#469 – Oliver Anthony: Country Music, Blue-Collar America, Fame, Money, and Pain

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Oliver Anthony, singer-songwriter from Virginia, who first gained worldwide fame with his viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. He became a voice for many who are voiceless, with his songs speaking to the struggle of the working class in modern American life. His legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. Oliver Anthony was his grandfather's name. And so Chris used this name as a dedication to his grandfather and to 1930s Appalachia, where his grandfather was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times, as Chris says. He's happy to be called either one, by the way. I've gotten to know Chris more since the recording of this conversation. He truly is, as he appears online and in his songs, down to earth, humble, and a good man who deeply feels the pain of the downtrodden. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfridman.com/sponsors. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Masterclass for Learning, Shopify for Selling Stuff, Oracle for Computing, Tax Network USA for Taxes, and Element for Electrolytes. Cheers, Wives and my friends. And now on to the full ad reads. I do them differently than most podcasts do. Usually, I barely talk about the sponsor, and instead just take this quiet moment to talk about things I'm reading or thinking about. A little Bob Ross like heart to heart between you and me. Also, unlike most podcasts, I don't do ads in the middle, so they're all bunched up here in one place. You can skip if you like, but if you do, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. If you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfridman.com/contact. All right, on to the ethereal realm of sponsor land. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by Master Class, where you can watch over 200 classes from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. You know I know so little about filmmaking. The Scorsese Master Class was instructive. Scorsese himself, his approach, his deliberate, passionate, almost bipolar approach to filmmaking into editing. It's inspiring to watch madness manifest into genius. I think about the hand drawn storyboards for Taxi Driver. Haven't seen them, heard about them. And that I think is the birthplace of great films is the storyboards, right? Really it's the vision in the mind of somebody like Scorsese. That then is projected onto the storyboards. So the storyboards is just a slice, but that's the first time they take shape in a visual, physical reality. I should do that more. I should think in the space, in the realm of storyboards, especially when I try to do sort of vlog, documentary, filmmaking type of stuff. Really inspiring. Anyway, get unlimited access to every Masterclass and get an additional 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com/lexpod. That's masterclass.com/lexpod.
This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. I got a chance to talk to DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, for many, many, many hours. What a wonderful human being. Genius, but also fun and aggressive in his opinions. And holding those opinions not in a personal kind of way, but in an almost backyard football kind of way. Just seeing who wins with a particular idea, just for the explicit purpose of learning something from the interaction, from the tension between the ideas, from the debate. Such a fun person to talk to. Anyway, I mention it because I think about 10,000 or 100,000 times who give a shout out to Shopify. Because Shopify is really an exemplary execution of a system used by a very large number of people that is built on Ruby on Rails. That conversation, by the way, is just an homage to programming period. And you can think of Shopify as an homage to Ruby on Rails, which DHH really explains well why it's such a beautiful programming language. Anyway, a lot of love for Shopify to go around. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/lex. All lower case, go to shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by Oracle, a company providing fully integrated stack of cloud applications and cloud platform services. I was just talking to a friend yesterday about the weather. In a way, that's the most generic of topics but talked about in the least generic of ways. And the discussion centered around how much computational power would be required to simulate the weather sufficiently to be able to predict it. And I've gotten a chance to talk to a few people who chase storms. They're storm chasers. And they actually have to do this kind of weather prediction. Obviously, with simulation, you have to always choose a level of, you can't get down to the sort of quantum mechanical simulation. Or if you do, you're going to need a large computer, probably as large or larger than the size of the universe if you want to perfectly simulate a thing. But sometimes a laptop with a nice GPU will do. Anyway, cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, I believe that stands for. Offer is for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify at oracle.com/lex. That's oracle.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Tax Network USA, a full service tax firm focused on solving tax problems for individuals and small businesses. I think this is the right place to mention Oliver Anthony's curses song Rich Men North of Richmond. Boy, does the tax law really fuck over the blue collar worker, the everyday man. The more complexity there is, the more loopholes there are for people with many lawyers and accountants and expert explorers of the loopholes, finders of the loopholes. It's nuanced, of course, pros and cons, but really, at the end of the day, I think a simpler tax law is better. I don't know. That song hit me hard, hit a lot of people hard, and a lot of Chris's songs do. Sometimes it feels hopeless, but I would say more than probably any country on earth, the United States really puts a lot of power in the hands of individuals. But we live in the system we live in, so here we are. That's why you need these guys. Talk with one of their strategists for free today. Call 1-800-958-1000 or go to tnusa.com/lex.