The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1437 - Stephen Dubner

00:00:00.000 Ready, young Jamie.

00:00:02.000 Here we go.

00:00:03.000 How are you, sir?

00:00:04.000 I'm great, thanks.

00:00:05.000 Nice to meet you.

00:00:06.000 Nice to meet you.

00:00:07.000 We were talking before about Adam Curry, who's just here, who has these crazy ear enhancements that are these software-based so he can tweak it and change levels and stuff like that.

00:00:18.000 And you were saying that you also have hearing, but you get it from rock and roll.

00:00:22.000 Yeah, I mean, honestly, I've never been tested.

00:00:24.000 I just know that when I'm out eating with my family or friends, that everybody can hear everything and I can't hear anything.

00:00:31.000 But no, I played loud rock music for six, seven, eight, nine years.

00:00:38.000 And yeah, it does what they say it does.

00:00:41.000 Yeah, they know what they're doing.

00:00:42.000 Yeah.

00:00:43.000 Those people that tell you not to do that.

00:00:45.000 But look, I like the technology.

00:00:47.000 I have older relatives who have a hearing aid, or whatever they're called now, hearing enhancement devices, that are light years better than they used to be.

00:00:55.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:00:56.000 So I figure if I can hold out a couple more years, mine are going to be so good, they'll take out the garbage, too.

00:01:01.000 Well, the ones that Adam has sound pretty fucking amazing.

00:01:04.000 He said it just sounds incredible, and he can actually tune into people that are 50 feet away, having a conversation, he can hear them.

00:01:10.000 And can you tune out people you don't like?

00:01:11.000 That's a good question.

00:01:12.000 I bet there is a way.

00:01:14.000 He has various settings, but I bet there's like a tone the world out setting.

00:01:19.000 I don't need to tone the world.

00:01:20.000 There are just some people.

00:01:22.000 Have you used any of those AirPods that have the noise cancelling technology?

00:01:26.000 Oh, not AirPods, but I wear Bose noise cancelers almost every day.

00:01:32.000 I wear them a lot.

00:01:34.000 You know, when I started as a journalist in newsrooms, this was late 80s, early 90s, a newsroom is an open place, and a lot of people back then were on the phone doing your reporting.

00:01:47.000 It was pre-internet reporting, right?

00:01:50.000 And you're a writer.

00:01:52.000 You're writing and you're editing.

00:01:52.000 And I didn't understand how people could think with all this din going on.

00:01:57.000 I couldn't do it.

00:01:58.000 So I started wearing just the good foam earplugs.

00:02:01.000 They're made by Flint's, I think, is the brand that I use.

00:02:03.000 They're kind of non-tapered, and they're very thick.

00:02:06.000 And if you compress them and put them in, it'll block out like 70%, 80%.

00:02:10.000 So I've been shutting out the world for like 25 years now.

00:02:13.000 So when the noise cancelers got good, I've embraced them, yeah.

00:02:18.000 Yeah, some people need it though, right?

00:02:19.000 They need that sound like at a coffee shop. 0.83

00:02:22.000 Like they love to go to coffee shops and all the milling around actually helps their creativity.

00:02:25.000 You know, we're doing an episode right now for Economics Radio on noise basically as, you know, kind of we got into it thinking about noise pollution, right?

00:02:34.000 Because noise is a funny thing.

00:02:36.000 It's what economists call an externality, a negative externality, meaning you can produce it and it affects me, but I can't charge you for it, right?

00:02:45.000 It's like pollution.

00:02:46.000 Right.

00:02:46.000 If you have a big factory, your pollution goes up, it blows over to someone else.

00:02:50.000 That's an externality on them.

00:02:51.000 So noise is that.

00:02:53.000 But what's really interesting is that there's a huge variance in how different people receive and perceive noise, as you just said.

00:03:01.000 So some people really need it and want it.

00:03:04.000 For some, it's a burden.

00:03:06.000 And then there's all these rather weird intricacies of noise.

00:03:11.000 Like, have you heard of misophonia?

00:03:13.000 You know what that is?

00:03:13.000 I have heard of it, but I don't remember what it means.

00:03:15.000 It is an intensely negative reaction when you hear other people chewing or their mouths making any sound.

00:03:23.000 And it can be debilitating for people who have it.

00:03:26.000 But then there's something called, I'm going to get it wrong, AMSR, ASMR, you know that?

00:03:30.000 Yeah, there's all these videos online with that.

00:03:32.000 Right, right, right.

00:03:33.000 What does that stand for, though?

00:03:36.000 I'd have to look it up.

00:03:39.000 Automated sense something.

00:03:41.000 Or someone would have to look it up.

00:03:44.000 Yeah, but if someone screams in your ear unexpectedly and hurts your ear, that is a form of assault, right?

00:03:52.000 You don't think of it that way, but if you saw a girl, she was standing there, and a guy ran up to her and just, in her ear, and she's like, and she falls down because your ear hurts.

00:04:03.000 I agree.

00:04:04.000 You can do that with sound.

00:04:05.000 What about when airports play CNN at blast volume?

00:04:09.000 Yeah, that's annoying.

00:04:09.000 I mean, is that a form of assault?

00:04:11.000 Borderline?

00:04:11.000 What kind of sweet deal does CNN have with airports?

00:04:14.000 I think it kind of made everybody hate CNN, blasting when you don't want to hear it.

00:04:18.000 That's right, right?

00:04:19.000 It shows that it's a little bit annoying.

00:04:21.000 But it's also, it's like, you don't want to be looking at all the world's problems when you're about to get on the most stressful thing that a person does.

00:04:29.000 You have to self-medicate pretty heavily before flying, I understand?

00:04:33.000 No, I don't have to.

00:04:35.000 You enjoy it.

00:04:36.000 I enjoy it.

00:04:37.000 You enjoy it more.

00:04:37.000 Yeah.

00:04:37.000 Well, this is the way I think of it.

00:04:39.000 On a plane, one of two things, either I get some work done or I get some entertainment.

00:04:44.000 I watch a movie on the laptop or I'll get some writing in.

00:04:47.000 Right.

00:04:49.000 I can get really, really high and then get on that and just freak the fuck out and make it, but go through a rollercoaster ride of thoughts and a lot of times I wind up riding too.

00:05:02.000 Wait, when you get high, you have a worse experience on the plane than you're saying?

00:05:06.000 No, no, no.

00:05:06.000 It's not worse.

00:05:07.000 It's just scary.

00:05:08.000 It's not worse.

00:05:09.000 And scary is not worse.

00:05:11.000 No, because there's benefits to it.

00:05:13.000 There's benefits in terms of creativity and then insight.

00:05:16.000 I have a whole bit about it, but it is based on the truth.

00:05:20.000 I oftentimes take a heavy dose of edibles and then get on a plane.

00:05:23.000 In order to intentionally put yourself in a state that can be somewhat negative but also creativity?

00:05:30.000 I don't.

00:05:31.000 See, I don't use that word, negative.

00:05:32.000 I don't think it is negative.

00:05:33.000 Even when I'm freaking out.

00:05:34.000 Like, if I'm sitting in the chair and I'm like, whoo! 0.70

00:05:37.000 And, you know, I'm looking out the window, we're flying, and I'm realizing we're 30,000 feet in the air, and I'm, you know, really fucking high.

00:05:43.000 Is this...

00:05:43.000 So I'm not, like, a rollercoaster person?

00:05:47.000 I don't like rollercoasters.

00:05:48.000 But is this a similar kind of...

00:05:49.000 Like, you intentionally put yourself in a scenario where you're going to heighten some senses?

00:05:53.000 Is that the idea?

00:05:54.000 No, because I think a rollercoaster is just...

00:05:57.000 Fun, right?

00:05:58.000 It's just goofs.

00:05:59.000 This is an essential thing you're doing.

00:06:02.000 You're traveling to a place where you're going to.

00:06:04.000 And as you're doing it, you're incredibly vulnerable, right?

00:06:07.000 You're immobilized in a chair while you're going 500 miles an hour in the sky, right?

00:06:12.000 And you're like, whoa, already you're like a little weirded out if you look out the window.

00:06:16.000 But now when you're really, really, really high, it puts you in this very strange state.

00:06:20.000 And you start thinking about your life and you start thinking about how you talk to people.

00:06:23.000 You start thinking about things that you've learned and Documentaries that you find fascinating.

00:06:30.000 You start dwelling on weird things.

00:06:32.000 And then, you know, oftentimes I'll either watch something or I'll start writing.

00:06:35.000 So I get something very productive out of what would be dead time.

00:06:39.000 It makes me...

00:06:39.000 It fires up my...

00:06:41.000 Whatever it is...

00:06:43.000 That creates creativity, for me, whatever the source of it, for me, for some reason it gets enhanced oftentimes by being on a plane on edibles.

00:06:51.000 How predictable, though, is the experience?

00:06:55.000 Unpredictable.

00:06:55.000 Right.

00:06:55.000 So is that not a little frightening?

00:06:57.000 Yes, that's the fun part. 1.00

00:07:00.000 You're the lunatic. 1.00

00:07:01.000 A little bit. 1.00

00:07:02.000 But nobody gets hurt.

00:07:04.000 That's the thing.

00:07:04.000 It's not like a real fear.

00:07:06.000 And in the back of your mind, you know this is just a physiological, chemical response and I'm going to...

00:07:13.000 Exactly.

00:07:14.000 And...

00:07:15.000 I mean, that's what paranoia really is, marijuana-based paranoia, if I had to guess.

00:07:19.000 It's a hyper-awareness that you're not comfortable with.

00:07:22.000 And so in taking in all these things, it's like, if you just can't settle in, you're recognizing every threat that's around you all the time.

00:07:29.000 The fact that a rock could come out of the sky, the fact that the tsunami could hit at any moment, the earth could shake, what if a super volcano blows up?

00:07:37.000 All those things that you know to be real all of a sudden get dragged into the sky.

00:07:40.000 And you put yourself back into caveman mode.

00:07:43.000 Like, every rustle of grass is the lion who's coming to eat.

00:07:46.000 All right, let me ask you a question.

00:07:47.000 Sorry, I realize I'm not supposed to be asking you questions, but I'm going to ask you.

00:07:49.000 No, we're talking, man.

00:07:50.000 Let's do this.

00:07:50.000 Here's a question.

00:07:52.000 Let's say for people who don't use drugs, right?

00:07:55.000 But they hear you say this, and they say, wow, that is...

00:07:59.000 I recognize the value of putting yourself...

00:08:03.000 In a place, emotionally, cognitively, kind of unleashing yourself or maybe putting yourself in a new place where you're going to have thoughts, big thoughts, maybe scary thoughts, is there a way to do that that you know of without drugs?

00:08:15.000 Yeah, we were just talking about that, with Adam, in fact.

00:08:18.000 We were talking about holotropic breathing, and he has had some experiences with holotropic breathing.

00:08:23.000 It's like a meditation-based breathing routine that, for whatever reason, it activates psychedelic chemicals in your brain, and you can really trip out.

00:08:32.000 And he was talking about how he was flying for like a half an hour, and I've had various friends do it.

00:08:36.000 I've yet to experience it.

00:08:37.000 You've tried it?

00:08:38.000 No, yet.

00:08:39.000 I've yet to experience it.

00:08:40.000 But I've had various friends who've done it who have had spectacular experiences, like full-blown mushroom experiences for several minutes.

00:08:48.000 And is it guaranteed, like if you do the breathing, is it guaranteed to get you to that state or no?

00:08:52.000 No, I think you have to learn how to get there.

00:08:54.000 Not as reliable as drugs then.

00:08:55.000 Right.

00:08:55.000 And also physically demanding.

00:08:58.000 Like I think it takes a long time.

00:08:59.000 I think you have to work yourself up into this state where this stuff starts to happen.

00:09:03.000 And you also have to probably follow some routine that's tried and true.

00:09:08.000 I don't know what that routine is.

00:09:09.000 But I do know that people that I trust, including people like Adam, super smart guys, We'll tell you that for them, it gave them the same experience as like taking a drug.

00:09:20.000 All right, I'm going to look it up.

00:09:21.000 Because I'm not big on drugs.

00:09:22.000 I don't know why.

00:09:23.000 Just not.

00:09:24.000 Because you're smart.

00:09:24.000 No, I'm also not judgmental about it.

00:09:27.000 I have no issue. 0.87

00:09:29.000 I'm not saying that you would be dumb to do them, but I see you're a smart guy. 0.92

00:09:32.000 So if you're a smart guy and you see drugs, you see a lot of people have problems with drugs and you're fine with reality. 0.91

00:09:37.000 Yeah, I mean, I smoked dope in college, and it just, I mean, also the dope was...

00:09:41.000 Believe me, son, I smoke dope.

00:09:46.000 But also, the dope was a different caliber then.

00:09:49.000 It wasn't very good.

00:09:50.000 It wasn't very predictable, and I just had bad experiences, so whatever.

00:09:55.000 I like whiskey.

00:09:57.000 Me too.

00:09:58.000 And I like the predictability of, like, even, like, the difference between if I drink my Laphroaig as my favorite scotch, like, and if there's not that and there's another...

00:10:06.000 That's the stuff we had the other day, no?

00:10:07.000 We had Lagvulin.

00:10:09.000 Lagvulin.

00:10:10.000 Lagvulin's good.

00:10:11.000 Lagvulin's good.

00:10:11.000 They're very close.

00:10:14.000 It's the Petey family.

00:10:15.000 Some people don't like the Petey stuff.

00:10:17.000 Oh, Petey.

00:10:18.000 Yeah, that was the first time I think I've ever had anything like that.

00:10:20.000 Oh, you've never had a... 0.98

00:10:21.000 The bottle was half empty, though, so I don't know what the fuck happened. 0.98

00:10:24.000 I was probably so drunk that I was drinking it and not even realizing it was Petey. 0.96

00:10:27.000 It's a nice thing about Scotch, though.

00:10:29.000 You can sip it kind of forever if you're, you know...

00:10:33.000 That stuff, too, I would imagine is even better when you're gently sipping it because you're dealing with this really exotic flavor.

00:10:39.000 It's also good for you.

00:10:41.000 Is it really?

00:10:42.000 Well, let me rephrase.

00:10:43.000 It's not bad for you.

00:10:44.000 In terms of alcohol, I mean, beer...

00:10:46.000 Look, it depends how crazy you want to be about caloric...

00:10:50.000 Consumption and so on.

00:10:51.000 But beer has a lot of calories.

00:10:52.000 Wine has a lot of sugar.

00:10:54.000 And whiskey is actually pretty low-cal, low-sugar, just high alcohol content, so the sugar works a little bit differently.

00:11:02.000 But no, my doctor fully approves of a couple drinks a night.

00:11:06.000 Yeah, there's been research that shows that a couple of drinks a night for most people is actually...

00:11:10.000 In fact, my doctor, who's a researcher as well, she said that if you look at longevity, the people who have the shorter life expectancies are the people who drink a lot, not a surprise, and none.

00:11:24.000 Ooh.

00:11:25.000 So it's the people who drink from like one and a half to maybe two and a half, maybe a little bit more drinks a day, have the longest life expectancy.

00:11:32.000 She doesn't know, though, whether it's the teetotalers.

00:11:35.000 Why do they live shorter?

00:11:37.000 It may be because they can't alleviate the stress, maybe.

00:11:41.000 You know, it could be that alcohol does have physiological benefits.

00:11:44.000 We don't know.

00:11:44.000 But the message seems to me that everybody should drink a little bit.

00:11:48.000 Yeah, there's got to be a benefit in relaxation.

00:11:51.000 There's got to be.

00:11:52.000 You know, I was listening to your podcast on loneliness and statistics.

00:11:57.000 It's really good.

00:11:58.000 I love your podcast, by the way.

00:12:00.000 I'm a big fan.

00:12:00.000 Appreciate it.

00:12:00.000 Thank you.

00:12:01.000 And that one, you know, talking about loneliness and, you know, that whole correlation, how they came to the conclusion that it's like 15 cigarettes a day.

00:12:10.000 But that a bad feeling, that a bad feeling is bad for you.

00:12:13.000 And a good feeling is probably good for you.

00:12:15.000 And the little trade-off health-wise, I kind of feel like you can make that up in the gym.

00:12:20.000 And you can achieve a good balance.

00:12:22.000 There's something about having a drink every now and then.

00:12:24.000 It's nice.

00:12:25.000 Yeah.

00:12:25.000 You want to hug people.

00:12:27.000 You want to have smiles.

00:12:28.000 Agree.

00:12:28.000 It relaxes you.

00:12:29.000 Also, you know, this is a phrase that younger people will not remember, but actually I can't remember it either.

00:12:35.000 So I think it's the social lubricant.

00:12:38.000 That's what they used to call alcohol, right?

00:12:40.000 And so the fact is, is that a lot of people have a lot of trouble communicating with other people, period.

00:12:46.000 Whether it's loved ones, you either say you're too candid or you're not candid enough with strangers.

00:12:52.000 Yeah.

00:12:52.000 So a lot of people have a hard time being with other people kind of in the way they want to.

00:12:57.000 And if alcohol can act, does that kind of take the edge off, as they say?

00:13:00.000 It's interesting.

00:13:01.000 But I'm always looking for ways.

00:13:03.000 I'm always trying to isolate the places or the circumstances where I get good ideas.

00:13:10.000 And the problem is it's very – it's unpredictable.

00:13:13.000 Walking is the one thing that I've found.

00:13:16.000 And the fact is that writers throughout history – A lot of creative people throughout history have embraced walking.

00:13:22.000 Now, in the old days, it was one of the few things that you kind of could do.

00:13:26.000 You weren't going to go out and, well, I guess you could have played golf or whatever, but people have been walking for a long time and they say that there's something about what the brain and body do in...

00:13:37.000 Concert with each other on a walk, which is you're kind of mapping, you're kind of decoding, you're kind of figuring, but you're also getting some physiological stimulation.

00:13:45.000 And I find that's one that's pretty good, but I wish there was a thing I could do to make the good ideas flow, because that's the hard part. 0.84

00:13:53.000 I think if there was a thing other than show up and start writing, if there really was a thing, it would cheapen whatever the fuck it is that makes you have those weird thoughts that come across.

00:14:02.000 Like, where'd that come from? 0.94

00:14:03.000 A gift from the heavens!

00:14:05.000 Yeah, no, the mystery is beautiful.

00:14:07.000 Yeah.

00:14:09.000 But walking, to me, I didn't really walk until really recently.

00:14:13.000 I didn't go on hikes or anything until really recently.

00:14:15.000 I usually would run.

00:14:17.000 And running, a lot of times, you know, you're just so tired, you're not having any good ideas.

00:14:21.000 You're just thinking like, I gotta get to the top of the hill.

00:14:23.000 How long you lived in LA? Since 94. And before that?

00:14:27.000 I lived in, this is my whole thing, New Jersey until I was 7, San Francisco from 7 to 11, Florida from 11 to 13, Boston from 13 to 24, New York from 24 to 26-ish, 27 maybe,

00:14:43.000 before 27, I'm on the West Coast.

00:14:46.000 Okay, so did you find that in Boston and New York, which are easily the best walking places of all those places you just said, did you walk a lot more there and did it change anything for you?

00:14:54.000 No, I was busy.

00:14:56.000 There's no time to be.

00:14:58.000 Well, I was 20, you know, my early 20s.

00:15:00.000 You were working in clubs in New York at that age, right?

00:15:02.000 Yeah.

00:15:02.000 I was working in clubs in New York, and I was doing a lot of road gigs, and I was playing a lot of pool, and I was hanging around with a bunch of comedians, and I wasn't going on any hikes.

00:15:11.000 I would go to the gym occasionally and work out, but we were doing comedy.

00:15:16.000 But as a grown-up, and I usually run with my dog, he loves to run, and I haven't been able to run recently because of a little injury.

00:15:24.000 So for the last two months, I've just been walking with him and then hiking on the trails and he runs around.

00:15:30.000 When I was doing it, I was realizing I can listen to podcasts, or I can listen to music, or I can just do it silent.

00:15:36.000 And when I do it silent, it's really interesting.

00:15:40.000 There's inner dialogue that starts playing out, and it's like you're having a conversation with yourself that's a little therapeutic.

00:15:46.000 So I go on these hour walks with my dog, and at the end of it, I feel like I've got a better handle on stuff.

00:15:54.000 I wonder, what you're saying makes me think, and I hope it's not too late for our episode on noise, because this is actually a component that'd be good to get at, is, like, the way you just described quiet, or solitude, whatever it is, right?

00:16:09.000 I think almost everybody who hears that would say, oh yeah, I definitely see the value of that, because, you know, you need time to process your thoughts, to feel things, whatever.

00:16:19.000 But it does make me wonder, the world is obviously more noisy now than it used to be.

00:16:24.000 Yeah, way more.

00:16:25.000 And I do wonder if you just get conditioned out of even thinking about that.

00:16:28.000 Like, my kids, who are teenagers, like, I don't see them ever having silence or solitude.

00:16:36.000 Right.

00:16:37.000 And, again, I don't want to be the generation, because every generation thinks that what the next generation does is horrible.

00:16:44.000 Like, the people, you know, the Rolling Stones came, the people who, like, Perry Como said, this is the worst music ever, and then the people after that said the Rolling Stones, you know, etc., But I do wonder how much we're losing by not having availability of that quiet.

00:16:59.000 Unless you build your life to have a lot of silence, which I do because I'm a writer and I sit alone all day, not many people get to have that.

00:17:09.000 And I wonder what the loss is.

00:17:10.000 There's got to be something because there's a shift in attention and there's a shift in focus that's dramatic.

00:17:18.000 We've gone from just looking at the world around us to fixated on a device.

00:17:22.000 You know, you look at people's phone time, a lot of times it's six hours in a day.

00:17:26.000 Just constantly on their phone on the toilet, constantly on their phone when they go to get a coffee, on their phone at their desk, texting people while they're walking to the other office, they're texting and walking down the hallway. 0.99

00:17:37.000 I mean, most people are on those goddamn things all day long. 0.59

00:17:40.000 And there's, for sure, you're putting energy into that little device, which means you're not putting energy into thinking without that device. 0.98

00:17:49.000 And though you might think of it as a, well, I'm still paying attention, I'm just doing this.

00:17:53.000 But you're not. 0.98

00:17:54.000 You're not dedicating any resource to being bored and to thinking about shit and to just walking and talking to yourself. 0.99

00:18:02.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:18:02.000 Like thinking to yourself. 0.99

00:18:03.000 And there's something about like a long hike.

00:18:05.000 You take a dog for a couple mile hike where you're just walking and you hear crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.

00:18:12.000 And you're just thinking.

00:18:12.000 And no one's talking to you.

00:18:14.000 And you're not talking to anybody.

00:18:15.000 You're just walking and talking with your dog.

00:18:17.000 And then you're thinking about stuff in a way that is like...

00:18:20.000 A tangible sort of meditation on your life.

00:18:23.000 It's a real moment.

00:18:24.000 And we don't value that real moment.

00:18:26.000 We think of it almost as like wasted.

00:18:27.000 Not even listening to anything.

00:18:29.000 No good tunes.

00:18:30.000 But it's really like there's value in thinking.

00:18:33.000 And we haven't put a value judgment or a number judgment on that.

00:18:38.000 It's interesting, some of the people you hear these days talking the most about really limiting or even forbidding their kids' screen time is Silicon Valley executives.

00:18:49.000 Oh, yeah.

00:18:50.000 That's where, you know...

00:18:51.000 They're smart.

00:18:51.000 Yeah, so you have to say, like, you know, at a certain point, you have to say, okay, the writing is on the wall here.

00:18:56.000 But on the other hand, look, every technology that's ever been invented, people get scared of it, people embrace it, people trash it, and then, you know...

00:19:05.000 For sure, for sure.

00:19:08.000 There's always a thing where there's an example in history where people are wrong.

00:19:13.000 But then there's the reality of what it is.

00:19:15.000 What it is is an ever increasingly immersive experience that everyone is addicted to.

00:19:21.000 And when you're walking through a Starbucks and you see nothing but people on their phones.

00:19:26.000 Like people in line are on their phones.

00:19:28.000 People sitting down are on their phones.

00:19:30.000 You go through a mall, everyone's on their phone. 0.99

00:19:32.000 You go through a movie theater, people can't put their fucking phone down while a movie's on. 0.99

00:19:36.000 People are driving, they're on their phone. 0.99

00:19:38.000 On the other hand, but you've got to consider the upsides, too.

00:19:40.000 Oh, there's a lot of upsides.

00:19:41.000 I mean, even in the environment you're describing that sounds like, let's say Starbucks, everybody's on the phone, you've got to think, well, wait a minute.

00:19:49.000 Maybe that person over there who looks like they're a slave to it, maybe they are, maybe they're sending a text to their grandma that they wouldn't have done, they wouldn't have been able to do 10 years ago.

00:20:00.000 Sure.

00:20:01.000 So that's the tricky part.

00:20:02.000 I mean, that's why I like economists, because economists are ruthless, bloodless.

00:20:08.000 They almost don't know what humans are, but they're very good at measuring costs and benefits.

00:20:14.000 And that's what I feel that our kind of political, social media discourse is missing.

00:20:20.000 People are all, for the most part, Advocates or activists, they pick up the lane and they stay in it and they want to pave over the rest of everybody's lanes and make it theirs.

00:20:32.000 And it's not a good way to be.

00:20:34.000 No, it's not.

00:20:34.000 You know, that's another episode that I was listening to of yours recently about how hard it is to get people to change their mind on things.

00:20:42.000 And I forget who the expert was who was talking, but it was a really interesting point that he had about the mind of Like people say, change your mind.

00:20:49.000 You don't really have a mind.

00:20:50.000 You have the mind of the community.

00:20:51.000 And if you step outside the beliefs of the community, it can be very bad for you in terms of, like, your personal connections with people.

00:20:58.000 And I really enjoyed that episode.

00:21:01.000 It's funny.

00:21:02.000 Thanks.

00:21:02.000 It's a paradox, though, because the way you just said it, like, if you are in your tribe… Yes.

00:21:07.000 Then, even though it can be healthier for you and for presumably many other people for you to change your mind or at least think differently about things, you risk losing credibility or whatever.

00:21:19.000 Well, I mean, some religions, I mean, that's how they keep you, right?

00:21:23.000 You get ostracized.

00:21:24.000 There's religions that we know of where if you decide to leave, you don't just get ostracized.

00:21:30.000 You literally have a death sentence.

00:21:32.000 Like, now you've escaped our group. 0.96

00:21:35.000 You're an outsider now.

00:21:37.000 My father, both my parents converted from Judaism to Catholicism before they met each other.

00:21:43.000 Yeah, it was a very unusual story.

00:21:45.000 How did that happen?

00:21:47.000 It's a long story.

00:21:48.000 I'll tell you if you really want to know.

00:21:49.000 But anyway, I'll do the short what I'm getting to.

00:21:52.000 And this was during the Second World War.

00:21:55.000 They were both in New York, both first-generation American Jews.

00:22:00.000 That makes sense.

00:22:00.000 They converted for different reasons from each other, and then they met.

00:22:03.000 My father's family was Orthodox.

00:22:07.000 And his father, a guy named Shepsel Dubner, who'd come here when he was in his maybe late 20s from Poland, he still lived his everyday in Brooklyn as if he were still in Poland.

00:22:16.000 He didn't change at all.

00:22:17.000 When my father converted and his father found out, my father was in the war, he was overseas, he was home on leave, and I think we're good to go. 0.96

00:22:44.000 The sit shiva forum, the Jewish mourning ritual, where for seven days you mourn the dead.

00:22:50.000 He declared that he would never again speak to his son, and he forbade everyone in his family from speaking to his son.

00:22:58.000 So, by the time I was born, I was the youngest of eight kids in this family because they'd become very Catholic.

00:23:04.000 I didn't know this whole family of my father's was unknown to me entirely.

00:23:10.000 So, they did exactly what you're saying now. 1.00

00:23:13.000 Holy shit! 1.00

00:23:15.000 Yeah, yeah, that was what I thought too when I... Holy shit! 1.00

00:23:19.000 And my mother's did the same thing, but it was less dramatic because her family was less religious, so they still didn't like at all that she had converted. 0.98

00:23:30.000 Do you have any children?

00:23:32.000 Yeah, I got a couple.

00:23:33.000 I'm Jewish again, though.

00:23:35.000 The first book I wrote, long before Freakonomics, was called Turbulent Souls, although it got then republished under a different title called Choosing My Religion, and it tells this story of my two parents and then me.

00:23:47.000 I would love to hear that, but I just want to put in your head that what I was going to ask you is like, how could you imagine a scenario where you would be capable of doing that to your children?

00:23:58.000 So, no chance.

00:24:01.000 No chance.

00:24:01.000 No chance, but...

00:24:02.000 It's so scary.

00:24:03.000 Yeah, it's scary.

00:24:04.000 It is.

00:24:05.000 But on the other hand, I mean, this is what Freakonomics is...

00:24:09.000 What I try to learn through doing Freakonomics is, you know, to measure the what...

00:24:17.000 And try to figure out the why, but then not be the judge who says, that was terrible, this is wonderful, because, you know, different people have, look, if Shepsel Dubner were here, we could ask him, What's your side of the story?

00:24:32.000 He could tell us a story that might convince us that, you know what, this son of his did a terrible thing to the family.

00:24:39.000 He did a terrible thing.

00:24:40.000 You know, he would say, how could it be that we Jews existed for generations and generations and generations when everywhere we lived, there was always someone trying to, you know, get rid of us.

00:24:51.000 And then we finally come to America You know, the land of freedom, religious freedom, economic freedom.

00:24:57.000 And here, after generations and generations of forefathers fought to stay Jewish, here my son decides to become Catholic.

00:25:05.000 What are you thinking?

00:25:06.000 So, you know, everybody's got a perspective.

00:25:08.000 Everybody's got an emotional experience.

00:25:10.000 So I try to respect that, but no, I would not do that to my children.

00:25:13.000 I understand the outrage.

00:25:15.000 I understand being upset.

00:25:17.000 But I can't understand choosing that over your son and over the relationship you have with your son. 0.99

00:25:23.000 It's ridiculous. 0.87

00:25:24.000 The saddest end of the story is when my grandfather, who I never met, this was a long time ago, my father's father. 0.76

00:25:31.000 My father died when I was very young, so I didn't know the story either.

00:25:33.000 That was why I wrote this first book, was to try to figure out this.

00:25:37.000 All the stuff I'm telling you now, none of this I knew until I was in my 20s when I was writing this book.

00:25:41.000 But when Shepsel Dubner was dying of cancer in the maybe late 50s or so, I think?

00:26:05.000 Thought that that was my father, his son.

00:26:09.000 My dad's name was Solomon.

00:26:10.000 He called him Shloyma.

00:26:11.000 And he was calling out to him, Shloyma, Shloyma, as if he was, you know, happy to see him.

00:26:19.000 It wasn't him, though.

00:26:21.000 And my father didn't go visit his own father dying in the hospital because he'd been forbidden to go anywhere near.

00:26:29.000 So, it was terrible.

00:26:31.000 So, look, this is why religion... 0.63

00:26:34.000 I've been long fascinated by religion and I think that, again, if you think about it the way that economists think about things, there are costs and there are benefits and it's complicated.

00:26:46.000 I think you're 100% right.

00:26:47.000 I think that's hard for people to handle when people are hardcore atheists.

00:26:53.000 Where they don't see any value in it whatsoever, even though people are getting some sort of ethical value, moral value.

00:27:02.000 And the way I always put it is it's like a scaffolding to live your life by.

00:27:07.000 You can live within these confines and it really kind of makes sense if you follow it loosely that we're doing it for the benefit of community.

00:27:15.000 And it's also like a real community sense that comes from meeting in Sunday.

00:27:20.000 Or whatever day it is with your religion, and you meet in a group of other people that are also in the community, and you all basically are saying together that we should do good things and be good to people and treat each other the way God would want us to.

00:27:37.000 Like, all that has undeniable benefits.

00:27:39.000 And anybody that says differently is like you're deluding yourself.

00:27:42.000 Like, your points… The atheists who are hardcore, who make points about the preposterous nature of a lot of religious texts, they're on the money.

00:27:49.000 But it doesn't mean that it doesn't give people a benefit and that I couldn't even disagree with them continuing it.

00:27:57.000 Because there's a lot of people that benefit greatly from religion.

00:28:00.000 Someone wrote to us after that loneliness episode came out.

00:28:05.000 And said, how did you fail to write about this supposed epidemic of loneliness without addressing the huge decline in organized religion in America?

00:28:17.000 Which I thought was a very good piece of criticism.

00:28:19.000 Because you're right, it's a community.

00:28:22.000 One other thing I would add to the list that you provided of what it can give is humility, right?

00:28:27.000 Because, you know, if you have an image of some superior being, God, deity, whatever you want to call it, You kind of understand that one mortal is, you know, the world does not revolve around me.

00:28:39.000 The other thing I would say, and look, it's hard for me to scientifically, logically embrace a lot of the arguments that a lot of religions make, especially about things like the afterlife, right?

00:28:49.000 That said, even to an atheist, I would suggest one way to think about it is, if someone does believe in those rewards, or if in economic terms we're talking about them as incentives, Yeah.

00:29:08.000 Yeah.

00:29:22.000 How do you know they're not?

00:29:29.000 Maybe that's where God lives.

00:29:33.000 It could be.

00:29:34.000 I went to one of them in Brooklyn, by the way.

00:29:36.000 The only one I ever went to.

00:29:38.000 I was in Brooklyn for an audition in the early 90s.

00:29:40.000 And I'm like, why not? 1.00

00:29:41.000 Fuck it. 1.00

00:29:41.000 It was like 10 bucks or something. 1.00

00:29:43.000 I walked into this lady. 0.98

00:29:44.000 She's wrong about everything.

00:29:45.000 She thought I had a brother.

00:29:47.000 She thought I was trying to get into the family business.

00:29:50.000 You're really tight with your dad?

00:29:51.000 No, I don't even know him.

00:29:53.000 It was a disaster.

00:29:56.000 Alright, so maybe you didn't...

00:29:57.000 We need like a Yelp for psychics, and that one wouldn't have been the good one.

00:30:00.000 Yeah, I think if we're going to do something like that, we bring in James Randi.

00:30:04.000 We have him go by the rules.

00:30:06.000 And someone like Penn Jillette, who will be able to...

00:30:08.000 Because he understands all those carny tricks where they do where they can pretend that they're psychic just by leading you into questions.

00:30:14.000 But you know what's funny?

00:30:15.000 I think he's a pretty strongly professed atheist, right?

00:30:18.000 But somehow I find his talking about the subject incredibly, like, embracing.

00:30:23.000 Like, he doesn't, right?

00:30:24.000 Because it's a smart way of doing it.

00:30:26.000 He understands.

00:30:26.000 He's a generous person.

00:30:27.000 He is, yeah.

00:30:27.000 He's a really, really nice person.

00:30:29.000 And that's, even if he disagrees with you on something, he'll laugh and joke around, but he's a nice person.

00:30:36.000 He'll let you have these conversations.

00:30:40.000 Some people try to shove their atheism down your throat and mock you. 1.00

00:30:45.000 All you're doing is reinforcing the ideas of these people because you're acting like an asshole. 1.00

00:30:50.000 So they're like, well, I'm now connecting atheism with assholes, so fuck atheists, fucking assholes. 1.00

00:30:56.000 And that's what people do. 1.00

00:30:58.000 It's like a natural...

00:30:59.000 But if someone's nice...

00:31:02.000 Do you know the story of Daryl Davis?

00:31:06.000 Daryl Davis is a gentleman who's been on this podcast before, and he is a musician by trade, but he has converted over 200 different guys to leave the KKK and Nazi organizations.

00:31:19.000 And he's converted it by becoming their friend.

00:31:22.000 Because he was doing a show, and this guy came—I'm butchering it, and I'm sorry, Daryl, but this is what he said on the podcast.

00:31:29.000 I'm sure you'd do a better job of telling the story.

00:31:31.000 But he was at a show, and he was playing in this band, and this guy said, you were really good, you know, and he sat down with the guy, and the guy said, I've never had a drink with a black guy before.

00:31:39.000 He's like, how is that possible?

00:31:41.000 And he shows him his card.

00:31:42.000 He's in the KKK. And so he goes, you're having a rational conversation with me, a normal conversation with me.

00:31:49.000 Do you really think that black men are evil or black men are dumb? 1.00

00:31:53.000 And they have this conversation, this civil conversation. 1.00

00:31:55.000 And then he gives the guy his, I think he gave him his phone number and said, I'll call you when I'm back in town if you want to have this conversation again.

00:32:04.000 And so then they become friends.

00:32:05.000 And so they go back and forth for like months.

00:32:08.000 Hanging out.

00:32:09.000 And then three months or so into the friendship, the guy brings his KKK outfit. 0.57

00:32:14.000 And he goes, I want to give this to you because I'm never wearing it again.

00:32:17.000 He goes, I'm done.

00:32:18.000 And from being this guy's friend.

00:32:19.000 Unreal.

00:32:20.000 And so then he meets a bunch of other ones.

00:32:22.000 And he starts talking to them.

00:32:23.000 And just nice as pie.

00:32:25.000 Just nice, friendly, intelligent, super articulate too. 0.99

00:32:28.000 So it's hard to describe him as dumb when he's way smarter than you. 0.99

00:32:32.000 Right? 0.99

00:32:33.000 You're talking to him and he's so eloquent.

00:32:35.000 So...

00:32:36.000 He converts more and more and more.

00:32:37.000 He converted a guy who was a Nazi. 0.52

00:32:40.000 He's converted a bunch of people.

00:32:42.000 It's more than 200 now.

00:32:44.000 And he continues to do it.

00:32:45.000 And there's some pieces about it online.

00:32:47.000 But hearing him say it, hearing him talk about it is the most amazing.

00:32:52.000 He grew up in a way that he didn't really experience racism until he came to America.

00:32:57.000 I think he said he was like six years old.

00:32:59.000 He's from Italy, right?

00:33:00.000 That's where he was from before that, up until then, I think.

00:33:04.000 Somewhere where he just didn't experience it and then when he was a little boy People were throwing things at him in a parade and he had no idea.

00:33:12.000 He couldn't understand it He'd never he didn't know and they had to pull him aside and say it's because you're black He's like what like he couldn't believe it so because the fact that he didn't have it in his early childhood and then he had it when he was a Young boy and realized how crazy it was that he didn't experience this before this one moment and became obsessed with it was Italy His Wikipedia says he grew up all over the world.

00:33:33.000 But when he came back, when he was 10, he was in an all-white Cub Scout pack in Massachusetts.

00:33:38.000 Yeah, so that's what it was.

00:33:39.000 So he was 10 years old.

00:33:41.000 Man, if you want to pick somewhere to experience kind of straight-up racism, Massachusetts is a good place to start, I would say.

00:33:47.000 There's definitely some spots.

00:33:48.000 I have some thoughts on that.

00:33:50.000 I feel like there's that heirloom...

00:33:53.000 Civilization that still, like, it landed there from boats just a couple of decades ago.

00:33:59.000 I mean, my grandparents came over in the, I think they were here in the 20s or the 30s, from Italy and Ireland.

00:34:07.000 Everybody came from somewhere, right?

00:34:09.000 There was mostly, most of them, three of them came from Italy, one of them came from Ireland.

00:34:13.000 So I'm three-quarters Italian.

00:34:14.000 But it's The families of those people were risk-taking savages.

00:34:20.000 They didn't even have a video to watch, right? 0.99

00:34:23.000 They just jumped in a fucking boat and hoped America was better. 0.99

00:34:26.000 And then when they got there, they got checked in at Ellis Island. 1.00

00:34:29.000 And then they started working in factories and scratching and clawing.

00:34:33.000 And there's just a lot of struggle that's still in that part of the world.

00:34:38.000 When you come to California, one of the first things you feel is like a lighter...

00:34:42.000 A lighter sense of discourse than the East Coast. 0.99

00:34:46.000 The East Coast, I always felt like people had their guard up a little bit more, a little bit more tense, a little bit more like, what the fuck did you say? 0.93

00:34:52.000 There was a little bit more of that, a little bit more sketchy people. 0.92

00:34:55.000 Just the echoes of the savage past is still in the soil.

00:35:01.000 I hear you, but...

00:35:04.000 There's also, so the thing that I like about New York, I don't mean to trash California.

00:35:10.000 I like California a lot.

00:35:11.000 Oh, I love New York.

00:35:12.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:35:12.000 But man, when I'm in California, first of all, it feels much more like a foreign country to me than any other place in America.

00:35:20.000 Maybe.

00:35:21.000 What makes it seem like a foreign country?

00:35:25.000 It feels because I feel people have a manner and a style that is totally divorced from this intensity that I'm used to, right?

00:35:39.000 In New York.

00:35:40.000 Now, I grew up on a farm in upstate New York.

00:35:42.000 So I grew up not in the hurly-burly New York City was scared because my parents, once they converted...

00:36:03.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:36:04.000 And then I caught the bug, and now I love cities.

00:36:07.000 So I love California, but when I come here, I feel like it's running on a different voltage, you know?

00:36:14.000 And I am envious of people's ability to run like that.

00:36:20.000 Like, they seem, right, like their shoulders, like you, look at me, I'm sitting here, my shoulders are always up to my ears, like, kind of just a built-in tension.

00:36:28.000 And I feel like I thrive on it.

00:36:30.000 Maybe I do.

00:36:30.000 I mean, things have worked out okay.

00:36:32.000 But like I said, when I look at the way people are sort of congenitally relaxed...

00:36:40.000 I envy it.

00:36:41.000 On the other hand, I think that that intensity produces some things that I like a lot.

00:36:47.000 I also like the environment of a university campus.

00:36:52.000 To me, the tricky part is there's that fine line between intensity and competition that treats it like a zero-sum game.

00:37:01.000 So I don't like to be around environments where people are trying to Yeah.

00:37:28.000 You know about population densities, right?

00:37:30.000 That you can accurately depict or detect how many people live in a given area by putting a camera on one red light and then a camera on another red light and then as the people walk by, measure how fast they walk.

00:37:42.000 No kidding.

00:37:42.000 I didn't know that.

00:37:44.000 And when they do that, if they do that— I assume faster is denser.

00:37:48.000 Yes, faster is denser.

00:37:50.000 Also, how many syllables that they say per sentence, how quickly they say those syllables, that there's actually a cadence, a speed, an uptick— What are you talking about?

00:38:00.000 What are you talking about, John?

00:38:01.000 I don't believe what you're saying. 1.00

00:38:02.000 What the fuck are you saying, bro? 1.00

00:38:05.000 People get to the chase. 1.00

00:38:06.000 Cut to the chase.

00:38:06.000 And I think that that urge to walk faster, that urge to talk faster is an energy.

00:38:10.000 And that energy, you know, we're looking at it in terms of its results, right?

00:38:13.000 The results are you can actually detect.

00:38:15.000 If you know the formula, you look at a camera here and a camera there.

00:38:19.000 You know a timer.

00:38:20.000 So someone walked from here to there.

00:38:22.000 You add it all up.

00:38:23.000 And you can guess, like, really accurately, within a million people.

00:38:26.000 Pretty neat.

00:38:27.000 Yeah.

00:38:28.000 I think it's because there's energy that comes out of cities.

00:38:31.000 My friend Jeff lives in New York, my manager.

00:38:33.000 He's lived there forever.

00:38:35.000 And he loves it.

00:38:36.000 He goes, I never leave New York.

00:38:37.000 I love New York. 1.00

00:38:38.000 The fucking energy of this city. 1.00

00:38:39.000 Because it gives him juice. 1.00

00:38:41.000 Right.

00:38:42.000 Not for everybody, we should say.

00:38:44.000 Not for everybody.

00:38:45.000 Some people, I think, just get weirded out by it and they need to be alone.

00:38:48.000 And some people like a yard and some people like peace and quiet.

00:38:50.000 But some people live for that. 1.00

00:38:52.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:38:53.000 They live for it. 1.00

00:38:54.000 They live for being stacked on top of a building with strangers below them and everyone's all together in this hive feeding off each other.

00:39:01.000 You know what's interesting is, you know...

00:39:02.000 How old are you?

00:39:03.000 52. Okay, so I'm 56. You look great.

00:39:08.000 Ditto.

00:39:09.000 So we're the same, roughly, generation, and we remember that back when, you know, computerization was starting and the internet was starting, that all the predictions were that, you know, now anybody can do anything from everywhere, so nobody's going to have any reason to have to live anywhere,

00:39:25.000 and cities are just going to empty out.

00:39:27.000 Yeah, I remember that.

00:39:28.000 Exactly wrong!

00:39:29.000 Exactly.

00:39:29.000 Around the world, the more digital we've gotten, in fact, the urban population now, the share of the human population that's urban is higher now than it's ever been in the history of the world.

00:39:39.000 It's unbelievable.

00:39:40.000 So what that says to me is, and this is not about New York versus California anymore, what that says to me is, even when you can engage with people remotely or have a lot of space, whatever, there's something about humans wanting to rub up against each other physically,

00:39:55.000 intellectually, etc.

00:39:56.000 that is incredibly strong.

00:39:58.000 Undeniable.

00:39:59.000 That's why going to live, see live music and things like that.

00:40:02.000 It's a shared experience.

00:40:03.000 You're all seeing something live.

00:40:05.000 There's a benefit to that.

00:40:06.000 And I always tell people, like, if you watch a comedy special on television, that comedy special is, at the very best, 70% as good as seeing it live.

00:40:15.000 It's never 100% because you're not there.

00:40:17.000 So it might be great because it's a funny person, but you're missing, for sure, at least 30%.

00:40:23.000 And then, you know, when you're live, there's like this intangible quality.

00:40:27.000 You feel it in the air.

00:40:29.000 When you're all laughing, there's a buzz that everybody gets.

00:40:32.000 You're laughing together.

00:40:34.000 Yeah, like right now.

00:40:35.000 It reminds me of, I once watched somebody else's wedding video.

00:40:40.000 I can't remember the circumstances.

00:40:41.000 Did you get forced at gunpoint?

00:40:43.000 It was pretty close to that.

00:40:44.000 And they said it was somebody showing me their sibling's wedding video because they said it was such an amazing experience.

00:40:52.000 It was so warm.

00:40:53.000 And I was watching it.

00:40:55.000 And I felt like I was watching a detergent commercial.

00:40:57.000 Like, no emotional connection because...

00:41:00.000 I wasn't there.

00:41:01.000 I wasn't there.

00:41:01.000 That's the worst thing that people make you do.

00:41:03.000 They make you sit and watch their...

00:41:05.000 The only thing worse is someone who's in a really bad band and they want you to listen to their album in front of you.

00:41:10.000 And you have to sit there and go, dude, you're making me do this.

00:41:13.000 When I played music, my...

00:41:16.000 So I had...

00:41:17.000 I never...

00:41:18.000 So first of all, when I started in this band, we were in North Carolina and my family was mostly up in New York State and so on.

00:41:25.000 So they weren't close.

00:41:26.000 But then when we started to travel and tour and whatnot...

00:41:29.000 We would get within their range and they'd come to see us.

00:41:31.000 These are like my older siblings who I love.

00:41:33.000 They're great people.

00:41:34.000 But I would say to them, I don't think this really is going to be for you.

00:41:38.000 It's going to be pretty loud, raucous, rock and roll, a little bit punky, a little bit whatever.

00:41:42.000 And they're like, no, no, no.

00:41:43.000 I want to come see little brother.

00:41:45.000 So then they'd see a show.

00:41:47.000 I remember this one show we played at the old Ritz in New York.

00:41:49.000 And I remember my brother, who's a musician, by the way, and a very good musician, but much more refined than I was.

00:41:56.000 He came up and he said...

00:41:58.000 You guys really looked like you were having fun up there.

00:42:02.000 We weren't.

00:42:04.000 I wasn't.

00:42:04.000 You had so much energy up there.

00:42:08.000 So yeah, the difference between the experience from the inside and perceived experience was a massive gap.

00:42:15.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:42:17.000 Yeah, going to see something live like that where it's bad is actually extra super painful.

00:42:23.000 Like when you watch a comedian bomb on stage and you're in the audience, you're feeling agony.

00:42:27.000 Like you're mad at this person for putting you through this.

00:42:29.000 Like, oh my God, get off stage.

00:42:30.000 No, you can't be mad at him, though.

00:42:32.000 Isn't it more empathy than anger?

00:42:34.000 Oh, for sure.

00:42:34.000 Yeah.

00:42:34.000 But sure, but there's a lot of anger, too.

00:42:37.000 Because you are being tortured.

00:42:39.000 Like imagine if, and it's not really physical pain, but there is a certain level of emotional pain you experience when someone's bombing.

00:42:46.000 When someone's in front of you like, oh god, especially me, because I've done stand-up for so many years, like I know what it's like to bomb, I've bombed, so I see someone bombing, I'm like, yikes, I gotta get out of here, I can't take it.

00:42:56.000 It's almost like my guts are on fire.

00:42:58.000 The thing I always wondered about comics is why they don't cheat more.

00:43:03.000 Because laughter is plainly very contagious, right?

00:43:07.000 Yeah.

00:43:07.000 So every time I've seen someone bomb, I always felt like if one or two people had started going with it, laughing, responding.

00:43:16.000 You mean cheat more by packing the audience and people laughing?

00:43:19.000 Something.

00:43:19.000 Or just putting your iPhone in the audience and having it start laughing.

00:43:23.000 I don't know how to – there's a lot of ways to cheat.

00:43:25.000 Because I've always thought that it's such an obvious dynamic that laughter is very, very contagious.

00:43:32.000 But even like you see like kids in school when they're supposed to not be laughing and one kid laughs, they all can't stop.

00:43:38.000 It's this incredibly contagious behavior.

00:43:40.000 So – I think if you did pipe in laughter, first of all...

00:43:44.000 No, I'm not saying...

00:43:44.000 Well, maybe I am saying that.

00:43:47.000 You did kind of say it with a phone in the audience.

00:43:49.000 Okay, that's most drastic.

00:43:51.000 Let's say you plant people in the audience.

00:43:54.000 Right.

00:43:54.000 You could probably swing things in a way from a really bad set to maybe an okay set, but you're never going to make it funny.

00:44:02.000 See, the best way to do that is to just make it funny.

00:44:07.000 Actually, to bother to be good.

00:44:10.000 That cheating thing's not helping you ever.

00:44:12.000 It's going to get in the way.

00:44:14.000 You make a good point.

00:44:15.000 You're not going to learn anything from it.

00:44:15.000 It's like people that steal other people's jokes.

00:44:18.000 They never learn how to write.

00:44:20.000 You have to figure out the language of it.

00:44:23.000 And when you're up there...

00:44:25.000 If you're just doing fake laughs in the background to juice it up, you're not going to know how to get real ones.

00:44:29.000 You're going to feel weird about it.

00:44:31.000 Also, you're going to know that you're doing it, and the audience is going to know that something's wrong.

00:44:36.000 Maybe I'm not talking about cheating per se.

00:44:39.000 You're making sense.

00:44:40.000 As having...

00:44:45.000 And I'm sure every comic does this already, so it's not like I'm telling anybody anything, but having something in your pocket that's going to get them on your side, even if for a little while, just to get the momentum going in your way.

00:44:59.000 We certainly do have some bits that you know work.

00:45:02.000 Because if you bomb or somebody else bombs, you could give exactly the same set an hour later to a slightly different crowd, and it would go great, right?

00:45:11.000 Sure.

00:45:13.000 Sometimes.

00:45:13.000 Sometimes you're bombing because you get off on a bad start.

00:45:17.000 The real sketchy time is when you're writing new material.

00:45:22.000 That's touch and go.

00:45:23.000 The way I always like to describe it, it's like you have no weapons.

00:45:26.000 You're going into a fight, but everything's made out of rubber. 1.00

00:45:28.000 Like, fuck. 1.00

00:45:29.000 Like, nothing's good yet, right? 1.00

00:45:31.000 Yeah.

00:45:53.000 Yeah.

00:45:55.000 Yeah.

00:45:59.000 Yeah.

00:46:11.000 Yeah, it's a psychological mind game.

00:46:13.000 For sure, you definitely could.

00:46:15.000 Look, and I've seen it happen to comedians while they're writing a whole new hour. 1.00

00:46:19.000 It's almost like they lose their glow as a human because they're just eating shit all the time. 1.00

00:46:25.000 And we get away from them like they're diseased. 0.99

00:46:28.000 Like if someone bombs and they come off stage, you get away from them because we know what it's like.

00:46:33.000 Does it feel contagious?

00:46:35.000 A little bit.

00:46:36.000 Yeah, you've got to get out of the room.

00:46:38.000 One of the worst things that people do, and I don't know why they do it, but a lot of comedians like to bring terrible comedians with them on the road so that they look like a hero.

00:46:46.000 It's a really sneaky move.

00:46:48.000 And they literally hire people that don't work any other way.

00:46:52.000 Is that a bad idea ultimately?

00:46:54.000 It's a terrible idea.

00:46:54.000 Because you want everybody to have fun.

00:46:56.000 And if you make them sit through 20 minutes of someone who's terrible, you're torturing them. 0.96

00:47:00.000 Do you end up lowering your own standard because you're around shitty people? 0.86

00:47:04.000 You ruin the vibe of the show. 0.99

00:47:06.000 It just fucks it up.

00:47:07.000 Especially if you're doing it on purpose.

00:47:10.000 There's a thing that's going on on stage that's not quantified.

00:47:13.000 And there's a mass hypnosis that's happening.

00:47:16.000 When someone is killing, for me, as an audience member, my recognition of this is, as a person who performs it and also as an audience member, when I'm an audience member and someone's killing, I'm letting them think for me.

00:47:29.000 I'm not even thinking.

00:47:31.000 I'm just letting them take me down a trail.

00:47:33.000 Say like Dave Attell.

00:47:35.000 Dave Attell was at the improv the other night. 0.97

00:47:37.000 We worked together and he was fucking amazing. 0.92

00:47:40.000 One of the best sets I've seen from him. 0.97

00:47:42.000 He's always been amazing, but God, he was on fire.

00:47:46.000 It was me, my friend Owen Smith, and Tony Hinchcliffe.

00:47:49.000 We were sitting in the back room and we were watching Dave and we were in a trance.

00:47:54.000 We were just laughing.

00:47:55.000 We were letting him think for us.

00:47:57.000 You know what I'm saying?

00:47:58.000 Like, he's doing all the thinking.

00:48:00.000 We're just on a little ride that Dave's taking us on this ride.

00:48:03.000 And as an audience member, I recognize that.

00:48:05.000 There's a mass hypnosis.

00:48:07.000 There's a thing that happens where we all get into this mindset.

00:48:10.000 And if someone has, like, really well-crafted material, like Dave Attell, and they take you on it, you let them.

00:48:15.000 You're like, whee!

00:48:17.000 Mitch Hedberg's gonna take us on a ride!

00:48:19.000 You know what I mean?

00:48:19.000 That's what it's like.

00:48:20.000 You think the same thing happens when a politician is speaking?

00:48:25.000 That's a good question.

00:48:26.000 For sure, Trump has a lot of elements of stand-up comedy in his routines, for sure, 100%.

00:48:31.000 If you watch his most recent speech where he's making fun of Joe Biden saying 150 million people were killed with guns, and he's like, I looked at the First Lady, I mean, he's literally doing stand-up, who does a very good job, by the way.

00:48:41.000 I looked at the First Lady, I'm like, where are all these bodies? 0.94

00:48:43.000 Where are all these 150 million people?

00:48:45.000 That's half the population.

00:48:46.000 Like, they just let him say, nobody talks to him.

00:48:49.000 He's like, Hello, Idaho!

00:48:50.000 And you're like, you're in Iowa.

00:48:52.000 Oh, he's doing stand-up!

00:48:54.000 So someone took it and they made a video saying Donald Trump at the Apollo.

00:49:00.000 And so they put him doing this speech with audience reaction from people watching stand-up comedy and laughing and a laugh track over it.

00:49:08.000 And it seems real.

00:49:10.000 It seems like he's a comic.

00:49:11.000 What about Bernie?

00:49:13.000 Bernie, for sure, is a powerful speaker, but I don't think he's that funny.

00:49:16.000 I mean, he'll say a funny thing every now and then, but he's more serious.

00:49:19.000 When you talk about going along for the ride, they're doing the thinking for you.

00:49:23.000 It's such an interesting idea.

00:49:25.000 Bernie is a trustworthy person.

00:49:27.000 People trust him.

00:49:28.000 They see him up there.

00:49:29.000 He's not polished, right?

00:49:31.000 The thing about Bernie... 0.99

00:49:33.000 It's like, when he's saying things, there's ums and there's uhs and there's, you know, his hair's all fucked up. 0.98

00:49:40.000 Yeah, but Trump's not polished either. 0.98

00:49:40.000 It's a different kind of polish. 0.98

00:49:41.000 What do you mean?

00:49:41.000 Trump is a polished performer.

00:49:43.000 Yeah.

00:49:43.000 Like, he's like a comic doing scat.

00:49:46.000 You know, it's da-da-da-da.

00:49:47.000 You know, it's like, I'm telling you, that's exactly what it is.

00:49:50.000 It's an amazing, it's an amazing thing.

00:49:51.000 He's like, filling in the blanks, loading up his weapons. 0.81

00:49:54.000 For the next line that he's going to throw and call crazy Hillary, lock her up. 1.00

00:49:58.000 It's stand-up. 0.87

00:49:59.000 It's basically like he's doing stand-up. 1.00

00:50:01.000 That's why Biden is so fucked. 1.00

00:50:03.000 He's so fucked because he can't talk. 1.00

00:50:05.000 He has a really hard time talking. 1.00

00:50:07.000 He keeps screwing things up.

00:50:09.000 And it's a real bad horse to bet on because he's an older guy.

00:50:12.000 You're still a Bernie guy at this moment?

00:50:14.000 I love Bernie.

00:50:14.000 I love the guy.

00:50:16.000 I love what he represents.

00:50:17.000 I don't know if he's going to be able to get anything implemented, but I love what he represents is a man who wants to do good for people that don't have much.

00:50:27.000 That's a sentiment.

00:50:29.000 There's a quality to that that I think helps us as a community, as a community of the United States.

00:50:35.000 If we have this agreement, hey, let's see what we can do.

00:50:39.000 Let's see what we can do to balance things out for the downtrodden, for the people that are hurting.

00:50:45.000 Concentrate on them.

00:50:46.000 And he's made that a huge priority of his life and always has.

00:50:49.000 And to deny that, it's like, look what he's trying to do. 0.99

00:50:53.000 I don't know if he can get any of this shit passed. 0.99

00:50:56.000 I don't think anybody knows until he gets in there. 0.99

00:50:58.000 But the idea is we're saying we want better for people who don't have much.

00:51:04.000 That's what he stands for.

00:51:06.000 And you can call it democratic socialism, but it's an idea.

00:51:09.000 The idea is like helping people.

00:51:12.000 Just helping people.

00:51:13.000 Helping people you don't even know.

00:51:15.000 Making the world a little bit better place for the working person.

00:51:17.000 What's then the corollary?

00:51:19.000 What's the Trump idea and why did it succeed? 0.99

00:51:22.000 A bunch of pussies out there trying to ban free speech. 1.00

00:51:25.000 A bunch of pussies out there. 1.00

00:51:26.000 Come on! 1.00

00:51:27.000 America's number one! 1.00

00:51:28.000 Fuck yeah! 1.00

00:51:29.000 Fuck yeah! 1.00

00:51:30.000 There's also, he doesn't talk like a politician. 1.00

00:51:33.000 You know, he talks about China. 0.99

00:51:35.000 You go to them listening motherfuckers when they charge you 25% and everybody's like, yeah! 0.99

00:51:39.000 More stand-up. 0.99

00:51:39.000 It's more stand-up, right? 0.99

00:51:41.000 It's way more entertaining.

00:51:42.000 He's the most entertaining.

00:51:43.000 Forget about value judgment of who he is as a person.

00:51:46.000 Without a doubt, the most entertaining president that's ever lived.

00:51:49.000 And not even close.

00:51:51.000 There's not even a close second.

00:51:52.000 He buries all of them.

00:51:53.000 And he drags them into his fight.

00:51:55.000 Even Hillary is now talking differently about other people.

00:51:59.000 She said about Bernie, nobody liked him.

00:52:01.000 She would have never said that.

00:52:03.000 Before Donald Trump, she would have never uttered those words.

00:52:06.000 His victory over her is deep in her DNA now.

00:52:10.000 And she's starting to exhibit some of his patterns.

00:52:13.000 By saying nobody ever liked him?

00:52:15.000 How could you say that? 0.96

00:52:16.000 What kind of crazy...

00:52:18.000 Of course, millions of people like him. 0.87

00:52:20.000 They're voting for him.

00:52:21.000 Millions.

00:52:22.000 Millions of people to say nobody liked him or nobody liked him.

00:52:26.000 Of course people like him.

00:52:28.000 And then they started writing, I like Bernie.

00:52:30.000 This hashtag I like Bernie start popping up.

00:52:32.000 That behavior is a direct reaction to her getting pounded on by Donald Trump through the entire campaign.

00:52:39.000 Let me ask you this.

00:52:40.000 You've talked to a lot of people from all different realms in here, right?

00:52:44.000 If we can agree, let's say, that being entertaining is not a great prerequisite or a qualification for being president, if we can agree on that, which seems pretty easy.

00:52:54.000 Yes, very easy to agree on.

00:52:56.000 What can be done, whether it's in the political sphere, the media sphere, putting something in the drinking water, to let people – to encourage people to have – A little bit more of what you're after, whether it's compassion,

00:53:12.000 whether it's understanding, whether it's balance, whether it's moderation.

00:53:15.000 In other words, why is the entertainment force winning right now?

00:53:19.000 And if you don't like that notion, what can be done about it?

00:53:22.000 Well, the entertainment force is, for whatever reason, is being portrayed through Trump only.

00:53:29.000 See, he's not a politician.

00:53:31.000 He's a guy who's a media star.

00:53:33.000 And he's been a media star for decades.

00:53:35.000 He knows how to manipulate the media. 0.95

00:53:37.000 He knows how to sit on the letterman couch and kill. 0.94

00:53:40.000 He's been doing it for a long time.

00:53:43.000 He's very comfortable being in front of cameras.

00:53:45.000 None of those people have those kind of skills.

00:53:47.000 And nobody thought of it as a skill.

00:53:50.000 They thought of a politician being able to do their politician stuff.

00:53:53.000 When this guy's calling you Crazy Ted or Lion Ted or Lion Hillary, he just makes up names for you.

00:53:59.000 Sleepy Joe.

00:54:00.000 And I'm smiling because it's funny because he's good at it.

00:54:03.000 He's funny.

00:54:04.000 He's good at it.

00:54:05.000 Here's the problem. 0.99

00:54:06.000 You shouldn't have a goddamn popularity contest to see who controls thermonuclear weapons. 1.00

00:54:10.000 That's fucking stupid. 1.00

00:54:11.000 It's stupid. 1.00

00:54:12.000 They'll allow people to vote based on a popularity. 1.00

00:54:15.000 But it's a system we've got.

00:54:15.000 So that's what I'm asking you is what now?

00:54:18.000 Well, the system's only a couple of I know.

00:54:20.000 Or even this kind of...

00:54:22.000 I mean, the way that these elections are...

00:54:23.000 Because I don't think it was...

00:54:24.000 I mean, if you look at Lincoln-Douglas debates, those were actual debates with two people.

00:54:28.000 And they took for hours and hours and hours.

00:54:30.000 It has evolved a lot.

00:54:31.000 But I mean, let's say that you're not happy with the way it is.

00:54:34.000 And there's a lot of people...

00:54:35.000 Even there are people who like Trump quite a bit on some dimensions who are very troubled by other dimensions.

00:54:40.000 There's a lot of people out there who are open to like...

00:54:43.000 No, let's try to adjust to thinking.

00:54:45.000 Let's try to change our minds.

00:54:46.000 Let's try to not be influenced as much by what we're being influenced by.

00:54:51.000 Do you have any pointers?

00:54:54.000 The real problem that we're having is this tribal battle of left versus right.

00:54:59.000 And the strongest voices on the left, the loudest voices, and the most extreme oftentimes are the worst representations.

00:55:07.000 And the same with the right.

00:55:09.000 The loudest, most extreme team members.

00:55:12.000 They're the people at the front of the line. 1.00

00:55:13.000 Fuck yeah, we're gonna kick their ass. 1.00

00:55:15.000 I'm like, is that guy with me? 1.00

00:55:16.000 Am I on this team? 1.00

00:55:17.000 Fuck! 1.00

00:55:18.000 Are we in a war now? 1.00

00:55:19.000 We're in a war with the left.

00:55:20.000 Like, that's what it is, you know?

00:55:22.000 And there's also these ideas that we have that are cemented in stone, that, you know, if you're a left-wing person, you believe in X, Y, and Z. This is your doctrine.

00:55:31.000 If you're a right-wing person.

00:55:31.000 But most of us have, like, a little bit of this.

00:55:33.000 Maybe you believe in the Second Amendment.

00:55:35.000 Maybe you believe in the First Amendment.

00:55:37.000 Maybe you think that maybe, you know, maybe we should incorporate a lot of things we do with the fire department and Do that to schools and do that to housing.

00:55:47.000 Make sure that all the stuff's covered.

00:55:49.000 Make housing an important part of a civilization, like for everybody.

00:55:54.000 We did a piece, a Freakonomics Radio piece a year or two ago called America's Hidden Duopoly, and it was about the Democratic and Republican Party basically acting like Pepsi and Coke, right?

00:56:05.000 They kind of divide and conquer the market, and they've built an industry that is incredibly valuable.

00:56:10.000 Yeah.

00:56:10.000 The thing that's amazing to me is this.

00:56:13.000 Trump won the presidency as the Republican that the RNC most wanted to get rid of.

00:56:20.000 Bernie, last time around, was the Democrat that the DNC wanted to get rid of.

00:56:26.000 They lost by getting their candidate, Hillary, in.

00:56:29.000 This time, Bernie, who may very well become the candidate, is again the party that the DNC is out to get.

00:56:36.000 So what does it say that you've got a duopoly, literally the machines running the system that we kind of let ourselves get manipulated into buying?

00:56:44.000 Like you said, I've never understood.

00:56:46.000 My mom and dad were Democrats for a long, long time.

00:56:49.000 I think?

00:56:57.000 I think?

00:57:15.000 When that happened, and the Democrats lined up in favor of legalized abortion, she switched parties.

00:57:24.000 Everything else about her was still mostly Democratic, but she had to become a Republican. 1.00

00:57:28.000 Because of life.

00:57:29.000 And that's another powerful one that gets integrated into the right.

00:57:33.000 And it happens to all of us, though.

00:57:34.000 There's one issue that kind of sets people off, and then they have to join the team that they may, you know.

00:57:41.000 With a lot of people I know, it's the Second Amendment.

00:57:43.000 People that are afraid of their house being broken into and they don't have anything to protect their family.

00:57:47.000 And they'd otherwise be kind of libertarian-ish Democrats.

00:57:49.000 And it's almost always guys who have kids.

00:57:52.000 Once you have kids and you think about someone breaking into your house and doing something to your family, you get real scared and then you want to get guns.

00:57:59.000 All right.

00:57:59.000 Let me ask you a slightly different question.

00:58:01.000 It's actually a totally different question.

00:58:04.000 As I'm sure you know, if you look at any indicator of prosperity, longevity, health...

00:58:12.000 I think?

00:58:29.000 I don't think we know how to manage our life correctly, and life doesn't come with a guidebook.

00:58:36.000 It doesn't come with, when you're in this condition, seek out these remedies.

00:58:40.000 Start exercising.

00:58:42.000 Get together with your friends.

00:58:43.000 Tell them you love them.

00:58:44.000 Meet up and have dinner and hug each other.

00:58:46.000 Sleep well.

00:58:47.000 Sleep well.

00:58:47.000 Drink water.

00:58:49.000 And whiskey.

00:58:50.000 A little bit of whiskey, too, right?

00:58:51.000 And also, so many of us have a bad head start.

00:58:56.000 You're starting off...

00:58:58.000 You know, like, how about your dad?

00:59:01.000 He'd been growing up getting kicked out of the family.

00:59:05.000 Yeah.

00:59:05.000 I mean, and then starts a family of his own where you don't even know your grandfather.

00:59:09.000 I mean, it's madness, right?

00:59:10.000 Madness.

00:59:11.000 So you're coming out of this stressful pocket, or maybe your dad goes to jail, or maybe your mom dies when you're young.

00:59:17.000 All these things that happen to people where they have this bad start.

00:59:21.000 Right? 0.99

00:59:21.000 And then they develop defense mechanisms to deal with all their insecurities and they get around similar minded people and you curse the world and fuck everybody and fuck the police and fuck the this and then you get in these communities of people that think the same way. 0.99

00:59:35.000 And then maybe there's gangs and maybe there's drugs and maybe there's crime and despair and sadness and maybe just negative people. 0.99

00:59:42.000 Maybe there's none of the above.

00:59:43.000 Maybe there's no danger. 0.97

00:59:44.000 It's just fucking annoying. 1.00

00:59:45.000 Everyday people complaining about shit. 1.00

00:59:48.000 And you're stuck in the mud of humanity with people. 1.00

00:59:51.000 It's real hard to engineer 350 million people out of that.

00:59:55.000 But for yourself, you can take actions to make your life better.

00:59:59.000 And if everybody did that, if everybody took actions to make their life a happier experience by doing those things, by exercising, eating well, hugging friends, enhancing community, just trying to be nicer to people.

01:00:12.000 Everybody there would be a massive shift.

01:00:15.000 So let me ask you this.

01:00:16.000 I feel like the list you just gave is basically my list too, right?

01:00:20.000 I try.

01:00:20.000 That's what I try to do, pretty much.

01:00:23.000 And they all sound attractive.

01:00:26.000 Yes.

01:00:26.000 So why is it so hard for so many people to do it?

01:00:30.000 Because people are lazy.

01:00:31.000 And the reason why we're lazy is because it's very difficult for us to waste resources on something that we don't currently do.

01:00:37.000 And even though we know something to be true, that if you do this physical thing- Long-term benefits are- Yeah, we know that.

01:00:42.000 But short-term, it's like, I don't want to do it right now.

01:00:44.000 Right.

01:00:45.000 Because your body craves relaxation because it used to be a very rare thing to achieve.

01:00:50.000 Alright, so if you could pick one thing, let's say I'm a person...

01:00:53.000 I would never.

01:00:54.000 Why would I pick one thing?

01:00:55.000 It's a comprehensive approach.

01:00:56.000 Let's say the first thing.

01:00:57.000 Let's say that I feel like, you know what, society says everything's great, I'm unhappy.

01:01:03.000 Exercise.

01:01:04.000 Okay, why is exercise the one...

01:01:06.000 Because you get your blood pumping.

01:01:07.000 You release natural endorphins and you legitimately feel better.

01:01:10.000 And I also think of this all the time.

01:01:12.000 I think of your body as almost like the energy in your body is like a battery.

01:01:16.000 And it requires a certain amount of use.

01:01:18.000 And when you don't use it, it overflows.

01:01:21.000 And then you get weird behavior and overreacting to things.

01:01:24.000 And you almost get antsy.

01:01:26.000 You've got to get up and move.

01:01:28.000 Cognitively, it's a big...

01:01:29.000 I find.

01:01:29.000 What do you do?

01:01:30.000 Let's say you have to take two long flights.

01:01:33.000 Let's say you're unable to exercise for like, you know, 24, 36 hours.

01:01:37.000 Oh, you're fine.

01:01:38.000 You don't have to do it every day.

01:01:39.000 I don't do it every day.

01:01:40.000 You don't?

01:01:41.000 No, I take days off.

01:01:42.000 Yeah, yeah, it's fine.

01:01:43.000 It's fine.

01:01:44.000 The whole key is just to develop regular habits.

01:01:46.000 If you have to take two or three days off, it doesn't matter.

01:01:48.000 The whole key is just regular habits.

01:01:50.000 What's your sleep regime?

01:01:53.000 Well, I have a whoop.

01:01:54.000 And my whoop tells me every night how much I sleep.

01:01:57.000 Has it improved?

01:01:58.000 Has the feedback improved your sleeping?

01:02:00.000 Yeah, because it made me accountable.

01:02:01.000 I was like, I get like seven, eight hours every night.

01:02:04.000 I was getting like four and five. 1.00

01:02:06.000 And I was like, oh, you lying bitch. 1.00

01:02:07.000 So it made me concentrate more on getting more sleep. 1.00

01:02:11.000 What do you do to sleep better or sleep well?

01:02:13.000 It's just a matter of the time.

01:02:14.000 It's a matter of when outside I have to get up.

01:02:16.000 Do you sleep with earplugs, eye mask, anything like that?

01:02:19.000 I don't have a problem sleeping.

01:02:20.000 I sleep well.

01:02:21.000 The problem is doing things and waking up early.

01:02:24.000 And I realize, if I'm going to wake up that early, I've got to go to bed early.

01:02:28.000 You're not a napper?

01:02:30.000 No, I don't nap.

01:02:31.000 How come?

01:02:32.000 I just never enjoy it.

01:02:33.000 Really?

01:02:34.000 Yeah.

01:02:34.000 You never tried it?

01:02:35.000 No, I have.

01:02:36.000 No, but it doesn't work.

01:02:37.000 Like, when I'm done, I'm done.

01:02:39.000 Do you drink caffeine?

01:02:40.000 Yes.

01:02:41.000 Have you ever tried the caffeine nap?

01:02:42.000 Do you know about that?

01:02:43.000 Yes.

01:02:43.000 Yeah, I know what it is.

01:02:44.000 But that's not my problem.

01:02:46.000 All right.

01:02:46.000 My problem is when I shut down, I shut down.

01:02:49.000 So a 20-minute nap becomes eight hours of sleep.

01:02:52.000 I'm not interested.

01:02:52.000 I'll be laying down for hours.

01:02:55.000 I don't mean to criticize your productivity.

01:02:56.000 You're plenty productive, plainly.

01:02:58.000 But there's a balance.

01:03:00.000 There's a balance between being productive and being happy.

01:03:02.000 And I think it's hard to find that balance because we look at the numbers that come in, whether it's money or productivity or the number of things you've been able to create, and you think of that as being like, but look, I can get so much done.

01:03:17.000 Yeah.

01:03:32.000 Success is intoxicating.

01:03:35.000 And then you want more of it.

01:03:37.000 And then it becomes very easy to see that as the main goal at the expense of loved ones, other people.

01:03:46.000 I'm looking for, I'd like to know how, and I know some people do manage that really well.

01:03:51.000 And I know some incredibly successful people are incredibly generous in spirit to people around them.

01:03:57.000 But I find that's pretty rare.

01:03:58.000 I find that success often is driven by a sort of ambition that's a little bit unseemly.

01:04:03.000 And I'd like to know how to deal with that a little bit better.

01:04:07.000 Well, it doesn't have to be, but it seems like it would be if it's a number game, right?

01:04:13.000 If success meaning like you're in a business, you're trying to sell the most placards or whatever, like whatever it is, you know, you have this thing in your head and like you're really driven.

01:04:22.000 Can I just say, if you're selling placards, you're already starting behind me.

01:04:26.000 Okay, widgets.

01:04:27.000 You're selling the most widgets, and you have this goal in your mind of being number one, and you're obsessed, and everyone's going to tell your story.

01:04:34.000 Oh, Bob, he wouldn't let it go.

01:04:35.000 Every time I got there, he was in the office, and he left after everybody. 0.99

01:04:38.000 But look, now Bob's got a fucking yacht, and he's also got a pacemaker, right? 0.98

01:04:42.000 Bob's ready to tick over any minute now. 0.98

01:04:44.000 But also, I think the thing is, in pursuit of success, I think what often happens that I've seen in people I know and in people I don't know but I've read about is that your moral compass starts to shift.

01:04:57.000 But that's not necessarily true.

01:04:59.000 There's a lot of people that are successful.

01:05:01.000 And we're only talking about business, right?

01:05:02.000 We're not talking about athletics, are we?

01:05:04.000 I'm thinking of some people in academia who, you know, even though the average person may not consider the stakes in academia super high, but like if you get in a big university department and And you start to write papers and get published and then get grants and accolades and so on.

01:05:22.000 You're on a trajectory that's very intoxicating.

01:05:24.000 And then all of a sudden, I think it's tempting.

01:05:29.000 Or not even tempting.

01:05:30.000 I don't think it's even a conscious decision.

01:05:32.000 You start to make decisions that are not as sound, not as morally acceptable as you would have made five years ago when you were starting out.

01:05:41.000 And I see that happening a lot.

01:05:43.000 I see it in media.

01:05:44.000 I see people cutting corners.

01:05:45.000 I see it in business.

01:05:48.000 The academia I don't have any experience with, but I would imagine that would be particularly frustrating because those are the people that you call upon to be the objective purveyors of knowledge.

01:05:58.000 These are the people that are talking to you about this because they're dedicated to being intellectual.

01:06:03.000 Exactly.

01:06:03.000 You don't want to think of them as being a social climber.

01:06:05.000 How strange is this, though?

01:06:06.000 How strange is it that we talk about economists, just for one example, but it's a good example because they're the most involved in policy and so on.

01:06:14.000 There are Democratic economists and there are Republican economists.

01:06:17.000 That shouldn't make sense, right?

01:06:30.000 Right?

01:06:39.000 But it does.

01:06:39.000 If you're for one thing, you've got to be in for everything.

01:06:42.000 And that's not a good way to...

01:06:59.000 People didn't really seem to budge on with Obama, like drone attacks.

01:07:03.000 Like a lot of people killed in drones attacks that were innocent.

01:07:07.000 And that happened during the Bush administration and happened during Obama.

01:07:10.000 But people, particularly on the left, treated the Bush administration's drone attacks very differently than they treated it when Obama was doing it. 0.99

01:07:19.000 They seem to let it go because it didn't fit with their narrative of the evil military-industrial complex-influenced president who only gives a fuck about money. 0.84

01:07:28.000 It didn't seem to jive with that, so they let it go. 0.96

01:07:32.000 Because it's a team thing. 0.93

01:07:34.000 They were rooting for their team to be good, so they, listen, my team's made some fucking slips up this year, but I'm with the Yankees all the way. 0.80

01:07:41.000 It's basically what you're doing. 0.96

01:07:42.000 You're just doing it for the Democrats.

01:07:43.000 Exactly.

01:07:44.000 Yeah, if you're watching a football game, Let's say you're watching a football game in a bar and you're with, let's say I'm a Steelers fan, so let's say I'm watching with a Steelers fan, we're playing whoever, Ravens.

01:07:54.000 The minute there's a call, let's say a pass interference call, The room divides equally because one side knows that it's a bad call and the other side knows.

01:08:03.000 And these are people who, if you took them out, out of a football context, they're totally going to have different feel.

01:08:08.000 They're not going to experience everything the same way.

01:08:11.000 And even if it's a bad call, as long as it's for your team, you're going to take it.

01:08:14.000 Yeah, we got it.

01:08:15.000 And once in a while, if it's such a bad call, you say, ooh, we got lucky there.

01:08:19.000 But almost never.

01:08:21.000 It's part of the fun in it, right?

01:08:23.000 The tribal fun.

01:08:24.000 I agree.

01:08:24.000 And that's why sports, again, it's like a low stakes, you know, replica of life and war and all that stuff relatively.

01:08:31.000 So I'm totally in favor of that.

01:08:33.000 I am too.

01:08:34.000 But I think it does show how kind of, you know, suggestible we all are.

01:08:38.000 Super suggestible.

01:08:39.000 And how strange it is that you could make this format like football, you know, a ball across the line represents a victory.

01:08:47.000 Right.

01:08:47.000 And we've decided to make huge amounts of money attached to this game and then fill up the biggest arenas we have.

01:08:56.000 We have enormous 50,000 plus arenas of people cheering when a ball goes across the line.

01:09:02.000 There was this story I read about some rabbi in Europe 100, 200, 300 years ago, something.

01:09:15.000 We're good to go.

01:09:35.000 They said, you know, just come outside and watch it once, and we think you'll see how it works and how great it is.

01:09:42.000 So this old rabbi comes out once at lunchtime, and he's watching the two teams with the ball going back and forth.

01:09:48.000 They come back in after lunch, and he says, I think I've solved the problem for you.

01:09:52.000 If you get two balls instead of one, you won't have to be fighting each other all the time over the one ball, and everybody can be happy.

01:10:00.000 So, you know, different ways of looking at the world.

01:10:02.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:10:04.000 Yeah, if everyone could look at the world that way, the world would be a better place.

01:10:11.000 Sports are, for whatever reason, the best escape for a lot of people.

01:10:15.000 Because it's exciting and unpredictable.

01:10:17.000 And it's really happening.

01:10:19.000 Whereas a movie, even though it's an escape, you know it's not really happening.

01:10:22.000 You watch a sport, man. 1.00

01:10:24.000 If a guy can make a fucking three-pointer at the buzzer and it wins the game and everybody goes nuts, that shit's real. 1.00

01:10:30.000 Like, yes! 1.00

01:10:31.000 We fucking did it! 1.00

01:10:32.000 You turn to your friends. 1.00

01:10:33.000 Everybody's so excited.

01:10:35.000 Hey, did you ever wonder?

01:10:36.000 So this is the universal symbol for yes, right?

01:10:39.000 But here's the one that also gets me.

01:10:41.000 The universal symbol for something great almost happened and then it didn't is this.

01:10:46.000 Hands on the forehead.

01:10:47.000 Everybody around the world, where does that come from in the human?

01:10:51.000 I don't know.

01:10:52.000 Where in the code dictated that that's how we're going to express?

01:10:55.000 But everywhere around the world, that's what they do.

01:10:57.000 That's a really good question.

01:10:58.000 Yeah, I don't have an answer.

01:10:59.000 What is that?

01:10:59.000 I don't know.

01:11:00.000 Is it like my brain?

01:11:01.000 Yeah, it must be like it's together.

01:11:03.000 My head's still here.

01:11:04.000 What's your favorite sport to watch?

01:11:07.000 I like fighting.

01:11:08.000 Because you do commentary for the UFC. I find the rest of the sports to be boring.

01:11:13.000 I don't really watch other sports.

01:11:14.000 Do you like fighting because of the tactics, because of the action, etc.?

01:11:18.000 Or is it because of the personality primarily?

01:11:22.000 The excitement that comes from it being insanely difficult, the way I describe it, sorry if everybody's heard this a million times, it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.

01:11:34.000 So you know that they're on this crazy path where one guy's trying to slam his shin into the other guy's face, and the other guy's trying to do the same.

01:11:43.000 They're trying to take each other down, choke each other, and to lose is horrible, and to win is glorious.

01:11:48.000 And everybody's cheering.

01:11:49.000 And then, you know...

01:11:50.000 When it all plays out live, the rush of these guys, that these guys experience, and then the rush that the audience experiences, it's hard for me to watch tennis.

01:12:02.000 I don't care where that ball goes.

01:12:03.000 I get it.

01:12:04.000 I get it.

01:12:05.000 It's very athletic.

01:12:06.000 There's no knock on the athletes. 1.00

01:12:07.000 And again, I like playing pool, so I watch a lot of dumb shit. 0.99

01:12:11.000 I watch pool on YouTube every day. 0.99

01:12:12.000 So, let me ask you this.

01:12:15.000 UFC, let's say, is...

01:12:17.000 I mean, it's doing pretty well.

01:12:19.000 It's not the bonanza.

01:12:20.000 It looked like it might be a couple years ago, right?

01:12:22.000 Business-wise, the league, right?

01:12:23.000 It's doing better than ever.

01:12:24.000 Is it?

01:12:25.000 Is that right?

01:12:25.000 Yeah.

01:12:26.000 So, the athletes themselves, I know the superstars do great.

01:12:31.000 What about the rest of them?

01:12:33.000 Is it a steep pyramid, and is it bad news if you're in the middle?

01:12:36.000 It's a less steep pyramid than boxing.

01:12:38.000 In boxing, when you see the undercards of fights, if you see a fight like Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather's biggest boxing pay-per-view fight ever, huge fight, right?

01:12:48.000 Millions and millions and millions of dollars.

01:12:49.000 The guys further down the bottom of the chain, they're getting an awesome opportunity to fight in front of the crowd that's going to see Manny Pacquiao versus Floyd Mayweather, and they don't make much money.

01:12:58.000 And that's the case in boxing overwhelmingly in the early stages of a person's career.

01:13:03.000 It's the same as MMA. And then as they become famous, they start making more.

01:13:07.000 The difference is there's a Floyd Mayweather, and the closest thing we have to that is a Conor McGregor and maybe Ronda Rousey.

01:13:13.000 Floyd Mayweather, when people talk about money in boxing, you're talking about Floyd Mayweather.

01:13:18.000 I mean, maybe you were talking about Tyson at one point in time and Ali before him and Sugar Ray Leonard, the guys who made the big money, Roy Jones Jr. But there's only...

01:13:31.000 We're good to go.

01:13:44.000 Right.

01:13:44.000 Do you like that?

01:13:45.000 So that's what economists call a tournament model, right?

01:13:48.000 Which is where a lot of people are willing to enter it because the winning is so high.

01:13:53.000 But you know that you're not going to make anything unless you advance a whole lot.

01:13:57.000 Would you rather see MMA like that?

01:13:59.000 Or would you rather see it more like the team sports where you're on a salary, right?

01:14:07.000 Right.

01:14:08.000 So NFL, if you're the 53rd guy on the roster, you're not making a ton of money, but you know you're going to make money, as long as you don't get hurt.

01:14:14.000 Would you rather see MMA a little bit more like that?

01:14:16.000 Would you rather see the fighters have more of a league and have more leverage, or do you like the way it's set up now?

01:14:22.000 Fighters are always going to be individuals.

01:14:24.000 It's very difficult to get a fighter in a union.

01:14:27.000 That's why it's never been done before.

01:14:28.000 Although the PGA Tour...

01:14:30.000 Is basically the union for the golfers.

01:14:32.000 They did that.

01:14:33.000 That's what the golfers did.

01:14:34.000 And tennis is a little bit different.

01:14:36.000 But anyway, I mean, couldn't they do it if...

01:14:37.000 Well, now UFC has too much leverage, I think, for that to happen, right?

01:14:42.000 Well, even if they didn't, it would be very difficult to get fighters to not jump in and take a fight.

01:14:47.000 Because opportunities are rare.

01:14:49.000 And when a fight comes along, if you say, look, I'm going to offer you...

01:14:52.000 Fight Conor McGregor for X amount of money, and you're like, I want more.

01:14:55.000 They're like, look, this guy's standing right by.

01:14:57.000 And that's always going to be that case until you're Conor McGregor.

01:15:00.000 And that's the business model.

01:15:01.000 That's always been the business model in boxing, but in UFC, it's different.

01:15:04.000 In UFC, it's controlled by one company so they can force big fights, whereas there's a lot of big fights in boxing.

01:15:09.000 So this is their justification for the structure that they have.

01:15:13.000 Those big fights in boxing didn't occur, and it frustrated the fans.

01:15:17.000 And the reason why it didn't occur was just multiple promoters.

01:15:28.000 The question is, should the guys at the bottom make more?

01:15:34.000 I think they should.

01:15:36.000 Because I think it's a very, very, very difficult thing, and I think we should be trying to give them enough money so that they can do their best and we can see the best fighters come up.

01:15:44.000 I think one of the impediments of guys coming up is that in the beginning you have to work a full-time job as well as fight, and it's really hard to train.

01:15:51.000 It's hard to make that leap.

01:15:52.000 And if we get someone we can sign it, I agree with you, there should be some sort of a minimum, and that minimum we would agree upon something that would be sustainable if you're fighting, say, once or twice a year.

01:16:04.000 On the other hand...

01:16:05.000 Twice a year at least.

01:16:06.000 Okay.

01:16:06.000 Especially in the beginning you'd fight.

01:16:07.000 You'd probably fight as many times as you can in the beginning.

01:16:09.000 You'd fight three times a year if you could, four even.

01:16:12.000 And guys like Donald Cerrone, even at the top, still fights like four or five times a year just because he's a wild man.

01:16:17.000 So theoretically, like if you're looking at it as supply and demand, it seems that there's a lot of supply of fighters, right?

01:16:23.000 It seems like there's a lot of audience demand, but what UFC is doing is, according to you, kind of smartly constraining the supply so that the quality is high.

01:16:33.000 Yes.

01:16:33.000 If you were to come in, let's say you or 10 other people were to come in with alternate leagues to UFC right now and take UFC as whatever.

01:16:43.000 Let's say there's 100 very good fighters right now, or 50. I have no idea.

01:16:47.000 But let's say you take the next 200 and make those other leagues.

01:16:50.000 Are you saying that would basically be what happened to boxing and then end up lowering- Well, people are doing that.

01:16:56.000 I don't know if you know, but there's multiple organizations that actually are doing that.

01:16:59.000 There's one called Bellator that's huge.

01:17:02.000 It's on the Paramount Network.

01:17:03.000 It's enormous.

01:17:03.000 And it's the biggest rival to the UFC in America, but still pales in comparison.

01:17:08.000 But there's world-class fighters there, and they're starting to get people from the UFC that they get their contract up, and they're still in their prime, and then Bellator comes with a better, more attractive offer, and they take that offer.

01:17:17.000 Also, in Bellator, they're allowed to have sponsors.

01:17:20.000 The UFC is solely sponsored by Reebok, so the fighters all have one sponsor, that they wear Reebok gear.

01:17:26.000 And do the athletes get a share?

01:17:28.000 Yes, they get a share.

01:17:29.000 I don't know how it's structured, but I know that the fighters prefer the Bellator model, which is they can find their own sponsors, and if they have a good management company, the management can get three or four sponsors on their shorts, and they might make more money from sponsors than they do from the fight itself, which is what was in the UFC,

01:17:45.000 so a lot of fighters were really bummed out when they switched over to a different business model.

01:17:49.000 So that, I think, would probably be better for fighters.

01:17:53.000 But then, here's another thing.

01:17:54.000 Those fighters have to enforce that. 0.54

01:17:56.000 They have to chase those down, chase those sponsors down.

01:17:59.000 A lot of them go bad on you, and a lot of them don't pay.

01:18:01.000 And there was a real problem with that with fighters, where they had gotten fucked over by a couple different sponsors, and it created a hassle.

01:18:08.000 And so then you have fighters who didn't get paid, but the sponsor did get put on UFC. Oh, boy.

01:18:14.000 So is the UFC responsible?

01:18:17.000 Who's responsible for that? 0.73

01:18:18.000 It turns out it's the fighters that are responsible, but that's a fucking giant burden on them while they're in the middle of training to try to go sue some fight gear company that didn't pay them their money.

01:18:28.000 I don't think it's a justification for not giving them the freedom to choose their own sponsors.

01:18:33.000 I think a better scenario would probably be have one sponsor available that everyone could choose this sponsor or a competing sponsor.

01:18:44.000 You know, like, maybe something else.

01:18:46.000 So, like, you could have a Reebok guy that's fighting against a guy who's, like, some motor oil company sponsoring him.

01:18:51.000 It's, like, making it mandatory takes some of the power away from the fighters for negotiation.

01:18:55.000 So, forgive my ignorance, but getting back to just the actual fighting, two fights a year sounds kind of like standard.

01:19:02.000 Three is kind of a lot.

01:19:03.000 Four is a whole lot.

01:19:04.000 Why?

01:19:05.000 It's hard.

01:19:06.000 But, I mean, like, I've seen fighting a little.

01:19:10.000 I've obviously, I mean, you look at me, you can tell I've never done it myself.

01:19:13.000 No, you go at it.

01:19:14.000 You get busy.

01:19:15.000 But, I mean, like, the NFL is hard, right?

01:19:19.000 And they're playing 16 games a year plus preseason practice.

01:19:22.000 How can it be that hard that you can only do it a few times a year?

01:19:27.000 These are adorable questions.

01:19:28.000 Because it's this sport of hurting people.

01:19:31.000 Yeah.

01:19:32.000 Football hurting people is an accidental occurrence.

01:19:35.000 No, that's not true.

01:19:36.000 Not if you're playing on the line.

01:19:37.000 Yeah, but they're colliding into each other, but they're not doing something specifically to knock you unconscious or to break your liver. 0.63

01:19:43.000 There's techniques that you're doing that are trying to fuck a guy's knee up.

01:19:47.000 I understand that, but is it that you need three, four, five, six months between to literally recuperate from the pain even if you win? 0.96

01:19:55.000 Is that what it's about?

01:19:55.000 It's not just pain.

01:19:56.000 It's punishment.

01:19:57.000 There's guys that their leg, it takes, Randy Couture, he fought this guy named Pedro Hizzo.

01:20:03.000 Pedro Hizzo was this Brazilian kickboxer that had the most devastating leg kicks maybe in the history of the sport.

01:20:08.000 He would slam his shin into people's legs and you could see them like visibly hobbled by it.

01:20:13.000 And Randy's leg was so fucked up from their first fight that he had to wait six months before he was fully recovered. 0.97

01:20:20.000 Six months. 0.97

01:20:21.000 Just from a guy kicking his leg, slamming his shin into the thigh.

01:20:24.000 His legs were just chopped meat.

01:20:26.000 They were just destroyed.

01:20:28.000 All the tissue was broken up.

01:20:30.000 There was blood inflamed.

01:20:32.000 His legs were swollen up.

01:20:33.000 I mean, it's horrific.

01:20:34.000 I have to say, you're reinforcing the validity of my decision to become a writer and not a fighter.

01:20:39.000 It's a long career.

01:20:41.000 It's exciting, but not too exciting.

01:20:43.000 Yeah.

01:20:43.000 So I don't mean to sound even more naive than I've sounded now, but why do you choose the life of a fighter if it's that punishing?

01:20:53.000 Well, initially they do it for self-improvement.

01:20:57.000 They get involved for self-improvement.

01:20:59.000 Maybe they want to learn how to defend themselves.

01:21:01.000 Maybe they want to learn some self-confidence.

01:21:03.000 Then they get excited about improving and they get better at it and then they achieve a level of expertise that makes them the person in the gym that is above the other new people that come in and then you get to experience what it's like to be an assassin.

01:21:16.000 You get to strangle people all the time.

01:21:18.000 And then you get to a point where you're like, I want to test myself.

01:21:21.000 And then you say, I'm just going to take an amateur fight.

01:21:23.000 So then you take an amateur fight, and then you go, you know what?

01:21:25.000 I think I can do this for a living. 0.97

01:21:26.000 And then you think about being stuck in some fucking cubicle selling insurance, or maybe making Conor McGregor money. 0.99

01:21:33.000 Maybe I can get to the poor. 1.00

01:21:34.000 I know how to talk shit. 1.00

01:21:35.000 I think I can hurt people. 1.00

01:21:37.000 I think I can get in there and make some money. 0.99

01:21:38.000 And I don't have to fight three or four times a year, and I don't have a fucking boss. 0.99

01:21:42.000 No one tells me what to do. 0.99

01:21:43.000 I can talk shit, and I can go out there and just do something that I really enjoy doing, martial arts, and just continue to be... 0.96

01:21:50.000 As good as I can to be a professional athlete, it's attractive, especially to risk-seeking young males or females. 0.99

01:21:56.000 That totally makes sense, but let's say it's you.

01:21:58.000 Let's say you're 21 years old, you, and you have the ability to do that, right?

01:22:02.000 You're discovering that you have the ability to do that.

01:22:05.000 And then if you could project that decision forward, let's say 30 years, and say, okay, I'm going to go for this, and I'm going to factor in the probability that I'm actually going to make really good money or have an amazing life-changing or life-affirming experience for 10 years and then get out and do something else,

01:22:22.000 versus...

01:22:24.000 I think?

01:22:39.000 Well, first of all, why would I only have two choices? 0.93

01:22:41.000 That seems ridiculous.

01:22:42.000 Because I'm only giving you two right now.

01:22:44.000 And I used to fight.

01:22:45.000 I stopped fighting when I was 21 because I was worried about head injuries.

01:22:48.000 It was too dangerous.

01:22:49.000 And when I was doing it, there was no money.

01:22:51.000 There wasn't a UFC there.

01:22:52.000 If you were making that decision now, though, with the money now...

01:22:55.000 Do you think the decision would be different?

01:23:16.000 And the risk-seeking, those kind of people that are risk-seekers, the ones that do rock climbing and BMX bike running and base jumping, that's a type of person.

01:23:26.000 For whatever reason, that's a type of person.

01:23:28.000 And they gravitate towards those fights, and they gravitate towards martial arts.

01:23:32.000 And some of them are the nicest people I've ever met in my life.

01:23:35.000 They are some of the nicest, kindest, most interesting, introspective people, deep-thinking people.

01:23:41.000 People that...

01:23:53.000 I think?

01:23:58.000 And it's a very dangerous path, and so there's an incredible camaraderie between the people that do it.

01:24:03.000 So they understand that very few people have the stones to do something like this, or the nuts, or the chaos in your brain, or the insanity that lets you risk your life like this versus take that cubicle job.

01:24:17.000 But for them, it's insanely attractive.

01:24:20.000 What's the long-term health complications from MMA? Do we know a lot about it yet?

01:24:25.000 I mean, we're learning a lot about football.

01:24:26.000 It's the same as any combat sport.

01:24:28.000 Football is like a car accident.

01:24:30.000 These two giant dudes are slamming into each other.

01:24:32.000 I tend to think that there's some impacts that I've seen in football that it's not recreatable in an MMA ring.

01:24:38.000 Because you don't have momentum.

01:24:40.000 Yeah, you're not running at each other.

01:24:42.000 But, that said...

01:24:44.000 There's plenty.

01:24:45.000 I mean, I've seen dudes get kicked into oblivion, and women get kicked unconscious multiple times in one event. 0.98

01:24:51.000 And I've worked, I don't know how many events, I've called more than, I would have to say like 1,500 professional fights.

01:24:59.000 Like easily, somewhere in that neighborhood.

01:25:01.000 Definitely more than 1,000.

01:25:03.000 Definitely without question.

01:25:05.000 That's being real super conservative.

01:25:07.000 So out of those, how many people had legitimate brain damage because of fights?

01:25:12.000 A lot of them.

01:25:13.000 Yeah, they know going in there that there's going to be a risk and they got to know when to get out and sometimes they don't and sometimes friends and family have to intervene and it's a scary thing to watch someone slide down that road when you know, oh my god, he's chinny, which means you can't take a punch anymore, which means you're starting to develop some severe damage from all the sparring and the fighting and you got to know when to stop and some people can stop and they're fine and they can live a long healthy life as long as they stop in time.

01:25:43.000 Yeah.

01:25:43.000 Similar to boxing?

01:25:45.000 Very similar.

01:25:46.000 Very similar.

01:25:48.000 I think maybe boxing has a little bit more damage because all you're doing is punching.

01:25:54.000 You're not kicking the legs.

01:25:55.000 You're not taking each other down.

01:25:57.000 You're not choking each other.

01:25:58.000 So the accumulation...

01:26:00.000 Yeah.

01:26:18.000 In their entire life, like tenfold.

01:26:21.000 They get hit ten times more than him, easily.

01:26:23.000 So imagine that I came down from Mars and I look at human civilization and I think, you know, this makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense.

01:26:32.000 This one doesn't make any sense.

01:26:34.000 Fights?

01:26:34.000 Well, I was going to use fights as an example.

01:26:36.000 Yeah, what about the Coliseum?

01:26:37.000 I mean, it's always been a part of humans.

01:26:39.000 Right. 0.96

01:26:40.000 We've been interested in people beating the shit out of each other since the beginning of time. 0.98

01:26:44.000 Because it scares us. 0.95

01:26:45.000 So it's entertaining to watch other people do it.

01:26:47.000 That's why we want to watch a bar fight. 1.00

01:26:48.000 I don't want to be in a bar fight.

01:26:49.000 You don't want to be in a bar fight, right? 1.00

01:26:51.000 But if you saw a bar fight, you'd be like, what the fuck? 0.99

01:26:53.000 Is this really happening? 0.99

01:26:54.000 A lot of the people who have turned against football the last, let's say, five or ten years, fueled by CTE, which is obviously a legitimate thing.

01:27:02.000 We don't really know the magnitude and the scope yet.

01:27:04.000 But a lot of people who've turned against it do it for a kind of moral argument that I don't want to support an endeavor.

01:27:12.000 Where people are hurting each other, period.

01:27:15.000 Right?

01:27:15.000 How do you feel about that?

01:27:16.000 I mean, there's a libertarian argument to say, what are you talking about?

01:27:20.000 People can do whatever they want.

01:27:21.000 They can do drugs.

01:27:22.000 They can go bungee jumping.

01:27:25.000 They can work stock trading, which is stressful.

01:27:28.000 You can do whatever you want.

01:27:29.000 So where do you lie on that?

01:27:30.000 Well, I think, first of all, they're right, and you are doing something that's definitely going to harm you. 0.97

01:27:36.000 However, I feel like if you want to do something that you enjoy doing, that's going to take some time out of your life that's finite anyway, who the fuck am I to tell you you can't do that? 0.88

01:27:46.000 Where am I going to draw the line? 0.95

01:27:47.000 Am I going to say no gymnastics?

01:27:49.000 Yeah.

01:27:49.000 Where am I going to draw the line?

01:27:50.000 Do you know soccer causes a tremendous amount of CTE? Do you know that?

01:27:53.000 Yeah.

01:27:53.000 Lacrosse.

01:27:54.000 Lacrosse is a lot of...

01:27:56.000 It's subconcussive trauma.

01:27:57.000 Yeah.

01:27:57.000 Just heading the ball causes a lot of CTE. I know a lot of youth leagues now are starting to cut out heading, which I think is probably a pretty good idea.

01:28:03.000 It's a very good idea.

01:28:04.000 They should probably eliminate it totally.

01:28:05.000 Often it's not the ball.

01:28:06.000 It's the collision with the guy in here.

01:28:08.000 Yes.

01:28:08.000 Often.

01:28:08.000 But they think heading has a huge impact.

01:28:11.000 No, no, no.

01:28:11.000 What I'm saying, when you're going up for headers, you're often, you're knocking heads, you're knocking a shoulder into a head, an elbow into a head.

01:28:16.000 Yeah, I mean, you're running around on a field in full clip.

01:28:18.000 You're going to collide with each other.

01:28:19.000 Where do you stand on paying for organs?

01:28:23.000 But let's keep going with this, because we didn't even touch the surface of this.

01:28:27.000 I'm in favor of people doing what they want to do with their life.

01:28:30.000 If you choose to do something with your life, are we going to take away race car driving? 0.97

01:28:34.000 Because that's one of the scariest goddamn things a person can do. 0.63

01:28:38.000 Not as much anymore. 0.93

01:28:40.000 What are you talking about? 1.00

01:28:42.000 These guys are getting fucked up. 1.00

01:28:44.000 Did you see that recent crash? 0.99

01:28:45.000 I did, but the fact that we remember that so well, one reason is because there have been so few since Earnhardt died back in whatever that was, 2000...

01:28:55.000 I had Dale Earnhardt Jr. on this podcast and he went in depth about brain damage that he's gotten from multiple crashes.

01:29:02.000 He talked about the severe impact of the concussions.

01:29:05.000 He talked about the difficulty coming back and the different modalities, the different medical treatments that he's had to have.

01:29:11.000 That's Dale Earnhardt Jr. This is after his dad is gone, right?

01:29:14.000 This guy talked like really extensively on this podcast about his personal struggle Yeah.

01:29:32.000 Yeah. 0.93

01:29:39.000 NASCAR drivers who wind up in these crazy collisions and go sent through the air and they wind up in the hospital all fucked up. 0.99

01:29:45.000 The impact, just the impact, even if you're in a cage, just your brain rattling around inside your head fucks you up. 0.98

01:29:51.000 And we're letting people do that. 0.61

01:29:53.000 And I don't think we should stop.

01:29:54.000 I think we should let people do whatever they want.

01:29:56.000 If they want to take a tightrope walk across the Grand Canyon and film it on YouTube, I'm not the guy.

01:30:04.000 Unless it's over private land or public land and there's a law against using it, who are we to tell people they can't rock climb?

01:30:11.000 Who are we to tell people they can't ski?

01:30:13.000 Where do we draw the line?

01:30:14.000 Where do you decide a person can't do a thing?

01:30:18.000 I don't know.

01:30:19.000 You make a good argument.

01:30:20.000 I don't think there's a bad argument with what you're saying, though, in saying that it causes damage to people.

01:30:26.000 You're right.

01:30:27.000 By the way, I love the NFL. I would cry if it went away.

01:30:32.000 On the other hand, and I know a few NFL, well now former NFL players, one of whom stopped playing in his fifth year way earlier than he had to because he was worried about CTE, but also he was getting a PhD in math from MIT at the same time.

01:30:49.000 So he had a plan.

01:30:51.000 He had an alternative.

01:30:52.000 But then there's another guy- You should have him on your show.

01:30:57.000 John Urschel, his name is U-R-S-C-H-E-L. Okay, we'll talk about it after the podcast.

01:31:00.000 Fascinating guy.

01:31:02.000 There's another guy, Dominique Foxworth.

01:31:04.000 Both these guys happen to play for the Ravens, which happens to be the team I hate most, but I've gotten to be friendly with them.

01:31:08.000 Dominique Foxworth had a great money-making career because he kind of got his big contract in his, whatever, fourth, fifth year.

01:31:17.000 Well, took out insurance on it, then got hurt, and really never played again.

01:31:21.000 So he banked enough money.

01:31:23.000 After that, he went and got an MBA from Harvard because he's a bright and interesting and ambitious guy.

01:31:28.000 He will never let his son play football.

01:31:32.000 It's like you hear these stories about the guys who've done it, who've made a life, you know, out of it.

01:31:37.000 And it just really makes me think about, you're right.

01:31:41.000 Everybody should have the right to do anything for their own livelihood or for their own excitement, right?

01:31:47.000 Yeah.

01:31:50.000 Like, if we had the Colosseum today per se, like what we have is a modern version of the Colosseum, if we had the Colosseum per se, fighting the Tigers, slaves getting thrown in to fight the Tigers, we don't like that.

01:32:00.000 It's like, the line, things are repugnant until they're not.

01:32:03.000 And it's hard to predict where that line is.

01:32:05.000 A lot of things that used to be not repugnant, slavery, fine.

01:32:09.000 The whole world, if you had the ability to do it.

01:32:11.000 Right.

01:32:12.000 And then it goes straight back to the Colosseum.

01:32:14.000 It's the same thing.

01:32:15.000 It's like we have a line, and whatever the cultural line is, especially depending upon how many people die around us, how much plague and murder, and how much you're dealing with war, that line moves.

01:32:27.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:32:28.000 Right now, people find it repugnant to use a plastic shopping bag.

01:32:33.000 And that's a dangerous argument if it's not a good decision, right?

01:32:37.000 Because if you can feel like, oh, we stopped using plastic shopping bags, therefore, this is called moral licensing.

01:32:45.000 Because I've made one good moral decision, now I can license myself to do other stuff.

01:32:49.000 It's great on paper, right?

01:32:51.000 Every time you go to the supermarket, you have to bring a reusable bag.

01:32:55.000 It's great on paper until you don't have a reusable bag.

01:32:57.000 And so then you have to buy...

01:32:58.000 Then you can get a paper bag, and then it rains, then your groceries fall on the street.

01:33:02.000 I mean, that's the extreme.

01:33:03.000 No, but these are...

01:33:04.000 I mean, the problem is plastic bags, if you look at the menace to the environment overall, plastic bags are a pretty, pretty small part.

01:33:11.000 The danger is when people feel that they've contributed by doing something small and then stop thinking about bigger, better things to do.

01:33:20.000 That's...

01:33:20.000 It's interesting, too, that we just...

01:33:22.000 Accept an inevitable amount of litter.

01:33:25.000 Yeah.

01:33:26.000 Because it's really a garbage disposal issue.

01:33:29.000 Yeah.

01:33:29.000 It's true.

01:33:30.000 If we had a zero...

01:33:31.000 How hard is it?

01:33:32.000 I know.

01:33:32.000 It's interesting.

01:33:33.000 Because sometimes there's accidents, right?

01:33:35.000 Things fall off things.

01:33:36.000 Things blow down the street.

01:33:37.000 You can't get to them. 0.99

01:33:38.000 But there's a lot of it is just asshole-ishness. 0.99

01:33:42.000 I agree. 0.99

01:33:43.000 I happen to play golf, which...

01:33:45.000 I'm a little embarrassed about it.

01:33:46.000 How dare you?

01:33:47.000 I know.

01:33:47.000 I grew up as the kind of person that looked at golfers like, that's not my club.

01:33:51.000 When did you start?

01:33:52.000 Like eight, ten years ago.

01:33:53.000 I love it.

01:33:53.000 I absolutely love it.

01:33:54.000 It's also nice because you're outdoors for a long time.

01:33:56.000 You're often alone for a long time.

01:33:58.000 And another thing I really like about it is I get to be around other people, often men, in a way that you don't get to be around other men in that way.

01:34:06.000 You know what I mean?

01:34:08.000 It's good for the soul, in a way.

01:34:12.000 And I just like the competition.

01:34:14.000 It's a really hard game, so I like trying to get better at it. 0.99

01:34:16.000 But the thing that amazes me is how much crap there is, how much garbage there is on a golf course. 0.99

01:34:22.000 I'm like thinking... 1.00

01:34:23.000 It'll blow out of your bag.

01:34:25.000 And I'm just like...

01:34:26.000 I don't know.

01:34:26.000 I like nature a lot.

01:34:28.000 I don't like the idea of candy wrappers all over.

01:34:30.000 So then I... Right.

01:34:31.000 I extrapolate and think bigger like you do.

01:34:33.000 Plastic bags, should it be that hard to take it home, use it maybe once or twice again, and then throw it away?

01:34:40.000 And I understand that they're...

01:34:44.000 We're good to go.

01:35:06.000 Well, you know, we make technological improvements that are difficult to see while you're in the moment.

01:35:11.000 Like, if you go back and look at photos of Los Angeles in the 60s, and you see the pollution, it was insane.

01:35:17.000 It was literally like there was a fire, right?

01:35:19.000 And now it's gotten a lot better. 0.97

01:35:21.000 It still sucks, but it's gotten a lot better. 0.96

01:35:23.000 Question, would it have gotten a lot better without, let's say... 0.98

01:35:26.000 Regulation?

01:35:27.000 Yeah, would industry have done it on its own?

01:35:28.000 No chance.

01:35:29.000 No, they would have accepted it.

01:35:30.000 Clean Air Act.

01:35:31.000 Which president?

01:35:32.000 Do you know that?

01:35:33.000 I don't.

01:35:33.000 Nixon.

01:35:34.000 Oh, wow.

01:35:34.000 That's crazy.

01:35:35.000 Go to Mexico.

01:35:36.000 Go to Mexico City.

01:35:38.000 Wild.

01:35:38.000 Yeah.

01:35:39.000 Like, when we were flying in, I was like, holy shit, that's real? 0.99

01:35:42.000 Like, crazy pollution. 0.99

01:35:44.000 Yeah.

01:35:44.000 I took photos of it and put it on Instagram.

01:35:45.000 I'm like, this is wild.

01:35:47.000 Yeah.

01:35:47.000 Have you been to China?

01:35:48.000 No, never been in China.

01:35:49.000 Bring your face, man.

01:35:51.000 I'm sure, yeah.

01:35:51.000 No, I've seen videos.

01:35:53.000 I'm hoping that technology catches up to our pollution.

01:35:58.000 At the same time, we're remedying our situation by trying to be better with recycling.

01:36:02.000 But I'm hoping that someone figures out some giant building-size filter.

01:36:06.000 Some huge thing they put in the middle of every city, and it sucks all the carbon. 0.93

01:36:11.000 Yeah.

01:36:11.000 It just seems like in the particulates.

01:36:14.000 So, particulate pollution has gotten so much better.

01:36:17.000 In fact, one wrinkle of climate change and global warming is that the particulates, the soot in the atmosphere in the 50s, 60s, and 70s was apparently what kept things a little bit cooler because it refracted sunlight and heat,

01:36:34.000 right?

01:36:34.000 That's So the irony is you clean up the air and you allow more heating.

01:36:39.000 Global warming.

01:36:39.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:36:40.000 Anyway, global warming is a very complicated issue.

01:36:43.000 This is another example where when people reduce it to the headlines and then divide people into tribes, it's exactly the opposite of what you want.

01:36:50.000 Perfect example because it's clearly a right versus left thing, too, in some people's circles.

01:36:55.000 If you're on the right, you're supposed to say, it's exaggerated, it's a hoax, it's this, it's that, it's not my concern, my concern is jobs, my concern is that.

01:37:03.000 Like, you repeat the talking points, and if it's on the left, it's, how dare you!

01:37:08.000 It's Greta Thunberg.

01:37:09.000 I think the biggest, that was not the best Greta Thunberg.

01:37:14.000 How dare you! 0.99

01:37:14.000 That was actually, now that I know it's her, it was not a bad imitation. 0.99

01:37:16.000 It's not bad.

01:37:17.000 I think one of Obama's biggest mistakes, he plainly wanted to address climate change, global warming, but he did it in a kind of standard left Democrat way by calling it global warming, by saying that there were bad actors,

01:37:34.000 which is true.

01:37:35.000 The thing that astonishes me that Democrats haven't done is talk about it in a language that Every Republican, every conservative, every Hunter Fisher would respond to, which is pollution, which is what it is, by the way.

01:38:03.000 Welcome to my show!

01:38:21.000 He basically said, no, no, no, I don't want to own this patent.

01:38:24.000 He could have become a billionaire.

01:38:26.000 You know, this is the way we have thought in our past as humans about solving big problems.

01:38:33.000 We seem to have gotten away from that a little bit.

01:38:36.000 And I think that's where, to me, the tribalism is the most dangerous.

01:38:39.000 It's not about the political charades.

01:38:41.000 I don't care about that.

01:38:42.000 I don't think that's particularly damaging.

01:38:43.000 Where I think it's damaging is by dividing yourself into these tribes that are so exclusive Yeah.

01:38:55.000 Yeah.

01:38:56.000 Yeah.

01:39:02.000 Groups of one and two people who are working on solutions that keep coming.

01:39:08.000 You know, humans are a cool species, is what I'm trying to say. 0.89

01:39:12.000 We're fucking awesome. 0.88

01:39:12.000 We really are. 0.88

01:39:13.000 Yeah, and I think it's interesting, but Jonas Salk, when he did create that vaccine, the world was a different place.

01:39:18.000 And there wasn't this pharmaceutical industry that we have today that's It has such a strong ability to influence the way people look at things through advertisements and just through the way they influence politicians.

01:39:31.000 It's a different world.

01:39:32.000 So to compare the bounty that was awaiting Jonas Salk for coming up with the polio vaccine, it's just a different world.

01:39:38.000 The world's different.

01:39:40.000 Wasn't there some controversy that he didn't give credit to the other people that helped him with the vaccine?

01:39:44.000 Yes, there was.

01:39:45.000 So he's okay with money, but not good with giving people credit?

01:39:49.000 I haven't read this in a long time, so I can't speak to it.

01:39:52.000 But even like, I've been...

01:39:53.000 Do you like Richard Feynman?

01:39:55.000 You know Richard Feynman?

01:39:56.000 So, you know, when he talks about...

01:39:58.000 I love hearing him talk about when he was drafted to work on the Manhattan Project.

01:40:02.000 And you think about it.

01:40:03.000 America was...

01:40:03.000 It was an existential fear.

01:40:07.000 Legitimate, right?

01:40:08.000 Sure.

01:40:08.000 I mean, we wound up using it.

01:40:09.000 They could have used it on us.

01:40:10.000 We did indeed.

01:40:11.000 And...

01:40:13.000 And when you hear Feynman talk about all the complication of that, we have an enormous scientific challenge, we have an enormous competition against the Germans who are trying to do the same thing, and then even if we win, then we have another whole challenge, which is the moral challenge. 0.94

01:40:27.000 Yeah.

01:40:29.000 But there's a way of thinking about those things, and again, measuring the costs and benefits that people who might disagree aggressively, and they did about the Manhattan Project, can sit down and say, okay, here's what we're going to do.

01:40:40.000 What's the lesser of the two evils?

01:40:42.000 And I feel like right now, I don't know, as much progress as we've had, I feel we've gotten worse at looking at the lesser of two evil paths, at weighing costs and benefits.

01:40:54.000 Well, what is the lesser of two evils in that regard?

01:40:57.000 Is it drop the bombs and stop the war? 0.74

01:41:00.000 Or is the lesser of two evils never drop the bomb and stop the war later?

01:41:05.000 Yeah, I mean, look, there's a million books been written about this.

01:41:09.000 Yeah.

01:41:11.000 I could make an argument in either case.

01:41:14.000 I mean, Japan, we were very, very scared of Japan.

01:41:17.000 Japan had shown a lot of ability to punish the United States.

01:41:23.000 Even though Germany was out, America still felt very fragile. 0.81

01:41:27.000 So I totally get the argument that it was meant to be I get it, too.

01:41:33.000 Yeah.

01:41:33.000 On the other hand, you're picking some pretty big cities to drop it on, and you're picking two.

01:41:38.000 And you're killing mostly civilians. 0.66

01:41:40.000 Yeah. 0.90

01:41:41.000 Yeah.

01:41:42.000 So it's hard to imagine that decision would be made today.

01:41:44.000 But as you just said about polio vaccine, different case, but roughly same time era, it's very hard to project your morals onto – 50 years from now, we may have a very different view about MMA, for instance.

01:41:56.000 It's very hard to project it.

01:41:58.000 Well, I think that's far more intense and extreme than MMA. I mean, we're talking about nuking people literally out of existence.

01:42:06.000 But I think that just the fact that these brilliant scientists were forced into that moral dilemma.

01:42:12.000 Like, one of my favorite videos online is Oppenheimer, when he's discussing what he said when the first atomic bomb was detonated, and he quoted the Bhagavad Gita, and he said, I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

01:42:25.000 Have you seen it?

01:42:27.000 The video?

01:42:27.000 Oh, please.

01:42:28.000 Let me play this for you.

01:42:29.000 Play Oppenheimer right after describing what it was like because it's so eerie.

01:42:35.000 Because here you have one of the most brilliant scientists ever who completed this fantastic project.

01:42:39.000 The Manhattan Project created bombs that literally were nuclear weapons.

01:42:45.000 Never happened before in all of human history, as far as we know.

01:42:48.000 And here, the guy that did it, that knew, that knew that that was going to be the death of untold amounts of people.

01:42:55.000 Listen to this.

01:42:56.000 Listen to what he says.

01:42:57.000 We knew the world would not be the same.

01:43:02.000 Few people laughed.

01:43:06.000 Few people cried.

01:43:08.000 Most people were silent.

01:43:13.000 I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.

01:43:22.000 Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty.

01:43:31.000 And to impress him takes on his multi-armed form.

01:43:38.000 And says, now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

01:43:46.000 I suppose we all thought that one way or another.

01:43:49.000 Dude!

01:43:50.000 Imagine being that guy.

01:43:53.000 I mean, here's a guy, first of all, was quoting the Bhagavad Gita in 1945. A little ahead of his time.

01:43:59.000 It was pretty incredible.

01:44:00.000 Or 46?

01:44:02.000 When did they first detonate?

01:44:05.000 The tests were, I think, 44 and Hiroshima and Nagasaki 45, correct?

01:44:11.000 Somewhere in that range.

01:44:14.000 Being this guy who, you know, he's just a brilliant scientist.

01:44:18.000 He's not supposed to be the guy who destroys a half a million people in one moment, one brief flash of light and vaporizes a half a million people.

01:44:28.000 He went to this school in New York City called the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, which is where my kids went.

01:44:35.000 So Oppenheimer is kind of a patron saint for...

01:44:41.000 Having the brains to do something almost unimaginable and having the ethics and courage to know that what he'd done was...

01:44:53.000 Unacceptable on some levels.

01:44:55.000 You know, on the other hand, but look, if we're talking about costs and benefits, let's think about nuclear power, nuclear bombs as a deterrent against others down the road, right?

01:45:06.000 So you have to say, killed a lot of people.

01:45:08.000 How many lives did it save?

01:45:10.000 Impossible to say.

01:45:12.000 You sound like a Republican, sir.

01:45:13.000 I know, I know, but I mean, no.

01:45:14.000 That's the argument, right?

01:45:16.000 Then let's also talk about nuclear power, which was the byproduct of this, right?

01:45:23.000 And there are those who could argue, and I would probably aid this argument to say that if the U.S. I think?

01:46:00.000 That's been terrible for the environment, for lives.

01:46:03.000 A lot of lives lost in mining coal, but then the pollution and so on.

01:46:06.000 So, you know, actions have consequences.

01:46:08.000 What seems to be all benefit often has a lot of costs.

01:46:12.000 And life is complicated, but I think the more that we can measure and weigh things sensibly, the less screaming there is.

01:46:21.000 I just, you know, I love changing my mind.

01:46:24.000 I love hearing somebody make an argument That makes me say, oh, you know, the way I thought about that before, I see why I thought it.

01:46:31.000 I don't feel like a fool for having thought it, but wow, now that you've laid out some facts and laid out some counterfactuals, I appreciate the opportunity to change my mind.

01:46:40.000 I enjoy that.

01:46:41.000 I don't know why.

01:46:42.000 I do too.

01:46:42.000 Well, I think we're so often married to our ideas, like our ideas are a part of us and we're losing if our ideas that we've been discussing are incorrect.

01:46:51.000 If our assumptions were incorrect, it's a value judgment against us.

01:46:54.000 Right.

01:46:55.000 You know, I think the nuclear thing is interesting because I think one of the problems with what happened was the shitty design of like Fukushima where they can't shut it off.

01:47:05.000 It's freaked people out, rightly so.

01:47:07.000 And it's built in a bad spot.

01:47:09.000 It's a terrible spot. 0.95

01:47:10.000 Yeah, and the backup plan sucked.

01:47:12.000 Everything's wrong.

01:47:12.000 And now they have this nuclear hotspot that they're, you know, it's going to be like that for 100,000 years.

01:47:16.000 Right.

01:47:17.000 There's a better way, and they never had a chance to find that better Right.

01:47:49.000 How about a Tesla?

01:47:50.000 Zero emissions.

01:47:51.000 Maybe they would figure out how to really knock it down.

01:47:55.000 I mean, there are still a lot of people working on next, next, next, next generation nuclear power, including Bill Gates is involved, and including some that are working with using as fuel what's called spent fuel in a traditional nuclear act, which takes care of two big problems at once.

01:48:10.000 Right, right, right.

01:48:12.000 Yeah, reasons to be cheerful. 1.00

01:48:14.000 Bunkers filled with shit that's eventually going to crack through the bunker and toxify everything around it. 1.00

01:48:19.000 Maybe. 1.00

01:48:20.000 Or you could also theoretically use that as literally as fuel.

01:48:24.000 Not only that, have you seen the thing where they've discovered bacteria in Fukushima that's adapting to eating nuclear waste?

01:48:30.000 No, that's interesting.

01:48:32.000 Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Fukushima.

01:48:33.000 Pull that up.

01:48:34.000 Bacteria that eats nuclear waste.

01:48:35.000 Yeah, they're discovering bacteria that's...

01:48:37.000 Life is so sneaky.

01:48:41.000 Life just finds a way.

01:48:42.000 Like those vents, those volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean.

01:48:45.000 You're like, what are you doing here?

01:48:47.000 This sounds like the way...

01:48:48.000 You know CRISPR? You know what CRISPR is?

01:48:50.000 This was discovered.

01:48:52.000 It was found.

01:48:52.000 The mechanism for that was basically these bacteria that were living in some deeply inhospitable place like this.

01:48:59.000 Radiation-eating bacteria could make nuclear waste safer.

01:49:02.000 All right.

01:49:02.000 Yeah.

01:49:03.000 Where do we buy those?

01:49:04.000 Like a Walmart?

01:49:05.000 You get those bacteria?

01:49:06.000 What was the date you just highlighted there, Jamie?

01:49:08.000 2017. Oh.

01:49:09.000 April 11th.

01:49:10.000 I think that's a different one.

01:49:11.000 But that's probably something they've been talking about.

01:49:13.000 But I think there was something recently where they discovered...

01:49:17.000 Some bacteria that was eating radiation.

01:49:20.000 Alright, I got a question for you, Joe Rogan.

01:49:23.000 Let's say that we collectively decide that protein is a really important intake for most humans, but that some people Either don't want to eat meat, or they find that meat is too resource-intensive, etc., etc., but they also don't want to eat the kind of processed fake meat,

01:49:41.000 which is, you know, processed food, etc.

01:49:43.000 And let's say that we decide that one of the best, most available sources of protein, if you develop it well, is insects, okay?

01:49:52.000 But that most people find that disgusting.

01:49:56.000 What do you do to make people less disgusted by something they find disgusting?

01:50:01.000 Well, with all these things, I think it's very important to give people the opportunity to choose for themselves, especially with things they've been doing forever, like eating meat.

01:50:08.000 People are terrified of someone coming along and legislating that they can't Right.

01:50:22.000 Right.

01:50:25.000 Right.

01:50:30.000 Right.

01:50:34.000 But here's the thing for the people that do want to eat bugs.

01:50:37.000 It's a good source of protein.

01:50:38.000 And ethically, we don't feel as bad about killing bugs as we do about killing cows.

01:50:43.000 I was at an ashram once, and I had a friend that was renting a place that the ashram had for rent.

01:50:51.000 So I'm hanging out with this lady who's a monk, I guess.

01:50:54.000 I don't know how you would call her.

01:50:56.000 But she ran the ashram. 0.85

01:50:57.000 Very nice lady.

01:50:58.000 But she had bug spray. 0.99

01:51:00.000 And I go, why a bug spray?

01:51:02.000 She goes, we have an ant problem.

01:51:03.000 They're getting into the garbage.

01:51:04.000 I go, whoa.

01:51:05.000 I go, do you understand what you're saying? 1.00

01:51:07.000 I go, we're at an ashram and you're fucking, you're spraying death from the sky on these little life forms. 1.00

01:51:12.000 Like imagine if she was running around killing kittens with a hammer, right? 1.00

01:51:16.000 We would go, no fucking way. 1.00

01:51:17.000 She's like, they shit everywhere. 1.00

01:51:19.000 They're pissing on my garbage. 1.00

01:51:20.000 I got to kill these fucking kittens. 1.00

01:51:21.000 Right. 1.00

01:51:22.000 Well, to a Buddhist, spraying ants with bug spray should be the same as killing a fucking kitten with a hammer. 1.00

01:51:29.000 What an arbitrary decision, right? 1.00

01:51:30.000 The kitten's okay.

01:51:31.000 It's a very arbitrary choice.

01:51:32.000 You see many vegans slap mosquitoes, right?

01:51:35.000 You don't just let them eat you.

01:51:36.000 There's a thing where we decide that an animal is not as valuable.

01:51:41.000 And big furry animals are the most valuable animals.

01:51:46.000 One of the horrible truths about monocrop agriculture, and there's a video that a friend of mine put up on his Instagram page the other day about farmers.

01:51:56.000 This farmer was talking about, like, when I grow avocados, you have to understand, like, you think you're getting this organic avocado and nothing else to die.

01:52:02.000 He goes, I have to kill thousands of gophers. 0.85

01:52:05.000 Thousands of them. 0.99

01:52:06.000 He goes, I'm going to kill untold numbers of bugs.

01:52:08.000 He goes, I'm spraying all this organic pesticide down that's going to kill weeds.

01:52:13.000 He goes, I'm fucking up the ecosystem.

01:52:14.000 I'm churning up the land. 0.50

01:52:16.000 I'm displacing all these animals, all the places that I'm putting things on.

01:52:20.000 There should be wildlife.

01:52:21.000 I'm moving it.

01:52:22.000 I'm getting rid of it. 0.94

01:52:23.000 I'm fucking up this system. 0.92

01:52:25.000 And, like, that's an uncomfortable truth, that if you even want to buy lettuce, which is the most harmless thing, like, oh, I just plucked that head and, you know, I'll be fine. 0.94

01:52:33.000 No one's getting hurt, no one's dying.

01:52:35.000 But they are, because monocrop agriculture is devastating.

01:52:38.000 And unless you are growing an organic garden, which I firmly encourage people to do, and I think that would be, like, one of the best solutions for community.

01:52:47.000 Although one argument against it is it takes a lot more land because the yield is so much lower.

01:52:52.000 Yeah.

01:52:52.000 It takes more land, but I'm not talking about for the entire city.

01:52:55.000 I'm saying like if we had blocks, right?

01:52:57.000 Like say if there was a block of people, right?

01:52:59.000 And in that block, there's one patch that everybody tended to do together.

01:53:02.000 And there was a community.

01:53:03.000 My parents actually, my parents were hippies.

01:53:05.000 And when I was a kid in San Francisco, they actually were part of this co-op.

01:53:09.000 And we would go there.

01:53:09.000 And I thought it was interesting, but I was seven.

01:53:11.000 I didn't know that that was unusual.

01:53:12.000 Right.

01:53:12.000 And we would go there, and it was a part of this university project that my dad was involved in, and they were growing all these crops.

01:53:19.000 And I'm like, oh, this is kind of cool.

01:53:21.000 And it was in San Francisco.

01:53:23.000 It was in the city itself.

01:53:24.000 It had this area where we would go, and it was all fenced in, and people would grow tomatoes and different vegetables and stuff, and they'd learn how to grow, and there was classes on composting and stuff like that.

01:53:34.000 People were composting their organic waste, and they would reuse it.

01:53:38.000 And that is something that could be done inside communities.

01:53:43.000 It doesn't have to be that we have these giant swaths of land where nobody grows it.

01:53:47.000 Just take Central Park, for example.

01:53:49.000 What an amazing place.

01:53:50.000 Somewhere near there.

01:53:52.000 I'm not saying grow vegetables there.

01:53:53.000 But take it as an example.

01:53:54.000 Everything doesn't have to be hardscaped.

01:53:57.000 Central Park is this beautiful part of New York City because it's this lush green patch in the middle of this urban sprawl.

01:54:04.000 So you have this urban city around it, and then it's really cool to be able to go through that and to see the ducks and to sit by a tree and Although there's this one duck in Central Park now that got like a plastic bottle ring stuck around its beak.

01:54:17.000 It's become a duck-caused syllab.

01:54:20.000 Have you ever eaten insects, like cooked well?

01:54:23.000 Yes.

01:54:24.000 Well, first of all, I hosted Fear Factor.

01:54:26.000 Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.

01:54:27.000 I've eaten roaches and tomato hornworms.

01:54:29.000 Why do you think there's such a...

01:54:31.000 Roaches do gross people out more.

01:54:34.000 They carry diseases.

01:54:34.000 Yeah, but don't others?

01:54:36.000 Is it because they're garbage eaters because they live near humans? 0.99

01:54:40.000 That's the problem? 0.99

01:54:40.000 Yes, exactly. 0.99

01:54:41.000 That's the ones that we hate.

01:54:43.000 We hate everything that lives near us.

01:54:44.000 You do have to appreciate their indestructibility, though.

01:54:46.000 They're amazing.

01:54:47.000 Unbelievable.

01:54:48.000 Yeah, they're amazing.

01:54:49.000 I mean, if I were an engineer, I think the roach would be my, like, inspiration.

01:54:54.000 It's a special animal.

01:54:55.000 I mean, it really is.

01:54:56.000 It's a special little creature.

01:54:57.000 It's figured out a way to live in every single urban environment.

01:55:00.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:55:00.000 And to live inside your walls, inside your house, and exist in your garbage. 0.98

01:55:04.000 Is the rat essentially the roach equivalent, or are all rodents pretty? 0.98

01:55:07.000 Scarier.

01:55:07.000 Because rats have technically carried things that have killed millions of people.

01:55:12.000 Don't squirrels as well, though?

01:55:13.000 Nah.

01:55:13.000 Not really.

01:55:14.000 How come?

01:55:14.000 Because they're herbivores.

01:55:15.000 They're not involved in those tight-knit groups where they spread diseases.

01:55:20.000 I mean, they could technically get fleas that could carry plagues, and I'm sure they have.

01:55:26.000 That's where a lot of people used to get diseases, right?

01:55:28.000 They'd get a flea from a rat, and that was the plague.

01:55:31.000 And they blamed it on the rats, but it was really the bugs.

01:55:33.000 And I think that rats, I mean, have you ever seen the Netflix documentary?

01:55:37.000 No.

01:55:39.000 I got a long list from you.

01:55:41.000 You got this list.

01:55:41.000 Walking out of here with a lot of entertainment.

01:55:43.000 This one's number one.

01:55:44.000 What's it called?

01:55:44.000 It's called Rats.

01:55:45.000 It's a Netflix documentary.

01:55:46.000 It is amazing.

01:55:48.000 Did they deal with this story I've read about years ago, and I think this was in Saigon probably years and years ago.

01:55:55.000 Maybe that's, that might not be right.

01:55:57.000 About when, you know, there's a rat infestation.

01:55:59.000 This has happened throughout history.

01:56:00.000 It's happened in many places.

01:56:01.000 I know it happened in South Africa not long ago either, where the city will call for like a bounty.

01:56:07.000 They'll say, you kill the rat, so people start breeding and growing extra rats.

01:56:11.000 Is that in the film?

01:56:12.000 No, it's not, but I know that story.

01:56:14.000 I love stories of incentives gone wrong, because we do it.

01:56:18.000 You incentivize something. 0.95

01:56:19.000 People are so gross. 0.99

01:56:21.000 Would you eat a rat? 1.00

01:56:22.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:56:24.000 Have you?

01:56:24.000 Especially if I was hungry.

01:56:25.000 No.

01:56:26.000 I mean, it's just meat.

01:56:28.000 Once you cook it and you put some seasoning on it, I have a friend who ate a coyote.

01:56:32.000 And what's your meat situation right now?

01:56:34.000 You're still eating mostly meat?

01:56:36.000 Yes.

01:56:37.000 Mostly wild game.

01:56:39.000 So mostly what I eat is elk.

01:56:41.000 It's stuff that you've hunted yourself?

01:56:43.000 Yeah.

01:56:43.000 But I eat beefsteak too.

01:56:45.000 Right.

01:56:45.000 But I've been on this diet for the last couple months that's basically just meat.

01:56:49.000 What else are you eating besides meat?

01:56:51.000 That's it.

01:56:52.000 Just meat.

01:56:52.000 No fruit, no veg.

01:56:53.000 No fruit, no vegetables, just meat.

01:56:55.000 So what's that feel like?

01:56:56.000 It's weird.

01:56:57.000 This is what's weird about it.

01:56:59.000 First of all, what's weird is your energy levels.

01:57:02.000 Without the carbohydrate rollercoaster ride of the spike of the insulin and the sugar and the body processing it, it's amazing.

01:57:10.000 It's just steadier, you're saying?

01:57:12.000 Yes, you don't get the crash.

01:57:13.000 I did hear you talking about, though, feeling like you are more angry or aggressive in some ways.

01:57:18.000 Are you still feeling that?

01:57:19.000 I was partially joking around about that, but I was saying that you almost have to work out more.

01:57:23.000 I think it's just energy.

01:57:24.000 I think my body not having to process a large amount of carbohydrates, particularly, not vegetables.

01:57:31.000 Vegetables seem pretty easy, but they do, like if I eat a lot of vegetables, I do get a lot of gas.

01:57:37.000 Thanks for sharing.

01:57:38.000 I appreciate that.

01:57:39.000 But that everybody gets.

01:57:40.000 Not all vegetables.

01:57:41.000 Some vegetables are super gassy.

01:57:43.000 The Jerusalem artichoke is, I believe, the gaseous vegetable.

01:57:47.000 Well, it's really dependent upon your personal digestion.

01:57:49.000 Is that true?

01:57:50.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:57:51.000 I mean, for people that are, your gut biome sort of dictates what you're- What happens, since we're on the topic, what happens to be your gaseous vegetable?

01:57:59.000 Oh, I don't know.

01:58:00.000 It's when I combine a bunch of them together, I'm sure.

01:58:02.000 It's usually when you combine protein and vegetables together that you get the worst reaction.

01:58:06.000 Yeah.

01:58:06.000 But the point is, there's none of that with just meat.

01:58:09.000 Do you eat breakfast or no?

01:58:11.000 Yeah.

01:58:11.000 It depends on the day.

01:58:13.000 Today I did.

01:58:13.000 What did you have?

01:58:14.000 Today I had six eggs and I had four pieces of bacon.

01:58:18.000 Okay.

01:58:18.000 That was breakfast.

01:58:19.000 Lunch then?

01:58:19.000 I haven't eaten anything since.

01:58:21.000 Okay.

01:58:21.000 Gotcha.

01:58:22.000 We should say we're talking at 6 p.m.

01:58:24.000 local time.

01:58:25.000 I had a workout and I hung out with my dog, went for a walk with him, and then came here and did two podcasts.

01:58:34.000 Right.

01:58:34.000 And you're going to eat again today?

01:58:36.000 Yeah.

01:58:36.000 What do you have?

01:58:37.000 I'll eat meat.

01:58:37.000 Right.

01:58:38.000 But just a plate of meat, then.

01:58:40.000 Yeah.

01:58:40.000 Does it get boring?

01:58:41.000 Because I love meat, but I can't imagine that it wouldn't get a little...

01:58:44.000 It does not.

01:58:45.000 It gets boring if you think it's boring.

01:58:48.000 But it is delicious food.

01:58:50.000 If you have it every day, you get bored because you have too much delicious food.

01:58:55.000 So I think it's really a perspective issue.

01:58:56.000 And it's also the health benefits that I've found, like just the way I feel, the energy level, and mental clarity.

01:59:03.000 It's very interesting.

01:59:05.000 Like there's something going on with the struggle that you have...

01:59:10.000 Thinking about things right after you have a big meal.

01:59:13.000 You know, that mashed potatoes and pasta. 1.00

01:59:16.000 I'm so dumb. 1.00

01:59:18.000 I'm like 30 IQ points dumber. 1.00

01:59:20.000 For sure. 0.99

01:59:21.000 That seems to not be an issue when you are on this steady diet of just eating animal foods, protein.

01:59:29.000 Because your body creates its own glucose through glucogenesis where it breaks down the protein and creates glucose.

01:59:36.000 And as long as you get enough fat...

01:59:38.000 That's what's really critical.

01:59:40.000 You can get too lean, where the meat is too lean, you don't have enough fats, your body doesn't have fat to process, and that screws with you.

01:59:47.000 Yeah, now what about the things that are in vegetables that are not in meat, nutritionally?

01:59:52.000 That's a good question.

01:59:52.000 Are they significant enough to either take supplements or to worry about?

01:59:56.000 What do you do?

01:59:56.000 That's a good question.

01:59:57.000 I take multivitamins.

01:59:59.000 I take an athlete's pure pack.

02:00:02.000 It's like a bag, a little baggy filled with multivitamins.

02:00:05.000 Then I take Glucosamine and chondroitin.

02:00:08.000 I take a bunch of other different things.

02:00:10.000 Fish oil.

02:00:10.000 I take quite a few supplements.

02:00:13.000 And again, I'm not telling people to live this way.

02:00:15.000 Don't do it.

02:00:16.000 What does an all-meat diet do to your stool, if you don't mind me asking?

02:00:19.000 It reduces it.

02:00:21.000 Really?

02:00:22.000 Yeah, because mostly you're using, like if you eat eggs and meat, you're breaking it down, your body uses a lot of it, there's no fiber, right?

02:00:31.000 And because there's no fiber, which is probably the biggest argument against the diet, when you look at research for the benefits of fiber, the research is weird, right?

02:00:39.000 Because it's epidemiological, it's all like how much vegetables do you eat, how many instances of colon cancer, let's quarrel, let's put it all together.

02:00:45.000 That's why all that stuff is very, very unreliable.

02:00:48.000 Yeah, it's very weird.

02:00:49.000 So there's a bunch of doctors that are currently like, and I use the term in air quotes, that are promoting the carnivore diet and seeing positive results with it and getting a bunch of other people that achieve positive results.

02:01:02.000 The big one is autoimmune issues, people that have severe skin issues.

02:01:08.000 Eczema is a big one that seems to be cured with an elimination diet, which is essentially what a carnivore diet is, right?

02:01:14.000 If you eliminate all those plants and all those carbs...

02:01:16.000 I mean, maybe the plants are fine, but maybe it's the sugar, and maybe by just eating meat and your body has one thing to concentrate on, it can relax a certain amount of the inflammation that you're getting.

02:01:26.000 Has there ever been a population that's been studied, at least quasi-scientifically, that's had a mostly meat diet for a long time?

02:01:34.000 Inuit, yeah.

02:01:35.000 And?

02:01:36.000 What do we know?

02:01:37.000 The Maasai, Inuit.

02:01:38.000 What do we know about cancer, longevity, and so on?

02:01:40.000 I don't know.

02:01:41.000 It's a good question.

02:01:42.000 Inuit apparently now suffer. 1.00

02:01:44.000 And one of the reasons why they suffer is the introduction of alcohol and tobacco and, you know, cigarettes.

02:01:50.000 And also, you know, just Western life.

02:01:53.000 The foods change.

02:01:54.000 So you look at those communities, it's not the same community as the ones that were just eating seal and whale blubber and eating whatever they can get a hold of. 0.98

02:02:02.000 The Maasai lived for a long time on milk and meat and blood.

02:02:07.000 And they were very healthy.

02:02:09.000 Milk from what animal?

02:02:10.000 From cows.

02:02:11.000 Okay.

02:02:12.000 They're cattle herders.

02:02:13.000 Let me ask you this.

02:02:15.000 Let's say you and I run Lake America for just a couple days, and we decide, you know what, of all the things that people do that's not good for them, that we feel...

02:02:27.000 Is a good idea to get rid of, right?

02:02:29.000 Especially if we're going to be having a little bit more socialized medicine, right?

02:02:32.000 So you're paying my tax, my medical bill, and so on.

02:02:36.000 Of all the things that we should maybe, you know, ban would be sugar, right?

02:02:40.000 Because like, there doesn't seem to be that much nutritional benefit to sugar.

02:02:44.000 People like it, but it's demonstrably bad on a lot of levels.

02:02:49.000 How would you do that?

02:02:50.000 Let me ask you this.

02:02:51.000 Why the inclination always to ban things?

02:02:52.000 No, I'm not.

02:02:53.000 I always go to the extreme just to show.

02:02:56.000 The hypothetical is always ban the word, ban the food, ban the action, ban the sport.

02:03:01.000 It is because we're not very good at regulating, honestly.

02:03:05.000 Because we kind of vacillate between an all embrace and a hate.

02:03:08.000 Look, I think the best example of how bad we are at this is with vaping.

02:03:12.000 Yeah.

02:03:12.000 So like vaping in this country was handled very poorly.

02:03:15.000 Yes.

02:03:16.000 There were the deaths, which were mostly, as I understand it, black market THC pods.

02:03:20.000 You're right.

02:03:20.000 Adam Curry just ran over this entire thing in the last podcast.

02:03:24.000 E-cigarettes are, they might get you addicted to nicotine, which may be a bad thing, although nicotine per se, not a bad thing in moderation.

02:03:32.000 In fact, it's used clinically.

02:03:34.000 People have been using it historically.

02:03:35.000 It's a nootropic.

02:03:36.000 Yeah.

02:03:37.000 Okay, but the UK did something very different with e-cigarettes.

02:03:40.000 When they saw people 10, 12 years ago starting to use them, they said, oh, people want this.

02:03:47.000 We can either say, no, you can't have it.

02:03:49.000 We'll make it illegal, in which case there will be a black market and they'll get stuff that's probably not so well made.

02:03:53.000 Or we can try to deal with it in a responsible, sensible way.

02:03:57.000 And what they did is they allowed e-cigarettes with about 20% as much nicotine as are in the United States.

02:04:05.000 So what you don't have in the UK is a bunch of teenagers who are now addicted to nicotine who never would have been smokers.

02:04:11.000 You also don't have a whole bunch of counterfeit THC pods in the UK where people are dying.

02:04:17.000 So to me, banning is almost never the solution.

02:04:21.000 You look at prohibition, I mean, prohibition did exactly the wrong...

02:04:25.000 But do you understand the hustle, what happened behind the whole THC ban?

02:04:29.000 This is why it gets more complicated.

02:04:30.000 The THC vaping ban?

02:04:31.000 Excuse me, the vaping ban after they...

02:04:35.000 The people died from the THC. They knew that those things had nothing to do with it.

02:04:40.000 They started blaming...

02:04:41.000 With e-cigarettes, you mean?

02:04:42.000 Right.

02:04:42.000 They started blaming it because they were trying to introduce a tobacco-based e-cigarette.

02:04:47.000 Right.

02:04:47.000 And it was all about the company that bought out the Juul cigarette, which was a very popular one, in order to kill it.

02:04:56.000 They were just trying to kill the business.

02:04:57.000 And then they passed this, they're trying to pass this, rather, legislation against flavored tobaccos.

02:05:03.000 Right, right.

02:05:03.000 All they're trying to do was clear the room for their business.

02:05:07.000 And Adam Curry laid it out brilliantly.

02:05:10.000 It's shocking how well it worked.

02:05:12.000 He said it's basically the tobacco version of who killed the electric car.

02:05:15.000 It's a sneaky backroom deal and they hoodwink people.

02:05:19.000 And next thing you know, you're, oh, I don't want the kids to be smoking strawberry vapor. 0.98

02:05:23.000 And really, they're just clearing the way for this tobacco-flavored bullshit, because it's made with tobacco. 0.98

02:05:28.000 Like, this is the only stuff you can have. 0.99

02:05:29.000 This is the purest.

02:05:30.000 It's like doctors smoke camels. 1.00

02:05:32.000 It's really like those goddamn commercials. 1.00

02:05:34.000 They were, yeah. 1.00

02:05:35.000 That's what's going on.

02:05:36.000 So it's really just a sneaky business move.

02:05:38.000 And we're all like, I don't get it. 0.94

02:05:39.000 Like, how the fuck are they going to ban vaping when cigarettes are still legal? 0.91

02:05:42.000 You're talking about something that kills 500,000 people every year in this country alone. 0.98

02:05:46.000 They die of premature death due to tobacco use.

02:05:49.000 And you're not going to ban that, but you're going to ban that flavored smoke that...

02:05:53.000 Didn't even have anything to do with the 10 people that died from the nicotine or the THC with the vitamin E oil.

02:06:00.000 You're also going to drive a lot of smokers who are trying to quit smoking back to cigarettes.

02:06:03.000 That's right.

02:06:04.000 That's the issue. 1.00

02:06:05.000 Your stuff sucks. 1.00

02:06:06.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:06:07.000 People are mad.

02:06:08.000 I can't even have strawberry anymore.

02:06:09.000 I was enjoying the strawberry.

02:06:10.000 And a lot of smokers who take up vaping to stop smoking, they specifically don't want tobacco flavor because that's too reminiscent of the cigarettes.

02:06:19.000 They just want that hit.

02:06:19.000 Were you a smoker ever?

02:06:21.000 No, never.

02:06:22.000 Just pot.

02:06:22.000 Never had any nicotine?

02:06:24.000 Because nicotine's an interesting drug.

02:06:26.000 Oh, I've had it.

02:06:27.000 I've had cigarettes.

02:06:29.000 I've had a cigarette with my friend Tony Hinchcliffe a couple of times before shows, and Dave Chappelle smokes, and when I do shows with him, I'll steal one of his cigarettes and smoke it.

02:06:38.000 If you don't smoke, one cigarette will get you pretty buzzed, right? 1.00

02:06:41.000 You get high as fuck. 0.99

02:06:42.000 You don't just get high, you get like racing. 1.00

02:06:44.000 Jittery.

02:06:45.000 No, no, no.

02:06:46.000 It's like your brain's firing.

02:06:48.000 It's one of the things that Stephen King said about quitting that really bothered him was it was great that he cleaned up the habit and stopped doing it, but the firing of the synapses, like he misses that.

02:06:59.000 When I wrote my first book, I Was a Smoker...

02:07:02.000 Not a heavy smoker, but I smoked, and I was living in the middle of the Catskill Mountains, beautiful place, by myself, middle of the woods.

02:07:08.000 It was great.

02:07:09.000 Dude, that's romantic.

02:07:10.000 That's a romantic writer's story.

02:07:11.000 It was romantic if there had been someone else with me.

02:07:13.000 No, it's a romantic writer's story, right?

02:07:15.000 It was great.

02:07:15.000 I loved it.

02:07:15.000 The middle of the Catskills, by yourself, writing a book.

02:07:17.000 Even better, the house I bought, even though I didn't know when I bought it, it used to be owned by this guy named Anton Otto Fischer, who was a painter and an illustrator.

02:07:25.000 He was German, ran away from home, had an abusive father.

02:07:28.000 This was in the 1910s or something.

02:07:30.000 Ran away from home in Germany, Became a sailor, talked his way onto a ship, got to America, I think fought for America in World War I on a ship, and then he became like the preeminent maritime painter in the U.S. in the decades maybe between the two wars and maybe after.

02:07:49.000 He then got married, lived in New York, and had a kid who had, what do you call it?

02:07:55.000 Not tuberculosis, not emphysema.

02:07:57.000 What's the old one where you need to get the clean air, fresh air?

02:08:00.000 You know, they'd send people away.

02:08:01.000 No, it's something we would know.

02:08:04.000 It's a respiratory thing, right?

02:08:06.000 And the Catskills had this clean air.

02:08:10.000 So they went there.

02:08:11.000 He built this house, and because he was a painter, but also because he'd spent so much of his life on ships, he built this studio, his painting studio, that looked like a little ship with this great window looking out over the Catskill Mountains.

02:08:25.000 That's the house I bought to write my first book.

02:08:27.000 It was unbelievably...

02:08:30.000 I could focus for like 14 hours a day, 16 hours a day writing, but the reason I was able to focus so well was because of cigarettes.

02:08:38.000 I'd write for about 28, 29 minutes, total focus, go outside, smoke, the nicotine would just reset all the focus.

02:08:48.000 It was an unbelievable drug, but it's a terrible delivery system.

02:08:51.000 I've heard someone recently say, I recently heard a kind of reluctant Trump supporter say the same thing about Trump.

02:08:59.000 That a lot of the things he's doing policy-wise, especially foreign policy or economic policy, really, they like it.

02:09:05.000 So they say he's like a cigarette.

02:09:07.000 Like the drug is good.

02:09:08.000 The delivery system is absolutely terrible.

02:09:12.000 That's interesting.

02:09:13.000 Now, how is the vaping?

02:09:14.000 Did you switch with vaping?

02:09:15.000 No, I quit smoking a long time ago.

02:09:17.000 Although I quit, you know, it's interesting.

02:09:19.000 I wrote in my first book, my family memoir about the Jewish Catholic family, I wrote in there not that I was a smoker, but that this one instance where I stepped outside with my brother after this intense moment and we had a cigarette.

02:09:34.000 And a few years later, the book had been published.

02:09:37.000 I was now newly married, and I know that you're supposed to buy life insurance.

02:09:42.000 And so I got this insurance broker, and he knew my name.

02:09:46.000 He said, oh, I read your book.

02:09:47.000 I said, oh, that's great.

02:09:48.000 Glad to hear.

02:09:50.000 And then we started to price out the insurance, and he said, you know, what do you do?

02:09:55.000 Are you a smoker?

02:09:55.000 I said, no, not a smoker, because I'd quit a few years earlier.

02:09:59.000 And then he called me back and he said, you know, I read your book where you stepped outside to have a cigarette with your brother.

02:10:05.000 All of a sudden I got the smoking rate for life insurance.

02:10:08.000 Even though you quit?

02:10:09.000 Yeah, even though I quit.

02:10:10.000 Because you used to smoke?

02:10:11.000 Yeah.

02:10:12.000 Oh, so have you smoked at all?

02:10:14.000 No, that's not what I thought.

02:10:15.000 He asked me, are you a smoker?

02:10:17.000 I said no, because I'd quit.

02:10:19.000 Isn't there like scientifically, there's a certain time window where your lungs are fully recovered.

02:10:24.000 They also say...

02:10:25.000 So this message, I would say, is really serious for anybody.

02:10:28.000 Even if you've been smoking 40 years, they say if you quit, your lungs can actually recover greatly.

02:10:33.000 So it's worth it.

02:10:34.000 Yeah, I think smoking is...

02:10:35.000 I hate to say it.

02:10:36.000 I think smoking is a terrible idea.

02:10:38.000 It's a terrible idea.

02:10:39.000 There's no if, answer, but...

02:10:40.000 On the other hand...

02:10:41.000 Does vaping replace the...

02:10:42.000 Like Adam Curry switched to vaping.

02:10:44.000 He had this crazy contraption.

02:10:46.000 One of those guys who's in a really complicated garage remote control looking vaping things with...

02:10:52.000 He's into those things.

02:10:55.000 He quit, and that's how he quit.

02:10:57.000 So the best science at the moment says that vaping is almost certainly much better than smoking.

02:11:03.000 Because they don't know all the chemicals and all the potential damage that vaping may or may not do, but they do know the damage.

02:11:12.000 Combustible cigarettes and all the chemicals there are demonstrably pretty bad.

02:11:16.000 Even though, like you said, we were told Doctors do it.

02:11:20.000 This is the best.

02:11:21.000 We're told the same thing about sugar.

02:11:23.000 Sugar gives you a great boost and so on.

02:11:25.000 It's awful.

02:11:25.000 But again, my take is if you want to smoke, go ahead.

02:11:29.000 Well, but wait a minute.

02:11:30.000 I think you're living a finite life.

02:11:31.000 But wait a minute.

02:11:31.000 Let's say now we are talking about who pays, right?

02:11:34.000 So this gets back to the externality thing.

02:11:36.000 If you smoke and I'm paying for your health insurance as a taxpayer, don't I get to have a say?

02:11:41.000 It's a very good question.

02:11:42.000 And how far should we extend that?

02:11:44.000 Because if you're fat, should I have to pay? 0.56

02:11:46.000 Right.

02:11:47.000 You keep eating.

02:11:48.000 Why do you keep eating?

02:11:49.000 If you don't sleep well and you're prone to heart attacks, am I supposed to pay?

02:11:54.000 Why don't you sleep more?

02:11:56.000 There's so many variables.

02:11:57.000 Are you a guy who rock climbs?

02:11:59.000 Well, what if you fall and break your leg? 0.99

02:12:00.000 Do I have to fucking pay for that? 0.98

02:12:02.000 There's a lot of variables that you've got to wonder about when you start breaking down how much assistance people get based on their life choices. 0.99

02:12:11.000 But the way to do that is to price it.

02:12:13.000 And this is where economists are really useful.

02:12:16.000 Price it out for the individual and punish them for their behavior?

02:12:19.000 Not punish them, tax them, charge them, right?

02:12:20.000 If I want to be a rock climber and a smoker and an everything, but I get free healthcare, then there should probably be a premium, or I should probably pay into a little fund that is a pool.

02:12:32.000 Well, it's not free if there's a premium, right?

02:12:34.000 Look, healthcare is never free.

02:12:36.000 Right, not in this country.

02:12:38.000 No, no, no.

02:12:38.000 Even in Scandinavia, it's free to the user at point of purchase.

02:12:42.000 Right, yes.

02:12:43.000 But no, it's expensive.

02:12:44.000 And that's what Scandinavia has done well.

02:12:46.000 We're talking about the user, though.

02:12:47.000 We're talking about the user having to pay a premium.

02:12:49.000 Right.

02:12:50.000 You're already paying your taxes.

02:12:51.000 Let's say you're paying 20% total tax, whatever that goes into the healthcare.

02:12:55.000 But then additionally, theoretically...

02:12:58.000 I think it's very hard to regulate behavior because, again, where do we draw the line?

02:13:02.000 What about BMX riding?

02:13:04.000 What about people who do this and that?

02:13:05.000 There's a lot of things that people do.

02:13:06.000 Basically, everything you do, you have to pay for.

02:13:08.000 Yeah, but there's so many things that people do that we take for granted.

02:13:11.000 How about little girls do gymnastics? 1.00

02:13:13.000 How much do their parents have to pay?

02:13:15.000 How about driving in a car?

02:13:16.000 Yes, one of the scariest.

02:13:17.000 Right.

02:13:18.000 How about so many things that people do that they think of nothing?

02:13:19.000 We should just all sit inside with helmets and watch YouTube.

02:13:22.000 How about CrossFit?

02:13:22.000 How much you gotta pay?

02:13:23.000 You wanna do CrossFit?

02:13:25.000 But then we've got to measure the benefit, too.

02:13:28.000 CrossFit, you're building up your body, you're going to live longer.

02:13:31.000 Well, that's possible. 0.99

02:13:32.000 But then you're also probably hanging out with lunatics like you who are riding crazy vehicles, right? 0.98

02:13:37.000 I'm a kind driver. 0.94

02:13:39.000 But I think that CrossFit, the benefit, yeah, is you're getting in shape.

02:13:43.000 So that balances itself out.

02:13:45.000 As long as you do it intelligently, you're involved in athletics.

02:13:48.000 But should we reward people?

02:13:50.000 Should they pay less?

02:13:51.000 So if someone does yoga three days a week, are we supposed to make them pay less? 0.98

02:13:55.000 I mean, I think you get into some weird swampy area and people start to juke the system the same way when, you know, people got paid for rats, they let rats loose and then fucking killed them. 0.98

02:14:06.000 Right. 0.99

02:14:06.000 Because people are gross. 0.99

02:14:07.000 Yeah, but we're improving. 0.95

02:14:10.000 Yes.

02:14:10.000 Again, as a species.

02:14:11.000 Yes.

02:14:11.000 Let's not lose sight of that.

02:14:12.000 It's good news.

02:14:13.000 I'm an optimist.

02:14:14.000 Yeah.

02:14:14.000 I'm a 100% glasses half full person.

02:14:16.000 Yeah.

02:14:17.000 Yeah.

02:14:18.000 Have you ever tried to turn other people into an optimist and been successful?

02:14:22.000 No.

02:14:25.000 I think it's real hard to turn a battleship.

02:14:28.000 Even if I've made an incremental push in the direction, I've moved in one or two degrees to the right, over time maybe it'll change their direction.

02:14:37.000 But the reality is you've got to want to change yourself.

02:14:40.000 And sometimes someone's inspirational words could be the thing that you needed, and that sets you off on a good path, and then you do make change.

02:14:47.000 But for the most part, when someone comes to you and tells you you have to change, it's really hard for people to accept, just like you were talking about in your episode on changing your mind, which I really loved.

02:14:57.000 But I'm sure that a lot of people who listen to this podcast or who watch this podcast have drawn in Both the explicit and implicit optimism.

02:15:12.000 Yes, for sure.

02:15:12.000 But I haven't had any specific reaction with them.

02:15:14.000 I haven't had any specific interaction where I got them to change.

02:15:18.000 They're changing because they're hearing me.

02:15:20.000 But they're also probably hearing a million other people.

02:15:22.000 They're hearing David Goggins and Cameron Haynes and fill in the blank. 0.92

02:15:26.000 All these different people that do incredible things and they go, I gotta fucking do something with my life. 0.96

02:15:31.000 I gotta stop drinking soda. 0.88

02:15:33.000 I gotta stop doing this.

02:15:35.000 I gotta just start eating healthy.

02:15:37.000 Taking vitamins.

02:15:38.000 Maybe one workout class a week.

02:15:41.000 Just one.

02:15:42.000 Start with one.

02:15:42.000 There's also, though, I guess a danger.

02:15:43.000 I don't mean to be a downer because I'm an optimist.

02:15:45.000 I'm an optimist too.

02:15:46.000 But the downer or the danger potentially is that – and this relates to suicide.

02:15:52.000 So, you know, suicide is a little bit of a mystery because – It's such a tragic thing if it affects someone that you knew or even people you don't know.

02:16:03.000 It just seems like such a drastic solution to a problem that is hard to imagine, right?

02:16:09.000 But if you look at suicide rates through history and around the world, there's a lot of variance, but there's one trend that's pretty strong, which is suicide rates tend to be higher in countries with more prosperity, which would seem nuts, right?

02:16:23.000 We're good to go.

02:16:49.000 I think we're good to go.

02:16:51.000 We're good to go.

02:17:13.000 Where you've never had to worry about having enough to eat.

02:17:16.000 You've never gone too cold or too hot.

02:17:19.000 Where you're surrounded by prosperity and you look around at everybody else and like, they're not depressed.

02:17:25.000 And you think, what is it?

02:17:27.000 It's me.

02:17:28.000 The no one left to blame theory.

02:17:30.000 And that's one argument for why there's like right now is a lot of teen and young people suicide in a country like America where the riches are, the prosperity is boundless.

02:17:40.000 Have you read Jonathan Haidt's work?

02:17:42.000 Yeah.

02:17:42.000 Yeah, so his take on that is that these kids are experiencing social media, and they're experiencing this addiction to the internet and this cruelty that they experience, the bullying, the meanness, the coldness, and that when it's targeted on people and when they're losing their position in the social chain and they feel left out,

02:18:02.000 they don't have the tools to cope with this.

02:18:04.000 They're developing minds, and this is the reason why you're experiencing this uptick that's directly correlated to the invention of the iPhone.

02:18:11.000 And the invention of smartphones, the invention of social media applications.

02:18:15.000 There's all sorts of correlations where you see the inventions of these particular things that have changed everything, and then you see the uptick, particularly with girls, particularly with girls in suicide.

02:18:25.000 And you see them trying to keep up with the Joneses and this feeling that they're inadequate or judging themselves against girls that are supermodels, that are photoshopped, and they just feel inadequate.

02:18:36.000 I hear you on all that.

02:18:37.000 We have to be careful about correlations proving causation because it's really tough because I totally hear you on it.

02:18:43.000 It looks like they both travel together, right?

02:18:46.000 On the other hand, history is full of correlations that looked good.

02:18:51.000 We were talking about polio, the vaccine earlier.

02:18:54.000 Polio, for reasons that are still not understood, by the way, because they never really figured out the disease.

02:18:58.000 They just figured out a vaccine.

02:18:59.000 They never figured out what caused the disease.

02:19:02.000 But it turns out that polio would always spike in the summertime.

02:19:05.000 So there were a lot of theories, maybe had to do with being outdoors, so parents would keep their kids indoors.

02:19:11.000 Maybe it had something to do with swimming pools.

02:19:13.000 People keep it out of swimming pools.

02:19:15.000 But then there was one theory that what else happens in the summertime that doesn't happen in the wintertime?

02:19:20.000 Ice cream consumption.

02:19:22.000 So there was a theory for a while that polio was caused by ice cream.

02:19:25.000 On paper, the correlation looks pretty good.

02:19:28.000 So I'm saying, look, internet and depression and suicide are a little bit more complicated than ice cream and polio, but it's hard to tease out effects, for sure.

02:19:38.000 No, you're right.

02:19:39.000 But it's also hard to ignore the effect of social media on people's self-esteems, people who are addicted to phones, people who are addicted to likes.

02:19:45.000 It's a real occurrence.

02:19:46.000 It's also been engineered in order to attract the most eyeballs, and the best, turns out, the best way is to get you outraged.

02:19:53.000 I agree.

02:19:54.000 But, again, just to bang the same drum again and again, where there's costs, you've got to look at the benefits.

02:20:01.000 And this is what I hate about politicians, is they'll talk about a policy that they like, they ignore the costs, they talk about the opponent's policy, they ignore the benefits.

02:20:10.000 So with social media, for instance, I know a kid, a boy, Who is a friend of the family who, if he were born 30 years earlier and there were no way to connect with people other than in person or phone, whatever, he would have had a very disconnected life.

02:20:26.000 He just had some issues with doing that, with kind of in person, kind of behavior that's a little bit on the spectrum, just would have been very difficult.

02:20:35.000 As it turns out, because of the digital revolution, he was able to build a community that is unbelievably good for him.

02:20:43.000 Are there downsides to these things?

02:20:45.000 Absolutely.

02:20:46.000 But, you know, you've got to look at the benefits.

02:20:48.000 Oh, I do.

02:20:49.000 I do.

02:20:49.000 And I agree with you.

02:20:50.000 But I think we're adapting.

02:20:51.000 I think human beings are adapting to a new normal.

02:20:54.000 And the new normal is constant connection with all the people around us all the time if we so choose to engage and look at our phone.

02:21:01.000 If we so choose.

02:21:01.000 The problem is when it becomes more invasive than that.

02:21:05.000 Right now it's if we so choose to engage.

02:21:07.000 But if we get to some point where we're wearing something that...

02:21:09.000 We transmit stuff into our brain all the time.

02:21:12.000 Or someone's wearing us.

02:21:12.000 Or if you don't, if you don't do it, then you can't be a part of this corporation because we're about succeeding.

02:21:18.000 And this is the best way to succeed is to connect yourself to the network, to uptick your bandwidth so that you can keep up with us.

02:21:23.000 Come on, Steve.

02:21:24.000 What's up?

02:21:25.000 You know, I mean, it's team!

02:21:27.000 Let's go team! 1.00

02:21:27.000 You know, and then next thing you know, you're wearing the fucking headband. 1.00

02:21:31.000 Are you optimistic about the future in a general way, though? 0.99

02:21:34.000 People are awesome.

02:21:35.000 It's a great time to be alive.

02:21:36.000 I love it.

02:21:37.000 I love people.

02:21:38.000 I think a lot of people love people.

02:21:39.000 How old do you want to live, too?

02:21:40.000 That's a good question.

02:21:41.000 It's not how old I want to live, too.

02:21:43.000 I don't want to live 300 years in agony and pain.

02:21:46.000 Right, right.

02:21:46.000 I want to live a healthy life as long as I can.

02:21:49.000 I don't know when that...

02:21:50.000 But given how old you are now, your health now and the state of science and technology and medicine now and where it might be in 20 years, would you like to be 120 and be...

02:22:00.000 It'd be interesting.

02:22:00.000 If I was functional, right?

02:22:02.000 If things worked, I don't want to be a prisoner to my shell.

02:22:05.000 But I think that people like Aubrey de Grey, who I had on last week, who's a fascinating character...

02:22:12.000 He believes we're three to five years away from a giant breakthrough, and that when that giant breakthrough has...

02:22:16.000 This is my concern.

02:22:18.000 The haves and the have-nots will never be more separate than once there's some sort of innovative technology that allows you to live forever, but it's $1,000 every week or something like that.

02:22:28.000 Yeah, but history shows us that all technologies...

02:22:32.000 Most technologies start out very expensive and almost all of them get really cheap really fast.

02:22:37.000 Like Michael Douglas with that greed with that big-ass Wall Street phone on the beach.

02:22:41.000 Right.

02:22:42.000 And digital era even more so.

02:22:44.000 Sure.

02:22:44.000 The leverage is accelerated.

02:22:46.000 So my thing would be… But here's the question.

02:22:49.000 Yeah.

02:22:49.000 Would there be too much of an insurmountable head start from the people that are using that technology?

02:22:53.000 Fair enough.

02:22:53.000 So there'd be a transitional generation at least.

02:22:56.000 They have two sets of the technology.

02:22:58.000 They have the life extension technology or the age reversal technology, which is what it's really talking about.

02:23:05.000 And then on top of that, they have the things like what Elon Musk wants to do with that Neuralink, or some more advanced version of it, or the next competing version of it.

02:23:13.000 What if both of those things are highly expensive?

02:23:17.000 The amount of head start that a wealthy family would have over a poor family that just has to go au naturel.

02:23:23.000 Fair enough, but in the scheme of history, we're just talking about the blink of a couple generations where there's a transition, right?

02:23:29.000 Sure.

02:23:29.000 Oh yeah, if you want to be hard and cruel and just look at numbers.

02:23:31.000 To me, the – all right.

02:23:33.000 To me, the harder question, even, is whether immortality is desirable.

02:23:39.000 Or even if, like, 200 years...

02:23:41.000 Because, you know, there's something about scarcity that produces euphoria, or at least desire, right?

02:23:47.000 So I sometimes think that, like, every day feels precious because you know there aren't that many of them.

02:23:52.000 And if I know that there are 300 years worth, I wonder.

02:23:56.000 Well, that's all scale, right?

02:23:57.000 300 years, if that was normal, you'd be fine with it.

02:24:00.000 You'd be like, I'm going to be so wise when I'm 250. Yeah.

02:24:02.000 And then I'm going to settle down and live the last 50 years on a boat.

02:24:06.000 I mean, people can really think like that, right?

02:24:08.000 And I'll eat vegetables only for that one year, between 250 and 251. Otherwise, it's all meat, baby.

02:24:14.000 Yeah.

02:24:15.000 I think what we're used to is 100 years if you're lucky.

02:24:19.000 That's what we're used to.

02:24:20.000 So the idea of 120 is like, whoa, is that real?

02:24:22.000 He thinks it is.

02:24:23.000 And he thinks that we're probably looking at people that one day in the future will live to be 300, 400 years.

02:24:29.000 Yeah, I do think about this, though.

02:24:32.000 Retirement is a relatively new concept.

02:24:34.000 It's only for the last 80, 100 years.

02:24:37.000 You used to work yourself pretty much, and then you die.

02:24:41.000 And I do find that a lot of people get lost after they give up the thing.

02:24:45.000 Yes, they do.

02:24:46.000 And it's a, you know, it's kind of a rich kid problem, you know, to be able to retire.

02:24:51.000 It is and it's not.

02:24:51.000 It's like a sadness problem.

02:24:52.000 People need a task.

02:24:54.000 And I think when people are just waiting around for death to come knocking on their door, they get really morose and they just don't feel good.

02:24:59.000 They don't feel productive.

02:25:01.000 It's one thing with old people. 1.00

02:25:03.000 They don't feel helpful.

02:25:04.000 Yeah.

02:25:04.000 Well, that's the thing they say.

02:25:06.000 The single best, if you're feeling down generally about yourself, the single best thing they say, they.

02:25:10.000 As though there's some quorum of they who all agree on everything.

02:25:13.000 But a lot of people say, the single best thing you can do, and this was in our loneliness episode as well, service.

02:25:18.000 Helping other people.

02:25:20.000 So, do you, have you run across anybody that you've interviewed who you thought had a great kind of prescription for how to help other people?

02:25:27.000 Like, doable, sensible, you know, that if people really, like, let's say I say, you know, I work hard.

02:25:34.000 I try to love the people around me, but I really want to have some kind of service component, but I don't know what to do.

02:25:40.000 That's a good question.

02:25:41.000 I think first start with the people around you, right?

02:25:44.000 Start telling them you love them, hug them, enhance the sense of community that you share with your friends and your loved ones.

02:25:50.000 Do your best to sort of be the person who steps forward, starts it off, you know, like makes an action.

02:25:56.000 Tell someone how much you care and appreciate them and care about them and appreciate them when you maybe wouldn't have done that ordinarily.

02:26:02.000 You can do that.

02:26:02.000 We can all do that.

02:26:03.000 And we've all had it done to us and it feels amazing.

02:26:05.000 When someone comes up to you out of nowhere and goes, hey man, I just want to tell you, I really appreciate you.

02:26:10.000 I know sometimes we don't talk to each other that much, but when I do, I really enjoy it.

02:26:14.000 I love you.

02:26:15.000 Give me a hug.

02:26:16.000 I just want you to know.

02:26:17.000 I'm very fortunate that I have a lot of friends that do that kind of stuff.

02:26:21.000 I have a real supportive group of friends.

02:26:23.000 And if you don't, you long for that, and I think that's a big thing.

02:26:26.000 Become that person.

02:26:27.000 Reach out and try to start that.

02:26:29.000 I can't imagine anybody hearing you say that would disagree.

02:26:32.000 It's like such an obviously good way to be.

02:26:35.000 And yet, I find that so many people kind of go out of their way to not just be generous.

02:26:40.000 Because they're scared.

02:26:41.000 There's scarcity. 0.99

02:26:43.000 They think that they have to make it, and that if you make it first, they're a loser.

02:26:48.000 Yeah, it's famine thinking.

02:26:49.000 It's real, real, real common.

02:26:51.000 Yeah.

02:26:51.000 Our hardware is the same and our software is not.

02:26:54.000 Yeah.

02:26:55.000 And we can manipulate our hardware.

02:26:57.000 We just have to understand what the patterns are and also have been there.

02:27:00.000 You have to make mistakes.

02:27:01.000 You've been there, you feel it, you understand what it is, and then you have that time to adjust.

02:27:06.000 That's why losing in life is so important.

02:27:09.000 Whether it's getting dumped, getting fired, losing a game, loss.

02:27:14.000 Those feelings where things didn't work out your way, that's important.

02:27:17.000 Because it lets you know this is the bad feeling that comes when it goes wrong, and you improve, and then it makes the good feelings of victory all the better.

02:27:26.000 And I mean that in a relative sense, like even getting good at something.

02:27:30.000 Forget about victory. 0.99

02:27:31.000 Making a terrible book that gets rejected by every publisher, and then writing a really good one, and people accept it, and you're like, fuck, I got better. 0.99

02:27:38.000 Yes! 0.99

02:27:39.000 Like, there's that feeling.

02:27:41.000 Those feelings of failure are really critical for your motivation.

02:27:44.000 That's interesting.

02:27:45.000 I've always thought of failure like a bad event.

02:27:52.000 I've always thought that they were good...

02:27:56.000 Because I'm like a scaredy cat in some ways, right?

02:27:59.000 And then if the very bad thing happens, the very thing you feared happens, you survive it, and then you learn to shed more fear in more directions.

02:28:08.000 You know what I mean?

02:28:09.000 Well, you could look at it that way.

02:28:12.000 Look, there's a lot of ways you could look at bad events. 1.00

02:28:15.000 You could say a bad event is just who you are, and you just have bad events, and you're a fucking loser, and life hates you, and God hates you, and look at that. 1.00

02:28:23.000 Happening to Mike again. 1.00

02:28:24.000 Can't fucking believe it. 0.95

02:28:25.000 There's a lot of guys who go through life like that. 0.99

02:28:27.000 And, you know, they could say that they seek comfort in lowering the standards that they expect out of things. 0.89

02:28:32.000 So when things go bad, and they say, look, I fucking knew it. 1.00

02:28:35.000 For them, it alleviates some concern about what's going to happen in the future, because the future is always dog shit. 0.99

02:28:41.000 So by doing that, they've taken away the fear of succeeding, the fear of overcoming, the fear of improving, the fear of getting better as a human being. 0.99

02:28:49.000 If you just exhibit the same patterns, you fall into those patterns, whether it's alcoholism or gambling addiction or sex addiction.

02:28:56.000 People fall into those because they're accustomed to it.

02:28:58.000 It becomes a normal part of your life.

02:28:59.000 I think that's a scary thing for people is to recognize that they're on a bad pattern and to say, okay, I have to stop drinking.

02:29:05.000 How do I do this?

02:29:07.000 Right, right, right.

02:29:07.000 What steps do I make?

02:29:08.000 And what's the best way?

02:29:10.000 Community.

02:29:10.000 They've shown 12-step programs.

02:29:12.000 You get together with some other guy, and he goes, look, Mike, I used to drink too much, too.

02:29:15.000 We're just people.

02:29:16.000 We can help each other.

02:29:17.000 I'm your sponsor now.

02:29:18.000 And they work together.

02:29:20.000 I think that solution is a really good solution.

02:29:24.000 You know, I have three brothers, all older.

02:29:26.000 I'm the youngest of eight, and I don't mean to disparage them.

02:29:29.000 And I also know you're younger than me, but I kind of wish you'd been my older brother.

02:29:33.000 You'd have been really good.

02:29:34.000 Yeah.

02:29:35.000 Maybe. 1.00

02:29:36.000 I've been sucking up, pussy. 1.00

02:29:37.000 Come on, man. 1.00

02:29:38.000 Stop crying.

02:29:39.000 Yeah, that's okay.

02:29:40.000 Yeah, no.

02:29:41.000 A little bit of that would end.

02:29:43.000 No, I'm sure.

02:29:43.000 I have a sister.

02:29:44.000 I don't have a brother.

02:29:45.000 But, you know, having conversations with your brothers and sisters, sometimes they're the only people that really know you.

02:29:51.000 Like, I have conversations with my sister sometimes.

02:29:53.000 She's the only person that really knows our childhood.

02:29:56.000 Right.

02:29:57.000 So we'll talk about what it was like when we were nine and ten.

02:30:00.000 Do you have the same perception of events?

02:30:02.000 Yeah, my sister's super honest.

02:30:03.000 Right.

02:30:04.000 But I mean, you remember...

02:30:06.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:30:07.000 She doesn't distort anything.

02:30:08.000 We both have real similar recollections of our past.

02:30:12.000 But those people that have experienced those things with you, they're like the only ones who really know you deep at your core.

02:30:21.000 And the more things you can experience with people, the more you're going to share that sort of...

02:30:24.000 The people that make me sad are the people that know friends and know confidants.

02:30:29.000 They have no one they can talk to.

02:30:31.000 They have no one that knows their secrets.

02:30:32.000 They have no one that they can tell a terrible joke to and that you would never say in mixed company. 1.00

02:30:36.000 Right.

02:30:37.000 You have no one who, you know, especially comedians, we're famous for it.

02:30:42.000 We say things to each other all the time that are the most horrible things.

02:30:46.000 And just to get a rise out of each other.

02:30:48.000 You know, like, one of my friends will say something terrible to me.

02:30:50.000 I'm like, bah!

02:30:51.000 Like, about me! 1.00

02:30:52.000 Like, horrible shit about me! 1.00

02:30:54.000 And I'll just think it's so funny. 1.00

02:30:56.000 I'm like, dude, that is what I look like.

02:30:57.000 Ha! 0.89

02:31:00.000 We're so accustomed to it.

02:31:02.000 And there's also, in our culture, there's a currency of being able to joke around like that.

02:31:07.000 Of course.

02:31:07.000 If somebody makes, one of my friends makes fun of me, it's hilarious.

02:31:11.000 It's fun.

02:31:12.000 Like, we do it to each other all the time.

02:31:13.000 There's actually, like, a currency in being able to take it, too. 0.99

02:31:16.000 Like, you can make fun of Andrew, he doesn't give a fuck. 0.99

02:31:19.000 It's a good thing, you know? 0.98

02:31:21.000 Because when people, you know, I mean, you're in the business of making fun of things.

02:31:24.000 If you're mad that someone makes fun of you, it's not good in our world.

02:31:27.000 Yeah.

02:31:28.000 All right.

02:31:28.000 I got to learn.

02:31:29.000 I got a lot to learn from you.

02:31:31.000 I have a list, things I'm going to look up and watch, things I'm going to read.

02:31:35.000 I think we should all be concerned.

02:31:39.000 About each other's sensitivities, but we shouldn't coddle people.

02:31:42.000 And that's the difference between compassion and just full-on nerfing the world.

02:31:47.000 You know, you can't nerf the world.

02:31:49.000 And when you stop humor, like you nerf humor, there's a real problem with that.

02:31:55.000 Because it's fun. 0.99

02:31:56.000 It's fun when people talk shit. 1.00

02:31:58.000 Talking shit is fun. 1.00

02:31:59.000 It's interesting to me how comedy is like the last place in society where you can actually say stuff. 1.00

02:32:04.000 Yeah, you can say some...

02:32:05.000 Come to the Comedy Store. 1.00

02:32:06.000 We still say some really ridiculous shit. 1.00

02:32:09.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:32:09.000 No, it can't happen in the media. 1.00

02:32:11.000 It can't happen in politics.

02:32:13.000 That's the art form, though.

02:32:14.000 I was talking about Quentin Tarantino's new movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and how he's sort of grandfathered in.

02:32:21.000 Because there's scenes of violence in that movie against women. 1.00

02:32:24.000 If a new guy came out of nowhere, and he didn't have a track record, and he had some woman getting her brains bashed in on a fireplace, you'd be like, what?

02:32:32.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:32:32.000 What the fuck is this? 1.00

02:32:34.000 But when you go to see a Tarantino movie, you know exactly what you're getting into. 1.00

02:32:37.000 It's madness and chaos and ultraviolence.

02:32:40.000 You ever seen Porgy and Bess?

02:32:41.000 What is that?

02:32:42.000 Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin musical from the 1920s, I guess.

02:32:48.000 Is it like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?

02:32:50.000 No, not at all.

02:32:51.000 But it's a couple of white guys writing about this African-American community in coastal South Carolina or Georgia.

02:32:59.000 And it's this drama.

02:33:00.000 So it was written as a Broadway show and as an opera, too.

02:33:03.000 And I saw it at the Metropolitan Opera.

02:33:05.000 I don't go see a lot of opera.

02:33:06.000 I saw this recently.

02:33:07.000 And it was very, very good.

02:33:09.000 It was incredibly moving, even though it was opera, which wouldn't seem to be.

02:33:13.000 But it was so unbelievably against everything we think about now about how to talk about race.

02:33:19.000 Everything against it.

02:33:20.000 And yet...

02:33:22.000 It was about 80 actors, opera singers and actors on stage, all African-American, right?

02:33:28.000 So first of all, you have to think it's great to have a vehicle for that.

02:33:32.000 But written by these two white guys, if it were to happen now, and I was surprised the Metropolitan Opera allowed itself to put on this show because it feels, from the light of day of 2020, way too dated or racial or whatever. 0.78

02:33:48.000 And yet what was really interesting is because it's a really good piece of art, It overcomes that.

02:33:53.000 I think we should be really careful, even with bad pieces of art, of shielding people from the reality of our own evolution.

02:33:59.000 So if you go back and watch some of the early...

02:34:02.000 There's a Disney film that Splash Mountain's based on that you can't even get anymore.

02:34:07.000 It's this really racist film about the South.

02:34:11.000 What's Splash Mountain?

02:34:12.000 Splash Mountain's a ride at Disneyland, but it's based on a movie.

02:34:15.000 It's based on a movie you can't even get anymore.

02:34:17.000 Because it's so problematic.

02:34:19.000 They kicked it out of the archive?

02:34:21.000 Yes, it's so problematic.

02:34:23.000 I think stuff like that, it's important to know where we came from.

02:34:27.000 I don't know if you've ever watched some of the old Popeyes.

02:34:31.000 I have.

02:34:33.000 From the 1920s and 30s, whatever it was. 1.00

02:34:35.000 Bluto was a fucking rapist. 1.00

02:34:37.000 All he was trying to do was rape olive oil. 1.00

02:34:39.000 He was always grabbing olive oil and trying to rape her. 0.99

02:34:42.000 That was normal. 0.96

02:34:43.000 I've been watching Cheers lately.

02:34:44.000 You remember Cheers?

02:34:45.000 I do remember Cheers.

02:34:46.000 Even Cheers!

02:34:47.000 But stop and think.

02:34:49.000 I'm sure that was.

02:34:50.000 But some of those old black and white cartoons were insanely racist.

02:34:55.000 Yeah.

02:34:55.000 They're depictions of Japanese people.

02:34:57.000 They're depictions of African people.

02:34:59.000 They're depictions of all the Popeye ones. 1.00

02:35:01.000 Fucking crazy rape stories. 1.00

02:35:03.000 And your argument is people should be allowed to see it. 1.00

02:35:06.000 We should be able to see evidence of our own evolution. 0.99

02:35:08.000 We shouldn't pretend that we just figured this shit out. 0.99

02:35:10.000 Right. 0.99

02:35:10.000 We shouldn't pretend. 0.99

02:35:11.000 We shouldn't pretend.

02:35:12.000 And look, there's so many things that were on...

02:35:16.000 Look, the Dukes of Hazzard, they took away the Confederate flag from the roof of the General Lee.

02:35:20.000 You literally can't watch the Dukes of Hazzard anymore because they pulled it off television because people were so offended by that flag.

02:35:27.000 Look, I'm not saying...

02:35:28.000 I'm not promoting the Confederate flag, but I've got a Leonard Skinner poster from 1976 in my toilet.

02:35:32.000 I saw that with the Rolling Stones.

02:35:34.000 Yeah.

02:35:34.000 Rolling Stones got second bill.

02:35:36.000 How did that happen? 1.00

02:35:37.000 Because Leonard Skinner was a shit back then, son. 1.00

02:35:39.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:35:39.000 And on top of it, while they're on stage, there was a Confederate flag in the background of the image of them on stage. 0.99

02:35:46.000 And that was...

02:35:47.000 Look, I'm not a proponent or a supporter of the Confederate flag or the Confederate anything.

02:35:52.000 But that is a part of history.

02:35:55.000 And I think white... 0.85

02:35:56.000 Whitewashing it.

02:35:57.000 I think...

02:35:58.000 Pretending that it didn't exist.

02:36:00.000 Eliminating it from the historical record of who we were in 1980 or who we were in 1930. That's not good.

02:36:08.000 It's good to see what it was like.

02:36:11.000 Little Rascals, our gang, right?

02:36:13.000 Some of those things were ridiculous, but what they were was an example of the way culture and art viewed those times.

02:36:20.000 Now, what about the argument you say, well, for the people who belong to the group that's being discriminated against, it's just too painful?

02:36:28.000 That's a good argument.

02:36:29.000 But I think that we should recognize that these people were wrong, but they existed.

02:36:35.000 Don't hide it.

02:36:36.000 Don't make it impossible to get to, because then you're going to make it forbidden.

02:36:39.000 If you make it forbidden, you're going to make it attractive.

02:36:41.000 Right. 0.96

02:36:41.000 If nobody give a fuck about swastikas, no one would care. 0.96

02:36:44.000 You have them up everywhere. 1.00

02:36:45.000 I'm not promoting a swastika, but it's the fact that if you have a swastika tattoo, it's so awful that makes morons want to get one. 0.99

02:36:52.000 It makes them want to spark up the taboo. 0.98

02:36:56.000 There's a thing that people do when you take stuff away.

02:37:01.000 You're deciding.

02:37:04.000 That they can't see this anymore. 0.95

02:37:05.000 And you shouldn't want to watch it, but why the fuck is Hogan's Heroes okay? 0.99

02:37:09.000 It's a goddamn sitcom about Nazis and a concentration camp and these guys who are prisoners of war. 1.00

02:37:15.000 It's ridiculous. 1.00

02:37:15.000 And they're joking around with these fucking baby murderers. 1.00

02:37:19.000 You know, it's a crazy concept for a show that you never could do today. 0.99

02:37:23.000 I'd love to see you pitch that to a studio here, though.

02:37:25.000 Hogan's Heroes again, right?

02:37:26.000 A new version of Hogan's Heroes.

02:37:28.000 Yeah, there's certain things you can't pitch anymore.

02:37:30.000 Right.

02:37:31.000 And I don't think you should do a new version of Hogan's Heroes, but I don't think you should make the old one a banned product either.

02:37:37.000 I understand.

02:37:38.000 I understand.

02:37:39.000 Historical record of our evolution is a good way to look at it.

02:37:41.000 I like that lens of looking at it.

02:37:43.000 There's also the idea of how the line between what's repugnant and not shifts.

02:37:48.000 Yes.

02:37:48.000 And then once you get past it, how much access do you want to when it, you know.

02:37:54.000 Yes. 0.66

02:37:55.000 Just imagine if you had a cartoon today where the main character is constantly fighting off the co-main character trying to rape his wife. 0.80

02:38:02.000 Yeah.

02:38:02.000 That's what Bluto and Popeye was.

02:38:04.000 Yeah, I don't think you could sell that in the room, certainly.

02:38:06.000 And all violence.

02:38:07.000 They're always solving it with violence.

02:38:09.000 Stay away from me, girl. 1.00

02:38:11.000 She's my girl.

02:38:13.000 And then they're duking it out.

02:38:14.000 And there's cartoon exaggerated violence at every turn, every episode. 0.97

02:38:20.000 His biceps are firing up and he's punching the shit out of somebody. 0.97

02:38:25.000 But it's a sign of the times. 0.99

02:38:27.000 People back then lived a hard, hard life. 0.99

02:38:30.000 And that was what – they didn't want some bullshit-ass fucking modern-day Disney movie to calm them down. 0.99

02:38:35.000 That wouldn't work, right? 0.99

02:38:37.000 If you tried to put one of them modern Disney movies, like The Lion's King, try to put that shit on in 1920, they'd be like, what are you talking about? 0.98

02:38:45.000 Hard to say. 0.98

02:38:45.000 We don't know the counterfactual. 0.98

02:38:47.000 I mean, you know, the art that's produced is a part of its time.

02:38:50.000 If you import an art from a different time, it'd be interesting to see, yeah.

02:38:54.000 I mean, look, you can make the argument in reverse.

02:38:56.000 What happens if you take a bunch of aggressive, violent people now and play for them classical music?

02:39:02.000 Does it work?

02:39:03.000 I mean, the evidence seems to show that not really is the answer.

02:39:06.000 Well, it's way more complicated than that.

02:39:08.000 You take someone whose life's already gone so fucking sideways that they're violent and they're reaching out and smashing people and they're getting arrested and they've got problems you're not going to fix with Beethoven.

02:39:18.000 Yeah. 0.93

02:39:19.000 Although Beethoven can go a long way, you know.

02:39:21.000 A little bit.

02:39:23.000 It might make them angry.

02:39:24.000 You know?

02:39:26.000 It might lead to the no one left to blame theory.

02:39:28.000 Oh, I can't stand this.

02:39:30.000 I love how you pick apart everything, though.

02:39:31.000 And that's one of the things that I really enjoy about your show.

02:39:33.000 You look at every single potential angle.

02:39:36.000 And today in this society, there's certain subjects that people don't like to do that with because...

02:39:46.000 It interferes with the orthodoxy.

02:39:48.000 It interferes with this accepted-upon narration of reality that we are, for whatever reason or another, stuck with.

02:39:57.000 I think we're stuck with it.

02:39:58.000 I think a lot of people have shortcuts.

02:40:02.000 Because life is busy and complicated, and if somebody's done the thinking for you and it seems okay on the surface, like I touch it and it's not too hot, not too cold, then I'm going to go with it.

02:40:13.000 And the fact is, thinking for yourself and ferreting out the information and finding the data and then finding conflicting data and trying to measure one against the other takes forever.

02:40:24.000 Look, we put out one podcast a week and it almost kills us just to do one a week.

02:40:32.000 Because there's a ton of, like, I think of it as, you know, I mentioned I grew up in the country.

02:40:36.000 We used to make maple syrup.

02:40:38.000 And you would have all these maple trees.

02:40:41.000 You'd drive the tractor around, banging in the taps, put the buckets, and you'd empty them out into the big vat.

02:40:46.000 And then you'd boil it down and you'd get this much maple syrup.

02:40:50.000 And it was very frustrating because it was... 0.97

02:40:53.000 Goddamn, it's good. 0.97

02:40:54.000 It's really good. 0.91

02:40:55.000 But the ROI, like it took a lot of effort, a lot of time to make it.

02:40:59.000 And so the fact is, is that that's what I do for a living and I enjoy it.

02:41:02.000 I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I totally get why people reach for the fastest piece of conventional wisdom.

02:41:09.000 We're seeing it with coronavirus.

02:41:11.000 There's just so much.

02:41:13.000 But I'm very thankful that there's someone like you who's not doing that.

02:41:17.000 Can I tell you?

02:41:18.000 I'm thankful that there's a market for it.

02:41:20.000 Yes.

02:41:21.000 Because that's not an easy...

02:41:23.000 There's no guarantee of it.

02:41:24.000 Well, there would have never been the market if it wasn't for the internet.

02:41:27.000 Because if you had to go through a network and do what you're doing...

02:41:30.000 100%.

02:41:31.000 I had a trick...

02:41:33.000 I kind of fooled my way into getting...

02:41:35.000 So when I started the podcast, I also wanted to have a radio component.

02:41:40.000 But I knew that if I went to NPR or somebody like that, Sirius, whatever, and said, listen, I want to make a radio show that's basically inspired by the Freakonomics way of thinking, and we're basically going to interview a bunch of scientists and academics and philosophers,

02:41:55.000 and we're going to try to wrestle with these big pieces of life and There'd be no way that any executive would go for that.

02:42:04.000 So, thank God for technology.

02:42:05.000 It made it so cheap to make a podcast on my own that I just did it, put it out there, and then I could go to these partners, which happened to be WNYC and American Public Media, and they said, oh, okay, that works.

02:42:19.000 There was already an audience for it.

02:42:20.000 So, that's another case where… If people are able to use a technology that's in front of them and marry their ideas to it, you know, then… But it's also, I agree with you, but it's also like what you were talking about before where there's so many ideas that, like, it's so much easier to let someone do the thinking for you,

02:42:36.000 right?

02:42:36.000 It's so much easier to just fall into place.

02:42:38.000 So the vast majority of people do that.

02:42:40.000 But there's so many of us.

02:42:42.000 There's so many of us.

02:42:43.000 There's always going to be a market.

02:42:44.000 So even though the vast majority of people might slot into a previously grooved little opening and fit their thoughts to fit that little space, there's plenty of people that don't want to do that.

02:42:54.000 And the beautiful thing about your reach is you're getting a pure sample of people who enjoy what you're thinking because there's no reason to listen if you don't enjoy it.

02:43:04.000 Yeah, it's true.

02:43:05.000 And look, I am very, again, just appreciative of being in a world where there's people who are willing and able to have ideas that are prima facie unpopular.

02:43:16.000 Like my co-author, Steve Levitt, when he wrote this paper, it's gosh, more than 20 years ago now, I think about abortion and crime.

02:43:25.000 Man, there are all kinds of ways in which you could talk yourself out of even thinking about that, much less writing a paper.

02:43:31.000 So it takes courage.

02:43:32.000 But if you look through history, if you look at the people who've really changed the world, they have courage.

02:43:38.000 Yeah, those are really, really controversial subjects that are – That's an uncomfortable fact of our reality.

02:43:45.000 And some uncomfortable facts, people would be happier with you if you left them alone.

02:43:50.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:43:52.000 But, you know, the world doesn't progress very much unless there's a guy like Steve Jobs or a Copernicus or whatever, you know, sticking the needle, poking people in the eye with a stick.

02:44:03.000 And they, you know, very often, they're discredited or hated for their whole lives.

02:44:08.000 I love the stories where someone, like, gets pushed out, and then finally, toward the end, they're appreciated for what they did.

02:44:16.000 There was this geologist in England named William Smith who kind of invented modern geology, but he was not of the gentrified class.

02:44:25.000 And so his work was kind of stolen.

02:44:28.000 This is an amazing story told in a book called The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester.

02:44:33.000 And basically, his ideas and his research were kind of hijacked.

02:44:37.000 He was discredited.

02:44:39.000 He ended up getting thrown in debtor's prison.

02:44:41.000 It's like a horrible story.

02:44:44.000 But then, at the end of his life, he was able to persuade people that he had actually done this work, and he was lauded at the very end.

02:44:53.000 But much more often, you'll find the stories of the people who just get stomped on For their ideas and don't get the credit.

02:45:02.000 But you look at the people who've died in disgrace, who've had world-changing ideas.

02:45:07.000 It's, you know, artists.

02:45:08.000 Look at all the artists who were, like, not at all popular in their time and only now do we appreciate.

02:45:14.000 So, you know, got to take the long view.

02:45:16.000 I agree.

02:45:17.000 I'm just happy that you do it.

02:45:19.000 I'm just happy that you're out there and that your podcast really does explore things in every nuanced corner and really objectively and honestly, and I think it's a powerful thing.

02:45:29.000 Appreciate it.

02:45:30.000 It's one of my favorites.

02:45:30.000 Hey, thanks for having me.

02:45:31.000 Hey, thanks for being here, man.

02:45:32.000 It was awesome.

02:45:33.000 We just did two hours and 45 minutes.

02:45:34.000 Can you believe that?

02:45:35.000 I really enjoyed that conversation.

02:45:37.000 I really did, too.

02:45:38.000 It was a lot of fun.

02:45:38.000 Thanks, man.

02:45:39.000 Thank you so much.

02:45:39.000 Thank you.

02:45:39.000 Thank you very much.

02:45:41.000 Tell people everything.

02:45:43.000 Social media, all that stuff.

02:45:44.000 It's easy.

02:45:45.000 Yeah, we're on social media.

02:45:46.000 Just Freakonomics, as long as you spell it right.

02:45:49.000 It's Freak, F-R-E-A-K-O-Nomics, N-O-M-I-C-S. But, you know, the main thing is the podcast.

02:45:54.000 We're also starting a little podcast channel with some new shows that are kind of related.

02:45:59.000 So we're doing that in the next year.

02:46:01.000 This is our 10th year of Freakonomics Radio.

02:46:03.000 We might do another 10. Who knows?

02:46:04.000 Keep going.

02:46:05.000 Yeah, thanks, man.

02:46:05.000 Come on, baby.

02:46:06.000 Thank you.

02:46:06.000 Appreciate it.

02:46:08.000 Thank you so much.

02:46:09.000 That was really fun.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 05, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1437 - Stephen Dubner

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Transcript