelly (15:45)

Oh, yes.

Erica (15:46)

Oh, yeah.

Shelly (15:47)

He's like, oh, did you hear the latest one? So he would play them all the time. Well, we would love to hear something if you could play something for us.

Akira the Don (15:57)

I tell you, I could play something which is. Something which is a new one, which I was just finishing up last night. This isn't the final mix, but, yeah, this will be the next single with Scott.

Erica (16:13)

First time you guys. A debut. This will be the next single coming out. So you're going to hear it first. On this call.

Akira the Don (16:20)

It will be a little different because this isn't sort of final mix and master, but if you don't know what that is, you have a song and you make the song, and then you'll do slight adjustments to sort of EQ little sound levels. This thing a little bit louder, this little thing a little bit quieter. It's kind of like the final coat of paint on a house or something. Some people don't notice at all. And it's. I spend as much time on the final process as the early process, where you wonder if.

Owen Gregorian (16:46)

I had very little knowledge of this until I went to. There was something called the Prince Experience. I'm a big Prince fan, and my wife got me tickets to this Prince Experience when it came to Chicago. And they had a room in there where you could mix a song. And so it was just like moving the levels up and down for each of the instruments and each of the tracks. So you were playing with the master. Yeah, by making, like, the bass louder or softer or, you know, changing the levels. And it was. It was interesting to see all the different sounds he could make and the.

Akira the Don (17:12)

Crazy difference something like that makes. Prince, for example, what was the Song where he just decided to take the bass out at the last minute.

Owen Gregorian (17:18)

Yeah, that's when doves cry. And that was a really innovative thing. I think that was the first time anyone did that. And I don't even know how many people have done it since. But it certainly makes a big difference.

Akira the Don (17:29)

Yeah, it makes a big difference. Well, bass is like half of a song. Like, technically on the. The frequency range. Bass occupies almost half of the entire frequency range of a song, which would be the lower half, because that's down there. And you remove that, it makes a wild difference. You know, I know this, like, just DJing. I remember one time I was DJing at this place on Hollywood Boulevard and the sub went out in the club. The sub is the bit that the. That transmits the lower end of the music. And without the sub, everyone suddenly stopped dancing. It's the sub. It's the area there that particularly gets. Women just come running to the dance floor. And it particularly. If you ever heard Pony by Ginuwine, the first note is like. Does that thing. You ever play that in a club? Pretty. Like 90% of females in the building will all just instinctually just. Yeah, that. The sub bass, it doesn't work without the sub bass. People are confused. And if there's no bass, people aren't quite sure what to do with themselves. So what they will do then is focus on. On the top end. More so in Prince is the context of Prince. Prince is genius. And Prince already had like a billion amazing records. So he could do something like that and people would continue to pay attention because he'd already built up the frame of. Okay, it's Prince. I'm going to pay attention to what he's doing. He knows what he's doing. It's going to be good. If it wasn't Prince, it wouldn't necessarily work, people. No base. Turn it off. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.

Erica (18:55)

All right, all right, we'll hit mute.

Shelly (18:58)

Let's go off camera too.

Erica (19:00)

Okay.

Akira the Don (19:01)

Okay.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (19:01)

So.

Akira the Don (19:01)

Well, this would be funny. I've done this before. This is an unmixed but brand new song featuring the words of the immortal Scott Adams.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (19:15)

Right, here's one. How many of you have ever thought, or maybe gagged when you heard somebody else say it, that they were trying to find themselves? I need to find myself. I need to. I need to figure out who I am. Bad idea. Here's the reframe. Instead of being a explorer and trying to figure out who you are.

Sergio (19:46)

How.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (19:46)

About authoring yourself to be what you want to be? Be what you want to be. You can author your situation. You don't have to discover who you are. You can make yourself who you want to be. Instead of fighting yourself. That's one of the great things about human life, is that you don't have to be. You don't have to be anything. Anything. You can author yourself into almost any kind of situation. No other. Obviously, you can't offer yourself a billion dollars just because you want to. Maybe some people can. Maybe some people can, but I love these words. I love these words. Instead of finding yourself, finding yourself. Instead of finding yourself. That's very powerful that you take that dart, take, author yourself. Because sometimes we forget that we have that power, that we can turn ourselves into whatever we need to turn ourselves into. Sam it's tax season, and at LifeLock.

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Scott Adams (voice clips) (23:16)

Sam.

Akira the Don (23:43)

What I don't know is even if the sound was broadcasting properly, then, so hopefully.

Erica (23:46)

That was amazing. That was amazing. The chat's going wild.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (23:53)

Good.

Akira the Don (23:53)

I should have checked. I was suddenly like, hang on, was the audio going through Rumble proper?

Erica (23:57)

Am I just like, we're crying, we're dancing, there's twerking in the chat. It's all happening.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (24:03)

Wow.

Akira the Don (24:04)

So that's a brand new song. I think it's called Author Yourself.

Erica (24:08)

Oh, it's amazing. Akira. We asked the local subscribers if they wanted to have some questions for you, and Marcella gathered them. So if you don't mind, we take some questions.

Akira the Don (24:21)

Thank you, Marcella, for gathering. That's very nice of you.

Marcella (24:25)

So the first question is from Raphael and he wants to know whether you're going to release vinyl records.

Akira the Don (24:32)

Yeah, lots of people have been asking for vinyl records and it was always my dream to get all the Scott albums on vinyl, and it was my dream to get them on vinyl and then to sort of go on a, on a quest and take them to him and then give him the vinyl and then he would have the vinyl. I always thought he would like that and I always thought that would be the case and I always assumed that would be the case. And then suddenly that wasn't the case in this realm. And so yeah, one should always kind of do things as quickly as possible, if you can. It was difficult because I got stranded in Mexico and locked out the US after 2020, which made it difficult to do things like vinyl and things like that. But we, yes, that is, that is the aim. We just this week put the new album available as a pre order on cd and if that goes well, then we will then do a vinyl operation and that will be the sacred quest of getting the Scott Adams records on vinyl where they always belonged. Double vinyl in perfect audio fidelity. But they have really nice record sleeves. I always wanted to see them big and sort of open the thing up and you know, read all the little notes and things. So yeah, so yeah, you can get the Almost Anything could happen today cd meaningwave.com now and then if that goes all well and people like that, then we will work on getting vinyl.

Erica (25:58)

We'll make sure to drop the link after the show or in the chat of where they can get that. So you guys, let's get this. Do vinyl for us. Okay, Marcela, next.

Marcella (26:09)

The next question is from Dave Hawkins. Are your creations including by. I don't know how to pronounce this bin. Our role beats beyond.

Akira the Don (26:19)

Yeah, I mean not usually deliberately, sometimes accidentally. I kind of develop my own system with regards to frequencies and all that sort of a thing. So there's lots of. Yeah, it's. It's an easy. It's an esoteric area of audio. But you can put music at different frequencies and some people think it gives different results spiritually and so on and so forth. So yeah, a big part of what I'm doing is essentially deliberately utilizing audio for specific results. Yeah, so I'm very deliberate in what I do, I'll say. I'll say that much. And I'm definitely.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (26:58)

Ah.

Akira the Don (26:58)

How's that possible? That's incredible.

Marcella (27:01)

Anyway, calling you right now.

Akira the Don (27:02)

I don't even know how that came through the computer when it's on the phone. Anyway, whatever.

Marcella (27:08)

It's a.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (27:08)

Is.

Marcella (27:08)

Are you using a Mac?

Akira the Don (27:10)

No. Oh, go away way present. I'm going to turn on airplane mode. Yeah, how about that? My bad. I don't understand how that's possible. I'm freaked out this. I'm streaming off of a Windows laptop. DJing off of a Mac. How is the fun Anyway, whatever.

Marcella (27:29)

What is Colt Winchester? Guess not a name, but it's gone, I guess. What is his. What is your creative process structured with creative exercises or do things just come to you? How Does. How do you decide which message or which lesson to focus on?

Akira the Don (27:52)

Well, Winchester is an excellent name and if your mum gave you that name, then she's wonderful. And I'm sure she's wonderful anyway. But there are many rooms in the mansion, as it says in the Bible, and there's a thousand different ways this occurs. I remember once Jordan Peterson talking about room reading the Bible and sort of teaching himself to read the Bible and sort of teaching himself to understand the Bible. And he said something along the lines of sometimes he would find a passage and it would finally make sense to him and it would glitter. And I find that with. With audio, I'll hear something and it sort of glitters and I instantly know that it's a song and I instantly know what it. Pretty much what it sounds like to a degree. Sometimes I'll take a thing and I'll go for a walk and then I'll kind of hear the shape of it in my head. And then the job will be to get what was in my head into the world. And that's something I've gotten better at over the years as I've done more and more and more. And I'm, you know, there's now. I've been doing this meaning wave thing since 2017 and there's now nearly 700 songs. But before that I was. I was producing and rapping and what have you for many years. And I made thousands of songs. So it's. Yeah, but yeah, I basically, I'm constantly reading, listening, paying attention to things. And when something glitters to me, I Then I hear it and I make it. And it's kind of very instinctual as well. I don't overthink things generally. I have a kind of. I have a plan. I have an arching plan of what I'm working towards with regards to what ideas and messages and people and wisdom and what have you. I'm sort of transmuting into this form, but there's always room for inspiration. For example, that author yourself. 1. I had been in the UK visiting family for Christmas and I came back to the studio. I came back here to Mexico and I just ran into the studio and it was literally just to get something. And then 45 minutes later, I'd written that song. Wow, you saw a way. And I barely remember it happening. It was very much the kind of getting smacked in the head by a lightning bolt of do this now.

Erica (29:55)

I think Sergio has a question. You're on mute, Sergio. You're on mute.

Akira the Don (30:04)

Sergio is on mute.

Marcella (30:05)

No, it's Rumble, you're on mute on Rumble.

Erica (30:09)

This is his nemesis, Akira.

Akira the Don (30:13)

Rumble 9. Just the mute button.

Owen Gregorian (30:16)

You're there.

Akira the Don (30:16)

Okay.

Sergio (30:17)

Akira.

Akira the Don (30:18)

Yeah. What's up, mother?

Sergio (30:20)

I'm so excited. You're the guest that. Of all the guests that we had, that I've been the most excited about. You have no idea. I've been following you for such a long time. I was very nervous. I wasn't speechless. I was trying to jump in and talk to you.

Akira the Don (30:34)

You had the mute button on.

Sergio (30:36)

I know. I'm such an idiot. Sorry about that. I really wanted to talk to you because what you said about music is exactly what Scott always explained how powerful music is throughout history and how it has been used for evil means, too. Right? And he explains how music is a drug. And we talked about that yesterday, too. That's why I didn't watch the super bowl, because I don't want bad drugs in my system. I want to control the drugs that I get. And you are my favorite drug of all your music. Because, like Erika was saying, you made all this music. You condense God into these chants, right? And like the Gregorian chants that Owen was talking about yesterday that they're just impregnating to people's psyches, even without having to think. That's what I love so much about your music. Because it's a lot like what Scott did with his books.

Akira the Don (31:38)

That's right.

Sergio (31:38)

But it wasn't just a message. It was the choice of every word in every. In every. Every phrase and every page. And you do that, too. So my question is. Okay, let me get to my question. Sorry. I would love to see. I don't know. You read the Religion, War and God's debris.

Akira the Don (31:58)

No, not yet. There are there. I have them on audible.

Sergio (32:02)

Okay, so this.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (32:03)

Nice.

Sergio (32:03)

This is my idea, right? This is what I would love to see. Maybe I would like you to read it, you know, because it's like, I think this is the most amazing story ever, especially with the religion war. It's an amazing story.

Akira the Don (32:15)

This. We might. We might converge on this. So we do a thing on my live streams where we do a kind of book club where I will play an audio book, and then I kind of live score it while it's happening. So I did that with Dune, for example. So we did the entirety of Dune, which ended.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (32:31)

Oh.

Erica (32:37)

Give him a second. Mexico's glitching for a second.

Akira the Don (32:42)

It's the CIA.

Owen Gregorian (32:42)

You know it?

Sergio (32:44)

The CIA.

Erica (32:45)

That's a great point, a great question.

Akira the Don (32:47)

I love what happens.

Sergio (32:50)

What I'm going to my Question is that when he gets back is that Scott wanted to make a movie, right. Of religion, war and gas, debris and. And it would be great if he could do the soundtrack. If Jay could do in like a, like an anime, like a cartoon style. Yeah, that's what I want to talk to him about.

Marcella (33:09)

It would be for the estate to decide that.

Sergio (33:11)

Oh, no, no, of course I'm not deciding, Shelly. I'm just.

Erica (33:16)

Yeah.

Sergio (33:16)

Looking here like a fan. Okay, I'm a fan. Yeah, I'm more a fan than you guys.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (33:20)

Okay.

Sergio (33:20)

I mean, I'm sorry. I'm more of a fun than a. Than a talk guy, you know, So I just like love Scott so much and I just wanted to pull that idea out there.

Erica (33:31)

It's a great idea, Sergio. Let's see if Akira can come back. And isn't he great, you guys? I love him. Let's see.

Marcella (33:40)

I love his voice.

Erica (33:44)

Marcella, obviously you do. Marcella is the cutest. You guys, what other questions do you have for him too? I love that new song author yourself. And I love any of you said you needed to hear that right now. And I glad that happened. Go ahead, guys. I'm going to look for Akira, see if you text me.

Marcella (34:10)

Okay, so now, now we dance without Akira.

Erica (34:18)

Well, you guys, do you have any other questions for him? You know, if he comes back? We want to make sure we answer your questions. And also, I think that we should really support him because, you know, this is his gig, this is what he does. So I saw a couple of people dropped a link to the album and hit in the chat if someone could drop it into YouTube also. And we'll also post his links on the socials, as the kids say, after the show. And also you can, I believe, subscribe to him. So, you know, if you want to do that. But I say support him because music is the way to your soul. And as you see, there's a lot of really dangerous music out there. I'll say it's satanic and it's evil. And why not pick something that feeds your soul and feeds your brain and brings positivity. I think that's the way to go. And even like play it in the car if your kids are in the car. We have Akira back. But that, you know, that's. It's beautiful, inspirational, and it feeds your soul. And it's also the words of people like Scott or Jordan Peterson that bring life. So, Akira, I have a quick question for you. Somebody wanted to know why you got stranded in Mexico. If you make it Back. Okay, let's see.

Akira the Don (35:43)

Hey, everything is fixed. It is fixed. I'm in Mexico. The power goes out so often. Yeah, but it came right back on, so that was nice. Anyway, sorry about that. So anyway, just to finish the previous one, I was. Yeah, I had an idea of later this year to do a Scott Debris Trilogy book club thing where we would play the audiobook and I would sort of live score it in real time on live stream. Anyway, yeah, I love it.

Sergio (36:16)

Thank you so much. Akira. And what does Akira mean and why they don.

Akira the Don (36:19)

Oh, yeah. Well, I was called Akira for a while. I was rapping. Akira was a fundamental. The Japanese anime. Anime was. I remember I was talking to Grant Morrison. He was telling me about how when he was a little kid, his mom took him to see 2001 A Space Odyssey and it fundamentally changed it. And he went back and watched it like seven times. And then after that he had a very clear idea of what his life was going to be as a writer and all this sort of thing. And I had a similar thing with Akira in that I was like 10 or something. I already knew what it. Like what I wanted to do, but I ordered that movie from the back of a magazine with my paper round money and waited till my parents were asleep and sneakily watched it on a. On. On the VHS and. And was just awed by the potential of human creation and knew that I would. That I wanted to do something that powerful. And it changed the way I thought about things in some ways. So I took the name Akira as a sort of rap name when I started rapping. And then I got really good at freestyling while we were on our first tour where we would only communicate in rapping, even when ordering sandwiches at gas stations. So in one sort of freestyle thing with my band, I declared myself Akira the Don. And then that became my name from then forth. And then I kept it because it sounds like a good sort of powerful sort of a name, even if it is mildly preposterous. You know, I called my son Hercules. There is great power in names. You will tend to sort of live up to whatever was bestowed upon you in that regard.

Sergio (37:47)

I deprecate on the names. My nephew's name is Maximo and he's a wrestler and he's maximum.

Akira the Don (37:54)

There you go. He's Max. Yeah, exactly. What was the. Sorry, what was the other question?

Sergio (38:00)

That was it.

Akira the Don (38:02)

Someone else had a question when I rejoined.

Erica (38:05)

So, yeah, the chat. The chat wanted to know how come you were stranded in Mexico.

Akira the Don (38:09)

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, it's because the. The visa I was on, which is the O1 artist, sorry, alien of extraordinary ability visa, which is the best named visa that there is on Earth, to be in the usa. That's what I was on. And I was in the USA for eight years or something, living with my wife and son and we'd built, you know, a life in a business, in a studio and all that type of stuff. You have to get like the visa rebooted every three years. And the reboot period happened just around the early part of Tom Hanks disease. And so we had to go out the country to get the new visa signed. An embassy you have, that's the thing you have to do. So we went and did that. And then while we were out getting it signed, the Biden regime declared that you couldn't reenter the country if you were a legal immigrant, if you weren't vaccinated, which I was not, and my family was not, so we weren't allowed back in. So then we had to sort of restart our lives where we were happened to be, which was Mexico, which is where we'd gone to get the visa. And we'd luckily like, met some nice people and, you know, figured this could be a nice enough life. It's very beautiful here. We'd met some lovely people. I'd found a nice gym and a coffee shop. I mean, what else do you need in life? So we had to restart our lives there. And I literally, you know, I'd only left the USA with, you know, some hand luggage and like a laptop and a little keyboard and I had to basically rebuild the entirety of my sort of, well, live wielded of our lives from scratch over, over here, bit by bit, Amazon order by Amazon order, wire by wire. And yes, that is how we ended up here. You know, I had planned in 2021 to go on tour and do all sorts of stuff, but, you know, man plans and. God, Alan Watts. By the way, I have an Alan Watts laughing button on my button thing here.

Marcella (40:10)

Someone actually, someone actually said that they wanted more Alan Watts.

Akira the Don (40:14)

What was that? Someone said, what's. Well, a new Alan Watts album literally came out last week. Was it last week? January 30th. What day are we on now? Just over a week ago, A brand new Akira, the Dunn and Alan Watts album, created in collaboration with Alan's son Mark, who sent me the audio that I turned into an album about a year ago. And then I spent a year working on, mostly going to the beach and walking along the beach and listening to it. And really visualizing it. It's called this Is why I Love the Ocean. Lots of people are saying it's the best album yet. And lots of people are saying it's the best. Gary, the Don and Alan Watts album. Yeah, certainly. If you go and look at the comments section and. Yeah, so your wish is granted. I'm assuming you weren't aware of that because you're very greedy. If you want another one a week later.

Marcella (41:05)

This. This was posted on Friday. I'm not sure why they didn't know that, but. But I'll. I'll post it so that everybody knows, right?

Akira the Don (41:12)

When you post things on the Internet, you assume that everybody sees them. It's like, right, I've got a new album out. I made one post on Instagram and I posted it on Twitter a few times and I uploaded a video like.0002% of the people that actually like you would have seen that, let alone the rest.

Erica (41:26)

Terrible.

Akira the Don (41:28)

It really is the case that no matter how much marketing you're doing, it isn't actually enough. And I know that and it fills me with great, with great horror and sadness when I think about it like that. But there's only so much time that one has to create and then to tell people about things that you've created. So I tend to spend most of my time doing the creating under the. With the sort of, like, idea that word of mouth will get it to the people that want it, that it would work for eventually.

Erica (41:54)

You have an amazing group here that is like, we, we love you because a Scott told us about you. He loved you. He approved of what you were doing.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (42:04)

He.

Erica (42:04)

He loved what you were doing. And we all became fans and, you know, coming on the Scott Adams School, I think is beneficial to everybody that's come on because you have an army of people that support and love what you're doing, and we want to see it, you know, to keep going. So I think everybody in the chat agrees. Like, they, they all were saying they were going to download the album. You know, they're going to share it out, we'll post about it, it will travel and, you know, I think you're going to see a nice bump because probably a lot of people who haven't met you yet, maybe they weren't on locals or they didn't know much about you, now do. And I think it's important what Sergio said too, about, you know, like, I'm going to keep reiterating, feeding your soul with something positive when you have a choice of what you can listen to. Listen to some positive affirmations built into an amazing beat and. And feed your soul. So, Owen or Shelley, do you guys have questions?

Owen Gregorian (43:02)

Well, the binaural beat question made me think of another maybe esoteric music question. Do you use 432Hz or 440Hz?

Akira the Don (43:11)

People always ask about that one as well. I use the. Well, I move around between slight frequency adjustments, depending on what I'm doing. So it's usually in the contemporary Western standard, but then sometimes I will deviate for slight effects.

Owen Gregorian (43:29)

And by contemporary western, is that 440?

Akira the Don (43:32)

Yeah, I think.

Owen Gregorian (43:34)

Have you noticed a difference in terms of how you think it sounds? Because, I mean, for people who aren't aware, there's a theory that 440 hertz is like, kind of dissonant. It's a different tuning. It refers to what A is tuned to. And 432, I think, is meant to be kind of more naturally harmonic.

Akira the Don (43:50)

And yeah, this is the idea. I've done a B testing. I've done the sort of Pepsi taste test thing on this. I've not seen anything observable, but I've got some tests running in the background that I'm not going to say what they are because then people will know. So there's some tests and I'm going to. I'll be able to sort of extrapolate after a period of time if there's actually been any difference with the one that's one and one that's the other type vibes.

Owen Gregorian (44:17)

Okay, interesting.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (44:19)

Yeah.

Akira the Don (44:19)

But back on that thing, it is very much the case that if you're not deliberately programming yourself, something or someone else is. And they're not necessary. They don't necessarily have your best interests at heart. The devil will find work for idle hands to do. Is was a Morrissey song, but it was also in the Bible, wasn't it? But when I first learned that from the Morrissey song, and I thought about that a lot when I was a little kid, I was like, huh, yeah. So if I'm not actively busily doing things, the devil will take control of my body and do weird stuff. And that's kind of true. There's a reason, for example, they call boo spirits. The whole idea of what my nan used to tell me, if you get blackout drunk, then the devil will joyride, demons will joyride in your body, and that's why they call it spirits. And, you know, Carl Jung said, the world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know it will tell you all. There's a million ways of saying the same thing, which is basically program or be programmed. And you have complete dominion over your own being. And you get to decide what the inputs are. And you can reverse engineer a desired outcome to which inputs would get you to that outcome. And then essentially, you know, that's what that song was about. That's what Author Yourself is about. That's what. That's what beloved Scott is talking about there. You know, you get.

Sergio (45:33)

Yeah, your music is a, is a, is a, is a, is a reframe that is coming alive in people's bodies, you know, with the. Especially with the sob, Right. Like the SOB is the drum that make people sacrifice their lives to go to war and defend your loved ones. You know, that drum got everybody going. Right. And Scott always talk about the drums, and that's why he started learning the drums in front of us. You know, he actually started doing it in front of the whole process.

Akira the Don (46:03)

Asking me if he could send me some drums, I'm pretty sure. And he never did.

Sergio (46:06)

Oh, wow, that would have been great. Maybe Shelley has some. Well, I. That's all I have for my questions and thank you very much, Akira. I'm gonna pass it on to the rest.

Marcella (46:17)

There was a. There was a question on locals that they are of heart, heart of hearing, and they wanted to know if you do closed caption on your. On your videos.

Akira the Don (46:29)

Yeah. If you go look up. If you go on the YouTube channel, all the videos have got captions on them. Certainly all the ones in the past couple of years. In the early years, it took me a while to realize that captions would be useful. I had this idea in the early stages. I wanted people to be sort of like, listening. There's a difference in watching a movie or listening to something in the experience when you have the words in front of you and when you don't. Right. But I find it's the case with a lot of pop music. You don't really. You get maybe 20% of what they're actually saying. But it's like, if you look at the lyrics of a lot of stuff, say, 80s pop songs, which you've just been singing all your life, oftentimes you're like, wow, he was saying that. What is all that about? Why is that Wang Chung boy guy talking about taking a baby by the ear or whatever? What does he even mean? That's terrifying. But anyway, yeah, if you check out the. You, the YouTube, there's captions on all of the albums and videos for everything. Made in the past. In the past couple of years. And also there's the lyrics to basically every single song is on meaningwave.com in the lyrics section. And you can also find genius. And also if you listen on streaming services like Spotify, the lyrics are also in there as well. So I spent a lot of time and effort resources getting the lyrics done. I do them myself now, by the way, at one point I was outsourcing it, but people would make mistakes. So now for every single release I put out, I do the transcription and then a very tight timing to the song. So the. When it appears on the video or anywhere else, it's exactly at the right moment.

Erica (48:00)

Akira. That's awesome. I have a quick question from Andy Wang. He wants to know Wang Chung tonight. He wants to know if AI is affecting your industry or you.

Akira the Don (48:13)

It's affecting me in the way that, like, it's a tool that I can use for various things. Like for example, on the captions thing there, it used to be the case that I'd have to do the captions and then I would have to open up a text file and edit a load of code in the back end of the text file and then copy that into a thing and this, that and the other. And it would take about half an hour. And now I can get an LLM to do that in 30 seconds. So in that regard, there's loads of tools in music. People have been using AI for a long time and nobody knows because, like, the people have. There's like LLM technology in various plugins that people have been using for ages, like EQs and stuff like that. So contemporary EQs for years now will be able to. You'll put an EQ on each channel that's like a thing where you can adjust the level of the bass or the at the top and it can listen to the other ones and tell you where frequencies are and things of that nature and help you clean things up. This like the billion. I guess the real question people, because everyone's all like, will computer music eradicate human music? I suppose is what people are worried about. And it is certainly the case that is very easy now to press a button and generate something that sounds very mid. And the world has always been full of very mid stuff. If you. If you watch an old broadcast of a chart show of a music chart show from any year, you always. People are always like, oh, music was amazing in the 60s. That are. But if you watch one of the weekly chart shows, 95% of the stuff is awful. And then they'll be like, you know, something good. It used. People are all concerned about AI cover versions or what have you. And if you go to any kind of, what you guys, like a swap meet, garage sale or what have you, there were all these albums in the 60s and 70s that were cover versions of whatever the popular songs were at the moment that would be made sort of cash in on the existing thing and not have to pay for the license. You know, there was Muzak in elevators and so on and so forth. It's always been the case that like most of what you hear is mid and doesn't have a huge amount of care or love put into it, but that there's a. There's amazing stuff if you go look for it and if you have taste. So people who have taste and want amazing stuff will still be able to get amazing stuff. And people who don't care will have amazing AI generated playlists in coffee shops that just generate whatever the particular mood required is and nobody will care or think about it. And you know, that.

Erica (50:41)

That different experientially, I. I do have to ask from our friend Mike Burt, who Scott deemed our jester. He terribly wants to be immortalized and he wants to know if the clips that he has sent you about his role have any possibility of becoming a hit with you. Just. You don't even have to answer it. I'm just letting you know.

Akira the Don (51:05)

A lot of communication. It certainly is the case that, you know, there are. There are so many things that I have that I want to do with regards to making songs. So I do not spend my time frivolously, I'll say that much. People like, oh, you should do that thing that that politician said in that thing last week. That'd be hilarious. It's like, yeah, I'm not here to make hilarious little meme songs or what have you. I'm trying to make like useful art that will be beneficial to people for decades, hundreds of years, thousands of years or what have you. People still read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. You know, that was a good use of life there. You know, he wrote things down and they're still useful thousands of years later. He acted with a deliberateness of purpose and turned his life into a masterpiece that would be useful across the ages. And we can all do that, but we have to be very. If we want to, but we have to be deliberate about where we're putting our time and our energy and what we're, you know, allowing.

Erica (52:07)

I agree. Yeah, that's it's important to yeah, store your energy for those things and you.

Akira the Don (52:13)

Know it's fellow are not doing wonderful things out there and I haven't seen your video. Maybe it's just genius and maybe when I see it I'll go oh my gosh. Oh my goodness, this must become a record. Immediately. Scrub. Other stuff I was going to do this is the most important time. Maybe that's the case. I don't know yet though because I haven't seen it.

Erica (52:30)

He wanted me to clarify it was Scott talking about the role of a jester, not him per se. And I also wanted to say before when you're talking about Hercules, I was going to mention that Cernovich, his son's name is Aurelius. So yeah, names are important.

Akira the Don (52:46)

Shout out to Cerno. I read Cerno's book and Scott's book back to back.

Erica (52:51)

Yes, Guerrilla mindset. We love Mike Cernovich. Shout out to him for sure. He's an inspiration you guys. Cernovich, we're going to hope he's coming on here one day soon.

Akira the Don (53:03)

So stay tuned for that self talk in his book which was a concept I'd never even thought about. And now I always tell people I was literally talking to someone yesterday. It's like if you're having a bad time or you're feeling bad or down or what have you, a really useful exercise is to just speak out loud what's in your head. You know, you could put in a, in an earphone or something and just go for a walk and people will think you're talking to your mum or something and you just say what's in your head. Allow it to come out of your face and you will realize how ridiculous so much of it is and how self pitying or self flagellating or unnecessary and you can very quickly transmute it into something useful and positive if you do that. And that idea came to me from reading Gorilla Mindset and Mike talking about just the idea of self talk and how people can just have this conversation going in their head all the time. That's completely unuseful and negative and mean.

Erica (53:51)

That's right, that's right.

Akira the Don (53:53)

That's a mic.

Erica (53:55)

What you tell yourself you'll believe what.

Akira the Don (53:57)

You think about is who you are. There you go.

Erica (54:02)

That's the spirit.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (54:05)

I love that.

Marcella (54:05)

I don't know if Shelley wants to share anything with with you but.

Erica (54:13)

Shelly's on mute. Shelly, do you want to say anything?

Marcella (54:16)

It's frozen.

Akira the Don (54:17)

That was a beautiful dramatic silence.

Erica (54:20)

Sometimes very Michael Jackson at the super Bowl.

Sergio (54:23)

I like what you do with Joko Wheeling, too. I love how you work with him and. And that song.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (54:29)

Good.

Sergio (54:32)

So how do you get with Joko Willing? What is it that. How do you pick people to make songs?

Akira the Don (54:41)

I would. Like I said earlier, it's just a case of if it glitters. You know, sometimes the message can come from many different places. Something I was doing in the early days was I would sort of meditate upon a sort of idea, and then I would find a bunch of different people essentially talking about the same idea, but from very different perspectives. And then you'll find that there's commonality between some very different people. So, for example, you might not think that Alan Watts and Ayn Rand have much in common, but it turns out they do. Turns out that there's a place where Ayn Rand and Alan Watts and Marcus Aurelius and all sorts of people all interconnect. And I sometimes I look for those places. That's one of the things I sometimes do. Thank you for everything that you've been doing. I think. I thought. I think about you often, particularly because one of the songs I did is that song Soccer, where Scott is talking about. About when he looks back upon his life. What would be important and what is important. He talks about watching his stepdaughter play soccer and that aspect of his life, and how easy it is for us to sort of get caught up in the striving and got to get this done and do this bit of work and so on and so forth, when around you the most important things in the world are just right there in front of you. And it's really easy sometimes to forget that. And that record was really important for me to make because it communicated very, very perfectly a really, really fundamental and useful and just crucial aspect of existence, which is very easy to. For us to forget.

Shelly (56:20)

Yes. Scott loved your work. I mean, like Erica said earlier, he would play it over and over and over and over again and just. It just lit him up. So you were really special to him and did some great work, and I'm glad that he got to see that and appreciate it.

Akira the Don (56:40)

Thanks.

Erica (56:41)

That was touching. That was very touching. All right, you guys. Well, here we are at the top of the hour. Akira, I have to ask you, will you come back again?

Akira the Don (56:53)

Of course.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (56:54)

Of course.

Erica (56:55)

I do know.

Shelly (56:56)

Play a little something for us. Do you want to play a little bit more? We have a few minutes.

Akira the Don (57:11)

All right. This is a song from the new. I'll say It's Nukes. It came out in December. That's new. Time feels weird to us now. But this is from the most recent album with Scott Adams, which is called Almost Anything Could Happen Today. And this is the second track on the album. Lots of people say it's their favorite. It's called the Universe Owes Me.

Scott Adams (voice clips) (57:35)

The usual frame. The old way of thinking is, if things are going wrong, the universe is acting against you. Have you ever thought that? Have you ever thought, my God, the whole universe is acting against me? Nobody could have this much bad luck. One thing after another, right? Ever have that very, very suboptimal way of seeing your world? Now I'm going to read frame. The universe owes me. The universe owes me. If you had a bad. If you had a bad childhood, the universe always. If you had a bad defense, course the universe. I wish it's your turn. It is almost impossible for anybody to have bad luck all the time. So if you have a string of bad luck, it is the surest sign that some good luck is on the way. Does that make sense? Because luck always gets to the average. People have average luck over time. In any small period of time, they might have extraordinary luck or bad luck, but over time, it's definitely going to go back to something like average. So if you're in one of those, man, I can't believe how bad this is. This week, this week, this week, this week. It's the surest sign that the universe owes you guys is going to pay you. The universe owes me. The universe owes me.

Akira the Don (60:04)

Universe owes me. It's got Adams forever.

Erica (60:11)

Amen. Thank you. Akira. Akira. If you want to give yourself one last shout out for me so I don't mess up where everyone can find you, I will post links after so people can support you. They are so appreciative that you were here. Everybody wants you to come back. And you know what? We want to talk philosophy also with you.

Akira the Don (60:32)

Okay, Sounds wonderful. Thank you for having me and thank you for everything everybody's doing. And yeah, as always, let me know if I can help with anything.

Erica (60:42)

Thank you.

Akira the Don (60:43)

Find me meaning wave.com and wherever you listen to music or watch videos or what have you, should be able to find me and the various things that I work with, with all these amazing people. So, yeah, just look for Akira the Don. Wherever you might be, look for meaning wave and meaningwave.com is the website and you can get things there and find out what the latest records are. For example, if you go there, you'll see that there was an Alan Watts album out last week and I saw it amazing.

Erica (61:16)

Shelly, thank you for letting this continue and being our queen. Isn't it great?

Scott Adams (voice clips) (61:23)

All right, so everyone is music plus.

Erica (61:26)

Ah, that's right. That's right around town. It's the truth. You guys join us in a closing sip. Akira, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for tuning in every day and being so kind. And let's have a closing sip. To Scott. We love you. We miss you. I'm gonna cry. Love you guys. And we'll see you tomorrow with Brian. Rally to Scott. Bye, guys. Bye, akira.