#838 - Josh Zepps

[0] Three, two, one.

[1] Yes!

[2] Josh Debs, it feels like you were just here.

[3] People don't know.

[4] Most people don't know because it hasn't come out yet.

[5] Well, no one would.

[6] How would they?

[7] We did a podcast late last night, and it got completely out of hand.

[8] So I don't even know what to do with that thing now.

[9] Put that thing out, like a gentleman.

[10] I mean, I'm certainly putting it out.

[11] I'm certainly putting it out.

[12] So, long story short, for listeners, Joe was kind enough to, I was interviewing Sam Harris for my podcast, and Sam was like, we really should just do more than just a one -on -one, because ordinarily my podcast is a panel of people, a bunch of people sitting around talking about the news.

[13] And so I texted Joe, and I was like, is there any chance of doing it at your studio and being the gentleman that he is?

[14] He was like, sure, just come on by, and we'll just tape it, even though he had two shows yesterday.

[15] So after those shows, late at night, Sam Harris comes over.

[16] And Hannibal Burris is still here.

[17] Yeah, Hannibal was about to call an Uber, and I said, why don't you stick around?

[18] Yeah.

[19] We were drunk, by the way.

[20] We drank so much whiskey.

[21] Best decision you ever made inviting him to stay.

[22] So Hannibal, Barris, and Sam Harris, and Joe Rogan and I have an interesting episode of my podcast, which will come up.

[23] So if you're listening to this now or watching this now, subscribe to Weather People Live.

[24] Just search for Weather People, space, live.

[25] You need the live.

[26] And then when it drops, you will see it.

[27] It was entertaining.

[28] epic hour -long argument between Hannibal Burris a drunk Hannibal Burris and Sam Harris regarding statistics we'll just leave it at that yeah you don't want to give them more statistics that may or may not involve Black Lives Matter yeah and police shootings and just the reality of police violence versus the perceived reality of police violence so arguing about the statistics rather than the emotional that's right connection and the difference and I mean what was interesting is how we have conversations about things that are so touchy right I mean part of the reason why I wanted to talk to to sam and you on my podcast is because I think it's important for us to find ways to have the sorts of conversations that you have and that Sam has and that hopefully I have where it there's not a lot of kind of opinionated bloviating it's more about actually trying to understand each other right actually trying to take each other at face value not sticking uh you know what a sword in the sand and saying like I can't believe that you offended me or you know having tripwires that if someone transgresses that or says a certain thing, then all of a sudden you're going to crank up the outrage machine.

[29] There's so much of that.

[30] So much of that.

[31] So I wanted to talk to Sam and you about, well, how do we have conversations that are more reasonable?

[32] But of course, you don't necessarily have a conversation that's that reasonable when you're drunk and emotionally sensitive.

[33] A drunk Hannibal Burrith that says that he's smarter than Sam Harris.

[34] And smarter than, I think anyone, didn't he say anyone?

[35] He definitely said he was smarter than Sam Harris.

[36] I mean, Hannibal's a smart guy.

[37] He must be.

[38] He's successful, and he's compelling and good comic.

[39] Just not smart enough to know that he shouldn't say he's smart than Sam Harris.

[40] It was drunk.

[41] I'm telling you, we were really drunk, and we kept drinking, too.

[42] You hit it well.

[43] You hauled your liquor well?

[44] I bounce back quick.

[45] I'm healthy.

[46] Yeah.

[47] So I stopped drinking also about an hour.

[48] What are you saying, Hannibal's not healthy?

[49] Is that what you're implying?

[50] That's exactly what I said.

[51] You heard me. And about an hour before the end of our potty of me and Henneville.

[52] Hannibal.

[53] I realized I was drunk, so I backed off.

[54] Right.

[55] And he just plowed right on.

[56] He was pouring himself like half a half a wine glass of whiskey.

[57] Yep.

[58] Yep.

[59] Yeah.

[60] It was deep.

[61] We went deep.

[62] So he can't be held responsible, folks.

[63] Everyone's held responsible.

[64] Yeah, right.

[65] Because if you drive drunk and kill somebody, then you're not held responsible for that, right?

[66] You are responsible for that.

[67] If you're a woman and you get drunk and have sex with someone, you're not responsible, though.

[68] The man's responsible.

[69] That's right.

[70] That's true.

[71] You know about that?

[72] So was Hannibal more of a woman having sex or more of a drunk driver hitting a hobo?

[73] More of a woman having sex.

[74] And I'll tell him you said that.

[75] He was a guest in my studio, so I'm responsible.

[76] He could not consent to that conversation.

[77] You were the chaperone.

[78] He was too drunk to consent.

[79] I was the rapist.

[80] Oh, you were the rapist.

[81] I raped him with our conversation by forcing him into this conversation that I didn't know he was going to get into.

[82] Right.

[83] You sort of an anally fisted him with words.

[84] Now you're going a little bit to my own taste.

[85] You said rape.

[86] What about this whole rape?

[87] Have you been talking or thinking about the whole, like, Amy Schumer, Kurt Metzger?

[88] Do you know, Kurt and like his Facebook?

[89] I do.

[90] And I saw what he said.

[91] And, you know, I had someone else contact me about that guy and whether or not, you know, he was telling the truth or the woman was telling the truth.

[92] I don't know him.

[93] I don't know her.

[94] And I'm not getting involved because I don't know.

[95] If I knew her and I could implicitly trust her and I knew that she was going to tell the truth.

[96] And it's not, it's not a, it's, I just don't understand the motivation behind.

[97] someone jumping in with an opinion.

[98] I think what he's saying, though, is interesting, because what Kurt was saying was that it is entirely possible.

[99] He was satire, obviously, but he's saying women cannot lie.

[100] They're like my Bible.

[101] It's impossible for a woman to lie, just like the Lord's word.

[102] He's, you know, he's being funny.

[103] Yeah, he's such a, he's hilarious.

[104] He's such a shitster.

[105] Yeah, he's hilarious.

[106] But it's, uh, it's weird, you know, like that there's this, there's this culture, what we know for a fact that some people lie about every single aspect of life.

[107] They lie about what they did, they lie about their taxes, they lie about everything, but we're supposed to assume that women never lie about rape.

[108] And it's not true.

[109] We know it's not true.

[110] But we're not allowed to say it's not true, even though we know it.

[111] We're not allowed to bring it up.

[112] So if there's a possibility, if a woman says that she's raped, you have to accept that 100 % at face value, even if the man is saying he didn't rape her.

[113] It's really hard because that's one side of the ledger.

[114] And then on the other side of the ledger, you've got all of the overwhelming number of cases where men get.

[115] away with it yes because women are too afraid to go to police or that they feel like they feel like they're dirty or they're somehow you know for whatever reason they would rather just not talk about it and let it go away so I think that I think that women's rights people and feminists think like if if it's occasionally the case that a man is wrongly accused that's a small price to pay for fostering a climate in which women feel more feel less nervous about coming forward now I'm not saying that I believe that but wow what a shitstorm Kurt has so I'm not sure if everyone knows the background to this.

[116] One of the comics at UCB Theatre in New York was accused of being a repeat sexual offender by a bunch of women.

[117] So UCB suspended him as a comic and conducted its own internal investigation.

[118] And Kurt went on a big Facebook rant.

[119] I was looking at it this morning actually saying basically like why is this internal, you know, what is this like the Catholic Church that UCB Theater?

[120] like doing an internal investigation, why didn't these women go to the police?

[121] He writes, this is his original Facebook post, guys, I've just heard some disturbing news.

[122] This guy, Jif Dilfieberg, is a rapist.

[123] I know because women said it, and that's all I need.

[124] Never you mind who they are.

[125] They're all women.

[126] All women are as reliable as my Bible, a book that much like a woman, is incapable of lying.

[127] That's what you were saying, right?

[128] You think I would dare ask my God, Lord Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, to provide any details or evidence of any kind before I believe in him or a woman?

[129] No, because that would be like hammering the nails into Jesus my Lord's feet or re -raping the victim's good hole.

[130] Or asking for proof in a murder trial.

[131] And he goes on like that.

[132] It's really funny if that guy's innocent.

[133] If that guy's guilty, then it becomes really disturbing because you kind of become an enabler.

[134] The problem is there's no way Kurt can know.

[135] Exactly.

[136] Exactly.

[137] But I do, I think it raises interesting questions about the whole kind of the the censoriousness and like the hysteria of the social justice warrior brigade in that there are people who really fucking want him to get fired and never to you know if Amy's show comes back they don't want him back as a writer I'm sure that there are comedy clubs that are going to rethink whether or not they want to book him because he might be too toxic and oh I doubt that maybe maybe not this not I don't think this is that big of a deal because what he said was not that big of a deal but the issue but everyone went crazy she went crazy You know, and she posted that Amy did.

[138] She posted this thing, you know, saying that she's very disappointed.

[139] That was in response to an endless barrage of social justice people and feminists saying that this is completely unacceptable and he deserves to be fired for it.

[140] Meanwhile, he showed some pretty incredible loyalty to her during that whole plagiarism scandal, especially when he was one of the ones who told her to not do one of those jokes because it was a Wendy Lieman joke.

[141] So he kept his mud about all that.

[142] and then she turned on him with this whole thing.

[143] Although the whole thing is very sorted.

[144] I see her point of view and I see his point of view.

[145] I really do.

[146] I think she didn't have, I think she felt she didn't have an option.

[147] Because she did say, you know, Kurt's my friend and no, I support him, I'm disappointed in him.

[148] Yeah.

[149] It's toxic.

[150] I mean, there's no way that you can talk about.

[151] You can't raise the question that you just raised of like, unless you're on the Joe Rogan experience, you cannot raise the question of whether or not it's appropriate, whether there should be in a presumption of innocence.

[152] That's why podcasts are so goddamn, You could never do this on a regular show.

[153] Certainly couldn't do the shit we were doing last night on a regular show.

[154] We'd be yanked off the air in a heartbeat.

[155] Yeah, wait till it comes out.

[156] You know, here's the problem, again, here's the problem.

[157] If that guy is innocent, then Kurt is doing a service because he is expressing this very real possibility that someone might be lying.

[158] If that guy's guilty, then it's not funny at all and it becomes really fucking gross for the girl.

[159] If she has to sit back and listen to someone mock whether or not she's telling the truth when she knows she did.

[160] That has got to be a horrible feeling.

[161] So the question is, what is worse?

[162] Is it worse to get falsely accused of rape?

[163] Or is it worse to get raped when someone doesn't believe you and get accused of being a liar?

[164] It's obviously worse to get raped and being accused of a liar.

[165] But by how much?

[166] I mean, if you're grading on a scale, like getting, I mean, let's just assume it's at least a bit worse.

[167] on that side because you're there's a physical act.

[168] Yeah, I think being raped is worse than being falsely accused.

[169] But surely there's a third option, right?

[170] But being falsely accused in having your career destroyed and dragged through the mud and forever labeled a rapist, which is entirely possible for someone who's innocent.

[171] It happened to a friend of mine.

[172] A friend of mine got accused falsely of rape.

[173] This girl that he was dating, he broke up with her, they broke up, and she just decided that she was going to get back at him.

[174] So she said that he was a rapist.

[175] And she followed through with it for a while and then eventually abandoned it.

[176] But that does happen.

[177] And it's happened many, many times.

[178] And there's a bunch of statistics you can look up online, but they're not entirely accurate because they don't take into account.

[179] How many women, if you look at like overall rapes and overall people who lie at rape, the overall rape statistics are not accurate because they do not know, nor do they take into account, or can they possibly take into account, how many women don't say anything?

[180] Yeah.

[181] It's a big number.

[182] And also, like, what constitutes a rape?

[183] Exactly.

[184] Like, when you say that some men are falsely accused, it's not always as black and white as, you know, they were dating and they never even had sex at all, but she suddenly accuses him of rape.

[185] There are also scenarios where, as you said before, she was drunk or like she didn't know that she consented.

[186] Or he thought there was consent and there wasn't consent.

[187] Or, you know, I mean, or maybe they were, you know, so it's a vague area.

[188] And I think Kurt's point, which is, like, I don't think that we should be having to choose between the two options.

[189] that you just cited, which is on the one hand, a woman gets raped and is not believed, and on the other hand, a man is falsely accused of rape.

[190] Well, I think what Kurt is trying to do, just in a clumsy, smart -assie, flame -throwing way is say, can't it be true that rape is really, really terrible?

[191] And we also should offer men the benefit of the doubt and encourage rape victims to go to the police rather than to internal investigations at places like UCB.

[192] his point is like I'm on the he thinks he's on the side of the rape victims right by saying like they've been sold a dumb bill of goods by feminists by saying oh you're such poor pathetic victims that you can't go to the police and it will never be taken care of by going to the police so you should just be molly coddled and and you should either remain silent or or you know just have it sorted out internally is he think he's saying that well that's what he says he says so this is his follow -up Facebook post which he posted last Wednesday Wednesday, where he begins by saying, my punishment the mob is howling for is now officially more severe than the one for the actual rapist, which is interesting.

[193] But towards the end, he says, I didn't yell at victims to go to the police.

[194] They are victims.

[195] I'm yelling at the people who said women can't go to the police.

[196] They have to work outside the system.

[197] I think that's out of bullshit and leads to rapists walking free.

[198] It hurts the victims of sexual assault.

[199] Okay, he's saying that because this woman never went to the police.

[200] That's right.

[201] publicly accuse this guy of rape.

[202] That's right.

[203] Isn't there more than one woman as well?

[204] I believe so.

[205] I believe there's a second one who's friends with that girl.

[206] Right.

[207] Who also says the same story.

[208] So that ain't good.

[209] He claims to be on the side of the victims.

[210] I mean, I think he just doesn't quite get how traumatic it can be for people who've been, for women who've been sexually assaulted.

[211] He gets raped every day.

[212] You don't even know.

[213] You don't know.

[214] He gets raped every day just so you can understand.

[215] He gets raped every day.

[216] He loves it.

[217] Not funny.

[218] Rape is never funny he said why he says why did the story of what actually happened what happened to come out after the guy is declared a rapist i'll listen to any victim's account all that was given initially is p's aran's a rapist pass it on my point was that no one seems disturbed by this no one sees down the road next time we might get it wrong well we might have it wrong here we don't know um but it's not good when a second person calls you out for the same crime that's right but it's also not good that no one went to the cops.

[219] And maybe, but also, what kind of evidence do you have?

[220] If somebody raped you a month ago, guess what?

[221] You have no evidence.

[222] No, exactly.

[223] Once you've showered up and you don't have any bruises, like, what can you say?

[224] It's your word against them.

[225] Yeah.

[226] And, you know, I think for some women, and it's also like, what exactly was the scenario that we're talking about?

[227] Was it a simple social justice warrior type thing where two people were drunk and then the woman didn't consent?

[228] So they're calling that rape, which is repeated ad nauseum.

[229] I mean, it got someone kicked out of office.

[230] Occidental College is a lawsuit going on right now because of that.

[231] I'm sure you know that story where a man and a woman, the girl was saying, come on over, do you have condoms?

[232] They have sex.

[233] And then her friends convince her that because she was drunk, it was rape, even though they were both drunk.

[234] And then the college kicks him out, keeps her.

[235] And so he's suing the college.

[236] It's a fucking giant disaster.

[237] It's total sexism.

[238] 100 % sexism against the man. And when you look at the story and what it is, it's a goddamn witch hunt and they gave into the witch hunt.

[239] They just wanted to quiet it down.

[240] And they figured it would be easier to kick this kid out and just give in to the wills of the mob.

[241] And then on the other hand, you've got that, like, the California college swimmer kid who raped the girl behind the dumpster on campus.

[242] You heard about that one.

[243] She was passed out, right?

[244] Yeah, she was passed out, and he was, like, fingering her, and she had, like, pine cone cuts all over a vagina.

[245] It was really horrible story, and he ended up getting, what, six months or something stupid, basically nothing, right?

[246] Now he's out again.

[247] And, um, and like, see, that's, that's, that's a fucking terrible person.

[248] And that guy should be punished.

[249] And the judge was, the judge was an alarm of the same college and so on.

[250] So he's like, it's an old boys school.

[251] He's like, oh, well, boys will be boys.

[252] And the, and the apology that this racist, this rapist little asshole wrote was like, I think this serves as a good lesson about, uh, intoxication and the dangers of like inebriation on campus.

[253] Like, fuck you.

[254] It doesn't, that's not the lesson.

[255] The lesson is don't rape people.

[256] Like when she's, pine cones in someone's vagina.

[257] Piece of shit.

[258] I mean, when she was, and it was bad enough, like to people who say, well, maybe he thought that she was consenting, it was obvious enough that two other students, they were foreign students, they were Swedish guys, were riding by on bicycles, and they saw what was going on.

[259] And it was obvious from afar, even in the dark, what was happening, because they stopped and came over and rescued her.

[260] She was as limp as a rag doll, so he can't, you know.

[261] Yeah, so there's that.

[262] That's real rape.

[263] And that's terrifying when a woman does get, you know, exposed.

[264] as being someone who's experienced rapes and you have to think about all these people that know your personal trauma and then this guy barely gets punished that's horrible too yeah that's horrible too yeah man it sucks both ways you know i guess it's definitely sucks worse if you're the person who gets victimized but it still sucks if you're someone who didn't do anything wrong and someone claims that you're a rapist and that tag carries you for the rest of your life and you're being falsely accused yeah until we can read people's minds clearly and truly god that'll be terrifying it's going to happen it's on the way it's it's like right now we are at the morse code of reading minds we're at the uh do do do do do do that's where we're at i mean they're sending signals they're receiving signals they're articulating words someone's sending they're sending words through the internet into your mind and you see those words you hear those words images they can place images in your mind this is very rudimentary right now but they're going to be able string those words together and form sentences and those words instead of being through some giant bank of supercomputers, it's going to be something that's in your phone or a chip that we all willingly install on our brains.

[265] And we're going to read each other's minds.

[266] Then we're going to know.

[267] I wonder how nuanced that'll be, though.

[268] So I did a story.

[269] Before I was at Huff Post Live, I had a show on Discovery Science Channel, which was a bit like the soup, like a smart -assie kind of look at, but science nerd news.

[270] And I went to, I can't remember where it was, somewhere up in the Bay Area, so some IT place, where they're working on mind -reading computer games.

[271] And this was all the way back in, I guess, 2010, 2009, and you could put a thing on your head and you can operate the computer game just through the intensity of your thought patterns.

[272] It's very, like you say, it's basically Morse code.

[273] It's pretty much only on or off.

[274] There's no nuance apart from just think hard about something and then, you know, you'll set fire to this little thing that you need to set fire to to win the game.

[275] That's amazing that they can tell that.

[276] But I wonder whether or not, and for example, we can see the brain, when you put people in an MRI machine, we can tell whether or not the memory part of your brain is lighting up when they show you something.

[277] So they're talking about the possibility of, in a criminal trial, they'd be able, they'd at least be able to tell whether or not you've ever been to the inside of the place where the crime was committed.

[278] Well, you know, I did an episode of this of Joe Logan questions everything.

[279] With FMRI, they actually accused someone and convicted someone, I believe in India, of having functional knowledge of a crime scene because through FMRI, they were able to indicate that she understood where that crime scene was and she had some form of memory that they could deduce from the FMRI.

[280] The problem, according to neuroscientists, and the woman I was talking to on the podcast, on the show, I forget her name, I apologize to her.

[281] but she explained that the problem is that during the course of the investigation, that person, the woman who was accused and convicted, could have been exposed to the evidence of that crime scene and then have functional memory of that crime scene because of that, which was exposed during the fMRI, particularly when you think about the fact that her freedom was on the line, she was falsely accused or, you know, accused of this crime.

[282] I don't know if she did or not.

[283] She's accused of this crime.

[284] They present her with this evidence.

[285] She has to go over this evidence.

[286] There's an incredible amount of weight in a moment.

[287] emotions involved in that and they could have seared that memory deeply in her brain of what that scene looked like yeah that's interesting i can't remember whether you've told me about that or whether i've just heard you talk about it on the on the podcast but but then as you get to more and more subtle layers of thought so it's not just is the memory part of the brain firing when we show this person an image of something right but it's like i mean how would you how would you ascertain somebody's guilt or innocence in a rape case?

[288] Well, right now we can't.

[289] See, I think what they're doing with this fMRI stuff is, I mean, obviously, you can, if there's like some significant evidence, semen, scratches, video.

[290] No, I just mean by reading your mind.

[291] I don't think they can yet.

[292] What they were saying is that the, what they did in India, this woman was telling me, and she, again, is a prominent neuroscientist, she was saying that they misused the evidence, they misstated the efficacy of this evidence, and that they used this.

[293] in a very inappropriate way that would not be legal in the United States like you would get no one who understands truly understands FMRI who would sign off on that or no one who's ethical.

[294] I mean, from the neuroscientists who I've spoken to I think we are a long, long, long way away from having the kind of granularity and confidence that we could say just because this part of the brain is lighting up or just because these kinds of waves are being emitted by your neurons that means that you're either guilty or not guilty.

[295] According to our standard biology, I would agree with that.

[296] Here's where I would deviate.

[297] I think that we are not that far away from them being able to introduce artificial recording of memories.

[298] And I think that people are going to do it willingly.

[299] And I think it's going to be one of those things that people share with each other back and forth.

[300] What do you show me, Jamie?

[301] Scientists discover how to implant false memories.

[302] Boya!

[303] Wow.

[304] Jamie just blew it up.

[305] So what does that mean?

[306] Pull it up.

[307] MIT researchers expand that so I could read that a little bit better.

[308] MIT researcher Steve Ramirez and, wow.

[309] Zulu.

[310] recently made history when they successfully implanted a false memory to the mind of a mouse.

[311] The proof was a simple reaction from the rodent, but the implications are vast.

[312] They placed the furry little creature inside a metal box, and it froze, displaying a distinct fear response.

[313] The mouse was reacting as if it received a electrical shock there when it had it at all.

[314] Huh.

[315] Interesting.

[316] I'm not surprised, and this is what I think.

[317] I've been really heavily dabbling in virtual reality lately, because my friend, Duncan has the HTC vibe and he put it on me and I went into a fucking frenzy and I realized like what is happening and where we're at and where I thought we were at versus where we actually are at.

[318] They are so far ahead of where I thought they are.

[319] They are so close to creating an indiscernible virtual reality.

[320] It's so close.

[321] I've got to do this.

[322] A friend of my works at Oculus up at what who owns Oculus Facebook?

[323] That's the big virtual reality of either Google or Facebook.

[324] I remember.

[325] Yeah, Facebook.

[326] Carmac is coming in here.

[327] John Carmack, the guy from Id Software, who programmed, he created Doom and Quake and all those games.

[328] He's now at Oculus, which is just, I mean, he is a fucking, super genius.

[329] I should go up there and try this stuff.

[330] I was hearing Tim Ferriss talk about this as well.

[331] Do you know Duncan?

[332] Do Duncan's podcast?

[333] Okay, great.

[334] I'll connect you guys.

[335] Call him in town for.

[336] Uh, till Saturday.

[337] Okay.

[338] I'll connect you guys when we get out to this show and I think Duncan's in town.

[339] Oh, fantastic.

[340] You're going to shit your pants.

[341] I love this shit so much.

[342] It's amazing.

[343] What's amazing about it is right now it's goggles and it's connected to a computer and it's clunky.

[344] But, you know, the original computers that the Apollo mission used were a giant room.

[345] Yeah, yeah.

[346] And they had one quarter of the processing power or something of your iPhone.

[347] I don't even think it's one quarter.

[348] Yeah.

[349] You know, but that's the point is that as you, as this technology exponentially gets more and more powerful and smaller and more easy for people to access, you know, used to be everywhere like remember wall street when michael douglas had that giant brick phone yeah and we're like what a gangster look at them walking around with that phone yeah that phone's joke yeah and now i mean i was in brazil um a few years back in 2003 and uh you know you go to these like little tiny jungle villages and all these people have cell phones yeah everybody has a phone no it's going to be incredible as you see how i mean the interesting thing for me in vr is what we're seeing is where it's going to so everything moves so fast now that it's incredible for me to, I love, I love human ignorance as well as genius.

[350] Like, I love my own inability to predict how things are going to unfold and just the, the sheer, the sheer joy in how spontaneously kind of, I don't know, exciting that this whole human experiment is.

[351] Because when, for example, half -post live, we started doing this thing in 2012, we were like, okay, well, let's do the future of television, because obviously television and the internet are coming together and they're going to merge.

[352] So the way that we, if you, if you were starting from scratch and inventing a television talk show now, knowing nothing about the history of broadcasting or television or radio, what would it be like?

[353] Well, it'd be, you'd have commenters and you'd have people joining via webcam.

[354] And so they developed like 12 hours a day of half post live broadcasts from studios.

[355] Within a few years, it was clear that that was obsolete.

[356] That was not the way that the future was going.

[357] And now it's all like short, live streaming, shareable things, right?

[358] Similarly, with virtual reality, I think the fear was and has been, when it gets really good, everyone's just kind of sit in their basement and watch virtual reality porn all day and no one's going to connect with each other anymore, right?

[359] It's coming.

[360] But here's what's the biggest virtual or augmented reality breakthrough thus far that's widespread that's caught on?

[361] I don't know.

[362] What is it?

[363] Pokemon Go.

[364] Yeah, but that's It's dropped off significantly.

[365] Do you know that?

[366] Yeah.

[367] They've dropped up by 15 million users over the last week.

[368] Oh, really?

[369] Yeah.

[370] I didn't know.

[371] It was that much.

[372] Yeah.

[373] But here's the thing.

[374] That's pretty significant.

[375] It's in time.

[376] Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that it's going to change, that Pokemon Go itself is going to change the world.

[377] What it points to to me is the possibility that where we thought that virtual reality was all going to be about headsets and me in my own head.

[378] And maybe it still will be, to some extent.

[379] I could totally see it go in the augmented reality.

[380] way instead so that you're walking around the street with some kind of little thing on the side of your head and all everywhere you look things are popping up like little graphics are popping up on top of things offering you sales in a particular store showing you where you know you can say what you're looking for you know where's the nearest bank and there's a little arrow that points down over the nearest chase branch or whatever that's what magic leap is saying yeah right right so I mean and and that strikes me as actually a more plausible and organic possible future than the one in which we're all just sort of like in the wally Remember the movie Wally universe where we're all just in Barker Loungeers and lazy boys in kind of our own universe?

[381] I don't think they're mutually exclusive.

[382] I don't think it's either or.

[383] I think that's going to happen as well.

[384] There's going to be brave fools that venture outside and experience augmented reality where everybody else stares at people's buttholes from two inches away.

[385] I'm telling you, man, you put on these virtual goggles and you have a 3D porn going on where these people are having sex and you can get right in there.

[386] You can look at their face.

[387] You can stare in their eyes where they have sex.

[388] and it looks so goddamn real.

[389] But their computer -generated avatars or are they filmed human beings?

[390] No, they're filmed human beings with 360 -degree cameras.

[391] And right now it's, you know, it's fairly limited.

[392] Did you watch porn on it?

[393] I didn't.

[394] Duncan has, though.

[395] Duncan is into it.

[396] I didn't want to watch porn in front of Duncan.

[397] I just didn't trust him.

[398] I can't see anything other than the...

[399] I'm just kidding.

[400] But it's...

[401] All of a sudden you feel someone blowing you.

[402] You're just like, what...

[403] Hey, Duncan!

[404] Come on, buddy.

[405] I feel your beard.

[406] Enough, Duncan.

[407] It's, you know, I saw the most impressive thing that I saw was the underwater thing.

[408] They have this underwater thing where you're like standing at the bottom of the ocean and these fish swim by and then a whale swims up to you.

[409] And you're looking the whale in the eye and it has this feeling of mass. Like you really feel like those whales in front of you.

[410] You're freaking out.

[411] I mean, it's so realistic.

[412] And it's actual three -day footage of a whale?

[413] Mm -hmm.

[414] No, it's a CGI.

[415] CGI generated whale.

[416] But it's amazing.

[417] It's amazing.

[418] And it gives you this, well, I first tried virtual reality at Duncan's place.

[419] I want to say four years ago, three years ago, somewhere like there.

[420] And it was really crude.

[421] It was pixelated and it was some silly game and it was really clunky.

[422] But I could see it.

[423] I could go, oh, I get it.

[424] I see where this is going.

[425] This is just leaps and bounds past where that is.

[426] And there's one game that you play or one experience that you have where you you go into this guy's room and he's composing music on a piano and you walk in the room and you can look up and look around and while this guy's playing the piano you can get up beside him and look at his keys it's fucking crazy that's video that's a real guy and apparently duncan says like the porn is just like that you can just like get so i mean for me the question is i think fundamentally we are oh wow he's the image of the whale yeah i mean this is not doing it justice because you don't Of course not.

[427] It's not virtual reality.

[428] Yeah, but you don't have any control whether or not you move.

[429] So you're kind of getting a sense of what happens while this camera moves around.

[430] But I mean, you can get underneath that whale and look at its body.

[431] I got in the water with a humpback whale in Maui a couple years ago.

[432] You're not allowed to swim with them.

[433] But if you're in a little dodgy zodiac like I was, then they get around the rules, well, my guy did, by just holding your legs.

[434] So as long as you're still connected to the boat, like you're technically not swimming.

[435] Why are you not allowed to swim with them?

[436] Because for environmental reasons.

[437] Like people, dickheads would go up and harass them.

[438] Carve the name and the whale or something.

[439] Yeah, exactly.

[440] You need to give them their space.

[441] Right.

[442] And so I had a snorkel and goggles on.

[443] And this huge thing just comes looming out of the water.

[444] It's the size of a fucking bus.

[445] This mammal that breathes air, like, that eats these times.

[446] I mean, the miracle of, it blows my mind.

[447] Of diversity of life.

[448] Of biodiversity of life.

[449] of biodiversity of this incredible planet that we live on.

[450] And then it just sort of sinks down into the crystal blue water until I can just sort of make it out.

[451] And then it's just disappeared and it's all just blue on anything.

[452] I mean, it was like, I don't want to sound too wacky, but it was spiritual.

[453] I mean, you come out of that and you're like, that thing is just, that was born.

[454] That like squirted out of another whale's vagina and then grew up.

[455] And now it's just, now it's doing its thing in the Pacific.

[456] Well, they're so paradigm shifting because of their mass. and the oddness of them.

[457] Well, even dolphins.

[458] I did this thing last summer where me and my whole family were in the Big Island, and you go on this dolphin excursion where they take you on a boat and they find these pods of wild dolphins, and you just jump into the water with the dolphins, with snorkels.

[459] So you're there swimming around, and, you know, I did it with my, at the time, she was five.

[460] I did it with my five -year -old.

[461] I'm like holding her hand and taking her with these dolphins, and we're looking down with our goggles and these dolphins are swimming right under you amazing it's fucking so beautiful it's nuts i was in the water in in australia uh in byron bay and was and there are occasional shark attacks there and caught a glimpse of movement out of the side of the side of my eye oh fuck and was like oh fuck and looked over and could see like a shape and a fin pierced the the water and then like what that moment where time just stands still and you're like Holy shit.

[462] And then the back just arched out of the water.

[463] And I was like, oh, thank fucking Lord, you dolphin.

[464] Oh, you fucker.

[465] Oh, God.

[466] And then this whole pot of dolphins just diving through the waves.

[467] I was like, oh, my God.

[468] Yeah, there was a video off of Maui, or excuse me, off of Malibu, really recently, where these people were flying a drone over Malibu, and it was only, I don't think, maybe one or 200 yards away from swimmers and surfers.

[469] and there's this fucking monster great white just swimming around out there looking for something to chomp on and they're out there apparently like really common off of Malibu and they're realizing that now because of drones because people fly those drones and have you ever done those?

[470] I haven't operated it myself no. It's another aspect of virtual reality.

[471] It's fascinating.

[472] You put these virtual reality goggles on and you put a camera on this drone and as the drone is flying you feel like you're flying.

[473] I did that in the Pacific Northwest when we were looking for Bigfoot Duncan and I, coincidentally, and this drone is flying over the treetops, and it really does, you have this sensation of flight.

[474] That's what I want, because I used to want to be a pilot.

[475] I'm a huge aviation buff.

[476] Like, I'm part of the travel hacking community, the bunch of nerds who figure out ways to fly first class all over the place using credit card frequent fly miles and all these, like, travel hacking.

[477] Travel hacking.

[478] I didn't know that was real.

[479] Yeah, it's great.

[480] I mean, I fly around the world in first class at least two or three times a year.

[481] as many times as I have time for.

[482] On flights that would cost $20 ,000 or $30 ,000.

[483] I mean, you know, a flight from here to Australia in first class on a good airline is $22 ,000.

[484] And you hack it?

[485] Yeah, and you just use points.

[486] Use miles.

[487] But so I'm a huge...

[488] You look like you think that I'm committing a crime.

[489] No. I'm not...

[490] Just your own little insecurities.

[491] Coming out.

[492] I don't know.

[493] I feel like I'm insane in an interaction with law enforcement, Joe.

[494] So, um, but who's credit card?

[495] are you using?

[496] No comment.

[497] But I've always, I mean, I reckon flight would be the most amazing thing.

[498] I'd love to, I've been meaning to get around to like learning to hang glide or paraglider, one of those types of things.

[499] I think that would be a great hobby.

[500] Well, have you seen the new inside of planes that they're building?

[501] Where they're just out of PCD screens?

[502] Oh, yeah, I'm not sure they're going to do that.

[503] But you mean passenger planes where the interior shows you, the exterior?

[504] I've seen the mock -ups of that.

[505] Yeah, well, apparently they're thinking about making it or they're in development.

[506] meant, but if it becomes a reality, the ultimate goal is you're going to be flying and essentially what feels like a convertible.

[507] Yeah.

[508] Because the entire top of the plane is going to be a screen, and you're going to be able to look up and see the actual sky above you.

[509] I mean, they could do it on the floor as well if they wanted to.

[510] Sure.

[511] They'd freak you out, feel like you're just sitting in a chair flying through space.

[512] Oh, my God.

[513] I sometimes wonder what the experience would have been like for, like, the people on the Malaysia Airlines plane that was blown up over Ukraine, where, like, all of a sudden, you know, one minute you're at 34 ,000 feet.

[514] And then, because those explosions, the way that those anti -aircraft missiles go is they blow up outside the plane, just immediately outside it.

[515] And then they, all of the shrapnel shatters the plane and blows it apart.

[516] Yeah.

[517] So do they shoot that thing down or did a bomb blow up on the plane?

[518] They shot it down.

[519] Who did it?

[520] The Russians shot a plane down for?

[521] Yeah, you remember the Malaysia Airlines plane that went down?

[522] M .H. They proved who shot that day?

[523] Yeah, basically.

[524] So Putin was arming, it wasn't intentional.

[525] They didn't know it was a passenger plane.

[526] So it was during the Ukrainian, Putin had annexed Crimea and was basically fermenting a revolution in Ukraine because he resented the Ukrainian government being pro -Western and pro -American.

[527] And so they were sending in Russian special forces in, like not in Russian uniforms, but our Secret Service guys all know that they are Russian -backed and Russian finance.

[528] They're using military hardware.

[529] that only Russia could have gotten them, that a rag -tag team of Ukrainian rebel separatists would never have been able to get on their own, such as an anti -aircraft missile that can shoot a plane out of the sky from 34 ,000 feet.

[530] Now, there are lots of conspiracy theories that are put out by Moscow about this, because of course Russia doesn't accept it.

[531] They think that it was the West.

[532] They think that it was the Ukrainians or whatever.

[533] But there was a Malaysia Airlines jet that was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, full of quite a lot of people who were heading to Melbourne actually which is why I did quite a few stories on it and they were heading to Melbourne for a big AIDS conference was the big national AIDS conference so actually a lot of the world's best best AIDS scientists and AIDS researchers died in that crash and they were just flying and they'd been in the air for a few hours and they were going over Ukrainian airspace and the rebels saw a speck in the sky and it assumed that it wouldn't be a passenger plane Why do they assume that?

[534] I think that there was a warning that passenger jets shouldn't be going over that area.

[535] So they thought it was a military plane?

[536] Yeah, they assumed that it was a military plane.

[537] Wow.

[538] And they used one of these huge anti -aircraft things and it's self -guided, it's heat -seeking, so it goes straight to the thing and then just as it's next to it explodes.

[539] And the plane splits in two and just literally drops out of the sky.

[540] And I sometimes wonder, like what is the experience when you're sitting there?

[541] Do you have a half a second to know what's happening?

[542] I mean, you must, right?

[543] The deceleration is so fast that I've heard scientists say you wouldn't really know what's happening.

[544] You'd just sort of, you'd pass out because all of a sudden you're going from, what, 500 miles an hour down to rapid, rapid deceleration.

[545] Obviously, all of a sudden it's...

[546] No, yeah, there's no air.

[547] There's no air anymore.

[548] There's, it's freezing cold.

[549] But, I mean, some people, I would have imagined, would be momentarily aware that something horrible has happened and that suddenly it's cold and that they're tumbling out of the sky.

[550] It's kind of weird to...

[551] So I don't want that kind of flight, Joe.

[552] I don't know why that popped into my head, that whole story, but I want some kind of flight.

[553] Yeah, that's not good.

[554] Yeah.

[555] It'd be amazing.

[556] On the question of virtual reality, do you think, do you not think that we are so fundamentally creatures of community, of communion, of communication, that this dystopian vision of all of us just sitting solo with our headsets on having our own experiences is unlikely.

[557] I tend to think that there are going to be ways, that we will find ways to use it to connect us more rather than less.

[558] Because what makes it anything that's not a gimmick?

[559] Like I don't know, I can't foresee what virtual reality will become.

[560] Like when film was invented, they started out just by doing, here's an image of a steam train.

[561] And people are like, oh my goodness, it looks like there's a steam train.

[562] But no one knew what the fuck to do with it.

[563] It took a while.

[564] It took years.

[565] It took decades before the craft and art of cinematography and filmmaking became a thing.

[566] And I don't know that we know yet what virtual reality will become.

[567] At the moment, it strikes me as just something like, whoa!

[568] It'll become everything you can become.

[569] It's not going to become any one thing.

[570] It's not going to go in only one direction.

[571] All these directions that we're proposing are not just possible, but most likely inevitable.

[572] And whether or not we're creatures of community, there's a lot of people that see community online.

[573] And that's the only way they get community.

[574] And it's very problematic.

[575] And a lot of them, when you find out, like, who they are as people, they're really fucked up.

[576] And one of the reasons why they're seeking community online is because they don't have community in the actual physical world.

[577] And they're disenfranchised and they're loners or they're, you know, they're on the spectrum or there's a bunch of different factors, a bunch of different social misfits that are finding community online.

[578] I know places we can go where you can see the same people online literally 18 hours a day every day Some people that are on disability and they get checks and they never leave the house and all they do is pay for their internet connection and food and that is where they exist and that is really common So if that's really common, you know, there's probably a million plus people out there that are doing that every day What's going to stop them from going virtual?

[579] Oh, they will Yeah, they will and I think a lot of other people will as well if you think about what we're doing with phones You know, how many times you've gone to a restaurant, you see a table full of seven people, no one's talking to each other, everyone's staring at their phone.

[580] I mean, this is a form of virtual reality.

[581] You're going into the reality that exists on your phone, and you're like, hmm, let's see what's going on?

[582] You're constantly updating it and constantly checking your Facebook feed to see who's posted something interesting.

[583] You're clicking on videos, and instead of talking to each other, you're showing each other some shit that's on your phone.

[584] That is really common right now.

[585] It is.

[586] It's a big fucking problem, I think.

[587] I think it's a deeper problem than we know.

[588] Ari Sheffir and Big J. O 'Kerson did a podcast where they were on the roof of this building and they were peeping -tombing on this couple.

[589] This couple's about to have sex and they both start talking on their phones.

[590] They both start playing with their phones.

[591] The woman is straddling this man and she's looking at her phone.

[592] And the guy's underneath the girl and he starts looking at his phone.

[593] I want to know why Ari Shafir is spying on people.

[594] That's what he does.

[595] He's a pervert.

[596] He's a creep.

[597] But I think it's, I don't know what it's doing to our.

[598] heads but like because like so a friend of a friend of mine is a stand up here in LA and he not first he got rid of his smartphone in favor of a flip phone or he did that too and then he got rid of his flip phone in favor of a home landline with an old -fashioned answering machine with a tape in it because he feels like he enjoy he thinks there's a virtue in being bored there's something to be in bored yep that that Your brain needs the space of having to conjure up imagination in its own right in order to lead you to the muse, because you never know when it's going to hit.

[599] So, you know, constantly, I mean, I think back to when I was a kid, and if you made arrangements to go and see a movie with a buddy of yours, you know, when I was 15, and you said, we'll just meet at the movie theater at 5.

[600] and they were going to be late, there was no way for you to know that they were going to be seven minutes late, and during those seven minutes there was nothing for you to do.

[601] And it's amazing to me that I'm amazed that that's the case.

[602] It's amazing to me that now I can't even really imagine just standing on a street corner outside a movie theatre for seven minutes, being totally unruffled by the fact that a friend is seven minutes late, and being perfectly comfortable just doing what, gazing at the sky, looking at passes by, Yeah, that's what people have done for thousands of years when they had to wait for something.

[603] And that space, that just psychic space of not having the ability to check who's talking about me on Twitter, what's going on on Facebook, what am I missing?

[604] What's happening?

[605] What's the latest photo from my friends?

[606] What's the latest news thing that's coming down?

[607] Just standing there.

[608] Life used to be punctuated by moments like that all the time.

[609] And I wonder whether those are the moments in which you come up with ideas for the book.

[610] that you want to ride or the stand -up bit that you want to do or the painting that you want to paint or the I don't know the chair that you want to make well they can or you can just actually work you know there's a lot of people think that the muse is supposed to come to you when you're bored how about you sit in front of your desk you fucking lazy bitch and actually right you know there's that too I mean I think there's there is absolutely an argument for not being constantly entertained by electronics there's absolutely an argument for that but I don't know if that's the best one.

[611] I think...

[612] What is?

[613] Well, I think reflection and time alone.

[614] And also, I think the way to mitigate that is discipline.

[615] I think you have to have discipline.

[616] You have to have no when to...

[617] A lot of people don't.

[618] I don't, and I appreciate moments of...

[619] You know, I used to love flying before you had seatback televisions because it was a good excuse to just read and just gaze out the window and just think, now I watch TV.

[620] Do you?

[621] Yeah.

[622] Because I'm an undisciplined shit.

[623] But you're not, though.

[624] But you're not.

[625] You get a lot of things.

[626] done.

[627] I do, but don't, I mean, I like a lot of creative people, beat myself up a lot for not getting more done.

[628] I mean, I do as well, and I get a lot done.

[629] Yeah, but I think, I think everyone looks at you and thinks, fuck, I wish I was more like Joe's, that I just did a lot of shit.

[630] He seems to have a shit together.

[631] Guys like you and Tim Ferriss, you like, and Anthony Robbins and stuff, you're always doing shit.

[632] Yeah, but.

[633] Whereas a lot of us, other creative people spend a lot of time, like, scratching our heads, scratching our asses.

[634] Here's the dirty secret.

[635] I'm never satisfied.

[636] I hate everything I hate everything I do I hate everything I do If a podcast comes up great I'm happy and everything like that But I get very little satisfaction from it All I think is the next one's got to be good too Let's make sure the guest is good Let's make sure the subject matter is good You're fucked on that today I hope gad was good This is easy You're easy fella You're a good guest But I've had some guests before We're like oh Jesus I got to do all the heavy lifting here This motherfuckers aren't even finishing his sentences I've had people like that before especially people that don't know how to do podcasts or they haven't done them before.

[637] Yeah, I mean, podcasting itself is kind of a work of art. It's a very pretentious way to describe it.

[638] But, I mean, it is a creation.

[639] And there's something that's going on.

[640] You have to be aware of how people are going to perceive this creation, how they're going to ingest it.

[641] And it has to be as smooth as you can make it.

[642] And you have to learn from your mistakes.

[643] And you have to make sure you're not talking over each other too much.

[644] But you also can't let someone ramble too much as well.

[645] Sometimes people get boring.

[646] They just drone on about things in their own.

[647] their own space and you've got to kind of pull them out of their space.

[648] So there's like a craft to it all.

[649] But yeah, I do a lot of different things.

[650] But one of the reasons why I do a lot of different things is that they all kind of symbiotically connect together in some sort of a weird way in that I love them all.

[651] I enjoy doing them all, whether it's comedy or MMA commentary or podcasting.

[652] They all do sort of flow together.

[653] I mean, it's interesting that you say that like there's craft to podcasting in terms of how, and we were talking about this a little bit last night with Sam Harris on my podcast about when should you interrupt and when should you not not interrupt?

[654] Because I find that sometimes I'll be criticized for interrupting somebody on my podcast.

[655] And as far as I'm concerned, the last thing I want my podcast to be, or any form of entertaining conversation to be, is just a sequence of speeches that two people give to one another.

[656] I mean, this is one of the things that's appealing about your podcast.

[657] You know, you come into this with a two to three hour stretch ahead of you with absolutely no idea what's going to happen and no preconceptions about where it's going to go.

[658] And the joy of it is the dance, right?

[659] Is the interplay.

[660] Like, I don't know what we're going to be talking about in five minutes time, and neither do you.

[661] So it's interesting to find out.

[662] And I feel like if you are too nice to other people and don't interrupt them in order to create that dance, then there's basically one person standing on the sidelines and another person trying to do the two -step or the flamenco by themselves.

[663] But that depends on who the guest is.

[664] There's certain guests like Dr. Rhonda Patrick is a perfect example.

[665] All I do is wind her up and let her go.

[666] I mean, I interact with her a little bit, but as little as possible, and she's just such a dynamo that all I have to do is ask her questions about the mechanisms of certain vitamin absorption or whatever we're talking about, cold shock therapy, whatever the fuck it is.

[667] and she just goes.

[668] So in that case, if I wanted to chime in and have a normal conversation, I'd fuck up the flow of the conversation.

[669] Right, right.

[670] So you've got to know.

[671] You've got to have the, yeah.

[672] Whereas you and I, we always have these silly conversations.

[673] It goes all over the place.

[674] We're laughing.

[675] We're serious.

[676] It's very fluid and it goes back and forth.

[677] But you, like I, am not a fucking medical expert.

[678] No. I mean, we're not experts in anything, which is kind of what I like.

[679] I like being a polymath.

[680] I like having a lot of fingers and a lot of different pies.

[681] A polymath?

[682] A polymath.

[683] A person who is...

[684] I've never heard that before.

[685] Can we get a definition on polymath, Jamie?

[686] I understand it to be a person who's interested in and good at several different disciplines and doesn't really focus on one.

[687] I prefer renaissance man. A renaissance man. A person of wide -ranging knowledge or learning.

[688] Well, expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas.

[689] That's an expertise, many expertise.

[690] A person who's known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

[691] Well, that's the wiki.

[692] I was...

[693] No, look at the one above.

[694] I was using the general, the general use.

[695] Wide -ranging knowledge or learning.

[696] Yeah.

[697] Well, that's just a more pronounced version of it.

[698] Yeah, okay.

[699] Polymath, I like it.

[700] How much time do you spend distracted by your phone?

[701] I try very little, more, less lately than ever.

[702] I've been really good about it over the last few months.

[703] Like, I went to, I was in the Nevada high country in the desert last week.

[704] Just now?

[705] For a whole week.

[706] I love this.

[707] I love that, I love that, just for your listeners.

[708] So I book a trip to L .A. I have a few meetings out here.

[709] I'm always here at the last minute, so I can never plan in advance.

[710] I send Joe a text.

[711] Don't hear from him for a couple of days.

[712] He gets back to me. Sorry, I've been in the wilderness.

[713] My image of you is like, you didn't have any cellarphone reception.

[714] You're out in the woods, and in my brain, you're like, you're naked on the back of a horse, like shooting elk.

[715] No, I was trying to shoot mule deer.

[716] I was in the desert.

[717] I was camping.

[718] And I was with a group of friends And we were on a hunting trip And we were there for seven days No cell phone reception No Pete We occasionally saw another hunter But that's it We're just out there on public land In the wilderness And chasing after deer I gotta do more of that Seven days, no cell phone No email No There was five of us total One two, three, four, five, six Six of us total Great Yeah What did you eat?

[719] Split off into two groups We brought food brought freeze -dried foods these things called Mountain Ops you add water to them there's freeze -dried foods and dehydrated foods and then we brought some whole food some actual real foods we ate that all by the like the fourth or fifth day and then we eating that shitty freeze -dried stuff but we're hoping we were going to eat a deer but we struck out but it was a very fun time and even just for the just the release of just being disconnected from society yeah but the point is I try to do that several times a year I do that maybe five times a year, but more important than that, I leave that fucking thing alone more than I've ever done before.

[720] I treat that thing like if I spend too much time with it, it's going to give me a disease.

[721] I think it does.

[722] I think it does.

[723] And I don't know why, I don't know what's changed.

[724] I'm trying to put my finger on what it is about my relationship, especially to Twitter, that has changed.

[725] Because it's a very...

[726] Assholes.

[727] Yeah, is that what it is?

[728] You get in contact with so many assholes.

[729] You realize, like, in my real life, how many people do I get in contact with that make me feel awful?

[730] Very few.

[731] Almost zero.

[732] Almost zero.

[733] So you choose to hang out with your friends.

[734] You choose to hang out with your acquaintances, all the people that you know, you interact with people.

[735] And even if I meet someone and they're a stranger, 99 .9 times, when I meet them, it's a pleasant interaction.

[736] It's very rare that I find someone who's like really truly rude or where it can't be worked out, you know, where you can't walk away from it with a handshake and feeling good.

[737] But this thing, this two -dimensional conversation where you don't know who the person is.

[738] You don't know where they're coming from.

[739] You don't know what their agenda is.

[740] You don't know what their life is like.

[741] You don't know anything about them.

[742] And they say something, and you react to that 130 -plus characters.

[743] So there are two problems, right?

[744] One is the absence of the distractedness that it kind of fosters in our lives.

[745] The fact that it robs, at least in my experience, I only speak for me. It robs me of moments of Zen that could exist throughout the day.

[746] Right.

[747] By plunging by, you know, we know physiologically that it gives you a little dopamine hit every time you notice that someone's mentioned you on Twitter and said something, right?

[748] I mean, you get a true that they've done like studies with people?

[749] Yeah, you get a little hit.

[750] You get a little drug hit.

[751] I mean, just a tiny drip, drip, drip.

[752] It's like having a little piece of candy.

[753] Well, I could just get dripped all day then, right?

[754] Just sit around and just drip away.

[755] Well, people do.

[756] Drip, drip, drip.

[757] Yeah, something's fucking crazy, man. And so there's that.

[758] There's the fact that I'm constantly getting that little hit by, by, by, logging on.

[759] What is that an energy thing?

[760] Are you reading?

[761] This is your...

[762] Alpha brain?

[763] Alpha brain, yeah.

[764] Want some?

[765] Yeah, sure.

[766] Is it gonna...

[767] What does it contain?

[768] I mean, I know I should know this because I know that you're the guy.

[769] Ah, don't worry about it.

[770] Doesn't matter.

[771] I'll talk you off the air about it.

[772] All of your listeners.

[773] Hannibal sent me...

[774] Oh, no, he did.

[775] He burned through them all last night.

[776] There was only two left.

[777] Hannibal stole it.

[778] He sent me a text message this morning laughing about how he stole all my alpha brain.

[779] And I got his address.

[780] I'm like, just give me a address.

[781] I'll send you about.

[782] Did he say anything else about last night?

[783] No, no, no. Okay, good.

[784] I don't want him to feel bad about it.

[785] No, well, he's going to feel bad when it comes out.

[786] Yeah, all right.

[787] You know, getting around that.

[788] If you release it, he's going to feel bad.

[789] Certainly not going to not release it.

[790] You know, maybe Sam will feel bad.

[791] I don't know.

[792] I doubt it.

[793] Well, this comes back to Twitter.

[794] They'll feel bad if they read Twitter and they won't feel bad if they don't read Twitter.

[795] You've got to stay off Twitter.

[796] And so this is interesting.

[797] So in addition to it being a kind of a little drug that you keep in your pocket that stops you from ever just being alone with yourself.

[798] Have you seen that Louis C .K. bit, by the way, about he, I think he's on Conan where he's talking about why he doesn't want to give his daughters a phone because he's like, you know that he was like he was stopped in traffic at lights and he felt something inside that he didn't like, which was like the experience of being human.

[799] And so he reached for his phone and then he realized that that's what we do, like the moment we start to feel the great emptiness of being alive, we reached for our phone.

[800] But on one occasion, he didn't reach for his phone, and he pulled over the side of the road and, like, started bawling his eyes out, and it was so cathartic and so beautiful.

[801] And then he recovered, and he, like, had this wonderful, spiritual, wholesome experience.

[802] Hold the fuck on.

[803] He just started crying.

[804] Why start crying?

[805] He'd been listening to some song.

[806] Like, there's some song on the radio, and it was so beautiful.

[807] Anyway, he waxes all lyrical and gets all poetic about it.

[808] Louis C .K., growing a vagina.

[809] Right in front of our eyes.

[810] You heard it here first, Louis.

[811] Joe Rogan says you out of a vagina.

[812] Sorry, go ahead But anyway, his point is like That's what part of the experience of being human is all about Crying on the side of the road with a car Listening to music Created by a machine Yeah, so human All right, maybe that's the wrong example Fucking pussy But so in addition to that Then you're talking about People are tweeting Louis right now Did you hear?

[813] Did you hear?

[814] He doesn't even have a Twitter anymore That's wise deleted his Twitter.

[815] Well, he sells out Madison Square Garden.

[816] Yeah, what does he need?

[817] He doesn't need a fucking Twitter.

[818] So disappointed.

[819] I was one of these schmucks who bought a ticket to see him at Madison Square Garden in a couple of weeks.

[820] And now I'm thinking, I used to see him when he was at the cellar.

[821] Like, I was at the Austin, Aspen Comedy Festival and saw him, you know, with 50 people in the room.

[822] Why am I going to be sitting?

[823] I'll feel like it's not going to be the same.

[824] In the garden?

[825] Well, it's definitely not going to be the same because it's a different show and a different day.

[826] You know what I mean?

[827] Yeah, well, so what?

[828] You wanted to see him.

[829] It's a stadium.

[830] So you could see him at the comedy stories here all the time.

[831] Can he just come over to my place and do it in my living room?

[832] Shit just got weird.

[833] He's crying.

[834] He's crying.

[835] I'm going to be on virtual reality watching porn.

[836] He's going to be doing a bit.

[837] Yeah, man, it's going to be different.

[838] He's doing a big, gigantic show, and he's, you know, making a lot more money doing it that way.

[839] Sure is.

[840] Yeah, well, he apparently emptied out his bank account to create that animated series.

[841] No, Horace and Pete.

[842] Yeah, the animated series.

[843] That's not animated.

[844] Horace?

[845] No, Horace and Peter's is like an old school kind of multi -cam, no studio audience.

[846] I never watched it.

[847] Somebody told me it was animated.

[848] Sitcomy thing.

[849] I just assumed they were right.

[850] I thought it was animated.

[851] No, it's not.

[852] Oh, wow.

[853] It has a drawing as its icon.

[854] Oh, that's what it is.

[855] Oh, huh.

[856] So what is?

[857] Is it good?

[858] It is innovative in a way that only an orteur like Louis would have the balls to pull off.

[859] Is that a tactful way of dodging that question?

[860] So don't get it.

[861] Just kidding.

[862] I watched the first...

[863] So he fucks with you, right?

[864] Like, do you remember his original Louis, Lucky Louie on HBO?

[865] Like, that was done to sort of look like the honeymooners and, like, with bad sets that kind of shook and, like, you know, a bad studio audience.

[866] It was like a very sort of 1960s sitcom feel.

[867] Right.

[868] And everyone criticized it because they're like, oh, the production values are terrible.

[869] And he's like, well, yeah, we fucking know that.

[870] It's not like HBO doesn't have the money to get a good set if we wanted a good set.

[871] It's supposed to look like an old sitcom.

[872] But it's a very sort of meta, like fuck you concept.

[873] And in a similar way, what he's done here is he's basically done a dramatic sort of almost 1970s English style play that is shot with no studio audience with very, very, very long scenes and long takes that's very dark and a bit.

[874] whimsical and funny, but I only got through a few episodes, and then, although I respected it, it just wasn't a way that I wanted to spend my evening, if that makes sense.

[875] Yeah, that does make sense.

[876] You mean, it's a piece of art. Yeah.

[877] And also, when you're creating something, like, especially when it comes to, like, a sitcom or something along those lines, it takes a long time for it to find its legs, for you to figure out, like, what the characters are all about and what, how the scenes are going to play out.

[878] Every sitcom that I've ever seen, or the ones that I've been a part of, they take, many, many, many episodes to create to figure out what it actually is and then along the way, like, you have to have someone who believes in it and then they're financing it, funding it.

[879] And he apparently did all that shit on his own, but emptied out his fucking bank account.

[880] And he's already made it back.

[881] So now everything from now, he hasn't made any sales of it.

[882] So he's made it all back just from internet sales, according to him.

[883] And so whatever sale he ends up making, if he sells it to Netflix or whatever, he's apparently waiting for the Emmys because he wants to, he's hoping he'll get some.

[884] and then we'll be in a stronger negotiating position.

[885] But all of that will be profit, 100 % profit.

[886] That's interesting.

[887] So he did make the money back.

[888] So he complained about it.

[889] And then after he complained about it, he made more money.

[890] Is that what it is?

[891] I think he claims that was just a bullshit media spin.

[892] He was on Howard, I think.

[893] I think he was on Howard Stern's show or something.

[894] Oh, he lied?

[895] No, no, he didn't lie.

[896] What he was saying, his point is that he was saying that he spent all of his money.

[897] And he was, like, joking about how, like, you know, I spent all my money on this thing and I have no idea if it's going to work.

[898] And then some fucking clickbait media outlet was like, Louis C .K. broke after losing all of his money on this show.

[899] He was like, no, I never expected to get my money back immediately.

[900] This is an experiment.

[901] I put my money in.

[902] It's an investment.

[903] And now, later, it's paid off.

[904] But wasn't he saying that that was all the money that he had?

[905] And he was just doing that and then he had to go on tour?

[906] I mean, that was part of what he was saying, that he was going on tour for more money.

[907] Because he had emptied his bank account.

[908] Yes.

[909] But that's different from losing your money.

[910] Right.

[911] He didn't lose the money.

[912] He invested his money in this thing.

[913] And while he was waiting for it to pay, yeah, for it to pay itself off.

[914] That makes sense.

[915] A bunch of news articles came out about how he had no money.

[916] Well, that's what people want to hear.

[917] They don't want to hear.

[918] What a wonderful investment and all paid off.

[919] And what creative venture that was profitable.

[920] Nobody wants to hear that.

[921] They want to hear, he's a loser now.

[922] He's sucking dicks for homemade wine.

[923] Homemade wine.

[924] That's just, that's what people are gross, man. They want to hear about failure.

[925] Like hearing about a guy that has a, you know, a reasonable sort of a risk and it pays off.

[926] It's not a great story.

[927] He's already successful.

[928] That's not.

[929] Nobody wants to hear that.

[930] Why are we like that, Joe?

[931] Why do we want to hear that bad?

[932] Because it's exciting to see accidents.

[933] Do you want to see someone to fly by in a motorcycle?

[934] You want to see someone fly by and another guy changes lanes and that guy goes, fucking.

[935] Changes lanes, change his lanes.

[936] I want to see blood.

[937] And at least see him flying.

[938] I saw a fucking VW beetle on the highway on the way here.

[939] Chard, burned to a crisp on the side of the road with the cops around it.

[940] Is that a thing in Los Angeles that I should be aware of?

[941] Well, is that for insurance or something, or is it a massive accident?

[942] It could have been anything.

[943] We could have just been a fire, you know?

[944] How does a car catch fire?

[945] Well, didn't VW go through some weird fucking shit where they were lying about...

[946] Yeah, the diesel.

[947] But this was a VW.

[948] This was a beetle.

[949] Oh, no, old school one?

[950] Yeah, from the 70s.

[951] No, no, no, not the ones with the little fake daisies in the...

[952] Probably caught on fire.

[953] Those are shitboxes.

[954] Well, it definitely did that, Joe.

[955] All right, thanks for listening, everybody.

[956] That's the show.

[957] We solved it.

[958] This is like CSI, VW, Beetle.

[959] Okay.

[960] Joe fixed it.

[961] It was on fire.

[962] No, it was definitely on fire.

[963] I just don't know why.

[964] Have you ever been in a car that accidentally caught on fire?

[965] Actually, I have now that you mentioned it.

[966] Yeah, when I was a kid, we were staying in the UK and we were driving a friend's Jaguar.

[967] Or Jaguar.

[968] Jaguar, as American said, Jaguar.

[969] Jaguar.

[970] And it was one of the, it was incredibly expensive.

[971] This guy's a multi, multi -millionaire, big star in the UK.

[972] And so we are driving.

[973] He lends it to us for a weekend while we're there.

[974] and it's a 1960s vintage thing and we go out on a drive through the countryside and the car catches on fire so my parents had to pay to restore this vintage jaguar and you know wait a minute why are you responsible for this piece of shit catching on fire well he lent it to us it actually it was more than a weekend he was letting us use because he was out of the country I think we were staying there for a couple of weeks he was letting us use his place letting us drive his car.

[975] It's kind of the deal, you know?

[976] We're not going to accept money for it.

[977] Sort of, but whatever.

[978] A car does not catch on fire.

[979] Does if it's a 1960s vintage Jaguar.

[980] But it doesn't catch on fire because of your fault.

[981] No. Catch it's on fire because it's a piece of shit.

[982] But we got unlucky.

[983] So he let you a piece of shit.

[984] He knew it was a piece of shit because it's a 1960 car.

[985] You're driving it around and it acted like a piece of shit and caught on fire and then he wants you to pay.

[986] I would have been like, fuck you, buddy.

[987] How about you get your wires checked and I sue you for almost killing me with your shitbox car?

[988] He didn't want us to pay.

[989] He didn't want us to pay.

[990] We just paid.

[991] How much was it?

[992] I don't remember.

[993] I was a child.

[994] Well, not a child.

[995] Probably a lot of money.

[996] Probably about 12.

[997] It was a lot.

[998] I remember my parents feeling like it was a lot of money.

[999] And it was because, like, smoke just started pouring out of the back seat in between my parents.

[1000] Did it even have a fucking fire extinguisher?

[1001] No. Fucking shit box.

[1002] Yeah.

[1003] God damn.

[1004] I'm mad.

[1005] I know.

[1006] I'm mad now.

[1007] British engineering excellence.

[1008] And he was a wealthy guy?

[1009] Very wealthy.

[1010] Well, he's a piece of shit.

[1011] That's why he had such an expensive car.

[1012] Your parents weren't rich?

[1013] They were not rich.

[1014] And he made them pay?

[1015] He didn't make them pay.

[1016] They refused to accept his offer of, to reimburse them.

[1017] Oh.

[1018] So they were, they, they insisted on paying.

[1019] Yeah.

[1020] Wow.

[1021] He should have bought him some with that money.

[1022] He probably did.

[1023] My parents are nice people, Joe.

[1024] I come from good Aussie stock.

[1025] I appreciate that.

[1026] I'm sure you do.

[1027] From a friend of theirs.

[1028] Yeah, but it's, it's, that's tricky, man. First of all, what a wonderful guy for letting you borrow this 1960 -something job.

[1029] Those old Jaguars are so bad.

[1030] ass -looking too with that long front nose yeah god what a fucking no this was even before so I'm trying to think of what model that is with the very very long nose this is the one before that which was a rounder around a rounder kind of shape from memory pull it up jammy can't remember what it is what what was the shape of jags in the late in the late 60s um wasn't talk about a gas guzzler I mean you know it's an V12 wasn't it yeah to be a V I'm not even sure it might have been an inline eight would that make sense could have been a V12 I don't know I'm making not things up.

[1031] I don't know anything about old Jags.

[1032] I don't know why I said V -12.

[1033] It was, I mean, it was certainly eight or 12.

[1034] It was not, you know, it was not nothing.

[1035] Hmm.

[1036] It was expensive.

[1037] Is that it?

[1038] Yeah, it was one of those.

[1039] Whoa.

[1040] 1960s Jaguar MK2.

[1041] Wow, what a pretty car.

[1042] Incredible.

[1043] It was a kind of car where when you stopped at the lights, people would wind down their windows and be like, beautiful car, mate.

[1044] See, the one next to it is the one I was thinking of, the red one?

[1045] What is that one?

[1046] That's like a James Bond style.

[1047] That's so dope.

[1048] I love the.

[1049] Oh, an E -type.

[1050] That's an E -type.

[1051] 1960s E -type.

[1052] Those are so pretty.

[1053] You know, they make those now with modern underpinnings.

[1054] You can buy one of those.

[1055] These companies, they take an old Jaguar E -type, but they put a completely modern suspension and brakes and modern engine.

[1056] So you look like you're driving, like this 1960s car, but you're driving this.

[1057] That's a real new thing that they're doing.

[1058] It's called Resto Mods.

[1059] That's great.

[1060] Super common.

[1061] I have a 1965 Corvette like that.

[1062] Really?

[1063] Yeah.

[1064] I love Corvettes.

[1065] Yeah.

[1066] It's got...

[1067] 65.

[1068] What's a 60...

[1069] Can you show me a 65?

[1070] This is a picture of mine.

[1071] See, I did a video with Jay Leno.

[1072] We did Jay Leno's garage.

[1073] All right, okay.

[1074] Yep, yep, yep.

[1075] Oh, I'll check that episode out.

[1076] Yeah.

[1077] That'd be great.

[1078] I heard him on your show as well.

[1079] You had him on, right?

[1080] That's my car.

[1081] Oh, that's great.

[1082] I love those.

[1083] That's fantastic.

[1084] How many cars have you got?

[1085] I got a few.

[1086] You don't want to say...

[1087] You don't want to lose the common man touch?

[1088] I'm definitely not...

[1089] Well, yeah, I've lost it.

[1090] It's over.

[1091] Yeah.

[1092] But that has a 500 -horsepower LS1 supercharged engine under the hood.

[1093] And it only weighs like, it's probably less than 3 ,000 pounds, especially because it's a convertible.

[1094] At what point during this did Jay come in his pants?

[1095] Immediately.

[1096] Yeah.

[1097] We had to change pants four times.

[1098] He's an animal.

[1099] But it's...

[1100] Oh, speaking of coming in...

[1101] Oh, no, I won't even...

[1102] I'm not even going to go there.

[1103] I'll talk to you about it after the podcast.

[1104] You know, why?

[1105] You know, in the filter between your brain and your mouth, just there's no more floodgate.

[1106] Come on, man. No, it's just something personal in my life that I don't want to talk about.

[1107] Your call.

[1108] So, I just want to come back to...

[1109] Awkward segue.

[1110] How do we go from...

[1111] The problem is that the actual thing is so much less interesting than whatever is in everybody's brain.

[1112] So, dear listener, here's a piece of advice.

[1113] Whatever you are thinking about right now, you heard me talk about coming, that is more interesting than the reality of the story that I was going to tell you.

[1114] So just hang on to that.

[1115] Listen, folks, whatever he tells me after the show, next podcast, I'll tell you.

[1116] I will break our bond of trust.

[1117] I will violate our privacy.

[1118] No, it basically had to do.

[1119] I'll tell you the skeleton of the story, which is that there's a medical procedure that I am a part of at the moment, which requires.

[1120] me to potentially it's an IVF -related thing, right?

[1121] So, I had a meeting earlier this week.

[1122] IVF mean in vitro fertilization.

[1123] He's trying to make a baby.

[1124] Yes, conceivably.

[1125] Josh Zep's trying to make a baby.

[1126] So I didn't say it was my baby necessarily.

[1127] Test tube robot baby.

[1128] That's right, a super fucking superhuman.

[1129] I'm basically trying to create like, it'll be like the movie twins, you know, creating the ultimate superhuman machine.

[1130] But I had a meeting at 11 a .m. on the same morning that I had to donate my sperm sample this this week a few days ago and so I'm in the meeting and like it's not going that well I'm not really feeling it so then I was like guys I'd be jerking off right now no I literally I literally said to them these really these important entertainment types I was like guys I got a I got to be blunt earlier this morning I came into a bucket and created a human what the fuck did you do before 11 a .m. You were that bored with the conversation?

[1131] Yeah, I'm out of here.

[1132] Just blew it up.

[1133] You were doing Huff Post Live.

[1134] Why did you stop doing that?

[1135] The whole thing basically gradually imploded.

[1136] Yeah.

[1137] I got out a founding editor of the Huffington Post who sort of helped create it with Ariana had been fired slash supposedly resigned in November.

[1138] And now Ariana was fired slash supposedly resigned what last week or two weeks ago.

[1139] How do you fire the Huffington of the...

[1140] The Huffington Post.

[1141] That's what happens and you ask other people for money.

[1142] Yeah, basically.

[1143] So she, so HuffPost was bought by AOL in 2011.

[1144] Wait a minute.

[1145] AOL has money?

[1146] Yeah, well, basically, AOL actually does have money because they have some.

[1147] They get money.

[1148] It's really funny.

[1149] Two ways.

[1150] One is they've got some proprietary ad software, which is helpful for websites.

[1151] And the second is, a lot of people in America still unknowingly pay for AOL .com because back when they used to sell you, well, they don't know that they don't have to anymore.

[1152] Like when they were selling, like in the 90s, they would send out CDs apparently.

[1153] I wasn't here then, but like AOL was the place where Americans got online.

[1154] And so those, here we go.

[1155] 2 .1 million people, CNN money.

[1156] 2 .1 million people still use AOL dial -up.

[1157] And they pay.

[1158] They pay for that.

[1159] Scroll that down.

[1160] I want to read that.

[1161] Oh my God.

[1162] 70 % of Americans are connected to the internet.

[1163] and over much faster broadband.

[1164] The average UFs broadband speed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, 200 times faster than the 56K per second dial -up, even smartphones are more than 100 times faster than that.

[1165] Yeah, so the average AOL dial -up user is paying 20 bucks a month.

[1166] Whoa.

[1167] 20 bucks a month for dial -up speed.

[1168] They should pay you for dial -up.

[1169] So what is this people that just live in like really super rural areas?

[1170] Yeah, they probably can't get it.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] Or can get better.

[1173] That's right.

[1174] Or they're just old Hicks and they don't know better.

[1175] That's amazing.

[1176] So AOL basically, I mean, they say that AOL bought Huffington Post, but really it was Ariana essentially becoming a senior manager of AOL or whatever her title was at AOL, because AOL had no future.

[1177] And they were like, oh, Huff Post is cool with the kids, so let's get in on some of that action.

[1178] Oh, I see.

[1179] Then last year, Verizon bought AOL.

[1180] And in part of that whole shake -up, you know, she got ousted.

[1181] I mean, let's be frank.

[1182] She is eccentric and has her own hobby horses, like her...

[1183] I mean, she spends a lot of her time...

[1184] Is that what you're calling her boyfriends?

[1185] Is that hobby horses?

[1186] Is that a hobby horse a thing in America?

[1187] Is that her term?

[1188] I would think if I was an old rich lady, I'd have some hobby horses, though.

[1189] A hobby horse...

[1190] There's a lot of dudes that need money for the gym.

[1191] Yeah, sure.

[1192] No, I'm not implying that.

[1193] Studs and give them Viagran, send them over.

[1194] Do you want a fucking Jaguar or not, boy?

[1195] Get it hard.

[1196] Not a boy.

[1197] Toy.

[1198] A hobby horse is a hobby that is a personal interest that you spend way too much time on instead of, yeah.

[1199] I mean, it might be, it's probably an Australianism.

[1200] And she spends, in other words, she spends a lot of time going around the world giving speeches about why you should get more sleep.

[1201] Really?

[1202] Mm -hmm.

[1203] She's big into sleep.

[1204] That's it.

[1205] She wrote a whole book about it.

[1206] How much sleep do you need?

[1207] She wrote a whole book.

[1208] Really?

[1209] Yep.

[1210] And all it is is one of, you know those books where you basically know in the first page what the whole book is going to be, but then they just pat out the remaining 180 pages.

[1211] That's one of those.

[1212] Huh.

[1213] And it's just about how much you need to recover.

[1214] You don't get enough sleep.

[1215] Ariana Huffington, the sleep revolution.

[1216] Here it is.

[1217] The sleep revolution.

[1218] Transforming your life.

[1219] Listen, you're a rich lady.

[1220] Most people aren't rich.

[1221] They can't fucking sleep all the time, bitch.

[1222] The sleep revolution.

[1223] Do you know how many fucking people I know that are participating in that revolution unknowingly?

[1224] Just by being lazy bastards Comics Yeah There's a lot of comics Well I'll fucking call them Before noon They were like What did you call Oh totally Yeah I mean If it were up to me I would stay up very late And get up pretty late as well I mean some people Are just like that I felt bad about it And then I found out That Sam Harris and Tim Ferriss do it as well So fuck They stay up late And go to get up late Yeah Well I get my best work done Late at night When everyone's asleep And I almost feel I almost feel like It sounds so woo -woo But this is what I believe I believe there's a different feeling to the air at like two, three o 'clock in the morning because almost everyone is asleep.

[1225] And I feel like there's less signal.

[1226] I think you get something from people.

[1227] I think there's an intangible quality that people exude, that people express, that they broadcast.

[1228] And when you're around them, that's why certain people have bad energy and certain people have good energy and some people are warm, some people are weird.

[1229] I think there's a thing that we don't know how to quantify and that it's about people.

[1230] people.

[1231] And I think that it is entirely possible that there is a hum of a city, like a literally a feeling that you get when a bunch of people are thinking and awake and conscious.

[1232] And you get a different expression when those people are asleep.

[1233] And so I know that when I'm writing at two three o 'clock in the morning, which is when I do my best work, everybody else is conked out.

[1234] So I feel like I have more clarity.

[1235] I feel like I have more peace.

[1236] And I can, write better.

[1237] Might be total bullshit, but there might be something to it.

[1238] You're right, that is woo -woo.

[1239] Total woo -woo, right?

[1240] It's possible.

[1241] It's also possible that there are visual and auditory cues that just make it feel, make you feel like you're in a special place, right?

[1242] It's dark, there's no one moving, there's no one making noises.

[1243] Here's another reason why I might be interested in believing that.

[1244] Not what you're saying, but what I'm saying, is because when I go on these camping trips, He's hunting trips where no cell phone service.

[1245] There's a very different feeling to the world when there's no service.

[1246] You feel different.

[1247] Like you feel...

[1248] Wait, when your cell phone has no service?

[1249] No cell phone, no internet, no signals.

[1250] There's no nothing.

[1251] But how would the thinking hum of a human mind get transmitted through to your phone?

[1252] I don't.

[1253] Not to your phone.

[1254] I'm not saying it gets transmitted to your phone.

[1255] I'm thinking that there are signals that you are receiving all the time.

[1256] Like in this room, we have Wi -Fi.

[1257] there's cell phone, there's radio there's a lot of shit in the air That all of those waves somehow resonate You can sense them I don't know if you can But I know my computer can And I know my phone can But do you think you can sense The mental states of other human beings Which is what I thought you were saying It was what I was saying But I'm thinking that there's more than one kind of signal That is being expressed Not just by people But by society in general The hum of a city The buzz, the alarm Like you know that feeling you get of New York City, like, it's a lie.

[1258] Yes, absolutely.

[1259] You know, I wonder if that's not because you're dealing with, you know, seven million people stuffed into this little tiny area, stacked on top of each other.

[1260] It's definitely that.

[1261] The question is, what is the transmission mechanism by which that presence makes itself known?

[1262] I mean, I totally know what you mean about camping, because one of the most beautiful, I mean, places that I could ever be is in the outback at night.

[1263] Nothing around for miles.

[1264] I love deserts.

[1265] I love, you know, I drove through Nevada once, and I've done a couple of trips around Australia right deep into the middle of nowhere, and there's just something so, I mean, for a start, the blazing sky of just stars so bright that if anyone hasn't seen them, you would not believe that the sky could be that bright.

[1266] Yeah.

[1267] And then the sheer silence, the silence so silent, it's just almost a noise in itself.

[1268] It's almost a deafening noise in the absence of noise.

[1269] It's not just a silence.

[1270] I feel like it's an absence of signal.

[1271] It's a silence and an absence of signal.

[1272] I think we've become accustomed to the signal of a city, the signal of all the people and all the things that are being broadcasted around us and all the waves and all the different shit that we're experiencing unknowingly.

[1273] It might be bullshit.

[1274] But it might, I mean, there's people that really are concerned with Wi -Fi.

[1275] They're concerned with Wi -Fi because there's not.

[1276] a long history of us using Wi -Fi or even cellular signals.

[1277] We know for a fact that they interfere with bees.

[1278] Bees' form of communication gets interfered with by...

[1279] That's cell towers, right?

[1280] Cell towers and cell phone signals in general.

[1281] And that all these signals that are flying through the air that are reaching your and my phones and everyone else's phones are that bees are actually taking these things in, too.

[1282] And just imagine the world where bees before, you know, the 1990s, they're like hanging out, having a great time.

[1283] buzz, buzz, buzz, communicating with each other, buzz, buzz, buzz, and then all of a sudden they're here a jackhammer in the background.

[1284] Don't know, like, what the fuck is that?

[1285] Well, they think that this, they think that sonar is one explanation for why whales beach themselves and why so many migratory patterns underwater are fucked up as well.

[1286] Have you heard that theory?

[1287] Totally makes sense.

[1288] You know, the military and the, the U .S. military does all kinds of, I don't even, I can't even remember the name of it, but long -distance sonar so that, you know, really, really reaching out, part of the spying system, I think, is, is, it may not be sonar, but anyway, the gist of this is correct, even if the details aren't, that they basically blanket, you know, hundreds or thousands of miles of ocean in these things that we can't hear, that we thought had no impact on anything, but you can notice behavioral changes in whales, just vast distances away from these submarines that are conducting these things.

[1289] So it's entirely conceivable that with, you know, bees and other animals tuned into things that we're not tuned into.

[1290] Yeah.

[1291] I mean, the thing I love about getting away from all that is, like, the first day, I don't know if you find this, but I find that the first day, the absence of all of that can seem a little bit irritating in some way or a little bit like there's nothing to do.

[1292] Like I feel sort of fidgety when I first go to the desert.

[1293] That's why you've got to go hunting.

[1294] Well, yeah, that'd be great, too.

[1295] There's nothing fidgety about that at all.

[1296] You have a very primal task in front of you.

[1297] Sure.

[1298] But, I mean, after three, four, five days.

[1299] days, then your pace just slows down into, it almost makes me feel some kind of kinship to Aborigines or something.

[1300] I like people who are a lot more connected to land and New York City.

[1301] Yeah.

[1302] And you get into it just a different sort of headspace, different relationship to the earth and the soil and the sky and all that.

[1303] I mean, it sounds very hippie -dippy, but you can definitely feel it when you're there.

[1304] Yeah, it does sound hippie -dippy, but I think you're right.

[1305] There's something going on.

[1306] And I think there's something going on that's natural when you're, you're, you're disconnected from all this unnatural stuff that are so attractive to us yeah i mean the reason why you're seeing these people at dinner all touching their phones and playing with their phones something is happening to them right there's some sort of compelling thing it's not like they're that compelled to read like if you have magazines yeah because if you had books in front of these people would they be looking at those books the same way they're reading people's tweets no no they wouldn't at all focus and concentration you know this is the this is the big thing this is um there's a book called The Shallows by, I can't remember, I did a segment on the Discovery Science Channel show based on, is Google Making a Stupid, which is, do you know that book?

[1307] There's a book, Is Google Making a Stupid?

[1308] No. And there's this kind of ideological battle between these two guys.

[1309] I can't remember their names.

[1310] One of them is Nicholas, someone or other, about the question of, is all of this technological input, you know, making us smarter because we've got so much more data at our fingertips and we're so much more nimble intellectually, or is it making us more.

[1311] stupid because we're more reliant on outside sources of data.

[1312] We don't have to remember things anymore and we're constantly skipping across the surface of information instead of digging down into it.

[1313] And I think it's an interesting question about, you say, would those people be reading books?

[1314] Well, no. And do they even read as many books as they would have if, you know, if they'd lived 100 years ago?

[1315] Because an argument can be made that we're really good these days at multitasking.

[1316] We're really good at jumping from Facebook to Twitter to the next thing to I'm writing something, but then a little email pops up, and then a text message comes through.

[1317] So I'm constantly distracted.

[1318] I'm constantly busy, but there's that old line of, I can't remember who said it.

[1319] Yes, you're busy, ants are busy, but what's the point, right?

[1320] Like, what are you up to?

[1321] What are you doing?

[1322] Are you being productive?

[1323] Are you being efficient?

[1324] Are you achieving anything that's really important to you?

[1325] Business is the scourge of modern life in a way, because it gives you a fake way of feeling like you're doing something.

[1326] when you're actually not.

[1327] And the argument is, yeah, we're better at juggling all this shit than someone in the 1800s would have been.

[1328] But are we as capable of having the patience to read Dostoevsky?

[1329] Could you read Moby Dick?

[1330] Do people sit down and really devote themselves to a deep dive rather than just an across -the -surface horizontal?

[1331] Well, you certainly can.

[1332] If you put that thing down for a little bit, you certainly can.

[1333] My question.

[1334] Does it disinclined you to doing that?

[1335] I think so.

[1336] I think something's going on.

[1337] And I think something's going on that we haven't quite recognized yet.

[1338] And I think one of the things that's going on with cell phones is this a step towards this symbiotic relationship that we're going to have with computers and internet and communication.

[1339] And what we're talking about with virtual reality is a part of that.

[1340] And it's all becoming more and more integrated, more and more invasive and more and more prevalent.

[1341] And I think what we're doing, and I've said this time and time again, so forgive me if you've heard this before, other people who are listening, I think we are a caterpillar that is giving birth to some sort of an electronic butterfly.

[1342] And I think we are going to become something different.

[1343] And I think this is a step.

[1344] I think we're building a cocoon.

[1345] We're building an electronic cocoon by encompassing and engrossing ourselves in these electronic aids, these things that we're connecting to constantly all day.

[1346] We are getting more and more attached to them to the point where.

[1347] The other day I left my phone in my house.

[1348] I drove down the street and panicked and had a U -turn and turned right back around.

[1349] How could you live?

[1350] I was just going to go to the store real quick.

[1351] I was just going to go to the store real quick.

[1352] Yeah.

[1353] And I couldn't do it without my phone.

[1354] I'm like, fuck my phone, turned around.

[1355] And that feeling is, it's a weird feeling.

[1356] It's a strange feeling.

[1357] And I think that that feeling is, there's something, I think it's a natural thing that we're doing.

[1358] I think that as technology becomes more and more innovative and, and, you know, it's more and more powerful, and it can do more and more and more things for you and connect you to more and more people and in more and more different and involving ways, I think it's going to eventually lead to the next step, and that next step is some sort of an integration of it into your biology.

[1359] I want to get to that in one second, because you've said that to me before, and I think it's really interesting.

[1360] On the question of leaving your phone at home and freaking out, I mean, another, this comes back to the anecdote that I was telling earlier about, the friend of a friend who's a comic who's gotten rid of his phone because I love podcasts, listen to podcasts all the time, love your show, love a whole bunch of different shows, and I will habitually be listening to a podcast while I'm brushing my teeth, listening to a podcast while I'm driving around, you know, whatever it is.

[1361] And today I was interviewing Andy Kindler, the comic for my podcast, and he, like, literally he was downstairs at the hotel where I was staying.

[1362] And just to go down and pick him up, I had exited the room without my phone to listen to a podcast.

[1363] I walk back into my room, open the podcast app on my phone, put my earphones in, find the podcast that I was listening to, waste like 25 seconds of a one -minute task, because heaven forbid I should go outside and get in an elevator and go down and meet Andy Kindler without listening to what?

[1364] 55 fucking seconds of the latest radio lab episode that I have to listen to.

[1365] How dumb am I?

[1366] How distracted do I need to be by people speaking in my ears?

[1367] Or?

[1368] But I can't just be with myself for an elevator ride from the seventh fucking floor.

[1369] In your defense, how engaged are you in this wonderful podcast where you're gaining all this knowledge?

[1370] And it's fascinating and intriguing.

[1371] You don't want to let it go.

[1372] Thank you, Joe.

[1373] I feel better.

[1374] How much do I owe you for this session?

[1375] It's free.

[1376] Comes with being a friend.

[1377] If we are building a cocoon, then is the butterfly artificial.

[1378] intelligence?

[1379] Yes.

[1380] And do we play a role?

[1381] Like, because we become it.

[1382] A Kurzweil will say, yeah, so a Kurzweil will say that the artificial intelligence, the whole question of artificial intelligence is slightly a red herring because we will become the artificial intelligence.

[1383] We will unify ourselves with machines in such a way that human intelligence, that biological intelligence and artificial intelligence become essentially indistinguishable.

[1384] I think it's possible that that's true.

[1385] I also think it's possible that we could have both.

[1386] We could, we could literally have artificial life forms that we have created, along with us being interconnected with some sort of a computer that enhances our intelligence that we carry with us everywhere, or that is a part of our body, and that it becomes something like Kurzweil's talked about these computers, these nanocomputers that are as small as red blood cells that they're going to inject into our bloodstream to find cancer and cure diseases and all these things.

[1387] I think it is entirely possible that there's something like that is going to enhance intelligence and that you're going to have something that you can inject into your body and you're going to be like Lucy from that Scarlet Johansson movie.

[1388] I mean, it's not outside the realm of possibility that both things could happen at the same time, that you could have a literal artificial intelligence, something that is created by a person that can think and talk.

[1389] Did you see X. Machina?

[1390] Yes, loved it.

[1391] I actually interviewed both of the actors and also the writer of that, Alex.

[1392] I forget his name.

[1393] But very interesting guy grappling with a lot of these big issues.

[1394] I mean, he's genuinely motivated by and interested in the whole question of what it means to be conscious and self -aware.

[1395] Yeah, amazing, amazing movie.

[1396] But that's possible, too, that kind of thing, where you're going to make a fake human.

[1397] Yeah.

[1398] And, you know, it could be confined like they were in some sort of a way where it didn't have the option to access the World Wide Web, nor did it have the option to exponentially increase its own abilities.

[1399] Because that's one of the things that all of these people sort of agree with is that the launch of our artificial intelligence is not simply going to be, oh my God, we have an artificial intelligent thing here now.

[1400] But it's going to be that this artificial intelligence is going to be infinitely smarter than us almost instantaneously because it's going to innovate on itself.

[1401] That's right.

[1402] So, yeah, I mean, I've heard Sam talk about this as well.

[1403] I mean, Sam Harris.

[1404] 10 ,000 years.

[1405] Precisely, in a minute or something.

[1406] Yeah.

[1407] So it's amazing.

[1408] So when you say something to me, my brain is operating at presumably roughly the same speed that your brain is operating.

[1409] Neither of us are inebriated, another of us are incredibly tired.

[1410] So presumably the experience of the passage of time of this conversation for us is roughly one -to -one, maybe slightly off.

[1411] Imagine if every single thing that you said, I had the experience of basically waiting for several years to figure out the perfect way to answer that.

[1412] And then by the time you get to that, the artificial intelligence is going to be so far ahead of that.

[1413] that because we're talking about.

[1414] No, I mean, I'm the artificial intelligence in this analogy, right, you know, and so I've just been sitting here wondering what is the best possible response.

[1415] Well, of course, I'm going to end up giving better responses.

[1416] What I find interesting is if you make this X mark in a robot, I think it'll be easier to make a robot that seems to, that passes the Turing test, that seems to us to be self -aware, then it will be to know whether or not it really is self -aware, right?

[1417] And is there a meaningful difference?

[1418] I mean, this is what's interesting to me. Is there a meaningful difference between a computer that can completely convincingly reassure you that it has feelings and a computer that actually feels?

[1419] Well, what is feeling?

[1420] What difference does it make?

[1421] Here's a thing.

[1422] We're so connected to this idea that the only life that's real is a carbon -based life of biological intelligence, cells, life, death, lifespan, it has a, it's got a finite reality, it's eventually going to rot.

[1423] I mean, that's what we think of life is, and that's the only thing that's worth anything to us, because we're so, we're just so inexorably connected to what we are, and that we only think that's the only kind of life.

[1424] But there could easily be a life form that exists in the form of ideas.

[1425] You know, and I've often thought about this in terms of like the word of a the word alien like people always love that expression alien intelligence and uh have we ever been visited by aliens i often think that if intelligence keeps expanding and keeps growing at the rate that it has with human beings you compare us to people that lived a few thousand years ago versus today it's impossible not to conclude that people have gotten far more intelligent, far more capable, and have far more abilities than we did, whether it's technologically or, you know, through the way we can manipulate matter in our environment.

[1426] It's far, we're far more capable now, right?

[1427] Now, if we continue to go from here till, you know, thousands and thousands of years from now, we could get to the point where we can inject ideas and send ideas to each other in the form of, like, thoughts.

[1428] Yep.

[1429] Now, how do we not know that imagination itself is not a life form that wants us to continue to innovate and create and build something different?

[1430] That it's not just a function of the brain.

[1431] It's not just a function of the conscious mind to be curious and a byproduct of our time as hunter gatherers and this constant seeking of food and shelter and safety that is causing us to innovate.

[1432] But instead, these ideas are almost like a signal that's in the mist and that imagination itself, which is responsible for every single thing you see in this room and in this city and on this planet that human beings have created.

[1433] All of it came out of the imagination, all of it.

[1434] And why is this imagination so fucking hungry for innovation?

[1435] Why don't we have the capacity to recognize that phones are small enough, computers are fast enough, TV, are big enough cars are quick enough let's stop right here let's stop right here and work for the better good of humanity because every era you could have said that joe that's why fuck the 60s and they're shitbag cars and they're fucking you know that's what people that's what people will say in a half century about you want to drive one of those old shitty jaguars and catches on fire no but you know what i'm saying yeah i do i do right you're right i mean you could have said that but what is it what is going on like what is imagination well i think anyone who works in a creative field or maybe anyone who even those who don't will agree that there is something mysterious about the muse for one of a better word right i mean there are moments when i'm writing where i where something just drops into my head and i'm like that's great and certainly people who write music or who paint you know they will you get in that zone and you find that flow and it is like you're writing something else it's not like you're the author of it entirely um so i on the question of whether or not computers would fit in, when you say like what would it mean to say does a computer actually feel, I think, do you know the, have you heard of the essay, what does it like to be a bat?

[1436] I think it's, I think it's called Thomas Nagel.

[1437] It was a 20th century philosopher.

[1438] And this was a foundational sort of philosophical essay.

[1439] It's only about 10 pages long.

[1440] Really kind of trying to nail down the fundamentals of, I can't remember the field of philosophy, but basically a philosophy of mind, where his point is, it's only meaningful to talk about things having feelings if you can say, like, what is it like to be an X?

[1441] And so what does it like to be a bat?

[1442] That's a meaningful question.

[1443] I mean, you can sort of look at a bat's brain.

[1444] You can try to figure out how it responds to its sonar, what that might feel like.

[1445] Is that a kind of a vision?

[1446] Is it a kind of a sound?

[1447] If I pick up this cup and I say, what does it like to be this cup?

[1448] I mean, that's essentially meaningless.

[1449] What do you mean what does it like to be a cup?

[1450] The cup is non -sentient.

[1451] It has no input.

[1452] It has no experience of life.

[1453] So my question about artificial intelligence is what would have to happen for it to be meaningful to say, what is it like to be that computer?

[1454] And I think that's more than just a computer that can be creative or a computer that can have imagination or a computer that can spew out something that's interesting.

[1455] I mean, we already have computers that can, for example, write operas, bad operas, but operas that conform to operas.

[1456] Like, we're not far away from having computers that can write books that are at least as good as the average book that you get an airport bookstore, right?

[1457] Just a general book.

[1458] But for a computer to write Proust is going to be difficult.

[1459] For a computer to write Beethoven is going to be difficult.

[1460] And when it does, I'm not saying, it won't happen.

[1461] I'm just saying there's some spark of imagination in humans.

[1462] There's something about biological intelligence so far, which is uniquely creative and uniquely imaginative.

[1463] And what the fuck is it?

[1464] It's the imagination.

[1465] Without the imagination, we're just an animal.

[1466] Deers are not very imaginative, you know?

[1467] They're not.

[1468] No. But they still have an experience of life in a way that my computer and phone don't.

[1469] For now?

[1470] For now.

[1471] And so something's going to happen.

[1472] I mean, at some point there will be, I mean, I sort of agree with the materialists on this, because I'm not a religious person, that our brains are surely, all of this experience of being me, philosophers have this word qualia, which means the actual experience of experiencing knowledge and data.

[1473] So there's this thought experiment that I remember from university where imagine a child is born in a black and white room.

[1474] they can't see themselves.

[1475] They're just strapped down, so they can't see any colour, right?

[1476] But they learn everything there is to know about colour.

[1477] They're scientifically schooled in the nature of the light spectrum, and they understand all, they know that the sky is blue, they know that they've never seen the sky, but they know everything there is to know about the science of colour.

[1478] Then, one day, after they've only ever seen black and white, you release them into the world, and they look around at trees and birds and skies and the ocean.

[1479] what would their response be?

[1480] Would their response simply be, oh, well, I already know everything about colour.

[1481] I, you know, I perceived the world previously as a kind of a paint -by -numbers picture, so I already know that the sky was blue and I know what the wavelength of light is that makes it blue.

[1482] Or would they be overwhelmed by how beautiful and amazing the world looks?

[1483] Of course they'd be overwhelmed by how much richer the experience of experiencing colour is than merely knowing and understanding about the spectrum of light.

[1484] And that difference is what philosophers call qualia.

[1485] the experience of having an experience, which is very hard to, like, what is that difference?

[1486] They already had, this person already had everything you could possibly know about color.

[1487] What was added?

[1488] What was added to the mix here that made them impressed?

[1489] Well, color is a purely visual thing.

[1490] I don't think it's the best example, because if you're, you don't feel color.

[1491] So if you can not see color, and then you can see color, there's no way you could have known everything about color without seeing it.

[1492] But what is it that you didn't know?

[1493] You didn't know what the visual aspects of different hues are.

[1494] You hadn't experienced them, but you would have been able to answer a question.

[1495] No. Yes, a scientist could have answered you.

[1496] No, it's nonsense.

[1497] What question would you not have been able to answer?

[1498] Well, you don't know what it looks like to see red.

[1499] But how, but you would have been able to answer exactly what red means.

[1500] No, no, not without seeing it.

[1501] No, not without seeing it.

[1502] No, no, understanding a spectrum.

[1503] You're not grasping the point of the qualier analogy.

[1504] No, I'm absolutely grasping it.

[1505] It's a nonsense argument.

[1506] No, a scientist would have been able to have the person who's never seen color and a person who has seen color, and there's nothing they could ask either of them that would make a difference.

[1507] Doesn't matter.

[1508] They haven't experienced the visual aspect of color.

[1509] Precisely right.

[1510] Right.

[1511] So they haven't taken it in.

[1512] So that's what I'm talking about.

[1513] But that's just a signal.

[1514] But it's a signal that the person who is seeing in black and white does not receive.

[1515] Once they receive that signal, it simply becomes more data.

[1516] And then...

[1517] No, it's not more data.

[1518] That's the thing.

[1519] What do you mean?

[1520] It's not more data.

[1521] It's a visual experience of data.

[1522] Okay, it's data.

[1523] We're splitting hairs here because if you're looking at red, like if you're looking at something and you just see black and white, right?

[1524] Yeah.

[1525] And then all of a sudden someone adds something and you see color, right?

[1526] They turn on the switch.

[1527] Yeah.

[1528] That's data.

[1529] So suppose that the black and white thing that in your world, in your paint -by -numbers world, red is the number 19.

[1530] Mm -hmm.

[1531] And that object had a 19 written on it.

[1532] Okay.

[1533] Then you knew that it was red.

[1534] You don't know what red is.

[1535] Try saying what the color blue is to a blind man. But I think you're the point that you're arguing is precisely the point that philosophers wrestle with, which is if the question we're asking is what does it mean to actually feel and be self -aware and be conscious?

[1536] What would it mean for an artificial system to feel the way that we do?

[1537] What would it mean for artificial intelligence to actually have interests for it to be meaningful for us to say what's it like to be this computer in a way that it's not meaningful to say what's it like to be this cup?

[1538] then qualia is one of these interesting things that's sort of that's intrinsic to the experience of being human and you're totally right it is part of our foundational knowledge because living without it would be sort of meaningless but it's very very tricky to understand exactly what the difference between that and pure data is there clearly is a difference I mean it's clearly different there's a difference now it was clearly different for me to be me alive and experiencing things than merely for me to be, for example, an intelligence that is just behaving like me, but actually the lights are off inside, right?

[1539] Okay, but why do you assume the lights are off?

[1540] Once the connections are being made, how do you not know that artificial life won't be a life that's artificial?

[1541] Well, I think it will be at some stage.

[1542] Yeah, it certainly can be.

[1543] That's right.

[1544] But that's what I'm saying.

[1545] Right.

[1546] That difference is the difference at which how are we going to know once that where that boundary is being bridged, right?

[1547] We don't have to know.

[1548] This is what I think.

[1549] I think we're trying to define it in some way where this is real life and that won't be real life.

[1550] The same thing is like we're talking about virtual reality, like this is reality and that will be a fake virtual reality.

[1551] I don't necessarily know that.

[1552] I'm not necessarily convinced that this reality that we experience because we have gravity, because we have cells, because we feel the weight of our feet on the ground as we walk, once that is replicable, once there's something that you can plug into that gives you all of that.

[1553] exact experience but it's not happening in the physical sense and it's indiscernible but is it still happening it's absolutely still happening the experience is still the same so is your consciousness what guides you is your is the data that hits your consciousness is that what's important or does it have to be something you can put on a scale or measure with a ruler or or see over a timeline what is reality is what the real question becomes and that's when people who really think there's a significant possibility, and there's a real physicist, that we are living in some form of a simulation currently, that it's one of the reasons why reality is so preposterous, is that reality is a work of fiction, and that if we keep going as we are today, there's going to come a time where we are able to create some form of virtual reality that's indistinguishable from reality.

[1554] So the question becomes, how will we know when we're in it?

[1555] Yeah.

[1556] Elon Musk is a big proponent of this as well, you know.

[1557] He believes that it's almost certain that we are in a virtual reality right now, just because the proportion that I think the argument goes along the lines of at some point in the future there are going to be so many virtual realities that the likelihood of us being in one of those instead of in the earthly reality that we think we are in is going to just be enormously more probable.

[1558] Well, we can go one better that even the earthly reality is so fucking bizarre and filled with holes that the very atoms.

[1559] I mean, the very atoms that we have that exist that encompass every single aspect of everything that we see that's physical are mostly nothing.

[1560] And then we have these subatomic particles that blink in and out of existence.

[1561] And they can be in a super state where they're moving and still at the same time.

[1562] they come and go, they go somewhere.

[1563] And it seems like they're bouncing back and forth between this dimension and another dimension that we don't even...

[1564] Have you seen Stranger Things on Netflix?

[1565] Yes, yes.

[1566] It's like the underside.

[1567] Which brings us to ayahuasca.

[1568] Oh.

[1569] So about a month ago, I tried ayahuasca for the first time.

[1570] I'd wanted to do it for a while.

[1571] And a friend of mine...

[1572] Have you done psychedelics before that?

[1573] I've done psychedelic.

[1574] I've never done DMT, but I've done...

[1575] So I've done acid and mushrooms, but not for a few years.

[1576] Had some of the best experiences of my life on acid.

[1577] I mean, some of the most eye -opening and just revelatory and extraordinary experiences.

[1578] Had a bad mushroom trip and haven't really done many psychedelics since then.

[1579] Bad how?

[1580] Too much.

[1581] I was in Amsterdam.

[1582] There was such thing.

[1583] Too much for the circumstances under which I was trying to hold it together.

[1584] I tried to do it in public?

[1585] Yeah.

[1586] Oh, you're not supposed to do that.

[1587] I was going out on a, you know, a trip with my brother in Amsterdam, like, wandering around.

[1588] It was like, we were just, it was, it was, it was one of those moments where, like, you can't even remember the thought that you had, like, half a second ago.

[1589] So your entire experience of life is just a fractured.

[1590] Yeah.

[1591] You're supposed to be quiet, laying down somewhere.

[1592] I know, I know.

[1593] I know.

[1594] I know that.

[1595] I knew all that, but I was better.

[1596] I was too good for any advice that I could give myself.

[1597] How many grams?

[1598] I don't know, because, well, it was mushrooms.

[1599] I mean, so.

[1600] Show me in your hand.

[1601] big it was.

[1602] Oh, it was a handful.

[1603] It was a significant handful.

[1604] It was a lot.

[1605] And we ended up, like, you know, we tried to go into a cafe thinking that that would be better, but by the time we'd made our way through the thicket of impenetrable chairs that seemed like there were too many tables, like none of it made sense.

[1606] I didn't know where the walls were.

[1607] So then I'm sitting down and like, I don't know how to order tea anymore.

[1608] And like, she's, I don't know what people are asking for.

[1609] I don't know when I'm supposed to pay or how I'm, and then it just became too stressful and I was like have to get out of the cafe.

[1610] It was just all of that.

[1611] And then I don't even remember like how long have I even been in the cafe.

[1612] People were looking at me because it was just one of those weird, like just not good.

[1613] But I mean, I wasca is a bit different because it's, it's a shamanistic ceremony that's presided over by this Peruvian where'd you do it?

[1614] In New York.

[1615] In the city?

[1616] Yeah, in Brooklyn.

[1617] They rent out a, like a dance studio or some space.

[1618] Did you know the other people you're doing it with?

[1619] Only one of them with my friend he's done it a bunch of times he's done it a lot um and starts about nine or ten in the evening goes until about four to six in the morning and uh there are about 20 people there so it was a reasonably large group and you're all sort of lined up along the the walls with yoga mats and whatever else you want a bucket to vomit into uh and he uh gives a little speech he's down in peru a lot He's been doing this for decades, you know, this has been going on for thousands of years among, for people who don't know what ayahuasca is.

[1620] It's a hallucinogen from the Amazon.

[1621] It's been fundamental to a lot of South American religions for thousands of years.

[1622] It's a combinator hallucinogen that combines the leaves of one plant and the vines of another.

[1623] So one of them is DMT and the other one is called an MAO inhibitor.

[1624] And monoamine oxidizes MAO and your body produces it in your stomach and your gut.

[1625] And what it does is it keeps you from getting high on DMT, which exists in thousands of different plants.

[1626] So if you were eating a lot of the things that we eat on a regular basis, if you didn't have monoamine oxidase, and I'm sure it has other functions as well.

[1627] But it would cause you to get high on certain grasses and plants and many, many different ones.

[1628] So your body produces this stuff to break that down.

[1629] There you go.

[1630] Glad I got you here, Joe.

[1631] I didn't even know that.

[1632] So it's an orally active version of DMT.

[1633] And they've essentially figured out a solution for dealing with the monoamine oxidase that your stomach produces.

[1634] Long before they even knew what any of that shit was.

[1635] Yeah.

[1636] Thousands of years ago when they were just screwing around in the Amazon.

[1637] Yeah, we don't even know how really how old it is because they don't really have much of a written tradition.

[1638] No, but they claim it's, I mean, they claim that it's been fundamental, but who knows, it's a verbal tradition.

[1639] We don't know how they figured it out.

[1640] We don't know any of those things.

[1641] I mean, it's a very interesting experience because I went into it sort of wanting what everyone, I guess, wants out of a psychedelic experience, which is some kind of like opening up of your mind and connection to the cosmos and connection to your own true self and connection to life force and the mystery of consciousness and everything.

[1642] But ayahuasca is very interesting.

[1643] It almost felt like it was a character in the trip.

[1644] The trip was very visual and the first portion of it was like just the moment I closed, I would close my eyes.

[1645] It was just an incredible, a candy -coloured universe of weird like Pez dispensers, dancing and all kinds of amazing visual hallucinations.

[1646] I opened my eyes and the person next to me, I couldn't tell whether or not they were there or not or whether they'd gone.

[1647] I think that he'd gone to the restroom, but, and I could see, I mean, it's not that dark, I couldn't see that he was not there, but I still felt like he was there, not in like a woo -woo, oh, his spirit is still their way, just like I was literally not sure what criteria I would need to use to establish whether or not there was a person sitting next to me. Whoa.

[1648] Like the visual data was there.

[1649] I could see that there was just a yoga mat, but I was like, where'd he go?

[1650] Is he there?

[1651] Wait, he's there.

[1652] No, he's there.

[1653] He's not.

[1654] If he's there, then where's his physical body?

[1655] No. Is he there?

[1656] Is there someone sitting next to me?

[1657] I think there is.

[1658] Hang on, then where is he?

[1659] It was literally, it was very, because some people were vomiting.

[1660] I mean, some people have an experience where they're crying, they're bawling their eyes out, and they go to the darkest places.

[1661] I was a bit nervous beforehand because it shows the claim, what they claim, what the shamans claim is that it shows you what you need to see about yourself at that moment.

[1662] And that can be wonderful, or that can be negative but whatever it is it's like ayahuasca has a personality it's like it is gaya it's like it is the power of life it's like it is you know the amazon itself it's like the lungs of the earth or something and it brings you in and you just have to roll with it because if you try to fight it it'll crush you um what i loved what i was heartened by was the true sort of josh seps that came out during the experience was a very like funny not funny ha ha but like just joyful person.

[1663] Like there was no, there were moments of darkness and there were moments of hallucinations where like there was the bloodied face of a woman up on the right hand side of my periphery.

[1664] And I started going towards it.

[1665] And then I was like, I consciously sort of said to the ayahuasca, you know, we can go there.

[1666] I didn't want to, I knew that if I tried not to go there, then it would get worse and worse.

[1667] So I was like, we can do that and that's fine.

[1668] And we can make this a bad trip if you want.

[1669] Frankly, it's just more.

[1670] interesting over on the fun, candy -colored side, and then it just sort of faded away.

[1671] So I think there's something about relinquishing yourself to it and not trying to control it and not trying to have power.

[1672] A lot of bad trips come from is just trying to control with your ego, trying to control the experience.

[1673] So I sort of gave myself into it.

[1674] And like, there were moments where, like, the funniest thing that you can ever do.

[1675] I know you're a comic, so here's a little tip.

[1676] You'll enjoy this, Joe.

[1677] Next time you need to have the best laugh of your life, just pull a blanket over your head.

[1678] hilarious, according to Josh Steps, whilst on ayahuasca.

[1679] Funniest thing I'd ever done.

[1680] I was, like, giggling madly underneath a blanket with the blanket over my head.

[1681] That's why drugs are illegal.

[1682] Look at them.

[1683] He's just laughing at nothing.

[1684] It was like, it was so funny.

[1685] And then, so I was, so to get back to the point about what I was looking for was some kind of insight into like the mystery of consciousness and what you were just sort of talking about, about like the imagination and, you know, self -awareness.

[1686] I felt like about halfway through the trip I hadn't really gotten my bunnies worth on that.

[1687] It was a fun, like...

[1688] You had a goal in mind.

[1689] I had a goal, exactly.

[1690] I was like, I felt ripped off.

[1691] And the ayahuasca goddess or whatever it is, like the personality of the drug was sort of visually, like up here on the left of my periphery.

[1692] And I was like, hey, what gives?

[1693] Like, show me the majesty of consciousness.

[1694] And the drug said, I can't just notice.

[1695] And I was like, oh, that's bullshit.

[1696] I came here for some life -expanding experience.

[1697] I wanted my mind to be blown.

[1698] And all of a sudden, the drug tells me that she can't even give me an insight into the nature of how incredible consciousness is.

[1699] And I went off, and my brain went off on different tangents.

[1700] Then about 10 or 15 minutes later, I'm not sure how long it was because your sense of time is completely screwed around with.

[1701] I was struck by how incredibly profound it was.

[1702] she was like, you don't need the drug to be aware of how incredible consciousness is.

[1703] Just notice.

[1704] And I was like, whoa.

[1705] And I kind of was struck by the fact that at any point in time, on drugs or not, day or night, wherever we are, if you just remind yourself that we are atoms that were produced inside of stars that have been spewed out of exploding stars and have accreted on this little rock that is spinning around another star and we have evolved over hundreds of millions of years from amphibians through to mammals and we are self -aware and we're blots of substance clinging to the side of a speck of dust in the middle of a massive cosmos and we are self -aware and we are conscious and we're looking at the universe that created us and now having a conversation about it, that in itself is weird and is staggering and impressive.

[1706] And we're a couple of decades away from creating an artificial version of ourselves.

[1707] Quite probably.

[1708] Quite probably.

[1709] If not decades, by 100 years.

[1710] It's 100%.

[1711] Yeah.

[1712] And then we're off to the races.

[1713] Well, then we're God.

[1714] Or not us, but it is.

[1715] it is God because it's going to like we were talking about become 10 ,000 years more advanced in a matter of moments and then in a matter of moments after that 10 ,000 years more and then in a matter of moments and weeks and months will pass and we will be infinitely more separated from what we are today or more evolved or more capable there was a moment during the trip where one of the female and the The shaman is on ayahuasca as well, and he has female assistants.

[1716] She's saying this incredible song about, like, the majesty of life or something.

[1717] And one of the things she was singing about was, like, that whatever the life force is inside you is more powerful than the sun, more powerful than anything.

[1718] And it sounds a bit corny when you're not high.

[1719] I was listening to it.

[1720] But it gave me a profound sense that, yeah, this web of procreating, self -developing, ever -improving, sentient creatures that are life is one of the oldest and most enduring things in the universe, and most impressive things in the universe, just in terms of going all the way back to the genesis of life on this planet or elsewhere.

[1721] So as you say, if we give birth to this new artificial intelligence, we will, as you say, be the organism that sort of transcends from biological life to artificial life, and just being a part of any of that experience struck me as incredibly incredibly moving and touching in a way that I know sounds stupid to people who've never done psychedelics, and I know that there are friends of mine who are like, well, yeah, okay, you had a hippie -dippy trip, but it's one of the, again, it comes back to sort of the qualia question, the insight that you are able to achieve when you're using these substances, or alternatively, if you're a great meditator or something, or if you're in a float tank, or any other way of getting your mind into a different plane than the normal daily plane, is not a one of data.

[1722] It's not one that is easily explainable.

[1723] It's not one of reason.

[1724] It's an insight.

[1725] You know, it's an experience.

[1726] It's an undeniable experience.

[1727] And I always wonder if that state that you achieve when you're on DMT, and DMT, which is the active component in ayahuasca.

[1728] And I haven't done ayahuasca.

[1729] I've only done the hardcore form of DMT.

[1730] But DMT takes you to these places that apparently you can kind of reach on ayahuasca for brief moments.

[1731] A lot of people feel like ayahuasca is a more spiritual version of it because it lasts longer.

[1732] You have more time to absorb the experience.

[1733] And a lot of times it's more, for some people more life -changing.

[1734] Because DMT is so titanically alien that when it's done, you're just like, what the fuck were that?

[1735] But I've done DMT over the course of several hours where you keep doing it.

[1736] I thought it only, oh right, you keep doing it because you smoke it, right?

[1737] And it lasts for about 15 minutes a pop.

[1738] Yeah, these 15 minute trips, and then you fucking bang it out one more time, get back in there.

[1739] Did you have someone coaching your way through it?

[1740] Because my ayahuasca friend who introduced me to this ceremony tried DMT once and really had a freak out and wasn't crazy about it and was then told you should really have someone who sort of knows what they're doing with you.

[1741] Or don't be able to.

[1742] pussy.

[1743] Or don't be a pussy.

[1744] You gotta just let it go.

[1745] You gotta let it take you there.

[1746] And but your mind does get exposed.

[1747] Your thoughts do get exposed.

[1748] You find out what's negative and what's positive about the way you look at the world.

[1749] I had one of the most powerful experiences ever in my second trip where I had this visualization of negative thinking.

[1750] Like I had a negative thought came into my head and it was like dark and twisted and I just had this negative thought and then I realized that I was thinking in a negative way, and this is a physical manifestation in front of me of negative thinking, and at that moment, I relaxed and thought wonderful, beautiful, positive thoughts, and it blossomed into this incredible flower of geometric patterns and continue to get more and more beautiful as I relaxed more and more.

[1751] It was like a physical manifestation of looking at negative thinking.

[1752] It was negative.

[1753] The negative was like dark, black and green, and it was just like, it was like a toxic.

[1754] Were your eyes open or closed?

[1755] No, totally closed.

[1756] But I was so fucked up.

[1757] It probably wouldn't have mattered.

[1758] If I opened my eyes, I probably would have seen the same thing.

[1759] I was so gone.

[1760] You're, you're, you, you disolve.

[1761] You cease to be there when you're doing the DMT, the most intense version of it, smoking it.

[1762] but you I wonder if we will eventually be there because what that feels like when you're doing DMT and McKenna's described it as Terence McKenna described it as like you're in some sort of a well of souls that you you transcend the physical body and you enter into some space some well of souls I wonder if this thing that we look at we look at reality and we look at atoms and what we're talking about, the physical space, when atoms are mostly nothing, and then these subatomic particles that blink in and out of position, I wonder if what really is going to happen as we get more and more evolved and more powerful with our ability to manipulate matter, is that we're going to transcend this dimension.

[1763] And I wonder if that place that we go to is where our future lies, and that our future doesn't lie in the stars, because the stars aren't even real.

[1764] and that the real dimension means they're real isn't you can see them and you can send things to them and you can measure them but this is just a almost like a prison of a dimension and that this dimension can be transcended and that you can briefly view it when you do DMT or when you visit the ayahuasca god and you you pass through briefly into that dimension but if one day that is where consciousness will exist all the time and that we are creating this possibility and this door through our thirst for innovation and knowledge and this constant evaluation of our current abilities and the constant desire to improve upon those abilities, that one day it'll get past this desire to have artificial intelligence and what is this intelligence going to be able to do, what's going to be able to achieve, and what's it going to be able to accomplish, and we're going to open up other dimensions as possibilities for consciousness to exist in.

[1765] I mean, this sounds a lot like pre -Abrahamic religion, right?

[1766] I mean, this sounds a lot of those religions were based on psychedelic experiences.

[1767] Yeah, and indigenous religions where before we fucked everything up with Moses and Jesus and Yahweh and Muhammad.

[1768] Well, you say that, but do you know that most recent scholars in Jerusalem believe that the Moses experience was about DMT?

[1769] The Moses experience specifically.

[1770] Oh, no, I have heard theories that a lot of the early, a lot of those Old Testament things, writers, were on psychedelics.

[1771] Most likely they were when you think about the fact that psychedelics have been here forever.

[1772] So what's the Moses?

[1773] The most experience is that Moses saw burning bush that represented God.

[1774] Well, one of the most DMT rich plants in the area where Moses was is the acacia tree.

[1775] The acacia bush is rich in DMT.

[1776] If that was on fire or if you figured out a way to extract DMT from it and then you smoked it or you lit it on fire and did it in some sort of a way, where you're absorbing the smoke and absorbing the DMT, you would see God.

[1777] You would see God.

[1778] There's a lot of DMT flora in Australia, apparently.

[1779] And just filaris grass, right?

[1780] A lot of different plants.

[1781] There's an Australian native called the Wattle, which I think is the national plant.

[1782] I'd have to look that up, or maybe it's the state plant of my state.

[1783] And acacia isn't, they're all part of that family.

[1784] And so I was looking earlier this year that there's a push in Australia to get ayahuasca off the banned substances list and permit it as a religious as a medicine as a medicine as a medicine well it helps a lot of people there's a lot of people that go to it that have all sorts of addictions and all sorts of real problems and it sort of resets their brain or resets their life it's one of many different psychedelics that are really good at that i i boga is incredibly good for people that have addictions to opiates literally resets the way your brain our views and connects to addictive substances Well I've heard yeah I mean one of the I did a story on Halfpost Live about ayahuasca before I'd ever used it and they were saying that there's some interesting research about its ability to to be a circuit breaker against for example alcoholism and stuff like that that people will go into the experience alcoholics and will come out yeah right yeah with psychedelics so I mean if it's so difficult to know what the fuck is going on with consciousness right why is it that we are assembled in such a way as to have these experiences and to be conscious at all.

[1785] But why do you think that it's a different dimension that we could cross into rather than just a another perspective on this world that we are opened up to because we're ordinarily, I mean, my theory I suppose, although it's tentative, is we have the capacity to be tuned into all kinds of amazing shit that's going on in the universe.

[1786] I don't really mean in terms of woo.

[1787] I don't mean in terms of spirits or ghosts or anything.

[1788] I just mean there is a perspective on life that is much bigger than the one that we walk around with on a day -to -day basis.

[1789] But evolution has favored traits that force us to focus on getting food and having sex and surviving, right?

[1790] Which means that it has intentionally closed the parameters of what our mind is capable of experiencing.

[1791] Is it intentionally closed it or is there no benefit for the biological body?

[1792] That's what I mean.

[1793] to be distracted by these things like running from tigers precisely you don't want a caveman who's who's like philosophizing about his place in the cosmos he's eating while he gets eaten while he's tripping yeah exactly he's like this is amazing such a spiritual journey we are but stardust gets devoured by a woolly mammoth and that little silly voice um but you know and and and what drugs do is they they break down the walls of perception you know to to borrow from huxley they they shatter those those kind of limits and constraints that our biology that evolution has put on our mental ability and simply let the mind wander into whatever space it cares to go to yeah well by using the word dimension i think we've sort of uh we've i've limited the perception of what i'm saying because we we already have like three dimensions that we believe in and the dimensions that we understand four dimensions that we believe in time also the they believe that quantum physics is I think 11.

[1794] 11 is it?

[1795] Yeah.

[1796] So we understand that there are other dimensions that we don't totally understand yet, right?

[1797] But those are words, right?

[1798] Dimensions are words.

[1799] There's time, space, distance, all these different things are words.

[1800] And these words sort of lock in a definition in our own mind.

[1801] But whatever the fuck it is, when you do have a DMT trip, you go to a place.

[1802] And that place is not right here.

[1803] It's not, you're not here when you go there.

[1804] and it's some all -encompassing, infinite, geometric place.

[1805] Call it a dimension, but that's just a noise that you make with your mouth.

[1806] It doesn't really matter what it is.

[1807] It's something that you experience, that you don't experience right here in, you know, Calabasas or wherever the fuck we are.

[1808] You know, there's something different about it.

[1809] And could it be another dimension?

[1810] Yes, could it be all in your imagination?

[1811] Yeah, but your imagination might also be another dimension.

[1812] I mean, the word dimension is a weird word because it's so limiting and defining.

[1813] And we have these preconceived ideas that we, you know, it's a box that we can put in our head.

[1814] Oh, it's a dimension.

[1815] There's a dimension.

[1816] You know, whatever that thing is that you can experience, if we can tap into that in other ways, it's going to, the world is going to get very strange.

[1817] One thing that struck me after the experience, which gives, which I think bolsters, the idea that there is something real about that dimension or slash intelligence or whatever it is, you know, whatever you want to call it, was that I noticed that whenever people have these experiences and go to these places, regardless of what mechanism they use, they always come out with basically the same gist of a conclusion.

[1818] And if it was merely what someone like, who's a teller, pen, pen and teller, why am I Penjolet.

[1819] If it was merely what a person like Penjolette thinks it is, which is just the perturbations of your brain, right?

[1820] I mean, you take this stuff.

[1821] But he's never done anything.

[1822] No, exactly.

[1823] That's right.

[1824] He's a teetotaler.

[1825] He's not just a teetotaler.

[1826] He's a denier of the possibility of all these different experiences being transcendent.

[1827] That's right.

[1828] As far as he's concerned, what happens when you take DMT is that there are neurological disturbances and your brain has weird experiences because the drug is just fucking with your neurology.

[1829] And that tells us nothing.

[1830] what?

[1831] I said, why don't you, why have you, how come you have no interest in it?

[1832] I think everything's been learned from those experience.

[1833] Everything, we've already figured it out.

[1834] We've already taken what we can from those experiences, nothing to be learned by doing that.

[1835] Other people have already done it.

[1836] I'm like, you're out of your fucking mind.

[1837] And if that's the case, then just do it.

[1838] Then there's no harm, right?

[1839] He's so silly.

[1840] To say that is so silly.

[1841] It's crazy.

[1842] I love that guy.

[1843] I think he's good.

[1844] I think he's awesome.

[1845] But I think he is missing out on a massive blind spot.

[1846] Massive blind spot.

[1847] A gigantic chunk of possibility.

[1848] He thinks it's hallucinations.

[1849] Yeah.

[1850] I mean, he doesn't know.

[1851] He really doesn't know.

[1852] He doesn't understand.

[1853] I mean, some of it is hallucinations.

[1854] But so is it?

[1855] I'm not sure.

[1856] I'm not sure.

[1857] I think it might be what McKenna thinks.

[1858] It might be a well of souls.

[1859] It might be what life is.

[1860] This whole biological thing might literally be the cocoon that we were talking about.

[1861] But when I'm, when I close my eyes and I see a mechanistic, universe of bright pink yellow and purple machines clanking away and exploding and little sort of Mario -style computer things bouncing around on them and then I like start spinning through kaleidoscopes of color.

[1862] Are you implying that McKenna, I don't think McKenna would say that those are actual real things that I'm seeing in another dimension, would he?

[1863] McKenna believed that what you were, I mean, he had some weird names for them.

[1864] I think he called them, uh, uh, co. what do you call machine elves and hyperspace, he believed that they were entities.

[1865] He believed that they were living entities and that you were communicating with an other.

[1866] That was his words.

[1867] I think there are, I could believe that, I think there are clearly hallucinations because there were just things like I would open my eyes and then there was a river in the middle of the room between me and the other people sitting there.

[1868] Like I'd see no reason to assume that that actually was a river, but maybe it was.

[1869] But anyway.

[1870] But where it comes to like souls and where it starts getting really woo -woo is when I could feel the tug of going into a particular place like the woman's head or something.

[1871] Like I could feel there were moments where I was having lots of fun and I was thinking, oh, is this all this is?

[1872] Oh, this is going to be enjoyable.

[1873] And then some, I would just a wave of dread would wash over me. And I was like, and I'd start to feel like I was going to vomit.

[1874] And then I'd be like, oh, okay, I have to take this shit seriously.

[1875] and I'd sit upright and I'd take a deep breath and that I can imagine I think is what he's sort of talking about right maybe that's like some well one of the things to make the really powerful distinction is McKenna was specifically talking about DMT that's what he was into sure she wasn't really into ayahuasca right his brother Dennis is really in ayahuasca and his brother Dennis is really recommended that I do it and I probably will eventually I'm sure I will but Terrence was into the hardcore version of yeah I see and it was it's a apparently you can't well I know from the hardcore version of it, you're not escaping.

[1876] Like, once you're locked in, you're gone.

[1877] Like, it's way more potent.

[1878] Way more potent.

[1879] Yeah, I've got to try it and see the difference.

[1880] So what you're experiencing when you're having the ayahuasca trip is this M -O -A inhibitor, allowing you to have this prolonged, slow -release DMT trip.

[1881] So you're not getting shot through a fucking cannon to the center of the universe.

[1882] No, sure, but people have been using this for thousands of years and believing that it is opening a portal to some kind of spirit world.

[1883] No, I understand, but I'm saying there's a difference between what McKenna's describing and what you experience.

[1884] Yeah, got it.

[1885] And what I have experienced.

[1886] But presumably McKenna's theories can be extrapolated to ayahuasca as well as to EMT.

[1887] Sure.

[1888] Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

[1889] But I think that you're getting a much more watered down version of it when you're doing Iowahua.

[1890] Sure, I'm sure you are.

[1891] Which is one of the reasons why people can sustain it for many, many hours.

[1892] I mean, I'm just trying to figure out what the competing claims about this dimension that we're accessing are, right?

[1893] On the one hand, you've got a pendulumette who's saying, well, it's just all in your head, right?

[1894] You've got to disregard what he's saying.

[1895] He hasn't experienced it.

[1896] If he experienced it and he was dismissing it, I would be like, wow, he must have got some weak shit.

[1897] I mean, what's compelling to me, what I was just saying about the conclusions that people have after they come off of these kinds of experiences, No one has ever had one of these experiences and come out of it and said wow, I really felt like I got an insight into the true meaning of life and the meaning of life is I should hate Jews or like no one has ever become more petty all of the experiences well not that I know of certainly everyone who I know or have read of who have had these kinds of experiences tend to come out with similar intellectual conclusions that we are all one that life is precious, that, you know, consciousness is divine, that love is important, all these kinds of things, which indicates to me that it's more, that makes it more plausible than it would otherwise be, that you're actually viewing something that exists rather than merely having your brain stirred up.

[1898] But isn't it possible that just stripping away the normal boundaries of consciousness reveal the most positive aspects of the human nature?

[1899] And you take away all of our insecurities and all of our, the biological necessity of survival and all these different things that sort of motivate us, and sexual impulses and desires and fears, strip all that stuff away with dimethyltryptamine and all of a sudden you reveal what the human soul really essentially is.

[1900] Could be, but why is the human soul based on love?

[1901] Well, because love is probably the thing that makes us most connected and makes us most productive and makes us feel the best.

[1902] you know you don't feel good if you're successful in a loan it's one of the weirdest things about being a person if you gave a person all the money in the world and all the tools and toys in the world and all the gadgets and gizmos but you left them by themselves on the moon they'd probably want to blow their fucking brains out you we don't exist in a vacuum we exist as a superorganism this is something that anthony robin says that makes sense absolutely absolutely i mean it's almost you could it comes back to it's almost semantics between that and having an insight into another dimension.

[1903] Because if what you're saying is that fundamentally at the core of all of us, once you strip everything else away, is a kind of beating heart of deep glowing and abiding connected love, well, just call that the other dimension then, because that's spooky in and of itself.

[1904] That other dimension, what it feels like when you're doing DMT, is that the way I describe it is you're in this infinite realm of complex geometric patterns that are made out of love an understanding and that you and by understanding i mean like wisdom like they see you can't bullshit them you just you're exposed raw and what you are and what you've been is exposed raw and your personality in your life your culture stripped away and you're left with your soul or whatever we think of as soul again weighted words weird words but ultimately that feeling of love does come out of everybody like and i think that that's probably at the root of what makes us want to be connected with each other.

[1905] That's why you do feel bad when you're just alone for long periods of time.

[1906] You don't connect with people.

[1907] It's probably good to be alone occasionally, but ultimately you want to get back to people and you want to get back to people that you care about and that you love because you bond with them.

[1908] You do that thing that happens when you go into the DMT world where you connect with everything and it sucks you in.

[1909] And as you let go, it bathes you with that loving, weird, strange, all -knowing feeling.

[1910] Anthony Robbins has an interesting line that you reminded me of at the beginning of the show when you were joking about how you always feel unfulfilled and like, you know, the moment you do a podcast, you need to just focus on the next one and get the next one done, which is that he feels like the greatest failures are successful people who don't feel fulfilled, that he would much rather see an unsuccessful, fulfilled person than a successful, unfulfilled person.

[1911] Let me step in here because Anthony Robbins' greatest success, Robbins, his greatest success is teaching people to be successful.

[1912] So he must say that it's to be fulfilled.

[1913] He must feel fulfilled teaching people how to be successful.

[1914] I think he would say that he teaches them how to be fulfilled.

[1915] Okay.

[1916] What has he done?

[1917] What has he done?

[1918] Besides teach people how to be fulfilled.

[1919] Yeah, that's his version of fulfillment.

[1920] How much amazing creative work of literature, of fiction, of how much stuff is Anthony Robbins done?

[1921] How many movies has he made?

[1922] How many paintings has he done?

[1923] How many things has he created out of nothing that he's super happy with?

[1924] No, he's none.

[1925] He's not a creative artist.

[1926] His life mission is to help people get fulfilled.

[1927] So him talking about creative people being fulfilled, fundamentally, I don't think he understands what I'm saying.

[1928] Like, am I fulfilled?

[1929] Yeah, I mean, is it great that we have 830 whatever podcast and a bunch of people like?

[1930] Absolutely.

[1931] But what is fulfilled mean?

[1932] Am I content?

[1933] Can I sit back and relax and enjoy it?

[1934] No, because part of what makes you good at something is that you're constantly assessing whether or not it's good.

[1935] And you're constantly objectively and introspectively analyzing it and breaking it down and chopping it up.

[1936] Dude, I just got through doing a Netflix special.

[1937] It's going to air in October.

[1938] And I had to edit it.

[1939] It's fucking awful doing that.

[1940] Chewing away at your work and trying to figure out what you can, what's better.

[1941] Should I cut this out?

[1942] Should I leave this here?

[1943] And ultimately, what I decided to do is I did four shows so I could do one of them almost completely in its entirety.

[1944] And they're like, and do it that way.

[1945] But I know other people think it's funny.

[1946] I know the people that were there.

[1947] I got a standing ovation.

[1948] I know they loved it.

[1949] I fucking hate everything.

[1950] I don't, I don't mean hate, but I mean.

[1951] You're a perfectionist, yeah.

[1952] But there's a constant search for the right beats and the right things, and it's not a matter of not being fulfilled.

[1953] I'm a very fulfilled person.

[1954] It's a matter of never really liking anything that I do, never really loving it, and there's always this constant need to make it better, this constant state of, and the most people that I find that are really super happy with everything they do, they usually suck.

[1955] That's true.

[1956] Yeah.

[1957] No, I mean, I'm like you.

[1958] That's why it takes me forever to write and why I never meet right.

[1959] writing deadlines because I always hate what I produce.

[1960] That's why you're good.

[1961] Anthony Robbins is a great guy.

[1962] I appreciate him very much.

[1963] And I listened to his motivational books on tape when I was a fighter.

[1964] I used to listen to that.

[1965] I had fucking one of those Walkman cassette things.

[1966] And I bought his books.

[1967] I've listened to his stuff.

[1968] Ultimately, though, and this is not to dismiss him, what he does is write about success.

[1969] That's right.

[1970] And he wants people to be successful.

[1971] So that's what he thinks of as fulfillment.

[1972] But if Anthony Robbins decided to write some great work of fiction, then I could listen to him.

[1973] If Anthony Robbins sat down and came up with this fucking amazing movie and produced it and it's some sci -fi masterpiece, then I could understand.

[1974] But he's not doing that.

[1975] But don't coaches, I mean, this isn't the defend Anthony Robbins hour, but don't coach it.

[1976] Like, you can be a great coach without being good at the thing that you're coaching people on.

[1977] Absolutely.

[1978] And sometimes that's useful too.

[1979] Oh, sure.

[1980] Yeah, there are great screenwriting coaches.

[1981] Robert McKee runs his three.

[1982] day seminar incredibly invaluable.

[1983] If anyone wants to write a screenplay who's out there, do Robert McKee's seminar.

[1984] He's never written a decent screenplay in his entire life.

[1985] No?

[1986] He's not a good screenwriter, but he understands that.

[1987] And he's the first to say that.

[1988] But you know what?

[1989] All the big studios pay for their script readers to go to his seminar.

[1990] Well, you know where that doesn't work?

[1991] Stand up.

[1992] There are no stand -up coaches that are any good.

[1993] No, that's true.

[1994] That's true.

[1995] Isn't it weird?

[1996] You get these terrible comedians that fail, and then they start teaching stand -up.

[1997] Yeah, it's like the stand -up class, and you're like, well, I'm sorry, what do you know about stand -up?

[1998] And if you ever watch them do stand -up, you want to fucking shoot yourself.

[1999] There was a couple people that wrote books about stand -up, and they were all awful, all awful comics.

[2000] There's one guy who was really helpful to me when I started doing stand -up.

[2001] Not that I've ever been successful at doing stand -up because I didn't pursue it, but he was really helpful to me in New York when I first got there.

[2002] But apart from that, yeah, I completely agree.

[2003] Basically, he was just a good joke writer, so he was good at whittling down a concept into a punchline.

[2004] Well, there's definitely people that are good at that.

[2005] And you could learn from friends, but I've never seen a really good comic teach a course.

[2006] Like, David Tells, not out there teach a stand -up.

[2007] You know what I mean?

[2008] That's right.

[2009] Well, be yourself.

[2010] I mean, like, I love the idea.

[2011] I've had so many conversations with successful creative people who I admire that I can't believe that I still ever doubt this advice, but it's the most consistent advice that I get from creative people I like.

[2012] Anytime they try to do something which is calculated to appeal to a particular demographic or which is based on notes that other people have given them or which is intended to fill a particular niche, it falls flat on its face.

[2013] And every time they do something that is for them, that they love, that has an audience of one, which is them, and it's true to them, and it speaks to them, and it's idiosyncratic in particular, it kills.

[2014] It's so true, but here's the rub.

[2015] You have to learn how to be yourself.

[2016] That's right.

[2017] And that takes a long fucking time.

[2018] I think back when I was 21, when I first started doing stand -up, and I'm horrified that anybody let me on stage.

[2019] Because I didn't know anything.

[2020] I didn't know who I was.

[2021] I didn't know what my thoughts on things were.

[2022] I was just terrified trying to get laughs.

[2023] So I was trying to figure out what would make people laugh.

[2024] I had no idea what I had no idea what I had.

[2025] thought was funny other than what I saw that made me laugh.

[2026] I couldn't break it down.

[2027] Like if I went to see Sam Kinnison or Jerry Seinfeld or something like that, I knew they were hilarious.

[2028] They made me laugh.

[2029] I could repeat the joke to you.

[2030] I could say, oh my God, I saw Seinfeld.

[2031] Let me tell you his joke.

[2032] And I could tell you and I knew it was funny.

[2033] But I didn't know how to do it.

[2034] Yeah.

[2035] I just clumsily concocted my own versions of different subjects that I thought could possibly be funny and then over time slowly but surely figured out how to actually be funny but along the lines i had to fail miserably and learn and feel pain and heartbreak and all the bullshit that people go to before i started forming my own actual opinions on things i think that's a really good point because i i sometimes wonder i was i was a late bloomer in figuring out who i am as a creative person do you know it now yeah i don't know who the fuck i am well no to to a closest approximation that you're able to, that you're able to land.

[2036] Like, your audience knows who Joe Rogan is.

[2037] Put it that way, right?

[2038] And that's enough.

[2039] Some of them do.

[2040] Some of them are mad.

[2041] I thought you were different, bro.

[2042] I didn't think you'd make fun of that.

[2043] What?

[2044] Ignore them.

[2045] Make fun of my mom, bitch.

[2046] It's like reading the comments section of a website.

[2047] But I think sometimes one of the differences between people who peak early and a successful young versus people who are better later in life is just how long does it take you.

[2048] to really get grounded in who you are and to stop trying on these different kind of invisible cloaks of personalities that you think you might be.

[2049] Yeah.

[2050] Until you can strip all that away.

[2051] And then you're like, okay, I think this is the real.

[2052] It's the same with podcasting as well.

[2053] Like I used to host stuff and try to get it up and do radio bits in Australia.

[2054] And if I listen back to them now, it's so affected.

[2055] It's so not, it's so me trying to be me on radio instead of just me. Yeah.

[2056] you got to be you.

[2057] I think the thing that happens also with the peaking early thing is success itself is the poisoner of creativity.

[2058] Success itself, like, all of a sudden you have it.

[2059] That's one of the reasons why I don't believe Anthony Robbins is correct.

[2060] It's like this idea of being satisfied and being fulfilled.

[2061] I mean, sure, I'm satisfied and sure I'm fulfilled, absolutely.

[2062] But the whole thing about this creative process is you can never totally be happy with what you're doing or what you've done because you've got to do more shit, especially stand -ups.

[2063] Like if you're a musician and you're the Rolling Stones and you have a catalog, fuck, man, you can tour forever.

[2064] You don't need to write a new song ever.

[2065] But if you're a stand -up, I put out a new special every year and a half, every two years, whatever it is.

[2066] And if I don't do that, I feel like a fucking piece of shit.

[2067] And if I try to do the same jokes, five years in a row, six years in a row, ten years in a row, we all know comics that do that.

[2068] You go to see them and they're doing the same bits word for word for decades and decades.

[2069] They never put anything out.

[2070] Yeah.

[2071] I go back to the comedy seller in New York sometimes and the, you know, the MC will be doing the same schick that he was doing 10 years ago when I first came to New York.

[2072] I'm like, that guy is still doing the same material.

[2073] I mean, in one respect, I can sort of understand it, because if you're, like, take music, maybe not the Rolling Stones, but say, Hansen, you can just do M -Bop every single time you go anywhere, and that's all you need to do for the rest of your life.

[2074] And in comedy, there are people like, like, sometimes audiences want it, right?

[2075] Sometimes audience would be like, do that bit about bloody blah.

[2076] Which is fine.

[2077] Which is fine.

[2078] I mean, Jerry Seinfeld did that one thing, I'm telling you for the last time.

[2079] Yeah, I did a global tour.

[2080] Yeah, I went and saw him in Sydney.

[2081] Yeah.

[2082] Nothing wrong with that.

[2083] But then he retired all of that material.

[2084] Right.

[2085] But like if you go to see a guy like Bill Burr, you see Bill Burr special and then you go see him like a year later, you're going to see a whole new set every time.

[2086] And that's the same with Ari Sheffir.

[2087] That's the same with, you know, fill in the blank.

[2088] Every single essentially touring comedian now.

[2089] To be fair to Anthony Robbins, I don't think that he's saying that you should just be, sit on your laurels and not strive and succeed.

[2090] You know what I mean?

[2091] What he's saying is we all know the story of like the person who wanted a Ferrari and wanted to, wanted a sexy wife and wanted the best job and wanted to make a million dollars and then gets it and finds themselves miserable.

[2092] Well, he didn't really want that.

[2093] Exactly.

[2094] They're not connected to what they really want.

[2095] That's what he's talking about.

[2096] He doesn't mean being self -satisfied.

[2097] He means he means being genuinely fulfilled by the things that you're aspiring to do with your life and to get up to in the world.

[2098] Well, there are a bunch of things that we think we want.

[2099] That's right.

[2100] And then what they are is really just.

[2101] these unattainable goals that seem like they're unattainable.

[2102] And then once we attain them, we go, well, then now what?

[2103] Exactly.

[2104] And that's what happens to a lot of people when they get famous.

[2105] It's why a lot of comics in particular, they become famous, and they're really good when they become famous.

[2106] Like Kinnison's my favorite all -time example.

[2107] Because I believe that Kinnison from like 1984 to 1986 is probably the greatest comic of all time.

[2108] There was just a time where he was just a maniac.

[2109] And he just was.

[2110] And it's hard because you've got to kind of put it into context.

[2111] of the time that there was no one like that back then.

[2112] Because comedy is not like music.

[2113] Like you go listening to music from the 1960s.

[2114] It's still really awesome.

[2115] Go try to listen to some Mort Saul from 1960.

[2116] It's fucking terrible.

[2117] It doesn't mean that Mort Saul's not a brilliant comedian.

[2118] He certainly was.

[2119] Or Lenny Bruce, who's like the godfather of the whole thing.

[2120] If it wasn't for Lenny Bruce, no one today would be doing the same kind of stand -up.

[2121] It just wouldn't have existed.

[2122] It's an art form that almost that he, in many, ways sort of gave birth to well go listen to that stuff today it doesn't hold up yeah comedy doesn't necessarily hold up so in some ways kinnison doesn't totally hold up when you go back i found him a bit hard to to grasp from today's vantage point i must say but during the time this is uh i've told the story before unfortunately so everybody who heard it gather around there was a girl that i worked with i was working at the boston athletic club i was 19 years old and there was this girl that was working at the front desk.

[2123] She was hilarious.

[2124] She was like a really like this big athletic girl and she was just always like boisterous and joking around about stuff.

[2125] And she was awesome.

[2126] I really wish I stayed in touch with her.

[2127] But anyway, I don't know her name anymore.

[2128] I don't remember her name.

[2129] But I remember she told me about Sam Kinnison.

[2130] She goes, I saw this comedian on HBO.

[2131] And now granted, this is the back and then there was like HBO, Fox, NBC, ABC.

[2132] There was nothing.

[2133] And maybe Cinemax, right?

[2134] She did that bit about homosexual necrophiliacs paying money to spend a few hours undisturbed with the freshest male corpses.

[2135] You know that bit?

[2136] There was a bit about a real story that Kinnison had heard where these, apparently this is a real issue.

[2137] And Joey Diaz knows a guy who walked in on this mortician that was fucking his mom after his mom was dead.

[2138] that apparently people have done this and that they treat people's bodies like a sex doll is Joey Diaz the kind of guy who'd make that shit up because that sounds almost impossible.

[2139] These guys got arrested.

[2140] These guys, in the Kinnison story, they got arrested because these morticians were accepting money from these people that would come in and fuck these corpses.

[2141] I mean, if it's a stranger, I understand.

[2142] I'd do that in heartbeat.

[2143] But my own mother?

[2144] Well, the guy wasn't fucking his mom.

[2145] Oh, someone else was wrong.

[2146] His friend's mom.

[2147] This mortician was fucking these guys.

[2148] That's fine.

[2149] I'm pretty sure was Joey told me that.

[2150] I hope it was.

[2151] Anyway, the point is, this girl does this bit for me. She goes, because the way Kinnison do it, he goes, imagine, he goes, you're lying there, you're on the slab, you go, well, well, I had a good time in life.

[2152] Now I guess I'm going to go to heaven and be with Jesus, and then starts rocking back and forth and she's doing this on the floor in the parking lot, on the ground.

[2153] She's lying on her stomach going, hey, it feels like someone's fucking me in the ass.

[2154] Oh, you mean life keeps fucking in the ass, even after your death?

[2155] it never ends it never ends oh oh I am laughing my ass off at this girl doing this in the parking lot and I went out and I believe I got it on VHS cassette because again this is 86 before I'd ever done stand -up and I watched his HBO special and I went holy shit like I didn't even know that was comedy I didn't know someone could I thought comedy was evening at the improv guys would roll up their sleeves do you ever notice?

[2156] Yeah set up punchline Yeah And this guy was doing This completely Radical version of that With a beret on And a trench coat I was like What the fuck is this And he was so good For a short period of time And then I went to see him live When I first got into comedy Around 1988 And he had already slid Way off the rails And he was just partying all the time And doing coke And banging strippers Well he's on heroin as well Wasn't he?

[2157] No I don't believe so.

[2158] I think he's a Coke, pretty much just a Coke guy.

[2159] Probably did heroin.

[2160] Probably did everything you put in front of him, you know?

[2161] He was Sam Kinnison.

[2162] He was an animal.

[2163] He even joked around about that, about people expected him to do drugs.

[2164] Like, you know, they're like, he's here, he's here.

[2165] Cut the biggest line in the world.

[2166] He would do it in his heart would be beaten out of his chest.

[2167] He said, well, I can't say no. I mean, that would be impolite.

[2168] Well, also, like, would be bad for his image.

[2169] He sort of became a prisoner of his own image.

[2170] He created this persona, and then he became a prisoner to that persona.

[2171] But he just stopped right.

[2172] and stopped being funny and he's hanging out with celebrities and he's going to parties and he's not not hungry anymore not doing the work and he went from being one of the best ever to being like an open micers caricature of who he really was where he really didn't have any points and it was all just the scream and all just the you know like trying to pick out a shocking subject but it wasn't really it wasn't didn't really resonate with him and I think uh with a lot of comedians what's really important is that you are a regular person you are you just you're just you're You can fit in with people and you understand people.

[2173] And a lot of people, they become famous.

[2174] And then all of a sudden they get assistants, and then they get, you know, managers and agents shield them from the world.

[2175] They have publicists that do all the talking for them.

[2176] And they get tucked away in an ivory tower.

[2177] And then they show up for interviews with sunglasses on.

[2178] And, you know, and they're all about maintaining.

[2179] Tell me about it.

[2180] I've interviewed enough of those on her post -life.

[2181] Yeah, well, I mean, not even necessarily comedians, but people who come on with that persona who are hands.

[2182] who have spent their entire lives being handled.

[2183] Like, give me an example.

[2184] Roseanne Barr?

[2185] See, I had her in here.

[2186] She was awesome.

[2187] Was she?

[2188] Yeah.

[2189] Well, you probably got her to open up.

[2190] I had 25 minutes.

[2191] Well, I had three hours, and she knows I'm a huge fan.

[2192] I think Roseanne is probably one of the ten most important comedians ever.

[2193] Oh, absolutely.

[2194] I mean, I'm a huge fan.

[2195] Actually, did you see the documentary film that was made about her run for president?

[2196] No, no. interesting.

[2197] It's, you know, it's fascinating to see this person who was so, so groundbreaking and who did so much for comedy and for, I guess, the portrayal of women and fat people and the working class on American television.

[2198] Completely unusual.

[2199] Like Kinison was a totally different thing.

[2200] She was a totally different thing.

[2201] Yeah.

[2202] To see her kind of pottering around her home in Hawaii, like trying to run for president as a green candidate.

[2203] It's an interesting documentary.

[2204] I had to set her straight about chemtrail.

[2205] She believed the government was spraying things in the sky.

[2206] Oh, I remember I remember reading, maybe I read about that on, maybe you tweeted about it or something about I remember reading about her and Kim Trails or maybe it was Brian Dunning's episode, did he reference that or something?

[2207] There was something to do with skeptical Maybe, he might have, I don't know I don't remember, there's too many of them They get, they get all -130 some If I really remember it at all, you know Dunbar's number Like there's only like certain amount of data You can stuff in that fucking dome of yours Absolutely, and let it go, who cares Who gives a shit how many hundreds it is?

[2208] But she was also on this show.

[2209] She didn't, she didn't come in, like, handled at all.

[2210] Mm -hmm.

[2211] She came in by herself, sat down, shot the shit, laughed, joked around.

[2212] Interesting.

[2213] I mean, fame, you were talking earlier about fame.

[2214] Like, it can be incredibly alienating when you reach a certain.

[2215] What's your sweet spot of fame?

[2216] Because I, you know...

[2217] I think I hit it about a year and a half ago.

[2218] I'm trying to back off.

[2219] You know, I want to be able to go to the movies.

[2220] Yeah, I can't think of anything worse than not being able to get on a plane without every...

[2221] But, like, I got on a plane a couple of years ago, and De Niro was sitting in seat 1A.

[2222] So I don't know how he got on the plane or how long he'd been on the plane, but he wasn't here.

[2223] I didn't see him bored.

[2224] So he'd been sitting there for Lionel Richie.

[2225] Oh, yeah?

[2226] We got on the plane, and Rwano Ritchie was already there.

[2227] I've no fucking idea.

[2228] He was already on the plane.

[2229] I'm like, I'm in the front of the line, bitch.

[2230] How hell did you get on that plane, Lionel?

[2231] So I was one of the first people on the plane, and I also happened to be in first class.

[2232] And the, did you hack your way into first class?

[2233] You son of a bitch.

[2234] No, actually someone, a production company paid for me that I was shooting a pilot.

[2235] And so I was, I was one of the first people on the plane and I was able to see the reactions of everybody walking past as they notice or don't notice that it's Robert Deiro sitting on the plane.

[2236] Right.

[2237] And it's incredible to, I mean, his life is just a relentless stream of people acting weird.

[2238] Yeah.

[2239] Right?

[2240] I mean, every single person who noticed him would do a double take, gasp, nudge, you know, unsubtely nudge the person who they're traveling with.

[2241] And he has to sit there reading the newspaper pretending that this is normal.

[2242] He can't say hello to everybody.

[2243] It is now for him.

[2244] But what a horrible normal.

[2245] What if you want to pick your nose?

[2246] Don't pick your nose in public, you piece of shit.

[2247] I love a good pick.

[2248] Isn't a good pick just satisfying?

[2249] It's weird how many people pick in a car.

[2250] When it's dry up there.

[2251] I know.

[2252] Get a big chunk out.

[2253] It's all dry.

[2254] Yeah, you realize that there's more up there you kind of you pull out a piece of your brain almost just goes all the way up to in between your eyes i agree it's good yeah it is uh it's got to be weird to be that famous so there's certain levels like a buddy of mine his friend doug stanhope's friends with johnny dep and uh he he talks about how unmanageable johnny depp's famous like he cannot go to if he goes to a restaurant literally people do not give a fuck if he's eating they swarm the table that's right and come over with cameras and pictures and they want to touch him yeah and they don't leave him alone he's just far beyond the regular fame into that weird there's only 10 people in the world that have that kind of fame You become other people's property Yeah Basically And they feel like you owe them Mm -hmm Yeah And I think television Maybe movie stars I'm not sure how it would play But I think I mean my experience Broadcasters And in other words Television personalities And radio hosts Are people feel like You're their friend In a way That they don't To movie stars Yeah So there's a different interplay Like people Movie stars are different because they play someone different.

[2255] Like, oh my God, that's the guy from Cape Fear.

[2256] That's Raging Bull.

[2257] That's Jake Lamata.

[2258] You know, that's the thing.

[2259] And there's something about the bigness of the screen and the glamour of Hollywood that makes them sort of otherworldly.

[2260] Yes.

[2261] Whereas when people go up to Jimmy Fallon, it's like, oh, Jimmy.

[2262] Like, you know, it's like, oh, you're my buddy.

[2263] Like, we should hang out sometime.

[2264] Yeah.

[2265] No, you're fucking idiot.

[2266] But I think there's a sweet spot to fame that, as you say, I would not want to go past.

[2267] I'd like to be more famous than I am, but not so famous that I can't pick my nose in public.

[2268] That's the Josh Sepp's level of fame.

[2269] You definitely shouldn't pick your nose in public, dude.

[2270] Wait to you're alone.

[2271] Grandmother, stop chastising me for my...

[2272] I've got my fucking boogers in front of all these humans.

[2273] I've got my fist up my nose right now, up to my wrist.

[2274] I was sitting next to this guy in an airplane once this old dude, and he just kept digging in his nose.

[2275] He didn't give a fuck.

[2276] Because he was about 75 years old, and he's like, nobody's fucking me. Do it once.

[2277] Like, it ain't happen.

[2278] I don't give a shit.

[2279] And he was in first.

[2280] class so he had some cash and he's just fucking up there where'd he wipe it i don't remember i just stopped looking at him i put my headphones on i zoned out i'm like i'm tired of look at this old dude picking his nose he farted a bunch of times too asshole he was just all about just letting that body go i've had some bad experiences on greg fitzs has a bit about that about how he uh you know when he's in first clothes he always gets upgraded because he flies so much so he was in first class and needed to fart but didn't want to stink out the first class cabin so he'd go back through the curtain to economy class and just and just walk down the aisle farting just crop dusting yeah and then he'd go back to first class so smart move those those people in cattle class are disgusting it smells like hell back there Joey Diaz always farts in first class and it's always so horrific you can imagine I wrote a whole bit about Joey farting in first class I wrote a whole blog entry about this one time that he did that this woman, she yelled out, but I had headphones on, and she yelled out behind us, oh my God!

[2281] And she yelled it out, and I put my shirt over my nose like this, and he started laughing and clapping his head.

[2282] Sometimes, look, I've occasionally, I will confess, I've occasionally been too hungover on a plane and have not been able to hold it in, and I've got a little trick for people, which they can keep up their sleeves and, you know...

[2283] You go to the bathroom, you're rude piece of shit.

[2284] Sometimes you're in the window seat and the person sitting next to you is eating their meal or something and you can't get out, you don't want to disturb things, and you're not sure if it's going to be smelly or not, and you're not sure if it's going to be big or not.

[2285] It's just going to be...

[2286] Something has to give.

[2287] And so here's the tactic, so that no one will suspect you.

[2288] You release it, you survive through the beginning of the horrible smell without paying any attention to it.

[2289] Right.

[2290] Then as soon as it would have had time to have gotten to you, if it had been emitted by someone nearby, then you very visibly start to react to the bad smell.

[2291] You don't understand.

[2292] Later.

[2293] This is a strategy that has been employed by American children for decades.

[2294] It is called, he who smelt it, dealt it.

[2295] So this is not some new strategy.

[2296] I'm not saying you should be the first.

[2297] No one is going to.

[2298] You wait until the person sitting next to you starts to win.

[2299] wince.

[2300] And then once they winced, then you go, oh, because then the trajectory can be established.

[2301] If they wince first and then you wince, then it's obviously coming from the other side of them.

[2302] No, you're going to give away these, like, micro -expressions that are going to reveal your guilt.

[2303] No, because I'm a perfect actor.

[2304] It's the perfect crime.

[2305] Who?

[2306] By my word.

[2307] You don't know my poker face.

[2308] Who has shot themselves?

[2309] And then I loudly say, I can't believe someone was so disgusting as to fart in this cabin, and that person wasn't me. Yeah, it's the woman behind Joey Diaz.

[2310] That's who it really was.

[2311] She probably farted when she smelled his fart and she made it even worse.

[2312] And I was blaming it all on Joey.

[2313] But her yelling out, oh my God, I'll never forget that lady.

[2314] That poor lady.

[2315] I love the audacity that she's not embarrassed about it because ordinarily you have the, ordinarily you have the tact to be a bit embarrassed about, on behalf of the farter when you're the fartee.

[2316] You don't understand what kind of fucking smell Joey Diaz can pack in that body.

[2317] You're talking with a man who's well over 300 pounds and who knows what he ate.

[2318] He ate a small child who is farting inside him and now he's farting the fart.

[2319] Many things could be happening, many things.

[2320] I wanted to mention also I was reading this piece about stem cells.

[2321] Have you been paying attention to the fucking crazy?

[2322] I mean it looks now like we're going to be able to use stem cells to grow I mean, we always knew you'd be able to grow organs in a lab, right?

[2323] But now it looks like within the foreseeable future we're going to be able to grow hearts and essentially grow hearts in a lab and you're not going to have to worry about getting a heart transplant.

[2324] Do you know that I've had stem cell treatments?

[2325] No, talk to me. I was that close to shoulder surgery.

[2326] Yep.

[2327] I had a tear in my rotator cuff, a tear in my labrum, a tear in my bicept tendon, and my shoulder was in some pretty significant pain.

[2328] And I was like, God, damn it.

[2329] Is this from a particular injury?

[2330] Is this from generic?

[2331] It's from martial arts.

[2332] It's from weightlifting.

[2333] It's from years of abuse.

[2334] The overall wear and tear of being Joe Rogan.

[2335] When I got the MRI, apparently my shoulder had been dislocated.

[2336] I didn't know it.

[2337] And it popped back in place at one point in time.

[2338] And they saw there's some particles that are floating around.

[2339] Jiu -Jitsu is just unbelievably brutal on your body because you're constantly attacking joints and trying to break those joints.

[2340] And then you have to tap, but you don't want to tap.

[2341] So you muscle through it.

[2342] And then you wind up getting pretty injured.

[2343] And then you heal up for a little bit and you hop right back in and train again because it's so much fun.

[2344] So I was really close to getting shoulder surgery.

[2345] And I talked to the doctor from the UFC who had just gotten these stem cell injections in his shoulder after surgery.

[2346] He had shoulder surgery, had his shoulder repaired, and then gotten these injections and had some pretty good results with it.

[2347] And he's like, look, you really probably need surgery.

[2348] But if you want to try these injections, let's give it a shot because it has been shown.

[2349] I just don't want to give you any false hope.

[2350] Okay, let's give it a shot.

[2351] So what they do is they take a woman's placenta that is given birth to a kid through cesarean section and then a young woman.

[2352] And they take that placenta and then they get these embryotic stem cells from it.

[2353] Yep.

[2354] And they injected it into my shoulder and within four weeks I felt better than I'd felt in a year.

[2355] And then it kept getting better and better and better.

[2356] And now, I mean, there's still some like clicking because there's still some shit floating around in there.

[2357] But I lift a lot of weights, and I don't have any pain.

[2358] I mean, it's amazing how much better it got.

[2359] I did a kickboxing workout today where I went seven rounds on the back, so I'm slamming into the back.

[2360] I have no pain in my shoulder at all, nothing, zero.

[2361] I mean, there's stuff floating around in there, like I said.

[2362] I could feel it, go click, click, click, because there's like some broken off cartilage and shit that maybe I'll have to get pulled out of there one day.

[2363] But there's no pain.

[2364] And there's no limit in my range of motion.

[2365] There's no strength problem.

[2366] Like, I've shown the doctor, like the physical exercises that I can do, and he's blown away.

[2367] He's like, that is incredible because it just regenerates tissue.

[2368] And it can regenerate, it could regenerate meniscus.

[2369] It can regenerate ligaments.

[2370] It's incredible.

[2371] Well, it can become anything.

[2372] So, I mean, think about that.

[2373] You had an injury.

[2374] You had a debilitating injury that was causing you significant discomfort and pain.

[2375] What science was able to do is take the cells that were going to form.

[2376] the spinal cord of a baby from an embryo, and those cells were then able to convert themselves into portions of Joe Rogan's different constituent components in order to rebuild a portion of Joe's body.

[2377] It's crazy shit.

[2378] I mean, if that ain't miraculous, I don't know what it is.

[2379] I mean, there are some things coming down the pike with stem cells that are going to change everything.

[2380] I literally made the cusp.

[2381] like if I had gotten this injury five years ago I would have had to have surgery but I didn't I got it now and now there's no need for surgery like my shoulders I have a I'd shoot archery you know right so I shoot I pull 80 pounds a hundred times a day so I'm just going no no shoulder pain at all nothing I mean you watch the zero did you watch the archery in the Olympics I did watch some of it yeah it's fun the Aussies got silver I think oh you fucking people are showing to yourselves We're into ourselves.

[2382] I've just watched the NBC telecast of that.

[2383] I gave up on the Americans.

[2384] Americans were very humble.

[2385] That swimmer lied.

[2386] I gave up.

[2387] Ryan Locty?

[2388] That poor fellow.

[2389] He's a bit of a bogan, isn't he?

[2390] As we were saying in Australia.

[2391] Yeah, that's what you guys would call him.

[2392] You know what I thought was hilarious, though, that how people were, I think it was Salon had some article that it's proof that white male athletes are pieces of shit.

[2393] Like, they had this whole thing about white male athletes.

[2394] It's like, Jesus Christ, you think you can generalize?

[2395] one person one guy can you imagine if they'd said this is proof like if it was an African American they were they were like this is proof that black women are yeah the black women are piece of shit that would have been fine that would have been totally fine it's amazing that people are allowed and by the way it was written the article was not written by a white man so it was written by someone else but it's amazing that that you could do that you can be sexist as long as you're being sexist about and you can be racist as long as you're being sexist and racist about a class that you believe is privileged.

[2396] So you're allowed to punch up.

[2397] Yeah.

[2398] You should always punch up.

[2399] That's what we're talking about yesterday with Suey Park.

[2400] That's the on my podcast.

[2401] That punch up shit.

[2402] That is, God damn it, that's annoying.

[2403] It's so annoying.

[2404] And it's especially annoying because I understand the motivation behind it, right?

[2405] I do believe that it's different.

[2406] If there's a genuinely oppressed minority, then it's different, then they should have more of a license to make fun, for example, of the majority than the majority should on them.

[2407] At least it's less, I can understand that it's less bad.

[2408] What I don't understand is when they're allowed to show flagrant bigotry.

[2409] Yes.

[2410] Right?

[2411] I mean, it's not just like a gag.

[2412] It's like, so did you see there was a, I mean, this is slightly tangential, but everyone got their knickers in a knot or their tits in a tangle about a headline, I think it was in the San Jose Mercury, when Michael Phelps won his final.

[2413] You see that?

[2414] And it was this tokenistic kind of patronizing headline, which was like, you know, Olympic glory for Michael Phelps and African American woman, because there was like an African American woman who made Olympic history at the time.

[2415] No, what I saw is Michael Phelps win silver is a big headline.

[2416] And then below it is world record set in the 800 meters by this woman.

[2417] So she set a world record and she was below him.

[2418] He won a silver and he was above her.

[2419] There must have been another one because there was another one which was something.

[2420] like, you know, Olympic triumph for Michael Phelps and African -American athlete.

[2421] Now, that's a clumsy, stupid headline, right?

[2422] Is that the one?

[2423] Michael Phelps shares historic night with African -American.

[2424] Olympics, it said, Michael Phelps shares historic night with African -American.

[2425] Wait a minute, wait a minute.

[2426] He was wildly panned for being racially insensitive?

[2427] That headline.

[2428] The headline said, Olympics.

[2429] Michael Phelps shares historic night with African -American.

[2430] My point is, it's part of America's anal obsession with race that makes that headline possible in the first place.

[2431] That headline isn't racist in the way that the KKK is racist.

[2432] I mean, no white supremacist would write that headline.

[2433] They would just ignore the African American entirely, or they would write off that achievement.

[2434] That is the kind of headline that's written by a constipated white guilty liberal.

[2435] Right.

[2436] It has to say African American instead of just say the woman's name.

[2437] That's right.

[2438] Right, right.

[2439] Trying to be tokenistically approving in this kind of paternalistic patronizing way that white liberals insist on being.

[2440] And in doing so, they became racist.

[2441] And in doing so, it's actually racist.

[2442] And that's telling, I think, because it is racist to be overly concerned about race, even if you're trying to be positive.

[2443] What does this say?

[2444] Yeah, they put up a second one, 10 minutes later.

[2445] Oh, 10 minutes later, they changed it to.

[2446] Olympics, Michael Phelps shares historic night with Stanford Simone Manuel.

[2447] Why is that a gaffe?

[2448] it says missing something guys the third time was the charm as the Merck went with oh third time they wrote instead Stanford Simone Manuel and Michael Phelps make history so because Michael Phelps was first that's hilarious that's ridiculous so they're saying that when they changed it they didn't put the gold medalist first they put Michael Phelps first because he's the best fucking swimmer in the history of the world ever yeah but what's hilarious is they got it right the third time because her name is first.

[2449] Like, why, first of all, how about just say she won a fucking gold medal?

[2450] Why does she have to be in the same headline as him anyway?

[2451] Can you have another goddamn story where she won a gold medal?

[2452] Have her, give her own fucking story, and then have him have his own story.

[2453] I mean, why not just say Olympics, you know, gold and silver, you know, silver and gold for Phelps and I'll tell you why.

[2454] Because if you want people to buy your fucking newspaper, you better show Michael Phelps name.

[2455] Because otherwise, is they're not going to buy it?

[2456] No, I said he's the Kim Kardashian of swimming.

[2457] I think it's, I just think there's so much unnecessary, yeah, here it is, the Mercury News.

[2458] I didn't have her.

[2459] I didn't have him in the picture, just had a picture of her.

[2460] Well, now, is that the original?

[2461] No, that's the original.

[2462] That's the original.

[2463] Well, still, people love to say his name.

[2464] But hang on, let's see some of these tweets.

[2465] So flustered now, they can't even get it grammatically correct.

[2466] Keep trying that Michael Feltz shares historic night.

[2467] Oh, yeah, Stanford.

[2468] I mean, who cares?

[2469] Well, social justice warriors care.

[2470] A bunch of fucking weirdo shut -ins that are constantly monitoring the internet, looking to be recreationally offended, and can't wait to...

[2471] But look, there was a clumsy fucking headline in their defense.

[2472] But again, to be fair, the reason why that headline is stupid or exists in the first place is because it's written by someone who has been contaminated by a social justice warrior thinking and thinks that they need to point out the race of the gold medalist.

[2473] Wouldn't it be nice if there was just a gold medalist and a silver medal?

[2474] And that sort of a medalist happens to be much more famous than the gold medalist.

[2475] So obviously you put his name in.

[2476] Imagine if she went to a gas station and lied about being robbed.

[2477] And then someone from Salon wrote an article that it's proof that black American women are.

[2478] Look at this.

[2479] Proof that male athletes are a protected class.

[2480] It's not proof.

[2481] It's a proof that this guy is a fucking sociopath.

[2482] And he lied, Mary Elizabeth Williams.

[2483] The Ballad of Swim Shady.

[2484] That's a good headline.

[2485] That's pretty cool.

[2486] I don't know why we have to...

[2487] That's not true.

[2488] I was wrong, too.

[2489] I thought it said white males.

[2490] Just as male athletes are a protected class.

[2491] I just don't think that it's fair because it was one guy amongst thousands of athletes.

[2492] It's so stupid that you said male athletes are a protected class because he didn't get protected, by the way.

[2493] He got exposed.

[2494] There's nothing protected about dragging that guy's name.

[2495] Do you know he will be the fucking subject of jokes about lying for the end of time?

[2496] Yeah.

[2497] That guy will be the Benedict Arnold of jokes.

[2498] Jimmy Kimmel did a gag of ban last night.

[2499] Look, it's going to happen.

[2500] Like, there's nothing protected.

[2501] That's not proof that he's in a protected class.

[2502] In fact, it's evidence that no one is protected from lies.

[2503] Because of video cameras, because of technology, and because the truth eventually gets out.

[2504] I do think that if he was a black athlete from a poor, from like Ghana or something.

[2505] Look at that.

[2506] He lost all four major sponsors in one day.

[2507] Good.

[2508] He's a dickhead.

[2509] I don't give a shit about Ryan Lockty.

[2510] He lost a report of $1 million in endorsement money.

[2511] Ooh, that's got to suck.

[2512] Speaking of breaking ourselves into tribal racial camps, did you see the uproar over Ellen Generis's tweet?

[2513] No, what she said?

[2514] She did this, can you find that, Jamie?

[2515] So, Usain Bolt, she was like, it was something like, next time I go to the supermarket, I know what mode of transportation I'm going to get, and there was like a photoshopped image of her on Hussein Bolt's back or something.

[2516] Here we go.

[2517] She tweeted that, or did somebody, did somebody Photoshop it or did she do it?

[2518] I think her show photoshopped it.

[2519] Someone photoshopped it, then she tweeted it.

[2520] Oh, okay, I see, right.

[2521] Someone offended it, did they?

[2522] And so then, of course, it's like, it becomes this big thing about she's racist because it's the white, it's the white person enslaving the black person.

[2523] Seriously, does anyone believe that she wouldn't have made the same joke if, so here she is, like, being given a piggyback by Hussein Bolt.

[2524] That's funny It's funny Is that a Photoshop Is that what that is?

[2525] No, she's really doing it Joe Is she really writing him?

[2526] Why did somebody Photoshop What is the tweet?

[2527] What does the tweet say?

[2528] Damn, her girlfriend's hot Who gives a fuck?

[2529] Go down, scroll out, stop, go back You don't see you God damn it, go back I'm trying You're trying Try harder Scroll down We have a picture of her girlfriend Yeah Good for them Okay Is that the current one or Should have gone back again I was wrong She looked really cute So she wrote This is how I'm running errands from now on Hashtag Rio 2016 With the picture of her But that's not a race joke Well people are retarded If it was a white guy If it was a white guy She'd still I mean she still would have tweeted it Right So that doesn't mean that she's racist So this comes down to the question of When we accuse someone Of doing something racist Are we do we actually believe That they're racist Or Are we just trying to find an excuse to interpret what they're saying as being racist.

[2530] This is recreationally outraged.

[2531] That's what she is.

[2532] Or they are, or they're getting upset at her.

[2533] They're recreational outrage.

[2534] They're deciding that this is something they should be upset about.

[2535] They see the green light and they're hitting the gas.

[2536] Yeah.

[2537] If you really get pissed off with that, go jump off of a fucking bridge.

[2538] Seriously, just stop.

[2539] Just stop talking, tweeting, interacting, stop sharing your opinions.

[2540] Of sort of emotional and intellectual effort, Joe, that's expended in the world these days on these outrage outbursts.

[2541] could channel that hot air into some kind of power plant.

[2542] Be like Zeppelin, light it on fire, crashing it just blow it up.

[2543] Oh, the humanity!

[2544] Yeah.

[2545] It's a waste of time, and it's one of those things where I think we've already beaten it into the ground, we know what it is, and I think it's slowly being less and less acceptable for people to do shit like that, because I think more and more people realize how fucking unproductive and stupid it really is.

[2546] Yeah, I feel like, that's right.

[2547] I hope that the tide is turning, but I think that as the tide turns, the people who really get a kick out of this stuff are becoming more and more vitriolic and are turning the dial up to 11.

[2548] Yeah, because they feel like they're being sidelined.

[2549] They're still shut -ins.

[2550] They're still not going out and experiencing the world.

[2551] They're still living in this really bizarre, confined environment that they exist in, or it's not reasonable.

[2552] That's not reasonable to get upset at that.

[2553] I had a conversation with an African -American friend of mine about braided hair the other day, because there was, was it a Kardashian just got her hair braided?

[2554] Oh, it's cultural appropriation.

[2555] Cultural appropriation.

[2556] And what frustrated me was she kept going up to the edge of being critical of it and then saying, look, I don't really carry the way.

[2557] And in these conversations, I always feel like saying, well, if you don't care, then just don't care.

[2558] Didn't Bo Derek do that, like, way fucking back in the day?

[2559] I mean, is that really cultural appropriation to have?

[2560] Braids came from Egypt.

[2561] I mean, they've been around for so much longer than African Americans existed.

[2562] Remember when that fucking girl was getting mad at that boy for having dreadlocks?

[2563] And she was trying to cut his hair off.

[2564] Yeah, yeah.

[2565] She was being a cunt to him.

[2566] Yeah.

[2567] And she was doing it just because he was a little tiny guy and she can get away with it.

[2568] I think if he was a 250 -pound football player, she'd be saying the same things to him.

[2569] Well, also, I mean, of course not.

[2570] She's at a liberal arts college, and so she knows that he's going to be full of enough white guilt that she can pull that shit and he's going to cop it, she assumes.

[2571] And meanwhile, she's wrong.

[2572] The dreadlocks came from the Greeks, came from the Romans.

[2573] It's like they've been around as long as people have been stinky with dirty hair.

[2574] And so what my friend was saying about braids was, there you go.

[2575] Cultural appropriation, bro, Derek.

[2576] God damn, she was hot.

[2577] She was hot as fuck back then.

[2578] My friend was saying, look, all we want is for people to just recognize that it's appropriation and to understand and to express their gratitude for.

[2579] And I was like, well, by what mechanism would a card.

[2580] who gets braids elicit such I mean exhibit such gratitude for the cultural I mean if a Kardashian gets great gets braids and then goes out and says I want to thank everyone in the African community for creating braids that's going to cause more of a fucking stir than if she just did it it's so stupid what if I wear a sarong what if you just wear pants and you're black what if you wear a white European created pants and shirts is that cultural appropriation what is that it's so stupid culture is about sharing.

[2581] That's what it is about.

[2582] It's about when you go to an Indian restaurant, are you culturally appropriating because you're eating their food?

[2583] It's fucking stupid.

[2584] When you create your own Indian food, are you violating the rules of cultural appropriation?

[2585] If you have Taco Tuesday, are you a piece of shit?

[2586] You know, come on, it's fucking dumb, man. It's dumb.

[2587] You're probably a piece of shit if you have Taco Tuesday.

[2588] I'm mad.

[2589] It's just stupid.

[2590] But some of the best cuisine...

[2591] I'm tired of wasting any of my time and thoughts about social justice warrior ideal.

[2592] You're right.

[2593] I'm actually starting to stop doing that because if people haven't heard previous times that I've been on the show and you like this, then go back and listen to the previous ones, but you'll find that Joe and I spend a reasonably large amount of time talking about social justice issues and social justice warrior issues and how ridiculous it all is.

[2594] I feel like to some extent we've reached a tipping point where that's hopefully no longer necessary and now it's a little bit self -indulgent for us to be whining about the whiners.

[2595] I think you're right.

[2596] That's how I feel.

[2597] I feel like we've sort of won...

[2598] I'm whining.

[2599] I feel like...

[2600] Yeah, exactly.

[2601] I feel like we've kind of won this battle and we don't need to be so outraged at the outrage anymore.

[2602] I think the data had to come in and we had to understand that the only reason why people are being so recreationally outraged about the stupid shit is because they don't have real things to be fucked up about in real life.

[2603] It's easy to get food.

[2604] It's easy to get shelter.

[2605] Most people have those things.

[2606] Those are the primary things that we need.

[2607] And once you have those things and they're so readily accessible, then you start looking at things to pick on in the world.

[2608] because you don't have any real dilemmas, any real significant, important, absolute dilemmas, primal dilemmas.

[2609] And then the, yeah, so the outrage machine, I mean, it comes back a little bit to the reaction to Kurt Metzger's comments, you know, Amy Schumer's writer, about rape as well.

[2610] Like, what is within the appropriate parameters of public discourse in order to trigger the outrage machine, right?

[2611] See, I kind of disagree there because, like, in that sense, like he's saying something about a violent crime against women, and he's not exactly sure you know so I kind of see why someone would be outraged that you would step up and defend a guy when you don't really know because you weren't there but he's also I definitely agree that it's a more valid criticism of him is a lot more valid than criticism of Ellen DeGeneres for her tweet that's true definitely but still in both cases I think that getting too angry and wanting to punish people for doing something that's politically incorrect is not the ideal response like did you see well also it's important to point out that he didn't say that the guy wasn't guilty what he did say is that we have to understand that women are capable he did it in a parody form but what he did say is women are capable of lying too like this this stupid club whatever it is bans this guy you know i don't know if they're stupid i'm sure they're great but they ban this guy they don't know whether or not he's guilty and he's saying that this woman cannot have lied because like my bible that's right i wouldn't get too hung up on the question of whether or not he thinks the is guilty or not.

[2612] It's not what his point is.

[2613] Yeah, that's not his point.

[2614] His point is social media should not be the forum in which we conduct witch hunts into people.

[2615] Right.

[2616] And so people, they see something where someone's stepping out with a controversial opinion.

[2617] And what's their immediate idea is not to debate this and say, hey, this is not necessarily appropriate, but here's where his point is and here's where I disagree.

[2618] No. Fire him.

[2619] Punish him.

[2620] Bird him Hang him Shoot him in the deck Shoot him in the deck Did you see the story about the sachi The executive at satchi in London Who was fired for inappropriate comments about feminism No So about maybe four or five weeks ago What was his comment?

[2621] He said he was giving it What is a satchi?

[2622] Oh sorry Sachi and Sachi is one of the world's biggest ad agencies Oh And they're based in the UK and he is an elderly white guy and he was giving an interview to Business Insider and they asked about feminism and sexism in the workplace.

[2623] And he said that it's not an issue at Sachi because he thinks that women have this much more expansive vision of what their priorities should be and that old male dinosaurs have this old -fashioned idea about success which is they want to get to the top of the ladder and they want to become an executive and they want to have as much money and power as possible but that women have a more expansive view and are wiser and care more about children and family and other things than just success.

[2624] And that was perceived as being an excuse for not addressing sexism in the workplace.

[2625] And he was fired.

[2626] He was fired for that?

[2627] Oh, that's hilarious.

[2628] Or put on administrative leave or whatever it is indefinitely.

[2629] And I...

[2630] Thank God I don't work in advertising.

[2631] I sort of understand, like, that is a whole big argument, an interesting conversation that's happening among feminists themselves, right?

[2632] I mean, even my old boss, Arianna Huffington has written columns about this sort of thing.

[2633] In between sleeping?

[2634] In between her wonderful, her bouts of sleeping.

[2635] I take lots of naps, and then I complain about how women can't make it as I'm worth a hundred billion dollars.

[2636] She sounds like Dr. Evil from a Greek Dr. Evil.

[2637] One million dollars.

[2638] We are being held back except for me. You complete me. Though she was not saying that she doesn't say that women are being held back.

[2639] Her point is that we need to have like a broader view of success rather than just thinking about money and power.

[2640] Oh, for sure.

[2641] But when a white man says, and I look, I don't know that it is appropriate for a white man at the top of of a company that doesn't have very many women on the board to be speculating loudly about why it's not important, why there's no sexism in his company and why it's not important for them to address.

[2642] But I don't think that he should be fired for it.

[2643] Well, I don't think you should be able to say to someone, you know, how do you feel about racism in your company?

[2644] I think you should have to have something to accuse someone of before you start bringing up accusations like that.

[2645] Like, there has to be something.

[2646] Like if there's a specific example of sexism that he needs to address in his company and then he needs to make a statement on it, that's one thing.

[2647] But the journalist is just interested in this powerful man's idea about women in the workforce in general.

[2648] I don't think they're making an accusation.

[2649] Right.

[2650] That's what I'm saying.

[2651] I'm saying they're not making an accusation.

[2652] So if you're getting upset at this guy's opinion about sexism and saying that I don't think there's sexism in my company because we have this diverse view of what success is and I think women are getting away from this old.

[2653] dinosaur idea of what sex.

[2654] There's nothing wrong with what he said.

[2655] But if you say anything about sexism, other than what they want you to say.

[2656] Well, that's the thing.

[2657] That's the problem.

[2658] What upsets, what I worry about is that people are no longer being punished for using bad words or slurs or attacking people or expressing flagrantly bigoted opinions or saying that one race or sex is better or worse than another.

[2659] I'm kind of cool with taking people down for doing that shit.

[2660] They're now being punished for simply expressing opinions that feel old -fashioned.

[2661] Right.

[2662] Exactly.

[2663] And so you have to subscribe to sort of the ideological thought police.

[2664] Yes.

[2665] And that's a real worry.

[2666] Even if I disagree with all of those opinions, I want to live in a society that is boisterous and diverse with lots of different argumentative, you know, arguments coming from lots of different positions.

[2667] And a lot of my white liberal friends disagree with this.

[2668] They say that...

[2669] Cut them loose.

[2670] These are smart, successful people What they say is that having someone like him express a view like that actually silences other people because it deprives It probably It probably inhibits the women in his company from feeling like they can speak openly about their ambitions Because they think that there's a misogynistic, chauvinistic old dinosaur In charge of the company Well, what is this?

[2671] Let's go, I can't really comment on this Unless I see his exact quote Because we're paraphrasing here him here so what is his exact quote you can't find the story I was looking it up when he started and I couldn't well tell me what is his name what is his name of the place Sachi's Sachi and Sachi let me Sachi and Sachi Spell that spell that S A -A -T -C -H -I Well Jamie can't spell Try Sachi boss Feminism Sachi boss feminism Feminesism Brou H -Haha F -U -H -P -A -U -X space P -A -S Okay.

[2672] If we, scroll up, please.

[2673] If women want to equal men, they must change their notion of happiness.

[2674] Hmm.

[2675] Women, not men, propel the cult of motherhood and spread the frightening notion that life will never be truly complete without a baby and that no career plot it can compare.

[2676] Is that what he said?

[2677] No, it's not what he said.

[2678] That's an opinion piece by someone in the independent who is twisting his words.

[2679] Well, what the fuck is his words?

[2680] Let's find out his words.

[2681] Let's see.

[2682] Well, it might be.

[2683] He might be quoted in that.

[2684] That's fine his words, please.

[2685] Yeah, because what that is is ridiculous.

[2686] Whatever the fuck, that person just said, yeah, you can get upset at a guy if he says that.

[2687] Their ambition is not a vertical ambition.

[2688] It is intrinsic circular ambition to be happy.

[2689] Huh.

[2690] They are going.

[2691] Actually, guys, you're missing the point.

[2692] You don't understand.

[2693] I'm way happier than you, he explained.

[2694] Their ambition is not a vertical ambition.

[2695] It is this intrinsic circular ambition to be happy.

[2696] What?

[2697] This is weird.

[2698] Tim Hunt, abandony career here, territory, by saying that Sachi and Sachi, he'd met a number of talented women who reach a certain point in their careers and rejected the chance to become creative directors.

[2699] They're going, actually, guys, you're missing the point.

[2700] So I'll repeat it again.

[2701] He's saying, these women are saying, guys, you're missing the point.

[2702] You don't understand.

[2703] I'm way happier than you, he explained.

[2704] Their ambition is not a vertical ambition.

[2705] It's his intrinsic circular ambition to be happy.

[2706] have to debate that idea because I don't know if that's not necessarily true for a lot of women who decide to have children and then realize they would rather raise these children than climb this stupid fucking corporate ladder I don't think there's anything wrong with what he said yeah he also says here's the original article that I've got he says if you think about those Darwinian urges of wealth power and fame they're not terribly effective in today's world for a millennial because they want connectivity and collaboration they feel like they can get that without managing and leading.

[2707] So maybe we've got the definition wrong.

[2708] We're trying to impose our antiquated shit on them.

[2709] And they're going, actually, guys, you're missing the point.

[2710] You don't understand.

[2711] I'm way happier than you.

[2712] Their ambition, meaning women's ambition, is not a vertical ambition.

[2713] It's this intrinsic circular ambition to be happy.

[2714] Yeah, you just read that.

[2715] So they say, we're not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic dinosaur like men judge yourself by.

[2716] He says, I don't think the lack of women in leadership roles is a problem.

[2717] I'm just not worried about it because they're very happy.

[2718] They're very successful and doing great work.

[2719] I can't talk about sexual discrimination because we've never had that problem, thank goodness.

[2720] That last part's slightly problematic.

[2721] Other than that, what he's doing is expressing a very self -deprecating opinion.

[2722] And this is the...

[2723] He's talking about himself being like an old fuck.

[2724] And then the following weekend, they announced that he'd been placed on leave.

[2725] And they released a statement saying, because of his comments, it is for the gravity of these statements that Kevin Roberts has been asked to take a leave of absence effective immediately.

[2726] Oh, my God.

[2727] Everyone can suck my dick.

[2728] Everyone.

[2729] Line up.

[2730] Promoting gender equality starts at the top, and we will not tolerate anyone speaking for our organization who does not value the importance of inclusion.

[2731] I don't think that's what he was saying.

[2732] We work very hard to champion diversity, and we'll continue to insist that each agency's leadership be champions of both diversity and inclusion.

[2733] They should boycott that agency.

[2734] They're a bunch of twats.

[2735] I can't believe I've spent so many man hours arguing this on Facebook.

[2736] This is the other thing, like when you were talking about using cell.

[2737] phones and like Facebook and like not using Twitter so much and how kind of corrosive that can be to to your lived experience constantly dipping into that well of insanity.

[2738] It's just a fucking waste of time.

[2739] It's a drag on my time these days, Joe.

[2740] I spend like I posted, so what I, what, how this blew up in my face was, I posted on Facebook this article, an article about this and all my, my comment was, um, dissent shall not be tolerated.

[2741] Okay.

[2742] That was what I wrote.

[2743] Right.

[2744] Well, that's a joke, right?

[2745] Right.

[2746] You know, we're not going to tolerate dissenting.

[2747] It ended up being like pages and pages and pages and pages.

[2748] We had to migrate it into messenger.

[2749] I had to go into private messages.

[2750] It's just reams and reams of back and forth with friends in Europe, friends all over the world, trying to convince me that I'm, you know, a chauvinist for supporting.

[2751] They can all suck my dick, all those friends, all of them.

[2752] People stop.

[2753] They told, they said to me. First of all, here's a problem.

[2754] This is not a prepared statement.

[2755] No. Speaking off the cuff.

[2756] Another point that I was making.

[2757] People don't understand.

[2758] He's just having a coffee with a reporter.

[2759] Yeah.

[2760] I mean, what he said was not that bad.

[2761] He's riffing.

[2762] Yeah, and he's trying to speak positively about the company that they don't have an issue with sexism.

[2763] Look, he's, I disagree with what he's saying.

[2764] I think it's naive.

[2765] I think it's kind of hamfisted.

[2766] I do, too.

[2767] It's not, yeah, exactly.

[2768] It's not the smartest thing to say.

[2769] It's not offensive.

[2770] It's something that usually, it's something that certainly opens up the possibility of debate.

[2771] Like, you could say, well, there's a lot of women that don't feel like that.

[2772] Right.

[2773] I feel like the door or the glass ceiling is there for them to achieve management positions.

[2774] Exactly.

[2775] And the best response to an idea that you disagree with is to respond with more ideas and to take that idea down, not to fire the person who aired that idea.

[2776] I'm so weary.

[2777] I can't do this anymore.

[2778] Me too.

[2779] And these are very smart, successful people.

[2780] One of them told me that I sounded like, he basically said that I'm the same.

[2781] He was remembering back to an occasion in the 1980s where an English broadcast, an English sports broadcast, called one of the, one of the players a nigger, a really, like, but with a whole bunch of adjectives before it, like a lazy, a lazy, he's just a lazy, nasty, old nigger.

[2782] He was saying that you were doing that.

[2783] And he said that I, I am the type of, I'm just like the type of person who was opposed to the firing of that person because he was like, at every point in time, our standards evolve.

[2784] Oh, no. And you are just one of those white chauvinistic dinosaurs who's defending the old, you know, the old guard.

[2785] And in 50 years, I'll be regarded as being as, I was like...

[2786] And that guy got away from his computer and his wife put her strap on on and pegged him.

[2787] And he cried, and then she took his credit card and she shit in his mouth and she left the house.

[2788] And she fucked her, her personal trainer who's a giant African -American man with a dick like a police flashlight.

[2789] Fuck him.

[2790] Fuck him all.

[2791] I'm tired of it.

[2792] I'm tired of it.

[2793] And it makes me question myself.

[2794] What was that sound?

[2795] Oh, Nirm's line.

[2796] Someone's breaking in the neighbors.

[2797] It's late.

[2798] No one just alarm shouldn't be going off the slate.

[2799] Past business hours.

[2800] I got to get out of here, dude.

[2801] Yeah, let's go for it.

[2802] Can't do this anymore.

[2803] And I really can't do this anymore in terms of, like, subject matter.

[2804] I'm so tired of, like, validating these dummies' opinions and arguing about it.

[2805] No, I mean, I'm glad that we didn't really talk about it much today.

[2806] I'm over it as well.

[2807] I try to stay away from it as much as possible, and I try to let it just peter out.

[2808] The massacre conversation is much more complex.

[2809] True.

[2810] You know, and the subject of, I mean, you're talking about, like, a real crime, rape, right?

[2811] Did it happen?

[2812] We don't know.

[2813] It was a real issue.

[2814] Just two women are accusing a guy of a real crime.

[2815] There's a thing happening there.

[2816] With this other guy, this is not, this is a conversation a guy's having about sexism at a company that he works at.

[2817] But the Metzka thing is, I take your point, but the Metzka thing is similar to me, not insofar as it relates to rape, but insofar as it relates to what should the penalty be against Kurt for expressing an unpopular opinion in an unpopular way.

[2818] No, you're right.

[2819] You're right.

[2820] He should fucking quit that stupid show.

[2821] and get a podcast because he has one.

[2822] Legion of Skanks, go listen to it.

[2823] He's got race wars as well.

[2824] I've been on that show with Sherrod.

[2825] Everybody else, go fuck yourself.

[2826] Everybody who doesn't support Josh Zeps, fuck off.

[2827] And if you want to hear Sam Harris and Hannibal Burris When is that going to be released?

[2828] Within the next few weeks.

[2829] A few weeks.

[2830] The fuck isn't put it out, man. What are you doing?

[2831] Why are you clinging to it?

[2832] Trying to build up attention?

[2833] No, it was.

[2834] It was just a rich.

[2835] originally planned for then.

[2836] So if I was going to release it now, because that was just when Sam was fitted into the schedule.

[2837] Just throw it out there.

[2838] It's already done.

[2839] But you're so wild.

[2840] But why are you hoping out to it?

[2841] You're so on to hear it.

[2842] I don't know.

[2843] I don't know.

[2844] Why are you hanging on to it?

[2845] I don't know.

[2846] Maybe I won't.

[2847] Just release it before we do.

[2848] If you don't release it in a couple days, we have a copy of it.

[2849] We're just going to fucking send it out there.

[2850] Just kidding.

[2851] Thank you, Josh.

[2852] We are people live, everybody.

[2853] Look forward on all of your pod platforms.

[2854] Joe, it's always wonderful.

[2855] Always a pleasure.

[2856] I really appreciate it.

[2857] We've got to do this more often.

[2858] I'd love to.

[2859] Open invitation.

[2860] You know that.

[2861] Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

[2862] See you soon, you fuckers.