#614 - Christopher Ryan, PhD

[0] The Joe Rogan experience.

[1] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[2] Back from the rain -soaked jungle of the Pacific Northwest where hippies flourish.

[3] Chris Ryan, dude, they're out there, man. They are.

[4] They're like monkeys in the jungle.

[5] They're like bugs in the forest.

[6] Yeah.

[7] Flowers in the garden, yeah.

[8] Oh, that too.

[9] You could look at it in a positive way.

[10] Yeah, yeah.

[11] It's a good place for them.

[12] It's an interesting place.

[13] So you're going to be there soon.

[14] Yes, this weekend.

[15] This weekend.

[16] I'm very excited.

[17] I love Portland.

[18] I fuck with them about being hippie infested, but better than fucking psychos, you know?

[19] That's true.

[20] That's true.

[21] It's an interesting place that it's got such a strong culture for such a small city.

[22] Yeah.

[23] You know what I mean?

[24] There are huge cities three times that size where, like, you don't even know you're there, right?

[25] Based on how people dress, food, you know, attitude, whatever.

[26] Portland is so specific and sort of microcultural.

[27] Yeah.

[28] Yeah.

[29] I was talking to a friend who grew up there the other day, and I asked him, what's the biggest change from 20 years ago?

[30] And it was interesting.

[31] He said, not eccentricity.

[32] It was really eccentric then.

[33] It's the same now.

[34] You know, that sort of became the calling car to Portland.

[35] He said the big difference is there was no smugness 20 years ago.

[36] Oh, now people are smug there?

[37] Yeah, because I think people who sort of choose that identity then go to Portland.

[38] You know what I mean?

[39] Like hippies who are actually kind of Nazis?

[40] Yeah, there's a lot of those, right?

[41] Yeah, like really judgmental hippies.

[42] Like super ultra left wing people who are really just mean, and they just find a target, and the target is a right wing.

[43] Right.

[44] So they go after them.

[45] Or whomever.

[46] Or they often go after each other.

[47] So there's like a fascist mentality that just happens to have chosen a hippie, you know, outfit off the rack.

[48] Exactly.

[49] I had an ex -girlfriend who was really into fashion, and I remember one time her saying, saying, we lived in San Francisco for a while, and I remember her saying, yeah, I want to, I want to go for a hippie look, you know, and I'm going to, like, buy the fringe, and I just remember thinking, like, that is so antithetical to what a hippie is, you know, like to go buy expensive hippie outfit.

[50] Isn't that perfect, though?

[51] That's America.

[52] It's like spraying body odor deodorant, so you'll smell like a dirty hippie, you know.

[53] Well, I saw this commercial, or not a commercial, like a website, rather than that.

[54] online that sells used jeans right they sell jeans that people wore and they have like i mean they have like stains on them some of them have patches and they were two hundred and seventy dollars yeah for a used pair of jeans good gig though be a gene wearer yeah or a good gig to be selling these jeans you can probably buy from goodwill for you know really cheap yeah and i forget the name of the company but their their hook is they're trying to make you look like you know you've worn these man I don't care about what I look like, man. You're buying $270 used clothes.

[55] Like, you're, instead of wearing them and turning them into that, you're immediately trying to, like, adopt that persona.

[56] I'm a comfortable pair of jeans.

[57] Look at me with my, like, when you see, like, fake rips, those fake rips that people have, they're crazy.

[58] Like, what are you doing?

[59] You're buying torn clothes.

[60] Yeah.

[61] And you think it gives you a look at how I'm down home.

[62] You know, the knees are just all worn out in these pants, man. I'm waiting for, you know, it works with clothes, I'm waiting for it to work with the body, you know, because I just turned 53 recently, and I'm like, when is old and fat going to be in?

[63] It's getting in, dude.

[64] Time.

[65] When genetic engineering kicks in it, everybody looks like Dr. Manhattan.

[66] Yeah, then, like, old, ugly fat will be, wow, interesting.

[67] It's new.

[68] Yeah, it's something different, man. It's like a lot of white guys who are into Asian women will go to Asian countries, like China, for instance, because there's no one.

[69] white men there or not as many rather and so they become an oddity it's like i've experienced that i remember that i can remember the first night i can remember the minute i experienced that thinking like what you know first everyone's looking at me okay i'm a foreigner whatever it's weird but these women are smiling and flirting and what that what's going on and and you know eventually someone explained to me like dude you're white they love and i've always the one thing about my body that i would complain about is my skin i've never liked my skin like all i've got as much melanin as anyone else but it's all in my teeth so i've got yellow teeth and and super pale skin you know um do you get burnt really easy oh completely what is your background irish ira yeah very white yeah and i remember redhead which is like you know one tweak away from albino right you know are you not are you like your hair is gone gray and now do you prefer the gray or the red well the got that kind of good thing going on and go blondeish sort of accent well that's it when you mix red with gray you get blonde right but no when i was a you know until i was in my 30s or 40s probably um you know i had sort of orange red hair whoa yeah it was dark orange it was like copper wire kind of color um so it wasn't bozo that's very close people are prejudiced against that in men yeah women it's sexy yeah what the It's geeky.

[70] How does that happen?

[71] Well, maybe because of the novelty, and also there's a reputation among redheads for being sort of temperamental, and everybody knows a temperamental woman's a lot of fun in bed, right?

[72] Hmm, maybe that's it.

[73] And temperamental men are just dangerous drunks.

[74] Assholes.

[75] Irish assholes.

[76] That's funny, man. I mean, Raquel Welsh was a redhead, although she was Mexican, so I'm not sure how that happened.

[77] Everything I've seen from Raquel Welsh, it was so.

[78] old i can't remember or was black and white black and white yeah she was a redhead like a dark red i think she dyed it yeah but just like auburn reddish kind of what do you think die was like back then what would they just grind up some leaves and fucking rub them in their hair well they probably had um what's that stuff they use in pakistan uh uh hena oh yeah hena's goes way back yeah that's that stuff is strong shit too right people get those fake hena tattoos they last for days yeah can't even scrub them off the dudes in pakistan henna dye their beards oh which is interesting it's a nice look oh that's funny so like when they start when they start going gray that's their version of just for men exactly that's funny man yeah yeah everyone no one wants to be gray that's the one thing like universally people like oh that's a fucking tricky one man did they think so i'm not happy about my gray hairs i just grew in a little chin beard here and it's completely white and i had one five six years ago when I was traveling and it was still red so I don't know what happened between then and now I got old man oh so you weren't shaving you were shaving it completely yeah so it was like a snapshot I there was no gradual process I still have mostly like say me like 80 % black in my beard but like the sides of my hair like where if I had any this is all going white now yeah all this is gray in the sides so you think the gray is more traumatic than the balding because I'm going through both both of them are rough the gray is probably less traumatic because I know dudes who are totally gray, who dye their hair.

[79] And they look fine.

[80] Or they look fine with the gray, right?

[81] Yeah, a distinguished gentleman kind of thing.

[82] I know both.

[83] Yeah.

[84] It just, well, it just represents reality.

[85] It represents the finite nature of the body and you're going through a process.

[86] But also, like, I was talking about how I'm hoping that, like, old and fat comes in now that I'm almost there or there, arguably.

[87] You, your sort of balding experience happened at a really good time historically.

[88] I got lucky, sort of, but I fought it for the longest time.

[89] I had hair transplants, I took propitia, and I put Rogain in there, which is very ironic.

[90] When your name is Rogan, you're going bald and you're buying Rogan.

[91] Perfect sponsorship.

[92] Especially when you had to go to the counter.

[93] Like, now you can just buy it.

[94] But you used to have to go up to the fucking pharmacist.

[95] You used to have a prescription for that shit.

[96] Yeah, I've bought a lot of Rogain in my day because my ex -father -in -law in Spain had me bring it back from the States every time I came to visit.

[97] He couldn't get it over there?

[98] I think it was like he thought it was stronger or better in some way.

[99] So it was like the only thing that kept my relationship with him partly civil.

[100] I so wish that I shaved my head way, way, way back in the day when I first started worrying about it.

[101] Yeah.

[102] It would have been way better because I love being bald.

[103] Like I really, I don't, if I could grow hair back now, I would still shave it.

[104] Right.

[105] It's the easiest thing in the world.

[106] I don't have to go to, I had a great barber and she was hilarious, a hairstylist, my friend Gabriela.

[107] She worked on news radio with me. She was my, she cut my hair forever, you know.

[108] But at a certain point in time, she was cutting it.

[109] It just looked like dog shit.

[110] She was just like, it gets thinner and thinner.

[111] And then once I quit taking the propitia, then it was like a serious downhill slide.

[112] Oh, really?

[113] Yeah.

[114] Yeah, shit was just dying left and right.

[115] It was horrible.

[116] Well, I agree with you.

[117] I think that all young men, like in their mid -20s, should shave their heads.

[118] Just so you don't worry about it.

[119] You know, if you're going bald, for sure, shave your head.

[120] I say, people don't like to shape my head, believe me. Take control.

[121] Yeah, it's better than whatever the fuck is going to happen if you don't shave your head.

[122] I wanted to shave my head.

[123] when we were in India.

[124] I was with my wife Casilda in India in Goa for months.

[125] We were in Asia for like over a year.

[126] And I thought this is a perfect time to shave my head because if I've got a weird shaped head or I look like a dork or whatever, who gives a fuck, right?

[127] Nobody knows me. And I came to her one day.

[128] We rented this house on the beach.

[129] I was like, hey, cut my hair and I want to shave my head.

[130] And she said, oh, please don't do that.

[131] Please.

[132] So why?

[133] Why?

[134] Well, it's not just because she's used to me looking like a dork, but it was my father had just had a liver transplant.

[135] And she said in India you shave your head when your father dies and like and she's very suspicious and she's got all these beliefs and she's like, you know, your father's in rocky shape.

[136] You don't want to be shaving your head, you know.

[137] Yeah, that's different.

[138] Yeah, I could see that.

[139] Oh, I miss my, miss my chance.

[140] Yeah, I miss my chance when I was on news radio.

[141] That's when I got my hair transplant, my first one.

[142] I got three of them.

[143] When I got my first one, I was on news radio and I was like, God damn, this shit is going, man. I just like was seeing it falling out.

[144] And I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was.

[145] I'm thinking about shade my head.

[146] They're like, don't do it, don't do it.

[147] I'm like, my hair is starting to look like shit.

[148] And they talk me out of it.

[149] Well, because it would fuck with my character.

[150] Yeah, like, because you'd look like a psycho.

[151] I'm like, all right.

[152] So I didn't.

[153] You know, people get used to whatever the fuck you look like.

[154] Right, exactly.

[155] Like, I have a picture of Joey Diaz back when he was like 210 pounds.

[156] It's crazy.

[157] It's on my wall.

[158] My office, I stole it from the comedy store.

[159] It was a headshot that he had up.

[160] And I don't even think it was up.

[161] I think I stole it from the office.

[162] I don't think they had put it up, so I snacked it.

[163] But it's Joey, like, thin.

[164] And, like, but if I saw, if he walked in today looking like that, I'd be like, what the fuck is going on?

[165] You sick?

[166] Yeah, but I see him the way he is now.

[167] I give him a big hug, and that's Joey.

[168] You know, you get used to, you get used to the change.

[169] Definitely.

[170] And I mean, I was thinking about that.

[171] I turned 53 last week, right?

[172] So I'm thinking about time and all that.

[173] And here in L .A. visiting my parents who were in their 70s, so there's all that.

[174] You know, there are a lot of cues for.

[175] these things and there's this famous poem by uh dylan thomas where he says rage against the dying of the light you know and i often think like i don't know i don't know maybe embrace the darkness you know like the light you know like people who fight he lost a fight against pancreatic cancer well you know maybe the that's not a fight worth waging you know well i don't know i know a guy who's got pancreatic cancer who's fighting it and they gave him a very short window to live and he's pushed way past that and you know and everybody's completely shocked but he has this amazing attitude and he's positive and enjoying life and i think his point of view is not instead of rage against the dying of the light enjoy the moment and live your life that's yeah and i think because of that he's actually living longer right there was a guy his name was bill hoiler uh who i became friends with from the internet from my my own message board and uh he was a uh a young kid who got pancreatic cancer and he lived for years and uh we became friends from online you know he used to he would have a he had a screen name we would call it uh i think his screen name is called pan can fighter a pan can like pancreatic cancer fighter i believe that was a screen name and um i would get him tickets to the ufc and get him tickets to a comedy show and one time he came to visit me in florida and um he came to the show i got him to the show and then you know he told him he was going to go sleep in his car and i was like you drove all the way down here you're going to sleep in your car he goes yeah i just wanted to see the show so i got him a hotel room and you know like this guy's got cancer you can't let him sleep in his fucking car like your immune system is like super important when you have cancer sleep is super important for the immune system but he was always so thankful and never weird and like for a kid a young kid who is facing this horrible disease that almost nobody escapes from it's like the percentage of people that survive one of the worst very very bad but his attitude was always like I'm going to fucking fight this, and he would post these tweets on the messages on the message board.

[176] Like, three years later, I'm still alive, motherfucker, like that kind of shit.

[177] And, you know, he had tubes in his stomach when I saw him once.

[178] We saw him, Eddie Bravo and I became friends with this kid.

[179] We saw him maybe six or seven times over the years.

[180] And, you know, one time we saw him, his head, he lost all his hair, his eyebrows were gone.

[181] He had tubes coming out of his stomach because, you know, some surgery that he had.

[182] And he was still alive, and he still had a good attitude.

[183] It was amazing what an attitude he had.

[184] And I think that that attitude is probably what allowed him to live for so long.

[185] But he eventually did die recently.

[186] As we all do, right?

[187] Yeah.

[188] Yeah, it's funny.

[189] I saw the guy from 60 Minutes who was in a car crash last week.

[190] Yeah.

[191] Did you see that?

[192] I forget his name.

[193] But he's 73.

[194] He was 73 years old.

[195] And the headline said, this gentleman in his name, I can't remember, lost his life in a car crash.

[196] And I thought, you know, when you're 73, you're not losing your life.

[197] You've already banked 73 years.

[198] Right.

[199] You're losing a couple years.

[200] You're losing whatever was left.

[201] 11.

[202] Yeah.

[203] Actuarial tables or something.

[204] Yeah, right.

[205] That's not losing your life.

[206] You spent that money.

[207] That's like, you know, somebody robs you and they got everything.

[208] Well, they didn't get everything.

[209] They didn't get what I already spent, you know?

[210] Right, right, right.

[211] It's not like they spent, they robbed your whole life savings.

[212] Well, you didn't really save my whole life.

[213] I've never saved.

[214] I've been saving for a couple of weeks.

[215] Yeah, really.

[216] Look at this picture of Vince McMahon from the WWE.

[217] He's 69 years old.

[218] Seriously.

[219] Yeah, this is insane.

[220] And that's not shopped.

[221] I'm going to, I'll, should I forward this to you, Jamie?

[222] What's that?

[223] Okay.

[224] He's on the cover of muscle and fitness.

[225] Tony Hinchcliff sent this to me because Tony Hinchcliff is a fucking W .W .E. fanatic, and he's in love with Vince McMahon.

[226] But nobody in human history has ever looked like.

[227] that at 69 years old yeah testosterone is a motherfucker yeah so if you want to rage against the dying in the light uh -huh that's the way to go get all pumped up testosterone replacement therapy go to a doctor they bring into the same levels you look at that picture that's ridiculous it's up oh sorry it's behind you yeah he doesn't have that other one huh that's okay it doesn't have it but it's just ridiculous like who the fuck has ever looked like that at 69 is it good or is it bad you know I don't think it would be too terrible people could live to be a thousand years if I knew that we had that the resources to support it.

[228] Because I would think, like, man, what kind of amazing philosophy and insight would you get from a thousand -year -old woman who's lived hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years and, you know, and seeing culture shift and change and remembers as much as she could and tells you about life in a way that only a person who's lived a thousand years?

[229] And we are a little blips.

[230] If you talk to a guy that lived a hundred years, you're going to be fascinated if he has his faculties.

[231] But someone has lived a thousand?

[232] My God.

[233] I mean, it would...

[234] Holidays would be a bitch, though.

[235] Imagine the great, great, great, great, great, she has to buy shit for.

[236] That's true.

[237] Imagine the candles on his fucking cake.

[238] Exactly.

[239] Dude would die blowing him out.

[240] Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

[241] I think that we're going to see a great advance in our lifetime of lifespans.

[242] But the real issue is do we have the resources for that?

[243] Because one of the things that is going on with our world, as everybody knows, is there's a lot more people today than there's ever been, and recorded human history by a giant number.

[244] And when you see places like India that are in dire poverty, it's one third of the size of the United States, it has three times as many people plus, it's like, wow, I mean, how, you're dealing with a lot of poverty and a lot of suffering.

[245] And, you know, maybe it's a prospective issue, and maybe what I consider poverty, they consider life, and that if I lived that life, I would be accustomed to it.

[246] It would be normalized.

[247] But I've got to think that most people don't want to sleep on dirt, and most people don't want to eat food that's bad or, you know, struggle to survive in any way and dealing with rampant diseases and that you're dealing with in impoverished nations, you know, when they don't have enough medicine to take care of people.

[248] I don't know.

[249] But if we did have the resources, man, it would be amazing to talk to a thousand -year -old person who knew everything about the, I mean, if you could keep your faculties.

[250] How grumpy would they get?

[251] These fucking kids today in their electronic hologram music.

[252] Pull your pants up!

[253] When I was a kid, We had drums.

[254] We made out of animal skins.

[255] Fucking kill those animals.

[256] We chopped those trees down.

[257] We hollowed them out.

[258] We stretched their skins.

[259] Yeah.

[260] We made the pom -pong.

[261] Boom, boom, boom, boom.

[262] But seriously, I mean, if you think about, you know, just how much things have changed since you and I were kids, you know, if you're talking to a guy's 500 years old, it's like, holy shit, man. Well, yeah, the other thing is a thousand years from now, I mean, if we really could live to be a thousand years old, a thousand years from now, people might not be necessary.

[263] I mean, we might have evolved past this state.

[264] in some sort of a gigantic technological leap.

[265] I really believe that when you're looking at the iconic image of an alien, you know, the big heads, the big eyes, and no genitals, I think we're looking at what holds us back as organisms.

[266] And the things that, if you look at our wars and our greed and it's all the crazy fucking larceny and crazy shit that people do, it's all attached to the primate body.

[267] You know, it's all attached to sex and breeding and greed and greek.

[268] guilt and fear and the worry about being mortal, if we can move past that in some genetic engineering leap, or if it goes Kurzweil on us, and they develop some insane artificial body that you transfer your consciousness into, that it's just way more preferable.

[269] You know, you've got all the buttons you can push for orgasm, all the buttons you can push for adventure, all those exist inside your head and they can access them at any moment.

[270] But you're looking at the world in some crazy 3D, you know, minority.

[271] report fashion where everything you see you're interacting with the world in a very different way you might get a bunch of people to jump ship and the models might get better and then the next model might be so pleasurable so much better than being a human being that it's just fucking people just start jumping you know especially the ship's sinking you know we're fucking polluting the ocean guess what how about you live off photosynthesis we're going to cure the whole thing all right you got bulletproof gim no you live off the sun oh you incorporate algae somehow into the genome or something Look, there was a snail that I read about recently or a slug that shifts between photosynthesis and actually eating things.

[272] And it eats certain algae, and then through eating that algae, can actually absorb life and exist off photosynthesis.

[273] And this is a new find.

[274] So it's like colonized its food and it's still alive.

[275] Yeah, yeah, that's...

[276] It's somehow another taking this ability from its food.

[277] Do you know how sea slugs have sex?

[278] No. Oh, this is great.

[279] Since you mentioned slugs, I wasn't planning to talk about slugs today, Joe, but since you brought it up, sea slugs are so interesting.

[280] They're on the bottom of the ocean.

[281] They're just sort of wandering around, blind, right?

[282] On the bottom of the ocean.

[283] Can they see with those things?

[284] I think they're like motion detectors, you know, whatever, antenna.

[285] But when two sea slugs, now, sea slugs contain both male and female reproductive organs, right, inside their bodies.

[286] So they've got sperm and eggs.

[287] And when two sea slugs meet each other, they sort of rear up and with those horns, these horns come out of their heads, and they start slamming each other with these horns, like a couple of, you know, mountain goats or something.

[288] And eventually one of them will break through the skin of the other with his horn.

[289] And at that point, he injects sperm into the other.

[290] And so the other becomes female because now the eggs have been.

[291] fertilized, and that one's a male.

[292] Whoa.

[293] So it's like when they're like fighting to see who's male and who's female, which you know, may be reminiscent Wow.

[294] That's crazy.

[295] Private school or summer camp.

[296] Boy scouts.

[297] Yeah.

[298] Who's the boy?

[299] Religious retreats.

[300] Yeah, man. That's fascinating.

[301] That's fascinating.

[302] It's amazing when you see all the different varieties of life.

[303] When you see all the different forms that it can take.

[304] And then you stop to consider that that's just in our, you know, our Earth's environment.

[305] Imagine, like, what they're going to find if they can chip through Europa and get to those oceans.

[306] It's very possible.

[307] There's something alive under there that's being fueled from the heat of the volcanic vents.

[308] Right.

[309] Most likely nothing, we've never seen anything in the ocean other than, like, you know, we see like hermit crabs.

[310] They'll use other people's, you know, as a shell.

[311] We've never seen anything, like, build a structure other than that.

[312] I don't think.

[313] Like, nothing you could consider, like, look, there's.

[314] as a house, you know, like a beaver.

[315] A beaver has a beaver den, you know?

[316] Even it's crude as fuck, but damn, they're building their own little house.

[317] It's kind of crazy.

[318] And we obviously have insects in the world above ground that build incredible structures.

[319] And termites.

[320] Oh, my God.

[321] You've seen a cross section of a termite mound?

[322] It's insane.

[323] With the, like, the vents for keeping the temperature.

[324] Are you thinking about leaf cutter ants?

[325] Is that?

[326] The one where they filled it up with cement?

[327] Uh, and they bring the leaves back, and then they have a fungus that grows on on the leaves and that's what they eat.

[328] Yeah, that's wild.

[329] I mean, termites probably do something similar to.

[330] Well, the termite thing I'm thinking of, I saw some BBC special recently, and I think it was termite mounds in Africa.

[331] And what they do is, like, where they have all the eggs has to be an exact temperature and humidity.

[332] And this is in like Kalahari Desert, right, which is dry and the temperature changes a lot night today.

[333] And so they build these things, and they've got this chamber, and then below the chamber are cooling fins that hang down perfectly spaced.

[334] And the air circulates through them so that it keeps the temperature exactly the same all the time.

[335] Wow.

[336] It's like, how does, I mean, there are things in evolution that are not understood, right?

[337] Yeah.

[338] Like, there are things where it's like, well, there's no gradual way to get from point A to point B here.

[339] How do termites know to do that?

[340] Right.

[341] You know, how do you encode that in DNA?

[342] That doesn't seem possible based on what we know of DNA.

[343] Especially since it's not an isolated incidence.

[344] Right.

[345] This is happening all over the termite world.

[346] Yeah.

[347] It's crazy.

[348] They don't communicate in a way that we understand.

[349] Right.

[350] So, yeah, it's very mysterious.

[351] And I think there's a, you know, you're talking about like quantum leaps and thinking and stuff.

[352] I feel like in a strange way, and I'm even hesitant to say this publicly because of, it's an example of what I'm talking about.

[353] Like, it's really hard to talk about.

[354] The areas where Darwinian notions of evolution don't quite make it because you immediately get lumped in with the religious lunatics, you know what I mean?

[355] Or the woo -woo people.

[356] Yeah.

[357] So it's sort of shut down an important conversation, you know, much like the Nazis.

[358] I mean, the Nazis were doing all this interesting science that you can't talk about, you know, or you can't talk about eugenics.

[359] Right, right.

[360] Like, well, that's a legitimate thing to talk about.

[361] Sure.

[362] Everything is legitimate to talk about, including when you're talking about Nazi history.

[363] Why is that legitimate to talk about, but eugenics as a concept, not saying as an actual practice.

[364] I don't think you should take people's lives because they're dumber than you.

[365] No, but you could encourage some people not to reproduce.

[366] Like, how dare you?

[367] Like people who have a genetic propensity to a certain illness.

[368] Like, hey, you know, maybe you should adopt, and here's a massive tax credit if you do, right?

[369] I agree with that, but, man, I don't think you should be able to tell anybody that they can or can't.

[370] breed.

[371] I think education is important with all aspects of breeding, but we all know that people make terrible decisions when it comes to breeding.

[372] Because they want to get that nuts, son.

[373] And then they're like, oh no, I made a person.

[374] All right, now I've got to deal with it.

[375] You know, I mean, I don't think we should take that away from people just because they have diseases or force them to get an abortion.

[376] Or if, you know, also one valid point that people who have illnesses say is, I don't want anyone else to have the illness that I have.

[377] But I'm alive and I'm okay.

[378] and I have, you know, cerebral palsy, and I have, you know, whatever I have, you know, and I can still enjoy life.

[379] It might not be perfect, but you're telling me that this experience, my experience in life because I have cerebral palsy or because I have something else is not valid, and I'm saying that's wrong.

[380] I'm hampered, I'm hindered.

[381] I certainly can't move the way a regular person moves.

[382] However, my experience is my experience, and I can make the most of it, and I enjoy it, and I'm not necessarily trying to give a child this, but I'm not trying to invalid.

[383] You know, this is an argument for that.

[384] Right.

[385] But okay, but let's look at the counter argument, right?

[386] Because the assumption there is you're, as you said, you're invalidating my experience.

[387] But looked at from another way, what are we comparing that experience to?

[388] Right.

[389] We're comparing it to nothing.

[390] We're not comparing it to, you know, you should die.

[391] You should be, you know, we're saying nothing.

[392] Right.

[393] Now, how do you compare it to nothing?

[394] A kid who isn't born isn't suffering.

[395] Right.

[396] So, I mean, I think that the assumption, I've got a cousin, this really smart little kid, he's like five or something.

[397] And the other day he was talking about how he, before he was born, he was saying that all fetuses should have iPads, but no password, right?

[398] Because they wouldn't understand.

[399] How old is he?

[400] It's like five, I think.

[401] And because it's boring, you know.

[402] Boring being a fetus.

[403] Right.

[404] And I was like, well, my aunt was talking to him.

[405] And he said, she said, well, where were you when you were a phoenix?

[406] She said, I was sleepy dead.

[407] You're like, sleepy dead.

[408] Yeah, it's not like dead when you die.

[409] It's dead before you're born and you're kind of sleepy.

[410] So it's sleepy dead.

[411] Whoa.

[412] And like, okay.

[413] Yeah, this is kind of a genius kid.

[414] What if that kid actually knows something?

[415] What if you remember some shit that we forgot?

[416] I'll tell you.

[417] I mean, this is going to sound crazy, but I remembered.

[418] When I was a kid, I remembered.

[419] You remembered what?

[420] I remembered the feeling of where I came from before I was born.

[421] What?

[422] And what happened was, and this is a weird thing, I was just talking to Casillo about this recently, I remembered it as a general, how can I say this?

[423] Like, what I remember is as I got older as a kid, I remember thinking, I'm losing this memory.

[424] I'm losing contact with something I know.

[425] And as my consciousness was getting more sort of aware as a person, right, I realized that that was a really valuable thing that I was losing.

[426] And so as I was like 12, 13, 14, I was like, I have to remember this.

[427] I knew I wouldn't remember it as a memory, so I was creating like a record of it that I would remember, if that makes any sense too.

[428] you know what i mean like i know you know it's like people who have um i forget what it's called where they don't recognize faces like uh that all over sacks the neurologist has that and he describes it one of his books and he's like they've got this face blindness so what they'll do is if they're having a conversation with you and they're going to go to the bathroom and they know they're going to come back they'll be like okay the guy with the blue shirt and the thing and the tattoos is joe you know just to create a record in his head and then he'll go to the bathroom so when he comes back he'll remember your Joe.

[429] Wow.

[430] Yeah, it's a really interesting neurological thing.

[431] I would like to see that guy draw a picture of a face.

[432] Yeah, I wonder if they...

[433] What is he safe?

[434] Do you know Oliver Sacks?

[435] He would be an amazing guest for you.

[436] I don't know.

[437] I don't know.

[438] I'd love to have him on, though.

[439] But you know who he is.

[440] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[441] I've heard of him.

[442] I've heard of him actually describe that.

[443] I forget what show I was listening to, but he was actually describing that issue.

[444] Yeah.

[445] Not knowing what people's faces necessarily look like.

[446] Yeah.

[447] I mean, I just, it's hard to, like, imagine that.

[448] It is, right, because it's something that's so automatic to us.

[449] Yeah.

[450] He also wrote a book about hallucinogens, hallucinations, which was very interesting because it was the first, this came out maybe five years ago, and it was, it struck me as the first, like, mainstream, sort of non -apologetic discussion of the use of hallucinogens by a very mainstream doctor, who's written all these best -celled.

[451] And he talks about when he lived in Topanga in the 60s, and he took some acid.

[452] Of course you did.

[453] You have to.

[454] Get in there.

[455] Exactly.

[456] To go to the farmer to market.

[457] To get the acid.

[458] That place is ridiculous.

[459] Yeah.

[460] I was looking at a house there once, and these fucking hippies talked me out of even looking any further.

[461] They were like, like, the house had a tennis court behind it.

[462] They're like, if you buy the house, you're going to let the community use a tennis court, right?

[463] I go, what?

[464] That's right under my bed.

[465] Like, get the fuck out of here.

[466] No, I'm not going to let.

[467] Well, you care, you fucking people are too much.

[468] Yeah.

[469] I can imagine all these dirty hippies showing up.

[470] Sunday morning, you're trying to sleep in.

[471] You hear, boop, boop, boop, hey man, that was in bounds.

[472] Newt wasn't, man. You should share the score.

[473] Oh, fuck you.

[474] That's good.

[475] You sound like the Californians of Saturday Night Live.

[476] That's them, dude.

[477] I know.

[478] It's so true.

[479] I want to go back to what you were saying, though, like your memory of before you were born.

[480] You know, I was listening to this Radio Lab podcast.

[481] I know that I've said that about a million times.

[482] If you're playing the podcast drinking games, time to have a shot.

[483] Drink up.

[484] because I listen to that podcast all the time, but they were talking about memories and how poor people's memories truly are and how many people, like, believe that they have an idea in their head that's carved in stone.

[485] This is what happened.

[486] But if you look at the actual events, the provable actual events in comparison to their idea what happened, oftentimes they're way off.

[487] Yeah.

[488] You know, a lot of people see that.

[489] The eyewitness reports are terrible, yeah.

[490] Yeah, often people see that when they go back to where they grew up, you know, Like your house looks smaller.

[491] Everything looks different.

[492] It's just like, wow, it's like someone he made a replica of where you grew up but did a shitty job because they didn't have all the data.

[493] Did you ever feel betrayed when you had that experience?

[494] No, no, no. The opposite for me. When I went back to where I grew up, it was amazing.

[495] I took my wife and my kids and we walked through the neighborhood.

[496] It wasn't even a neighborhood.

[497] I lived across the street from the Charles River.

[498] This is this big park -like area.

[499] And I would go fishing Down the river There was like this pond I would catch bass at And I took them on these Walks that I used to take through the woods And I was like this is a crazy spot to grow up I didn't realize how weird it was I grew up near this place called Echo Bridge And Echo Bridge is in the place called Newton Upper Falls And I had a waterfall across the street from my house And I never realized like how cool this was Like until I took the kids there and walked around I was like wow this is a wild place to be Like all the places where I used to hang out with my friends and just, you know, it's nice, and it wasn't all built up.

[500] It was still, there's still some empty space.

[501] Yeah, I mean, it's the Hemlock Gorge Reservation.

[502] That's like the area.

[503] I think it's preserved.

[504] That sounds nice.

[505] I always imagine you, like, inner city, because I remember you talking about rough neighborhoods and stuff.

[506] I lived in Newton from the time I was 14 to the time I was 17.

[507] Or until the time I was high school, you know, 14 to 17, and then like a year and a half, two years after that, I stayed there.

[508] But before that, I lived in a place.

[509] called Jamaica Plain.

[510] Jamaica Plain was rough.

[511] We only lived there for about a year and a half, maybe two years at the most, but I went to high school or grammar school in this, I think it was Curly.

[512] I think that was the name of the grammar school, but it was bad, man. It was real bad.

[513] Jamaica Plain has become more gentrified now, but when I lived there in 1979, 1980, I guess it was somewhere around then.

[514] I think my first year of high school was 81.

[515] It was really bad.

[516] There was a lot of, like, bad shit going down.

[517] There were 17 -year -old kids that were in the seventh grade.

[518] You know, they would, like, never graduated.

[519] And, like, you'd be in, you know, I was like a little kid, and I was going to class.

[520] And there was these fucking full -grown adults that are in my class.

[521] You know, there's guys and girls making out in the back of the class.

[522] It was all these, like, inner -city kids.

[523] Like, they were so...

[524] I'd come from Florida, where I lived before that in a college community in Gainesville, Florida.

[525] And we moved to, like, the only place in Boston that my parents could afford.

[526] And it was this Jamaica.

[527] playing place and they worked really hard to get us out of there and moved us to newton and newton was like way more urban way more relaxed but jamaica plane was fucking sketchy it was sketchy it was a lot of crime like there's breaking and entrings in our in our neighborhood all the time you know like we got a dog just to bark to let us know if someone was trying to get into the house it was very weird it was a weird place to live and then newton was a total different place that's cool that's something you and i have in common moving as kids i moved a lot as a kid i went to three high schools.

[528] It's real common with people that are interesting for whatever reason.

[529] Yeah, I mean, it's my, I have a younger sister and she and I sort of dealt with it in diametrically opposed ways.

[530] Like she had developed a real need to be part of the community.

[531] So as soon as we moved to, we've been Jacksonville for example, as soon as we were in Jacksonville she developed the local accent within a week.

[532] You know, I never developed any accent.

[533] I sort of, I became the pedantic arrogant asshole who doesn't need friends you know that's how i dealt with it right you know okay i i mean i got used to eating alone in the lunchroom you know like reading a book like i got my book i'll ignore the rest of you fuckers i mean i made friends but the the point was that i didn't like i wasn't reaching out you know i was trying to be and then that worked great in the you know the rest of my life traveling all the time living overseas all that i don't have a home and you're you're like this too right you move enough it's like, well, okay, I lived here for a couple years.

[534] I lived here for a couple years.

[535] But when people say, don't you miss your home, all your friends, the people you grew up with, I don't know the people I grew up with, you know, they were stages.

[536] I'm still friends with a couple guys from high school.

[537] Really?

[538] Yeah.

[539] Yeah, me too.

[540] Yeah, one guy from high school, actually.

[541] I have two, two buddies from high school that we talk, one that I'm pretty close with.

[542] I saw him last when I was in Boston.

[543] And, you know, we've known each other since we were at 14.

[544] So it's weird, you know, like we've seen us now.

[545] He has grown kids.

[546] We went to dinner with him and his kids.

[547] His daughter's like in her 20s.

[548] I'm like, this is crazy, man. You know, I've known his wife forever, too.

[549] It's interesting to see, he grew up in that neighborhood.

[550] He lived there and, you know, we became friends when I moved into the neighborhood.

[551] But almost all my friends, like Joey, R .E., like all these guys moved all over the place.

[552] You know, Duncan, you know, Brian Callan's the worst.

[553] Like, not the worst.

[554] I shouldn't say, but the most experience, because he lived in Saudi Arabia, his family, his family was involved in international finance.

[555] And so he lived in all these crazy Middle Eastern countries.

[556] He lived in Afghanistan, I believe.

[557] That's a whole different level.

[558] Oh, he lived everywhere, man. Yeah.

[559] And he's one of the most interesting people I know because of that.

[560] It's just like he, there's pros and cons, I think.

[561] Definitely.

[562] There's like a definitely like a more calming confidence of growing up in a neighborhood where you know all the people and you can.

[563] But there's also like a limiting aspect to that too, especially if it goes wrong.

[564] Depends on the neighborhood, right?

[565] Yeah, sure.

[566] A bad neighborhood, or if you get labeled as like a person in the neighborhood with the kids ostracized or they get mad at you for something.

[567] Right.

[568] Yeah, it's like you redefine yourself when you move to new places.

[569] That's like the new girl.

[570] Oh, she's the new girl.

[571] Where's she from?

[572] She's from Portland.

[573] Oh, does she smell like feet?

[574] You know, like you see her.

[575] She's wearing a granny dress.

[576] She's got a petulie on her thing, dude.

[577] She's got fucking.

[578] I like a pachulie.

[579] Oh, good for you.

[580] You're the fucking problem.

[581] I'm not one guy.

[582] I'm the one guy I mean everyone always I like pechuli I like prune juice I mean I know it's a joke but it's like it tastes good It's good for your body too I guess I mean it makes you shit or not shit I don't even know I know it affects shit somehow But I mean I just like the flavor And petulis smells good to me It's not the worst smell Yeah I like incense That's a very hippie thing People get angry at you You don't like the smell of incense Not if they're anything but Nag Champa I like the Nagchampa Some stuff laying around on here somewhere you know i don't like right there tell me if this one smells good to you i'm sure it'll be fine yeah hey shout out to duncan i feel we're shouting out white people shouting out well you mentioned duncan and and you know when i i i tweeted that i was going to be on the show everyone's like oh you you and joan duncan like oh yeah Duncan couldn't make it he's a big sir living the time of his life he is he likes it up there oh he loves it up there he's trying to talk me to buy in a house Dude, I'll watch your house when you're not there.

[583] What a favor.

[584] He'd be doing you, yeah.

[585] Oh, he would be.

[586] I would do that, too.

[587] I would totally trust him.

[588] It's pretty cool up there.

[589] I love it.

[590] It's a very unusual place because you can't really support a large population.

[591] It's like you can only live so far in and out.

[592] You're kind of butted up against a mountain.

[593] The water's right there.

[594] It's like, this is all you got.

[595] You spend time at Esselin ever?

[596] Never.

[597] No. I did, I was invited to do a workshop there.

[598] How's I smell?

[599] Is it okay?

[600] I don't even smell it yet.

[601] You don't smell it?

[602] going that way.

[603] Damn, what's wrong with you?

[604] I guess I'm wrong with your nose on.

[605] You should smell the fuck out of that.

[606] Oh, there it is, yeah.

[607] How's that?

[608] It's nice.

[609] You sure, don't lie to me, man. I'll put it right out.

[610] All right.

[611] I hardly noticed that.

[612] I tell you.

[613] I mean, I don't know.

[614] It must be the Coke.

[615] Oh, sorry.

[616] Did I say that out loud?

[617] How dare you?

[618] That's a bad drug.

[619] Don't you understand?

[620] That's a drug.

[621] I had access.

[622] I mean, you're in this position all the time, I'm sure, but, you know, having access to, like, the best of the best of something.

[623] I knew a guy in college who was the son of an oil minister from a country I won't name just to keep me out of trouble.

[624] He had a private jet.

[625] He used to fly to Columbia.

[626] He had a diplomatic bag so he could bring anything into the country.

[627] Oh, my God.

[628] He'd bring this shit into the country, and he was, like, in this frat, and I knew someone who was in the frat, and I was never a frat boy at all, but they would invite me in these, like, yellow rocks of Coke, you know, and it was like, I mean, I went to the, I mean, I went to the, I went to the, I mean, I went to the, this dumbass college where everybody was rich.

[629] So the drug scene there was off the charts.

[630] And I've done the best Coke there is, right?

[631] I mean, I know the guy who invented MDMA.

[632] I, you know, it's like I've got, I had these really good connections for drugs.

[633] And Coke sucks.

[634] The best Coke in the world is shit.

[635] I don't get it.

[636] Wow.

[637] I mean, my, in my sense is that it, it affects.

[638] Affects a certain personality structure in a really pleasant way.

[639] And I don't have that structure.

[640] So for me, hallucinogens are like, boom, that's pushing my button, right?

[641] Coke just made me fucking nervous and drink too much.

[642] Well, you're a self -deprecating guy, and you joke around about a lot, and you're also introspective.

[643] And I think that one of the things that people don't like about people that are coked up is that they want to talk about themselves.

[644] They want to tell you how fucking badass they are.

[645] they want to brag they want to they want to talk about like making money we're going to buy this forest we're going to fucking you know like you know i mean like mike young used to always talk about how people on coke always want to start a business with you and it's really kind of true it's like they always have these enthusiasm yeah they have these crazy grand plans and it just i i've never been interested in it i got lucky and i ducked it yeah when i was a kid i've told the story a hundred times but i had a friend my friend that i'm still friends with in high school right his cousin used to sell it and his life went down the toilet and i watched him wither away lost like a shitload of weight became weird you know just always on coke and when he wasn't on coke he was just exhausted you know it's just like jesus that looks like a like someone who got bit by a vampire yeah like oh my god like you got you got you got you it's like you're taking all the energy from part of your life and concentrating it in the few hours after you do the coke and like what are you going to do with all that energy except irritate people but i knew a girl and she was a great girl she wasn't a mean person she wasn't nasty materialistic she's beautiful she's really nice and sweet and kind but fuck she loved coke god damn and she would feel bad about it she god fucking love it i love doing coke i'm like really like what you know i was not curious enough to want to do it but listening to her you know she knew it was bad knew she shouldn't do it didn't want to do it anymore but she'd tell you god damn what i'm doing i love doing coke in my experience the people who tend to get really hooked on coke are people who have issues with uh they feel bad about themselves they they feel they've got a lack of self -esteem they they feel like they they're not good enough they're not whatever there's shame and all that because the coke takes that away for a while that totally makes sense in this case because this woman her mother was like really overbearing and her mother was like super alpha successful her mother was a single mom and was like like no man's going to fucking run me and show she was a lawyer and she was like she ran successful business she had a law firm and she was like super like intense with her daughter about achievement about pursuing things about you know don't eat the wrong foods and you know eat you know and she was like really like overbearing and gave her a hard time about her weight like you're too fat you're never going to be a model and like ooh and so I guess the coke was like oh free you know I don't have to think about I give her like maybe she had a deficit created by her mom's constant You know, just never letting her just be herself.

[646] Yeah.

[647] You know who Gabor Mante is?

[648] No. He's a...

[649] Gabor Mante.

[650] Yeah.

[651] I didn't know the name.

[652] I've only seen it written.

[653] Yeah.

[654] He's a cool guy.

[655] And if you ever want to have him on the show, let me know.

[656] He's a friend of mine.

[657] He's a very interesting guy.

[658] He's a doctor who works with addicts.

[659] He's been working with addicts in Vancouver in, like, the slum part of Vancouver for a long time.

[660] A lot of, like, real down -and -out people.

[661] And he also is very interested.

[662] in alternative approaches to addiction and you know he's written about ayahuasca as a way of dealing with addiction treating addicts and all that um but anyway he uh his theory is that all addiction is due to trauma it's not it has nothing to do with the substance or the activity it's that's just how it manifests right but it's all about psychological trauma it's all trying to alleviate suffering of some point of some kind and um it's interesting his research sort of meshes very well with this experiment that was done.

[663] Also in British Columbia, I can't remember Williamson, I think was the scientist's name.

[664] You know those famous studies where they give rats, like they've got a water bottle, it's just water, and then another one that's got Coke in it, and the rats will just keep doing the Coke, and they'll forget to eat and then they, you know, like die, like these people you're talking about, lost all this weight and just like completely focused.

[665] This guy looked at that.

[666] He was a professor of scientist.

[667] He looked at that and he's like, okay, well, that's the sort of main study that everybody cites that shows that Coke is addictive and it's coke that causes the problem and it's the substance and molecular problems.

[668] But what if we took those rats, same kind of rats, but instead of just being in a cage where there's nothing to do, put them in a really interesting environment where there are lots of other options.

[669] There are lots of other rats.

[670] There are tubes to go through and things to climb and things to hide under and lots of stimulation, right?

[671] And then let's try it.

[672] They try it.

[673] What happens?

[674] The rats do the coke once or twice and then walk away from it.

[675] Never go back.

[676] Right.

[677] So there's an argument to be made that a strong argument that it's not about substances.

[678] It's like I was saying, it's about the way this substance intersects with whatever your particular suffering is.

[679] Right.

[680] So these rats in a cage are obviously suffering because they're not in a nutshell.

[681] natural environment.

[682] They're in a fucking cage.

[683] There's nothing to do except like get high, so they get high.

[684] That's a very good point that I never considered.

[685] That is a very, very good point.

[686] It's called Rat Park.

[687] If anyone wants to Google it, just Google Rat Park, because that's what he called this, you know, like sort of enclosure that he made for the rats.

[688] Imagine being a rat, being stuck in a fucking fluorescent lighting room and the fucking metal cage and the little water bottle you've got to suck on big two.

[689] I mean, ugh, the fucking life they live is dog shit.

[690] Yeah, you're in a prison.

[691] I imagine you got a prison, a guy in solitary confinement, right?

[692] And you're offering him to get high.

[693] Of course it's going to get high.

[694] And you're being surrounded by giants.

[695] Everywhere you go, there's these enormous creatures who can easily reach in and just snuff your life out by squeezing.

[696] It's ridiculous.

[697] And by nature, you're terrified, right?

[698] Because you're a prey animal, you're, you know.

[699] Yeah, you should be running from everything.

[700] And all of a sudden you can't run.

[701] You can't hide, right.

[702] You're in a cage.

[703] And they just reach it and grab you.

[704] and they fucking give you coke yeah which makes even more paranoid what a fucking shitty life god damn peter might have a point I interviewed this guy recently talking about animal stuff he was doing his PhD in University of Pennsylvania and he was working in psychology but there were chimps involved in his research and so they like they would come into these cages but they had this big area outside back behind the cages right where so like at night they would go hang out and there were trees and stuff and whatever and so this is in the i guess 60s or 70s and uh so he would hang out until everybody went home and he was alone and then he'd sneak back into the area where the chimps were where he wasn't allowed nobody was allowed right like walking around with chimps but he was like fuck it if they kill me i don't think they'll kill me no problem so he and he was a hippie right um actually he's the guy who who now owns this chain of paleo restaurants in portland really cool guy rich Richard.

[705] Figures.

[706] Yeah.

[707] He opened the first mountain bike shop in the country.

[708] He's a very good businessman.

[709] Then he opened, like, he went to Portland because he wanted to be in a place where you could get all your supplies for a restaurant, all the food, within a hundred mile radius.

[710] And he studied all over the country, and he said, Portland's a place.

[711] Everything can be grown within 100 miles.

[712] He sort of was ahead of the mountain biking craze.

[713] Then he was ahead of the sort of farm.

[714] to table thing, and he opened a chain called Laughing Planet, which there were like 15 or 20 these, like vegetarian burrito shops in Portland, sold that because he had quintuple bypass surgery.

[715] Whoa.

[716] And he thought he was going to die.

[717] Sold that, bought this beautiful farm where he grows stuff now.

[718] It's just amazing.

[719] Quintuple bypass surgery.

[720] He's a vegan mountain biker?

[721] He was a vegetarian, not vegan, but he was a vegetarian.

[722] And so that's what he said.

[723] He's like, I work out, I'm eating vegetarian for 20 years, what the fuck?

[724] And he started reading about, like, wait a minute, this idea of low fat is bullshit, you know.

[725] Oh, he wasn't taking healthy fats.

[726] Right.

[727] He didn't know, you know, so now he's shifted to paleo, and now he's opened, like, you know, he's got this expanding business of paleo restaurants.

[728] Anyway, what am I talking?

[729] Oh, so he would go back with these chimps, and he told this hilarious story where he's with this chimp, and he'd, like, go back there and, you know, smoke a joint at the end of the day.

[730] and the chimps are wandering around.

[731] And one day this chimp comes over and sits down next to him and he's smoking a joint and the chimp reaches up.

[732] No. He does not get this chimp high.

[733] He adds the joint to the chimp.

[734] No, he just not.

[735] The chimp hits it and gives it back to him.

[736] Oh my God.

[737] That would be the greatest video ever on YouTube.

[738] A dude gets, there's one of a chimp fucking, a frog.

[739] Have you ever seen that one?

[740] Oh, I have seen that.

[741] That's kind of sad, yeah.

[742] Not for the chimp.

[743] But, But one of a chimp smoking a joint with a dude, especially a hippie, that would be the ultimate.

[744] Don't Bogart.

[745] Don't Bogart.

[746] And if you did Bogart, what are you going to do?

[747] You better just give the chimp the joint, shut the fuck up before it rips your arms off.

[748] Exactly.

[749] And what's a high chimp like, you know?

[750] Probably pretty mellow.

[751] It's like a paranoid rat.

[752] Like, how do you know?

[753] Well, that's another thing we're talking about rats being in cages.

[754] I got super high once, and I wrote a piece way back.

[755] a long time ago in my blog before my 2009 special before I started podcasting I used to write a lot and put it up in blog form and one of the things I wrote about is it's called animal prison and it became like the foundation for a lot of jokes that I went to use in some of my specials but it was about getting high I got really high once and I went to the zoo and I was super depressed not you know me personally in my personal life but being at the zoo stoned made me like especially edibles you know I had eaten a pot something or another cookie or something like that and i was like really fucked up about this i'm like this is just not fair it's it doesn't it's like it's cruel it's cruel and it's cruel in a way we're insensitive to and the joke was like hey man you know i watched the chimps they were playing with the tire swinging around look that they having a good time i'm like yeah well you can go to prison you'll see dudes playing basketball and it doesn't mean it's awesome right you know like people do what they have to do and they're in prison to have fun but they don't want to be there And that's the same thing These animals that did Like the idea that somehow or another They're being saved I guess we're supposed to accept That they're doing conservation work for sure And that some of these animals Can only exist in captivity in this day and age Or at least we have to have some of them in captivity To ensure their survival Because humans are pushing in on their area Where they live But fuck man That's especially with intelligent animals That's depressing as shit Yeah I've got a friend I just did a podcast with him the other day he's sort of been hired by the whole marine mammal consortium to try to help them deal with their image problem from blackfish and blah, blah, blah, right?

[756] So we were talking about this.

[757] And he's been working a lot in this place in Florida where the dolphins are used for therapeutic, you know, with like vets with PTSD and kids who are artistic and stuff.

[758] and the dolphins seem to have a real sensitivity and there's an interaction.

[759] And a lot of them are born in captivity.

[760] If you let them loose, they'd be dead within hours.

[761] You know, they don't know how to survive and stuff.

[762] But anyway, we're talking about this.

[763] And, you know, I said like, okay, you know, what are you going to do about the, I understand he has good arguments about the dolphins and the smaller animals.

[764] But like, what are he going to do about the orcas, man?

[765] You know, how do you fix that?

[766] And he's like, he said, there's no way to fix that.

[767] like they just should not be there because you can't build an enclosure that is even arguably big enough and interesting enough for them and they live they're social so you can't just have one you got to have like 15 of them you know they're very community based animals so isn't it possible that they could take an area in a bay like a very large area and take all the world's captive orcas and transport them to this large bay like take a large area in a part of the world that we don't go but it's habitable, inhabitable for them.

[768] And then, you know, fence something off underwater.

[769] Spend a lot of money to fix this issue.

[770] And then slowly but surely reintroduce them to the wild.

[771] Give them a steady source of food, like provide them with food, and then provide them with food that's you have to catch.

[772] Yeah.

[773] Like give them more and more food that's like you're going to let a tuna go or whatever the fuck it is.

[774] Yeah, habituate them and make it a project.

[775] I don't buy the idea that it's impossible to take them and let them live in wild you can take a 40 -year -old man and teach him how to go forage through the woods i mean look at survivor man that fucking guy he taught himself how to do that shit he he can exist for months at a time out there in the wilderness and there's a lot of people that do that they have survival skills like that's what we call it we used to call hunting and gathering is now survival skills it's not just existing as a person foraging for food like people used to do for fucking untold thousands of years i think you could teach orcas but it would have to take a long time be a huge It would cost a lot of money, but you owe that to the fucking orcas, man. I agree.

[776] I agree.

[777] But, you know, we're not, we're not, yeah, we get into what we owe to other, you know, being.

[778] Sure.

[779] It's a never -ending.

[780] I mean, you ever read Peter Singer, you know him?

[781] No. He wrote Animal Liberation, which sort of started the whole animal rights frenzy in the 70s, whenever it was.

[782] Really interesting philosopher teaches at Princeton now, I think.

[783] And he made a really interesting argument about using primates in.

[784] drug testing.

[785] And because, you know, the argument there is, well, they're close to humans.

[786] So their responses to pharmaceuticals and things is as close as we're going to get for our own testing.

[787] And what he said, he's one of these guys who just thinks really clearly wherever it goes and he doesn't give a shit.

[788] And so his argument was, okay, a chimpanzee has the intelligence and sort of demonstrable awareness of a three or four -year -old kid.

[789] So they're beings, they're thinking, they're experiencing, they've got emotions, they've got relationships, there's no question, right?

[790] They're not fish, they're not, you know.

[791] And every year, thousands of babies are born with no brain, with, I forget the technical, the medical term for it, but their brain never developed in the fetus and they're born.

[792] Thousands, really?

[793] Yeah, maybe it's hundreds.

[794] know, but a lot.

[795] And his point was, these babies are all going to die.

[796] They're born.

[797] They put them on these machines, keep them going.

[798] They're your feeding tubes and whatever.

[799] But they're never going to survive.

[800] They feel no pain because they have no brains.

[801] So why aren't we testing pharmaceuticals on them?

[802] Wow.

[803] Because they're human.

[804] That's some dark shit.

[805] Well, it is.

[806] You're right.

[807] But it makes sense.

[808] It certainly makes sense logically.

[809] It's the emotional fact.

[810] Instead, we're torture.

[811] you know these living thinking you know aware beings yeah um the idea being of course i mean the argument against that is that if it saves one human being who cares about the champ that's that's the the idea you know if it saves your wife right you know if your wife is saved you're you know the person you love more than anyone else in this world is saved because they tortured some chimp it's it's not a beautiful thing you know it's it's very dark but you would be happy that that champ gave up his life right but i think that's why we have governments right to think beyond that personal level because you know that's what war is right war is innocent people are dying so that you know and and you know there is no good choice right it's like okay a thousand innocent people die there or a hundred thousand innocent people die here well a government exists to kill those thousand innocent people essentially isn't that the real problem like what makes someone uniquely qualified to be the person that makes a very difficult choice yeah and really no one deserves to be a person who decides this group of people dies so this group of people lives or that this monkey gets a you know a battery cable attached to his dick right that's why psychopaths do so well because they're not worried about the consequences because they're they're able to make those decisions is it cycle or sociopaths i've never really understood the difference between the two to be honest with you i think sociopaths don't feel empathy and psychopaths like we're prone to more violent behavior if that makes any sense like i think sociopaths from what it's been explained to me and i might be butchering this probably should look but uh i think the idea being that they're not feeling empathy like the rest of us are like if so if they by their actions they get ahead but somebody else suffers it doesn't bother them whereas for you you would do something that would hurt someone's feelings and you'd be like man i just can't fucking sleep is so freaking me out you know they don't have that right that sense of empathy i have a friend who wrote a book called the psychopath test oh i've read that yeah john ronson yeah i started reading it i should say i think i bailed on it i got bored Yeah, well, you get the idea pretty quickly.

[812] I'm all ADD on that shit like that, man. I'm really good with like a documentary on stuff like that, but like getting deep into the dry issues of psychopaths and sociopaths.

[813] What's his take on it?

[814] You know, essentially that psychopaths are very prominent in fields like Wall Street, military, you know, they do really well in areas where you have to make decisions.

[815] that, you know, hurt people and you don't give a shit.

[816] Here's an article in psychology today that explains it in a way.

[817] Many forensic psychologists, psychiatrists, and criminologists use the terms sociopathy and psychopathy interchangeably.

[818] Leading experts disagree on whether there are meaningful differences between the two conditions.

[819] I contend that there are clear and significant distinctions.

[820] Okay.

[821] Sociopaths and psychopaths share.

[822] This is what they share.

[823] A disregard for the laws and social norms.

[824] disregard for the rights of others, a failure to feel remorse or guilt, a tendency to display violent behavior.

[825] In addition to their commonalities, sociopaths and psychopaths also have their own unique behavioral characteristics as well.

[826] Sociopaths tend to be nervous and easily agitated.

[827] They are volatile and prone to emotional outbursts, including fits of rage, blah, blah, blah.

[828] Codontas.

[829] Yeah, psychopaths, on the other hand, are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities.

[830] Interesting.

[831] That's what I would think of as sociopaths.

[832] Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people's trust.

[833] They learn to mimic emotions.

[834] Now, I've met people that do that, despite their inability to actually feel them and will appeal normal to unsuspecting people.

[835] I've seen that.

[836] I've seen that where I've had conversations with people and I realize that they're like mimicking emotions.

[837] Like, oh, yeah, man, it's horrible that that happened to him.

[838] Like, oh, you don't care at all.

[839] Like, you're feeling like no, you know, there's a, there's like certain.

[840] feelings that people have, what you feel, you, you see it in them, that they feel remorse or they feel sad or they feel empathy.

[841] And then there's other people that are like faking that where it's like they're doing bad acting on a soap opera.

[842] Especially in L .A., dude.

[843] I mean, I was on a TV show here two weeks ago or something, and it struck me how the sort of their concentric circles of bullshit that get more intense the closer you get to the cameras.

[844] You know, there's like, you check into the hotel and they're like, hey, Dr. Ryan, I said, so nice.

[845] kind of light but friendly but they don't give a fuck right and then you got the driver who's like hey is everything good can i help you with that sir you know and then you get the assistant producer who greets you at the door oh we're so thrilled you're here dr ryan uh you know it's just and then you're actually on stage in front of the cameras and the the shit is just like up to your fucking neck it's unbelievable yeah like all the fake emotions what kind of a show was it well i'm Legally, I can't talk about it.

[846] I can't name it, but it was like a talk show, you know, kind of like where I was talking about monogamy and, you know, hey, you know.

[847] And the, like, the segment before me went long.

[848] It was about dirty underwear and, you know, so I'm like.

[849] That's important, dude.

[850] That's important to discuss.

[851] Are there issues?

[852] Is there bacteria?

[853] Can people die?

[854] Yeah.

[855] What about vaccinations?

[856] They protect you against dirty underwear?

[857] And I'm not saying it's a pretty, I don't, I've never seen the show.

[858] show so i don't know if it's a good show or a bad show but it's just and i've experienced this in lots of shows not this show all right but lots of shows where like your tv particularly you know why am i talking to you about tv but in my experience at least the way i interact with tv it's just such bullshit yeah it can be certainly can be but there's some shows you do that aren't bullshit like they're like the jimmy kimmel show for instance you talk to jimmy kimmel he's like totally there he seems like a real guy he's a real guy he's a real guy I often wonder about I was talking to this buddy doing the dolphin stuff he dated a woman who was on a rebound from George Clooney talking about a tough gig right like you're the rebound from George Clooney I would take that over the rock I'll take George Clooney all day all day I dated a woman who told me I was even better than Fabio in bed you should never know that a chick fucked Fabio you're taking Fabio sloppy seconds good Lord I know.

[859] Good Lord.

[860] Well, she didn't tell me until it was too late to change course, but it's one of the most dubious compliments I've ever received.

[861] That's interesting.

[862] Even better than Fabio.

[863] So Jimmy Kimmel was dating a girl who was on the rebound from George Clooney?

[864] No, not Jimmy Kimmel, my buddy, Chris.

[865] But anyway, that got us talking about famous people and who seem cool like George Clooney.

[866] To me, George Clooney seems like if you hung out with him, he would actually be a cool guy.

[867] Yeah, I would imagine he'd be pretty cool.

[868] And so, like, how hard is that?

[869] For a guy like that, who's probably a thousand times more famous than, like, my level of fame?

[870] Yeah.

[871] He's probably, like, legitimately, like, a thousand times more famous than me. That's pretty intense fame.

[872] He can't go anywhere.

[873] Yeah.

[874] George Clooney shows up, like, helicopters will start circling the restaurant that he's at, and people just jump out of buses with cameras and try to touch him.

[875] And it relates to what we were just talking about, like, that fake emotion.

[876] motion thing, right?

[877] How much true input is he getting from human beings?

[878] Well, he goes to other countries.

[879] That's one of the things that I think benefits you for a guy like that.

[880] I think he's got like a fucking villa in France.

[881] France.

[882] Notice how I said France because I'm video shirt.

[883] I didn't say France.

[884] Okay.

[885] I'm not like that.

[886] He's got mad cash.

[887] That's cool because it insulates him from a lot of the bullshit.

[888] Well, yeah, but it also attracts the bullshit.

[889] Well, I was going to say my buddy is friends with Johnny Depp.

[890] And he spent some time with Johnny Dip in England.

[891] And he said it was the most ridiculous scene you've ever seen in your life.

[892] The guy can't go anywhere.

[893] Everywhere he goes, there's people with earpieces in and suits.

[894] And they follow him everywhere.

[895] They're peripheral.

[896] And you try to go outside.

[897] He was like going outside to have a cigarette.

[898] And they swarm on him.

[899] We get your ride somewhere.

[900] Do you need something?

[901] Like you're always catered to.

[902] So he lives in this weird, insulated world where he runs from restaurant to restaurant and has chefs come over his house and cook.

[903] You can't go to stores.

[904] Everywhere he goes, he's being swarmed upon.

[905] And for him, apparently it happened after the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that took things to this critical nuclear place.

[906] Where it's at right now, where he's just like, he's a story.

[907] He's an object of attention everywhere he goes.

[908] It's got to be really hard to keep your shit together when you're like that.

[909] Yeah.

[910] Your version of reality is so fucked.

[911] Yeah, I mean, you're not getting the sort of feedback that you need just to, like, know, what's real, you know?

[912] How do you, it's interesting, the character that put him over, you know, into that world of strangeness was based on Keith Richards, right?

[913] Yeah.

[914] Who, yesterday I was talking to my friend Tau, who he's an Italian prince talking about European.

[915] He was married to Olivia Wilde for seven years, you know, so he's sort of like, he's like in this world, strange world.

[916] and he was talking, his father was this crazy Italian prince who hung out with Fellini and Bridget Bardot and Salvador Dali and, you know, he sort of started the Dolce Vita in Italy and the 50s and squander this huge family fortune like in his lifetime on women and boats and parties and all this shit.

[917] I love him.

[918] Yeah, really interesting cat.

[919] Anyway, Tao is a great flamenco guitarist.

[920] And we were talking about like, how do you get in?

[921] When did you start playing guitar?

[922] And he said, well, when I was 13, the Rolling Stones came to, like, Rome or wherever they were playing.

[923] And my dad is an old friend of Keith Richards, and he took me to the hotel where the stones were staying.

[924] And Keith had, like, a whole floor to himself, right?

[925] And we went in, and there were all these people and all this scene.

[926] And actually, Keith Richards' father was there, he mentioned.

[927] And my dad mentioned to Keith, like, hey, I was learning.

[928] guitar and Keith had a flamenco guitar there and he picked it up and he did a few like riffs and he said to him if you want to learn to play guitar learn flamenco because if you can play flamenco you can play anything wow and towel now is a fucking great flamenco guitarist and he's like man if Keith Richards tells you what to do like you know that's what you do you know he fucking went with it it's great that makes sense because that flamenco is very fast finger movements you would have to develop some incredible coordination of your fingers yeah like doing a stone's riff after that is easy yeah it's uh i mean i always loved music but have never had any inclination to learn an instrument yeah i love it do you regret that nope no it's not enough time you know i mean i i have enough forms of expression that i'm enjoying i just i think it would be cool as fuck man yeah you watch like a jimmy hendricks solo and you go good lord can you imagine if You could just.

[929] Just the feeling of being in it that deeply, the flow, you know.

[930] It's just, that's what I regret.

[931] You know, I never had the discipline.

[932] I took electric guitar lessons for two weeks and quit, and I took piano for a week and quit.

[933] And, you know, I was just too much of a fuck off as a kid.

[934] I could never get over the hump to where it started being enjoyable.

[935] Yeah, you need to be obsessed to get really good at anything, whether it's the drums or, you know, the guitar or playing chess.

[936] I mean, it's all the same thing, really.

[937] It's like you need to just get obsessed at that particular discipline.

[938] You know, whatever it is that it takes to get really good at it, a big part of what makes someone really good at anything is like this crazy obsession.

[939] If you don't have that obsession, you'll just drift in and out from one thing to the other until you find the thing that you really are obsessed with.

[940] Do you think the, now, obsession is defined, you know, in the psychological terms, as a pathology, right?

[941] obsessive compulsive disorder and and you know this is a very subversive kind of thought but it's like in our society this relates back to the psychopaths who who attain great success are i mean our most really successful people uh responding to some deep trauma you know what i mean like they say comedians you know there's some need for approval and you know make people laugh make people love you you know because whatever your family's I don't know as many comedians as you do, but, you know, you always hear that, right?

[942] You know, because I needed the attention in actors, like, they need people looking at them.

[943] They need to be on stage.

[944] They're, like, drinking that up because there's some need.

[945] It nourishes them on some level.

[946] Right.

[947] So I wonder, like, is there, you know, like I'm thinking about people who say, like, I learned to play guitar so I could get laid, you know, because the girls were, I guess I didn't, if I didn't think of it that way.

[948] So, like, if you had a strategy.

[949] Nobody told me I would get late.

[950] Or maybe if you and your friends got together and you were like, man, we're having a hard time getting late.

[951] Okay, here's a bit.

[952] Let's form a band.

[953] We're just make a band.

[954] I think you probably wouldn't be as good as if you guys were like, man, can you man?

[955] Look, the stones were our age when they got together.

[956] Let's just fucking do this guys.

[957] You know, if you, like, really had this desire to produce something that people loved.

[958] Yeah.

[959] And that's what you kind of have to do.

[960] You have to, I think to get to be a Keith Richards, you have to have this desire to produce something that people are going to love.

[961] Because when you listen to his guitar riffs, or any great guitar, Stevie or Avon, anyone, I mean, they have to have this deep desire to connect with just the correct sounds that's coming out of their mind, their imagination, their skill, their interpretation of the moment, you know?

[962] Like, that's why people like when someone does a guitar solo, the idea being that this guy's just feeling it, you know, it's not the exact, same solo every time every time they're doing it like you know if a guy just just starts riffing and everybody starts cheering and going along with it you want to see like what's what's in that guy right at that moment and expresses itself through all the discipline or all the years that he's practiced guitar and then the finger coordination that it's able to achieve and and you know there's some shit that's like you could tell they're just kind of they're just going fast right you know there's going fast yeah there's people that shred and it's really cool and it's really and then there's like some Stevie Ray Vaughn shit there's some Stevie Ray Vaughn where you like feel like him crying through the guitar yeah like there's like there's like this emotion that's attached to it and then people connect to and when you see like Stevie Ray Vaughn's version of Little Wing yeah you know you see a great guitarist inhabiting and loving another great guitarist you know there's something really beautiful about that fuck yeah dude fuck yeah he's his his version of voodoo child is the only version I accept other than Hendricks.

[963] Obviously, I'm a huge Hendricks fan.

[964] I mean, that's why I named this the Joe Rogan experience to rip off Hendricks.

[965] Oh, really?

[966] Always, from the time I was a little kid.

[967] I mean, he just, he has a special quality to him.

[968] Like, that song Voodoo Child, to me, like that just the...

[969] The opening, yeah.

[970] Coming.

[971] Where the fuck did that come?

[972] Who did that before him?

[973] I mean, compare music before Hendrix and after Hendrix.

[974] it's like I really believe that like especially voodoo child there's something about that beginning riff like when he really gets into it it's like god he was on some new place he was in some new dimension when he was and restring the guitar like fuck that I'm not learning that I'm doing it my way that's he's just like so unconcerned with what came before in a way you know it's drugs yeah he was on drugs well that that's what I was going to say and honestly the first time it's special drugs not coke oh yeah Yeah, right?

[975] No, he's on all sorts of different drugs.

[976] Generally, yeah.

[977] I mean, the, I, I, there it is.

[978] There it is.

[979] Hit that, crank that shit up.

[980] Listen to this.

[981] What you really have to think about it is, like, this is the late 1960s when this guy comes out with this.

[982] Now, if you just go 10 years before that, you're dealing with, like, Buddy Holly.

[983] Yeah.

[984] And, which is great music, but this is just some next level shit.

[985] Like, listen to this part.

[986] This is one dude, by the way.

[987] And the distortion.

[988] I have a few all -time favorite songs.

[989] I don't have like an all -time favorite song.

[990] But I listen to that motherfucker when I'm in my car on the way to the gym.

[991] I'll time it for like the last five minutes before I get to the gym is Voodoo Child.

[992] Because it's just fucking blast it.

[993] Put my phone on airplane mode.

[994] Fuck you.

[995] And hear this cranked.

[996] Always high.

[997] it just touches like your DNA you feel that guy's expression right through the sound I get that with a do you ever listen to Danny California Red Hot Chili Peppers Oh yeah okay yeah There's a guitar There's a thing Like the whole song builds to this fucking wild guitar lead Near the end And like if I'm working out Or running or something I always have that on my playlist Because I just There's like energy comes out of the ether You know It's amazing Yeah, they had a cover of higher ground that was one of the few covers that I actually enjoyed as much as the original, just like Steve Ray Vaughn's version of Voodoo Child.

[998] There's some covers that are better.

[999] I really love that genre of music, you know, where a cover, like, gets the essence of the song in a way that the original performer may have missed.

[1000] Like, there are a few examples, I mean, all along the Watchtower, you know.

[1001] I think Hendricks does that better than Dylan.

[1002] Dylan and Dylan actually said that as well yeah it's just so different his version is a different song i mean it's just so it's so different and you know here's one that people don't talk suspicious minds Dwight yokem did a cover of suspicious minds right oh it's better than Elvis yeah people get mad fine young cannibals did a version of it which isn't bad yeah they did a great version too it's a funny song suspicious minds too you know because it's Elvis saying oh come on baby you know No, I wouldn't lie to you.

[1003] Who are you going to believe?

[1004] Me or your lying eyes, right?

[1005] Especially in context of Elvis's life.

[1006] Exactly.

[1007] You're a ghost, dude.

[1008] Come on, baby.

[1009] It's like JFK saying, hey, I'm a one woman.

[1010] Yeah, sure you are, dude.

[1011] Well, not only that, Elvis was probably on so many pills.

[1012] He didn't know if he was a monogamous.

[1013] Oh, when he was the drug czar.

[1014] Oh, he was drifting in and out of consciousness all day long.

[1015] I mean, he was a...

[1016] Poor guy.

[1017] Talk about trauma leading to great fame, right?

[1018] Yeah.

[1019] In a way, yeah.

[1020] Yeah.

[1021] Damaged soul, you know.

[1022] know, seeking approval from the world.

[1023] Well, I often wonder if what we're seeing when we see great, like, great resonating forms of expression, whether it's art or whether it's comedy or, you know, any music, I always wonder if what we're looking at is a mathematical equation.

[1024] If we're looking at like a yin and a yang, an ebb and a pull, and that the ebb, you know, whatever it was that created this great deficit, responds the body, the mind, the soul, the spirit responds with this incredible work of art to sort of make up for all the trauma that it experienced when it was young which is why it's it's really tough to find someone who had this really ultra privileged life who is accepted and loved and nurtured in every way who becomes this really fascinating great artist right like what you usually find is these people that are in pain and torn up and exactly yeah and i i often wonder if we're looking at it in a cultural context and we sort of, oh, that guy's an asshole or his life sucked or she was abused or he was neglected.

[1025] And we're looking at it in terms of like these definitions that we've already categorized in our mind.

[1026] But in fact, what it really is is like math.

[1027] And all evens out.

[1028] Yeah, that we're looking at a minus and a positive.

[1029] We're looking at Jimmy Hendrix, this young black man in this incredibly racist world who comes along, like right at the moment of this psychedelic acceptance where the whole world especially young people are turning on in a way that they never have before the Beatles come along they do the white album people are freaking out Clapton you know Layla Pink Floyd and then all the sudden this dude comes along who's dressed like a fucking Indian he's got a headband on and he's playing music from outer space chewing gum yeah I mean you know Phil Hartman uh rest of soul who's a good friend from news radio and he was uh He grew up when he was young, rather, he lived in Hollywood and he worked as like a stage hand when Jimmy Hendricks played the whiskey.

[1030] And so he was right there with Jimmy Hendricks holding the speaker because sometimes the speakers would fall off the stage.

[1031] Like they were on the edge of the stage and you had to be there in case something happened.

[1032] So he was there when Hendricks first burst on the scene.

[1033] So he is as close to Hendricks as you already.

[1034] Talk about a front row seat, right?

[1035] And he played guitar.

[1036] Phil did everything.

[1037] He was a true genius.

[1038] He was a true genius.

[1039] I mean, he really could do anything.

[1040] And he had an incredible work ethic, that guy.

[1041] Like, we joke around about it.

[1042] We had this thing we did at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

[1043] He got a star earlier this year.

[1044] And Stephen Root and Candy Alexander and I were joking around about how Phil had these notes.

[1045] Like, he would have, his script would be, he would have tabs for each scene and, like, these different color tabs for every scene that he was in.

[1046] And everything would be highlighted.

[1047] he would have notes and stickums and everything was like super organized and we were always like can i borrow your script you know like nobody could find their fucking script but phil had his in a binder he would take his thing he would punch holes in them stick them in a binder you know he was super duper organized and anal about that kind of shit but one of his greatest moments you know when we were friends somewhere along the line he started smoking weed like all the time this is before i actually smoked weed and um he did it because he had a lot of problems there's a lot of marital issues obviously that led to his wife killing him but he enjoyed like after work was done not while he was there but after work was done he enjoyed getting high he loved getting high and going on a boat and uh he had a boat and he would take his boat out and he would just love being high sailing and he was uh telling me one time we were hanging out in his room who's after after filming and he was high and he was telling me that story about him working at this club and holding the speakers for hendricks and to this day it's like one of my favorite memories of him, you know, because it's just so I could see him.

[1048] I said, this is this young guy.

[1049] It's like he was so fascinated by everything.

[1050] He's the only guy that I've ever met that I went to a strip club with, and it didn't feel creepy because he sat down.

[1051] He was, uh, he sat down.

[1052] I could say this now because he's dead.

[1053] I couldn't.

[1054] If he was alive, I'd probably not tell you this story.

[1055] Yeah.

[1056] But he used to love to go to this place called Bob's Classy Lady.

[1057] And it was, uh, in the valley.

[1058] That's great.

[1059] And Phil took me there.

[1060] Um, and and he would sit by the stage and the girls would come out and dance and he'd give them money and he was like a genuine childlike enthusiasm for their bodies Yeah You know they'd be like moving in front and be like Wow you're beautiful Oh you're beautiful He was high as fuck Just high as fuck And he was watching these girls dance And stick their genitals in his face And he just was loving it He was loving it a way that wasn't creepy Yeah Like it was weird It's like he had this almost like innocence about the way he was appreciating their bodies that I didn't feel weird being near him while this was happening because it was just me and him could you feel it as well or were you I was too insecure yeah yeah I was too uh for whatever reason there's too many preset ideas about yeah bodies and I also I was like at the time I was 26 or 27 20 maybe 28 of the most and I was pretty fucking crazy you know I was just a different person it was just I was to operating on the momentum of my youth and chaos and I couldn't even believe I was hanging out with Phil Hartman at a strip club like to me like seven years before that I had been fighting you know it was like so recent it's like my competition days so flavored like who I was because like you know you're talking about the word obsessed what it means I if it is a sickness the sickness meaning that you can get good at something because of that sickness I was 100 % sick when I was a kid I was sick as fuck as a psychologist in that way, you know, not in a way where, like, didn't care about other people's feelings, but just, maybe psychotic's not the word now that we've researched it.

[1061] Maybe it's the word is just, just singular in my purpose and vision on earth.

[1062] I just wanted to do that and only that.

[1063] Monomania.

[1064] Yeah, and so it was hard for me to get out of that headset for a long time.

[1065] It was, I was, I was to drift back into that headset and try to fight it off and try to like assimilate and be normal, but I felt like, I, like, almost like a drug.

[1066] addict who had stopped doing coke or heroin or meth or something like that.

[1067] I had like gone into this world where there was no more fight or flight.

[1068] There was no more terrifying bouts of competition followed by preparation, followed by more competition.

[1069] Now all of a sudden I'm hanging out with Phil Hartman in his trip club.

[1070] Did performance feel that way at all?

[1071] Like, you know, you got a taping on Friday leading up to it.

[1072] You're sort of nervous.

[1073] You're preparing, you know, to some extent.

[1074] Definitely not a TV show.

[1075] TV shows, especially news radio, was one of the easiest job.

[1076] I've ever had in my life in terms of the actual performance of it.

[1077] I mean, you would be a little nervous before.

[1078] Make sure you knew your lines.

[1079] Make sure you get it right.

[1080] But the cats was so fucking good that, like, you were working with these people that were so funny.

[1081] All you had to do is just do your thing.

[1082] Like, it was me in a scene with Andy Dick.

[1083] All I had to do was just go, Andy, what are you talking about, man?

[1084] What are you talking about?

[1085] And then he would do his wackiness, and then I would do whatever I had to say.

[1086] And the hard part was not laughing, you know?

[1087] It was remembering your lines first.

[1088] And then not laughing.

[1089] That was amazing.

[1090] But to be acting.

[1091] What about stand -up?

[1092] That's a little different because you're creating it.

[1093] You know, in news radio, they allowed us a lot of room for ad -libbing.

[1094] But even if you do create it, you're interacting with someone else.

[1095] And it's, you know, you're pretending some things are happening.

[1096] And either works or it doesn't work.

[1097] And it doesn't work.

[1098] You get together.

[1099] You take a five -minute break.

[1100] The writers all would, you know, Paul and Josh and all these guys would all huddle together and we'd try to come up with another line.

[1101] You know, so it's like everyone was working together on this thing.

[1102] So it was, in a sense, way easier than something.

[1103] stand up yeah because stand up like you're on your own bitch you know if you're out there bombing especially people paid money to see it it's fucking you know you better come correct you better have some shit to say so stand up more so but still never as terrifying as the the in -between bouts between competition it was terrifying you ever was there ever any sort of possibility of you being on saturday live i never wanted to act at all i didn't you're not a sketch that no i don't want to do that so how how did it it happened?

[1104] I mean, you don't have to talk about it.

[1105] You've covered this before.

[1106] I've definitely have.

[1107] It's super simple.

[1108] I just got a development deal.

[1109] I did MTV half hour, comedy hour.

[1110] I got a development deal.

[1111] They offered me a lot of money.

[1112] Next thing you know, I was on a Disney show of all things for Fox.

[1113] Two hilarious things.

[1114] Wow.

[1115] Disney show for Fox was called Hardball.

[1116] When that was over, I was totally ready to quit show.

[1117] You're doing a voice or your?

[1118] No, it was a character.

[1119] I played a baseball player.

[1120] Frank Valenti.

[1121] And it was a terrible show.

[1122] It started off really good.

[1123] The guys who created it were writers from the Simpsons, Jeff Martin and Kevin.

[1124] Kevin Kern.

[1125] They were writers from The Simpsons.

[1126] They wrote for married with children.

[1127] They were brilliant, brilliant guys.

[1128] But they were soft spoken, you know, writers, intellectuals.

[1129] They got steamrolled.

[1130] They got steamrolled.

[1131] They got steamrolled by hacks.

[1132] Yeah.

[1133] The people who came in, you know, Fox didn't think they were strong enough to run a show.

[1134] So they fucked up their pilot.

[1135] They fucked up all, all the episodes.

[1136] And they tanked a great idea.

[1137] You know, they were baseball fans.

[1138] And they wanted to make a hilarious sitcom about baseball akin to married with children for baseball.

[1139] Right.

[1140] That was their idea.

[1141] And I hated it.

[1142] I hated, I didn't hate them, and I loved being in the pilot.

[1143] Jim Brewer was actually in the pilot with me. Jim played, it was a one -time role for him.

[1144] And it was just a bad scene.

[1145] It was just not fun.

[1146] I didn't enjoy working with actors.

[1147] I thought, some of them became friends, but a bunch of them were like unbelievably self -centered and weird.

[1148] So you got no training or you never did theater in Boston.

[1149] Zero, no desire either, which is, like, infuriating to them, that all of a sudden I was in their turf.

[1150] Yeah, right, of course.

[1151] Who's this guy?

[1152] And I played the baseball star.

[1153] I was the guy who was the star of the team.

[1154] So it was based on your comedy?

[1155] No, not at all.

[1156] Oh, the MTV thing wasn't a...

[1157] No. My comedy, like, got me to the MTV thing, but the sitcom, they had already written it.

[1158] I just, they just cast me. I met them, and they said, you could be that guy.

[1159] And so, boom, all of a sudden, I'm in Hollywood.

[1160] and they're putting makeup on me Is that when you moved out of here?

[1161] I did the pilot first so I came out here to visit I got one of those Oakwood apartments in Burbank that everybody automatically goes to they have these rented furnished apartments they have cable it's beautiful you just move right in sleep in some bed that some dude before he's been farting and jerking off and I did that and then it became it got picked up and then I got an apartment I signed a lease because I figured oh this is going to stay i had the oak wood for like a couple of weeks and i go oh the show's doing well and they thought it was going to get picked up and then it got canceled yeah so then uh i got news radio same thing it's just uh audition went in for an audition there's a cattle call it's like a hundred dudes yeah i met them went in did the audition came back did a second audition bam i'm on a show that's amazing sitting there at the table read with phil hartman dave foley so all told being on news radio i had even thought about ever acting for less than a year And this was on my second TV show That's fucking insane It's totally insane And the second show I ever auditioned for it by the way I'd only auditioned for two shows ever And I was on both of them It didn't make any sense And so you know So to what do you attribute this Lucky as fuck That for sure Lucky as fuck And the ability to perform under pressure One of the things about sitcoms About auditioning for them It's so unnatural You're in this room There's a table There's these people that you don't know And you're supposed to pretend that you know We're on a tropical island and we're trying to find where the first aid cabin is.

[1162] You know, it's fake.

[1163] Yeah.

[1164] Like, and a lot of times people like, oh, my God, my life depends on this, my bills.

[1165] And some people have never had to perform under pressure before.

[1166] But being a stand -up helps that tremendously because you're accustomed to being nervous.

[1167] And then fighting helps that tremendously because you're accustomed to being nervous.

[1168] So those two things, you know, I performed under pressure more than the average person, even though I didn't have a lot of acting experience.

[1169] Interesting.

[1170] That's a very interesting way to look at it.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] I just, I mean, I'm interested in all this.

[1173] I just watched that SNL special the other night.

[1174] Yeah.

[1175] A lot of Phil Hartman.

[1176] He was amazing.

[1177] And a lot of audition tapes as well.

[1178] He's one of the reasons why I never wanted to do it, though.

[1179] His, his depiction of working in Silent Live was not good.

[1180] No. A lot of people hated it.

[1181] He hated it.

[1182] Well, Phil is a nice fucking guy.

[1183] He was a nice fucking guy.

[1184] He was really nice.

[1185] It's a very ultra -competitive.

[1186] mean -spirited place and Phil had the remnants of that almost like as a defensive shell when he first started working on news radio like he would say like things that like were really uncharacteristic of him later and it was really and we actually talked about it and he I don't want to name any names but he was talking about some mean people that he worked with on the show Cherry Chase I don't know I don't believe he's got that reputation he does yeah a lot of people that come from that environment do because I think it's really hostile and they're all competing to get their stuff in the air right and there's a lot of backstabbing you know there's people like doing favors for writers and trying to get their stuff in and there's a lot of there's a lot of greatness that comes from that too i mean the satir -in live if you look at the overall body of work and you just cherry -pick greatness my god i mean you have this incredible bouquet of john balushi and phil hartman and adam sandler and chris rock i mean you know his greatness eddie motherfucking murphy who was genius on that show him playing buckwheat my god i mean it was amazing it was it was a it was a but But I never had a desire to do that.

[1187] I don't want to compete with a bunch of people.

[1188] I don't want to be in a hostile environment.

[1189] I believe it or not, it doesn't make sense because I did martial arts my whole life.

[1190] I was trying to avoid hostility.

[1191] I don't want to argue.

[1192] I don't want any conflict.

[1193] I don't want to compete.

[1194] The beautiful thing about stand -up comedy is you're creating it yourself.

[1195] You go up there, you do it.

[1196] You don't have to argue with people about it.

[1197] If they don't like it, they're not going to laugh.

[1198] And then you're fucked.

[1199] You've got to restructure it and figure it out yourself.

[1200] That's how I feel about writing books.

[1201] I mean, sometimes I miss like an idealized.

[1202] team kind of environment because I know how wonderful that can be but the reality is that generally when you work with people you don't necessarily like each other and it's a pain in the ass because of all the weird ego shit and so I kind of like that I can at least for a while make a living sitting in a room alone you know it's it's got its ups and its downs of course there's also a positive aspect from the reader's point of view that if I read a chris ryan book I know I'm getting Chris Ryan's thoughts.

[1203] They're coming unadulterated from your mind to your typewriter, your keyboard, rather.

[1204] Yeah, and that's something I'm conscious of.

[1205] You know, I read this, I don't know, maybe it was that book you recommended to me, the The War of Art. But somewhere I read, someone said, always write posthumously.

[1206] Ooh.

[1207] You know, write as if you're dead because you will be and the book will still be there.

[1208] Wow.

[1209] So, like, let go, you know?

[1210] Say what's true.

[1211] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's amazing.

[1212] Yeah, that's way better than, like, if you're, like, a Beverly Hills housewife, you're going to write some shit that's only based on, you know, like, what's going to sell.

[1213] Yeah.

[1214] You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, like, okay, how is this going to work the best?

[1215] I mean, I don't mean to single them out, but, I mean, just like some people that write some books where it's pretty obvious as they're writing the book, they're kind of bullshitting who they are and what they're projecting.

[1216] Yeah, this will connect with that part of the audience.

[1217] but I don't offend that part, so I got to, you know, you're talking earlier about that whole ebb and flow idea, the mathematical sort of it all equals out at the end.

[1218] I've thought about that a lot, not so much in terms of individuals, though it makes sense, but I've thought about that a lot in terms of historical moments, historical periods.

[1219] You know, like Vietnam, the late 60s, right, like 65 to 71, that's when, you know, more Americans are dying in Vietnam.

[1220] Right, than any other period earlier than that.

[1221] Before they ramped up, it wasn't as many.

[1222] So you've got all this conflict, all these riots in the street.

[1223] You've got Selma and Martin Luther King and all this agitation.

[1224] And at the same time, you've got Jimmy Hendrix, you've got the Beatles, you've got all this music we're talking about, amazing literature coming out of that, fashion, craziness, tie -dyes, and afros.

[1225] And, you know, it's like when the shit hits the fan, it's really interesting, you know, And interesting people rise to the top, whereas when things are stable, the interesting people just, you know, they don't get anywhere because it's two, the structures are rigid and controlling, you know.

[1226] Well, sometimes there's a need for reform and change that makes these interesting things blossom almost out of pressure, almost out of like two rocks pushing together and they create a, there's this effect that happens because people are pushed into a certain way.

[1227] And in that sense, there's always been the argument that we need a certain amount of evil to appreciate love, to appreciate happiness and good times.

[1228] We almost need a certain amount.

[1229] Like, people who, this is in certainly no way supporting war, but people who look at war, like people in this country, especially, as just something, and they don't think about it deeply, they don't think about it in a way where they comprehend the loss of lives and the sadness and the softness.

[1230] They just look at it as those are our heroes.

[1231] They got to do what they got to do over there so we could do what we do over here.

[1232] All right.

[1233] And it's like this really surface way of looking at this thing.

[1234] But it's almost because they're not experiencing the suffering.

[1235] It's almost because they're not experiencing the sorrow that they don't have this, this, this appreciation.

[1236] Like the appreciation that you have of not being at war shouldn't be that someone's over there fighting war so that you don't have to have war.

[1237] It should be that you, you realize that people can get along.

[1238] That people can love each other.

[1239] They could be friendly.

[1240] We could be nice.

[1241] You can go to a farmer's market and everybody's saying hi You know you could you know that's a bad example, but you know we can interact with each other in a in a positive way Yeah, or we could fight over an oil hole right.

[1242] You know we could shoot each other and kill babies and fucking gun down Innocents and untold numbers over an oil hole.

[1243] I mean it's almost like having No interaction with it having and and also having this sort of archetypal patriotism that everyone subscribes to that sort of like there's a very cookie cutter vibration that certain types of patriot type people give off where it's like it's really like this is where we're going to operate we're going to operate in this very small box where the soldiers are heroes and there's no there's no doubt they're doing what they do over there so we could do what we do over here and they'll repeat that mantra over and over again without any consideration whatsoever for what it means as human beings that we're you're you're dealing with groups of human beings fighting other groups of human beings for some reason that has not really been clearly defined to me that most of the people fighting have no clue what it is yeah no most none of us do very few of us do and i think that for for someone who for someone who goes over there and experiences it it's probably got to be really weird to see that sort of cookie cutter version of it being expressed by people like uh i have quite a few friends that have been overseas and been involved in the war and you talk to them and man they have sorrow they have some horrible stories they have some shit they don't like to remember they have some you know some really difficult things on their mind you know this Brian Williams thing that happened in the news one of the things that I took from it especially hard was not that Brian Williams was not telling the truth because I think he's a fucking Hollywood guy he's just a showbiz guy he's an actor he's an actor he's an actor that reads the Promptor instead of a script.

[1244] He acts like a standard actor.

[1245] I mean, like they have the tie and they talk like most of them do.

[1246] I made a mistake.

[1247] You know, like, come on, man, you're fucking lying.

[1248] You lied.

[1249] You lied about some shit that went down.

[1250] But what would hit me harder was the pilot that was involved because there was a pilot involved that gave his version of the story and did some interviews.

[1251] And he said that they were in a helicopter and the helicopter took small arms fire.

[1252] And that the helicopter in front of them is the one that got hit with the RPG and it wasn't the one that Brian Williams is in but he was telling his story about this and then people started questioning no you weren't in the helicopter with Brian Williams this guy was in the helicopter of Brian Williams and so the guy says man you know what I don't really completely remember but what I it's hard for me to go over this I had put it aside but now that I'm being forced to remember the nightmares are coming back and I'm having a really hard time sleeping and he was talking about and he said I don't really don't want to talk about it anymore you know I said what I had to say is this guy is certainly not lying he certainly did serve he certainly did get shot at he certainly did see some horrific things there's no doubt about that no one questions that they're just questioning these these his version of events versus a couple other people have their version of the events and it's just so much trauma involved in this guy's experiences over there that he's like I had tried my best to forget about this was what I could remember when people asked me about my experience with Brian Williams this is what happened and he gave a very logical account of it the reason why we were an hour late he said is we had a drop off a payload We dropped off our payload, and then we went to the – it took us about an hour, and then we went to the site where the guys landed, and then we all had huddled down together in a sandstorm.

[1253] And it was an incredibly traumatic event for all involved.

[1254] So I'm not giving Brian Williams a free pass because he remembered this in a fucked -up way, because I do think he bullshitted it.

[1255] I think he added a bunch of shit to his version of it and put himself in more danger because he didn't think that anybody would put the pieces together.

[1256] And when it came out, look, his story as itself would have been just as good.

[1257] If he said the helicopter in front of us got hit with an RPG, it didn't make you better because you almost died.

[1258] You definitely almost died anyway.

[1259] Like his version, the real version, he almost died.

[1260] The real version, he still was in a convoy that got shot at.

[1261] His helicopter didn't.

[1262] They were all forced to land and endure a sandstorm for two days.

[1263] I mean, that version is amazing.

[1264] You don't have to, but it's indicative of the kind of bullshit artists that we have that are reading off the news that he didn't like that version.

[1265] He wanted to jazz it up.

[1266] He wanted to make a little bit better.

[1267] My life was in danger for the news.

[1268] But it is, as we started this conversation, talking about how unreliable memory is, right?

[1269] And Milan Kundera said, memory is not the opposite of forgetting.

[1270] It's a way of forgetting, right?

[1271] Because we do.

[1272] We remember things, things, you know, based on emotions.

[1273] And over time, it changes.

[1274] And especially a story like that, I know a guy who's a compulsive liar.

[1275] I mean, within 15 minutes of meeting, this guy.

[1276] He told me he had trained with the seals.

[1277] He had played semi -professional basketball in Europe.

[1278] And he owned this amazing apartment that we were in that I knew he didn't own.

[1279] His boss owned, who was this billionaire guy.

[1280] And he was the private pilot of this billionaire guy, this friend of mine, right?

[1281] And so I knew this guy was full of shit, but I also knew he flies a fucking Learjet for a living.

[1282] He's like on standby to fly this guy wherever around the world.

[1283] Like, dude, that's a good story in itself.

[1284] You don't need to lie, you know?

[1285] The guy who's working at Starbucks, okay, you make up some shit, why not, you know?

[1286] Gets you through the night, but you're a fucking pilot, like, chill.

[1287] I knew a dude who is a successful comedian and a multimillionaire and would do really well, but he would be, he's a compulsive liar.

[1288] Right.

[1289] If you started talking to him about something that you do, uniquely, he would also do it.

[1290] You know, like if you talk to him about, you know, whatever, going to the jungle and researching ants he would tell you about his time always a little better than your story right yeah he smoked cigarettes and he would tell me about his kickboxing experiences with world champions that's palsy though like to get into your realm right oh it's ridiculous it's funny that's high risk well he was crazy completely he still is completely crazy but he's really talented too which is interesting he's a really good comic so it's like it's i can't give his name away folks i'm so sorry so maybe he maybe he wants maybe he might have already in the Maybe he likes the thrill, like, that maybe you're going to call him out.

[1291] Nope, I don't think so.

[1292] There's no masochistic.

[1293] No, just ego and alcohol and a bunch of craziness.

[1294] But smoking cigarettes, tell me about how he's just sparring eight rounds with the world champion, which isn't totally impossible.

[1295] I had this guy in Joe Schilling recently.

[1296] He was one of the best kickboxers in the world, and he admitted on the podcast he smokes cigarettes on a regular basis.

[1297] It's fucking crazy.

[1298] But he's also, outside of that, very dedicated as an athlete, which is ridiculous that he smoked cigarettes in an endurance sport.

[1299] but he's a bad motherfucker.

[1300] I mean, like, bona fide, legit, trains all day.

[1301] This guy wasn't training.

[1302] This guy's drinking all the time.

[1303] He's like, I know he wasn't kickboxing.

[1304] Like, he's nuts.

[1305] Like, it's just, but he almost can't help himself.

[1306] He has to just, he starts talking and it just comes out and then he gets away.

[1307] There's a weird craziness.

[1308] I remember meeting a guy once at a wine tasting, uh, who told me he was a demi -god.

[1309] What does that mean?

[1310] Well, that's what I asked.

[1311] Like, what does that mean?

[1312] Well, it means I'm, I'm half human.

[1313] My father was human.

[1314] My mother was from.

[1315] And he tells some Latin word for a star system somewhere.

[1316] And he said, like, again, within 15 minutes, he said that he was the highest paid artist in the world.

[1317] Because he had designed that Atlas thing in front of Rockefeller Center, which was the highest, the most expensive piece of art. Any whatever, like, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

[1318] And I was fascinated.

[1319] And the guy was super good -looking dude.

[1320] like he had like a little beard and a bit he was big and dark you know he looked like satan like the mephistophiles kind of thing you know and i thought he was bullshitting me i thought that my friend had like put him up to it because i was high and i was just like so he thought he was just acting like it was just being silly i thought he was goofing you know and that after a few minutes he'd break character and we'd all get a good laugh out of it and i even called my friend i was like hey dave come over here i'm talking to the devil here he's got some great story and then cassie was there and then she came and he got into her and he started trying to impress her and telling her all these stories she's a psychiatrist right she sees bullshit like before the rest of us even though it's coming you know it was very funny like the whole interaction wow yeah but it's a it's a it's a form of insanity you know like people have to scratch that itch i don't know and they kind of keep moving those people almost by nature have to keep moving Because eventually they leave a mess behind them.

[1321] Their lives implode.

[1322] The lies come down and cave in on them and then they've got to find some new person to suck her in.

[1323] And that does happen.

[1324] You know, you see that.

[1325] You see people drifting from one group of people to the other group of people.

[1326] And I've seen it.

[1327] I've seen it happen.

[1328] Yeah.

[1329] It's weird.

[1330] It's weird when you meet someone who's just obviously full of shit and lying through their teeth as they're talking.

[1331] It's a very strange thing.

[1332] Like, do you know that I know?

[1333] And you're just going to like hope that I don't call you on it?

[1334] Because you've seen that before too, right?

[1335] Or you want me to.

[1336] Yeah.

[1337] Yeah, I wonder about that, too.

[1338] Like, some people, well, again, you know, my wife's a psychiatrist.

[1339] She's dealt with all this kind of stuff.

[1340] Like, she laughs.

[1341] She just cracks up when she sees it.

[1342] She sees it immediately and just like, her way of dealing with insanity is laughter.

[1343] And she works with, well, she's worked with all sorts of people, but her sort of specialization is loony, like one flu of the cuckoo's nest kind of scenes, right?

[1344] I remember going in with her the first time I visited her at work.

[1345] She was running a mental hospital with like double doors and bars over the windows.

[1346] These criminally insane people who had killed their kids and, you know, like crazy shit, right?

[1347] And we went in there.

[1348] I wasn't prepared, man. We went in and it was just like, lunatics.

[1349] And there was this woman like must have been in her mid -50s lying on her back in a little nightgown, no underwear with her, like, like arms and legs, you know, like a crab, doing a crab thing.

[1350] And we walk in and it's like this, you know, pussy in the whole scene just scared the shit out of me. And, and, uh, Gisilda just started laughing.

[1351] Like, you crazy old lady, what are you doing?

[1352] Get out from there.

[1353] She just like laughs.

[1354] And the thing that I didn't understand until I hung out with her is that people who are psychotic know they're psychotic.

[1355] Oh.

[1356] And so they kind of know how redoubt.

[1357] ridiculous they are.

[1358] And as a doctor, when she laughs, she laughs in such a loving, accepting, I get you kind of way that it creates this instant rapport.

[1359] And they start laughing.

[1360] Oh, so she like relieves a little tension.

[1361] Right.

[1362] Like it's all, okay, I know, you're just another crazy person.

[1363] I deal with you all the time.

[1364] And come on.

[1365] It's, it's kind of like how, you know, like a gynecologist, I imagine, would have to sort of be so laid back that you kind of, you know, Okay, he's seen a million pussies at this.

[1366] You know, like it relaxes you in a way, you know?

[1367] And I think she does that with crazy people.

[1368] It's normal people who make her really uncomfortable.

[1369] Oh, yeah.

[1370] I mean, imagine if you were a gynecologist and you were super nervous about seeing someone's pussy.

[1371] Okay, I guess we're about to do it.

[1372] Hold on.

[1373] Let me have a little more wine.

[1374] Take your panties off.

[1375] Oh, Jesus, it's happening.

[1376] It's happening.

[1377] All right, let's see what you got wrong down there.

[1378] I'm going to look.

[1379] I'm looking.

[1380] I'm looking.

[1381] Going to use a mirror.

[1382] Like it's a fucking vampire.

[1383] It's Medusa.

[1384] You can't look it in the eyes.

[1385] Yeah.

[1386] So if you had to have a job, like a normal job, what job would you be good at?

[1387] What would you want to do?

[1388] Not a gynecologist, I imagine.

[1389] Outside of comedy, I would probably be a martial arts instructor.

[1390] I enjoyed doing that.

[1391] You like teaching?

[1392] Yeah, I enjoyed teaching.

[1393] I bet you're good with kids, I'll bet.

[1394] I enjoyed it.

[1395] Yeah, I used teach kids class.

[1396] I taught a lot of kids.

[1397] I taught kids up, I taught several kids from white belt all the way up to higher belts.

[1398] Like, I don't think I taught anybody up to black belt, but I got pretty close because it takes quite a few years to achieve black belt.

[1399] So for most of them, it is very rare that they make it to that far.

[1400] Like, they'll learn some lessons along the way and it'll help them, you know, in life.

[1401] But to achieve that level of ability, so there's a lot of commitment.

[1402] So most of them didn't make it.

[1403] It's like maybe one out of a thousand.

[1404] and never make it to Black Bull.

[1405] Really?

[1406] Probably in a good school.

[1407] Maybe, I mean, might be one out of 500 or 600, but it's close to 1 ,000, whatever it is.

[1408] It's not 1 % by any stretch of the imagination.

[1409] It's probably, at a good estimate, it's one -tenth and 1%.

[1410] Right.

[1411] You know, so.

[1412] But I enjoy it.

[1413] I mean, you, I imagine you'd be really good in that kind of an environment, not just martial arts, but kids in general.

[1414] Because there's like a sort of an immediate respect, you know, like, you know, like, You're, you know, you look like a badass.

[1415] So it's like, oh, take that guy seriously.

[1416] Well, I like kids.

[1417] Yeah, and you're amenable.

[1418] You're open to them.

[1419] I also, I'm a big take -in strays sort of a guy.

[1420] Right.

[1421] I've always taken to stray dogs and cats.

[1422] Yeah, I've been following your Instagram.

[1423] Lots of good cat shots in there recently.

[1424] I got a new kitten.

[1425] I love cats, man. I do, too.

[1426] They're fun.

[1427] They're fun to have around.

[1428] They don't require your constant attention to.

[1429] They've got dignity.

[1430] They've got their own life, man. And especially the key, which you obviously understand, is have multiple cats.

[1431] Yeah.

[1432] Don't have one cat.

[1433] Because then you're going to have the neurotic, freaked -out cat pissing in your bed.

[1434] But you have a...

[1435] The difference between no cat and a cat is significant.

[1436] The difference between one cat and two cats is negligible.

[1437] Yeah.

[1438] Right, as far as, like, the toll on you.

[1439] Whatever, yeah.

[1440] I mean, so get a few cats if you're going to get a cat.

[1441] And so they have each other when you're not around.

[1442] Yeah.

[1443] You know?

[1444] Yeah, I got three of them.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] That's what we had, three.

[1447] Plan.

[1448] You know, interesting enough, teaching was one.

[1449] one of the things that really helped me on Fear Factor, which Fear Factor seems like is such a stupid show, and it was kind of dumb.

[1450] But it was some people that were, like, really freaked out and didn't know how to deal with, like, the stress of competition.

[1451] Right.

[1452] And I was so used to it.

[1453] I was so used to not just, not just teaching, but coaching.

[1454] Like, even when I retired, my friend Dimitri was fighting in this big national tournament, and I was in his corner for, like, and I pumped him up, like, during, and it was, like, one of his best performances ever.

[1455] like I'm good at getting inside of people's heads, especially people that I know, and telling them what they need to hear to get them to go out there and fire them the fuck up, you know, and telling them like what you're really good at, man, you can do this.

[1456] And it's all about not having any doubt.

[1457] It's all about knowing how to stay intense and focused and go out there and do what needs to be done.

[1458] And giving them this sort of technical advice as well as like this emotional pick -me -up.

[1459] Yeah.

[1460] Like some people have like a knack for that.

[1461] And I developed it by teaching kids.

[1462] Right.

[1463] Because kids are always freaked out, man. I took a lot of kids to tournaments.

[1464] And, you know, they'd be fighting other little kids, and most likely they wouldn't get hurt.

[1465] But, you know, when you got a little 7 -year -old in front of you and you're putting pads on his head to protect him from kicks, and you're like, listen, you just got to stay focused and don't be afraid.

[1466] All you need to think about is what you're doing.

[1467] Don't think about what happens if it goes wrong.

[1468] Never think of that.

[1469] Always think about what are you trying to do.

[1470] And if things go wrong, reset and think about it again.

[1471] What is my objective?

[1472] What am I trying to do?

[1473] Stay defensive, keep moving, never stand in one place at one, you know, never stand put, always, always keep fainting, always keep the opponent guessing.

[1474] And I'd go over all the most important things to them and then pump them up until you can do this.

[1475] When you get through this, you're going to feel so good.

[1476] I know you feel terrible now, but as terrible as you feel now, when it's over, you're going to feel so good.

[1477] And when they would do it and they would compete, even if they would lose, they'd be so relieved.

[1478] I'm like, see, now you feel good.

[1479] And this experience, this harrowing, stressful experience can give birth to this new appreciation of, peace right it's it's the yin yang again right we're talking about earlier i read a book recently a fascinating book called a paradise made in hell uh rebecca solnit and it's about uh disaster sociology right so it's studying people's behaviors in behavior in disasters right and so it's fascinating because the idea we have is like that's when people get really crazy and they you loot and pillage and you know oh now i can rape and nobody'll catch me there are no cops and And in fact, what happens is the opposite, that that's when people are most generous, most kind, they form communities, they meet the neighbors, they never set a fucking word to for 10 years, they're like taking care of each other.

[1480] And people, and it sort of relates to war, too, you know, people look back on it and they say, yeah, there was a lot of horrible shit that people were dying, stuff was happening.

[1481] But I remember it as the best time in my life.

[1482] And the main guy, there's this really moving passage where this guy who sort of started the field, who's no hippie, he teaches at Nebraska or something, he's like very straight up scientist, but he said, the best way to think about disasters is not as a disaster, but as relief from the disaster that is normal life.

[1483] because in normal life we're all isolated we're all suffering alone and he's like man when the shit hits the fan that's when things get really wonderful well there's no escaping the fact that it's finite when you're watching people die around you that's for sure yeah yeah well and again it's like you were saying about you know you need the pain to enjoy the pleasure you need hunger to enjoy the food you need you know loneliness to enjoy companionship there is no light without dark It really isn't, right?

[1484] And I think people, one of the things that people miss in their lives that leads people to become very stagnant and disappointed in their existence is that there's no thrills.

[1485] You know, I think that's what leads people to, you know, to get divorced or to become drug addicts or to be self -destructive.

[1486] It's almost like people need thrills.

[1487] And when you get stuck in a really secure job where you know, all right, Chris Ryan, for the next 40 hours, You know, you're going to be stuck in this spot or, you know, eight hours a day for the next, you know, seven days, five days, whatever it is.

[1488] You're going to be stuck in this spot, and you're going to be at this desk, and you're going to be dealing with all these cases that come your way, and you're going to have to file them, and then you're going to have to write a report, and it's going to suck.

[1489] And you're going to just be lumped in to this group of people that are all doing the same thing, and you're going to do it every week.

[1490] And at the end of the week, you know, when the day is done, then you can go home and you can relax.

[1491] But there's going to be no thrills.

[1492] the biggest throw would be merging onto the highway.

[1493] Oh, my God, here we go.

[1494] Like, other than that, there's nothing.

[1495] There's no ups.

[1496] It's all just steady and normal.

[1497] And I think that's one of the reasons why people have so much road rage and stress and there's no real experience.

[1498] Yeah, there's no, they're not flushing.

[1499] I often say in Spanish, the word isolar means both to insulate and to isolate.

[1500] So we, you know, and this gets into this whole book I'm writing.

[1501] Like civilization is largely an attempt to insulate ourselves from danger, from strangers, from any sort of predators, you know, from anything that could be a danger to us.

[1502] We try to insulate ourselves from it.

[1503] And then at the end, we're isolated, right?

[1504] Because we're surrounded by this margin, this moat that protects us from what?

[1505] From life, right?

[1506] From the thing that makes you feel alive.

[1507] Right.

[1508] Like, okay, you want to be completely safe?

[1509] You know, get inside this coffin, you know, and, you know, take some anesthetics and you won't feel a goddamn thing.

[1510] But how's that different from being dead, you know?

[1511] It seems like we're all doing our part in this existence, and we're moving past what we used to be from single -celled organisms to higher primates to some weird thing right now.

[1512] That's a combination of conscious being and physical animal.

[1513] Someone like Duncan.

[1514] Someone like Duncan.

[1515] Yeah.

[1516] And we're moving in this sort of advancing direction, and it's not, it's not done.

[1517] You know, we're in, yeah, we're a part of a great process.

[1518] And the stage that you and I are in, they're going to look back at us and laugh the way we look back at Isaac Newton, wearing a powdered wig or, you know, any of the weirdos that, you know, figured out all sorts of incredible things back in history, but also believed a bunch of stupid shit as well.

[1519] Like, you look back at Copernicus and the things that he discovered, and it's unbelievable and amazing.

[1520] But today it's like, duh, like everybody knows that, you know, like, look at the life that you live.

[1521] Like, imagine being Darwin and trying to express these ideas that you formulated over the course of your life's work to a bunch of Christian scientists, which is what he was dealing with.

[1522] It's hilarious.

[1523] If you go back and think about it today, like his challenges of this idea of this monotheistic world that the scientist pretty much universally existed in at that time.

[1524] and tries to push forth these crazy theories that he's coming up with uniquely on his own.

[1525] I mean, the resistance that he must have experienced to something that today is instantaneously accepted by everyone that's in academia, in science, I mean, almost across the board.

[1526] His ideas are accepted.

[1527] So we look back at those times and we go, God, they're fucking so stupid back then.

[1528] Well, they're going to do that to us.

[1529] Sure.

[1530] And it's got going to be that long.

[1531] I mean, with Darwin, you're talking about a few hundred years.

[1532] With us, it's going to be a few decades.

[1533] And then a few decades...

[1534] Because everything goes faster now.

[1535] Yeah, it's faster and faster and faster.

[1536] And we're in the middle of this.

[1537] Yeah.

[1538] We're in the middle of this weird process of human beings changing and becoming more aware of all the flaws and the folly in our civilization and our existence.

[1539] And all the shit we're fighting for today.

[1540] All the protests like Black Lives Matter and, you know, people fighting for rights of, you know, everyone across the board from women to gays to this to that.

[1541] like what we're doing is we're trying to patch up the holes in this crazy system with with agitation and anger and loud voices and you know social media campaigns and it's essentially all just trying to make this thing into a more coherent more advanced version of what it is now and then that in turn will find the inherent problems in its existence and it will move just like the monkeys from you know 200 ,000 years ago that became human beings were fighting off all these different creatures.

[1542] and realize, like, yeah, we got to make houses.

[1543] This is bullshit.

[1544] Like, this fucking living in trees is bullshit.

[1545] The cats climb trees, man. My fucking tired of my baby's getting eaten.

[1546] Like, let's figure out spears and snakes.

[1547] You know, you know, let's figure a way to make a better situation.

[1548] And I think we're in the middle of that, man. I think we just, like all things, you take it for granted that you're in the middle of it.

[1549] Well, if you look back on your childhood, you know, and today you look back and you go, wow, when I was 10, I was doing this and I was doing that.

[1550] But when you were 10, you were just in the middle of it, you know, you look back on how much progress has taken place in your own life as a microcosm to your existence, you know, all of our existence, your own individual memories and your own individual experiences, you're in the middle of it.

[1551] You don't think it about being, well, we're as civilization, we're in the middle of this babyhood.

[1552] We're in the middle of this adolescence, whatever the fuck it is.

[1553] Yeah.

[1554] You know, and we're moving into some new place.

[1555] Yeah.

[1556] And it's arrogant, but very common for people to think we're at the end of it.

[1557] Like, this is the cutting edge.

[1558] It is the edge, but it's not the end.

[1559] It's not perfection.

[1560] It's like, yeah, it's always, always in process.

[1561] Always in process.

[1562] But amazing to think that right now, we are at the pinnacle of human knowledge.

[1563] We are at the peak, the tip of the spear, as far as, like, everything that people have learned and figured out up until now.

[1564] We have this database that we've accumulated from hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of records.

[1565] And then, you know, after that it gets a little sketchy.

[1566] And you go a few thousand years.

[1567] Things get real weird in different languages.

[1568] Things get even weirder and it gets more vague and more strange and more difficult to decipher.

[1569] But all that data that we've accumulated and the access to it that we have today, unprecedented as far as we know and people.

[1570] It's amazing.

[1571] It's amazing to be at that time.

[1572] When you have a question, you just like with a psychology, psychopathy thing, we just bang, we just Google it.

[1573] And we didn't have to go to a library.

[1574] We didn't have to order a book.

[1575] We didn't have to go to a bookstore or go to a class.

[1576] You just instantaneously get that information.

[1577] And I think that that is accelerating us in a way that we can't even comprehend.

[1578] Yeah.

[1579] No doubt.

[1580] Yeah.

[1581] I think we're all experiencing it in a way that's, it seems so normal because everyone has a phone, you know?

[1582] Whoa, let me just check my, my phone and see.

[1583] Let me just call my friend who's nowhere near me. And, you know, this affects, getting back to the earlier thing about aging, right?

[1584] Like, this affects the experience of aging because more has changed in our lifetimes because it's always accelerating that, like, I remember the first computer I interacted with, right?

[1585] It was I was in my late 20s working in the Diamond District in New York, and one of my jobs was to back up the discs in this computer.

[1586] The computer was the size of a big refrigerator, and the discs were like, you know, double the circumference of an album.

[1587] And they were these massive things, and they were probably like 50 megabytes each or something, you know?

[1588] If that, right?

[1589] If that, right.

[1590] I mean, and I've probably got a thousand times the computing power in my pocket right now.

[1591] It's just, like, insane.

[1592] Maybe even more than a thousand.

[1593] Yeah, I don't know how it works.

[1594] Yeah.

[1595] Hey, I got a roll.

[1596] Get out of here, man. You got things you do.

[1597] I'm going to see this weekend?

[1598] I'm tempted to, like, miss the plane.

[1599] This is so much fun.

[1600] Oh, it's not the plane.

[1601] It's the rental car.

[1602] Oh, okay.

[1603] They're going to rate me if I'm late.

[1604] We'll hang out this weekend, and we're promising to do.

[1605] do one with you, me, and Duncan again.

[1606] We're going to figure it out.

[1607] I know we've been getting tweets.

[1608] Everybody's busy, folks.

[1609] Shit happens.

[1610] But we'll get it together.

[1611] We'll get it together.

[1612] But thank you, brother.

[1613] You guys pick a day.

[1614] I'll fly down, folks, for sure.

[1615] And you can, you could follow Chris on Twitter.

[1616] It's, uh, is it Chris Ryan PhD?

[1617] Yeah.

[1618] Or it's Christopher Ryan?

[1619] Chris Ryan.

[1620] Chris Ryan, Chris Ryan, Chris Ryan, Chris Ryan, Chris Ryan, uh, the one book that you can buy that he has is Sex at Dawn, fantastic book, guaranteed to piss off your wife.

[1621] Leave that shit around.

[1622] What are you reading?

[1623] Getting these fucking.

[1624] ideas out of your head.

[1625] Chris Ryan, ladies and gentlemen.

[1626] Thank you, brother.

[1627] Appreciate it, man. It's a lot of fun.

[1628] Bye -bye.