Daniele Bolelli joins me to talk about his new podcast, History on Fire, and how he's trying to learn to be a better Italian-American. We talk about accents, how to improve your English skills, and what it's like to be an Italian in the big city of New York City. Daniele is a writer, comedian, podcaster, and podcaster living in the Big Apple. He's also the host of History On Fire, a podcast about the history of the city and the people who built it. He's a friend of mine, and we talk about a lot of things, including how to talk better in Italian, and why you should learn to speak better English. It's a great episode, and I hope you enjoy listening to it! Thank you so much for listening to this episode of HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. All rights reserved. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies, unless otherwise stated. We do not own the rights to any music used in this podcast or any other works mentioned in the podcast. All credit given to any other source of music used on the podcast is given to a third party. This episode was produced, produced, and produced by our patrons. . If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and/or a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, etc. Thank you and review if you liked it. We are a review or review is in any other medium you'd like us to use this podcast in the next episode of this podcast, we'll thank us in the future. - Thank you for your feedback is appreciated! - thank you for supporting us in any way possible, we appreciate the feedback we get a chance to support us in our efforts to make this podcast and review us out there to help us make a better listening experience. -- Thank you, thank you, please take care of us more people like this podcast is appreciated. in the world is a little bit more of this is appreciated, we're working on this podcast more than that, not less than 5 stars, more than appreciated, etc., and we appreciate all the love and appreciation is truly appreciated, really appreciate you, really appreciative, and it's a big thank you... --
00:00:05.000Dude, I am loving, rather, I should say, your new podcast, History on Fire, and it's just wonderful to hear your sultry Italian accent waxing poetically on the path.
00:00:19.000That's because I just never learned to speak English right.
00:02:37.000I think it's like during conversation sometimes you need that micro mental break to just see okay where do I want to go with next you know but you don't want to leave an awkward pose so you're like throwing something out there just go like okay this is where I want to go next.
00:02:51.000Yeah and you also don't want someone to like Jump in thinking you want them to talk, and you're in the middle of trying to form the sentence, and if they do jump in, then you'll totally lose it.
00:03:02.000So you want to, um, um, just to let them know.
00:03:12.000Italy is painful that way because, you know, normally you give two seconds, pause between somebody starting and somebody beginning the next conversation.
00:04:40.000And any sentence that I would write like that in English, I lose half of the readers within three seconds because they're like, too many words.
00:05:59.000Yeah, there's much more of this slow pace.
00:06:02.000Tripping me out the other day, Aubrey Marcos gave me a call, and within about a minute I was thinking, And I love Aubrey, but the vibe for me was like, okay, great.
00:08:00.000So they added all their data from all the people that use the app, and one of the things they found was one of the least conducive things to happiness, one of the indicators that people are not happy, is when your mind is wandering.
00:08:12.000Like, you're just sitting around, thinking of nothing, just sitting, doing nothing, and in those moments...
00:08:18.000For whatever reason, people just don't feel good.
00:08:22.000Their mind will wander to the negative things.
00:08:25.000But when you're in the moment and you're occupied in something, whether you're creating something or whether you're writing something, whatever you're doing, those are the moments where people feel fulfilled and happy.
00:08:52.000That's not as easy to do as one would think.
00:08:55.000Yeah, that's why a class, whether it's a martial arts class or a yoga class, is really good for people because someone's telling you what to do.
00:09:04.000Like, okay, now we're going to work on arm bars from the mount.
00:09:08.000Okay, shift your hips to the left, grab the arm, pin it down.
00:09:11.000In going through those steps, you're forced to concentrate on that thing, and because it's so intense, you're forced to be in that moment.
00:09:19.000And that, for a lot of people, is a real, not just the physical relief of exercise, which is fantastic for the mind, but the relief of focus and concentration alleviates a lot of the bullshit that builds up when the mind is wandering.
00:09:47.000Not only physically, as you say, how good it feels, but in that moment, you know, if your mind wanders too much, the guy's choking you, the guy's arm barring you.
00:10:55.000Just do something that you have to concentrate on.
00:10:58.000If you're lifting something heavy, like if you're trying to bench press or squat or something like that, while you're doing that, that is what you're concentrating on.
00:11:06.000Isn't that amazing, though, that that's what the mind needs sometimes?
00:11:09.000Just one primary, singular thing to focus on, and to focus on it intensely, and it's almost cleansing in a way.
00:11:18.000Yeah, it's kind of like when you're having sex for too long and then you'd wait and suddenly everything in your brain switches.
00:11:28.000All this shit that I thought I had on me, all this tension, all this stuff that I thought were real problems, you just haven't had sex for too many days either, right?
00:11:53.000I mean, I, to this day, think that that is, especially for men, the primary reason why a lot of men exhibit, like, really pathetic behavior.
00:12:04.000Because they are trying so hard to get women to like them, and nothing is working, and so they have fallen into this trap of becoming this, like, She-male thing.
00:12:15.000This super feminist sort of always identifying with women's issues and trying to get women on your side.
00:12:33.000But he tweeted something the other day, and it was a billboard that some poor fool had put up, and it said, Dear women, on behalf of all men, I'm sorry.
00:13:00.000It's Not that there's anything wrong with siding with women if you agree that they've been fucked over or looking out for them or sympathizing or empathizing.
00:13:18.000It's also an anti-masculine behavior, an anti-male behavior.
00:13:23.000Maybe it's because they identify those characteristics with bullies or with people that were mean to them or people that caused them pain or frustration.
00:13:33.000But it's also like this, it's traitorous.
00:13:37.000It's like you're a gender traitor, like in some ways.
00:13:41.000And to me, there's that bullshit dichotomy there where you either have the tough, strong, macho asshole who also kind of doesn't care about anybody's feelings, but you're strong.
00:14:04.000And the problem is that in trying to get rid of the asshole male side, people have also gotten rid of the good stuff about being a man, about the strength, the determination, the stereotypical masculine quality.
00:14:15.000And it's like, that's not what we're trying to get rid of.
00:14:57.000I mean, there's feminine qualities that are beautiful and there's male masculine qualities that are beautiful and there's There's people on both sides that are out of their fucking mind and batshit crazy.
00:15:09.000And to side with women on every occasion just because you're a man, you're saying, I'm sorry for all men before me and my apologies.
00:15:48.000Things happen in a way where I didn't care.
00:15:50.000I was just like, if we hang out, I hang out because I'm happy to, but I don't want, yeah, you're a beautiful one, that's great, but I don't want anything from you.
00:15:57.000And of course, the second that my brain switched away, suddenly we meant like 10 times more than before.
00:16:02.000And he was like, look at how that works.
00:16:06.000But there's something about being comfortable in your own skin and just not constantly acting because you're trying to impress somebody or you want somebody to, whether it's sex, whether it's attention, whatever that may be, because you want something from them.
00:16:27.000That makes such a difference in the way people will relate to you.
00:16:30.000I think also that regardless of the words that you choose and the way that you say them and the sentences that you structure, I think people can feel intent and there's something about it.
00:16:43.000There's an intangible quality to a needy person that even if they do say the right things and do it in the right order...
00:16:50.000Some women or some men are like, not this dude.
00:16:55.000That's why you can read all the books in the world about the stuff you should say, but that's barely half of the game.
00:17:24.000I've seen some videos online where they're actually critiquing people's approaches and strategies for getting women to talk to them.
00:17:32.000There's like videos on it where a guy will have a hidden camera and he'll talk to a girl and like then the guys in the comments will be like, interesting, like opening, great game, I like how he's doing this.
00:21:11.000And their ways, they have the power in the exchange because the way they are going to play it is that they consider it kind of like dating except that I pick my clients.
00:21:19.000So it's like I'm sleeping around a lot, but I get paid bank for doing that.
00:21:57.000Because when you look at a really hot woman, like the Donald Sterling situation, that old troll-looking raisin man, and he had that girl, the one that ratted him out and made those recordings...
00:22:52.000They just happen to be monogamous prostitutes.
00:22:54.000They're monogamous prostitutes, but these guys are wealthy guys, and these women that they're dating really don't even particularly like them.
00:23:01.000They have to buy them things all the time, and they have to constantly keep the fires of this style of relationship lit.
00:23:38.000And I think that is a big part of what's going on.
00:23:41.000Part of what's going on with campuses where they have this massive amount of attention that's being paid to sexual assault is very good in a lot of ways.
00:23:52.000Because sexual assault, actual real sexual assault is horrific.
00:25:17.000But if it's just two people that drink and then do something and the other person wakes up in the morning and goes, I can't believe I fucked that guy.
00:25:47.000Whatever ever happened to making mistakes?
00:25:49.000And also, why is it that one gender gets a get-out-of-jail-free card, like you got raped, whereas every guy that I've ever met We're good to go.
00:26:19.000But then, of course, you get into this Bill Cosby territory where a guy is purposely getting someone drunk or purposely getting someone fucked up.
00:26:29.000Well, of course, that's where it gets weird, right?
00:26:32.000That's where it all turns into an actual crime or an actual negative interaction.
00:26:42.000Verifiable, bona fide, you know, assault.
00:26:45.000Yeah, that's different, even because the intent is different.
00:26:47.000It's not like you're both drunk once you get to another.
00:27:14.000When I was in high school, I had once, there was this pretty hot girl who was just passed out drunk, and there was two guys at the party who were clearly just moving in in that direction.
00:27:24.000They were clear and obvious about what was going on.
00:27:27.000That was like There was no ambiguity there.
00:27:29.000It's like, that is, you're trying to rape somebody.
00:27:32.000So I remember just, I had my good Samaritan day of my life where I just kind of picked her up, walked her outside, help her throw up, and all the whole...
00:27:41.000Because I was like, no, this is a bad scenario right here.
00:28:12.000Yeah, I would assume that when it's not something that's almost impossible to attain.
00:28:18.000Because you think about it like the average guy who makes a good living, you know, maybe occasionally you could afford to spend $500 on a prostitute or whatever the hell it costs, but...
00:28:30.000The idea of getting that prostitute to be in a sexual relationship with you voluntarily is almost out of the question.
00:30:20.000Well, and about this stuff that we're talking about, the sex work, I find it hilarious when people look down on it, kind of like, oh my god, I don't I'm like, do you work the job you have?
00:30:34.000Is that a job that you would have if nobody pays you?
00:35:09.000And everything calmed down in the 70s, and in the 80s they gave everybody Coke, and then Miami Vice, and Don Johnson didn't have any socks on.
00:35:19.000And it all sort of got to this different place.
00:35:23.000Like they took the drugs out of the equation and there was this big void and no one knew what to do.
00:35:28.000And it just sort of like had this chaotic bouncing against the wall thing where it was trying to find its equilibrium and find its harmonious vibration to get back to where it would have been.
00:36:16.000I mean, there was less social media and things along those lines, but ultimately, there's very little difference between today and 2005. If you had a 2005 car, that's a nice car.
00:36:27.000You could drive that around and be just like a modern car, or a 2015 car.
00:38:10.000And no place like the mom and pap store wasn't just open tables where people could sit down and chat, was just go eat and get your coffee, get out.
00:38:40.000The New York Times was very rare, and whenever I would deliver the New York Times, the dude always had like a BMW or a Saab or something like that, you know?
00:38:49.000They always had like some cool car, and they lived in a cool house, and they just, they wanted to be more into, they didn't want to live in New York necessarily, or if they did, they didn't have the funds to move there, but they wanted to be worldly.
00:39:26.000To really get a sense of what's going on in the world, you really got to read all of them.
00:39:30.000Like, the New York Times will cover some subjects globally that the Boston Globe won't.
00:39:34.000The Boston Herald doesn't give a fuck about what's happening anywhere but Boston.
00:39:37.000And there was, like, this thing where you had to kind of, like, search around to get a sound, like a distant sound of the Earth, of, like, what's actually going on on the planet.
00:40:14.000And I literally would have to call the one magazine in Italy that dealt with basketball that would come out once a month.
00:40:22.000And I would call them and they had talked to their friend in New York who had told them who won.
00:40:26.000Otherwise, I would have had to wait probably three weeks until that next issue come up who tells you who won the NBA final a month earlier.
00:40:39.000And so it's like, when you think about today, you can be on the top of the Himalaya, and if you find the right connection, you can watch the game live.
00:40:46.000It's like, that's a whole other game altogether.
00:40:50.000Yeah, you were reading about basketball that happened weeks ago.
00:41:51.000So somebody was like, okay, we can play this game where they beat the shit out of each other.
00:41:57.000It's going to be this manly physical game where they just brutalize each other.
00:42:01.000Then at least, you know, it's not as good as bringing home a good scalp, but it's something, you know, it's like it saves their masculinity and stuff.
00:42:46.000You're crossing a boundary, which is like the border to the city, the gates to the brothel or to the castle or to wherever you're trying to break into.
00:42:59.000And they even had these, all the top schools were Ivy League, upper class, you know, super rich people.
00:43:07.000And then one of the top schools was Carlisle Indian School, which was the lowest of the law, like poorest people in the United States, Indian kids who got sent there in boarding schools.
00:43:47.000There were some that were released, but basically they developed the game of football in terms of how, you know, this constant game between the league and the Indian school where these guys use some loophole, the league comes in, makes it illegal.
00:43:58.000And then the next time they use a different loophole and then the league comes in.
00:44:01.000And so a lot of the rules of football were shaped to start, okay, those guys do it, let's stop it.
00:44:44.000And it's funny how the stereotypes change over time, because you had Thad Russell on the show, like in his book, how he breaks down how many of the early natural Jewish athletes, which you're like, what?
00:44:57.000Or a lot of the early boxers are all Irish.
00:45:02.000A lot of Jewish boxers back in the day.
00:45:19.000A lot of Russians in both Europe and in America with so many Russians in MMA. Dagestan, a lot of Dagestan people.
00:45:27.000A completely disproportionate amount of elite fighters, too.
00:45:31.000A lot of really fucking tough guys from Russia.
00:45:34.000Well, if you are used to, I mean, it's almost stereotypical, but if you are used to toughness throughout your life, then climbing in the ring doesn't seem like much.
00:45:42.000If you are all sheltered and protected, climbing in the ring is scary as hell.
00:45:49.000And it's also like the hunger that you have because your life has been like just filled with despair and Struggle and in a lot of abuse they're like violence becomes like some sort of an automatic response to reaching out for abuse you know reaching out and In response for the abuse you've suffered.
00:46:10.000That's where a chip on your shoulder comes from, right?
00:46:13.000It's like someone just waiting for someone to say some shit because you've just been dealing bottled up.
00:46:19.000You have this rage that is like, please just cross that line so I have an excuse to beat the shit out of you right now.
00:46:25.000A few generations later, your kids are pussies.
00:47:10.000Like everybody that I know that grew up in a tough neighborhood, they have a sharpness to them, you know?
00:47:15.000And there's a character that they have, that they possess, that the people that grew up super cushy and some, you know, Connecticut country club estate type situation.
00:47:53.000More just like, you know, people who deal, people who rob, you know, that kind of thing, where it's like the guys who are some serious artists of just shoplifting, who just can go into a store and walk out, and they would do it pretty much professionally, where they make a living by,
00:48:09.000you know, stuff like that, where it's always like crossing, definitely doing illegal stuff.
00:48:14.000I mean, I've met some guys who are probably more well-connected in a more formal way, but that was not the normal thing.
00:48:20.000But the normal thing was guys who do a lot of illegal stuff, or maybe they are not technically against it in a strict sense, but people who get into a lot of fights, that kind of thing, where it's sort of outside of the normal rules of civilized society.
00:48:35.000But to me, there are clear rules of what you do with those guys.
00:48:40.000Usually, if you treat them with respect and you don't show yourself to be a wimp, they treat you fairly well if you know how to play the game.
00:48:48.000If you don't, these guys will test you.
00:48:51.000And if they smell weakness, then they'll clamp down on you.
00:48:54.000Or if you look down on them, they will clamp down on you.
00:48:58.000There's a very clear rule of the game that if you play it right, you can have very mellow, pleasant interactions.
00:49:49.000Yeah, it was a heavy-duty movie, and the movie was all about these Mexican gangbangers, and apparently he had become friends with these guys, in air quotes, friends, while filming this movie, and just got way too close, and they just started extorting him.
00:50:05.000And they started demanding money, and they knew where he lived, and it became a real fucking issue.
00:50:11.000Yeah, you are their lunch at that point.
00:50:13.000And again, if they think that there's any weakness there, then you're screwed.
00:50:16.000That's why there's a predatorial aspect to that game where you need to know how to play it, otherwise you're fucked.
00:50:22.000And I'm sure he wanted to be down, you know?
00:50:54.000It has repeated itself over and over and over again, like with Hollywood actors that wanted to be tough guys.
00:51:01.000And that weakness right there, because if they smell that you want something from them or that you look up to them in some way, then that's weakness.
00:51:08.000If they see you putting them down, that's also a challenge.
00:51:12.000So you're kind of screwed if you do one thing, you're screwed if you do another.
00:51:21.000But it's the same thing as getting into fights.
00:51:25.000If you are too aggressive, you will get into fights because you're challenging people and you're backing them in against the corner and they have to fight you back.
00:51:31.000But if you are too mellow, then people won't respect you and they see you as weak and they come after you.
00:51:36.000You kind of have to have that boundary where you're polite to people, you're nice, but the message is, look, I'm nice because I choose to.
00:51:43.000If you decide to cross that line, I'm going to fuck you up right now.
00:51:47.000And that vibe where it's like, you can bring up the goods when it comes down to throwing down, but you don't volunteer it.
00:51:53.000You're not this macho guy who's like trying to get into a fight.
00:51:56.000That's what usually people who are out for a fight tend to respect and bug away from.
00:52:00.000It's like, that guy, I'm not going to pick that guy.
00:52:20.000Whereas if you encounter dogs or even some wild animals, you know, and they say you have to stand your ground or yell at them, like mountain lions especially.
00:53:15.000I was dealing with some guys and then this other group come along and I'm in the middle and you can't really walk away because daddy are a bitch.
00:53:22.000It's like, oh Jesus, really do I have to be in the middle of this shit?
00:53:26.000And, you know, they start in this ritualized way where they start talking shit and so you can almost set your clock.
00:53:33.000It's like, okay, we're two and a half minutes away from the fight, right?
00:53:36.000It's like they are going through their dances, then they're going to do a push, then they're going to throw down.
00:53:41.000And I remember I was talking with some of these guys from quote-unquote the other side, assuming that I was with one side, but...
00:53:48.000And my vibe with these guys was like, look, if we really want to do this, okay, fine, let's do this.
00:53:54.000But honestly, I was thinking I had a date tonight, I want to go out with this hot woman, we're going to go to a movie...
00:54:02.000I kind of rather would do that than this, but I don't know.
00:54:05.000Maybe you guys have nothing better to do.
00:54:07.000I mean, if we don't, let's fucking do it.
00:54:42.000I felt like, okay, that was one of my better days in terms of how I played it.
00:54:49.000Because again, if you show too much fear, then you get squashed.
00:54:52.000But if you show too much aggressiveness, then you invite the fight.
00:54:54.000There's also a natural thing when groups of men meet.
00:54:57.000It's almost like it's a tribal thing that's in our DNA back to when you would run into people, you know, out in the field, and it would turn into a war, almost like an instinctive bonding thing.
00:55:09.000I wonder if that's where, like, because a lot of...
00:55:31.000When you have this mob mentality, people will do things like gang rapes or gang murders, gang beatings, lootings, lighting places on fire.
00:55:41.000The behavior escalates to this really insane place that is very, very rare for someone to go to on their own as an individual.
00:55:51.000I wonder if that's ingrained in us because of this It's a long history of war in the human race that when you get a bunch of men together and a bunch of men on the other side, we just immediately go to fucking scorched earth.
00:56:05.000It's immediately cutting off heads and lighting bodies on fire and catapulting them onto rooftops.
00:57:09.000Even often in a contest, like a jujitsu match or a kickboxing match or something along those lines, After it's over, people are still upset if they lose, and they still want to get that guy back.
00:57:19.000But a fight fight, like an actual fight on the street fight, oh my god, that can go on for years.
00:59:10.000I had this conversation with Duncan once, and it was the first time I ever thought this, but I said that the history of the human race is essentially military history.
00:59:20.000I've been obsessed with this thought because next time I chat with Dan Carlin, that's what I want to bring up.
00:59:27.000And the one question I want to ask him is exactly about this.
00:59:49.000Why is it that the stuff that makes the history book is all the horrible atrocity, massacre, war, set people on fire?
00:59:59.000Is it that just we don't do anything else or that it doesn't catch our attention?
01:00:02.000I wish there was a way to also put the spotlight in history on some more mellow aspects of people who figured out ways to live a good life in the middle of all the shit that was going down.
01:00:12.000It seems so much of it is, as you're saying, it's all military stuff.
01:00:16.000It's all fight, war, explode the other side.
01:01:11.000One of the great podcasts that Dan Carlin did on history that's not necessarily about war is Riddled with Violence, The Prophets of Doom, about Martin Luther.
01:01:22.000I mean, that's not about war, but it is.
01:02:02.000That's an important part, and we should look at it.
01:02:03.000But why don't we also look at other things?
01:02:05.000It's like, what's wrong with studying about, you know, putting the accent more on stuff about people dropping acid and having sex outside of marriage a lot more and listening to cool music and coming out with Jimi Hendrix?
01:02:17.000And why is that that less important than the Cold War?
01:02:23.000I mean, how many people's life has it touched or has transformed that way?
01:02:28.000A lot, as much as, you know, sometimes we think whose precedent is history.
01:02:34.000In fact, in most of our lives, whose precedent is at most mildly important, at most, and there are so many other things that count for so much more.
01:02:44.000But why is it that then when we write a history, it's about whose precedent and what war took place when there's so much other stuff in our lives that...
01:02:53.000When we were talking about the 60s, isn't a big part of the 60s, though, the Vietnam War and the resistance to the Vietnam War?
01:02:59.000And that sort of fueled that sort of crazy hippie behavior because they realized that these old assholes and their shitty, stupid ways had led us into the South Pacific in this crazy war that nobody wanted.
01:03:11.000I mean, that's a big part, I think, of the rebellion of the 1960s.
01:03:16.000It's almost unavoidable because that's the worst thing that can happen.
01:03:19.000See, the worst thing that can happen is someone kills you or kills your loved ones, right?
01:03:23.000So when that happens en masse, you know, like in war, well, those become the biggest blips on the social radar.
01:03:50.000I mean, it's hard to argue that war is avoidable when it's never been avoided.
01:03:55.000It's like, you kind of, at a certain point in time, you know, if a girl acts like a cunt all the time, she's always screaming and yelling and clawing and pulling chicks' hairs, and she's like, I'm not a cunt.
01:05:24.000But as soon as you get more than three, As soon as you get more than 10, like if there was 10 of us, if it was 10 of us living on an island, man, the odds of somebody getting jacked, it goes up.
01:08:06.000And these guys at least are clinching this one.
01:08:08.000The previous ones were in this stand side to side, walk each other, and then take five seconds where they are thinking about the next move.
01:08:14.000But look, they get back to the same position.
01:08:16.000They always get back to the shoulder-to-shoulder position.
01:08:18.000When they clinch up, it's just to get back to the side-by-side position so they can fucking headbutt each other.
01:08:48.000Because one of the cool things about giraffes is that they're an animal that's so universally gentle that you can have babies feed them.
01:08:56.000Like my daughter, when she was two years old, they give you lettuce and you hold out the lettuce and the giraffe comes over with this crazy tongue that's like an arm and they reach out with their tongue and it wraps it around the leaves and it pulls it.
01:09:09.000But they're so confident in their behavior around people They let babies feed them.
01:09:15.000But you get these two motherfuckers together and they fight over some pussy.
01:10:00.000That's another bizarre thing about deer.
01:10:02.000It's like they'll stab each other, and they put these horrible gashes in their body, and then like a week later, it's like completely sealed up, and they're just walking around like nothing happened.
01:11:39.000Like, a lot of people will kill an old deer, and then they open its mouth up, and they go, wow, he would have never made it through the winter, because their teeth are gone.
01:11:46.000They just have a very finite resource with those teeth.
01:11:50.000At that point, you're really doing them a favor, because that's an avid way to go by slow starvation.
01:13:37.000An analysis of 437 hybrid animals found that the coyote DNA dominates its genetic makeup with about one-tenth of its DNA from dogs, usually from a larger dog such as Doberman, Pinchers, and German Shepherds,
01:14:24.000That's always where you wonder about evolution going wrong.
01:14:27.000When you see those animals, you know, you think about wolves and then you see some of the dog species today, I'm like, how the fuck did you come about?
01:15:00.000They did a study on foxes, a really interesting study that they highlighted in this Radiolab podcast.
01:15:06.000But they were talking about genetic diversity in foxes where they only allowed the foxes that were timid and more accepting of human touch and to be around humans,
01:15:26.000And they sort of like bred Let those breed with other ones.
01:15:31.000And over like 10 years, they had completely changed the fox DNA. They had completely changed to the point where their ears were no longer pointed.
01:16:06.000Well, that's what they're finding now more and more, the more they study life, is that life can evolve and change and shift and adapt incredibly quickly.
01:16:33.000So, like, there's this BBC documentary on the Congo, and one of the cool things is seeing this swampy, crazy rainforest, and then seeing these deer run through the water of the rainforest.
01:17:28.000They didn't know that until really recently.
01:17:31.000And one of the ways they found it was through camera traps.
01:17:35.000Because they have these trail cams that people put up when they're hunting.
01:17:40.000And when they put up these trail cams, as the trail cams got more and more sophisticated, they started using video trail cameras.
01:17:47.000And as the video trail cameras started, you know, they get the data back from them, they started finding, like, occasionally birds, like deer would eat ground-nesting birds.
01:17:57.000It's so ruined in my Disney fantasies.
01:18:00.000You just told me that giraffes spit the shit out of each other, that deer eat birds.
01:18:05.000There are no certainties in life anymore.
01:19:03.000It's like where I live, there's regularly, almost on a monthly basis, there's like some cute little birds nesting, the eggs are hatching and everything, and the hawk regularly come by and just rip the shit out of them, and I find Pieces of birds everywhere, and it's pretty nasty.
01:19:19.000Yeah, my friend Tom was sitting out on his back porch.
01:19:22.000He was one of the directors of news radio back in the day.
01:20:14.000And then I see that right next to it, like maybe 10 feet away, there's this hawk that has another bird in his mouth that looks exactly like the one that's yelling.
01:20:23.000So this one is probably like saying, you son of a bitch, you are just eating my wife.
01:23:05.000There's a crazy video online from Alaska of this kid and his whole family.
01:23:12.000Their lawn is covered with bald eagles, and they were throwing out fish.
01:23:18.000They had some salmon, so they had filleted the salmon, and then they had the bottoms, the ribs and the heads and all that stuff, and they had thrown it out for these eagles, and their fucking lawn is just overwhelmed with bald eagles.
01:23:32.000So we like to think of bald eagles as being something extremely endangered and protected.
01:25:27.000And then they know that some birds, even birds that lived fairly recently, like the terror birds, They were these large, flightless, six-foot, seven-foot-tall birds.
01:26:09.000I find the world of nature to be unbelievably beautiful and exciting and crazy, but for whatever reason, I'm way more thrilled by the predators.
01:26:22.000When I see things like this, when I see raptors, that's what excites me.
01:26:27.000If I see some sparrows or something like that, I think we can relate more in the sense of, you know, as human beings, we have, you know, hunting and gathering has been, what, 95% of the time we've been around.
01:28:40.000And like I said, this is like real close to where the studio is.
01:28:43.000And this is a guy had a chicken coop and this thing figured out how to get in his chicken coop and was eating one of his chickens in his coop and found it.
01:28:50.000What a creepy looking face on that fucker.
01:30:06.000They think, well, that's the natural balance.
01:30:08.000Really shouldn't have that many deer around.
01:30:09.000And ultimately, I mean, I can see that point where it's probably better to have a lot of mountain lion than it is a lot of Lyme disease from ticks and a lot of deer slamming into cars like you do in places that don't have high mountain lion populations.
01:30:23.000You know, like Michigan or something like that, where they have a lot of them.
01:32:30.000I mean, once I figured, okay, these guys don't want to fuck with me, they just want to move around me and they don't care, he was great because you see all the calves running after them.
01:32:41.000And, yeah, that's the thing with all wild species that are cooler than, you know, all the domesticated species tend to be dumber, tend to be a lot like, Oh, somebody's going to bring me food anyway.
01:35:08.000Well, when chickens brood, you have to remove them from their regular nest because they'll sit in the nesting box and they'll pull their feathers off and they get sick.
01:35:18.000And they can do it for like a month and a half at a time.
01:35:20.000So what you got to do is you got to put them in a small cage for a couple days where they have to stand on a rail.
01:35:26.000They have to clutch and sit on this rail.
01:35:29.000And you do that for a couple days and then they'll get over their brooding instincts and get normal again.
01:35:33.000It's just a cycle because they're not having sex.
01:35:49.000I thought the only way that a chicken makes an egg is if she gets fucked by a rooster, and then an egg comes out, and then they sit on the egg, and it becomes a chicken, and you just got to get the egg before the chicken hatches, and you cook it.
01:36:02.000That's my understanding of it, so please enlighten me now.
01:36:05.000They actually lay eggs all the time with no males involved whatsoever.
01:36:11.000So I have 22 chickens, I have no males, they're all females, and they lay usually, if not an egg a day, at the very least an egg every other day.
01:37:32.000There's a video of this guy hiking and he's hiking and as he's hiking this mountain lion just sitting there staring at him watching him.
01:37:37.000He's on this trail and he starts making noise and smacking sticks against the ground but it's like that guy probably came super close to getting eaten.
01:38:03.000They track quite a few of them, but I guess when it comes to large, big predators, it's probably one of the best ones to have around because they have plenty of shit that they eat.
01:38:16.000They keep away from people for the most part.
01:39:13.000And the place where I usually go, I was chatting with some neighbors and they were telling me, yeah, you know, these days bears have stopped coming around.
01:40:16.000But for the most part, even if you do like...
01:40:19.000The natural selection process has probably eliminated people from their diet because every mountain lion that chose to eat a person was killed.
01:42:21.000I wonder how often that takes place, like when you go on one of those safaris.
01:42:25.000I wonder how often you actually see something get jacked.
01:42:28.000Yeah, even just because they are hunting doesn't mean they're going to be successful because, of course, a bunch of times you fail.
01:42:34.000And I think that's part of the interesting conflict is something's going to happen and the two sides, whoever the two sides are, are trying opposite things.
01:42:44.000So there's this conflict of will and somebody's going to get their way and somebody isn't.
01:42:48.000So there's that element of excitement that almost makes you want to bet on it like, Who's going to win?
01:42:53.000Who's going to step up with their A game and succeed?
01:43:02.000Even if it's not a fight, if it's the lion chasing the gazelle, it's like, can the gazelle speed leave the lion in the dust and just leave him pissed off and hungry?
01:43:14.000It's like, let's see how they play their cards when life is on the line, you know?
01:43:17.000Yeah, and that contemplation of how the outcome's gonna go down, like, that, for whatever reason, is one of the most compelling things that people can watch.
01:43:31.000That is, like, one of the most interesting things for people.
01:43:36.000I mean, that's why the Romans, I mean, when they were feeding lions or Christians, that's what that was all about.
01:43:43.000It's like to see how long that guy can last in there.
01:43:46.000Just to gross out your listeners, check this out.
01:43:49.000This is a nasty story that I did not know about.
01:43:52.000So one thing that would happen was after they would have the beasts either fight each other or they would have the lions eat Christians or something, then a typical thing is that after the end of the day when a whole bunch of these animals have been killed in one fight or another, The Roman emperors,
01:44:09.000to kind of look cool and popular with the crowds, would then distribute the meat to all the poor people of Rome.
01:44:15.000So all the animals killed in the arena would then be eaten by all the poorest people in Rome as a freebie.
01:44:21.000Because you're a poor person, and you're more likely than not, a lot of people in Rome were pretty close to starving a lot of the times, nothing got to be thrown away.
01:44:36.000That means that among other things that would end up as weird exotic dish on a Roman table, sometimes you get also the interiors of animals that have just been eating people.
01:44:49.000So through via second hand you're also eating people since you're eating stomach contents of a lion that just got killed in the arena and that lion just finished feeding on a Christian so you're having a lion Christian burger for yourself.
01:45:05.000This is just something you just found out about?
01:46:13.000We always talk about Rome, but isn't the United States way more fucked up and decadent than Rome ever was, except for feeding Christians to lions?
01:46:24.000Other than that, if you look at the overall numbers of death Yeah, there's a lot of strange stuff going on.
01:46:31.000The shit that we've done to the environment, shit that we've done, I mean, just a sheer number of human beings you're dealing with, 350, what is it, somewhere 350 million?
01:47:31.000Because they were killing thousands upon thousands of them, that they literally, they drove some species extinct in North Africa, at least in that part, you know.
01:47:51.000Remember when Pride was on and there was this wacky Japanese matchmaking where they would have like, let's throw the 600-pound hood against the 150-pound.
01:49:24.000But yeah, either case, it started out probably as a religious thing, and then it evolved into, oh, this is fun, screw the religion, but just let's have a good time.
01:49:33.000Well, we always point to the decadence of the Roman Empire as being like the pinnacle of excess, right?
01:49:40.000But then you go to Disneyland and you see people on scooters everywhere you go where they've eaten themselves into these gelatinous beanbag style human beings.
01:49:51.000Every time I go, there are more scooters.
01:49:55.000There's more and more people just getting so big that they can't walk.
01:50:00.000Yeah, let's make it easier for people to lead themselves to that because that's what we want.
01:50:05.000One of the reasons why I think it's interesting for many people in the U.S. to study Rome and there's this fascination for Rome is because the parallels are not that hard to see.
01:50:14.000You see that super powerful civilization that keeps growing and growing in power.
01:50:20.000And eventually hit the tipping scale of excess gets more and more.
01:50:24.000People have a confier life, so they do get softer.
01:50:28.000And then you are getting ready for the fall in the face of somebody else, tougher and stronger, who comes from a harsher life, who's going to It's the same stuff as the Roman Empire, right?
01:51:04.000No, it's a tough balance between living too harshly, where, yeah, you become this war machine, but that's a sucky life, and living too softly, when it's a real delicate game.
01:51:18.000With your kids, you want things easy for them.
01:51:21.000You want to make everything as easy, as pleasant as possible, but if you make it too easy, you turn them into wimps.
01:51:28.000And so if you make it too hard, they'll hate your guts because it's like, fuck you, you're needlessly making my life hard.
01:51:33.000So it's like that very delicate game of making feel people loved, giving them support, helping them when needed, but then also teaching them how to be strong.
01:51:43.000And that does not happen through softness.
01:51:46.000It doesn't happen through making everything easy for them.
01:51:48.000I've had that conversation many times with Brian Callen where he and I were talking about, you know, one of the reasons why...
01:52:32.000Yeah, I wonder if that's the only way to create someone or to engineer the life of a human being that has character.
01:52:42.000There's got to be ways that you can teach them through difficult tasks or through athletic endeavors.
01:52:49.000I mean, my life was definitely fucked up up until the time where I was in high school, but all of my, I think my real character development, who I became, The harder parts was when I was in a really nice neighborhood.
01:53:04.000I lived in Newton, which is like a really nice suburb of Boston.
01:53:09.000But that was when I was doing martial arts.
01:53:12.000So I... like consciously or Purposely did something really difficult because that was what I was interested in I wasn't thinking oh this difficult thing will make me a real You know interesting man when I grow up and this will provide me with all this character development No,
01:53:30.000it's like that was what I really wanted to do for whatever reason I was compelled to it and then the byproduct of that was I developed character I developed the ability to push myself and discipline and But I did it without having to go through horrible neighborhoods.
01:53:44.000I mean, people beat me up in the gym, but nobody beat me up in the street.
01:53:51.000But I developed character in a way that's similar to what someone would probably go through if they went through some really bad, violent times.
01:53:59.000And I think you nailed it right there because you're bringing up something that's not...
01:54:04.000You're going to get tough because we're going to throw you in the street and you're going to fight every day against some crazy kids with knives and you survive.
01:54:35.000And I think the more we make our life easier, which we want to, we do need to engage in things that keep the toughness alive, at least to some degree.
01:54:44.000You know, it's like you're not gonna be tough the way the one guy who survived out of a hundred was being thrown to the wolves, but at the same time, you still have that muscle there.
01:54:53.000It's not completely gone because you are just all about...
01:54:57.000Because then now you end up with people who are very pleasant, very nice, very sweet, and complete wimps and don't have a spine, and then it's like...
01:55:34.000And the only way you can get an animal that's tame is you have to provide them with all their food and that you have to bypass all of their natural predatory instincts that every dog has and every cat has.
01:57:13.000Once you go 100-0, then you really lost something.
01:57:16.000It's like, where exactly is that balance in a desirable place, where you are a strong person, but you're also pleasant and sweet and nice, and you can do all the things that we want in a civilized conversation without you being weak?
01:57:32.000When people lack the tough side, Then I don't buy their niceness either because it's like you're nice because that's the only thing you can be.
01:57:40.000You don't even have the option not to be nice because you don't know how.
01:57:43.000You don't know what it takes to instead step up and be extra assertive and extra tough.
01:58:13.000Why I've been focusing on this and obsessed with this lately is...
01:58:20.000I've gotten this weird idea in my head.
01:58:22.000Not necessarily weird, but this inescapable thought about human beings domesticating themselves with supermarkets.
01:58:31.000And that supermarkets are in many ways a lot like serving a cat a bowl of cat food every day.
01:58:37.000And that in removing the equation of having to go out and cut the wheat and pick the vegetables and kill the animals that you eat and instead just show up at the supermarket, buy it, throw it in the cart, that what we've done is we've developed like a system of domestication and the supermarket or the fast food restaurant or wherever you're getting your food in a lot of ways serves the same purpose that a master does to a pet.
01:59:02.000And that we're slowly domesticating the human animal in that way.
01:59:07.000I think there's a lot of parallels there.
01:59:09.000And that's one of the reasons also I think why people get angry.
01:59:13.000Even people that eat meat when they find other people hunt.
01:59:16.000I think that they're reacting to this path that they're on and it's a path of domestication.
01:59:22.000Even if it's irrational, even if they eat meat, and I've had the most irrational, which is people that are strict vegetarians or vegans, but they have animals they feed meat to.
01:59:40.000But the rationalizations, I feel like they form such a common pattern that you almost have to take into consideration the fact that those rationalizations may in fact be natural protective mechanisms for this domestication process to take place.
01:59:57.000And I think that as we become more and more peaceful and more and more civilized, like, I would say, and I think everyone agrees, that this is probably the safest time for human beings to live ever.
02:00:14.000I mean, when you look at so much of human history, there's always the guys from over the hill who are going to come up and slaughter your family at the drop of a dime.
02:00:22.000So now the fact that most people in many countries in the world are not in that situation, it's kind of unique.
02:01:40.000People that have and people that have not and have not show up at the gates.
02:01:44.000Yep, and they are hungry and they are more motivated than you because they are hungry.
02:01:49.000It is amazing that this is one of the only times that we've ever recorded where people show up in places where they don't know anybody and they're welcome.
02:02:01.000Yeah, I know Chris, Ryan, there are many people who have the theory that, like, Way, way, way in a distant past, in hunting and gathering time, people were not more mellow.
02:02:12.000And then there's the other campo that argues, no, no, hunting and gathering times were a crazy conflict.
02:02:16.000It didn't happen that often because there were few people, so they don't run into each other that much.
02:02:22.000And the reality is, I don't know who's right.
02:02:24.000I don't think either one is completely right in the sense that I don't think it was a peace and love scenario because that's not how human beings operate.
02:02:31.000And I don't think it was this model that only states can save you from violence because otherwise everybody's always killing each other.
02:02:41.000But clearly, I mean, we do have evidence that people bash each other's brains forever, you know, for a long time.
02:02:47.000How frequent that was, that's the question, and there are different schools of thought in that regard, and it's kind of hard to come up with a conclusive answer.
02:02:54.000But other than that scenario, which is so far in the past that we don't have that much solid evidence on, for much of the history that we do have records about, yeah, people do nasty shit to each other all the time.
02:03:08.000Yeah, I think Chris is talking about tribal cultures that live, you know, indigenous people that live in the jungle and shit like that.
02:03:15.000I think when it's resource dependent, I think when there's a lot of resources and there's plenty of women to fuck, Everybody's happy.
02:03:22.000Chris Ryan also, he loves those polyamorous societies.
02:03:42.000Which exists right now in some parts of the world, you know?
02:03:45.000I mean, that's how some indigenous cultures still operate to this day.
02:03:50.000But yet there's also indigenous cultures like the ones in New Guinea, which are the sperm warriors of New Guinea, which is, you know that story, right?
02:04:59.000And I do like what Chris is doing in terms of I don't know who's historically 100% right in that debate about how cool or not so cool ancient tribal societies were, but I do like where Chris is going with it in terms of what is that we can learn either from the actual history or from something that sounds cool that may not exactly have happened away,
02:05:40.000I firmly believe now is the best time ever.
02:05:43.000I mean, I think we're incredibly lucky to live right now.
02:05:46.000And as long as we don't hit some sort of a natural disaster or if someone fucks up and accidentally starts a nuclear war, I think it's a great time.
02:05:55.000It's not perfect, but there's nothing going to be perfect.
02:05:58.000We were talking about just the sheer numbers of humans.
02:06:01.000You know, 20 people on an island with three girls, 17 men.
02:08:54.000You're fortunate enough to be the parent of this human being.
02:08:57.000This idea that you're upset that it's one gender or another, just shut the fuck up, you monkey.
02:09:02.000And that goes back to the stupid stereotypes of masculine and feminine, of what it means to be a man or a woman.
02:09:09.000Of course there are genetic stuff, and that's a given.
02:09:13.000There's not even an argument that some of it is natural.
02:09:15.000But then there's also a bunch of it that is nurture and that is also how you raise.
02:09:19.000And somebody may have a tendency going one way, but if you teach them, you can balance it out in other ways.
02:09:25.000To me, even the most interesting people are the ones I have both, that have the stereotypical sensitivity from the supposed to be female, but they are also tough.
02:09:59.000But also the typical guy who breaks a beer bottle off his head, burping, watching football, that's not exactly, okay, that's great for about 10 minutes and then I'm out.
02:10:10.000To me, it's like develop human beings that are strong and sensitive.
02:10:14.000What the hell is wrong with that idea?
02:10:16.000Yeah, that's why one of the biggest problems growing up is if you're stuck in a neighborhood.
02:10:21.000If you're stuck in a neighborhood, and the people in your neighborhood are all stupid, and there's no one interesting to draw from, there's no one to find that you can relate to.
02:10:29.000Like, I remember being a kid, and, you know, you have a few good friends that you really enjoy hanging out with, and when they weren't around, you would hang out with dummies, and you'd be like, oh my god.
02:10:44.000Just by a roll of the dice, find yourself in a neighborhood where people are prejudiced or ignorant or aggressively ignorant or aggressively prejudiced.
02:10:54.000You just want to stay home and be locked in your environment.
02:10:57.000And I think until the internet came around, that was the biggest issue in children growing up.
02:11:02.000You were a subject to your environment or a victim of your environment sometimes, a product of your environment.
02:11:08.000That's why even what we're doing right now, the idea that somebody in Sweden can download and listen to what's happening, That's pretty...
02:11:17.000I mean, shit, I would have loved to have grown up with that possibility of listening into conversation so that I'm not trapped into the immediate world that is in the few miles for where you are born and where you are raised, but you get access.
02:11:30.000And then you realize, well, there are people out there who have a different way of thinking other than...
02:11:36.000I mean, think about even when TV came around and somebody in the middle of the United States in a town of 5,000 people suddenly could see people who look different, hear different conversations.
02:11:45.000It must have been the most freeing thing in the world.
02:11:59.000But he said that funny that in the 1950s, all the advertisers, all the programmers thought, in order to attract people, we need to make the content as Not controversial.
02:12:11.000Like, the most uncontroversial thing possible.
02:13:15.000Like, if someone's listening to Howard Stern in the morning, right, and they're hearing all this crazy shit, that's the same person that might watch the Big Bang Theory or America's Got Talent at night, and it's squeaky clean.
02:13:29.000But for whatever reason, they decide that this human being can accept it In this form, but can accept it in that form.
02:13:37.000You might watch something that's totally squeaky clean, and the advertisers are...
02:13:43.000But the same person might go to a rated R movie and watch crazy violence and death and some fucking horror film.
02:13:52.000It's weird what we decide people can and cannot be subjected to, cannot be exposed to.
02:13:58.000Especially with nudity, where it's like if you show any kind of nudity, automatically it's the highest possible restriction because that's going to fuck up your brain, right?
02:14:06.000If you see a boob, now you're going to be screwed for life.
02:15:17.000And just like, you know, a guy who just decided, look, I'm going to take a crazy chance.
02:15:22.000Like, look, we have these Quentin Tarantino movies where guys are getting their ears cut off, where they're taking these crazy chances with violence and Pulp Fiction, where the guy gets shot in the head and the brains splatter over the back seat and there's all these racial slurs being thrown around by white people to black people.
02:15:37.000But a guy getting his cock sucked in a movie.
02:15:39.000You could see, like, if she dropped down to her knees and you only saw the back of her head and she was sucking his cock, that would be okay.
02:16:35.000But as long as the windows are closed and the shades are shut and the door is closed and no one can hear them, then they can...
02:16:43.000They can jerk off in their hypocritical world, and they think it's okay.
02:16:46.000I don't remember if I mentioned that to you before or not, because it cracks me up so much.
02:16:52.000But there was a study in Utah a few years ago, because the way the Supreme Court had set up the obscenity laws, they basically said that it boils down to the standards of the community, of whether the community finds obscene or not.
02:17:04.000So in Utah, they were saying, well, we are a very conservative community, so we want all the hotel chains in Utah to not be able to allow to use porn.
02:17:15.000They cannot sell, you know, porn is the number one thing on the pay-per-view in hotels.
02:17:20.000They're like, nope, because it offends the standards of our community.
02:17:23.000So then they did this research and found out that porn consumption in Utah is actually way higher than in most other places under the file.
02:17:32.000What people say and what people do are completely different things sometimes.
02:17:47.000As long as you're not killing people, as long as you're not doing anything horrible to other human beings, Don't put forward this image of what you think you should be when you're not that person.
02:17:58.000If you're not that person, there's a reason why.
02:18:00.000It probably is not that healthy for you.
02:18:07.000And if you want to change yourself, then take a few baby steps away from that.
02:18:11.000But start accepting the fact that this is who you are, this is what you like, this is what you don't.
02:18:16.000Then if you decide you want to change, you can work on the edges.
02:18:21.000You're not going to change dramatically because you don't change the essence of who you are, but you can smooth the edges if you really, really want.
02:18:27.000But that never happens unless you start with realizing what it is that you are and you stare at it and accept it for what it is.
02:18:34.000It's interesting too because I think that a lot of what people are worried about is other people's perceptions of them.
02:18:40.000And those same people are shielding their own reality from other people worried about their perceptions.
02:18:47.000They might all be into the same thing.
02:19:27.000Do you feel extra freedom because you have podcasts and because you can express yourself through that and you can actually make money doing that too?
02:19:34.000So you have these other outlets for expression.
02:19:39.000I mean, I think I realized I had this really stupid idea for a long time that I could get a regular gig in academia as a good, serious professor, and then I could have also the space to do all the other stuff.
02:20:25.000I kind of step outside and saw it from above.
02:20:28.000And it was, I mean, my office hours, I'm playing Eminem in my office, and around my neck are strapped gloves that I just used to spar with one of my students during a break.
02:20:38.000In my hand is my medical marijuana renewal, and I'm wondering...
02:22:01.000We'll do this really daring thing and try to, you know, it's not going to start from the inside because any establishment is built on keeping the status quo.
02:24:19.000But I think the sheer numbers of human beings that are in school, if you're dealing with how many millions of kids are in school, I don't know how many there are, but out of those, you're going to be able to cherry pick some extreme examples of social justice warriors,
02:24:36.000political correct thinking, progressive thinking run amok, diversity run amok.
02:26:28.000But that tells you how insulated that word is, where it's about what's in the footnote on page 357 of the monograph that has been read by four people they may know about.
02:26:42.000But, you know, that weird world is what got people to this age today, where we can do things like hardcore history.
02:26:48.000I mean, it was all created by the knowledge that was taught through schools.
02:26:53.000And Dan did bring that up in one of his podcasts, where he said, look, in the past, history was a bit more holistic in nature, where good historians were also good storytellers.
02:27:02.000And they may have not been quite the same level of researchers, but they were really good storytellers.
02:27:08.000History has moved more and more in the direction of good nerds who hit the library, or now you don't have to go to the library, you do it online, but that are hardcore into research of primary sources, and you need it.
02:27:20.000You know, of course you need that skill, because otherwise you don't have the data to spin a good story about it.
02:27:25.000But if that's all the history that's out there, you can have the most accurate history in the world and nobody want to hear it because these guys can't tell it.
02:27:34.000You know, you need the hardcore researcher with dicks out little tidbits here and there.
02:27:40.000And then you need the ones who can spin it in a way that can communicate with other human beings, that people, that can make them care, that can make them interested, that can...
02:27:48.000And these are often not the same people because it requires very different talents, you know?
02:27:53.000Yeah, that's what a lot of people say about Neil deGrasse Tyson as well, that he's not just a brilliant man, but a brilliant communicator.
02:28:02.000Like that his real skill is in making it entertaining and exciting and absorbable.
02:29:10.000Most of the people who are professional historians in a traditional sense That talent is not encouraged.
02:29:18.000You may have it by luck, because that's how you are as a human being, but it's not something that you are encouraged to develop as part of being a good historian.
02:29:26.000That's seen as, ah, that's popularizing it.
02:29:41.000It's one of the most important things for human history, or for human beings rather, is to understand history because then you can learn from the mistakes of the past and then understand the parallels of what's going on in the current time.
02:29:52.000When you look at the Roman Empire and you talk about the Great Excesses and how that civilization crumbled under the weight of its own excess, You look at us now, you go, well, there's some parallels here.
02:30:05.000There's people on scooters in Disneyland.
02:30:07.000I mean, it might not be feeding Christians to the lions, but I mean, there's definitely some fucking crazy shit going on right now that they're going to look back on.
02:30:15.000When you look at the average American diet and the fact that...
02:30:19.000I was in Disneyland the other day, and I told you they were on scooters.
02:30:22.000But one of the other things is they had to change the boats out in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
02:31:42.000It's scarred my brain ever since, so we'll gladly scar the brain of everybody listening right now.
02:31:47.000So this couple went in to the doctor and they were complaining about how, you know, they keep trying to get pregnant and she's not getting pregnant.
02:31:56.000And, you know, the woman was like probably a good 500 pounds, something like that, just rolls of fat everywhere, the whole thing.
02:32:04.000And the doctor was like, okay, you know, let's see what's up, let's see what's going on.
02:32:08.000And lift the fat folds left and right, and suddenly he realizes, oh shit, these people thought they were having sex, but based on the residue I'm seeing here between the fat folds, they weren't exactly having sex.
02:32:25.000The guy was fucking the fat folds, thinking that he was in when he wasn't, and then they were wondering why they were not getting pregnant.
02:32:34.000This should have let him keep fucking the fat folds.
02:33:44.000I cut it out completely for two weeks, and then I cut it way back since then.
02:33:47.000And I will occasionally, every few days or so, allow myself one thing, like a piece of, I like this chili mango, you know, mangoes of chili that has sugar in it, but very, very little sugar.
02:34:13.000That's where nature is fucked up because sugar tastes so damn good and yet it's so bad for you.
02:34:19.000Well, it's supposed to taste good in the form of fruit because it comes with the reward of vitamins and fiber and all this other good stuff that's in fruit.
02:34:26.000But we've somehow or another hijacked that, extracted it from the fruit and shoved it into a liquid that comes in a nice aluminum can.
02:34:33.000You pop the top and you get that corn syrup deep into your heart.
02:34:40.000But the average American diet is just overflowing with sugar and these poor people are just becoming bigger and fatter and corn syrup and simple sugars and they're just overwhelmed with this excess sugar and it's that's the I think that's the primary issue that people have when it comes to weight loss sugars and and simple sugars and carbohydrates and And,
02:35:07.000you know, simple carbs like pastas and breads and all that stuff which converts to sugar.
02:38:12.000I was going to say, but, you know, in other ways, like things like golden rice, like genetically modified rice that is much higher in protein, that's helped a lot of people.
02:38:34.000I don't even care which one is winning.
02:38:36.000The point is if you start having one model only, there's a problem there.
02:38:41.000So you do have the people who want none of this shit and we outlaw it or the opposite is like we're going to saturate the market so much that we squeeze every other possibility out.
02:40:06.000New sort of a place to get, which used to be like you'd get Chili's, you know, you'd get like Applebee's.
02:40:14.000It was like chain restaurants or McDonald's, stuff like that.
02:40:18.000But now you get like a really nice salad.
02:40:20.000You get a kale salad with like real cucumbers and stuff on it and stuff.
02:40:24.000I think people are realizing that just because this is the only way we've had before, that you don't have to have it this way.
02:40:33.000You know, I saw this thing, one of Anthony Bourdain's shows was on San Francisco.
02:40:38.000And one of the guys that runs this really nice restaurant was going to open up an all-vegetarian healthy food option, a very cheap place, in the Tenderloin, which is like one of the worst places in San Francisco.
02:40:49.000And the menu was going to vary between $2 and $6.
02:41:32.000There's some of it it's true, but not completely.
02:41:34.000There are options where you can eat delicious meals that, I mean, you like to cook.
02:41:39.000I've done times where I cook at home and I think about what I just spent and it's nothing and it's fucking delicious and it's good food and it's nutritious and I'm like...
02:41:50.000And I think with what you were saying earlier also that intrigued me, something I've been obsessing a bit, the distance that goes from people eating the food to the food being produced, and I don't mean just how far it travels, but even how disconnected we are.
02:42:03.000I don't care even if it comes from three miles from here.
02:42:05.000I mean, it's better, of course, but I'm into the idea of people having, at least to some degree, some contact with the food you eat, so you do have...
02:42:16.000I remember you had it on the show, the image of the guy that in Milan did the vertical woods or whatever they call it.
02:42:24.000It looked like a skyscraper where they put a bunch of trees all over it.
02:42:31.000One of his plans now was trying to figure out how to put on all rooftops, put gardens, so that people can have their vegetable gardens, even on top of like four-story buildings or something, that there can be the building garden that everybody goes.
02:42:47.000Now, I don't know how it's going to work in terms of, that was my tomato, fuck you, I'm going to kill you.
02:42:51.000But having that idea where it may not be old, you're not self-sufficient, it's not all of your food, but you have some contact with the food that you end up eating.
02:43:00.000I think everybody should have it to one degree or another.
02:43:03.000And partially it's hard because most people don't have the space, the situation to do it in their backyard.
02:43:09.000But figuring out ways on the cheap to make that happen, figuring out ways on an architectural standpoint, on multiple ways to try to make the link between people and eating food a direct one so that people...
02:43:23.000Have a sense of where food comes from, that they raise their own food to one degree or another.
02:43:49.000There's something particularly satisfying about picking a cucumber that you grew, chopping it up, putting it in a salad, cooking a squash that you grew.
02:45:55.000It's very strange that we don't have food around us all the time.
02:45:59.000Like, we have to rely on it getting shipped in in trucks.
02:46:02.000Yeah, I mean, seriously, like any major American city, or for no matter, most cities in the world are this far away, like they are one big blackout away from everybody turning into the walking dead.
02:46:35.000Because I prepare a bunch of the research.
02:46:37.000For History on Fire, I prepare a lot of research ahead because otherwise what Dan Carlin ended up doing is that you do need to have these humongous gaps between one episode and the next to research because it takes...
02:46:47.000I was doing the math the other day just because I was bored and I figured it...
02:46:50.000Take me to produce a two-hour episode for History on Fire.
02:46:53.000It takes me probably about 200 hours of work of preparation and research and read the book and take the notes and do this and that.
02:47:49.000By delivering episodes on a relatively often schedule, I can also hook up more people and by that point they may be more forgiving if I take longer to do the research.
02:47:59.000Well, it's such an intensive style of podcasting.
02:48:02.000It's really not just educational, but it's like You're kind of doing a lecture.
02:49:00.000Now, you don't want to script it, because of course then it doesn't sound natural, but you want to have it pretty clear of where you are going, and so if you have the quotation that you need to quote, it's right there.
02:49:10.000You know exactly where it's going, so it's semi-scripted, but then you do it where you can.
02:49:16.000It's kind of like if I deliver a lecture in class.
02:49:18.000I'll take a peek at my notes, and I'm like, oh, that's where I need to go next.
02:49:21.000But then you deliver it in a more natural style.
02:49:24.000So I'll write a good chunk of notes, but then of course you don't read the notes, you just have them there to keep you on track so that you know where you're going next.
02:49:35.000I'd be really curious to see if your accent is the same by episode 9. I honestly doubt it's going to change because, again, if I could hear it...
02:49:44.000You know, actually, I got in trouble because I said it on your podcast, I think the first time I was on your podcast.
02:49:49.000And as a joke, I said, you know, no, I used to speak perfect English.
02:52:08.000That's the phonetic differences between the way letters, like that's a big issue obviously with Portuguese to English too, with the Brazilians or the R's or H's and everything gets very weird when you try to translate it back and forth.
02:52:22.000Well that was one I wanted to ask you earlier, but I had actually forgotten.
02:52:26.000When we were talking about translating, when you're talking about the difference between learning English and seeing how short and abrupt the sentences are as opposed to like the Italian, How difficult is it when they're translating ancient historical texts?
02:52:47.000Some translators are awesome, and who knows if they are really true to the original language, but some translators can produce something amazing, and some don't.
02:52:57.000I love Tao Te Ching, you know, when you read Taoism.
02:53:42.000Yeah, it's translation from one culture to another, one time period to another, and all those combined, like ancient Italian literature, translating that into modern American English.
02:55:28.000That's why most of the time you don't really know what that guy said.
02:55:33.000This translation sounds better, so I'll go with that one.
02:55:36.000But you don't really know which one they meant.
02:55:38.000Well, it's got to be one of the most difficult aspects about history, too, because it was written by people who decided how they wanted people to remember the turn of events.
02:55:49.000Whether or not that's exactly how it went down.
02:55:52.000There are cases where there's, like, the Egyptian guy who left the record of, like, oh, we met the Hittites, and we kicked their ass, and we wiped them out, and the pharaoh is the best, and then you read the Hittite account, and it's like, whoa, that does not look like the same battle they're talking about.
02:56:26.000There's a ton of guesswork involved in history.
02:56:28.000You know, we make it sound like it's this super hard science, and, you know, you want to be as scientific as possible, but there's a lot of guesswork at the end of the day.