#1099 - Christopher Ryan

[0] three two one is that a is that a gun that was a weird point that was not it i wasn't sure if that was the gun chris ryan hey i'm good dude the van anthropology right out there man scarlet joe vansson i call her you just traveling in that thing i just got back from a month on the road yeah wow to new orleans and back i was just new Orleans too but it only took three hours yeah i took a scenic route how many days it take to drive new orleans uh you know we stopped a lot along the way yeah yeah but uh i don't know 10 12 days something like that you want to stop we actually we went down along the border we we were in bizby uh stanhope was in as no he was in asia oh he was on you know southeast as that's how like when you think of bisby you think of stanhope they're inexorable at this point there's not much of a reason to go to yeah like if you say bisby and you didn't visit stanell like if you went to phoenix and didn't visit a guy that you knew there.

[1] It's like, I'm sorry, man, I got really busy.

[2] That's normal.

[3] But if you went to Bisby and didn't visit Stanhope, how many people aren't Bisby?

[4] I don't know, but it's a strange little place.

[5] Have you been there?

[6] No. I'm scared.

[7] It's like this giant open pit mine and like the hills are all kind of purple and weird colors because it's all slag from the mine.

[8] Really?

[9] Yeah, it's, it's a toxic looking place, I got to say.

[10] I don't know why anyone would choose to live there.

[11] Philisting crashes.

[12] Dr. Chris Ryan trashes, Bispy.

[13] It's going down.

[14] I'm not saying anything that isn't pretty obvious if you drive through town.

[15] I'm sure there are nice parts of town.

[16] I don't know.

[17] We just drove through.

[18] The coolest thing about this van is I've combined it with the podcast.

[19] And so I'm traveling and I'm also meeting people along the way.

[20] Some of which are planned, like if Stanhope had been around and was willing to hang definitely would have hung with him but others just come up like uh right near bisbee see people following me on social media and they're like oh i see you're in texas you should visit my buddy in terlingua and i did and i'll tell you that's starting a minute but near um bisby this woman dorothy i think her name was wrote to me and she's like dude you're in southern arizona you got to drop in on my buddy the rattlesnake guy who's been studying rattlesnakes for 50 years by himself he's not looking for fame or anything but i'll talk to him i think he'd he'd like you and you guys would enjoy each other's company and so i'm like sure i'll talk to the rattlesnake guys perfect so he came out to this campsite and we hung out for the morning this guy is amazing a john porter's his name he's been studying snakes for 50 years he's just totally interested in them that lives on next to nothing in a trailer in the desert that's his focus he's been bit 15 times Jesus.

[21] What keeps you fucking with snakes after bite number 11?

[22] Yeah, I know.

[23] Bight me 10 times.

[24] Shame on me. Fucking, this is bullshit.

[25] This job sucks.

[26] Like, how many years has you been doing it?

[27] 50 years.

[28] 50.

[29] He's almost 70.

[30] That's incredible.

[31] And he's in really good shape.

[32] He scrambles around in the hills and, you know, pull snakes out of holes.

[33] Wow.

[34] Yeah, he's a really interesting cat.

[35] And he's just like, that's his passion.

[36] That's what he does.

[37] Now, did he do the slow amount of venom in his system to try to make himself immune?

[38] You can't be immune to it because what I learned from him, one of many things I learned from him, is that rattlesnake venom is essentially digestive enzymes.

[39] Wow.

[40] And what happens is they bite an animal, the animal runs off 20 feet or something before it collapses.

[41] The enzymes are digesting the animal from within.

[42] because they don't have enough enzymes within their own digestive tract to digest the whole thing from outside, right?

[43] So when they get the animal inside them, they're digesting it simultaneously from outside in and then from inside out.

[44] Jeez.

[45] So that's why...

[46] What a monster.

[47] These are the snakes that strike warm -blooded animals.

[48] Right.

[49] And then the ones that eat cold -blooded animals, they have the neurotoxins.

[50] That's a different type of...

[51] There's a terrifying.

[52] video that I put on my Instagram a couple years ago I think is that rattlesnake one you'll never find it it's like way back there Jamie smiled it's like oh it's a challenge I retweeted or reposted somebody else's some guys were hunting and a rattlesnake was pulling a rabbit and just the way this demon thing just pulled this poor little fuzzy rabbit but I instantly made the differentiation instantly differentiated which one I was on team like whose team i'm on team fuffy fluffy fluffy and furry always right anything that's furry well unless unless you've got a gun or a bow in your hands well to eat it yes i think the furry ones are most delicious no no i'm not judging it at all but what i'm saying is it's but if something else was going after that snake if something it killed it's like a coyote had killed a snake yeah i really wouldn't be bothered by it right something that bothers me for whatever weird reason i think of a rabbit as being, not just a rodent, a life form.

[53] I mean, I think of it being like fucking Peter Cotton Tail or something stupid.

[54] Like that stuff's in your head.

[55] Herbivores are innocent.

[56] Yeah.

[57] Right.

[58] They're not out there fucking with other animals.

[59] Very few.

[60] Very few.

[61] Um, herbivores, sometimes they eat, uh, they eat birds.

[62] Yeah.

[63] They eat birds when they can.

[64] But they're more just opportunists.

[65] Like if a bird can't move, they'll eat a baby bird.

[66] Right.

[67] Yeah.

[68] What is this?

[69] Is it a snake first rabbit?

[70] No. Um, it's actually dragging a rat.

[71] rabbit in the desert it looks like we're in the mountains oh yeah this is the one where the mom saves the babies oh is that what it was yeah oh god that happened to me once look at this the mom rabbit comes over oh she sees what's going on wow that is crazy that is fucking crazy now that's not the one this one was a rattlesnake a big ass rattlesnake and it was drag it was just the way it was dragging this rabbit around was so intense when I was a kid I used to think I was Indian, you know, and I'd wander around the neighborhood in a loincloth.

[72] Are you allowed to do that today?

[73] Or would you get culturally appropriated?

[74] Probably.

[75] I don't know.

[76] I don't know.

[77] Someone would come after you.

[78] Probably.

[79] I mean, indecent exposure, too, because I wasn't wearing underwear.

[80] Oh, you're a terrible person.

[81] What's your loincloth made out of?

[82] Bath towel.

[83] Purple bath towel.

[84] So just folded in thirds and I'd have a belt and it would like come up and hang down in the front and the back.

[85] Seriously, I was totally into it.

[86] But anyway.

[87] I was wondering around the neighborhood in my Indian thing and I saw this rabbit and there was a bush with these hard little fruits on it and I grabbed one of these fruits and I threw it at the rabbit and I fucking hit it and the rabbit started flopping and boom just lay there.

[88] I was like I just killed that fucking with a piece of fruit with a hard like a little crab apple or something.

[89] So I walk over and I look at the rabbit and it's just laying there and then I hear this squeak, squeak, squeak under this pine tree.

[90] And I go, and there's this nest of little baby rabbits with their eyes still closed.

[91] Little tiny ones.

[92] I just fucking killed their mother, dude.

[93] I was like 10, maybe.

[94] Oh, what a bummer.

[95] So I took the babies home crying.

[96] She really did kill the mother with a crab apple.

[97] Dude, you should have been playing for the fucking Dodgers.

[98] Well, check it out.

[99] You got that kind of pitch.

[100] So I took the babies home and the next door neighbor, my friend's mother was a nurse.

[101] and I showed her and she had like a syringe without the needle and she showed me you have to mix, can't give them straight milk because the rabbit milk is thinner so you have to mix water with it and all the stuff and I was feeding them and then I went back actually a little while later maybe I don't know the next day or something and the big rabbit was gone which then later in life I thought maybe it wasn't dead maybe it was faking it to try to save the babies to distract me somehow.

[102] More likely, you caoed it.

[103] Maybe just a knockout.

[104] Yeah, you knocked out the rabbit.

[105] That makes sense.

[106] Because if you get hit in the head with something that you don't see coming, it's very likely your brain could just shut off.

[107] Right.

[108] Yeah.

[109] So, anyway, I raised these rabbits until, I don't know, a few weeks until their eyes opened.

[110] Wow.

[111] Yeah.

[112] And then what did you do with them?

[113] Boil them or fry them?

[114] Yeah.

[115] Now, then we had to go visit my uncle in Ohio, and I left the rabbits with this girl.

[116] girl and told her how to take care of them and all that.

[117] And, uh, the girl apparently forgot about mixing the water.

[118] And so by the time I got back after a three day weekend, a couple of them had died, but she didn't want to tell me. And, you know, we were 10, 11.

[119] Right.

[120] And actually it was all through the biology teacher.

[121] And then it turned out by the time that she told them they were all dead.

[122] Right.

[123] They all just died.

[124] They probably would have had a hard go of it anyway.

[125] Yeah.

[126] Yeah, yeah.

[127] That's crazy.

[128] Maybe you missed your calling.

[129] Baseball?

[130] I find baseball so boring, though.

[131] It's definitely boring.

[132] It's one of those things that you couldn't, and people right now are screaming.

[133] Fuck you!

[134] Yeah.

[135] Well, your fans hate me anyway.

[136] That's not true.

[137] That's definitely not true.

[138] I see it occasionally.

[139] You can't pay attention to those comments.

[140] Oh, I don't.

[141] They're amusing.

[142] They're only the people that would comment something shitty.

[143] They're the only ones that are going to get to you, right?

[144] And then you've got to also think like...

[145] There's a lot of cuck beta stuff about me. Oh, that kind of stuff.

[146] they assume I am in an open relationship and so therefore there's all that kind of stuff.

[147] Yeah, that cuck thing.

[148] That's interesting.

[149] Anyone who would call someone else a cuck or a bina male is?

[150] Most likely.

[151] I don't think you could say anyone because sometimes people just are and some people say it and they're correct.

[152] But I think you're, for the most part, the need to shut someone down.

[153] You're not in an argument, okay?

[154] Like you aren't in an argument with them.

[155] You don't know them.

[156] You guys aren't.

[157] So why are they insulting you?

[158] Why are they going after you?

[159] just because of an insecurity.

[160] But it's also because of this weird way of expressing each other ourselves on instant, you know, on Twitter and Facebook and stuff.

[161] It's just too instant.

[162] That instantaneous ability to just go after something, you don't meet them, you don't establish a friendship with them, you don't talk to them at all.

[163] That's why I'm saying.

[164] It's a reflection.

[165] As a psychologist, I find it really interesting because it's an, it's, you know, you see these guys, every fucking day there's another story about an anti -gay, you know, minister.

[166] who's been sucking little boy's dicks every day or even big black guy dicks whatever you can get whatever dix he's got whatever dix he's into but if he's trying to like pray the gay away yeah for sure there's some gays going on somewhere i think we reveal our deepest secrets in our loudest accusations i think you're right you know and so this whole the the trolling and stuff going on online is interesting because people don't realize that they're exposing themselves you know yeah yeah well it's just also So it's a really shitty way of interacting with humans that some people participate in almost exclusively.

[167] Like there's some people right now in our culture that they're communicating with people.

[168] But the people that they're communicating with, they're only communicating with people online.

[169] They're only doing it through Twitter or Facebook or however they do it.

[170] So like their days are spent interacting just randomly with people tweeting at them and reading tweets or reading.

[171] you know, reading message board posts or posting things or reading Instagram, you know, passages.

[172] All they're doing is interacting with people online.

[173] And I just think there's a lot of kids developing that way because they're not even, even when they're around each other, they're spending more time communicating with people through a device than they are doing it face to face because they're always distracted.

[174] And I feel like this is a very, it's not indicative of how we, evolved like this method of communication so like people say there's way more hate today than it's ever been before I don't think so I think it's the same amount of hate there's just this new weird form of expression that doesn't make you take into consideration the other people's feelings it's like the only time we've ever had something like that like if you killed someone or you beat someone up and you looked at them and they looked at you and you knew that you hated them at least that's an honest attack you know but if you're if you want something terrible to happen to someone, and you don't even know them.

[175] He just heard him on a podcast.

[176] He was a guest, and he annoyed you, so you want terrible things to happen to him.

[177] Like, you don't even know them.

[178] It's like traffic anger, you know?

[179] Fuck you.

[180] Like, yeah, you don't know that guy in that car or like, whatever.

[181] You know where that comes from, though, right?

[182] Traffic anger.

[183] It comes from a heightened sense of awareness because you're going so fast because you're in your car.

[184] You're scared.

[185] Yeah.

[186] Well, you're ramped up.

[187] You're looking constantly for anything to go wrong.

[188] You can't be at zero and just drive.

[189] When you're driving, you're very aware.

[190] that you're at the wheel of a big fucking thing.

[191] And that car accidents happen and people die in them.

[192] Everybody's aware of that.

[193] So you get ramped up.

[194] Although it's funny, I wrote a motorcycle every day for about seven years.

[195] And I felt very calm on the motorcycle.

[196] I think because freedom.

[197] Freedom and vulnerability.

[198] Yeah, both.

[199] Did you have a Harley?

[200] No, I had a BMW.

[201] I knew it.

[202] I'm a BMW guy.

[203] I'm not a Harley guy.

[204] Some European thing.

[205] It drives to good.

[206] Fine, low center of gravity.

[207] Yeah.

[208] I drove that like a grandpa, too.

[209] I was like, I never got pulled over.

[210] I was in Spain.

[211] I never had a Spanish license.

[212] Really?

[213] Yeah.

[214] That's amazing.

[215] Maybe you shouldn't say that online.

[216] Probably not.

[217] It's too late now.

[218] I'm out.

[219] Yeah, but the thing in Spain is funny because if you come from, you know, Mexico, Uganda, wherever, and you immigrate to Spain and you get residency, you have to turn in your driver's license and they'll give you a Spanish license, right?

[220] Right.

[221] The only country where they won't honor your license is the United States.

[222] Wow.

[223] You've got to go to driving school, that bullshit night school for six weeks, take the ridiculous test that's designed to trick you, and the translation into English is incomprehensible.

[224] And then you've got to do it again.

[225] It's like $4 ,000.

[226] It's a giant scam.

[227] And it's only for us?

[228] Only for America.

[229] And the reason is that all these Spanish kids were coming to the U .S. doing like high school exchange thing.

[230] And to get it, you have to be 18 to get a driver's license in Spain, but in the U .S. 16, obviously.

[231] So they would come here, and at 16, they'd get a driver's license.

[232] And then they'd go back to Spain and say, hey, give me the license.

[233] You got to do it.

[234] It's the law.

[235] And so Spain, they talk to the American government, like, hey, stop giving Spanish kids licenses.

[236] And the U .S. is like, fuck you.

[237] We do it the way we do it.

[238] We're number one.

[239] And so Spain was like, all right, then fuck Americans.

[240] And so now it's this giant pain in the ass if you're an American living in Spain.

[241] Oh, man. So what happens if you get caught and you don't have a license if you're driving around?

[242] You get a fine.

[243] How much?

[244] A few hundred euros.

[245] That seems like a bargain.

[246] That's what I figured.

[247] You got to get paid over 10 times you're pulled over in order to.

[248] I was like, what you do is you pretend you're a tourist.

[249] Just in town.

[250] Have your passport, you know.

[251] Don't have a vehicle registered in your name.

[252] Not that I would ever do any of these things.

[253] Yeah, I was reading about expats and about people who just decide to just like go and move over to you.

[254] to Europe for a while.

[255] That's like such an adventuresome thing to do, if you really think about it.

[256] As an American, because Americans are, for sure, locked into our way of thinking.

[257] Like, there's a, I don't want to speak for the whole group, but when you think of the typical American, you think of someone who just, they like things the way they have them here.

[258] Yeah.

[259] This is the best.

[260] We're number one.

[261] Well, those are the people expats are getting away from.

[262] Yeah.

[263] There's a lot.

[264] But the point is, like, if you even have.

[265] a niggling of that and then you decide to move to Italy for a year.

[266] Yeah.

[267] That will go away.

[268] You will realize like, oh, okay, whatever form, I think that's one of the reasons why people cling so hard to those norms.

[269] I go, because they know, I think they know that Cambodia is different.

[270] And if they were living in Cambodia, they'd be living like Cambodians.

[271] They know that Laos is different.

[272] They know that Vietnam is different.

[273] How could that be?

[274] How could these people and these other places be just like you, just a person, but they walk around at a rice patio all day and they push an ox and they don't have cell phones like how did that happen could that have happened to you like if you just got a weird roll of the dice and instead of coming out with a seven you came out with a three could you have been in laos if you unless you know i mean it mean and from a lausian's perspective he got the seven and you got the three oh for sure you have some you make some guy take a cubicle job he's used to working yeah outside beautiful weather louse is great i've been there have you Beautiful, beautiful country.

[275] It's gorgeous on video.

[276] I've never seen in real life.

[277] But that whole thing is just.

[278] Well, that's why I traveled all through my 20s and 30s was for that insight.

[279] Yeah, you got to see it.

[280] You got to see it and you got to.

[281] In person, right?

[282] Yeah.

[283] And you got to move slowly enough that you, Joseph Campbell called it detribalization, right, to understand that you are from a tribe, right?

[284] Everybody thinks everyone else has an accent, but I don't.

[285] You know, there are all these biases that we're unaware of until you get out and look back at yourself and where you came from.

[286] And so I was, you know, I was based in Spain for 25 years.

[287] So I really, you know, got into Spanish.

[288] I've lived in Spain longer than I've lived in any other country.

[289] But you don't speak Spanish.

[290] Sure I do.

[291] For suppuisto, filippo, yes.

[292] What do you say?

[293] I speak badly.

[294] But you speak it.

[295] Yeah, I understand everything, and I sound like, I gave a talk in Argentina once, and they came up after, and they said I sounded like, somebody said I sounded like a Catalan gringo, because I learned Spanish in Catalonia.

[296] So I have this very specific accent in Spanish, which I'm totally unaware of, of course.

[297] Intellectually, that makes sense to me, but my brain is like, what?

[298] Different Spanish accent.

[299] How the fuck could you tell?

[300] Yeah.

[301] Well, it's like.

[302] Obviously, you can.

[303] It's like a Spanish person who learns English in Scotland.

[304] Right.

[305] Yeah, right, right, right.

[306] Yeah, for sure.

[307] Or, I mean, how many number of people that come from other countries that speak Spanish, or speak English, rather, but they speak it with the accent of their place.

[308] India?

[309] Even Canadians.

[310] It's so subtle.

[311] About?

[312] A boat?

[313] Yeah.

[314] Yeah.

[315] Yeah, I went to university.

[316] Yeah.

[317] You know, and you see, hear A, a few, two times.

[318] And they're a little bit too polite.

[319] You're like, hey, where are you from?

[320] I love fucking with Canadians.

[321] And so asking where they're from or what part of the states are you from?

[322] And they say, I'm from Canada.

[323] I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever.

[324] James Brown has a song called Living in the USA.

[325] Right.

[326] And he goes through and, you know, how he does, like he calls out cities.

[327] Right.

[328] You know, it's New York.

[329] Pittsburgh, B, yeah.

[330] Toronto.

[331] He says Toronto.

[332] Well, it's living in North America.

[333] Sort of.

[334] I guess that's his thing, right?

[335] Mexico's North America, too.

[336] Isn't that crazy?

[337] Mexico's North America.

[338] My first apartment in Barcelona I shared with this guy named Rogelio from Regelio Gutierrez from Colombia.

[339] That's a fucking serious name.

[340] And I was just learning Spanish then and he got really pissed off at me when I said I was American because he's like, we're all Americans, dude.

[341] Columbia is South America.

[342] America is the whole Western Hemisphere, new arrogant fucking Estadunidensis.

[343] That's what I had to learn to say in Spanish.

[344] That means from the United States, right?

[345] Estados states.

[346] Estados, states, Unidenses, are united, yeah.

[347] So.

[348] I used to remember that.

[349] I used to remember Estado.

[350] Estado.

[351] You speak any foreign language?

[352] No. No. I took Italian in college and Spanish in high school and remembered none of it.

[353] I took three years of German in middle school, high school, because I initially signed up for Spanish, which would have been the smart move.

[354] But then over the summer, I was like eighth grade, I think.

[355] And over the summer, this girl named Judy Gumpf, who I just lusted after Judy Gumpf.

[356] Tell me about Judy.

[357] Judy Gumpf was like the 15 -year -old who was totally built and, you know, gorgeous and smart and going out with a 23 -year -old dude with a Camaro.

[358] And here I am with my Zitz.

[359] and braces, and I'm thinking I got a shot at Judy Gumpf.

[360] So she was taking German, and she said, oh, but there are only eight people in the class.

[361] I don't know if they're going to do it, because you should have nine.

[362] And I was like, Judy, I'm going to call the school and switch over to German.

[363] I did.

[364] Wow.

[365] I sat in that class for three years with Hare Flint.

[366] And Judy, never had a shot at Judy, of course.

[367] And then Hare Flint, I could not, I have no talent for language.

[368] I'm, like, I'm all right in English, but, like, when you start talking, grammar in the accusative case and you know in german there are three genders and you know there's d der das masculine feminine and neutral and every noun has a gender and it's like a fucking nightmare so is neutral for objects like das boot yeah right objects but also it's weird because like uh maitian girl is neutral and you would think girl would have a fucking feminine gender right girl's neutral yeah Dasmachin.

[369] But anyway, Herr Flint was also the soccer coach.

[370] So we sort of had this unspoken agreement that if I was on the soccer team, he would pass me in German, even though I was lost constantly.

[371] I mean, I would have failed out for sure.

[372] But he would give me a C as long as I was on the soccer team.

[373] Not that I was any soccer star, it's just that he needed enough people on the team that they'd keep paying him or they'd shut it down.

[374] so my memory of German is basically humiliation from Judy Gumpf because I never got anywhere humiliation in the class because I couldn't understand a fucking thing and humiliation on the soccer field because not only did I suck at soccer but he would scream at me in German because I was in the German class so it was like it was my tutoring or something so like nine dumb cops like yeah yeah okay in my Italian class in high school there was this really friendly, beautiful Puerto Rican girl.

[375] She was beautiful.

[376] Like, she was a type of girl that I would have been way too nervous to ask out, or way too nervous to approach.

[377] I just would have needed a bunch of green lights to talk to her.

[378] I'd be super nervous.

[379] But she would approach me. And she was always inviting me to go places with her, her and her friends.

[380] And I'm like, well, what are you guys doing?

[381] Well, we're going, you know, like a camp out.

[382] We're going to do this thing.

[383] And there was this getaway for the weekend.

[384] Like one of them I couldn't do.

[385] So I was fighting back then.

[386] One of them I couldn't do because I had a fight.

[387] And one of them I couldn't do because I think, I don't remember what the fucking reason was.

[388] But it was enough of a reason that I would say no to this hot Puerto Rican girl asked me to go somewhere with her on the weekend.

[389] That's beta cuck behavior, Joe.

[390] She was so hot.

[391] She was so hot.

[392] She was built like a woman.

[393] I mean, we're both, I think I was probably 19.

[394] And so she was probably 19 too.

[395] She was a phenom.

[396] I mean, her body was just, holy shit, super duper pretty and super duper friendly.

[397] So I'm thinking, one day, this is going to happen, right?

[398] Yeah.

[399] So I go to the lunchroom one day, and it was the day that it was a Trump airplane.

[400] I know I've talked about this before.

[401] The Trump airline, the runway gear didn't come down, and it skid.

[402] Like, remember when Trump had an airline?

[403] Do you remember that?

[404] Vaguely.

[405] Yeah, he had a fucking airline.

[406] Big Trump on the side of it.

[407] Of course.

[408] And I'm pretty sure it was him, or maybe it was jazz.

[409] Yeah, blue.

[410] Now when I think about it, it might not have been Trump.

[411] Or it might have happened either way.

[412] This airplane skid in, you know, they had to foam up the runway, the whole deal, and the thing skid in without the gear.

[413] And I showed up, and it was her and our friends, landing gear fails on Trump jet.

[414] No injuries.

[415] 1989.

[416] That is it.

[417] That's exact when it was happening.

[418] You were in high school in 1989.

[419] No, so if that was 89, that must have been I was 21.

[420] No, that doesn't make sense.

[421] There must have been another one.

[422] See if there was one from earlier.

[423] Because when I was 21, I'd already given up on the idea of college.

[424] I thought you're going to say giving up on the idea of her.

[425] No, I was like, what am I doing?

[426] When I was 21, I was like, this is just too ridiculous.

[427] And then I started doing stand -up.

[428] In the 87, there was a Mexico City Air Disaster, Belize Air International, Mexico City Crash.

[429] No, it wasn't a crash.

[430] It was the same thing.

[431] The landing gear wouldn't drop down.

[432] I typed an airline run.

[433] Maybe my memory sucks.

[434] In Boston?

[435] It was in Boston.

[436] Oh, there you go.

[437] Yeah, I just can't imagine that I was 89, I was 21.

[438] Anyway, so what happened with the woman?

[439] Yeah, no, it's definitely not 89 because I was already doing stand -up by 89.

[440] So, I'm sorry, I sit down.

[441] Hundreds of thousands of people are going, Joe, get back to the Puerto Rican.

[442] I say, did you guys hear what happened today at the airport?

[443] Yeah.

[444] And they'll go, no, what happened?

[445] I go, this jet came in and the landing gear didn't drop.

[446] So they had a skid across the runway.

[447] I go, but everybody's okay.

[448] And they all go, praise God, oh, praise God.

[449] And I went, oh, that's the weekend getaway.

[450] This is the weekend getaway.

[451] It's an indoctrination to a Christian cult.

[452] They were bananas.

[453] Right.

[454] And they were super proselytizing.

[455] They would go everywhere and sit down with people that were by themselves.

[456] And if they thought you were lonely or an outcast, they would send in the hot one.

[457] She would come and sit next to you and visit.

[458] invite you places and then they'd pull you into the fold and they were just recruiting people left and right to join and then like I noticed as the class would go on like later in the semester I noticed some of the people from the class were now in that little tight group and they'd all like hang together it was very strange I was like I was watching people get like they got culted up yeah I was watching it happen but it was all like standard standard you know Christian stuff but extremely involved in your life very rabid and you know and recruiting prostititizing everywhere and the fact that this happened it was very strange because i was like you dummy of course she doesn't like you she wants to bring you to jesus well you know maybe she was going to fuck you to jesus i didn't think so yeah i didn't have much confidence back then believe it or not i didn't think it was going to happen i you know does anyone have confidence at 1920s really dumb kids yeah that's it when i was 19 i was 19 i was Like, I just couldn't, nothing made any sense.

[459] I might have been 20 when it happened.

[460] Yeah.

[461] If you think you got it figured out at 19 or 20, you're destined for a life, you know, stacking shells somewhere.

[462] I can't imagine it was in an 89.

[463] It doesn't make any sense unless my whole timeline for when I quit college is off.

[464] I just finished watching, um, binge watching this new Netflix documentary about the Rajneeshi, you know, the Sunyacens in Oregon.

[465] Was that the wild west?

[466] What is it called?

[467] Wild, wild country.

[468] Wild, wild country.

[469] Yeah.

[470] It's amazing.

[471] It's really good.

[472] How many episodes?

[473] Six episodes, I think.

[474] Yeah, we just binge -watched it.

[475] I have a buddy who was a Sanyasin for 15 years, maybe, something like that.

[476] He wasn't in Oregon, though.

[477] He was always in India.

[478] But, yeah, that's very interesting.

[479] And the whole sort of appeal of the cult and the hunger to be part of this community.

[480] Wow.

[481] It's a very interesting documentary.

[482] Well, I don't think it's too hard.

[483] I don't think it would be very hard at all to start a cult.

[484] I just don't think it's very difficult I think people...

[485] Well, some people would say you already have Well, maybe But you could do whatever you want I mean Yeah There's no no no one's asking you For a membership fee Do you have to have any You need to step up your game there Those aren't the way to go You're like the instead of the Rolls Royces You got the Porsche's You're the Porsche car You're the Porsche guru This is I'm realizing I like old cars They don't even have to drive as good Yeah.

[486] They don't have, they're a different thing.

[487] You ever heard of Mickey Avalon?

[488] Yes.

[489] I had them on my podcast recently.

[490] Really interesting and smart guy.

[491] Yeah.

[492] And he, in addition to being a rapper and whatever he does, he, Simon Rex is a good friend of mine, dirt nasty.

[493] Yeah, I know Simon.

[494] And the two of them are on tour together.

[495] Anyway, so I was talking with the Mickey, and it turns out Mickey restores antique cars.

[496] Wow.

[497] And he's got like 20 of them, like Model T's and Shire.

[498] Like, really interesting cars.

[499] They're art, man. Yeah.

[500] This is what an old car, they're just a, it's a different thing, you know?

[501] What's cool to see the process of them figuring out how to design cars at faster and faster speeds.

[502] Is that his car?

[503] Oh, God, look at that thing.

[504] God, that's beautiful.

[505] What is that?

[506] 61 Impala.

[507] A Rockford Fosgate equipped 61 Impala.

[508] I love that sort of art deco lines.

[509] Yeah.

[510] So what he's doing.

[511] is, I mean, I think that is a what they would call a Resto Mod.

[512] You know, they take an old, this is, that's the best of both worlds.

[513] They take an old car and they put modern brakes and modern suspension.

[514] And they're just safer and they ride better.

[515] You can even swap out the engine, right?

[516] Oh, yeah, they all do.

[517] A lot of them do, I should say.

[518] They use modern fuel -injected engines.

[519] You can buy them from almost all the companies.

[520] Ford sells crate engines and people put them in old Mustangs.

[521] It's amazing.

[522] I love those old Mustangs split rear window.

[523] Some of those cars are just, you look at them and you're like, God, damn, like, what, how did they do it so good then?

[524] And why, like, you look at those old Mustangs or old Corvettes, like, there are a few years where Corvettes just couldn't have been more beautiful.

[525] Have you ever seen my 1965?

[526] I don't think so.

[527] Dude, it's the greatest car I've ever seen in my life.

[528] I have a 1965, silver, 1965 Corvette convertible.

[529] Wow.

[530] And I just sit in front of it.

[531] I think I may have seen it.

[532] Did you and Jay Leno drive around in that?

[533] Yes, exactly.

[534] Were you in Topanga?

[535] No. I remember watching that clip and thinking, oh, yeah, look at that.

[536] No, we went to the Angel's Crest Highway.

[537] That car is two years older than me. Sort of.

[538] See, but sort of is the real thing, like the outside is.

[539] But everything and the inside, as far as like dashboard and stuff is.

[540] Well, you've had the hip replacements and stuff.

[541] Those are new.

[542] My joints.

[543] Yeah.

[544] This car has got, everything in that car is modern in terms of like the brakes and the engine, the engines from a 2007 Corvette.

[545] Yeah.

[546] They just do that.

[547] And that way, like you're driving around in an old car, but it breaks good, it handles good.

[548] It's not a death trap.

[549] Right.

[550] But as getting back to the cult thing, you know, I think some of the mechanisms, the psychological mechanisms that make that possible apply to what's happening in.

[551] podcasting these days.

[552] Yes.

[553] And the beautiful thing about podcasting is so far no one has taken advantage of it and started some compound somewhere and banged everybody's wife.

[554] Are we on?

[555] Is this thing on?

[556] And required you to give up all of your financial money and all your worldly goods.

[557] Yeah, no, I got a Patreon account though.

[558] You ever see the Australian guy that said he was Jesus?

[559] Pretty fucking interesting.

[560] Because there's this whole documentary on and he has this woman, and the woman said that he said that she was married, then, like, halfway to the documentary, it was really revealed that there was another girl in the past, and he said she was married, too.

[561] That girl thinks she's Mary, and he thinks he's Jesus.

[562] It's fucking hilarious.

[563] Well, Mary was Jesus' mother, right?

[564] Yes.

[565] But they're partying together and banging because they're reincarnated.

[566] It's not really married.

[567] So Jesus is a motherfucker in this guy's view?

[568] Jesus is his own motherfucker.

[569] Oh, geez.

[570] Imagine?

[571] I don't know.

[572] I love my...

[573] I don't know.

[574] Sorry, she's not married the mother.

[575] She's Mary Magdalene, the...

[576] Oh, the prostitute.

[577] There you go.

[578] Now it's fitting into place.

[579] Maybe the other Mary was the mom.

[580] This is the lost gospel.

[581] Is that what he said?

[582] Is that what he said?

[583] Yeah, I mean, that's supposed to be a lost gospel, yeah.

[584] Yeah, that Jesus was hanging with the hookers and very accepting of sex workers.

[585] Yeah, why not?

[586] I mean, God made people horny.

[587] God knew what he was doing.

[588] But God made us monogamous, Joe.

[589] Don't get me started.

[590] It's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on.

[591] I have an intervention on behalf of Brett Weinstein.

[592] Yeah, you're going to get me married?

[593] You know, I told you in an email that I felt bad when your book came up on the show and I didn't know how to defend it.

[594] I didn't know what to do because I didn't, I was in that weird moment where I was recommending it because I like it because I think it's a great book.

[595] and he was saying that just...

[596] It's debunked.

[597] Well, I think he said you cherry -picked data, right?

[598] Which is always weird.

[599] Well, the thing is, any sort of popular non -science or non -fiction book is you have to choose what data you're going to include, right?

[600] I mean, there's an infinite amount of data.

[601] And so, of course, you form an argument and then you present data that supports your argument.

[602] Did you ever consider arguing against yourself?

[603] Sure.

[604] Yeah.

[605] And in fact, the book is, you know, the book is written as an argument against the standard narrative.

[606] So, you know, we had to present this.

[607] What is the standard narrative?

[608] Who believes this?

[609] You know, who thinks that people evolved as monogamous?

[610] And so we quote quite heavily from those people.

[611] But, you know, the thing is, and I really appreciated your email and, you know, we don't need to talk about this at any length.

[612] but it's not your job to defend the book and it's not even my job really to defend the book I think once a book is out it's out right the book is there you but isn't it it's not just the book it's that when someone goes hard on a book it's it's they're doing it about you as well it's like it's your expression of your work but see that's the thing I don't accept that association and so if somebody wants to critique the book that's totally cool and like look are there things that we may have misunderstood of course are the things we left out of course there are you know mistakes of course you know that's right there you're human you made right there are hundreds of citations in that book now if somebody says as people have like you know uh chris ryan you know deliberately misrepresented the science or doesn't understand the first thing about evolution or, you know, whatever it is.

[613] I just don't engage because that's emotional.

[614] It's like what we were saying earlier about comments online.

[615] I think people react to sex at dawn very emotionally.

[616] Right.

[617] And so if they're reacting emotionally, there's no point in me engaging with them because they're expressing some, something that's going on in their lives that I don't know anything about.

[618] And I don't, they're suffering in some way.

[619] I'm not talking about Brett Weinstein or anybody specifically.

[620] But there's an emotional reason to have that kind of reaction.

[621] Whereas if somebody says, look, on page 72, you said that bonobos are the only ape that does this and actually Gibbons do it as well.

[622] Okay, we can talk about that.

[623] You know, that's factual.

[624] Right.

[625] So when people say, oh, it's cherry picked, well, which cherries?

[626] What are you talking about?

[627] Right.

[628] You know, what specific thing and what's wrong with it?

[629] Right.

[630] Instead of saying it's cherry picking is.

[631] vast general critic critique of the book like what right and if it gets about me right like oh that's because he wants to get late or that was one of the arguments right was that it would be a good book to write i think i don't remember if he said or if his wife said it that it would be a good book and i really love those two they're great they're cool i just think um when it comes to monogamy and sexuality people have a notion in their head and that notion almost always aligns with how they're living their life or how they wish they were living their lives yeah maybe and again we're not talking about specific people here i've never met them no they're listen they're a great couple they're wonderful people but i mean there's there's something about the subject of your book i think i told you this before without me naming any names my friend brought your book home and his wife threw it away yeah you and i talked about that on the very first podcast actually yeah yeah yeah i mean i've run into this a lot right you can imagine cocktail parties with me can get awkward very quickly.

[632] Oh, for sure.

[633] You know, because people ask, oh, wait, you're the guy who, you know, and then often you'll see some people are very eager to hear about it and talk about it and other people are just, steams coming out of their ears.

[634] Right.

[635] I think, you know, a lot of people are in relationships that they're trying to make fit into what they believe is the right way to have a relationship.

[636] And often it just doesn't, it doesn't work.

[637] Right.

[638] And so there's a lot of shame and regret and resentment and all kinds of negative energy around that.

[639] And so any discussion where you're saying, well, maybe that's not actually the way it's meant to work.

[640] For some people, that's an incredibly liberating message.

[641] For other people, it's extremely threatening.

[642] Right.

[643] And I understand that.

[644] And, you know, so I've become very emotionally sort of separate from the book.

[645] It's out there.

[646] It stands or not based on its merits.

[647] When people get all riled up, I've learned to just be like, yeah, you know what?

[648] That's fine.

[649] That's between you and the book.

[650] That's a very healthy approach.

[651] Good for you.

[652] It's just, to me, it seems like people that get most upset about it don't get most upset about it for a rational reason.

[653] They get upset about it because it challenges the way they live their life.

[654] Well, that's what I was saying about like the gay preachers and stuff.

[655] It's like if you're getting that upset.

[656] it's about you man it's not i mean if you disagree with it then disagree with it that's fine what they need is out gay preachers like people who love jesus and are also gay right you can't do that you can't figure that out how come this guy can start a whole fucking cult in australia and tell people he's jesus and his girlfriend's mary and you guys can't get together and form yourself a nice gay church i mean do they have them that i don't know about it's called the vatican dude i mean have you heard all this stuff going on in italy that's crazy got all their sex parties.

[657] They're their own country.

[658] Do you know that?

[659] When I was there, you know, and when you just walk around the Vatican and just see the fucking vast amount of pilfered riches that are all just sucked out by an ideology.

[660] I mean, that's really what it is.

[661] Like that church, that whatever the fuck you want to call it, that religion, they just acquired an ungodly amount of wealth.

[662] Literally, ungodly.

[663] Ungodly.

[664] Yeah.

[665] It's fucking stunning.

[666] Yeah.

[667] Jesus is all about living.

[668] in poverty and hanging out with sex workers and these guys are like just lavish wealth and it's crazy because if jesus came back the first thing he'd say it's like what the fuck have you guys done yeah like what have you done look at these gigantic places that you built and i told you guys you don't even have to be anywhere for this yeah you don't you don't need to have some ornate temple with stained glass windows and it took craftsmen like like st peter's basilica like is it a shock that that that is probably one of the most stunning things that I've ever seen in my life, like one of the most beautiful works of art, yet was created for this religion that most likely the people that were living in that day were probably like worshipping these people that were running this thing, like as if they were deities themselves.

[669] And they needed them to have the biggest, craziest building.

[670] They impressed the rubs, right?

[671] When they come in from the countryside and they walk into a cathedral, like holy fuck the impact that it has on you is you can't understate it still yeah yeah and there are churches in barcelona i would go into and i'm i'm a pagan but just go in there and just feel the space yeah just feel it that does the you just you your body knows how big it is why can you it's like when you walk into an airplane hanger yeah you know like it's it's it's it's not something you really can't over emphasize how crazy it is like these people built this without power tools.

[672] I mean, I don't know what kind of fucking ladders they used, but whatever they did, look at that.

[673] Fuck, man. I mean, it's just crazy.

[674] You walk around that place, you can't believe how ornate it is.

[675] But at the same time this was happening, people were starving, you know?

[676] Yeah.

[677] Guaranteed.

[678] Like, how old is that?

[679] 1500s?

[680] 1 ,500.

[681] 1506.

[682] How well do you think everybody was doing financially in 1506?

[683] I bet pretty fucking shitty.

[684] I bet everybody that lived around that place suffered And these motherfuckers were building these crazy places They have an obelisk in this whole place Where you're these images right here where you're shown From Egypt This massive stone obelisk from Egypt And I was like, okay, how the fuck did they get that there?

[685] Yeah, it shows you how cheap labor was Oh, dude Yeah, you could hire people for a lifetime for a pittance, you know?

[686] Like really skilled artisans.

[687] Yeah, and that's just you know.

[688] They couldn't go anywhere, man. Yeah.

[689] What they did in that place, I mean, the Vatican is just a, it's a stunning place.

[690] Like, way more so than I thought it was going to be.

[691] Have you been to Spain?

[692] No, I have not.

[693] Look at that.

[694] Oh, my God.

[695] Look at that.

[696] Yeah.

[697] What is that, Jamie?

[698] What are we looking at?

[699] Is that the roof?

[700] I don't know.

[701] It's just St. Peter's Basilica.

[702] Look at the fucking carving and everything.

[703] And I'm telling you, it's one of those things like you were talking about how you have to see another culture in person, in order to really appreciate it.

[704] I think that's the same with this thing.

[705] St. Peter's Basilica is one of those ones when you're there.

[706] Like, look how little those people are walking around down there.

[707] See the top of their heads?

[708] That's it.

[709] That fucking place is giant.

[710] Yeah, beautiful light coming through there.

[711] Unbelievable.

[712] It's one of those game changers where you leave there.

[713] To me, it was way more impressive than the Coliseum.

[714] Coliseum was very impressive, but it wasn't as impressive.

[715] Well, it's not intact, right?

[716] Right.

[717] But it's not even that.

[718] It's like what it is.

[719] what it is is just craziness He's fucking The one impressive thing Was the elevator complex That they had set up To lift animals up from the floor Like that is fucking nuts man Do you ever think about the Coliseum When you're doing UFC commentary And it's kind of like this modern A little bit right Yeah it's definitely A big Violent distraction from everyday life That people really look forward to and enjoy You know For like entertainment value I mean it's as primal As you can get without anybody really dying.

[720] I mean, that's most of the time.

[721] Most of the time.

[722] I mean, no one has in the UFC ever.

[723] But it's because they have the most stringent rules and because they have the best medical staff and the best referees and all that stuff.

[724] But it's also just luck.

[725] Because, like, people can die sparring.

[726] It happens.

[727] What, if you're in a chokehold and you don't tap out.

[728] You just go unconscious.

[729] And then when they.

[730] And then you'll be all right.

[731] Yeah, you'd be fine.

[732] And you can feel when someone goes unconscious, the muscles relax.

[733] Yeah, they just, they slump.

[734] And the referee, sometimes the referee, like, pick up an arm.

[735] Even, like, the old pro wrestling move, like, they would check to see if the guy was still awake.

[736] Like, they would pick the arm, and the guy would be like, ah, and then the crowd would go nuts.

[737] Yeah, he was about to make his comeback.

[738] But they do do that sometimes.

[739] I've seen referees pick a guy's arm up to see if the guy responds or girl.

[740] You've seen girls get choked out a bunch.

[741] But, you know, people are tough.

[742] They don't want to tap, and then they wind up going to sleep.

[743] Holly Holie Holm when she fought Misha Tate Misha Tate choked her unconscious And before Holly went out She was throwing punches in the air And she went unconscious Wow, it was crazy It was crazy It was primal It was like drowning It was like watching someone drown You know So it's just You know You have a preference for how you die Drowning's one of my least favorite Seems like it would suck Yeah Yeah I don't want to do that Yeah I have a buddy who's a big wave surfer and like 40 foot waves shout out to Kyle and he did a breath holding course he can hold his breath for five minutes Jesus because he goes you know if you get caught in one of those waves you're like down in the deep for a long time yeah yeah some really interesting he was telling me some really interesting things like when a human being puts its face in the water all sorts of physiological changes start happening, your metabolism immediately slows way down, your oxygen consumption cuts way back just automatically.

[744] We've got a lot of seemingly evolutionary adaptations to living in the water.

[745] Yeah, have you ever heard that aquatic ape theory?

[746] Sure.

[747] Does that make any sense?

[748] Does it seem like someone should have already known that already?

[749] It makes, here's what it does, in my opinion.

[750] We should explain it.

[751] Yeah.

[752] So the idea, The idea is, I first read about it in a book by Buckminster Fuller, actually.

[753] Great.

[754] You know about him?

[755] Yes.

[756] The idea is that there, according to the people who support this theory, there was a period in human evolution where our ancestors lived in tidal areas.

[757] So they spent most of their time in the water that was about body temperature.

[758] So it was comfortable and it was shallow enough that they weren't.

[759] worried about sharks coming in and deep enough that leopards and other predators from the land couldn't get at them so it was safe in that respect also you have great sight lines so you can see if something's coming from a long way off and there's lots of food there lots of mollusks and fish and you can net and so it sort of made sense that they would be there and so we have these physiological adaptations for aquatic living like for example human infants are the only apes certainly i don't know primate probably the only primates that know to hold their water or hold their breath underwater so like that great nirvana album cover of the baby so you take a baby and drop them in water and it holds its breath right uh chimps just chimps just breathe and die yeah whoops yeah chimps don't can't even swim so uh there's that there's the fact that babies are really fat so they float you can't teach chimps to swim no and also it chimps don't have enough body fat to be buoyant.

[760] Right.

[761] They're super...

[762] They're like corded steel, their bodies.

[763] Yeah.

[764] I didn't know they could never teach them to swim.

[765] That makes sense to.

[766] But they're so smart.

[767] I guess they just can't do it, huh?

[768] I don't know.

[769] But yes, if you see lots of, you know, contemporary zoos, they have the chimps surrounded by a moat.

[770] Right.

[771] Because they want across the moat.

[772] Wow.

[773] What a bummer.

[774] They'll wade in water.

[775] I've seen chimps wading, but I'm not swimming.

[776] You know, maybe then the chimps, There's also the connection between eating fish and fish oil and brain health.

[777] Right.

[778] And there's a very strong correlation between fish oil and brain health.

[779] Yeah.

[780] So it could be related to fatical development.

[781] And also, you would have to be clever to try to dive into the water to go after those things.

[782] The smarter ones would probably survive.

[783] Right.

[784] Even the nostrils, like, you know, nostrils come straight out of the face and the idea of our nostrils facing down is related to this aquatic explanation, the oil glands that we have on our heads and faces and shoulders that, you know, cause acne and stuff in teenagers, you know, that's for protection from the sun, apparently.

[785] So there are lots of adaptations that seem to fit into this interpretation, but, you know, lots of sort of mainstream evolutionary theorists would say, well, wait a minute, you know, there are other adaptations we don't have and that we would have if that had been the case so it's it's controversial at best part of it was also the theory that the human brain in order for us to be born vaginally the brain could only be so big before the kid was born right well that so much right yeah i mean that's the explanation for why humans are born helpless right no but what i'm saying is that we really can't the brain can't get any bigger right for the vaginal canal unless our dicks get bigger and the vaginas get bigger as well i still whole bit about that about dick pills but if they really were dick pills no one's stopping at one you know like what's the dosage okay how much gives me a stroke i'm going to take one less than that and roll the fucking dice yeah or risk it and the idea would that be every dude's dick would just become a super dick and every woman would be you know she uh it was a joke about flying squirrel pussy people they would just jump dudes with big dicks and shopping cards we'd chase these girls to the edge of cliffs the women would leap off with their giant GM vaginas because the body would have to morph, it'd have to change for the big dick pills.

[786] But it does seem like if humans are going to get smarter, the head is going to have to get larger.

[787] Does that make any sense?

[788] Or is that just a crude way of looking at the brain?

[789] Is it possible that people can get smart?

[790] Like if we evolved, if we evolved from lower hominids, it's generally assumed that those lower hominids had little brains or littler brains than us, right?

[791] Up until like Australia Pythicus or something like that?

[792] Yeah.

[793] What really seems to matter, though, is the ratio.

[794] of brain size to body size.

[795] Ah, right.

[796] There are plenty of animals that have bigger brains than us that aren't, obviously aren't smarter than us.

[797] Like an elephant.

[798] Elephants, blue whales.

[799] I mean, a blue whale brain is probably the size of this room.

[800] Do we know if elephants are fucking super smart?

[801] Because isn't the thing about intelligence is not, like, there's communication between elephants for sure.

[802] And we know that they recognize each other after long periods of time.

[803] Yeah.

[804] Like 20 years apart, they get together and they see each other and recognize each other instantly.

[805] Sure.

[806] So there's an intelligence, but what we judge intelligence oftentimes depends on whether or not it can communicate with you, whether or not it changes its environment, builds a structure.

[807] I mean, that's, to me, this is one of the deepest questions in life.

[808] Do you ever see the elephant that painted a picture of itself?

[809] Sure, yeah.

[810] That's crazy.

[811] Yeah, in Thailand, I think.

[812] Yeah, pull that up.

[813] That is one of those things where you go, okay, wait a minute.

[814] A dog can't do that.

[815] I thought you said this thing was as smart as a dog.

[816] Because that's a hundred times smarter than a dog.

[817] And there are like gray parrots that have, you know, 300 word vocabularies or something.

[818] I mean, I don't quote me on the number, but Jamie can look that up.

[819] They can speak a whole like sentence?

[820] Yeah.

[821] And they can.

[822] And there's a guy.

[823] I remember seeing this recently.

[824] There's a guy who has a border collie who obviously can't talk but understands well over 100 words.

[825] And so what he'll do is like he'll put all these different toys behind a wall and he'll say, go get me the yellow bunny and there's like a yellow bunny a red bunny and a green bunny in addition to hundreds of other shit and the dog will go find the yellow bunny and bring it back whoa you know go get me the you know the green turtle you'll go get it so the dog knows those words right and also the dog sees in color I guess it's a predator I guess so here's the elephant painting itself it is fucking crazy because it really looks like itself And this guy helps it and gets the brush and puts it in its hand.

[826] But the elephant is essentially doing all of this with its trunk and just replicating itself.

[827] And it's proportional too.

[828] It's really, like, dude, that's better than a four -year -old.

[829] The dude was holding his tusk.

[830] You're at the training him to do that, I think?

[831] Well, I'm sure they're training him.

[832] Or is he just pulling so that the brush goes where he wants it to go?

[833] Let's see, look at the trunk.

[834] Like, he's definitely holding.

[835] But look at the trunk and look at how much motion.

[836] is in that thing.

[837] How could he possibly be controlling that?

[838] He's definitely lifting it up and down and helping them, though.

[839] But what it is is they're working together.

[840] Like, the elephant knows to stay in these lines.

[841] It's doing it with him.

[842] You're not buying it.

[843] I'm not buying it a little, too.

[844] It's not going to mirror or anything.

[845] That hand on the tusk is a little wrong.

[846] See if there's another one.

[847] There are other ones, but there's just articles that say that they're being trained to do it and it's, like, cruel or something.

[848] Okay, this one right here.

[849] here, this thing doesn't have anybody's hands on it.

[850] I think this is the one that I'd seen before.

[851] Let's see if this guy puts his hands on it too.

[852] In any case, the question of intelligence is so much more complicated than we generally credit it with.

[853] Right.

[854] Not only among animals, but also among humans, there's this big controversy that's, you know, perennial controversy that's being raised again.

[855] Right now, we're looking at another video.

[856] This is the one that I had seen.

[857] And he's, nobody's touching his tusks.

[858] Nobody's controlling him here, yeah.

[859] Well, he doesn't have any tusks, it looks like.

[860] Does he?

[861] I don't see any, no. So that looked like the guy was just giving him the brush and he was doing it.

[862] Why don't they pull back, though, so you could see if that's true.

[863] So this is the one that I had seen before.

[864] I hadn't seen the other one.

[865] Oh, this is unassisted.

[866] Yeah, this is unassisted.

[867] I would imagine that if you did get a guy like this that teaches his elephant how to paint a fucking picture.

[868] that you're going to it's going to become a tourist attraction right people are going to say come watch the elephant that paints the picture you as seen on youtube and then the next thing you know you got a tourist business well and if he always does the same picture too right draws himself over and over again yeah but it's right here it looks to me at least like the elephant's doing that you couldn't even talk a four -year -old into doing that so you know what I'm saying like four -year year you've ever seen a four -year -old do an elephant you have to ask him what the fuck it is like what is that?

[869] Like, that's an elephant.

[870] We're like, whoa, that elephant's crazy.

[871] What does it do it?

[872] Do you think it knows it's drawing an elephant?

[873] Or it's...

[874] That's a good question.

[875] Like, does it draw on a tree?

[876] It probably doesn't know it's drawing an elephant.

[877] If I had a guess, I would have a guess that it probably doesn't understand 2D space like that.

[878] Because if it did, it would start creating art. They would start expressing themselves to each other.

[879] They would start drawing directions, like, go this way.

[880] If you start seeing animals do that, that is so far beyond using tools.

[881] That's what bees do.

[882] Yeah.

[883] Yeah, well, these do it with smells, right?

[884] Well, they do it with a dance.

[885] Yeah, they little wiggle dance.

[886] They give instructions on where the flowers are.

[887] Yeah.

[888] So this question of intelligence is really interesting, and I think very important, because, you know, we talk about intelligence as if we know what it is.

[889] Right.

[890] But we don't.

[891] It expresses itself in so many different ways.

[892] There are so many manifestations.

[893] So this big controversy that's happening now among, you know, between, I don't know if you're aware, this was Sam Harris and Ezra Klein.

[894] and Andrew Sullivan and people are training.

[895] Charles Murray, right, exactly.

[896] That whole thing about racial.

[897] Why I explain it to people that don't know what the hell is?

[898] So Charles Murray wrote this book called The Bell Curve, I don't know, 20 years ago or something.

[899] It was 25 even.

[900] Yeah.

[901] Where he argued that there are racial differences in intelligence, IQ specifically with Asians being the highest and then whites and then blacks and that that's just the way it is.

[902] and social adjustments aren't going to change that because it's largely genetic.

[903] Right.

[904] And, you know, that's, as I understand, that was the argument.

[905] I haven't read his book.

[906] I don't think it's saying largely genetic, but I think they're saying that genetics play a factor and environment plays a factor.

[907] I think some people are not willing to look at genetics if it shows an unfavorable trait in minorities.

[908] They just, they don't want to look at it.

[909] Yeah.

[910] They deny it.

[911] That's true.

[912] But I think it's also true.

[913] that part of the argument is that social programs are a waste of money because they're not going to affect it because it's genetic.

[914] That's crazy.

[915] If that is part of the argument, that's just straight racist to me. Well, I think that's what people are grabbing on to.

[916] Save your money.

[917] No, do a better job.

[918] Like, you don't even know if it works because what have you done?

[919] Like, go to an inner city school and pretend you're a 10 -year -old kid trying to get by in this life and you're literally seeing gang members and craziness and people flashing cash and people dropping out because they're pregnant when they're 13th and you're trying to tell me there's not there's not some sort of a massive environmental factor if you were a white kid going to a school like that i only went to a bad school for one year of my life i'm not i'm no OG, but I really did go to one bad school, Mary Curley Middle School in Jamaica Plain.

[920] And in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, now it's become gentrified, sort of.

[921] It's kind of like East L .A. or a Silver Lake area, you know, like a lot of hipsters have moved in in nice places, but when I lived there, it was not good.

[922] It was very poor people, and the fucking middle school was scary.

[923] It was a 17 -year -old kids in my seventh grade class.

[924] And it was just a weird play.

[925] Maybe, I guess it was eighth grade.

[926] But the point was, these kids were, they were never going to graduate.

[927] They knew it.

[928] And they were trying to go back to seventh grade again, or eighth grade, whatever the fuck it was.

[929] And the teacher would have them in the class for a couple days.

[930] And then they would leave.

[931] And everywhere you walked, you were scared.

[932] Everywhere you walked, like some weird shit was happening with people.

[933] People were yelling at people.

[934] There was always, like, tension.

[935] And there was always, like, bigger kids around that were robbing other kids.

[936] Like, fuck.

[937] Like, I got through that year going, holy shit.

[938] shit.

[939] And when I got out of there, my parents moved.

[940] We moved to a really nice part of town Newton.

[941] But if you're a kid growing up in that environment, good fucking luck learning anything.

[942] And probably it's pretty bad at home too.

[943] Yeah.

[944] And what I experienced in Jamaica plane was nothing compared to Dorchester and Roxbury.

[945] Those are the bad areas.

[946] They were way worse.

[947] And we know that anxiety, stress stops brain development.

[948] Yes.

[949] It also makes people much more inclined to violence.

[950] You know, like when you grow up in the, even in the womb, if your mother's around horrible situations and people screaming and fighting and that cortisol and all those adrenaline and all those hormones are flowing through that baby, preparing that baby for a violent world.

[951] Well, and I'm sure you know about the epigenetics that show that that can pass several generations.

[952] Yes.

[953] Your grandfather was in a famine.

[954] You're more likely to be obese.

[955] Isn't that crazy?

[956] It's nuts.

[957] Yeah.

[958] You also live longer, though.

[959] Isn't that weird?

[960] like the people that were that were in famine people their kids lived longer for some strange reason interesting yeah like your body's preparing you to be extra durable like we were talking about before the podcast started right and fasting is the only intervention that's ever been shown to extend lifespan mm not nuts yeah I do it because it makes me um just function better I do it every 16 hours I eat so I'll eat and then I don't eat for 16 hours.

[961] So I eat for eight hours of the day, that's it.

[962] When that's over, that's over.

[963] So what is it?

[964] Like 9 a .m. to 5 p .m. or something?

[965] Whatever it is.

[966] I just figure out what the time is and then add 16 to it.

[967] If I'm cheating, I add 14, but I never add less than 14.

[968] Oh, I see.

[969] Yeah.

[970] I was talking to a guy recently about this Brian Friesinger and Austin, really, really smart guy.

[971] And we're talking about this, and he's like, I only eat when the sun's up.

[972] It's easy to keep track of.

[973] That's good.

[974] But what if you want to go to a nice dinner?

[975] Don't eat.

[976] BOW!

[977] Or go earlier.

[978] I know.

[979] You got to have cheat days.

[980] When he said it, I was like, dude, you know, I spend most of my life in Spain where dinner time is 10 p .m. Like, that's not going to work for me. If I go to a restaurant, I allow myself to have a little bit of bread, allow myself to have dessert occasionally.

[981] I allow myself to eat some shitty things.

[982] Yeah.

[983] Maybe a little pasta if I feel like it.

[984] Fuck it.

[985] You have to be, I think you have to both be disciplined and also I enjoy the art form of cooking.

[986] I enjoy that people make these delicious dishes.

[987] I follow your elk and halapeno Instagram feed there, Joe.

[988] Looks great.

[989] Do you cook at all?

[990] I love cooking, yeah.

[991] I have meat for you then.

[992] Oh.

[993] I have sausages.

[994] Joe Rogan has meat for me, ladies and gentlemen.

[995] That's what I meant.

[996] Here comes that cuck beta thing again.

[997] So I'll tell you a great, we're talking about the van.

[998] You know, my favorite thing in life is travel and the reason I love travel is that you can wake up and have no idea what your life's going to be like by the time you go to bed right right so we're driving the van through uh along the rio grande and we want to go to uh big ben national park which is beautiful it's that you know where that is no it's like that part of texas that sort of dips down okay and then you know and there's like a big bent literally a big bend that's the river um so it's way down south texas that's a weird spot it's cool it's it's it's interesting down there south texas is strange yeah yeah should have a passport to go there and the river's like as wide as this room i mean it's nothing you know you can just walk across over to mexico wow um but anyway so so we get into uh the western entrance of big bend and it's like 4 p .m. and the guy says, yeah, all the campgrounds are full and like, ah, shit, okay, can I get a back country permit?

[999] Like, no, you can't, you got to, uh, okay, so he says, just go back to that little town right there, spend the night there, and then come in the morning and I'll hook you up.

[1000] Okay, great.

[1001] So we go back to this town.

[1002] It's called Terlingua, the little town.

[1003] We just drove through it on the way in, nothing there, you know, some houses, whatever.

[1004] And we find this restaurant, and it's like, okay, we're just going to crash behind a dumpster in the van and, you know, whatever, and spend the night there.

[1005] So we're sitting there, and I remembered somebody had sent me an Instagram direct message, like, about Terlingua.

[1006] So I go back and I find it, and the guy's like, hey, if you get to Terlingua, Texas, you should look up my buddy Tony.

[1007] He's really cool.

[1008] So here's his handle.

[1009] So I...

[1010] You can't tell people that you're willing to do this because now they're going to be sending you direct messages.

[1011] Oh, they do it all the time, man. I love it.

[1012] No, see, but you're paranoid.

[1013] There's going to be a dude with a ball gag at his hand, and you're going to go, what?

[1014] And then you're going to feel that wet, that cloth filled with chloroform covering your nose.

[1015] You're in a different world, Joe.

[1016] I'm in the world of micro -podcasting where everybody who reaches out to me likes me. Oh, everybody reaches out to you, I'm sure.

[1017] And they're not crazy.

[1018] They just want to tie you up a little.

[1019] Well, hey, what's wrong with that?

[1020] I remember showing you a long time ago.

[1021] I was here doing a podcast in my phone, a message came in, and I looked and it was this really hot woman in Australia who liked to send me naked pictures of herself, and I showed it to you, and you're like, that's a trap.

[1022] It's a trap.

[1023] That's a trap.

[1024] That's what a trap looks like right there.

[1025] It is a good trap looks like.

[1026] She's in Australia.

[1027] They are different over there.

[1028] And they're far away.

[1029] Yeah.

[1030] They are interesting people.

[1031] Anyway, that's a place I would live.

[1032] I like Australia.

[1033] I would live there.

[1034] I like Australian people.

[1035] They're funny as fuck.

[1036] Funny as fuck.

[1037] But they get American comedy straight away.

[1038] Like there's no, there's no problem doing shows over there.

[1039] Humor is an interesting thing, cultural humor.

[1040] Anyway, let me finish this story.

[1041] So I text this dude.

[1042] I'm like, hey, I'm interlingua, you don't know me, but some friend of yours, whatever.

[1043] He texts us back, hey, we're in this restaurant, come have a beer.

[1044] So go to this restaurant, there's this table, maybe a dozen people sent out of the table.

[1045] Hey, come on, yeah, have a beer.

[1046] Really nice people.

[1047] After about 15 minutes, I said to somebody, are you guys tripping?

[1048] He's like, yeah, we ate some mushrooms.

[1049] It's like, okay, some of them did.

[1050] Some of them did.

[1051] Anyway, but super relaxed.

[1052] And somebody makes some joke about like their beer glass was dirty or something.

[1053] And someone else is like, yeah, just lick it.

[1054] It's good for your microbiome.

[1055] And I'm like, oh, you guys know about microbiome?

[1056] Yeah, yeah.

[1057] I said, I read this article a couple years ago, this dude, you probably read this article yourself.

[1058] This dude was in Africa with the hudsa people, the hunter -gatherers, and he took some hudsa shit and he mixed it up and blasted it up his ass to see if he could get a hunter -gatherer's microbiome because it's a much more complex microbiome, right?

[1059] I say this to this dude thinking he's going to have a reaction like you just had, and he says, oh, yeah, that's him.

[1060] He points to the end of the table.

[1061] I said, what?

[1062] And the guy's like half live wires coming out of him.

[1063] The guy's looking at me, smiling.

[1064] I said, that's you?

[1065] That's you?

[1066] He's like, yeah, he was me. You blasted fucking hunter -gatherer?

[1067] Yeah, yeah, I do this thing in Africa.

[1068] This guy's a world -famous scientist, microbiome expert.

[1069] Wow.

[1070] Spends half his life in Africa with this hunter -gatherer group.

[1071] And the other half in this tiny little town in Texas.

[1072] And there he is.

[1073] Wow.

[1074] And so we stay there four days, became great friends with this guy, did a podcast with him.

[1075] What's his name again?

[1076] Jeff Leach.

[1077] I'm going to, and is in tangentially speaking the podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher, and everywhere else?

[1078] Available or fine podcasts, I found.

[1079] Wow, I'm going to listen to that one.

[1080] That sounds amazing.

[1081] What a coincidence.

[1082] This was the trip, you know, and that was totally fell out of this guy.

[1083] We went to visit Peter Gorman, you know, him.

[1084] He was editor of High Times Magazine in the 70s.

[1085] First person to write about ayahuasca in the Western press, not scientifically, but popular press.

[1086] Oh, wow.

[1087] Explore the Amazon for years was all over down there.

[1088] First person to write about Sappo, you know, the burn.

[1089] Yeah.

[1090] Really interesting to do it.

[1091] He's in Texas, too.

[1092] Wow.

[1093] So he drove up to see him.

[1094] So it's kind of like just cruising around in the van, like hanging out with cool people.

[1095] I heard that frog poison stuff is horrible.

[1096] The trip.

[1097] Yeah.

[1098] I mean, I guess it was Aubrey.

[1099] Wasn't it Aubrey that was on the podcast talking about doing that tree frog poison?

[1100] Pretty sure it was him.

[1101] He's done everything.

[1102] Yeah.

[1103] He's like Mikey from that commercial about Mikey likes it for life.

[1104] He won't eat it.

[1105] He hates everything.

[1106] He's in there.

[1107] That's Aubrey.

[1108] He loves everything.

[1109] Takes everything.

[1110] But he was saying it was just a terrible ordeal.

[1111] But there was also an article that I read about certain countries where they didn't have an endogenous psychedelic or didn't have a local psychedelic.

[1112] So these people would take ordeal poisons.

[1113] So they would take poisons that would get them like literally to.

[1114] the brink of death, and then they would come out of it like a near -death experience, and that this near -death experience provided some sort of a shamanistic, you know, some sort of a breakthrough experience where you could move on to the next level.

[1115] Like you'd experience something that was like, like we were talking about before the podcast, like when you lived in Portland, and then coming here in L .A., when it's sunny out, you're like, ah, sun, you just feel it.

[1116] Yeah.

[1117] That it's similar.

[1118] Well, there's a similar theory about Africa that there aren't.

[1119] a lot of endogenous psychedelic plants there.

[1120] Iboga is one of the only ones, and that's incredibly strong and not available all over the continent.

[1121] And so they develop complex rhythms to provoke altered states.

[1122] That makes sense.

[1123] And that's why African rhythms are so complex, and Native American rhythms are very simple.

[1124] That's interesting because they were high as fuck.

[1125] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1126] And just boom, boom, boom is enough, you know.

[1127] Have you heard any of the Ikaroos that Aubrey plays when he has this little...

[1128] No, I haven't heard.

[1129] He's got these Ikaroos that he got from these South American shamans.

[1130] And I listen to them sometimes when I write.

[1131] Because I like listening to things that I don't know the language when I write.

[1132] Like I like some music from Armenia.

[1133] I like some Lebanese music.

[1134] I like, it's cool listening to things where I have no idea what they're saying.

[1135] So, like, I don't get wrapped up in, but I feel their emotions, but I don't get wrapped up and whatever they're talking about.

[1136] So I can write about whatever, fucking tabletops.

[1137] It's a lot of good music out there.

[1138] Oh, yeah.

[1139] You want Brazilian, African.

[1140] Most of the music I listen to, I don't understand the words.

[1141] Because I really fixate on the words if I do.

[1142] The iceroes are crazy because they make the psychedelic trip dance to them.

[1143] Like DMT.

[1144] Like, when you take DMT with the icros, you realize, like, the ecros, it's like a technology that was invented to work with DMT right like this is like give me some volume on this shit this is what they sound like now by itself you listen to this right now and you go oh this is just like some weird slow music but when you're in the dimension of dimethyltryptamine and the world has become infinite fractals that are moving and changing and morphing when you hear this song the hallucinations or whatever they are that you're experiencing, the visualizations, they dance to the song, 100 % in sync.

[1145] So all this, it's comforting.

[1146] Yeah, it's, but that's another thing.

[1147] It keeps people from having bad trips sometimes because they can cling to the music and the structure in the music, whereas their own paranoia and fear and inability to let go gets hit with that psychedelic juice, boom, and you just experience that new, and some people freak out but this music might be able to bring him down it sounds like what a fetus might hear in the womb got that heartbeat too yeah right imagine what a fetus hears see I like listen to this kind of shit when I write because I have no idea what they're saying yeah and so I can just keep it on the background it also makes me feel like just knowing just knowing that that's out there knowing that the the DMT world is out there it makes me just a little bit nervous it makes me write better.

[1148] You're writing jokes or other stuff?

[1149] Everything, whatever.

[1150] You ever written a book or essay or stuff?

[1151] I've written essays.

[1152] I used to write a lot for my website.

[1153] I've read some of your essays.

[1154] What are we talking about?

[1155] You wrote a beautiful one a couple years ago about that I really, I don't know if I've ever told you how much I appreciated that, actually.

[1156] It was about how the quest for optimal fitness shouldn't be taken as immortality that we're all going to die and you got to sort of deal with that.

[1157] Do you remember I want to talk?

[1158] Yeah, I think I wrote, your body's a sandcastle.

[1159] That's what it is.

[1160] Yeah, the sandcastles are beautiful, but one of the beautiful things about them is we know how temporary they are.

[1161] When you see a sandcastle, it's not just like, oh, this guy made an amazing sculpture.

[1162] It's like, oh, no, this person made something that they know it's not going to last.

[1163] And they put a massive amount of work into it.

[1164] But part of the beauty of it is that it's not going to last.

[1165] Yeah, I really, I enjoy that a lot.

[1166] I forget one magazine So you have a book in mind?

[1167] I started writing a book and then I had a deal with the publishing company they wanted very specific kind of writing Oh that's yeah it's for Maxim That's what it was They wanted very specific Like they wanted joky jokes They even offered to just pay me To transcribe my act And I was like I don't want to do that And they go but these people did it You know some famous comedians did it And I said, that's fine.

[1168] I just not what I want to do.

[1169] I like writing.

[1170] But I like writing shit that I feel like writing.

[1171] I don't want to have some.

[1172] So when we went into it, they were like, we love your blogs.

[1173] We think you're really funny.

[1174] This would be good.

[1175] Was this before you had the podcast?

[1176] Yes.

[1177] Yeah.

[1178] So I gave them all their money back.

[1179] I just thought I don't want to do this.

[1180] Yeah.

[1181] Because at this point, you'd have free range to do whatever you want.

[1182] Yeah.

[1183] I just think that any time you willingly take on some new.

[1184] project managers and other they might like their their opinion might very well be valid but I'm not looking for it I want whatever I write to be out of my head and whether it's good or bad dependent upon how much focus and attention I put into it you know I'm pretty self -critical so if I think it's clunky I'll try to redo it but I'm not interested in like artistically or creatively going down a direction where somebody else is picking the subject manner or somebody else is suggesting like I'm not I'm not I just it's fine there's no reason for you to do that I mean you've got the massive platform and a well -established voice you don't I think honestly I think publishing is is at the Napster stage yeah right now I think it's it's sort of collapsing I'm at I'm finishing this book I've been working on for a few years now and I don't know that I'll ever publish another book with major publishers well you've had great success with your podcast as well but the beautiful thing about your podcast is it'll allows you to put out an idea almost instantaneously.

[1185] I mean, you get together with this rattlesnake guy.

[1186] You guys have a couple hour conversation.

[1187] You upload that shit, and that's it.

[1188] It's wonderful.

[1189] And it brings these really interesting people into my life.

[1190] And, like, my circle of friends now is largely composed of either guests or listeners of the podcast.

[1191] You know, it's wonderful.

[1192] I've just put out a book recently that's sort of compilations of podcasts.

[1193] So it's not the whole conversation, obviously, but it's excerpts.

[1194] And the whole thing was crowdsourced.

[1195] So people who listened to the podcast picked the episodes.

[1196] They picked what part of the episodes that they thought was most interesting.

[1197] They transcribed it.

[1198] This guy Adam McDade did all the art. The publisher, Misfit Press are people that I know through the podcast.

[1199] They reached out to me and we had some beers.

[1200] And not intending to do anything together, just like, hey, dude, we're in town and we like your show.

[1201] can we get a beer and really like these guys and ended up having the CEO on the podcast, AJ.

[1202] And yeah, so we just put out the book and it sort of fulfills my fantasy of being a writer without having to write.

[1203] You know, if I could like do what, you're in it.

[1204] You remember you signed a release for it.

[1205] Yeah, yeah, I remember.

[1206] I hope you remember that, Joe.

[1207] You and Duncan and my mother blurbed it.

[1208] Oh, that's awesome.

[1209] Yeah.

[1210] Yeah.

[1211] You don't even know you blurbed it.

[1212] We just lifted something you said on a on a podcast about you.

[1213] Yeah.

[1214] You said, oh, perfect.

[1215] What is it?

[1216] You said, whatever it is.

[1217] I sign off on it now.

[1218] You said, Chris is the best beta cuck I've ever met.

[1219] And, yeah.

[1220] Yeah.

[1221] Anyway.

[1222] So, yeah, that's my dream is to put out one of these a year.

[1223] That's a great idea.

[1224] And I mean, really, there's a lot of amazing conversations that I've had with people on this podcast.

[1225] that I would love to see written down where I could read it, go over it and not hear my own fucking voice.

[1226] And also, it's people have it in the bathroom.

[1227] You know, it's like a little thing.

[1228] You just pick it up, whatever it is.

[1229] There's no, you don't need to follow the flow or the...

[1230] And you're encouraging reading, which is a dying thing.

[1231] And people, and there are a lot of people out there who don't listen to podcasts, right?

[1232] Me included, I rarely listen to podcasts.

[1233] Do you listen to books on tape?

[1234] No. No?

[1235] See, I don't have spaces in my life where I'm doing something that would allow me to, to listen to voices talking that wouldn't interfere with what I'm doing.

[1236] So, like, yeah, I'm not a carpenter.

[1237] I'm not driving long distances.

[1238] You know, it's like I'm either writing or doing my podcast or something else.

[1239] Yeah, I hear you know what I mean?

[1240] So there's a specific sort of, you know, activities that lend themselves to listening to podcasts.

[1241] And a lot of people just don't have those spaces in their lives.

[1242] So I envision the book is like something where people can be like, hey, dude, I know you don't, I know you don't listen to a podcast, but this is why I do.

[1243] These are the sorts of crazy -ass conversations that Chris and Duncan and Joe get into.

[1244] And that's why I like listen into those guys, you know, or Wim Hoff or Graham Hancock and all these guys are in the book.

[1245] Oh, awesome.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] Yeah, man, if I stopped and thought about it, because before I started doing the podcast, I would listen to recordings of like lectures that Terrence McKenna would.

[1248] give or Timothy Leary or you know and there wasn't a lot you know you or listen to Art Bell having some you know weird UFO expert on or something like that I mean that's really what you had to listen to you didn't have very many choices right and then I think about all the conversations that I've been able to have with guys like John Anthony West with Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson and Michael Shermer and you and Duncan and Ari I mean so many people have had these crazy conversations with them that to me they've been I mean I have it's shaped the way I look at everything it's changed everything so I feel like I'm constantly getting educated you know yeah you set up your life as like you know not I'm not talking about myself but you've had guests who are some of the smartest people in the world who come to you to sit here and chat with you for you know I mean that's you have set up an amazing little educational institution Sometimes.

[1249] Sometimes it's educational.

[1250] Sometimes it's chaos.

[1251] Well, that's education.

[1252] Yeah.

[1253] Well, it certainly is.

[1254] You learn about what we're like when we're drunk.

[1255] But it's, what it is is, you know, I mean, it's a thing.

[1256] You know, I mean, it's a thing.

[1257] And it's a thing that's enjoyable to me. It's like I like having all these conversations.

[1258] So if I can record them and they just put them out there and other people like them, this is a very rare, a balanced sort of relationship.

[1259] So to me, there's no other.

[1260] the way I'd get, like, if I said to you, hey, Chris, let's sit down and talk for three hours.

[1261] You'd be like, okay, all right, I'll block off three hours for you.

[1262] Can I look at my phone at all during this time?

[1263] Can I get up to go to the bathroom?

[1264] We would never have this, like, as connected a conversation.

[1265] I just got another set of headphones to give to my guest.

[1266] Because ostensibly, the main reason is I'm using handheld now because my whole thing's mobile, right?

[1267] Right, right.

[1268] People will occasionally come to my place in Topanga, but normally I go to them.

[1269] They can't hear when they're...

[1270] They don't hear, so I have to keep like going, hey, hey, the mic, you know.

[1271] A lot of them, they're not used to talking on mics and all that.

[1272] But the other reason I got it is my buddy Kyle actually pointed out to me that when you both have headphones, you're both in a shared space and you're much less likely to be thinking about your phone or whatever.

[1273] Because you're both like, I don't know what it does, but it seals it off.

[1274] in a way.

[1275] Yeah, we talked about that yesterday actually.

[1276] Me and Eddie Bravo talked about it because he doesn't like to wear them because he doesn't like the sound of his own voice.

[1277] And I said he and I are so comfortable, we've been friends for so long I didn't need to wear them, but I feel like when you're having a conversation with someone, it cuts out everything else.

[1278] It's just you too there.

[1279] Like, there's no distractions in the room, but if there were they would be less distracting because of the headphones.

[1280] Well, that's the thing.

[1281] I'm out like sitting in a campsite somewhere or by a river or whatever.

[1282] There's a lot going on.

[1283] Yeah, and the handheld microphone too is a big thing and if you get a mic that picks up everything then they pick up everything right everything like they pick up some shit over by the outhouse you'd hear in the background yeah i was using uh lapel mics for a while but they were omnidirectional it was too much and people were complaining like dude i can't in the car i can't hear it's you know so i got the handheld it is an interesting thing right because this is not something that a production company would ever uh get together and fund because they would say if they did they'd have a sound guy and they'd have a can't like half the fun is watching you well well this one sucked these these mics are bullshit all right we're not doing that anymore you know we've done a few from an iPhone we used to do podcasts on a plane like we'd be you know me and duncan or me and aure or whoever it was we'd be on a plane next to each other I just stick the iPhone between us press record and start talking in voice notes yeah and turn into a podcast and it's not that bad yeah I did that recently in the van I was driving I had some ideas I just grabbed my phone and started talking into it and I threw it up yeah people like you it because one thing they know this is one of the things that's appealing about podcasts in general is that it's not produced right it's just this is what it is you know it's like you got an idea and I'm getting it right from Chris Ryan's head it's going right from his head right in that phone and then it's going right into my ears there's no filters there it's getting right into your head it's one of the weirdest things about podcasts in general is that the the intimacy of your voice in someone else's head like I'm sure when you meet them they get weirded out right a lot of people get weird weird because you get in their head and all of a sudden you're You're right in front of them.

[1284] Yeah.

[1285] Like, yeah, and it's strange.

[1286] Like, they know you.

[1287] Yes.

[1288] You know.

[1289] And they really do know you.

[1290] It's not like fame where you're an actor.

[1291] Right.

[1292] And people like, oh, I know your face.

[1293] Like, yeah.

[1294] But, yeah, I mean, people really do know Joe Rogan.

[1295] Yeah.

[1296] Strangely.

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] So there are parts.

[1299] I know both of us have parts of our lives we don't talk about on the podcast, specifically your marriage, I guess.

[1300] You know, talk about.

[1301] Family, I don't like to talk too much about it.

[1302] Yeah.

[1303] Yeah.

[1304] I'm that way too.

[1305] I my impulse is to talk about everything like my impulses like I got nothing I got no secrets because I feel like there's a like a revolutionary shamelessness you know I feel like I feel so privileged and largely thanks to you and Duncan honestly when I started the podcast and you guys did that shrimp parade thing and that really built up my audience and to the point now where it pays self -sustaining and it's my main gig that's awesome it is awesome it's incredible But it's like, I feel like there's a responsibility I have in a way to express yourself.

[1306] Shamelessly because everybody else has a job they can get fired from or a marriage that they can get, you know, screwed.

[1307] Their wife can leave them or they can.

[1308] I'm invulnerable.

[1309] And so I kind of feel like, all right, so the cost of that, you know, every opportunity or every, you know, privilege comes with a responsibility.

[1310] The responsibility is like, I got to talk about.

[1311] about shit that other people don't talk about so that it's out there.

[1312] And so my impulse is to just say everything, you know, and my sex life has really has been very interesting, and I'd like to talk about it more.

[1313] But I don't want to, you know, other people never sort of said they were down for that, you know, so.

[1314] That's magnified when you have children because they have no say.

[1315] Well, that's the other invulnerability I have.

[1316] They put their kids out there.

[1317] I'm like, okay, I don't, I'm not saying it's the worst thing to do, but it's not the child's choice, and they're very young.

[1318] And you're making a, look, like, whoever did what they did to Michael Jackson, right?

[1319] Yeah.

[1320] One of the things that they did is they made him famous way before he had any idea what the fuck that meant, and they profited off of it.

[1321] Yeah.

[1322] They kind of pimped him out, right?

[1323] Yeah.

[1324] And that's kind of what's happening.

[1325] And they destroyed him.

[1326] Yeah.

[1327] Ultimately, the whole thing destroyed him, right?

[1328] And I just, I don't want to be a part of that.

[1329] I just, there's no benefit in it.

[1330] I don't think it's intelligent.

[1331] And I also don't, this is my real honest feelings.

[1332] I do not think that fame is, I don't think that people should aspire to it.

[1333] I think it should be something that happens if people like your work and then it's cool, it's fine.

[1334] But I think there's way too much emphasis put on just trying to get attention.

[1335] And it's being rewarded and supported in this weird way.

[1336] there's nothing wrong with getting attention but it should make sense it should make sense there should be some reason and if it's out of balance yeah you know you should you should probably look at like why why is it out of balance like yeah and lots of things that attract attention are not things that we need we want more of you know like conflict yes conflict that's a big one but it's also the like just fame itself one of the weirdest parts about it is that you have to constantly be checking yourself like all these people are nice to you all these people are saying nice things to you or being mean to you you know one of the all people that you don't even know so you can't rely on them for your self -esteem and you certainly can't rely on them for criticism you can't rely on them and people you don't even know that don't care about you you know so you're in this weird position you have to be very careful with who you communicate with because one of the weirdest things you'll see from famous people is all the sudden they get this very strange thing where they feel like people are supposed to do things for them and you know they're not supposed to pay for things and everything's supposed to be easy and they're supposed to get that that's a that's a weird one like they don't respond to criticism well they don't understand that they're still a human being in the middle of growth no they're a fucking star I'm a fucking star and I want this and I want it now yeah and they're just like what kind of fucking bullshit is this.

[1337] Do you know who I am?

[1338] Yeah, exactly.

[1339] We've all seen like a version of that, right?

[1340] And we know about it.

[1341] The problem, though, is that they know that their shit stinks.

[1342] Yes.

[1343] They know that they're human.

[1344] They know.

[1345] So then they develop this sort of fraud phobia.

[1346] Right.

[1347] That people are going to find out what they really are.

[1348] I mean, I've seen this with fashion models.

[1349] You know, I used to hang out with a lot of fashion models in Barcelona.

[1350] Do you know that whole story where I lived in the mansion with the fashion models?

[1351] Did you talk about that?

[1352] Could be.

[1353] I don't know.

[1354] I'm not sure, but I'd love to hear it again.

[1355] Who can keep track of what the fuck we've talked about?

[1356] I know.

[1357] It's impossible.

[1358] Yeah.

[1359] It's impossible.

[1360] Yeah, anyway.

[1361] So, yeah, fashion models, fame, wealth, people who are extremely wealthy.

[1362] And that gets back to the 70 grand a year thing and the whole sort of question of, you know, saturation.

[1363] You know what else it is?

[1364] It becomes a real problem with things being too easy.

[1365] and life being like way too patterned like you everything is very predictable in terms of like your success you have plenty of money you have adulation from fans without any stress or duress you can have a little bit of stress in terms of like trying to manage your career but it's nothing like trying to make it that I don't know if I'm ever going to make it stress that's a totally different kind of stress I don't know if I'm ever going to be a success stress that's real shit that goes away once you definitely become Kanye West or whoever the fuck you are and then you're subject to your own demons because then you're alone you're really alone you can't even go to the grocery store you spend any time with Jim Carrey no I don't know him I'd love to meet that guy yeah he seems like he's in a weird stage of his life he seems to me like someone who who you talked about you know you get to that that pinnacle and you have to deal with your demons yeah it seems like he's dealt with them and now he's come out the other side and he's in this very sort of this place of wisdom and uh and yeah it i just think he he's something russle brand is another guy who i i think i really admire where they are in their lives and how they got there they sort of went through the fire and they've come out the other side somehow russell certainly has i know russell he's he's a sweetie he really is a super sweet guy like genuine too and really trying to, like, be a better person and a better human.

[1366] And, you know, I don't agree with him on everything.

[1367] He gets a little social justice warriery on some things, but I think it's just because he wants to do good.

[1368] And he's, like, leaning towards good.

[1369] And he's leaning towards love.

[1370] And it's all for the right reasons.

[1371] Like, even if I don't agree with him, I see how he's thinking.

[1372] And even if I don't agree with him, it's a soft, do not agree.

[1373] It's not a hard, do not agree.

[1374] He's a fascinating guy.

[1375] Yeah.

[1376] I think if Jesus came back, he'd be Russell Brown.

[1377] He'd probably fuck a few less checks.

[1378] I don't know.

[1379] Maybe Jesus would go just slinging dick all over the place just to remove everybody of their ego.

[1380] Well, or just...

[1381] You don't possess these women.

[1382] A years ago, I came back from Asia.

[1383] I was in Asia for a couple of years and I visited my best buddy in Paris and we're throwing a football around.

[1384] I remember in some backstreet in Paris, which freaked out the Parisians, of course.

[1385] And my buddy's like the opposite of me. He's religious.

[1386] He's disciplined.

[1387] He speaks.

[1388] seven languages.

[1389] He's a, you know, musical prodigy, I'm a lazy fuck.

[1390] Growing up, it was like I was Kirk, he was Spock, you know, is that kind of dynamic.

[1391] Half your audience won't even know who we're talking about there.

[1392] And that's sad.

[1393] Yeah.

[1394] But he, uh, which explains why I've always wanted to fuck a green woman that's got this thing.

[1395] But, uh, he said to me, he's like, Chris, I figured you out, man. I said, yeah, what's, what's the deal?

[1396] He said, you're the anti -munk.

[1397] So what do you mean?

[1398] He said, mom.

[1399] Unks cut themselves off from the temptations of life in order to pursue a spiritual path.

[1400] You're pursuing a spiritual path, but it's by way of the temptations of life.

[1401] You immerse yourself in them because in those days I was doing a lot of drugs and, you know, whatever.

[1402] Right.

[1403] And I think he's right.

[1404] And in Buddhism, there is a path of the drunken guru, right?

[1405] There is a path of sex and altered states of consciousness and sort of, you know, William Blake said the palace of wisdom lies at the end of the road of excess, you know.

[1406] And so someone like Russell Brand, I think that's his path.

[1407] He's gone through the addictions and the orgies and all that stuff that a lot of people think would make them happy.

[1408] He's like checked those boxes.

[1409] Like, no, that didn't do it.

[1410] And that didn't do it.

[1411] And check them in a way that very few humans ever.

[1412] get to check him right because he's a beautiful man and a superstar yeah and he came on the other side and became this you know really conscious very spiritual person yeah and very humble and a sweetie which i really nice guy i think humility is what you find if you get through to the other side yeah yeah i think so i think if you but even when you get through the other side it's like there's no there's no destination it's not like a spot you get to like oh i made it finally i can relax i'm here yeah well you use that phrase a minute ago like you know trying to make you know trying to Make it.

[1413] Make it.

[1414] It's like it's as if you'll make it and then you'll have it made.

[1415] Yeah.

[1416] You know, like what?

[1417] What did we make?

[1418] What's made?

[1419] The make it thing is really for a comic.

[1420] It's just this, the high unlikelyhood of success is always looming over you.

[1421] And what is success?

[1422] A Netflix special?

[1423] No, I'm not even.

[1424] Just being able to work.

[1425] Just being a working, working comedian.

[1426] Just paying your rant with your standout.

[1427] That was always the dream.

[1428] Like every comic that starts out, if they're being honest, like Fitzsimmons and I have talked about this a hundred times because it was, we'd never thought of a career.

[1429] I mean, Fitzsimmis is one.

[1430] I think he's won at least two Emmys for writing.

[1431] Brilliant guy.

[1432] And, you know, we were just two dorks, two 21 -year -old dorks hanging out together in Boston.

[1433] You weren't a dork, dude.

[1434] You were a fucking martial arts expert.

[1435] Even though I was a martial arts expert, I was a dork, dude.

[1436] I would get nervous talking.

[1437] I've talked about this.

[1438] I never could figure out why I'd freak out when I would be about to talk to a bank teller.

[1439] Like, walking up to, I'd get, like, social anxiety.

[1440] I wouldn't know, like, I would get nervous about it.

[1441] It's not a good place to look nervous.

[1442] Well, yeah, exactly, right?

[1443] I mean, but back then it didn't even make sense because I was fighting.

[1444] And I would still get nervous talking to, like, any person who was in, like, an official person.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] Any person, like, you know, a teacher or a principal or anybody that, any authority figure.

[1447] I was just super nervous talking to them.

[1448] My wife gets that way around.

[1449] anyone wearing a uniform freaks her out because she was in a war when she was a kid oh wow so she's so like immigration guys she just she started shaking s a worker yeah yeah no i hear you man well uniform means uniform behavior right uniform means she could go sideways when's the last time you wore a tie speaking of uniforms probably when i was taking the photos for my 1999 cd because on the cover of the CD I decided to dress like like old school Frank Sinatra I just decided when I made the CD I was thinking I never wear a tie a suit and a tie that would be fun if I just decided to wear a suit and a tie for the cover of this so that's it right there that's probably Brad Pack the last time I wore a tie I'm going to be dead someday yeah yeah that's the theme song to my podcast is you're going to die one day yeah I don't want to give the end away but you're going to die one day.

[1450] That's a good song.

[1451] Carpe fucking DM, baby.

[1452] Enjoy that.

[1453] I mean, don't dwell on it too much.

[1454] Don't freak out, you know.

[1455] Well, it's like, I think every young man should shave his head.

[1456] Like, at 21 or something, shave your head.

[1457] See yourself bald for a month or however long it takes to grow back.

[1458] And it's like, okay, that's it.

[1459] Yeah.

[1460] And then you're not going to worry about it.

[1461] You say this, but you have a normal head.

[1462] I don't know.

[1463] I've never shaved my head.

[1464] I have a friend.

[1465] it looks like his parents never picked him up for the first year of his life to just let him lay down on a flat marble pillow his head is flat like a fucking pizza this poor bastard If he takes the back The back of his head's flat I think his parents just ignored the shit out of him And he's got a flat head You know about the flathead Indians?

[1466] Which ones are those?

[1467] There was up in Idaho That area northern...

[1468] Yeah they would put Oh yeah I did see Yeah they put a board on the baby's head Because the heads are so malleable And then tighten it and they look like cone heads.

[1469] They scare the fuck out of anybody.

[1470] I'm sure.

[1471] If you saw those dudes riding up.

[1472] I'm sure.

[1473] War paint, flat heads.

[1474] That was a thing about some of the, I think, was it Peru?

[1475] Where they would do, they would find a lot of these skulls from a certain period of time that had been elongated.

[1476] And, you know, the alien people went nutty.

[1477] Like, this is it.

[1478] This is evidence.

[1479] This is evidence of contact.

[1480] The aliens, they've been here.

[1481] but it's just boards.

[1482] They just put boards on the side of their heads and stretched their heads up.

[1483] Yeah.

[1484] They think they might have even been trying to emulate one of like, originally the idea was bounced about that someone in the royal family in Egypt had deformities.

[1485] And that was one of the things that said about King Tut.

[1486] Like King Tut was not a healthy person, like that he may very well have been the product incest and that there was some did you remember reading about this?

[1487] Yeah I know about the incest in the Egyptians yeah and that some of the like heads when you see people like with like elongated heads and hieroglyphs and images they might have actually done that to try to replicate someone who had something fucked up with them.

[1488] To normalize it which might have been like a royal who had been like look at there's that's his head.

[1489] That's his actual head so on the left that's Tutankan Is that his real head?

[1490] Peru.

[1491] Oh, these are giant skulls.

[1492] But they have King Tut's head, too, though.

[1493] Do you see if you can Google King Tut's head?

[1494] The ones in Peru, they know they're pretty sure, like, naive with a high degree of certainty.

[1495] I don't want to give you a number, but that they use boards and flatter.

[1496] Well, an example of that is in Spanish.

[1497] Look at what Tuts head must have looked like.

[1498] It was all fucking weird.

[1499] It was all stretched out.

[1500] Like, look at that.

[1501] Like, if you saw that on the ship of a spaceship, on the deck, like walking around, you'd be like, oh, my God, that's the alien.

[1502] He must be from another planet, right?

[1503] Like, if you were on a spaceship, say if you're watching Star Trek and that dude walks by.

[1504] Like, well, for sure, that dude must be playing someone from another planet.

[1505] With a martini on his head.

[1506] Like, look, the top of his head is flat.

[1507] There's all this extra brain that looks like there's like 10 % extra brain.

[1508] Maybe more.

[1509] What the fuck is going on back there?

[1510] Here's the flathead Indians.

[1511] This is a painting of it.

[1512] There you go.

[1513] Kateley.

[1514] That would make you very non -aerodynamic.

[1515] You'd be like a Land Rover defender, like a big flat square thing.

[1516] Similar skulls, though.

[1517] Oh, wow.

[1518] That normalizing...

[1519] It's crazy looking, isn't it?

[1520] A royal weirdness.

[1521] You ever hear Spanish people speak?

[1522] They have the Lisp.

[1523] Yeah.

[1524] Well, they say that's because one of the kings had a Lisp, and then all the, you know, courtiers started replicating it to seem cool.

[1525] You had told me about that, and I had forgotten when it came up the other day when someone was bringing up Abida.

[1526] Abitha.

[1527] Yeah.

[1528] And then I remembered it after the podcast was over.

[1529] Yeah.

[1530] I don't know that that's true.

[1531] I mean, I haven't looked it up if it's historically accurate or even if there's a way to know because there are no recordings, right?

[1532] Do you know the powdered wig one?

[1533] Do you know where that came from?

[1534] No, that's the best one.

[1535] That is a weird one.

[1536] That came from syphilis.

[1537] Really?

[1538] yeah yeah yeah how because men started getting syphilis find out what year it was i forget what year we just brought it up recently but there was a royal family um i think two brothers they both had syphilis and they started losing their hair and a lot of men were losing their hair to syphilis back then they just had it nobody knew what the fuck it was right so they would make wigs and the more expensive you more expensive the wig was the bigger it would be so the really rich people would be big wigs Big Wigs.

[1539] That's where bigwigs come from.

[1540] And they literally put this style on to mask the effects of syphilis.

[1541] Jesus.

[1542] It's a great story.

[1543] I didn't know syphilis made your hair fall.

[1544] Fall.

[1545] Yeah, your teeth rot out.

[1546] You're falling apart, man. You're rotten from the inside.

[1547] Your nervous system gets really scared.

[1548] And you're shooting your rotten jizz into somebody and giving it to them, too.

[1549] And you don't even know what the hell's going on.

[1550] Louis the 14th was only 17 when his mop started thinning.

[1551] Yeah.

[1552] So 1655, when the.

[1553] the King of France started losing his hair.

[1554] And so if you scroll down, it goes into the whole syphilis thing.

[1555] Whig out.

[1556] So where's the syphilis part?

[1557] They mentioned up above that he probably had.

[1558] Bucking crazy.

[1559] The brother said syphilis.

[1560] Yeah.

[1561] Apparently everybody had it back then.

[1562] You just imagine.

[1563] These people, I mean, they only lived to be 30.

[1564] The syphilis outbreak sparked a surge in wig making.

[1565] Victims hid their baldness as well as bloody sores that scoured their faces with wigs made out of horse goat or human hair.

[1566] Perukes were also coated, rather, with powder, scented with lavender or orange to hide any funky aromas.

[1567] Although common wigs were not exactly stylish.

[1568] They were just a shameful necessity.

[1569] So the King of France started losing his hair in 1655, and that's when everybody hopped on.

[1570] And his cousin, Charles II, did the same thing.

[1571] Both men likely had syphilis.

[1572] Cephalus created a whole, like, a thing where, like, judges would wear those wigs, those powdered wigs.

[1573] They would look like they were important people.

[1574] Look at my wig.

[1575] You know what we're doing right now?

[1576] Detribalizing.

[1577] Right now?

[1578] Yeah.

[1579] See, we're looking at our own culture.

[1580] I mean, it's British culture in this case.

[1581] But, and seeing how it's all this arbitrary silliness.

[1582] And that's travel.

[1583] That's what travel does for you.

[1584] Sure.

[1585] You know, because you see it in other cultures.

[1586] And then you look back at your own and you're like, oh, shit, we do weird shit too.

[1587] We're all weird.

[1588] There is no, it's like the, what is it, Einstein, right?

[1589] That there's no fixed point from which to observe anything.

[1590] You're always on a moving, your perspective is always mobile.

[1591] So there is no objective truth culturally.

[1592] It's all looking at one thing from another thing and both of them are moving.

[1593] Yeah.

[1594] I love that shit.

[1595] Yeah.

[1596] And again, I think it leads to humility.

[1597] I think so too.

[1598] You know, I think all roads lead to humility ultimately.

[1599] It just leads to a greater perspective.

[1600] I mean, if you live in a small town, and I'm not knocking Ohio, Jamie, but if you live in a small town in Ohio, that's what you're used to.

[1601] Yeah.

[1602] And you kind of, like, develop your pattern of what you expect to see in the world based on what's around you in a very close immediate area.

[1603] But if you're in the fucking rainforest of Bolivia and you're hanging out with these tribal folks who are going to go hunt a monkey and you're with them on a monkey hunt and they're all excited.

[1604] and they shoot this monkey out of a tree with a bow and arrow they made themselves.

[1605] And then they're cooking this monkey over a fire and throwing wet leaves on it and smoking it.

[1606] And you're like, what the fuck?

[1607] And these people do this every day and they're going to die in this forest.

[1608] I mean, this is what they do.

[1609] This is how they live.

[1610] And for you, it's like, I got to get out of here.

[1611] For them, this is like, this is the small town in Ohio.

[1612] This is just a small town in Ohio in the jungle.

[1613] Like this is to them.

[1614] This is their world.

[1615] And maybe, interestingly, for you, it isn't, I got to get out of here.

[1616] Maybe it's like, this is where I should have been my whole life.

[1617] There are thousands of cases of people from civilization running away to go native.

[1618] There are no historical cases that I know of where native people have chosen to come and live in civilization.

[1619] Yeah, I hate to beat a dead horse because I always do it.

[1620] But Sebastian Younger's tribe is amazing for that.

[1621] It's great book.

[1622] I really enjoy that book.

[1623] I talk about too much.

[1624] It's one of those things.

[1625] It's a good book.

[1626] It's really good.

[1627] It is really good.

[1628] I've read it three times.

[1629] It's a short book.

[1630] It's one of its...

[1631] It covers a lot of the same ground that I cover in Civilized to Death, actually.

[1632] I quote him in Civilized to Death and we have some of the same sources.

[1633] But yeah, he looked at some of the...

[1634] Those accounts of people running away to go live with the natives.

[1635] And it makes sense.

[1636] Totally makes sense.

[1637] I mean, it makes sense like a dog...

[1638] You ever read Call of the Wild?

[1639] Jack London?

[1640] Yeah.

[1641] It's about a husky.

[1642] It's a very...

[1643] It's a good book.

[1644] It's about a husky who goes and lives with the wolves.

[1645] It's essentially the story of the domesticated being, going and living with the wild iterations of that same being, right?

[1646] So it's like one of us and going to live in the Amazon or whatever.

[1647] Oh, a fantastic book, if you like, that kind of thing is at play in the fields of the Lord.

[1648] I've heard of that book, too, but I never read that one.

[1649] That's a great book, man. Peter Matheson.

[1650] That's an old book, right?

[1651] It's probably 30 years old, maybe more.

[1652] and it was made into a film starring Daryl Hannah and Tom Waits.

[1653] Oh, yeah.

[1654] And who else?

[1655] John Lithgow, Kathy Bates.

[1656] Incredible, incredible cast.

[1657] There's something that you get from escaping civilization that you don't know you're missing it until you're out there.

[1658] When you're out there, and I'm sure you experience this on your travels, there's a certain detachment from the masses, like just to be out of the hive and the influence of all the people around you.

[1659] As weird as it seems, there's energy that we're all exchanging in these giant hives together.

[1660] And some people live off of it.

[1661] Like those New York City people, like my friend Jeff, lives in New York City, is always going to live in New York City.

[1662] This is what I like.

[1663] He likes it.

[1664] I love it.

[1665] He's walking through the streets.

[1666] Pong, honk, bam, bam.

[1667] Yes.

[1668] That's his thing.

[1669] To me, I'm like, wow.

[1670] I'm always, my thought is always, how do you guys do this?

[1671] How do you guys do this?

[1672] That's all I ever think.

[1673] How the fuck do you guys do this?

[1674] For him is how could you live any other way?

[1675] Yeah.

[1676] But the people that, but he has got a good life.

[1677] See, he's got to, he enjoys what he does.

[1678] He's a fulfilled life.

[1679] He's happy.

[1680] But if you didn't, I think we're talking about the same thing.

[1681] I'm talking about Jardia.

[1682] Have you ever had Jardia?

[1683] Yeah, got it in Nepal.

[1684] I heard it's rough.

[1685] Yeah, your farts smell really interesting.

[1686] You might not have got it too bad because I have a friend who got it really bad where he's sick in hospital for like two days.

[1687] Yeah, I didn't go to the hospital By that point I'd been traveling for a few years I've had Jardy, I've had hepatitis I mean I've had some I've had you know Yeah I spent three days in a room in Palenke Shitting and puking into the same plastic bag Oh boy Three days in the same bag Yeah What is it like after day three If you had your worst enemy After day was the same as day one man If you were on the third floor The worst enemy was below you to stand there smoking a cigarette.

[1688] Would you drop that bag on them or would you have mercy?

[1689] I'd have mercy.

[1690] I don't have any enemies that bad.

[1691] Yeah, you'd have to really hate somebody for that one.

[1692] Yeah.

[1693] And the funniest thing about that was I came out of that room after, it might have been two days out of it.

[1694] It came out of that room, you know, pale, emaciated, just totally drained.

[1695] And I went out on the terrace of this.

[1696] Do you know Palenke?

[1697] You ever been there?

[1698] No, never.

[1699] Oh, amazing Mayan ruins.

[1700] and lots of magic mushrooms.

[1701] I've only been to one to Chichenica.

[1702] Chichiniza's cool.

[1703] Chichinisa is much more sort of commercialized.

[1704] Palinke is pretty wild still.

[1705] And Touloum is another one?

[1706] Toulm, that's out on the Yucatan.

[1707] Is that Astec?

[1708] It's Mayan.

[1709] It's mine still.

[1710] Anyway, I come out and there's this woman there, this German woman, and we start chatting a little bit, and she, and this was at a time in my life where I was really nervous around women and, you know, whatever.

[1711] And this woman was, like, super into me. And I was like, so, I was like, I could not fuck you.

[1712] Like, I just, there's no, I didn't, too much.

[1713] I just, I was felt so sick and horrible.

[1714] And it turned out later, I got to know her a little bit.

[1715] She was really into punk music and she thought I looked like Johnny Rotten.

[1716] Oh, so she thought you were cute because you looked like I was about to die.

[1717] That's hilarious.

[1718] She was into that look.

[1719] Just for people out there that you might go camping, please just get a gravity filter.

[1720] Don't get Jardia.

[1721] You can, it's real easy.

[1722] It's real, and there's also a thing called a Sterri pen.

[1723] SteriPen's wonderful.

[1724] Oh, yeah.

[1725] You take this SteriPen, you run it around in the water for a certain amount of time, and it kills everything bad in the water, and you even taste, it doesn't taste any different.

[1726] It's like UV light, yeah.

[1727] There's a bunch, like, SteriPen's a good one, but these gravity filters are amazing.

[1728] They have pumps.

[1729] They have another one.

[1730] You can take some water and you pump it, and it goes through the filter into your water bottle and you can drink it.

[1731] You can clean up like 99 .99 % of all the bullshit with just a good filter.

[1732] And it does, you don't have to drop chemicals in there.

[1733] Some people bring little, yeah, iodine tablets and stuff like that.

[1734] But you don't need to.

[1735] But please don't drink at a creek, folks.

[1736] Shit could be dead, just 100 yards up.

[1737] I don't know if you pull this up.

[1738] Just recently I read a thing online saying that like it's almost never necessary to filter your water when you're in the, when you're camping.

[1739] And I've always filtered my water camping.

[1740] But it was this thing where they did all these, they took all these samples from creeks.

[1741] from creeks and like apparently they're like self -correcting mechanisms they are in nature but if something's dead yeah something's dead a hundred yards up you're screwed you're fucked but you don't want that it's not worth it the gravity filter so fucking easy it's like if you you could take the risk and shit your brains out for three days or you can just enjoy yourself with water from the same place i think shitting your brains out for three days is a good experience yeah it's like an ordeal poison right yeah exactly you ever get high from vomiting no have you yeah whoa yeah because when you vomit you get all these endorphins you don't feel like great after you vomit i feel better yeah i wouldn't go with great it's true relatively great the last time i did some serious vomiting because i had food poisoning about i guess i was about 10 years ago i had some pretty serious food poisoning it was just hurling out of me yeah that was the last real real real like unstoppable where it's just coming out and just a fat tube of it you ever have a colonic irrigation no not into things going in my butt I don't believe that that is necessarily a healthy thing either I don't believe it's not but this all the stuff that people saying that it's healthy for you I'm like I don't necessarily think it is I was just talking to Andrew Weil about that you know I sent you an email about him actually He's like, you know him, the big beard?

[1742] He's a fan of ears.

[1743] Oh, okay, cool.

[1744] I was with him in Tucson, and he saw, he's an old friend of Paul Stamitts.

[1745] He was at Harvard when Leary was there.

[1746] I can, I'll hook you up.

[1747] Okay.

[1748] Does he ever know who he is?

[1749] Yeah, sure.

[1750] He comes to L .A. He was the most famous doctor in America for years.

[1751] He, he, um, but he's really interesting because he was at Harvard with Leary.

[1752] He studied under Richard Evan Schulte's, his undergrad degrees in botany.

[1753] Richard Evan Schultes is the guy who based.

[1754] basically, you know, discovered in commas, hundreds of psychoactive plants in the Amazon, you know, amazing dude.

[1755] Anyway, so Andrew was right in the mix, and he sort of was central in Leary getting in trouble because Andrew wrote an article in the Harvard Crimson criticizing Leary for indiscriminately giving psilocybin to students.

[1756] and that's what triggered a lot of the tumult after that.

[1757] Anyway, Andrew went on to Harvard Med School, residency at Mass General in Boston, like top -top flight, you know, academic stuff.

[1758] But instead of, he got his MD, but then he went and worked at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the main government research center.

[1759] It's like early 70s, I think.

[1760] and he has never wavered in his understanding that drugs are not necessarily bad.

[1761] And so he did these double -blind studies about marijuana, the first, I believe, double -blind studies of marijuana, where he said, like, okay, you know, people have tested marijuana and they say, oh, it's bad for your brain, because what they do is they get people high who've never been high, and then they give them a bunch of math questions, and they have trouble.

[1762] can't answer them, whatever.

[1763] He's like, I've been high.

[1764] I don't want to do math when I'm high.

[1765] So let's test people on things they like doing when they're high, like color perception or pattern recognition or ability to recognize tonal changes in music, things like that.

[1766] And he found that their perceptions were actually heightened.

[1767] So it's like, ah, see, marijuana is not bad.

[1768] It's just bad for certain things and not others.

[1769] So then he did, I think it was about driving where he said, They find that marijuana impacts, impairs driving ability, but that's, again, because they're using naive people who've never been high before.

[1770] And they don't have a chance to practice driving while high.

[1771] So he got people, let them practice, let them get used to being high.

[1772] Then he tested their driving ability versus what it had been before or when they're not stoned and average scores and all that.

[1773] And again, he found that when people had a chance to practice, they drove fine.

[1774] There's no problem.

[1775] he got basically pushed out because he was finding, you know, he was demonstrating that it's not necessarily a bad thing.

[1776] Yeah, it's one of those things that we talked about before that sometimes people don't want to know the actual results.

[1777] They just want to know the results that jive with their understanding of the world.

[1778] And this is really dangerous in science because people are purporting to be objective in science.

[1779] Yes, yes, it is dangerous.

[1780] And it's so often they're not.

[1781] And it's not fair.

[1782] It's also not fair to all the people that were unjustly arrested and prosecuted.

[1783] and then imprisoned for something that's very beneficial.

[1784] And they were saying a lot of them, saying that they like it, saying that it does good things for them.

[1785] You know, it's not the end all cure -all, but there's not a goddamn thing that is.

[1786] Right.

[1787] But it's certainly a tool.

[1788] Right.

[1789] And look at it objectively.

[1790] What's the, you know, ratio of benefit to danger?

[1791] Right.

[1792] You know, how many people have died from marijuana overdose?

[1793] Zero.

[1794] Right?

[1795] And so Andy Weil's been saying this since the 70s.

[1796] That's amazing.

[1797] And his first book's called The Natural Mind.

[1798] then he wrote the marriage of the sun and the moon, then a book called From Chocolate to Morphine.

[1799] These are all about...

[1800] Oh, that's a big stretch.

[1801] Yeah.

[1802] But chocolate is a drug, right?

[1803] Yeah, right.

[1804] Yeah.

[1805] And the marriage of the sun and the moon, each chapter is about a mind -altering substance or experience.

[1806] So vomiting is one chapter in there.

[1807] Cocaine, mushrooms.

[1808] So he and Paul Stamitz have been buddies for 35 years or something.

[1809] Does that have anything to do with bulimia?

[1810] Is bulimia also like something where people are getting addicted to actual throwing up?

[1811] Yeah.

[1812] And there are religions where people are.

[1813] people vomit every morning in India.

[1814] I think Gandhi vomited every morning.

[1815] Jesus, Gandhi.

[1816] Andy drank his own piss, by the way.

[1817] Way to go.

[1818] Yeah.

[1819] So anyway, Andy Weil is this kind of hippie doctor dude with all the drugs and all that and the big white beard.

[1820] And then he became very famous in the 80s with books about alternative medicine, what he calls complementary medicine.

[1821] Because he's not saying Western medicine's bad.

[1822] He's saying it's good for some things and not the best approach to other things.

[1823] So he brings in Ayurvedic and Chinese and all these different traditions depending on what the issue is.

[1824] He became very mainstream, huge mega bestsellers on Oprah, cover Time magazine.

[1825] You know, he started a school at the University of Arizona for doctors to get a certification in complementary medicine.

[1826] So he's super mainstream successful, but he has never wavered on his stance on drugs.

[1827] And so, yeah, imagine the pressures that were coming on that guy.

[1828] And he's like, no, fuck it.

[1829] The truth is the truth.

[1830] Especially in the 70s and the 80s, all that say no to drugs era.

[1831] Here's a question that you'd probably know the answer to.

[1832] They're obviously killing untold numbers of rhinos for their horns because men want to grind them up and it's supposed to get your dick hard.

[1833] Does that work?

[1834] Not for me. Did you try it?

[1835] I've been out there killing rhinos on a sneak pit forever.

[1836] You know, is there any science to that?

[1837] No, not that I'm aware of.

[1838] That is the craziest genocide ever.

[1839] And who's doing it?

[1840] It's not Africans who think it's going to make their dicks hard.

[1841] It's Chinese.

[1842] It's Asian people that apparently have their...

[1843] What I was told is that it's not even necessarily...

[1844] Just about the idea that it gets your dick hard, but there is value in the fact that it's a forbidden thing.

[1845] It's very difficult to acquire.

[1846] I think that's, I think it's a signaling.

[1847] It's like a Rolex watch or a Lamborghini or whatever.

[1848] It's look at me. My friend told me is that it's not just a signaling, but it's a signaling that you don't give a fuck.

[1849] Like you're here to make money and get the best and have the best things.

[1850] And look, let's drink rhino tea.

[1851] And then we're going to eat sharks fin soup.

[1852] Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

[1853] And live monkey brain.

[1854] Yeah.

[1855] Have you seen that?

[1856] I've seen that.

[1857] That's real, huh?

[1858] That's real.

[1859] I saw it in faces of death.

[1860] A bunch of people sitting around there Wacking a monkey in the head with a hammer and his head stuck in this little thing.

[1861] But I was like...

[1862] In the table.

[1863] Yeah, I wasn't really sure if that was real.

[1864] And they scoop it out and eat it.

[1865] Yeah.

[1866] Rattlesnake.

[1867] The monkey brains, though, isn't that like prions?

[1868] Can't you get prions from primate brains?

[1869] Yeah.

[1870] Like, you could be deathly ill from that, right?

[1871] Yeah.

[1872] Like, that's essentially what mad cow disease is.

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] Yeah, from brains.

[1875] Yeah, from cow, forcing cows to eat cows.

[1876] That's where mad cow disease comes from.

[1877] Which is a body mind couldn't give blood because he was in England.

[1878] He lived in England during the time that the mad cow.

[1879] I was in Spain then.

[1880] Yeah.

[1881] I can't give blood because of the hepatitis.

[1882] Which one do you get?

[1883] B or C. A. Is that a good one?

[1884] Yeah, that's the one.

[1885] That's the one.

[1886] Oh, nice.

[1887] Yeah, it was like a month down, yellow eyes.

[1888] Yeah.

[1889] Yeah, like no energy.

[1890] A month.

[1891] That was, yeah, that's a long story.

[1892] But that, that, I actually got it from a guy who was sort of saving me from something else.

[1893] I never told you the whole Scorpion and Guatemala story.

[1894] I think you did, but tell me again.

[1895] Well, it's a long story.

[1896] Yeah.

[1897] I mean.

[1898] If you don't now, though, people will be, they feel like they get.

[1899] No, people can hear it.

[1900] I've told it on my podcast, and I've also, I told it on a podcast called Risk.

[1901] And they, that's actually...

[1902] And give us the cliff notes?

[1903] Yeah, but listen to the risk thing, if anyone wants to hear the whole thing, because they added sound effects and it's really good.

[1904] What is risk?

[1905] It's a podcast.

[1906] Just, it's called risk?

[1907] Or it's a storytelling thing.

[1908] You know, it's like the moth.

[1909] It's that kind of thing.

[1910] Oh, nice.

[1911] And they added sound effects.

[1912] Yeah, they produced it really well.

[1913] Yeah, it was well done.

[1914] Yeah, what happened was I was with my girlfriend at the time, Puerto Rican, super beautiful Puerto Rican girl.

[1915] Did she try to get you to go to a camp away and talk about Jesus or no?

[1916] She never tried to talk to me about Jesus, but I would have listened.

[1917] Because she's too interested in El Diablo.

[1918] She was great.

[1919] So I was with her in Guatemala, and we had met this other couple, Solange and Fabrizio.

[1920] Whoa.

[1921] And, yeah, we were at this place called Tikal in northeast Guatemala, way, way back in the jungle.

[1922] And it's a Mayan ruins.

[1923] Beautiful.

[1924] You know, it was like a big city.

[1925] And now they're, you know, when I was there, this was 1989, there were maybe 10 big ruins, big temples that they had uncovered.

[1926] And we're staying in this campsite with hammocks.

[1927] It was very primitive at the time.

[1928] Anyway, we, it was a full moon.

[1929] And Anna and I decided we were going to take some acid and watch the moon rise and the sunset up from the top of Temple 4.

[1930] It's called the Jaguar Temple.

[1931] And so we went up with this other couple, and there's this ledge up there, and it's up above tree line.

[1932] You're way above the tree line.

[1933] You can see the monkey, hear the monkeys, and like see out over this flat jungle, the batan, I think it's called.

[1934] And so we're up there, and the sun's sinking, and the moon is rising, and the moon comes up.

[1935] It's beautiful, and there's this big bank of storm clouds.

[1936] And the full moon is like between the horizon and the storm clouds.

[1937] But then it starts to go up behind these clouds.

[1938] And you can see it's going to get dark as fuck, right?

[1939] So this other couple are like, yeah, we're going to go back to the campsite.

[1940] They didn't know we were tripping, right?

[1941] And we timed it so we're peaking like now, you know?

[1942] And so they're going to go back to the campsite.

[1943] So we were like, yeah, we're going to just hang here, right?

[1944] So I went over to hold the flashlight for them as they went down this ladder.

[1945] It was like maybe a 30 -foot ladder.

[1946] ladder drilled into this the temples made out of limestone blocks and so to get up there yeah there you go temple four so we're that steep yeah is that temple climbed up that is that temple four though yeah i mean uh the the jaguar temple yeah that's right that's i typed in temple for jaguar yeah okay cool yeah yeah when i was there it was much more overgrown yeah wow anyway so we we went up to the top of that looks like it there on the right Yeah, that looks like it from, like, when we were there.

[1947] Anyway, so we're up on that ledge there and see how flat the jungle is.

[1948] It just goes forever.

[1949] It's so crazy how it's almost like uniform and height.

[1950] Yeah.

[1951] I mean, it just varies a little bit, but.

[1952] Oh, look at that picture.

[1953] Yeah.

[1954] Yeah.

[1955] Oh, man, it looks like a picture I took, actually, up there.

[1956] That's insane looking.

[1957] That's so beautiful.

[1958] So we're up there, and I'm holding the ladder for these guys going down, and they're like, okay, we're good.

[1959] I like, okay, I turn off the ladder, and I take a step, and— Oh, what the fuck was that?

[1960] I turned the flashlight back on, I see the scorpion going up the wall, scurrying up the wall, like four inches, green.

[1961] And then there are like three other ones on the wall.

[1962] It's like, fuck, this thing's crawling with fucking scorpions.

[1963] And I just got stung on the toe while you're on acid.

[1964] while I'm tripping.

[1965] And thank God I didn't jump because I would have dropped 30 feet to fucking rocks.

[1966] Oh my God.

[1967] So I go back to Anna and I was like, shit.

[1968] She said, what happened?

[1969] I said, I just fucking scorpion, like watch out and like, oh, Jesus, right.

[1970] Oh, my God.

[1971] So we're kind of like, oh, are they dangerous?

[1972] I don't know.

[1973] I don't know.

[1974] Are they?

[1975] I don't know.

[1976] So now it's getting dark, right?

[1977] Because the moon's going behind these clouds.

[1978] And there's this other, these two dudes like way over on the other side of the ledge and we go over to them and they're Italian and they don't speak English but honest spoke Spanish so she was talking to them in Spanish and they're Italian and you can sort of understand you know they're both Latin similar languages and those guys are like I don't know and we were like watch out because they're all around like oh shit yeah so while we're talking to them now it's totally dark this Guatemalan dude comes up the ladder with an old bold action rifle and he's like the night guard or something so we go over to him and anna says to him in spanish um is son pedigrosos los os os scorpiones and they got are they dangerous the scorpions and the guy says yes they're lethal there are deaths I'm like oh fuck man I understood enough Spanish to get that you're thinking you're dying so I'm like yeah this is this is it April full moon of April 1989 yeah it was 27 that was right around the time when Trump's plane crashed what if it was exactly the same time I think I think talk about being mercury was in retrograde yeah yeah I was at a table with that Puerto Rican girl while with you were with that other Puerto Rican girl up there Puerto Rican girls crossed our paths maybe yeah we both survived just barely so what happened to you so I'm thinking like fuck, I got to get down from here.

[1979] Right.

[1980] Because there's no way anyone else could carry me down, all these ladders.

[1981] And you couldn't get a stretcher down, right?

[1982] So if I'm going to survive, I got to get down on my own quickly.

[1983] So then if I collapse, they can get an ambulance.

[1984] Although we're like, you know, two days from Guatemala City and whatever the town was.

[1985] I don't even know if they had a clinic or I don't know.

[1986] But we were pretty remote.

[1987] And like they're not going to send out a helicopter or some shit like that, right?

[1988] Right.

[1989] So I get down.

[1990] Oh, so what happens is my girlfriend's freaking out.

[1991] No, no criticism of her.

[1992] I think it's much harder to watch someone you love die than to die yourself in this case.

[1993] And so she's like, oh, fuck, you're dying.

[1994] And I'm thinking, yeah, maybe.

[1995] And so one of the Italian dudes is like, look, you guys go, I'll stay with her and, you know, make sure she's all right.

[1996] And so I go down with this other Italian dude.

[1997] we go down the ladder and we get down to the floor and we start walking around the jungle and it's fucking totally dark now because the moon's totally obscured and the jungle you know how when you're tripping your your pupils are super dilated so you can see light and stuff that normally you might miss they're like the jungle in guatemos full of glowing worms and shit flying by that's all like green and blue and yeah yeah and they're like these caterpillars and like holy shit this place is wild.

[1998] So we're walking around, lost, totally dark.

[1999] Tripping.

[2000] I'm tripping.

[2001] He doesn't know I'm tripping.

[2002] How tripping are you?

[2003] Tripping.

[2004] That was three head nods, ladies and gentlemen.

[2005] I mean, you know, I'm peaking from the acid plus all the adrenaline.

[2006] Right.

[2007] And so this pain is running up my leg.

[2008] And as it's like running up the bone in the center of the leg, this kind of fire.

[2009] and when it gets to the top of muscles, they seize up.

[2010] So, like, you know, my, from the knee down, it's just, like, rigid.

[2011] And then my tongue starts swelling and my throat starts swelling.

[2012] And I got this, like, novacane feeling in my lips.

[2013] And I'm sort of drooling.

[2014] And I'm thinking when this gets to my heart, that's when I die.

[2015] And so I'm with this guy and we're lost.

[2016] And at first, like, I'm freaked.

[2017] I'm scared.

[2018] And then it occurs to me that I'm saying my last words to a guy whose face I've never seen because we didn't shine the light in his face when we were talking to him.

[2019] And he doesn't understand English.

[2020] And that cracks me up.

[2021] I just, I start laughing like a fucking maniac.

[2022] and he's like got his arm around me. He thinks I'm like losing it.

[2023] And I'm just like, this is hilarious.

[2024] And I think about my friends and how they're going to be like, yeah, you know, good on Chris.

[2025] You know, he didn't die in some dumbass way like we all thought he would.

[2026] You know, he died in this.

[2027] It's still a dumb ass way, but at least it's interesting.

[2028] And then I started thinking, you know, all right, I'm 27, but I've been around the world.

[2029] I literally around the planet.

[2030] it.

[2031] I've been in love.

[2032] I've had sex with gorgeous women who loved me, who, you know, I've, I made a shit ton of money.

[2033] I walked away from it.

[2034] I've done, I've done everything I wanted to do.

[2035] I'm 27, but I've done everything.

[2036] And I've had a fucking amazing life.

[2037] Wow.

[2038] And this is cool.

[2039] I'd have been crying like a bitch.

[2040] I'd be like not yet I'm not done you know I felt really bad for my parents and and Anna but for myself I was like I've had a good fucking run it's not as long as I would have liked but I've had a good fucking run so I I really came to this piece and like the world doesn't owe me shit man I've had I mean I'd been in Alaska two summers at that point I worked in New York in Manhattan for two years at that point with a guy who offered me a million dollars if I would stay and I said no and I left I flew to India I'd been in Asia for two years you said no to a million bucks when I was 26 why did you say no to a million bucks what was the catch was what did you need to do do to you no he was a really good guy actually I liked him a lot um the million bucks was he said when you're 30 you'll have a net worth of a million dollars and if you're you're you'll have a net worth of a million you don't, I'll write you a check for whatever you're missing and we'll notarize it.

[2041] And this guy's worth $30 million or something.

[2042] So he just wanted you to work for him.

[2043] He wanted me to stay and I wanted to go.

[2044] I wanted to see the world.

[2045] This guy hired me to help him manage his family's property in Midtown Manhattan.

[2046] And the main reason he hired me is because I didn't give a shit about money.

[2047] So he knew I wouldn't steal from him.

[2048] Oh, that's interesting.

[2049] And then when it stopped being fun and new, I was like, I gotta go.

[2050] And he was like, no, no, stick around.

[2051] I'll make it worth your while.

[2052] And so there was this weird dynamic.

[2053] But anyway, I'd had all these experiences.

[2054] And so I was...

[2055] You were a piece.

[2056] I'm like, hey, I've had a good run.

[2057] So anyway, we finally, we come out into this little parking lot.

[2058] And there's this Guatemalan kid there, maybe 10 or something.

[2059] And the Italian guy talks to him and says Scorpion, Scorpion.

[2060] And the kid looks at me like, oh, my God, come, come.

[2061] And he takes us to this trailer.

[2062] And we bang on the door.

[2063] And this horrible fluorescent light comes on.

[2064] And this like Guatemalan dude who obviously had been drunk and asleep, you know, is like, what?

[2065] And like the kid says he's the doctor.

[2066] He's not a doctor.

[2067] He's some jungle dude, whatever.

[2068] And so the guy takes us in and he's talking, you know, it's sort of talking broken English.

[2069] And I explained to him, he says, how big is the scorpion?

[2070] He looks at my foot.

[2071] He says, how big was the scorpion?

[2072] I say, yeah, like, you know, this big, like a finger and what color?

[2073] gray, green sort of, and he says, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not a scorpion.

[2074] That's Alacran.

[2075] So in Spanish, in that part of Guatemala, anyway, there are two different words.

[2076] A scorpion is a little red thing.

[2077] Alacran is a big green thing, but they're both with the tail and the, you know.

[2078] And so we had been using the word scorpion because in English, that's all there is.

[2079] But scorpion, a scorpion, in that part of Guatemala.

[2080] is lethal and that's a little tiny thing that's a little red thing and that'll fucking take you out but the guy's like look you're still this was two hours ago and you're still alive you'll be fine apparently it's like if you have a bad heart or you're a kid maybe this will kill you but if you're if you survive a couple hours you're going to be all right speaking to something i read today something about the atkins guy this is an interesting story you know the atkins diet it's it's very controversial because Atkins diet is a lot of protein stuff I'd heard that the guy died of a heart attack and that they weren't being completely honest as apparently even Snopes says that's not clear the guy I feel like he was the head of like it's so weird when this happens the Atkins diet guy when he died he weighed 258 pounds so he was overweight and he was 72 years old and the story was that he slipped on ice in front of his house and hit his head.

[2081] But he also had a history of heart disease.

[2082] I did not know that.

[2083] And he had had heart attacks.

[2084] Is that why he got into the research that led to the diet?

[2085] I don't know.

[2086] I don't know.

[2087] I just read that today.

[2088] I'm like that there's some conspiracy.

[2089] And it was a vegan guy who was talking about it.

[2090] But there's a conspiracy about Atkins.

[2091] And that Atkins really died from a heart attack.

[2092] Which would ruin the brand.

[2093] Yeah.

[2094] Well, when that found out he was 258.

[2095] pounds.

[2096] It was like, wait, how way?

[2097] That's heavy.

[2098] How tall was he?

[2099] The report concludes at Dr. Atkins 72 at a history of heart attack and congestive heart failure and notes that he weighed 258 pounds at death.

[2100] Yeah.

[2101] So he was really unhealthy.

[2102] It was really interesting because that whole diet, the Atkins diet, like a lot of people were really criticizing that diet.

[2103] Yeah.

[2104] And saying that it's really terrible and that all the the fat and all the stuff, all the protein you eat, you really shouldn't eat that much.

[2105] But it's very similar to what a lot of people are eating now.

[2106] When they're eating paleo and they're eating low carb, apparently the real problem with, and I read this today about fat, high fat diets is if you're going to eat a high fat diet, it must be a low carb diet as well.

[2107] You cannot have high fat and carbs.

[2108] That is really bad for you because your body is going to use all the carbohydrates for fuel and all the fat that you eat is just going to be stored.

[2109] And apparently that combination, especially with saturated fats, is very bad.

[2110] So you want to be ketogenic or close to it?

[2111] Yeah, or you want to be close to it.

[2112] You know, you essentially want to eliminate most of the stuff that people love, like pizza and bread and pasta, eliminate almost all that stuff.

[2113] Yeah.

[2114] That's just all those unnatural foods.

[2115] But the point being that I'd never heard that, I'd always heard that he had fallen.

[2116] and I'd assume that anything other than that would be a conspiracy theory but then I read that and I was like, whoa you know who wrote it?

[2117] Now I remember John Joseph from the Cromag's you know that guy?

[2118] He's a vegan, super healthy ultramarathon triathlon dude now he used to be, well he still is lead singer the Cromaggs I think they're still around I know he tore still might be torn on his own now but he wrote that about Atkins today Yeah.

[2119] Well, just to tie this together, the guy, after he explains this to me, he gives me a couple pills, probably aspirin or something, and he dips some water out of a bucket and says, take these pills, you'll be fine.

[2120] I'd been traveling a long time.

[2121] I knew you don't drink water out of a bucket in the tropics, but this guy just told me I wasn't going to die, so I'll do whatever the fuck he says.

[2122] I drank the water, and a week later had hepatitis.

[2123] Wow That's how I got the hepatitis You got hepatitis from a bucket This dude had laying around his dirty shed That's crazy Exactly And that's you narrowed it down to that particular moment You got hepatitis Well I assume I mean that's a pretty high risk move Yeah Fucking crazy people with their gut biome down there You know they can It's like if you see Other animals drink out of a puddle Do you freak out?

[2124] No Like a dog drinks out of puddle, you don't freak out, because the dog's got body, he's going to handle that.

[2125] Well, that's what Jeff Leach was telling me about the hudza.

[2126] They drink right out of mud puddles all the time.

[2127] It's like, you know, that's why he wanted their microbiome.

[2128] That's so crazy.

[2129] Yeah.

[2130] Yeah, we have a weak -ass, bitch -ass, preservative -laden microbiome.

[2131] Yeah, antibiotics.

[2132] Yep.

[2133] You can't avoid them.

[2134] It's hard to stay alive, you know, if you get really, really, really sick.

[2135] Oh, no, I'm not talking about medical.

[2136] I'm talking about in the food supply, in the water supply.

[2137] everywhere in America.

[2138] I don't know if that really affects us that much.

[2139] One of the things that I was, I don't think there's levels of antibiotics in the water supply that's really affecting us.

[2140] It's possible that some of it is getting to us in the food supply.

[2141] But more so than not, I think the issue is poor dietary choices.

[2142] Because poor dietary choices are the number one factor and like what affects your microbiome.

[2143] Super low fiber.

[2144] Yeah, low fiber, just not, just not eating healthy.

[2145] If you're eating a lot of sugar in particular, you've got to.

[2146] that candida running around your gut and the unhealthy bacteria reacts better to that.

[2147] And just your body starts craving it.

[2148] That's one of the weirdest things about when you do eat a low -carb diet is your body really doesn't crave carbohydrates anymore.

[2149] It's like it's a trick.

[2150] But when you're on carbohydrates, if you eat them a lot, man, your body's craving them all the time.

[2151] Right.

[2152] It's like you are being influenced by those organisms that are in your digestive tract, which is really freaky.

[2153] Yeah.

[2154] I mean, that's the whole sort of super.

[2155] or organism.

[2156] I think you and I've talked about that in the past, the idea that toxoplosmosis, you know, about that?

[2157] Sure.

[2158] Jesus, these things that get into the brain and determine behavior and from the gut as well can determine, I mean, not, even something as simple, you know, this is a simple example of, like, wanting the organism to crave the thing that, that works for them, but not for the organism.

[2159] But, man, the weird, like really complex behaviors that are.

[2160] are created by some parasites in the brain, you know, like cats that, or mice that aren't afraid of cats and are actually attracted to the smell of cat piss.

[2161] Sexually attracted.

[2162] Yeah, they get turned on by it.

[2163] It's crazy.

[2164] And that bacteria or this toxoplasmosis can only grow and it can only reproduce inside a cat's gut, which is fucking bananas.

[2165] Like, Sapolsky, we had Sapolsky, Robert Sapolsky.

[2166] Oh, he's great.

[2167] He's amazing.

[2168] Amazing.

[2169] And he went into depth about that.

[2170] And it's just, it's one of those things where you just stop and go, what?

[2171] He's a cool guy.

[2172] I remember mentioning him to you once on this podcast, and Jamie brought up his photo.

[2173] And you looked at his photo and you said, there's a guy who does not give a fuck.

[2174] If you look at him, it was crazy fucking hair.

[2175] It's all the ponytail.

[2176] He's homeless or something.

[2177] He's just, he's interested in the work.

[2178] Period.

[2179] Yeah.

[2180] Yeah.

[2181] The work.

[2182] Yeah.

[2183] But he was gracious enough to give us an hour.

[2184] There he is right there.

[2185] Yeah.

[2186] Super nice guy, too.

[2187] But just, I mean, his work with baboons as well was covered in a radio lab podcast.

[2188] It's a fascinating podcast where they observed like this baboon, this temporary baboon utopia where...

[2189] Yeah, you and I talked about that, where the upper ranking males ate the contaminated meat and died out.

[2190] Yeah, I love that story.

[2191] That's one of the only hopeful fucking stories out there.

[2192] Well, I feel like there's certain pockets of humanity.

[2193] Like, I mean, I've never been to Burning Man, but I assume that that's sort of a representation of that as well.

[2194] Certain pockets of humanity were like -minded people get together and they say, well, it doesn't have to be like this.

[2195] Like, just because we're all caught up in this crazy trap, and I think more of those little pockets of humanity are popping up day in, day out.

[2196] I think this podcast represents that in a lot of way, too.

[2197] You know, we're talking about the podcast being a cult of its own creation.

[2198] A community, I think.

[2199] It's more of a community.

[2200] Well, no one's asking you to do anything.

[2201] And there's no, you know, there's no rules.

[2202] But it's an opportunity for like -minded discussion that's rarely present in cubicle life.

[2203] What do you think about, I mean, podcasting, in the intro to this podcast book we were talking about earlier, I said that I think that podcasting is on a par with the invention of the printing press in terms of the potential.

[2204] for radical social change because there's no like you said before there's no filter there's nothing between you and your audience yeah and that's a radical thing i mean the printing press said when the printing press came about what that meant was you didn't need to have a team of scribes to copy out this thing that you've written right so you can be just a regular guy and pay a thousand bucks or whatever the equivalent of that was in medieval Europe and have all these pamphlets printed.

[2205] So you could be Martin Luther and change the world if you have a good idea and it takes hold.

[2206] Podcasting seems similar to that in the sense that anybody who can afford a few mics in a laptop can get their message out.

[2207] Yeah.

[2208] And if it catches fire, it catches fire.

[2209] And it goes around the world.

[2210] You could do it on a phone, too, like we're saying.

[2211] You don't really need a whole lot of equipment.

[2212] A lot of people use one of those small MP3 mics, a Zoom.

[2213] We used that early on.

[2214] I still use a Zoom.

[2215] I love it.

[2216] I think maybe.

[2217] I think you're probably, you're on to something.

[2218] I think the Internet in general and the ability for people to just create their own content, that's the real, the gatekeepers to the masses have always been these production companies, content providers, networks, all these people, the hollowed halls, and those people all got fat on it.

[2219] In a weird way, because the gatekeepers, are the ones that hoarded all the money.

[2220] And they gave some of the money to the actors and some of the money to the writers and everybody got wealthy.

[2221] Don't get me wrong.

[2222] But the Harvey Weinsteins of the world is the one that really got rich.

[2223] If you look at that guy, like that guy's the guy that really got rich.

[2224] And of course...

[2225] You're really happy too.

[2226] Oh, he's doing really well.

[2227] Yeah, yeah.

[2228] He's doing super well.

[2229] That's great.

[2230] He, I mean, obviously that guy's the worst example, right?

[2231] But he obviously also, on a positive note, financed a lot of amazing movies.

[2232] And if it wasn't for him, they wouldn't have gotten done.

[2233] But clearly those people who do that, they're a different thing.

[2234] They're business people.

[2235] Now is the first time ever that there's a direct connection between a guy like you and a guy like whoever's listening to this right now.

[2236] That's never happened before.

[2237] I mean, the only one in the room is, you know, we have Jamie helping out.

[2238] And then it goes to the server and then it's uploaded to the RSS feed.

[2239] And then it goes to iTunes and it goes to wherever the fuck you're getting your podcast from.

[2240] And that's it.

[2241] Yeah.

[2242] There's no steps.

[2243] There's no network.

[2244] There's no notes.

[2245] There's no production.

[2246] If you did your podcast and your podcast was on some radio network somewhere, you'd have to go to meetings, weekly meetings with the studio.

[2247] You'd have some fucking program director, some dick fuck asshole wants to tell you what not to talk about anymore.

[2248] Yeah.

[2249] Look, you're losing sponsors.

[2250] I don't even have advertisers.

[2251] Good for you.

[2252] Yeah, I do it.

[2253] I had them for a while and I just got tired of listen to myself talking about underwear.

[2254] and shit.

[2255] So just do it for fun now.

[2256] No, it's supported through Patreon and, you know, people send me money.

[2257] This is what I think ultimately.

[2258] I think ultimately people will, someone's going to develop some sort of an app thing where you can have basically everything you put out.

[2259] Your podcast blogs, all that.

[2260] It would all be like a channel.

[2261] You could even call it channel.

[2262] And that would be like a new social media platform.

[2263] You could do everything from.

[2264] you know and people could either sign up for it and pay for it or not you know that's how sam harris has it you can either pay for his podcast or not that's how you have it too right yeah although you get it for free yeah you get it for free so if you want to support if you want to support it you can you pay and i do some some bonus stuff uh for patreon only yeah sam does it can be a buck a month you know yeah why not and i think there's the the future is probably going to be something like that that's the present as you said i mean sam's doing it duncan's got a patreon thing i do you got to get a patreon joe no i make some money i make plenty of money with ads i don't i'm trying to think of like what it's almost like give the option if you pay you get no ads or free a lot of people do that like dan savage does that he has the i forget what it's called but yeah there's the ad free version and that's probably a good move sponsored version that makes sense because that's that way, if you don't want to pay for it, you don't have to.

[2265] But the point being that you can reach a whole lot of people, forget about paying.

[2266] You can reach a whole lot of people and get ideas to a whole lot of people that you could just never reach before.

[2267] No one would let you.

[2268] Why would anybody invest in you?

[2269] Why would anyone put that time?

[2270] And then you're going to keep all of it?

[2271] What?

[2272] Yeah.

[2273] No way.

[2274] Well, think about publishing now, right?

[2275] I write a book.

[2276] That book comes out.

[2277] Somebody buys a copy of Sex at Don right now in paperback.

[2278] I get 8 .25 percent.

[2279] Whoa.

[2280] of the price.

[2281] That's hilarious.

[2282] Minus 15 % of that that goes to my agent and then taxes.

[2283] That's hilarious.

[2284] Right?

[2285] I mean, a pimp lets a hooker keep 50 % of the money.

[2286] Wow.

[2287] A stingy pimp.

[2288] What is a lady like J .K. Rowlings when she's bawling on top of the world, what kind of deal does she get?

[2289] Well, it depends what she signed, you know, but I mean, she's already like Stephen King, people like her, they can cut a totally different deal.

[2290] Right.

[2291] But the standard contract is what I had, which is, you know, 8 % on hard copy.

[2292] It's 8 % for 5 ,000 copies, then 10%, 5 ,000, then 12 % after that in hard copy.

[2293] And then paperback is 8 .25 % forever.

[2294] How many books are you sold?

[2295] In America, maybe 400 ,000, 450 ,000, something like that.

[2296] It's a lot of books.

[2297] Not really.

[2298] Not really.

[2299] I mean, it's in like 20 languages.

[2300] That's what's cool.

[2301] It's worldwide filled with 400 ,000 people.

[2302] It's a lot of books if you look at it that way.

[2303] That's how you have to look at it because that's what it really is.

[2304] But in terms of money, it's not that much money, especially if you stretch it out over the years it took to write it and all the promotion and all that.

[2305] It's not a way to make a lot of money writing books.

[2306] It used to be.

[2307] If you had a New York Times bestseller back in the day, you made a lot of money.

[2308] But the reading audience is much smaller now than it was 20, 30 years ago.

[2309] What about books on cassette or audio?

[2310] That's a different deal.

[2311] You sign a deal generally with Audible.

[2312] They sort of own that market, which is an Amazon company, right?

[2313] And yeah, you get, I forget what the percentage is, but it's probably 18 to 20, something like that.

[2314] And also e -books, you get a slightly better deal.

[2315] I think you get 17 .5 % of the price of an e -book, which is funny, though, because it's not costing the publisher anything additional to have an e -book, right?

[2316] It's already edited.

[2317] It's already the cover and L .S. It's already done.

[2318] And there's no distribution cost.

[2319] So you get 17 .5 % as a writer.

[2320] They get the rest.

[2321] That's so crazy.

[2322] There's no trucks.

[2323] There's no shelf.

[2324] There's no store.

[2325] There's no reason for them to be getting all that money.

[2326] No. That's so crazy.

[2327] It's all gravy for them.

[2328] Yeah.

[2329] And it's not like they're recouping costs.

[2330] And it used to be like back in, you know, Hemingway or whatever, back in the day, a publisher would support an author through three, four, five books thinking eventually something's going to hit.

[2331] This guy's got talent, eventually.

[2332] And so it's an investment.

[2333] Now they expect you to have your own platform, your own access to media.

[2334] Sometimes they're asking authors to hire their own editors, their own publicists.

[2335] Right?

[2336] Really?

[2337] Yeah.

[2338] But they still get all the money.

[2339] They still get the same contract.

[2340] The ratios are the same.

[2341] So it's like, yeah, that's why I say it's like a Napster kind of thing.

[2342] It's at the point now where it's like, wait a minute, if I got a platform, I got access to media, I'm hiring my own editor.

[2343] Why am I giving you creative control and 92 % of the fucking revenue?

[2344] It's a strange business.

[2345] That is a strange business.

[2346] Essentially what they have is credibility.

[2347] So if you self -publish or publish with some independent publisher, the New York Times isn't going to review it or, you know.

[2348] They won't?

[2349] No. Wow.

[2350] Because it's a very insular world.

[2351] Well, that's crazy.

[2352] If it's a book that takes off, then a publisher will come in and buy it.

[2353] So like 50 Shades of Gray, that was self -published.

[2354] I wonder why.

[2355] Yeah.

[2356] But look what happened.

[2357] Yeah, they tapped into a market, a chick that likes to get spit on.

[2358] Right?

[2359] There are a lot of them.

[2360] There's a lot of them.

[2361] I don't know about spit on.

[2362] Oh, yeah.

[2363] Choked.

[2364] Yeah.

[2365] Smacked around.

[2366] By a billionaire.

[2367] Yeah.

[2368] Good looking guy with a heart of gold.

[2369] Hard of gold.

[2370] But he likes to spit in your mouth.

[2371] Yeah.

[2372] And then she, and then ultimately he'll see the light and...

[2373] Of course.

[2374] He'll be tamed.

[2375] That's the story.

[2376] The fantasy.

[2377] Yeah.

[2378] That's the fairy tale.

[2379] That's what everybody wants.

[2380] See, that's why I was saying earlier, I've got this idea, I was talking to Duncan about this the other night.

[2381] I've got this idea to write an erotic memoir.

[2382] But that'll sort of be like my last book.

[2383] Because at that point, I'll have burned all the bridges.

[2384] And, like, you'll be the only person Would ever your interview me after that.

[2385] I think I was planning for it to come out around my 60th birthday and it'll be called an old manifesto.

[2386] It's just, if you change the names of people.

[2387] Oh, no, I'm not worried about the people.

[2388] I'm not going to hurt anyone in the book.

[2389] It's more just about, you know.

[2390] How many people you fucked and people find out the truth?

[2391] Dun, don't, da.

[2392] Dude, you're going to become legendary.

[2393] Listen, the people who love you, though, they love you already.

[2394] book about how much I got laid.

[2395] It's not a book about how cool I am.

[2396] It's a book about the amazing things I've learned in sexual situations and that the world is so different from what people think.

[2397] How so?

[2398] There's just so many things going on that mainstream people can't imagine.

[2399] Like, I mean, I was in college the first time a man told me he would be happy for me to have sex with his wife.

[2400] And it wasn't a kinky weird thing.

[2401] It was like, I'm not doing it.

[2402] She's wonderful.

[2403] I noticed that you guys like each other.

[2404] I just want you to know it's cool with me. Wow.

[2405] That's the first time.

[2406] Since then, there have probably been, I don't know, half a dozen or something um mothers like would you please have sex with my daughter because she really you know they're he's a good one generally it's because she didn't like the boyfriend always yeah so it's like will you show my daughter like there's a world out there that she doesn't know about yeah there's always that but then you know they recruit you and you got to take on the project well you know should you choose to accept it should you choose to accept it they expect you to expect it they around as well not necessarily yeah yeah yeah so just stuff that people think like you know my god if you know you have sex with someone's wife and he knows he's going to kill you well maybe not maybe he'll take you out for a beer afterwards and you'll be friends this is the subject of ari shafir's podcast this week with our with uhbri marcus and they're talking about open relationships and they get super honest yeah it's very intense i think that we live in cultural patterns and that what we see around us, we replicate.

[2407] I think there's a lot of evidence for that.

[2408] If you just pay attention, forget about studies.

[2409] Just look at how different people are in other parts of the world.

[2410] People that are putting plates in their lips and rings through their noses.

[2411] The way people tattoo themselves, the way people express themselves and dance, like human beings vary so wildly in what we accept and what we don't accept.

[2412] I was going to bring up Japan earlier.

[2413] It's one of the more fascinating travel experiences I've had was going to Japan.

[2414] because when you go to Tokyo, you realize, like, this is a completely different way of living.

[2415] Like, they have a completely different way of interacting on the streets.

[2416] They have a completely different way that they have decorated their buildings, completely different.

[2417] Like, I have tattoos.

[2418] They told me I had to wear long sleeves at the gym.

[2419] I had to go back and change my shirt.

[2420] They don't accept exposed tattoos.

[2421] Because it's associated with organized crime.

[2422] Yes.

[2423] So I had to go back.

[2424] And just there's a lot of that, like, where you realize, like, this is a totally different way of living, but if I live there, I would live like these people.

[2425] So the momentum of these patterns and these cultures gets established and then it takes something radical to lift them and to free people from these patterns.

[2426] And once they're free from these patterns, then they have a real opportunity to objectively assess the way they behave and whether or not this is the way they want to behave or the way they want to live or whether or not just expected to because of this unthinking culture, this momentum.

[2427] I think that's what potty.

[2428] I think that's what podcast is doing.

[2429] The big thing with podcasts is that it's creating more narratives and it's creating more discussions about interesting subjects and more questions and discussions about why we live our life a certain way.

[2430] And if you live a regular life with regular people, what are the odds that you get a chance to sit down with a guy like you for three hours or a guy like Graham Hancock or a guy like, you know, fill in the blank, all the fascinating people that you or I have talked to in our podcasts.

[2431] And then these conversations get right into someone's head, whether they're their earbuds on while they're at work, typing some nonsense bullshit into some fucking form that they have to fill out because that's what they do for a living.

[2432] That's what's different.

[2433] And that's never happened before.

[2434] These, like, no generation before the podcast generation had that option.

[2435] You had Howard Stern, you had, and it was always funny.

[2436] You had, you know, Art Bell was always weird and then you had like all the right wing wacko dudes on AM talk radio, the Michael Savage's and you know the fucking Rush Limbaos and you had all those people but you didn't have yeah you didn't have a guy who just talks about whatever he wants to talk about you had to be like well Chris before we give you this radio broadcast show what kind of a show you're going to do you're going to do a left wing show you're going to do a show on cooking what are you going to do like now I'm going to talk about sex and tribes and about how I think monogamy is just a cultural construct and really the way we evolved like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you fucking hippie.

[2437] Get out of my office.

[2438] There's no money in that.

[2439] Like before, you know, if you came to someone and said, hey, I'm going to write this book and it's going to sell about 400 ,000 copies and it's basically saying monogamous.

[2440] What do you think?

[2441] They'd be like, what?

[2442] The fuck out of here.

[2443] No one's going to buy that.

[2444] Everybody wants to be monogamous and have a picket fence and live in the same row of houses where everybody looks the same, everybody's got this, oh, you have an in -ground pool, you lucky bastard, you know.

[2445] But what podcasts have done is expose why we accept things as fact and why we just choose.

[2446] It's because everybody around us does it.

[2447] We are such a massive product of our environment.

[2448] You know, and I think when we were talking earlier about race and about race being a determining factor for IQ, Like, you don't really ever know.

[2449] You might know from studies, but you don't know until those people who have the high IQ have to live the lives of the people that have the low IQ.

[2450] And they have to have the same environment that they grow up in the same fears and the same influences, negative and positive.

[2451] Then you'll know.

[2452] And even then you won't know.

[2453] Because there's so many determining factors.

[2454] Like, you know, I know people that are just way fucking smarter than me. They're just smarter.

[2455] I just know they are.

[2456] they're just smarter what is that i don't know is it the the amount of studying they've done is it uh the amount of knowledge they is it the the path that they're on is different than my path or is it just their fucking brain works better but also what do we mean by smarter right you know i mean i look at at someone like you your discipline is a major factor in your success so is that part of being smart it's smart enough to understand the discipline is a worthwhile pursuit.

[2457] That's what it is?

[2458] So what about someone who has a really high IQ that's sitting in a basement, eating lots of ice cream, and not doing what they want to do?

[2459] That's not smart decision making, for sure.

[2460] Yeah.

[2461] But it's very high IQ.

[2462] Right.

[2463] So what do we mean?

[2464] Or a hunter -gatherer, these people in the Amazon, we're talking about who can identify 500 different kinds of plants at a glance and, you know, know the behavior of animals and all this stuff.

[2465] But you give them an IQ test and they're like under 100, for sure.

[2466] Well, I've had conversations.

[2467] What is a lot?

[2468] What is with people that are brilliant, super brilliant people and science, and they'll try to explain to me mixed martial arts and some fucked up cockamamie way and I have to stop them.

[2469] I'm going to stop.

[2470] Okay, right now, you sound like a fucking moron.

[2471] And I know you're not.

[2472] Professor.

[2473] But you're talking about something that I have a PhD.

[2474] Yeah.

[2475] You know, I have a PhD and people fucking people up.

[2476] I understand it as good as anybody that's ever lived.

[2477] So if you start talking nonsense about how to fuck people up, oh, your Kung Fu instructor said that.

[2478] Yeah.

[2479] Oh, great.

[2480] Yeah, I love your Aikido.

[2481] Your Aikido did you.

[2482] You silly fuck.

[2483] I like Aikido, but I recognize that there's a lot of bullshit there.

[2484] It's a fun thing to practice.

[2485] I mean, it's fun to be able to flip people around like that.

[2486] And it would be a great thing to know if you lived in feudal Japan and you lost your sword.

[2487] And someone was coming at you.

[2488] And you had one chance at glory.

[2489] What I love about Aikido is how it translates into psychological and emotional stuff.

[2490] So what we were saying earlier about how I don't engage with people who are emotionally triggered by sex at dawn.

[2491] To me, that's Ikeed.

[2492] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2493] You know, I learned that kind of thing from Ikeed.

[2494] First of all, you don't need to engage.

[2495] Secondly, if you do engage, what's important is that you stay calm and centered.

[2496] And most of the time, people burn themselves out.

[2497] You don't even really need to, like, as long as you step out of the way, let people have what they need to have.

[2498] Yeah, for sure.

[2499] Yeah.

[2500] But, yeah, as far as a fighting technique, it's not what you're going to pull up in the street.

[2501] No, it's not.

[2502] But it's just my point is that people who are brilliant and are geniuses.

[2503] is in one aspect of life, simply don't have enough time to accumulate the same amount of data about everything.

[2504] They just don't.

[2505] Sure.

[2506] Whether it's about, you know, fill in the blank, clock making or, you know, whatever the fuck it is.

[2507] There's just like, there's things that people know that you don't know.

[2508] And it doesn't make you stupid.

[2509] It's just information.

[2510] The difference is between how you apply that information.

[2511] Like, if you're a really smart person, you don't do shit with it, you're a moron.

[2512] You might be a really genius person, but if your life is falling apart and it's all because of your shitty decisions and you've never tried to improve upon your thought process and you just blame the whole world instead of yourself.

[2513] You're a moron.

[2514] Even if you're really good at taking IQ tests, you're still a moron.

[2515] That's it.

[2516] I mean, I don't personally, I don't think that I'm particularly intelligent.

[2517] I think that what I can do that a lot of people don't do is think outside the box and connect dots that other people aren't connecting, which is precisely because I didn't go to the right schools.

[2518] And I didn't, you know, in my 20s, I went and fucked around the world for 20 years.

[2519] Also, you don't have, like, tenure that you're working for or anything weird that's going to keep you in line.

[2520] I can just fuck around and figure it out.

[2521] And, I mean, that's.

[2522] There's a lot of people that get stuck in that.

[2523] Even intellectuals, they get stuck in that trap of having to tow the line, you know, in terms of, I mean, good luck trying to find a conservative professor, right?

[2524] I mean, what is, like, 4 % identify as conservatives and mainstream?

[2525] universities and colleges, some really ridiculously, a low number, might be 10%, whatever it is, but it's like the vast minority.

[2526] Yeah.

[2527] You know, if you get one out of ten, you're super lucky.

[2528] I think that's probably not really what it is.

[2529] Although, again, what do we mean by conservative?

[2530] Right.

[2531] It's so confusing, because the older I get, the more I realize that the language, it's like one of those Venn diagrams where there's language and there's reality and there's some overlap, but there's a lot that doesn't correspond.

[2532] on.

[2533] Right.

[2534] You know, I get into this a lot when people are talking about homosexuality and whether it's, you know, human nature or its culture or whatever.

[2535] And it's like, first of all, what do we mean by homosexuality?

[2536] You and I've talked about this before, this tribe in Papua New Guinea, where the boys suck as much dick as they can because they think that semen contains the essence of masculinity.

[2537] And so it's like, to them, that's not homosexual behavior.

[2538] That's normal male developmental behavior.

[2539] And we look at that and say, oh, well, that's gay, but they don't see it as gay.

[2540] So, again, it's, as you were saying, we replicate the behavior we see around us.

[2541] Do they have adult homosexuality or do they only have sex with kids?

[2542] I think it's only, at least the only kind that's been reported by anthropologists, because again, there's a filtering there.

[2543] Of course.

[2544] is younger boys with older boys.

[2545] So it's the younger boys are given blowjobs to the older boys because that's the way to get stronger and more masculine.

[2546] Whoa, what a scam.

[2547] Somebody pulled off on my face.

[2548] One dude probably a long time ago.

[2549] Listen to me. We have got a new way of do things around here.

[2550] Starting with my dick.

[2551] He pulls the grass skirt.

[2552] side yeah oh shit here we guys here we go do you want to get strong yeah yeah yeah it's beating drums sucking dicks bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum there you go it's pretty crazy though again like what we're saying earlier that you can have these pockets of culture that they're radically different than other places but the people just adapt and conform to what's around them and I think that's the case with human beings everywhere I don't think it's just the people that live in New Guinea, and it's not just the people that live in the Congo or they live in Woodland Hills.

[2553] It's people that live everywhere.

[2554] It's just how human beings behave.

[2555] And it's also interesting to look at how the culture reflects the environment.

[2556] Yes.

[2557] And Marvin Harris wrote about this, cultural materialism, how a culture responds to an environment sort of like how, you know, cacti live in the desert.

[2558] There's a reason for that.

[2559] You put a cactus in the jungle that dies immediately, right?

[2560] It's adapted to an environment.

[2561] So you've got desert cultures.

[2562] Right, right.

[2563] Right.

[2564] You've got jungle cultures.

[2565] So the culture actually grows in a way that fits that ecological environment.

[2566] Yeah.

[2567] He was the first – I think he's the first person to figure this out, certainly the first time I read it.

[2568] Like some islands, some cultures are cannibalistic and others aren't, right?

[2569] Why is that?

[2570] Like, I'd never thought about it.

[2571] Like, why would the Aztecs eat their victims, but the Christians didn't?

[2572] But the Christians killed a lot more.

[2573] They just left them to a rod on the field.

[2574] Why is that?

[2575] Is that the Aztecs are particularly evil or something?

[2576] I don't know.

[2577] He applied this prism to it and showed that also in the South Pacific, there were some islands that were the people are cannibalistic and other islands where they weren't.

[2578] And so he looks at all these, and what he figured out was that in the places where people are cannibalistic, there are no domesticated animals that eat different food than humans.

[2579] So, for example, you can't raise dogs for meat because dogs eat what we eat.

[2580] So it doesn't make sense, but you can raise goats for meat because goats eat shit humans don't eat.

[2581] Right.

[2582] So in the places that are cannibalistic, there was nothing they could domesticate for protein.

[2583] So when you killed a human, you ate him because your protein starved.

[2584] Wow.

[2585] Isn't that crazy?

[2586] So it's an ecological thing.

[2587] The Aztecs had no pigs, right?

[2588] There was nothing they could domesticate.

[2589] No cattle.

[2590] They had turkeys, I think, was the only domesticated animal.

[2591] So when they had meat from a person they killed, they were so psyched just to have meat.

[2592] You're not just going to let it go.

[2593] Wow.

[2594] Do you ever tell you that's the case with bears?

[2595] The bears are all cannibals?

[2596] Yeah, all cannibals.

[2597] It's really dark.

[2598] My friend Jonathan saw a boar, a male bear, kill a cub, and then saw the female eat it.

[2599] Oh, the female ate it?

[2600] Yeah.

[2601] The female chased the male away.

[2602] and after he'd killed it he was trying to eat it and she chased him away and then she ate it she ate her own cub and he said he had heard that they did that before but watching that in person but they're all cannibals well lots of mammals mothers will eat they're young but these guys come out of the den looking for cubs the crazy thing about spring bears yeah they do it for two reasons they do it one they know now that it's not just to try to force the female in the estrus again.

[2603] They used to think it was just that.

[2604] But now they, like, if you shoot a bear, other bears will claim it as theirs and start eating it.

[2605] And you have to chase them off.

[2606] Like, they're, it's, the world of a bear is so fucking hard scrabble and so fraught with peril.

[2607] And they have to, you know, you're talking about a 500 pound bear.

[2608] How much do you have to eat every day?

[2609] Yeah.

[2610] What do you have to eat like 30 pounds of meat or something crazy?

[2611] And they're eating like moths and shit.

[2612] Everything.

[2613] They're machines.

[2614] Yeah.

[2615] What they are is.

[2616] They clean the forest up of babies that can't get away.

[2617] And any, there's no overpopulating when there's bears around.

[2618] Dumb -ass hikers.

[2619] Yeah.

[2620] Well, they, oh, that's so rare.

[2621] It's so rare.

[2622] And it's more black bears than it is brown bears.

[2623] When brown bears kill people, it's usually because someone fucked up and came across a female with her babies.

[2624] And the female doesn't want to take any chances she fucks you up.

[2625] But when a black bear eats you, it's more likely for predation.

[2626] Also, a black bear will chase you up a tree and a grizzly won't climb it.

[2627] tree right that's true and a lot of times when the black bears are near people the reason is because people have encroached on their their areas and then they started getting into eating garbage right and they started getting into eating garbage they become a real problem because they're smart and they realize like why don't i'll fucking chase after some deer when i could eat this dude and then how about just eat this dude like they don't they don't think about the problems with that like this is going to bring heat on the clan no they just fuck that person up i spent a lot of time thinking about bears in alaska you should yeah i was working I was working the first year.

[2628] It's so stupid.

[2629] I worked in this cannery in Kenai for like six weeks or something.

[2630] Salmon cannery, yeah.

[2631] And I was 16 hours a day, seven days a week, just like full on fucking busting it out because the fish are coming in and they got the lines running, you know.

[2632] And at night I would go back and sleep in my tent on this bluff where we were all camped out.

[2633] So like, you know, after six weeks, everything smelled like salmon.

[2634] Everything.

[2635] My skin, my teeth, my hair, my butt, everything.

[2636] And so after we left, I was with these two other dudes and we were like, let's go to McKinley and like hike for a while and, you know, and we hitchhiked up.

[2637] Yeah.

[2638] Oh, no. I see this coming.

[2639] This is terrible.

[2640] We hitchhiked up to Donali and we were walking back this dirt road and this, this ranger came along in his truck and he stopped and he was this cool guy, you know, and he's like, yeah, you guys have been working.

[2641] And you're like, yeah, man. He's like, yeah, where?

[2642] You've been working at a counter?

[2643] Yeah.

[2644] Hmm.

[2645] And you're going to go hiking now.

[2646] Like, yeah, yeah.

[2647] He said, do you realize that every bear within 20 miles of here can smell you guys?

[2648] And you smell like food?

[2649] Like, oh, yeah, hadn't thought about that.

[2650] Like, get in the truck.

[2651] What the fuck out of here.

[2652] That guy probably saved your life more than the guy who saved you from the scorpion and gave you hepatitis.

[2653] That was the real savior.

[2654] That guy fucked me up, man. He did, but the other guy really saved you.

[2655] Yeah.

[2656] Dude, bears and fish, man, that's a crazy combination.

[2657] So the big bears of Codiac, I was out there.

[2658] That's the whole deal, is that they're just eating fish and even beach whales.

[2659] They eat whales, they eat everything.

[2660] That's a bananas place to be, man, when you look at 12 -foot bears.

[2661] I worked on a boat.

[2662] The second year, I worked on a boat that was based out of Codiac.

[2663] Really?

[2664] Yeah.

[2665] Did you get to see a lot of them?

[2666] Yeah.

[2667] Oh, man, I saw the bears.

[2668] I saw orcas.

[2669] I saw all sorts of shit.

[2670] Yeah.

[2671] We were out in Prince William Sound.

[2672] Orcas are the animal that I always point to That if they didn't exist and there was a legend of them It would be way more fascinating than Bigfoot If somebody told you that there's some mammal That lives in the ocean And they communicate with each other Through a complex series of sounds That we to this day can't understand And that there's several tons And they have accents They have accents Yeah they have dialects They leap through the air and smash They stay together in pods for life And they have a very strong family bond And if they didn't exist, if this was just like some Bigfoot type myth, it would be way more interesting than Bigfoot.

[2673] Because what does Bigfoot do?

[2674] It just wanders around the woods.

[2675] It's because Bigfoot looks like a human, you know?

[2676] So it's that wild.

[2677] It's the dogs fascinated by the wolf, you know?

[2678] Right.

[2679] Yeah.

[2680] Exactly, right.

[2681] That is exactly, right?

[2682] That is like, that could have been us.

[2683] We didn't.

[2684] You know about this subgenre of women who read Bigfoot erotic literature?

[2685] There's a lot of it, man. You should write some, Joe.

[2686] should that should be my move maybe that's what I'll write just really like you can't like I'll write a blurb for you nice for sure yeah I'll blur the lines between erotica and just like horrible hunting primal like slaughtering of villagers and then fucking the women like it'd be like some weird murder porn like you would uh storm into some weird log cab and you do that that famous photo of you you know looking all badass and black and white that's the back one for the author.

[2687] Yeah, that's your author photo for sure.

[2688] It drinks way too much coffee.

[2689] It's getting me wet just thinking about it.

[2690] Wow, you get wet?

[2691] Yeah, a little bit.

[2692] I'm about 56 years old, Joe.

[2693] Got a little leakage.

[2694] By the way, last week, big, big event in my life.

[2695] What happened?

[2696] First prostate exam, bitches.

[2697] Ooh, how was that?

[2698] It was fabulous.

[2699] Did it feel good?

[2700] No. No, but.

[2701] But everything's like, you look very healthy.

[2702] Can I just say that?

[2703] You look right now.

[2704] You look rested and healthy.

[2705] Last time I saw you, you and me and Duncan were here, it's maybe three months ago, there was a moment we were talking about something and you said, you know, going to yoga two days a week and change your life.

[2706] And you looked at me, and I don't know that this was happening on your end, but in my end, it felt significant.

[2707] It felt like you were saying, Chris, Chris, you know, just two yoga classes a week could change your life.

[2708] And I started going to yoga and I feel much better.

[2709] Oh, look at that.

[2710] That's why you're all healthy looking.

[2711] That and my urologist.

[2712] So I got to tell you about this urologist, though.

[2713] Okay.

[2714] Super cool guy.

[2715] Would you give him four stars on Yelp?

[2716] I'd give him five.

[2717] Wow.

[2718] Yeah.

[2719] And in fact, I've invited him on my podcast.

[2720] Oh, wow.

[2721] But he's hesitant to do it, and I understand why.

[2722] He works for a big hospital and, you know, he doesn't want to become a rock star.

[2723] But we ended up hanging out in his office talking for a while.

[2724] This dude gave himself of a septomy.

[2725] Ooh.

[2726] He told me, he's like, That's how bad he didn't want to have kids.

[2727] He pried his dickhole open and chopped away.

[2728] He was just like, you know, I do it.

[2729] I've done a lot of them.

[2730] I want to see how I could do it.

[2731] And he said, you know, my wife wasn't into the idea, but she insisted that I have a colleague standing by in case I got into trouble.

[2732] So that made sense.

[2733] I did.

[2734] The guy was going a little to the left.

[2735] To gave himself a fucking vasectomy.

[2736] That is the most badass thing I think I've ever heard.

[2737] Did he like, what did he do with his feet?

[2738] I don't know the position.

[2739] Feet back like this here, like way back, like a contortionist and just digging in.

[2740] He said it's on the side of the scrotum.

[2741] Maybe yours, bro.

[2742] Not mine.

[2743] Oh, you got yours up your butt?

[2744] That's what the people are being proud of.

[2745] They told me I had the biggest pipe.

[2746] Well, this did.

[2747] They tied my tubes.

[2748] They said, they never saw tubes like mine.

[2749] He never saw them like a fucking garden hose, bro.

[2750] He said to me afterwards, he said, you got the prostate of a 20 -year -old.

[2751] Oh, nice.

[2752] I love you, brother.

[2753] That's good.

[2754] That's good to hear.

[2755] Yeah.

[2756] It was really funny.

[2757] Are you fixed?

[2758] No. You're not?

[2759] You're still shooting live loads?

[2760] Who knows?

[2761] Who knows how live they are at this point?

[2762] Well, now you've got defects in your loads.

[2763] You get older, you get defects in your loads.

[2764] Yeah.

[2765] So, dude, you really do look healthier.

[2766] Like, I'm not bullshitting.

[2767] I saw that, like, instantly.

[2768] So two yoga classes a day, or a week, rather.

[2769] A week.

[2770] A day will probably cripple you.

[2771] It's not get crazy.

[2772] Probably come in here to emaciated.

[2773] But two a week.

[2774] really can change your life.

[2775] Yeah, and I'm doing the, like, old lady classes, too.

[2776] Those old ladies are tough as fucked.

[2777] That's how they got to be old ladies.

[2778] Dude, like, plank position, I'm like, lady, come on.

[2779] My arms are shaking.

[2780] There's some old ladies in my class that humble me. I take yoga with these old ladies, old housewives, and they're fucking tough as shit, and they're in there every day.

[2781] I come there a couple days a week, and they look at me like, oh, decided to drop in.

[2782] They're there every day, every day.

[2783] You see their progress, too.

[2784] Especially, it's very impressive to me when you see flexibility progress in old people.

[2785] And you realize, like, most of what we take for, well, we decide, like, oh, this is how far your body should move when you're 60 or this is how your body should move, you're 70.

[2786] It's based on the average person who doesn't do a goddamn thing with their body.

[2787] You don't go hiking.

[2788] You don't eat right.

[2789] Again, it's based on what you see around you.

[2790] Yes.

[2791] In Spain, everybody goes for a walk after dinner.

[2792] You can be 90 years old.

[2793] They're out there walking after dinner.

[2794] It's a way to go, too.

[2795] It's nice.

[2796] If you go to a nice place, it feels good to have a meal and then walk around.

[2797] That's why it's like, you ever eat in Malibu?

[2798] There's a Malibu seafood.

[2799] Do you ever see that?

[2800] You know what that place is?

[2801] Yeah, right on the PCH?

[2802] Yeah, you eat outside.

[2803] It's really good and they have fresh seafood there all the time.

[2804] You're talking about the real inn?

[2805] No, no, no. I think it's called Malibu seafood.

[2806] I think that's what it's called.

[2807] But anyway, the problem is getting across the PCH.

[2808] You've got to get across the PCH.

[2809] That's death -fying.

[2810] Oh, you park on one side and run across?

[2811] Yeah, you're going to run across.

[2812] Especially with little kids.

[2813] That's fucking scary.

[2814] She'd go to the real inn.

[2815] It's on the PCH down near Topanga.

[2816] I've heard that's good.

[2817] It's good.

[2818] And they've got tables outside.

[2819] You can bring a dog in.

[2820] It's kind of picnic tables.

[2821] Anyway, we talk about this after.

[2822] Yeah.

[2823] But there's something about, there's another restaurant on Malibu, too, that's a really good spot.

[2824] It's like right on the beach.

[2825] You can eat and then just go walk.

[2826] Yeah.

[2827] It's like walking on the beach or just going for a walk, like right after a meal.

[2828] That's what everybody's supposed to do.

[2829] Yeah.

[2830] Yeah, for sure.

[2831] Yeah.

[2832] It helps digestion.

[2833] And when you live in a, you know, I saw this so much in Spain, when you live in a culture that's healthy, you're healthy.

[2834] You know what my favorite example is?

[2835] Boulder, Colorado.

[2836] Oh, yeah.

[2837] You go to Boulder.

[2838] Everybody's got fucking Patagonia jackets on.

[2839] They're running up hills and dirt bike riding.

[2840] There's a yoga place every corner.

[2841] And people are having fun.

[2842] Having a good time.

[2843] It's not work.

[2844] No. It's fun.

[2845] Well, exercise is fun.

[2846] That's what people don't understand.

[2847] It's really, it's not fun to be unhealthy.

[2848] and when you try to exercise when you're unhealthy, it feels like shit because your body feels like shit.

[2849] But once you get the dust knocked off of it and get it moving, and I'm not talking about CrossFit or fucking MMA training or Jiu -Jitsu, I'm just talking about any kind of exercise.

[2850] Just get that blood flowing.

[2851] You'll be a better version of you.

[2852] I got a bike.

[2853] I don't know if you know if I've talked about this.

[2854] It's this electric assist mountain bike.

[2855] Oh, yeah.

[2856] My friend John Dudley has those.

[2857] Fuck, is that fun.

[2858] They're amazing.

[2859] It's so much fun.

[2860] Yeah.

[2861] And where I live, it's like uphill to get to any of the fire roads.

[2862] Right.

[2863] So a normal bike, I'm just not going to do it, you know, because it's like a half hour of hell to get any more interesting.

[2864] Yeah.

[2865] But this thing, it only assists when you pedal.

[2866] Right.

[2867] There's no throttle or anything.

[2868] The specialized gave it to me because I had this dude on my podcast who's a professional mountain bike racer.

[2869] And he was like, dude, you got to get a bike.

[2870] You're in Topanga.

[2871] This is heaven here.

[2872] and I was like, yeah, but like that's where I would ride, you know, way the fuck up there.

[2873] And he's like, yeah, let me talk to some people.

[2874] Well, my buddy John Dudley uses those for deer hunting.

[2875] Oh, right.

[2876] Because when you walk on the ground, well, not just that.

[2877] When you walk on the ground, you leave scent.

[2878] So instead of doing that, he rides a bike.

[2879] So when you ride a bike, you're just like deer's nose is so much stronger and more powerful than ours that if the wind is at your back and the deer's in front of you, you're fucked.

[2880] You're just fucked.

[2881] But if you play the wind correctly One of the best ways to avoid Leaving scent if a deer passes by after you've been there Is to ride a bike But you don't want to ride a bike And exert yourself because then you'll be sweaty And you have to sit in a tree stand You'll freeze your fucking ass off So instead he has these electric assist bikes And they're fucking amazing And when I was in Iowa We took these suckers out into the woods It's fun, huh?

[2882] It's amazing Like uphill, uphill doesn't matter Just rope up the hill, no problem Yeah, and it's still an effort, but it's not like, you don't, it's just like a light walk.

[2883] Yeah.

[2884] They're awesome.

[2885] I took it out to Utah.

[2886] I was out in the van, Scarlett Jovanson and I were out in Canyonlands.

[2887] That's so nice, man. That's so pretty.

[2888] And there was this one ride, it was like 20 miles, I think, out on this Jeep track.

[2889] Like, you could never go on, I mean, even in a Jeep, like a serious four -wheel drive, you're going two miles an hour on some of these.

[2890] But on this bike, just.

[2891] just cruising, 20 miles out to where the Colorado and the Green River converge, it's this canyon, nobody out there, and I'm just cruising.

[2892] It's like riding a horse.

[2893] It's so cool.

[2894] Oh, I did think at one point when I was going through this field with, like, tall grasses, that I, to a cougar, I would have looked like.

[2895] Impossible to resist.

[2896] Yeah.

[2897] Yeah, maybe.

[2898] Top speeds 20 miles an hour, so it would have got me. Most cougars are not really into attacking people, but they have attacked people on mountain bikes before.

[2899] Sure.

[2900] Mostly term.

[2901] Yeah.

[2902] I think it's like a yarn thing, like a ball yarn in front of a kitten.

[2903] Right.

[2904] I just can't help it.

[2905] Well, you've got cats, right?

[2906] Somehow I feel like cats are similar enough that if I saw a cougar, I would know how to deal with it just because I know cats.

[2907] Man. You can bluff a cat.

[2908] Did you see the video I posted up today where a guy in Boulder saw four fucking mountain lines on his street walking to A family must have been.

[2909] Big ones.

[2910] Four full -grown fucking mountain lions.

[2911] Not a mother and young.

[2912] But they don't hang together.

[2913] They do.

[2914] Not according to this fucking video.

[2915] Go full screen and freak us out, Jamie.

[2916] They're not pack animals.

[2917] Yeah, but there's two.

[2918] Look at that.

[2919] Two big ass, grown -ass mountain lines.

[2920] And they go down the street, look, what do we have at the end of the road?

[2921] Oh, another big -ass, grown -ass mountain lion.

[2922] And another one lying on its back over there.

[2923] Wow.

[2924] Imagine turn that corner.

[2925] in your fucking electric bike You're mad They're in the road They're in the fucking road So this guy, this is his house This guy's looking out of his house I guess he's outside of Boulder Mountain lions don't give a shit That's where a mountain lion ate my dog in Boulder Really?

[2926] Yeah They get dogs all time Yeah they get them They hang around near your house They start targeting your dogs It's an easy prey It's hard to get a deer My wife's dog got eaten by a lion A real African lion Lion Oh shit That's more scary Yeah It's Africa Fuck What kind of dog was it Was a small Pomeranian American Eskimo mix It's a sweetheart of a dog He was a great dog Worse ways to go Yeah Look there's just some stuff out there man Between the bears And the dogs Or the cats And also the foxes Foxes are amazing I mean I love foxes I think they're really Interesting animals And they're one of the few animals in the wild That will, if you live in a certain area for long enough They will almost become domesticated They'll get close to you and hang out with you And you could feed them They'll walk with you and hang out with you Like real close by They're a weird animal They're not quite a wolf And they're not like a coyote Like a fox Our relationship with foxes Is very playful You know?

[2927] Have you ever seen Grizzly Man?

[2928] Yeah sure Remember his relationship with the fox Hung around the campsite or something?

[2929] Took his hat, stole it.

[2930] hat, ran away.

[2931] They were playing.

[2932] Like, the Fox used to sit on his tent.

[2933] And he'd be right there, he'd be like, how are you?

[2934] Good morning today.

[2935] Like, they would just hang with them and walk with them.

[2936] There's that lady Sue Aiken's who lives, she lives 200 plus miles above the Arctic Circle.

[2937] She's on that show Life Below Zero.

[2938] There it is.

[2939] There's the grizzly man. Like, look at this fucking animal.

[2940] Just hanging with him, man. I mean, it's and that's Alaska.

[2941] That's way the fuck out.

[2942] Yep.

[2943] Way the fuck out, but once they get accustomed to you, they're very intelligent and they realized like this guy's not going to hurt me then they become like your little buddy and if you give them food I mean this is essentially how animals got domesticated right right this is how wolves became dogs they just hung around with us long enough that they were outside the edge of the campfire and we gave them food to keep them from you know attacking us or whatever but foxes in particular they'll kill a shit out of your cat they'll kill your dog foxes will kill a lot of thing they kill a lot of fawns you know I saw um a fox on the internet with a fawn that was almost as big as its body and it was dragging this fawn across this uh this road and i was like oh i never thought it would kill something that big i thought they'd get rats like yeah well they do generally right marmot or not marmots it's uh moles and stuff you see how they jump they hear so well they can locate it under the snow and just yeah well here's something fucked up i had a coyote kill one of my chickens recently and i buried the chicken and um i was it In the yard the other day, I heard this noise and my golden retriever who has zero killer instinct.

[2944] I mean, he'll kill like a bird or something if he gets a hold of it, but he's not like a guard dog.

[2945] He's a sweetie.

[2946] And he's like, what is going on over there?

[2947] And these coyotes are on the roof of the fucking hen house trying to pry away the chicken wire.

[2948] And I hear this clink, clink, clink.

[2949] And the clink, clink is the coyotes biting the chicken wire trying to break it open to get into the chickens.

[2950] So they killed one chicken I chased him off I got a video over there I was gonna post it I was like this is too gross chicken that got fucked up by this coyote Plus it's sad I love those chickens They're like a pet you know So I dug a hole Buried the chicken And the coyote dug the fucking hole Up and found the chicken And it was like a couple feet down Yeah You know it wasn't a super shallow grave I mean that coyote smelled that chicken Through two feet of dirt Yeah And went and dug it out I went out there a couple days later and I was like where's the fucking chicken there's just a hole there I was like whoa this is crazy they could smell through the dirt man they knew the chicken was down there it's crazy that's crazy you ever have strange experience with wild animals while you were tripping?

[2951] Never I've had zero experience with animals while tripping yeah I've had a lot because I trip in the woods a lot yeah man I know too much about the woods I want to trip inside an arm compound.

[2952] Well, that'll be safe.

[2953] Loaded guns nearby.

[2954] Yeah.

[2955] I just...

[2956] You got a fear fetish.

[2957] No, I don't.

[2958] I'm only joking around.

[2959] Half of it is for entertainment.

[2960] I mean, I've done mushrooms in a field before.

[2961] It doesn't, it didn't freak me out.

[2962] Baseball field.

[2963] When Aubrey and I went bear hunting, he took mushrooms one of the days.

[2964] Hmm.

[2965] I didn't, I wasn't with them.

[2966] You know, when you go to your own little area of the woods by yourself.

[2967] I'd find it hard to shoot.

[2968] anything if I were tripping.

[2969] You wouldn't if you were hungry.

[2970] The thing about those things is, like, bear hunting is a weird one, man, because they need to control the populations, because if they don't control the populations, the bears decimate the moose and the deer, and they eat 50 % of the fawns as it is.

[2971] Right.

[2972] If a, if a...

[2973] Although deer population's out of control.

[2974] In a lot of places.

[2975] Not in Alberta.

[2976] Oh, is that where you were?

[2977] Yeah, I mean, they have a good...

[2978] Pennsylvania, it's a fucking...

[2979] It's a healthy balance, but it's only apparently a healthy balance, according to biologists, and it's not according to vegans or hunters.

[2980] But according to biologists, it's only healthy if the bear population is kept to a certain number.

[2981] If it gets too crazy, then they run out of food, and then there's a lot of cannibalism already.

[2982] But then it gets even worse, and then they start encroaching on cities and towns.

[2983] And it gets weird.

[2984] But they treat it in terms of like a number thing, instead of looking at it from like a moral standpoint, like should you kill an animal?

[2985] They're like, well, if you don't kill an animal, this animal is overbalanced, this out overpopulated, this animal.

[2986] animal's going to be underpopulated now because they're going to go after them and they're going to kill a disproportionate number of them.

[2987] They try to keep this.

[2988] So, but bears are apex predators.

[2989] So who was killing bears?

[2990] Other bears?

[2991] Grizzlies.

[2992] So then the sort of the ultimate balance is to just leave the bears and let the other bears kill them.

[2993] That's a good balance.

[2994] But then you're living in a world where you have 11 foot, 12 foot grizzlies everywhere you go.

[2995] Wandering into town.

[2996] Because if you live in a place like Alberta, right?

[2997] In some areas of Alberta, you have you know good population of elk and moose and deer well that means you're going to have a good population of monsters so if you're comfortable with that you just you just have to decide like how much risk do you want to have yeah because once the bears chew through them they're going to go after you you shoot uh boars with the bow wild boars yeah i've done that yeah yeah a friend of mine invited me to go uh do that in hawaii has to do it that's a good place because of that they don't have any predators and they fuck up he was is explaining that the boars fuck up the coral reefs because they dig up all the dirt and then it runs off in the rain and it contaminates the bays.

[2998] Oh, that makes sense.

[2999] Yeah.

[3000] So it's a really big thing in Hawaii that they have to really go after the boars as much as awesome.

[3001] There's a project right now in Maui where they're going to fence in an area and the area that they're fenced in, they have to.

[3002] It's like 5 ,000 acres, I think it is, where they have to eradicate the deer that are this one particular area because they're trying to reclaim the forest land and a lot of these deer all the deer most of the large mammals in hawaii are non -native right and so these invasive species access deer from asia actually are just they eat everything nothing gets to grow like there's not going to be a forest because the little things grow and they just eat them yeah they eat them right when they're coming up and they just there's so many of them so they also have a problem with people you know needing food so what they're doing is they're like they have this project where they're going out and they're hunting these animals, killing them, and then giving the food to people for free.

[3003] And so they've set it up like this, so they have a real sustainable food source for all these poor people, which is the best meat in the world.

[3004] It's so delicious.

[3005] I was going to say, much better than, you know, industrial shit.

[3006] Yeah.

[3007] Well, it's really good.

[3008] I mean, even in terms of wild game animal, they have the most delicious game animal.

[3009] There's like two thoughts.

[3010] It's usually it's either elk or Axis deer.

[3011] Those are the two that go back and forth.

[3012] I've had both.

[3013] They're both amazing.

[3014] but Axis deer are fucking everywhere.

[3015] You ever had bison?

[3016] You must have.

[3017] That's, that's...

[3018] Yeah.

[3019] Free -range bison is amazing.

[3020] It's amazing.

[3021] A cool animal, too.

[3022] Huge.

[3023] It's like a Star Wars animal.

[3024] Yeah, exactly.

[3025] Yeah, we saw them in Yellowstone.

[3026] Big herd of them, just chilling.

[3027] But it was weird because they were so accustomed to people.

[3028] Yeah.

[3029] They're just lounging like 100 yards from folks.

[3030] Can you imagine when that, like, before they shot them all, the oceans of those things.

[3031] Crazy.

[3032] Do you know where that came from?

[3033] That's another one that's a weird one that I. I didn't know.

[3034] Dan Flores is a fascinating guy.

[3035] He wrote a great book on coyotes called Coyote America.

[3036] But he wrote a Pete, it was a paper.

[3037] It was bison diplomacy, bison ecology, that's the name of it.

[3038] But it was basically saying that what happened was when the Europeans came to America and the Europeans spread disease, it decimated the Native American population by as much as 90%.

[3039] That is when the bison boom happened.

[3040] Bison ecology and bison diplomacy.

[3041] the Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850.

[3042] So what his take is that the overpopulation of bison was a direct result of these Native American people being decimated because their population dropped by 90%.

[3043] No one was hunting the buffalo.

[3044] So the buffalo just went crazy.

[3045] And there's like with no hunters chasing after him, one, two, three decades later, you've got a shit ton of bison just running around everywhere.

[3046] and he points to early settlers that described in great detail all of the various game animals that they came across, but nary a mention of the bison.

[3047] And certainly not a mention of like these gigantic million strong herds of bison roaming the plains.

[3048] And he think that's a direct result of all their predators, the Native Americans, who had gotten really good at hunting them and even, you know, even surplus hunting them, where they'd drive them off cliffs and just take what they could that was at the bottom.

[3049] Yeah.

[3050] Although it's also interesting to think how the introduction of horses would have affected that.

[3051] Oh, that changed everything.

[3052] Horses and guns.

[3053] What Dan Flores says that is that just with just with wild, just forget about European settlers.

[3054] Just the Native Americans with horses and rifles were on their way to extirpating the bison.

[3055] Hmm.

[3056] So we, I mean, this does not like exonerate all the Europeans that had the stacks of bones and that killed them in masks.

[3057] because they certainly did that.

[3058] There's no doubt about it.

[3059] And that's what almost caused the complete extinction.

[3060] That's, it was at the end, it was the Europeans.

[3061] It was us, the settlers.

[3062] Well, to starve out the Indians.

[3063] Yeah.

[3064] Well, no, it wasn't even that.

[3065] That's another thing that they think.

[3066] There was not a concerted effort to starve out the Indians.

[3067] They wanted it for food.

[3068] They wanted the tongues.

[3069] What I read is they, Buffalo Bill and those dudes were shooting them and just leaving the bodies out there.

[3070] It was to wipe out the Lakota because they couldn't fucking be.

[3071] eat the Lakota.

[3072] That might have been done as well.

[3073] And the Cheyenne.

[3074] That's not what killed them off.

[3075] I mean, when you see these giant stacks of skulls, they were doing that, using them as a commodity.

[3076] A lot of it was just for their tongues, believe it or not.

[3077] Their tongues were a very valuable delicacy.

[3078] And then it was for their skins.

[3079] And, you know, when they had meat hunting, what they called market hunting, where they'd take guys who came back from the war and they were looking for a job, but one of the best jobs they can get, are you good shot?

[3080] Great.

[3081] You could be a hunter.

[3082] and they would go and shoot fucking everything, everything that moved.

[3083] And they wiped out all the antelope, all the elk, all the, it wasn't just the bison.

[3084] It's just the bison is such an iconic thing.

[3085] And then obviously those piles of skulls, it was unusual the amount of effort they put into killing them.

[3086] But I don't think it was necessarily just to wipe out them so that the Native Americans would star.

[3087] I'm sure they did that locally in some spots.

[3088] You ever read Barry My Heart at Wounded Knee?

[3089] No, I don't think I did.

[3090] It's a beautiful book.

[3091] It's a really interesting book about the sort of final chapter of different tribes in North America, Geronimo and the Apaches and, you know, Sitting Bull and all these people.

[3092] It's just really interesting, the story of the sort of contact and the characters and the different things that happen.

[3093] Yeah, I read that when I was very young when I was, you know, running around in a loincloth throwing apples at rabbits.

[3094] That is, if you look at human history, what is this year?

[3095] They used to shoot them from train trains.

[3096] They did it for fun too.

[3097] Crazy.

[3098] There were so many of them.

[3099] They just thought they could just shoot them.

[3100] What a relationship with the natural world that represents, you know?

[3101] Well, this is what I was going to say is like, has there ever been anything like that other than, I mean, anything in terms of the impact of a group of people landing on a continent?

[3102] like nothing that we've ever observed it's the greatest mortality in history for sure and the greatest change too like not only that but this weird movement to to the west and like a landing landing on this weird continent that was filled with these people that lived in a completely different way I mean what are the odds that you're going to get to a place you think of where Europe was in the 1700s the 1400s you know when the first started arriving and think of the sophistication with the boats and the written language and all the different things and then they show up go across the ocean and land to a place that has zero cities no there were cities to dachitland was was bigger than almost all european cities when cortez walked into it that's in in in mxico that's where the aztecs were right right and they also had sewage and lit streets well they did more in south america than they did north america right yeah no north from i mean you're talking about america canada there There was nothing comparable at that point.

[3103] Yeah, that's what I meant.

[3104] I mean, like, when they're landing here and they made their way all the way to California, they're not encountering a single city.

[3105] Right.

[3106] I mean, that's just fucking bananas.

[3107] You've got thousands of miles just natural.

[3108] People living in tents.

[3109] Yeah.

[3110] You know, crazy.

[3111] You ever sleep in a teepee?

[3112] No. This place in Turlingua, I stayed in a teepee.

[3113] Jeff, the microbiology guy, he's got a bunch of, or microbiome guy, he's got a bunch of tipies.

[3114] They're like luxury, beautiful teepees.

[3115] Luxury tipis.

[3116] fucking great.

[3117] What's a luxury teepee?

[3118] Jamie, Base Camp Terlingua.

[3119] You'll see.

[3120] They're fucking beautiful.

[3121] Base camp and Terlingua, T -E -R -L -I -N -G -U -A.

[3122] Terlingua.

[3123] It's, yeah, they're fucking sweet.

[3124] They've got like a concrete base and maybe a three -foot wall around it, and then the tee -pies on top so the wind doesn't blow right under.

[3125] Oh, nice.

[3126] And then he showed me the design of T -Pies is really interesting.

[3127] It's like they're designed so the wind comes under.

[3128] Under the tepee.

[3129] Yeah, there you go.

[3130] Oh, that's dope.

[3131] Check that out.

[3132] Oh, so they rent those out?

[3133] Yeah.

[3134] Oh, this is crazy.

[3135] We offer a once of a kind, one of a kind.

[3136] 26 foot teepee experience with our massive 26 foot teepee over the top of a sunken Kiva.

[3137] What's a Kiva?

[3138] Kiva is like a Hopi dwelling.

[3139] It's semi -submerged.

[3140] Each of our three luxury, hold on.

[3141] Each of our three luxury tipies has a comfy king -sized bed, fold -out couch, plenty of seating, rugs throughout, sink, under -counter fridge, curing, coffee maker, microwave, microwave, oh, you can make microwave popcorn, outdoor fire pit.

[3142] I think outdoor is one word there, isn't it?

[3143] Mm, it should be.

[3144] And house, oh, private bath, house private, hey, Jeff, get with the fucking typos here.

[3145] Chisos mountains.

[3146] Yeah, it's a beautiful area.

[3147] It looks like it.

[3148] Man, that looks badass.

[3149] Is it nice?

[3150] Wow.

[3151] I slept in both of those houses.

[3152] That's cool.

[3153] 100 year old, hold on, Jamie.

[3154] Rebolt A hundred year old ruin Located in the heart of Terlingua Ghost Town Wow That's amazing Dude we gotta wrap this up Yeah I got to piss like a race horse I'm sure you do Tangentially reading It's out now Anybody can get it Everywhere All the places that they sell books And of course tangentially speaking All the places you get podcasts There it is This man I'm glad you did this I'm glad you became a podcast guy Yeah The podcast world is richer for it.

[3155] Well, thank you, man. I'm richer for it.

[3156] Thanks to you and Duncan.

[3157] Chris Rogan, motherfuckers.

[3158] See you guys tomorrow.

[3159] Bye.

[3160] Oh.