TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Enjoy Meeting Marco. I did
Date: 11/22/24 Length: 00:55:17
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors, and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. Thanks for being part of the show and as always, please go ahead and subscribe. We'd love that. And while you're at it, you might also want to make sure that you are already a member of the Happy Warrior community. All you gotta do is go to RabbiDanielLapin.com and you too will be able to become part of the Rabbi Daniel LapinHappy Warrior community. And today, for the first time, I'm going to introduce a new feature, and that is every now andagain we are going to interview on the show a Happy Warrior somewhere around the world, an active Happy Warrior. And today, in today's show, we're going to be talking to Happy Warrior Marco. And his wife is Alexa, and they are he is Italian. His wife is South African, and they live in the United Kingdom. They've been Happy Warriors for quite a while. Now we're going to hear more about their life. I found an absolutely fascinating conversation. I hope you will too. I'm also and I want to recommend that if you haven't yet listened to the free lesson in the Scrolling through Scripture series, I'd like for you to try that out, and again, go to RabbiDaniellapin.com look for Scrolling through Scripture unit one, and you'll find the free lesson. And the reason I suggest that is because in the bonus section, I think you know already, we do a bonus section for Happy Warrior members, especially it's a bonus for those of you who have decided to make yourselfpart of that inner circle of Happy Warriors. And we have a chance to prepare something specifically for you, and today, your bonus is going to concern what it is about marriage that number one makes it important for society, quite beyond whatever it means to the man and the Woman important for society and why divorce hurts not just the man and woman, not just their children, but it hurts society as well. And why is it that marriages are down? What can be done about it? How could imminence? Is it economic incentives? Do you need? Do we need more daycare? Do we need more various funding for to incentivize people to have children, no, none of the above. And I'll discuss a little bit of that on thebonus as well. But the point is that the significance of the Bible can hardly be overstated. You know, whether it's something you know much about or don't, whether it's something you regard as important or not. The fact remains that so much of the civilization that we live in, so much of the civilization we depend upon to, as it were, protect us from the roughness of reality, right? The fact is, only because you live in civilization can you pick up the phone and call a guy, whether it's you need your car fixed, or whether you need a ride somewhere, or whether you need food delivered to your house, whatever it is if you need help in protecting yourself. Again, that also is something that you can do in civilization by picking up the phone and calling that aspect of civilization is something which lies rooted in the Bible, and at the very least the influential first chapter of the Bible, which everybody assumes they know six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. But my experience, based on the preparation I did for the scrolling through scripture, was that by far and away, the overwhelming majority of people have no idea what it means. Oh, they know the translation. But the reality is that the first 34 verses in Genesis, chapter one, plus three verses into chapter two. And why that division is the way it is, I explain. But I'd really like you to experience that and to be familiar with it, because I show how those first 34 verses are essentially a data stream, and attempting to translate it into English is adequate for only a very small. Percentage, say 5% of the full meaning. Now obviously I realize that you do not read and understand Hebrew fluently, and that's fine for the moment, my scrolling through Scripture process is designed to give you access regardless of your background or lack thereof, to give you access to the inner meaning of the first 34 verses of Genesis, unpacking the significance of things like male and female. He created them, unpacking the significance of the use of the word light five times in the first day of creation. What's that all about? And unpacking why it is that animals and human beings are all created together on the sixth day of creation. Wouldn't you have thought that in an attempt to move away from evolution towards something that proclaims the utter uniqueness of human beings? Wouldn't you have thought that the Bible should have made the creation of the human beings a topic for its own day. Nothing else that day except the wondrous human being. Well, not how it works out.
Daniel Lapin 6:30
What is going on there? And why does it say and it was evening and it was morning, or it was night and it was day at the end of each day? Why not day and night? Why night before day. What's that all about? And in every one of these cases, a deep aspect of reality, a deep aspect of how the world that's right really works is what is explained through that particular topic I discuss. And it takes quite a while to go through it all, obviously, but at least the first half hour is something that I think will really be valuable to you. If you haven't already had access to it, it will open up new worlds. You know how sometimes, you know, you listen to a speech and it's just filled with information, and you come away and you say, Yeah, okay, fine. I now know something about World War Two, or I know something about kangaroos, or I know something about the industrial revolution, but every now and then, you hear a speaker, you hear a lesson, you you you see a lecture where it is inspiring because there is a flash of insight that you have gained, that you realize that if you could just wrap yourself around it completely, will change the entirety of your worldview. I can guarantee that in scrolling through scripture, you're going to get that not because I'm such a great teacher or not because I know so much, but because I am able to give you access to the ancient Jewish wisdom, the pages upon pages upon pages, and you'll see some of them behind me, pages upon pages that lay out two to 3000 years of handed down tradition transmitted from one generation to the next, that I unpack for you and present to you in readily understandable English,so that is Scrolling through Scripture. Take a look at it - Go to RabbiDanielLapin.com and I'd love to hear your response to it. I'd love to hear your reaction. And again, if you are a Happy Warrior member, well then you know how to communicate directly with me, and you know already that I do respond, and not only read, but also respond.
Daniel Lapin 8:58
Okay, so I'd like to introduce you to Happy Warrior Marco, living in the United Kingdom. We're going to talk to him next,and love to hear what you think about that as well. You can communicate with Marco himself. He's a regular on the discussion boards, on the Community Board of we Happy Warriors, and I think you'll find him to be quite charming. Thanks for being with us and enjoy the rest of the show. God bless part of the Rabbi Daniel happen show where I your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. But even beyond that, there is a group of people that are particularly close, inner circle type people, members of the happy warrior community. And Susan and I were talking about this, and we thought, wouldn't it be nice if we could actually get to know some of those people? All and, and then I thought, well, I guess we could. I mean, firstly, we communicate backwards and forwards with Happy Warriors on the happy warrior website, and there's a place there for our community to interact, and we do. But I thought, wouldn't it be nice we did that even more? And thought, okay, they'll be good. And then we said to ourselves, well, in the same way that we are interested in getting to know the the people who are part of the happy warrior community, wouldn't the happy warrior community itself be interested in meeting some of you. And so I think we're going to try and do this from time to time, where we will arrange to chat with a Happy Warrior. And we'll do so in such a way that you can be part of it as well. You can get to hear it. And so today we have the the launching, the inauguration of the Meet the Happy Warriors segment. And Marco, please start off by introducing yourself to your fellow happy warriors.
Marco Troisi 11:19
Well, of course, thank you. Thank you so much, Rabbi and Hi everyone. So my name is Marco. I am a member of the Happy Warrior community. Happily so I am married to my wife, Alessia, and we have together, we have two little boys, five and six years of age. We live in the United Kingdom, although I myself was born and raised in Italy, and my wife is from South Africa, and yeah, so we are Christians, and I work as the CTO of a tech startup based in London which operates in kind of the financial services sector.
Daniel Lapin 12:10
Tell me a little bit about your wife and her African background, because that I didn't realize, and so naturally, I'm interested.
Marco Troisi 12:19
Yeah. So my wife was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and the but she is of Italian descent, so her grandfather was actually a prisoner of war during the during World War Two, obviously he was fighting for the for the losing
Daniel Lapin 12:40
side. He was probably captured at Tobruk. Maybe
Marco Troisi 12:44
he was captured in Ethiopia. Oh, in Ethiopia, okay, yeah, reserves well, and yeah, he was then into South Africa.
Daniel Lapin 12:52
I had, of course, who was captured by the Italians, and he was captured at Tobruk and and he spent a little time in a prisoner of war camp under the Italians and so. So her dad, at the end of world, he's brought to South okay, what people may not realize is that South Africa was led by an extraordinary Prime Minister in those war years. His name was Jan Smuts, or young Smuts and and as soon as England found itself at war in september 1939, very soon after that, I don't remember the exact date, Prime Minister Jan Smuts of South Africa brought South Africa into the war on the side of the allies, obviously. And and immediately there was a huge enlistment, vast numbers of South Africans, including my uncle, signed up and fought in the North Africa theater. Rommel was the main German leader. Great, great German General, who, I don't think, in my view, never, ever became a Nazi. I think he was, was just, didn't, I mean, but he, he was an extraordinary general. And then the Italians were in that theater as well, mainly because Libya was Italian at that point. And I think Ethiopia was under Italian control as well. Is that? Right? Marco, that's
Marco Troisi 14:24
right. So Ethiopia, Eritrea, and part of modern day Somalia, where were part of Italy. What's, what's really interesting there, as you say, is that the Germans got involved, and obviously with Rommel, you know, they, they did really give a really difficult time to the allies. But all of that really happened because they were sort of attempting to defend the Italian colonies. So Germany had no colonies in Africa, and there was no North Africa.
Daniel Lapin 14:53
They had colonies much further south. They
Marco Troisi 14:57
used to right which they lost. I put. Think after World War One, Oh, you're
Daniel Lapin 15:02
right, yes, you're right. Um German. East Africa was 10s, 1010, 10 and west, south west Africa, you're you're quite right. Those were German. And at the end of World War One, they were gone. So by World War Two, Germany had none and Italy was worried that Germany was going to try and take away, probably most importantly, Libya, which would have been a huge value for them,
Marco Troisi 15:27
yeah, so and so. It's really interesting, because, again, like Germany, if you think about it, they were already stretched quite thin, because they had by then, invaded pretty much all of Europe, excluding, of course, the United Kingdom. And Rationally speaking, or at least in hindsight, you can think that there was not really no reason for Germany to get involved in the African theater, other than they, they really stood by their Italian their weaker Italian ally, right? And so they, they got involved. And initially they really did give a hard time to, you know, well, the British Empire and the Americans, I believe, got involved in Africa as well at one point. But then, if, course, in the end, they kind of all got repelled and and pushed back.
Daniel Lapin 16:22
Gosh, so, so your parents is the grandfather on your father's side or your mother's side?
Marco Troisi 16:33
Well, so there was my wife's grandfather who was, yeah, right, of Italian descent. So he was Italian, actually. So born in Italy, got captured by by the British when he was fighting in Ethiopia, and then you got taken to South
Daniel Lapin 16:52
Africa, yes, and put in a prisoner of war camping. But what's
Marco Troisi 16:56
really interesting is that contrary to probably what happened to your uncle, which I suspect probably wasn't treated particularly well as a prisoner of war by the Italians. What they did to my wife's grandfather instead the British, they actually, they gave him a trade, they trained him in buildings and sort of construction, and then at the end of the war, they gave him a choice, whether he was free to go back to Italy if we wanted to, or he could stay in South Africa and keep on doing what he had been trained to do by them. And so then at that point, obviously, Italy was obviously a on the losing side of the war. And so the country was up in ruins. Not that it was particularly much rich or anything before the war, but it was much, much worse after the war. And so he probably, quite logically, you know, decided, no, I'm actually going to stay here. This is better than where I come from, where I came from. And so then he built a life for himself. And then
Daniel Lapin 18:04
who did? Who became his wife,
Marco Troisi 18:09
a well, a local girl, I suppose, which I have never met. I have never met either of them, because, yeah, they and
Daniel Lapin 18:21
so was his wife? Was she part of an Italian community? Because there was already an Italian community in South Africa, not large, but they were a number of Italians living inside, I
Marco Troisi 18:32
have been told. So, yeah, I but I don't believe his wife was or had any Italian connection, as far as i So,
Daniel Lapin 18:40
yeah. So he started a family and a business and and I hope, prospered and did well. Yeah. He
Marco Troisi 18:47
did very, very well, actually. Then he raised his family, and then, obviously his son is my father in law, so my father's what my wife's father. And so they because, obviously, they kept their Italian passports all along. So then, when my wife was 17, her family, they all decided to actually move back from South Africa to Italy. Because, funny enough, after all these years, the roles have somewhat reverse. And so now Italy is an okay, okay. Ish country, South Africa is going through challenges, as you know, yeah, it's quite a difficult place these days. So how long
Daniel Lapin 19:25
ago is that approximately, that they moved to back to Italy,
Marco Troisi 19:30
well over a decade. So my wife and I, we got married 11 years ago. So I think probably 15 or 16 years ago is when they moved, yes, from South Africa to Italy.
Daniel Lapin 19:42
Yeah, and you, how did you meet?
Marco Troisi 19:46
So, so we met in church, actually, it just so happened that we had some sort of shared friends. And, yeah, there was, there was a sort of a concert, a. A Christian concert at the at my local church, and she came over, and we got sort of introduced through these sort of shared friends, and yeah, three years later, we were married,
Daniel Lapin 20:13
and was your communication originally in English or Italian.
Marco Troisi 20:18
It was in Italian because, as I always say back then, her, her Italian was far better than my English. I like, I like to think that I've that I've caught up with my English over the years, but yeah, at the time, her Italian was far, far better than my English.
Daniel Lapin 20:35
And how old are your boys?
Marco Troisi 20:37
So there are, they are five and six.
Daniel Lapin 20:41
Lovely one. It's all wonderful, ages, but, but, yeah, it's a great it must be real fun to see them getting to understand how the world works. Yes, yes. They don't yet understand how it really works, but they're beginning to get how it works.
Marco Troisi 20:59
We're starting. We're starting to, you know, put in some little hints as to how it really works.
Daniel Lapin 21:07
Excellent. Yeah, and, okay, so, so there you are. You. You meet Alexia, right? Alexia, yeah, in Italy, meanwhile, at that point, what are you doing in Italy professionally, yes,
Marco Troisi 21:23
yeah. So I was working as a software developer. So with my wife, she was going to University at the time in Milan. So, you know, we dated, got engaged eventually, obviously we got married. And then after we got married, so I moved to Milan, and so we lived in Milan for, actually less than a year. We very rapidly, sort of realized that there wasn't really much of a future if we wanted to build sort of a successful, kind of prosperous life. There wasn't much of a future for us in Italy in terms of sort of the state of the economy and things like that. And so we started, we realized fairly quickly that we sort of probably had to move somewhere else. And thankfully, I got head hunted by a major software company in Germany. So we moved. So we lived, we moved, and then lived in Berlin for about two years, which is actually where I first heard of, you Rabbi, and I'll tell you the story of that when we get there. And then two years after, after two years in Berlin, we sort of got to a point where we had, you know, started to think about, you know, wanting to have children and raising a family and all that. But we, we had sort of realized that as fun as living in Berlin was we. We didn't really want to raise a family in a country where we couldn't speak the language fluently. We wanted to be able to, you know, integrate with the community and be
Daniel Lapin 23:02
Hi, Susan, you want to meet Marco? Come and say hello to Marco. Oh,
Marco Troisi 23:08
this is exciting.
Susan Lapin 23:12
Hi. I'm really excited to hear more about you from
Marco Troisi 23:15
this is Lapin this interview. Thank you. Yeah, that. This is so exciting. I get the I get to see you both.
Susan Lapin 23:24
Well, I will let you carry on, and I'll look forward to hearing some more of your story. Take care. Thanks,
Daniel Lapin 23:33
right. So, so you, you're, you're in Berlin, working for a Berlin company. You're thinking time to start building the family a little bit. Yeah,
Marco Troisi 23:42
that's right. And so again, part of what I'm saying here was, as I say, also influenced by some of your content. And again, I will dig into that in a moment if you want to. But basically, yeah, so for those reasons, we we decided that we wanted to move to a country where we could speak the language fluently or well enough. And so that meant, obviously, you know, there wasn't really, wasn't really an option for us to go back to either Italy or South Africa for the reasons we've we've talked about. And so that meant, probably, within the context of Europe, it was going to be the United Kingdom or Ireland, so English speaking countries, essentially, which is then what happened. So we moved over here, and this is where we've been for the last eight or so years. Yeah, both of our children were born here, and yeah, so we are now here in the UK.
Daniel Lapin 24:41
Do your children have South African, Italian or British citizenship?
Marco Troisi 24:46
So currently they have Italian citizenship. They are eligible for South Africa. But we haven't applied yet, but we will, because you never know in the future, maybe the roles will reverse again.
Daniel Lapin 24:57
It doesn't hurt. To have a number of passports.
Marco Troisi 25:02
It doesn't, and also, in in a couple of years, we we should be able to get them British citizenship as well, which I'm very much looking forward to. Yeah, yeah.
Daniel Lapin 25:11
Wonderful, yeah. So, so tell me how we met,
Marco Troisi 25:17
right? So, when we were living in Berlin, we started. We started attending a local church there, and at one point this church, they organized a sort of an event, a sort of a conference, on the topic of money, which for me, was mind blowing, because I didn't think money was even a thing that we could talk about, never mind in church. So it's like that surely is not, you know, it's not a very, you know, I don't know Christian or biblical thing to talk
Daniel Lapin 25:47
about, right? Of
Marco Troisi 25:49
course, I'm sure you are. And so then this, the conference itself, sort of blew my mind. But one of the names that kept being mentioned throughout the conference by by the speakers, was the name of this Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Rabbi Daniel Lapin. And particularly, what your your book, thou shall prosper. It kept being recommended throughout, throughout the event. And so I knew, I knew I had to, I had to read it after that. And so then i i I picked up the book right after the conference. I read it, and it's fair to say that it's probably not an overstatement to say that it changed. It changed my life. It certainly affected my life and my thinking very, very deeply. So yes, that's, that's where I kind of heard of you and and kind of how I first got exposed to your teaching survey.
Daniel Lapin 26:47
My goodness, well, I'm, I mean, I'm humbled by it and and also very gratified and very delighted with with the whole story so far. That's, that's really just terrific. Yeah. So So you are and now engaged in tech software development. Would that be correct?
Speaker 1 27:12
Yes. So these days, I'm the CTO of of a small startup. So, yes I'm,
Daniel Lapin 27:19
I mean, were you, were you recruited to that while you were still in Berlin? Or have you changed
Speaker 1 27:24
position? Yeah, no, no, change. This is not sort of the first job I have since, since moving to the United Kingdom. Yeah.
Daniel Lapin 27:33
And when, when you and I first started interacting, and that was on the we happy warriors website, there were a number of things that you posted that that I found very intriguing. And one of the things that cropped up was the question of cryptocurrency in general, Bitcoin in in particular. What was your interest in in crypto? And again, I think, had we bought Bitcoin at that point? Which I think I don't know. It's probably more than six months ago that that does, and I don't remember. I think Bitcoin at that point was probably somewhere around 70,000 and it's now 94,000 Yeah, yeah. So that would have been interesting, but tell me your your thoughts on on Bitcoin?
Speaker 1 28:36
Yeah. So, I mean, it's an interesting one. So I would say, obviously, back when there was the sort of the whole hype around cryptocurrency, and everyone was sort of going crazy about it, and people were talking about how it would change everything, which is what they always say about every hype you go through, even now with AI, it's the same AI change everything, yeah. And then turns out, it never really changes everything, but it changes something at least well. So I was always quite skeptical, because, well, I just wasn't sure, you know, it seemed, it seemed to me that when you have something that's, you know, sort of decentralized as as cryptocurrency is, it may be good for some reasons. Perhaps you don't have, you know, government sort of getting involved with with currency, but you also probably, you know, quite exposed to other types of bad actors. And also, I just couldn't see. I was struggling to see, so I was worried by Okay, first of all, the volatility. I'd heard lots of, you know, stories of people who had sort of lost everything on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And then, just in practice, I wasn't sure. I was just unsure, you know, at what point can I expect that my local, you know, grocery store is going to accept bitcoins for me to get? You know. Or buy a loaf of bread or something. It's just, seems, it doesn't seem like something that is going to actually affect the real world beyond a few maybe niche spaces.
Daniel Lapin 30:11
At that point to you, it's looking much more like a commodity than a currency. Yes,
Speaker 1 30:18
that is, that would be, that would be accurate, right? Except, again, that even, even as a sort of a commodity or an investment, it seemed, it seemed to me, that of all the places you could invest your money into, that was not one of the safest, right, where my thinking has evolved a little bit, and I should say, I don't currently hold any major sort of, you know, amounts of of cryptocurrency. I've purchased a tiny bit, but, you know, I can't say that. I've, you know, really doubled down on this idea quite yet. I'm still thinking about it. But where, where I have, where my thinking has evolved, is that, I suppose, having having seen so here's the thing, okay, one way, one way that I was always able to see cryptocurrency as somewhat useful was I had been pointed things that had been pointed out to me that there are places in the world where governments are perhaps quite tyrannical, or at least, you know, fairly sort of authoritarian. And those are places, and I heard of certain countries in particular where inflation had sort of spiked out of control, and people had been had ended up resorting to things like Bitcoin for actually, you know, day to day transactions. And so I thought, okay, I can see that. But surely not for us in the West, we are fine, right? I mean, we are we have, you know, the Bank of England and we have the Federal Reserve. I mean, we are fine. Of course, turns out that's not the case. Just look at the state of, you know, inflation over the last couple of years. But also, and more importantly, I think one thing that I didn't really think would happen was that our governments could sort of, you know, turn authoritarians. Put it this way, and
Daniel Lapin 32:07
think of what Canada did to the truckers that That's
Marco Troisi 32:11
right, that's right. So that was actually one of the major sort of
Daniel Lapin 32:15
event. Or maybe, are there any other places where governments have de banked individuals and basically made it impossible and for them to function in the conventional monetary
Marco Troisi 32:28
so there's, there have been some stories here in the United Kingdom certain political figures, although in that case, so there was one story in particular with one MP Member of Parliament who had it was all over the news. But although that one, it wasn't actually the government, as far as we know, but it was that specific bank which decided that because this guy, this individual, held certain views around the topics of and other things. So he was deemed sort of Robinson. So the one he may actually, that may have been true, the one I was thinking about now is Nigel Farage. Oh,
Daniel Lapin 33:10
my goodness, yes, yes. I've had the pleasure of meeting and talking about some amazing yeah,
Marco Troisi 33:16
yeah. I really like him. Yeah, me too. I'm not that may have happened to Robinson too, but I wasn't thinking about him. But, yeah, so. But in farages case, it was actually the bank. So it was the the that particular group. They actually own several banks and NatWest, so that's, that's the group, and they they decided to that they didn't want him as a customer, essentially anymore, because they didn't like his views. And there was a whole story, because initially they weren't very transparent about it. And then turns out, after some digging and some investigating, people were able to figure out that the reason why he had been de banked was because they didn't like his political views. So that one was to do with the bank, though, so he was he could have gone to another bank if he wanted to. So it wasn't necessarily the same as having the government. Yes, you know sort of coming after you, but still you know it. I'm sure it would be quite unsettling to imagine that somebody, whether the government, or whether some big institution could, you know, all of a sudden lock me out of my bank account, right? Like that is, it is unsettling to think about extremely Yes, and so that's why I've been thinking cryptocurrency, you know, could that be? And again, I'm not even the idea that we should, obviously, you know, put all of our savings into cryptocurrency or anything like that. And I'm not even thinking, No,
Daniel Lapin 34:47
that's right. But I, you know, my approach is a little bit similar in that it's very common among Jewish people. That's my comment about multiple passports, by the way. Is. A reflection of that kind of thinking as well. You know, although America has been a remarkable refuge of prosperity and and tranquility for nearly two, more than 250, years, actually the the the realization is never far from my mind that you never know what could happen, and if we do have to pick up and run, well, why should it have to be the way Jews had to run from England in 1290 when King Edward threw them out where they literally, they were not able to liquidate their assets at all, because as soon as it was known that the Jews were being thrown out of England, their assets dropped in value because people knew they didn't have to pay for them. There was no option. And so anyway, yeah, they were really they left with their suitcases. 1492 thrown out of the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal. And again, people who had been really wealthy in Barcelona or or in Lisbon, you know, arrived, several of them, many of them arrived in Italy and and both in Venice. And there was another city as Genoa also. And there was another city as well that became a refuge for Jews from Spain and Portugal. But again, as wealthy as they'd been there, they arrived with nothing. And so one of the first things and I was asked to be a guest on a movie, a documentary about Bitcoin, Bitcoin and God, and and so I, I started thinking about it very seriously. And of course, my first thought was how wonderful. You know, it's one any responsible person would put a certain amount of money in Bitcoin, not in not, hopefully it wouldn't decrease in value. Hopefully not, and maybe it doesn't even increase, but simply to be able to land somewhere with your digital wallet that nobody was able to take away from you, and at least you're not with nothing. Yeah, however, of course, I also said very early on, before it happened, I was a little bit prophetic on this. Well, it was obvious there was no no big deal. And that was that there was no way the government was going to allow Bitcoin to operate outside of its purview. That was not going to happen. And so it didn't take long before the tax regulations were modified, so as you have to declare any cryptocurrency holdings, and so that how useful it becomes at that point, you know, maybe a maybe a bunch of diamonds and gold coins sewn into a leather pouch tied to your belt. Maybe that is the better way to go, after all. But, yeah, but then I thought, and I still think about this, you know, what is the difference between Bitcoin and gold? Neither of them have any intrinsic value. The fact is, I can't eat a gold bar and I can't eat a Bitcoin. In both cases, they're going to need to be recognized as valuable by somebody who has something that I need? And so, you know, gold is also not backed by any sovereign power. There's no government that backs. There's no there. There is nothing at all that backs gold, other than human history, 1000s of years of human history that says and which I believe myself to be based on the the second chapter of Genesis, where the eighth time that the Bible uses the term good is in the context of gold. And I think that that's one of the reasons that that gold became adopted as the mana tri, the monetized metal. But bitcoin is also there's no government behind it. It has no intrinsic value. It's basically a large number of people who have tacitly agreed that it's rare like gold, about about 200,000 tons of. Old have been excavated, and the best estimates probably another 50,000 tons. You know, it will we won't run out of gold, because people will always trade it, but no new gold will be mined once. That's pretty much for the most part. I think most of the major deposits of gold are known and they're being mined. And that's exactly the same with Bitcoin. It's even funny that the term is the same mind where about 20 million of 21 million coins of mine, when? When will the last one be mined? I don't know exactly, maybe, maybe late in the 20s. I don't know, but at some point, no more gold, no more Bitcoin, presumably, the value goes up then. But is it possible in the remotest of circumstances? Is it possible that gold loses its value, I guess? And is it possible that Bitcoin, yeah, probably. So that's that. I have no conclusions on it, but, but that's how I'm seeing it at the moment. Yeah,
Marco Troisi 41:07
no, I think you're absolutely right. And it can never be about absolute certainty, I suppose, although you can probably think of, and by the way, what you say about of G the, you know, the Jewish people and the thinking there is fully understand that, and that is actually as a Bible believing Christian, that is, that is what has often motivated me, because I am keenly aware of, I'm very aware of the way society is going, and I know that, you know, we are Already a minority. Bible believing, people in general, we are already a minority. And it might not, especially here in Europe, it might not again. You know, if I had told you two years before COVID, that the government would have taken on to themselves those kinds of powers, would you have believed that you would absolutely not
Daniel Lapin 42:00
in the United States, couldn't, of
Marco Troisi 42:03
course, right, like, I mean, doesn't. And then it happened, and it was even worse than what we could have even thought. And so if I say to you, is it possible that you know 15 or 1015, years from now, 20 years from now, Bible believing Christians, and by Bible believing people in general. So even Jewish people, for example, in this country, is it possible that we could be persecuted or kicked out of the country or, well, I think, you know, it's not impossible. Let's put it this way. And and so the
Daniel Lapin 42:34
FBI had a branch in America. The FBI branch in Richmond, Virginia, actually produced a project in which they were going to investigate committed Catholic organizations. There you go, deciding that they are they have the potential to be seen as threats. So, yes, absolutely any anything like that that used to be thought of as unthinkable. We shouldn't think of it as unthinkable anymore. Yeah.
Marco Troisi 43:06
I mean, I think that in countries like like here in the United Kingdom, we again, we probably still have a few years in which the government will continue to pay some lip service to Christians. But there will come a point where they it will dawn on them that Christians are now a tiny minority. And you know, if the trend continues the way it is, it's gonna keep going down, right? And so, you know, they will eventually realize, okay, actually, we, we don't need these people. And, you know, and if they keep on, you know, protesting against our kind of liberal progressive agenda and all that, then we might as well kick them out. And probably no one will, you know, put up a fuss about it. And so anyways, this may not happen, but it also could happen, right? And so as I'm thinking about it, I think, okay, what can I do? You know, what can we do? And maybe bitcoin is one, one thing that, you know, all I'm, all you're thinking about is, you know, if it comes down to that, you don't need necessarily major riches, but you need at least some amount that will, that you will be able to use to get out of the country and, you know, make a safe, safe landing somewhere for yourself and your family. Yeah, and yeah. So I can't say that I've, you know, landed anywhere clear yet on this, but it's something that, you know, I occasionally think about. And Bitcoin is certainly something that has been sort of brought, brought to my attention as as a potential,
Daniel Lapin 44:43
yeah, likewise, I think we are very similar in Outlook at the moment, and I suspect that in the happy warrior community, we will continue discussing it, because part of part of being a happy warrior is having an eye open do. Approaching dangers that at the moment, have very soft footsteps,
Marco Troisi 45:06
for sure, for sure. Yeah, yeah, being able to see, see where the trends sort of are going in terms of what so yeah, the decisions and
Daniel Lapin 45:15
anything that you and your wife Alexia, wanted to to bring up and discuss with me, as we have this opportunity now, anything of interest or not particularly, oh gosh,
Marco Troisi 45:36
nothing comes to mind, although I'm sure if I, if I had thought about it for a moment, that there would have been 1000s of things that I would have loved to talk about, I will say one thing. Back when we were in Berlin and we decided, you know, as I said, we decided that we wanted to go somewhere where we could speak the language and all that a major part of that kind of reasoning was motivated by me reading your book, because you talk about how one of the very, very important ways in which you can make money, of course, is by being well integrated within the community. And so I very quickly realized, although we were part of a sort of small, kind of expat bubble in Berlin, my work itself was in English, and so we were just hanging around with a very small group of English speaking people. But it dawned on me that, you know, if I wanted to expand sort of our footprint in terms of business and more, we needed to be in a place where we could speak the language and be more fully integrated and be part of the community. So I will just point it to you. Give you credit for that. It's Thank
Daniel Lapin 46:53
you, and yes, if we would have spoken, then I would have told you, you're making exactly the right decision, because to live somewhere where you are isolated from the majority of people by language barriers is not good for business. 100% Yeah,
Marco Troisi 47:12
yeah. And we've been able to do things since moving over here, that, of course, both for myself, career wise, and for my wife as well that we would not have been able to do in Germany, I'm convinced of that.
Daniel Lapin 47:27
Are your boys in school? They
Marco Troisi 47:30
are, yeah, so they're both in primary school, p1 and p3 I can't tell you what that corresponds to in American standards. But anyways,
Daniel Lapin 47:43
and are they very close? The two of them,
Marco Troisi 47:46
they are extremely close. Yeah, I call them sort of lockdown babies, because, you know, they were, we were all locked together during the lockdown for, you know, nearly two years, really. And the two of them were sort of in a preschool phase, so not that they could have gone to school because schools were closed, but even if they could have, even if they had been going to school, they would have been, you know, they would have been forced to stay at home. But anyways, they were, they had to spend, you know, nearly two years just being each other's best friend and then playing with each other. And so I know they are now very, very close. And did
Daniel Lapin 48:23
Alexia teach them at all at home? Did she homeschool during that period?
Speaker 1 48:29
Well, no, again, because they were so, what were they three and four or two and three? So, yeah, very, very small. So there was no need. All we needed to do was just to keep them occupied with, you know, games and yeah, walks, walks when walking wasn't illegal, which is, which is also education. Yeah, 100%
Daniel Lapin 48:52
all that is wonderful. If, if you were a happy warrior listening to this conversation, what else might you be interested to know about you?
Unknown Speaker 49:07
Oh, gosh,
Marco Troisi 49:11
what? What could it be? What could it be? Well, I'll share. I'll share this. Okay, when I met my wife, what then obviously became my wife,
Marco Troisi 49:27
we sort of fairly quickly realized that, you know, we wanted to get married and build a life together. We were both obviously, we were both Christians at the time, and it seemed to both of us by reading our Bibles. It seemed to both of us that the right thing to do was to try and get married, you know, relatively, relatively quickly, and get get sort of the whole dating, courting, sort of time over with. It relatively quickly, but we did face, actually, major opposition from sort of the culture around us. Put it this way, because in some countries, and Italy is one of them, it it has sort of gone out of fashion to get married, uh, young. It is fairly normal, you know, to sort of even if you find the person that you think would be the right person for you, it is fairly, fairly common to, you know, maybe live together or something. But, you know, for many, many, many years and people would get married close to their 40s, yeah, if they even ever do. And so we faced a, sort of a, we were sort of in this really strange predicament, because the culture was telling us, what are you doing? You know, you shouldn't, like you should wait, because marriage, you know, it's such a bad thing, because it will, you know, tie you up and all that. But equally, we knew, you know, as Christians, we wanted to, you know, be, be faithful to God and all that. And so we knew it wasn't sustainable we and it made sense that we, that we should get married. And so, yeah, so, well, the a lot of things happened, but basically, we had to overcome sort of very important, a very important kind of opposition to then get married, and of course, that I still believe that that that was the right decision, and it would, for me, it's the best, the best thing I've ever done, marry my wife. Hopefully she can say she can say the same. But yeah, so, I mean, this is I don't, I don't hear stories like this very often, so I don't know if anyone in the community has been through anything like this, or is going through anything like this. If so, I might be able to maybe, I don't know, give you a tip or two. But yeah, I have been I've sometimes Rabbi, I think, on a few podcasts, you have talked about sort of what your philosophy is on that whole thing. And I think you've suggested that you encourage people to do what you call courting, and then essentially, you get that over fairly, fairly quickly and get married. And of course, I didn't know you when we were going through all of that, but I was glad to see that I had been able to well, that you know, that we had basically followed that advice, mostly
Daniel Lapin 52:35
you did everything I would have advised had we known another back then.
Marco Troisi 52:40
Yes, I was, I was quite encouraged to hear that, you know, because it has occurred to me sometimes, you know, was, I don't know did was that, of course, again, you know, reading my Bible, I can see that that's the way it should be. But the the cultural pressure is strong, and this is very alive, difficult
Daniel Lapin 52:57
to counter the cultural pressure. Very difficult indeed. Yeah,
Marco Troisi 53:01
absolutely, yeah. And of course, you know, it is also the type of thing that once you sort of zoom out. So for example, I now live in a different country where it is not, it's not quite like that over here. And so I can now see that as sort of a uniquely sort of Italian thing that was going on there. But while I was in it, I was like, Well, this is, you know, you can't, it's hard to see any other, we didn't have really, any other sort of examples, or other people around us that could tell us, you know, this is no no, you're right. You should get married quickly, or anything like that. And so, yeah, it was, it was a big challenge. But it, yeah,
Daniel Lapin 53:42
well, it's Marco like, like a good date or a good meal. It's always good to end when you believe that there's still many, many, many things you'd like to continue talking about, and that would be true for now. But as far as the conversation we're having for public consumption. I think we're going to come to an end of that one. So don't, don't go away. Hold on a sec. But, but for our fellow happy warriors, this is where we'll pause the conversation, I think, well, Happy Warriors. I do hope that you enjoyed my conversation with Marco. I certainly did. I really, I really felt that he came to life. I was I knew him, and I've communicated with him on our discussion board, on the community board, but it's quite a different thing, seeing him in in reality, hearing a full conversation and being able to discuss as we have done, so. Hope you've subscribed to the show. I hope you are going to take a good look at Scrolling through Scripture unit one, first 34, verses of Genesis. And I hope that we will be together Same time, same place next week here on the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show. Meanwhile, I wish you a week of growth, moving onwards and upwards with your five F's, with your family, your finances, your faith, your friendship and your fitness. God bless.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
