The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1504 - Alan Levinovitz

00:00:01.000 Hello, Alan.

00:00:02.000 Hello, Joe.

00:00:02.000 Good to see you.

00:00:04.000 First of all, thank you for this.

00:00:05.000 This piece of pyrite that's embedded into stone.

00:00:10.000 And we just started talking.

00:00:12.000 I said, just don't say another word.

00:00:13.000 Let's start talking about this on the podcast.

00:00:17.000 It's interesting.

00:00:18.000 I started your book.

00:00:19.000 Which I very rarely read books.

00:00:22.000 I mostly do audiobooks, but I was forced to read yours.

00:00:26.000 But one of the things that I found interesting is the concept of what is natural?

00:00:32.000 And I've gone over this many times myself.

00:00:34.000 I'm like, poison's natural.

00:00:36.000 Like, everything's natural.

00:00:37.000 Computers are natural, really, because they come from the ground.

00:00:39.000 They're made by people. 1.00

00:00:40.000 They're essentially like, you know, a human's version of anything like a bird would create, right?

00:00:46.000 Birds create Bird's nests, are those natural?

00:00:49.000 But this pyrite, this is pyrite, right?

00:00:52.000 Yep. 0.89

00:00:52.000 Which is fool's gold, right? 0.89

00:00:54.000 Fool's gold. 0.97

00:00:55.000 But it's naturally in these cubes, in this square form, these perfect angles, which you would never believe. 1.00

00:01:04.000 You would think somebody left this shit there. 0.99

00:01:06.000 I didn't believe it. 1.00

00:01:07.000 It looks like aliens left them.

00:01:09.000 Yeah.

00:01:09.000 And they're even in, like, what that's called is it's in the matrix.

00:01:13.000 Oh, wow.

00:01:13.000 So sometimes you can just get the cubes.

00:01:15.000 They're just the cube, but they call the rock that it's in the matrix, which I think is kind of appropriate.

00:01:20.000 That is going to have a permanent spot on this desk with all this other craziness here.

00:01:24.000 Thank you so much.

00:01:25.000 That was really cool.

00:01:26.000 I did not know that it came like that.

00:01:27.000 I found pyrite when I was a kid in rocks, you know, when they call it fool's gold.

00:01:32.000 Oh, Jamie's going to bring that up to you there.

00:01:35.000 Perfect.

00:01:36.000 Fool's gold, but it's usually like specks and flecks and stuff.

00:01:40.000 There's another one called – I forget. 0.97

00:01:42.000 They're called like Illinois Miners Dollars or something.

00:01:45.000 This is another form that pyrite takes.

00:01:47.000 I'm kind of obsessed with weird rocks.

00:01:49.000 But they look just like sand dollars, but they're gold.

00:01:53.000 Oh, wow.

00:01:53.000 They look like they're golden.

00:01:54.000 And so these are – I think one of the things – I actually changed my mind over the course of writing this book.

00:02:00.000 Oh, there they are.

00:02:00.000 Jamie Pullebs.

00:02:01.000 Yeah.

00:02:01.000 That's crazy.

00:02:02.000 They're incredible, right?

00:02:03.000 What causes it to take on these different completely unusual forms?

00:02:09.000 So I tried to find – there's like a local rock store where I live and I asked the guy and apparently – I don't understand how it works at all – but the way all crystals work is they have – Different kinds of structures and the way those structures come together determines whether it makes a quartz crystal or what shape it takes.

00:02:25.000 It's very...

00:02:27.000 It's very surreal, I think, honestly.

00:02:29.000 Yeah, it's very surreal.

00:02:29.000 This is very bizarre.

00:02:31.000 I did not know until you gave this to me that that existed.

00:02:34.000 Yeah, and this is, so like, for me, I went into this book, like you said, right, with this question of what's natural.

00:02:40.000 There's some people, like, often scientists, who will sort of scoff at the idea of naturalness, right?

00:02:45.000 They're like, everything's natural, right?

00:02:46.000 Humans are natural.

00:02:47.000 We're animals.

00:02:48.000 We made all this stuff.

00:02:49.000 We made the microphones.

00:02:51.000 We're all made out of space dust.

00:02:53.000 Everything's natural. 0.98

00:02:54.000 It's stupid to distinguish between natural and unnatural. 0.93

00:02:57.000 And honestly, that's where I was when I started writing the book. 0.99

00:03:01.000 I was like, I'm going to show this as a stupid idea. 0.97

00:03:04.000 I'm going to be Richard Dawkins, but for naturalness. 0.99

00:03:09.000 But I was wrong.

00:03:12.000 I don't know.

00:03:13.000 What shifted it for you?

00:03:15.000 Well, so one of the things, like with that pyrite, right?

00:03:17.000 People ask, is it natural?

00:03:19.000 That's the first thing they ask.

00:03:20.000 Does this occur naturally, right?

00:03:22.000 And it's an important question because there's a difference, like a sort of profound difference between knowing that that was just spewed up by the Earth forces that are not human, right?

00:03:34.000 Versus humans sitting down and deciding to make a cube, right?

00:03:38.000 It's like a diamond that has been shaped by millions of years of natural forces.

00:03:42.000 And what I realized is that it really does make sense To distinguish between naturalness and unnaturalness.

00:03:48.000 You have to.

00:03:48.000 Maybe it's a spectrum, obviously, right?

00:03:50.000 So it's not an easy binary.

00:03:52.000 But New York City is not as natural as Yellowstone.

00:03:55.000 And what I realized was...

00:03:58.000 I wasn't really against the idea of naturalness or even valuing nature, right?

00:04:03.000 I mean, hopefully we'll talk about, I went backcountry in Yellowstone.

00:04:06.000 It was unbelievable.

00:04:08.000 You know, I mean, everyone values naturalness in certain ways.

00:04:11.000 It was worshiping nature that I had a problem with.

00:04:14.000 This idea that the more natural something is, the better it is.

00:04:17.000 Or that what we need to do, like if you want to raise your kid, right?

00:04:20.000 You got to raise your kid naturally.

00:04:21.000 You like, you know, let them piss in the corner or like elimination communication.

00:04:24.000 Do you know about this?

00:04:25.000 No.

00:04:26.000 I swear.

00:04:27.000 So I think some celebrities have been into it.

00:04:30.000 Like Alicia Silverstone did it with her son Bear. 0.98

00:04:34.000 Isn't it funny that that automatically dismisses it?

00:04:38.000 You mean the fact that his name is Bear?

00:04:39.000 No, no, no.

00:04:40.000 Just the fact that it's a celebrity thing.

00:04:42.000 Like celebrities do it. 0.93

00:04:43.000 It's like I dismiss it.

00:04:45.000 Interesting.

00:04:46.000 Interesting.

00:04:46.000 That's a different...

00:04:47.000 I actually thought it was the name Bear that dismissed it.

00:04:50.000 No, I have a good friend who has a son named Bear.

00:04:53.000 I mean, I guess it makes sense if you're really obsessed with naturalness, right?

00:04:59.000 And you're toilet training your kid.

00:05:01.000 Then you don't want to be using diapers.

00:05:05.000 And you don't want to be using a toilet.

00:05:07.000 You want it to be like nature, right?

00:05:09.000 So when I talked with anthropologists who work with hunter-gatherers, I asked them, how does potty training work?

00:05:14.000 And they were like, what do you mean?

00:05:17.000 People just piss in the forest? 1.00

00:05:19.000 And if you take a shit in someone's lap, they're going to be really upset at you. 1.00

00:05:22.000 And then you figure it out. 1.00

00:05:24.000 Don't shit in daddy's lap. 1.00

00:05:25.000 Exactly. 1.00

00:05:26.000 But there's this idea, right, that...

00:05:29.000 And so that's what we should be doing with our children.

00:05:31.000 And I don't know about you, but when we had our daughter, I was online and I'm like, okay, well, how do I parent my child?

00:05:36.000 What are the right things to do?

00:05:38.000 Should she be in my bed? 0.98

00:05:39.000 Should she be in the crib?

00:05:39.000 And time and time again, I always read about how hunter-gatherers parented their babies, right?

00:05:44.000 And it was always like, this is the natural way to parent your kid, so it must be better.

00:05:49.000 And I realized that was where I had my problem, that it's fine to love nature, but you shouldn't worship it.

00:05:56.000 Well, human beings have done horrible things to their children from the beginning of time without anybody telling them to do it or not to do it.

00:06:04.000 And I don't know if that's natural.

00:06:06.000 But, yeah, I mean, if it occurs enough...

00:06:10.000 It's kind of...

00:06:11.000 Like, pedophilia occurs a lot.

00:06:14.000 Is that natural?

00:06:15.000 So there was a...

00:06:17.000 Yeah, I mean, essentially, again, right?

00:06:20.000 If natural is defined as whatever sort of emerges spontaneously out of forces that weren't willed by human beings, which is what I think natural is, right?

00:06:28.000 So we say we have natural instincts.

00:06:30.000 In other words, it's whatever we didn't will.

00:06:31.000 It just comes out of us.

00:06:32.000 Right.

00:06:33.000 There's a woman who's an expert on captivity.

00:06:35.000 So kidnapping, slavery, named Catherine Cameron. 1.00

00:06:39.000 And I was interviewing her.

00:06:41.000 She said, you know, it is as natural as the nuclear family to have slaves, right? 0.99

00:06:45.000 So slavery is a thing that has been done forever and ever.

00:06:50.000 I mean, you imagine, right?

00:06:51.000 So you're pre-agricultural.

00:06:52.000 Your tribe, your group requires certain population.

00:06:57.000 Can't get too high.

00:06:58.000 Can't get too low.

00:06:59.000 And so kidnapping other people's children.

00:07:02.000 It's often a common thing.

00:07:05.000 So is that good?

00:07:06.000 Well, clearly not, right?

00:07:07.000 Or, you know, dying in childbirth.

00:07:11.000 These are all things that are natural, but are obviously not good.

00:07:16.000 And so I started to see the way in which this word was being abused.

00:07:19.000 Basically, people would use natural to describe whatever they favored and unnatural to describe whatever they didn't like, right?

00:07:25.000 People do it with sex. 0.52

00:07:26.000 People do it with child rearing.

00:07:28.000 People do it with economic theories, right?

00:07:30.000 You want a natural market.

00:07:31.000 With no interference.

00:07:33.000 And that's how people justify a free market.

00:07:36.000 You've got other people who are like, actually, money is unnatural.

00:07:39.000 You really want a barter system.

00:07:40.000 That was what emerged naturally out of humans.

00:07:43.000 And I'm sitting here looking at both these arguments.

00:07:45.000 I'm like, no, you want an economy that works.

00:07:46.000 Right.

00:07:47.000 It doesn't matter whether it's natural or not.

00:07:49.000 That's a really good point.

00:07:50.000 You know, one of the things that I saw in your book was you were talking to Joel Salatin, who I love, and he's a strange man, but a beautiful person.

00:07:59.000 I really love what he's doing with Polyphase Farms, but he drinks the water that the cows drink out of so that he gets that in his biome.

00:08:09.000 You know, he's a real freak.

00:08:11.000 But when you were talking about New York City and, you know, would his method of farming work to feed a city as big as New York?

00:08:20.000 He's like, do you need a city as big as New York?

00:08:22.000 Then I'm like, okay, hit the brakes.

00:08:24.000 Now we're in the weeds.

00:08:25.000 Because I love New York. 0.99

00:08:27.000 It's a fucking great place to visit. 0.98

00:08:28.000 I don't want to live there, but it's awesome. 0.97

00:08:30.000 I mean, when you go to New York, if you're in a hotel that has like a 30th floor and you look out and you see the city skyscraper, you see all the skyline, all the different beautiful buildings lit up at night, I mean, that is an amazing, spectacular sight that I am very thankful exists.

00:08:49.000 I love it there.

00:08:50.000 Yeah.

00:08:50.000 I'm grateful for all that.

00:08:51.000 I mean, there's so many.

00:08:52.000 It's insane, really, to be right now.

00:08:56.000 If someone's listening to this podcast, here we are.

00:08:58.000 We've got microphones.

00:08:59.000 We're beaming this conversation to millions of people.

00:09:03.000 And to think that...

00:09:06.000 Simultaneously, people would be thinking to themselves, the criteria I'm going to use to judge whether something is good or bad with a capital G or a capital B is how natural it is.

00:09:15.000 Right.

00:09:15.000 This is totally unnatural.

00:09:17.000 As unnatural as unnatural as it gets.

00:09:19.000 Meanwhile, the coronavirus rate, which is, you know.

00:09:22.000 Natural, of course, people will say, well, actually, we wouldn't have been infected if only we lived more naturally, right?

00:09:26.000 So the problem is urban density or the problem is that you shouldn't be going into the jungle and getting things like this.

00:09:32.000 There's actually an argument against that, though.

00:09:34.000 The virus itself, more evidence is coming out daily that it's been manipulated, that it most likely did come out of that lab.

00:09:43.000 I had Brett Weinstein on the podcast, who's a biologist.

00:09:46.000 And he was talking about all the various aspects of the virus that really don't exist naturally in this form without having evolved for a long period of time.

00:09:57.000 The fact that it just emerged and made this leap from bats to the form that it is now in people.

00:10:02.000 He's like, it's far too contagious.

00:10:03.000 It's far too prolific.

00:10:05.000 There's so many different...

00:10:06.000 I'm going to fuck it up if I talk about the technical details of it, but...

00:10:10.000 When he was describing it, he was saying more evidence points to the fact that it was actually something that had been manipulated by people than that it was a natural virus.

00:10:19.000 So, I mean, I'm not a biologist.

00:10:21.000 Nor am I. I have no idea.

00:10:24.000 But I think what's weird, or what I would want to push back on, and this is a religious studies scholar, right?

00:10:29.000 Because this is where I came to all the natural stuff to begin with.

00:10:34.000 If something's bad, I think people are immediately going to think, oh, it makes sense that it was unnatural.

00:10:39.000 It makes sense that this bad thing that's hurting us couldn't be natural.

00:10:45.000 But the truth is, some things that hurt us are natural.

00:10:50.000 Cyanide.

00:10:50.000 There you go.

00:10:51.000 Or, you know, again, I keep going back to childbirth.

00:10:53.000 I mean, I went to Peru.

00:10:54.000 I got to tell you this story.

00:10:55.000 So I went to Peru to research this book because I wanted to talk with...

00:11:00.000 As close as I could get to pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers, right?

00:11:04.000 And you can't get too close.

00:11:05.000 But there are people called the Matzigenka, the Matigenga, in the rainforest that I got to talk to.

00:11:12.000 And I got to ask them about their relationship with technology and all that stuff.

00:11:18.000 I'm never going to forget.

00:11:18.000 I go up to this guy and I ask him.

00:11:22.000 They've just had solar lights installed.

00:11:25.000 Like in the main sort of area of their village.

00:11:28.000 And I go up to this guy and I was like, how do you feel about having these artificial lights installed?

00:11:35.000 And I'm thinking to myself, you know, it's this pollution, right?

00:11:38.000 Isn't it better to just have, you know, the stars in the sky and the moon?

00:11:41.000 And he looks at me and he goes, this is good.

00:11:44.000 We can see at night now. 1.00

00:11:47.000 Like he was talking to just a fucking idiot, you know? 1.00

00:11:50.000 Like, of course I'm happy, right? 1.00

00:11:52.000 And then there was this old lady, I was like, they had a pump, like running water installed, basically in water, right?

00:11:58.000 So you could wash your dishes and your clothes.

00:12:00.000 And I'm thinking, oh my God, this is ripping them away from the natural way of life.

00:12:06.000 And I asked this lady, I'm like, how do you feel about the water?

00:12:08.000 And she's like, we don't get bacterial, I mean, she didn't say bacterial infections.

00:12:13.000 She was like, we don't get sick anymore from the water that we're drinking from the river.

00:12:17.000 I was like, oh.

00:12:18.000 And she's just looking at me like, why is he asking me this, right?

00:12:22.000 And meanwhile, I'm coming from this place where everyone wants to get closer to nature, right?

00:12:26.000 Because we have been alienated from it.

00:12:27.000 And I'm asking from the perspective of someone who thinks it just must be paradise living so close to nature. 0.97

00:12:35.000 And she's like, no, we want to be able to wash our clothes and have the fucking lights on at night. 0.98

00:12:39.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:12:40.000 I was like, hmm.

00:12:41.000 There was a shaman.

00:12:42.000 I'm talking to the shaman in the village, Don Alberto, right?

00:12:44.000 And he's talking.

00:12:45.000 He's like, you know, it's true that technology is messing up the world.

00:12:48.000 We've got climate change.

00:12:49.000 We've got, you know, all these species are going extinct.

00:12:51.000 And he goes on and on, right?

00:12:52.000 He's very close to nature.

00:12:54.000 Very, very wise man.

00:12:56.000 He's got a cell phone.

00:12:58.000 Also, right?

00:12:59.000 And I'm like, well, so is technology bad?

00:13:02.000 And he's like, yes.

00:13:04.000 Well, yes.

00:13:05.000 Yes and no.

00:13:06.000 He's on Tinder.

00:13:07.000 Yeah, right?

00:13:08.000 Yeah, that's what he's really doing.

00:13:09.000 He didn't tell me.

00:13:11.000 And that's...

00:13:11.000 I want people...

00:13:13.000 I just want people to understand that there just aren't any easy categories you can use to divide up the world into good and bad.

00:13:22.000 And now that people, now that organized religion, sort of the sphere of authority is shrinking, right?

00:13:26.000 You don't go to your priest to find out what to eat.

00:13:28.000 You don't go to your priest to find out how to cure your disease.

00:13:33.000 Now that that authority is shrinking, I think people are looking to other similar kinds of authority.

00:13:39.000 And so they're like, okay, I can't go to my priest, but if I'm walking through the store, What sort of criteria can I use to divide the world up easily into good and evil, clean and unclean?

00:13:52.000 Organic.

00:13:53.000 Organic and inorganic, right?

00:13:55.000 Yeah, artificial.

00:13:55.000 And it's built into our language, Joe.

00:13:57.000 Like, artificial might be a thing someday.

00:14:02.000 Artificial, right, is linked to artifice, which is deception, right?

00:14:06.000 So you've got manipulated, which really just means...

00:14:10.000 Humans got a hold of it and changed it with their hands also means something bad.

00:14:16.000 So really built into our language, we have this idea that natural means good.

00:14:22.000 Artificial, manipulated, that's bad.

00:14:25.000 I think maybe it's because we have...

00:14:30.000 This insane power to manipulate things and we we all collectively use the power to manipulate things that was created by scientists that have a far greater understanding of what The implications and like what the process of this manipulation is and we just come along and use their technology I mean that's I think that's that's a problem with so much of what people do like we've we've earned this power Just by virtue of being alive and

00:15:00.000 being able to trade in goods and services for whatever that they've created And then we don't think about the consequences of utilizing this stuff like what is there's got to be there's some sort of a balance right there's a balance between If you want to have a fireplace in your house,

00:15:17.000 that's wonderful.

00:15:18.000 Fireplaces are great.

00:15:19.000 It's a nice smell, right?

00:15:21.000 You walk in the house, you smell the fireplace.

00:15:23.000 If you're walking down the street and someone's got their fireplace on, it smells good. 0.99

00:15:26.000 But if the whole fucking place is on fire, it's terrible. 0.98

00:15:29.000 You're filled with smoke, you can't breathe. 0.99

00:15:32.000 It's like there's a balance.

00:15:34.000 And clearly when you see polluted cities, clearly when you see polluted rivers, and we're destroying the environment, there's a lack of balance.

00:15:42.000 We've utilized this power that we have to manipulate our environment, but we've done it completely irresponsibly, or we've done it without the Without the awareness of the consequences of 8 million people doing the exact same thing.

00:15:56.000 Yeah.

00:15:56.000 Well, I mean, the scale you can do stuff on with technology is really increased.

00:16:00.000 I mean, it's made us incredibly powerful, right?

00:16:02.000 There's Stuart Brand, the guy who started the whole Earth Catalog, you know, so basically we've become like gods.

00:16:06.000 So we have to be able to wield this power responsibly.

00:16:10.000 I think it's easy to see that and say, well, then the evil is in the form of the power itself, right?

00:16:17.000 Obviously, then, if we've got a nuclear bomb or we've got, you know, if we're polluting the world, then the problem is with the technology itself.

00:16:24.000 So you locate the evil in that technology.

00:16:26.000 Whereas, you know, what you're saying, I mean, take burning wood, which is a great example.

00:16:31.000 You know, we've got a lot of people on Earth now. 0.97

00:16:33.000 We have them because kids aren't fucking dying all the time, right?

00:16:36.000 I mean, so there are some things that I discovered while I was reading this. 0.96

00:16:39.000 For example, have you seen that cartoon where there's two cavemen in a room?

00:16:44.000 It's a New Yorker cartoon, and they're talking to—they're not in a room.

00:16:48.000 They're cavemen.

00:16:48.000 They're in a cave.

00:16:49.000 Sorry.

00:16:50.000 So they're in a cave, and they're talking to each other, and one of them's like, you know, we eat organic, we exercise all the time, and like— Nobody's living past the age of 35. What's going on?

00:17:00.000 And that's the people that are like, nature's bullshit take. 1.00

00:17:04.000 But actually, it turns out that that cartoon is bullshit. 1.00

00:17:07.000 So people didn't just die at age 35. That was average lifespan because tons of kids were dying between the age of zero and five. 0.99

00:17:14.000 Truth is, if you made it past five, then you had a pretty good shot at like 60 or 70. So it wasn't so bad in the state of nature.

00:17:24.000 At the same time, there's another vision of what's happening to us now.

00:17:28.000 Have you seen that evolution?

00:17:29.000 There's like an evolution cartoon where it starts with, I don't know, like Paleolithic man or a chimpanzee or something.

00:17:34.000 And then it gets to like a big strong hunter with a spear.

00:17:38.000 And then technology comes in and they hunch over at the end and they get obese and they've got like a coke in one hand.

00:17:44.000 And there's this idea like...

00:17:47.000 Well, technology is now—we were perfect when we were natural, and then technology has made us worse.

00:17:53.000 And for me, it's what you were saying.

00:17:55.000 It's a balance, right?

00:17:56.000 There are ways in which technology—like my dad is 91. I talked to anthropologists, and despite what you might think, there aren't a lot of 91-year-old hunter-gatherers.

00:18:11.000 They're just not out there.

00:18:12.000 So I'm really grateful that my dad is a super healthy 91-year-old.

00:18:17.000 That's crazy.

00:18:18.000 That's an incredible thing we've done.

00:18:19.000 I'm glad that kids aren't dying all the time.

00:18:22.000 I'm glad that mothers aren't dying in childbirth. 0.99

00:18:24.000 Those are incredible things.

00:18:25.000 Like New York City, right?

00:18:26.000 At the same time, we're destroying the world.

00:18:28.000 Right.

00:18:30.000 So we got to work out these problems without using simple binaries to figure out what's good and what's bad.

00:18:38.000 It's better to have solar power than billions of humans burning wood.

00:18:42.000 Right.

00:18:43.000 But solar power is obviously, to me at least, less natural than light in a piece of wood.

00:18:47.000 Solar power doesn't bother me at all.

00:18:49.000 Yeah.

00:18:50.000 I mean, I love solar power, but I'm totally on board with what you're saying, and there is some sort of a balance.

00:18:56.000 And, you know, the nihilists, like, I have friends that will say, you know, we shouldn't have children, and there's too many people in the world, and overpopulation's our biggest problem.

00:19:06.000 I'm like, yeah, but...

00:19:08.000 I love people.

00:19:09.000 Don't you love people?

00:19:10.000 A world without people would suck for people.

00:19:13.000 Do you remember that cartoon?

00:19:15.000 There was an episode of Twilight Zone where Burgess Meredith, he is the last man on earth and he accidentally breaks his glasses and he can't read. 0.89

00:19:28.000 He's always just wanted alone time to read his books and he's always been bothered by all these people and then he's inside I forget what he's in a bank vault or something like that and there's a nuclear catastrophe something along those lines and he leaves this area to go outside and he realizes that he's literally the last person on earth but he has all these books to read and he's so excited and he starts picking up these books but then he breaks his glasses and he fucked and I

00:19:59.000 mean, the ideal of being the last person on Earth, that's probably one of the most terrifying ideas for a person, to be completely isolated and alone forever with no one to talk to.

00:20:09.000 We love each other.

00:20:10.000 People love people.

00:20:12.000 We like being around each other.

00:20:14.000 We like the love of other people.

00:20:19.000 It's like a vitamin.

00:20:20.000 I mean, really, it's like how you get vitamin D from the sun.

00:20:23.000 You get vitamin L from people.

00:20:25.000 You really need it.

00:20:26.000 It's a legitimate need.

00:20:28.000 And we don't want people to die.

00:20:29.000 And one of the things about evolution is that, you know, I say this in the book, the gears of evolution are greased with death, right?

00:20:36.000 That's what it is.

00:20:37.000 It's people dying before they reach reproductive age.

00:20:40.000 We've decided we'd like to prevent that from happening.

00:20:44.000 You know, as much as we can.

00:20:46.000 We don't want people dying all the time.

00:20:48.000 We love each other.

00:20:48.000 We're stepping in with our virtue and stopping natural selection.

00:20:51.000 That's exactly right.

00:20:52.000 And, you know, it's a weird argument, I think, to want to claim nature as this kind of benevolent deity that if only we follow what it tells us, right, just act naturally, which is a bizarre phrase if you think about it because you've got to act that way.

00:21:09.000 That is bizarre.

00:21:10.000 Right?

00:21:10.000 It's like, no, no, no, just act naturally.

00:21:12.000 You're like, well, but that's it's hard for me.

00:21:13.000 I'm going to have to sort of artificially do this.

00:21:15.000 But, you know, I that we don't want to be natural.

00:21:19.000 We're unnatural animals.

00:21:21.000 That's that's what we are.

00:21:22.000 Not my phrase.

00:21:23.000 HG Wells calls calls us unnatural animals.

00:21:25.000 And I think that's OK. We want to embrace that paradox instead of.

00:21:32.000 We're good to go.

00:21:41.000 You know, who was living in a time of very little technology in terms of like what we experience today.

00:21:47.000 That guy had a fantastic vision of the future.

00:21:51.000 He did.

00:21:51.000 I mean, this is a totally separate thing, I guess, for me.

00:21:56.000 But when it comes to the ability of science and scientists to predict the future, I think this is a place – I mean, we see it with macroeconomists, most obviously.

00:22:06.000 But there's a way in which – We've come to expect that science, because it has done such incredible things with manipulating reality, with telling us truths about where we are in the universe, that also it ought to be able to predict complex systems, like where humans going to be in 30 years or what's going to happen with the coronavirus 10 years down the line or whatever it happens to be.

00:22:26.000 But the truth is fiction writers, science fiction writers who have thought very hard about constructing plausible worlds Are just as good of authorities on predicting what's going to be happening with human systems 70 years,

00:22:42.000 100 years down the line as scientists are.

00:22:44.000 So there are clear limits to what science and a certain form of investigation can tell us about.

00:22:51.000 And I think it's important if we stop trying to force scientists To tell us everything, right?

00:22:57.000 Like, what's going to happen with the economy?

00:22:58.000 What's going to happen 70 years down the line?

00:23:00.000 What's going to happen 100 years down the line?

00:23:01.000 At that point, we need a different set of tools to figure out what to do with ourselves and what's going to happen.

00:23:07.000 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people that think that there's not enough babies being born in the Western world because people are more career oriented and we're worried that someday we're going to have underpopulation problems like Japan has right now. 0.90

00:23:21.000 Yeah, it's terrible.

00:23:22.000 In Japan, it's a real crisis.

00:23:24.000 And we got to that crisis.

00:23:26.000 All of these things are a result of us, like you said, stepping in with our virtue, which I don't mean in a bad way, but stepping in with our virtue, trying to fix things, like feed people, for example.

00:23:35.000 We don't want kids to die.

00:23:36.000 We want there to be enough calories to go around.

00:23:39.000 And what ends up happening is we have a lot of people.

00:23:42.000 So then we have to figure out new ways to house them and feed them and power the things that they do and entertain them and so on and so forth.

00:23:50.000 So we get a lot of people and then people are like, well, okay, let's have fewer humans because that's the problem.

00:23:57.000 But then when you do that, now you've got a system that depends on having more humans, right?

00:24:02.000 You need a younger generation coming in.

00:24:04.000 So these systems are incredibly complicated.

00:24:06.000 And I think...

00:24:07.000 I think, again, the reason people are leaning on naturalness so hard is because when you're faced with complicated, uncertain systems, it's scary.

00:24:16.000 You know, it's really scary.

00:24:18.000 And you want some kind of criteria, whether it's a holy book or a prophet or whatever it is, to tell you, no, I got this.

00:24:26.000 Yeah, I think that's one of the weirdest things about today, right, is that we are faced with these unparalleled crises.

00:24:35.000 Where we really, we don't have anything to go off of.

00:24:38.000 We don't have a similar situation that happened, you know, in 1985. Where we are today with the coronavirus, and then with the subsequent lockdown of the economy, where everyone's terrified, and then you have the George Floyd murder, and then you have the looting,

00:24:54.000 and the riots, and the chaos, and the protests, and then you have the coronavirus kicks in again, and our leaders Look impotent.

00:25:03.000 When you have a guy like Donald Trump in office, already you have a situation like, Jesus, I hope the cabinet can keep this thing together.

00:25:11.000 I hope the Senate can hold this.

00:25:13.000 This is madness. 1.00

00:25:14.000 We've got a reality show host who's the fucking president. 1.00

00:25:19.000 All the mayors are fucking up, all the governor, no one, it's not even that they're fucking up, is that no one is equipped to handle this. 0.99

00:25:26.000 So you see unprecedented anger, particularly online, where you're dealing with people, and this is one of the things that drew me to you, is one of the tweets that you made about processed information. 0.99

00:25:40.000 That online information is essentially processed information when you're dealing with social media versus actual communication like you and I are having right now, which is what resonates with people.

00:25:50.000 I think it's one of the things that resonates with podcasts.

00:25:52.000 It's one of the reasons why I prefer to do them in person.

00:25:55.000 It's the closest thing to a real conversation with a real person.

00:25:58.000 Whereas this viewing of text, white on black, you know, white letters in my case, I used the night mode, on a black screen, it's so weird.

00:26:10.000 Like, you have to interpret intent.

00:26:12.000 You have to try to get...

00:26:13.000 And then you're not getting any social cues from the person.

00:26:16.000 You're not...

00:26:17.000 There's not a back and forth.

00:26:18.000 It's just you spit something out, they spit something back, and it's...

00:26:21.000 You're trying to...

00:26:25.000 Approximate what it's like to actually talk to a person.

00:26:28.000 It's very processed.

00:26:30.000 I thought that the way you described it was really the perfect definition of what ails us, where so many people today are communicating in this way.

00:26:39.000 And it's very similar to people surviving off of processed food and becoming sick.

00:26:47.000 So if you think about how processed food was created, basically, and I mean modern ultra-processed food, because these terms are all really slippery, right?

00:26:57.000 Just like the term natural.

00:26:58.000 So this is on a spectrum, right?

00:26:59.000 The history of cooking is a history of processing food, right?

00:27:01.000 You like to cook.

00:27:02.000 I like to cook.

00:27:03.000 That's processing food.

00:27:05.000 Dessert is a kind of food that's been made to be highly palatable.

00:27:08.000 So it's not about processing being intrinsically evil.

00:27:11.000 But with ultra-processed foods, what you've got is you've got a bunch of companies that That are like, all right, what can we exploit about human appetites to make foods as compulsively eatable as possible, right?

00:27:24.000 It's terrifying.

00:27:25.000 You've got, I think Coca-Cola, I think it was, said something like, we have to conquer stomach share.

00:27:29.000 This is a term they use.

00:27:30.000 Yeah.

00:27:31.000 So like, there's a, yeah, so you think, right, you have a hundred, think of the stomach, right?

00:27:35.000 Like, okay, so we got a hundred percent of the stomach.

00:27:37.000 Like, how can Coca-Cola fill the stomach?

00:27:40.000 The maximum amount of stomach share in the humans of the world.

00:27:44.000 Wow, what a bizarre way of looking at people.

00:27:47.000 It's terrifying, right?

00:27:48.000 And they did it because they got the smartest people.

00:27:51.000 They've got great chemists and biologists working day and night to figure out how to conquer stomach share.

00:27:57.000 And they started with cocaine, which is even more weird.

00:28:00.000 Did you know it's still...

00:28:01.000 Yeah.

00:28:01.000 Okay.

00:28:03.000 I discovered that when I was like, wait, there's a plant in New Jersey that's getting like...

00:28:07.000 Yeah, and it's the number one supplier of medical cocaine.

00:28:10.000 It's so crazy.

00:28:11.000 It's Coca-Cola.

00:28:12.000 We should tell people.

00:28:13.000 Just tell people what we're talking about for people who don't know.

00:28:16.000 Yeah, well, so Coca-Cola, back in the day, was made with cocaine for the cocaine kick.

00:28:23.000 John Pemberton, the guy who came up with Coca-Cola, had cocaine in it.

00:28:27.000 And to this day, there is a plant that's been grandfathered in, I guess legally, I don't know how it works, that is still importing enormous amounts of cocaine, processing it so that it no longer has an effect on you in the way that cocaine would,

00:28:43.000 and putting it in Coca-Cola.

00:28:45.000 Yeah, the flavor of Coca-Cola is apparently a big part of the reason why Pepsi, unfortunately, Pepsi, you don't taste as good as Coke.

00:28:53.000 You just don't.

00:28:54.000 There's no cocaine in it.

00:28:55.000 Well, it's the flavonoids.

00:28:58.000 I think that's the right word.

00:29:00.000 There's some flavor that the coca leaf has.

00:29:03.000 I've never had chewed coca leaf, but people who I've talked to that have had it said it's an amazing way to get energy.

00:29:11.000 It's like a cup of coffee.

00:29:14.000 They gave it to us when we arrived in – so like when I was in Bolivia, I had chewed coca leaves.

00:29:20.000 What is it like?

00:29:21.000 It's not – I mean it's not like being on coke.

00:29:25.000 It's just like – Have you been on coke before?

00:29:26.000 I have.

00:29:27.000 And it's nothing like that.

00:29:29.000 So it's – because cocaine, right, is an ultra-processed form of what is in the coca leaves.

00:29:38.000 Exactly.

00:29:38.000 Yeah, that's how it's been described to me.

00:29:40.000 Unfortunately, I've never, or maybe fortunately, I've never done coke. 0.98

00:29:43.000 But I have had mate de coco, the tea from that, which is really interesting because I couldn't shut the fuck up. 0.96

00:29:50.000 When I was drinking, I was like, this is terrible for me. 0.98

00:29:52.000 I already can't shut the fuck up. 0.99

00:29:53.000 You give me this stuff, this is awful. 0.99

00:29:55.000 I want to get back to cocaine.

00:29:58.000 This is how we got sidetracked.

00:29:59.000 Cocaine, Coca-Cola, ultra-processed food, stomach share.

00:30:02.000 Alright, we're back where we were.

00:30:04.000 We should tell people that this Coca-Cola, when they do take the Coca-Leave and they process it and use the flavor for Coca-Cola, then they take the cocaine out of it, and then it's the number one medical supplier of cocaine are the people that do that. 0.93

00:30:20.000 So, literally, medical cocaine, like lidocaine and all that shit, comes from... 0.85

00:30:25.000 I didn't know it was the same plant. 0.99

00:30:27.000 That's crazy.

00:30:27.000 Crazy.

00:30:28.000 Yeah.

00:30:29.000 That's medical cocaine. 0.76

00:30:30.000 So these people are trying to conquer our stomachs. 0.94

00:30:32.000 And they did it, right?

00:30:34.000 And one of the ways they did it also was make it cheap and accessible.

00:30:36.000 There's vending machines in every school.

00:30:38.000 I mean, think for a second how crazy that is.

00:30:40.000 That there are vending machines with just Coca-Cola and candy bars and stuff.

00:30:45.000 In every single school we have.

00:30:47.000 You know, it's...

00:30:48.000 But it happened, right?

00:30:50.000 And so now we live in a world in which extremely cheap, highly palatable and very accessible food is everywhere.

00:30:59.000 No wonder we have a problem with our diets and that's exactly what's happening With information right now.

00:31:07.000 So as I understand it, the way in which Twitter was designed, for example, they consulted with people who wanted to figure out how to keep you compulsively coming back.

00:31:16.000 So like slot machines, right?

00:31:18.000 They consulted with people who build slot machines to figure out, okay, what keeps people pulling the lever, right?

00:31:24.000 So they could just have it refresh.

00:31:26.000 You just have your tweets at the top, but instead there's a little alert button, right?

00:31:29.000 You pull down, there's a little noise like Or whatever the noise is when you pull down on it, you know?

00:31:35.000 And so they've made it compulsive.

00:31:39.000 They've made it highly palatable, right?

00:31:42.000 You want to keep coming back.

00:31:44.000 And the thing is, the difference between ultra-processed information and ultra-processed food is that I think we're the companies now.

00:31:52.000 And that really freaks me out.

00:31:54.000 We're the consumers now.

00:31:56.000 We're also the manufacturers and we're also the distributors.

00:32:01.000 We make the meme.

00:32:02.000 Someone is going to take some cut of this show and turn it into a soundbite that's highly palatable in the way that information becomes highly palatable.

00:32:13.000 It's going to be oversimplified.

00:32:14.000 It's going to have heroes and villains.

00:32:18.000 It's going to demonize someone and it's going to be something that gives you a sense of belonging.

00:32:22.000 Those are the three things I think that make information highly processed and highly palatable.

00:32:27.000 We want a hit of information that's easy to understand, that demonizes someone.

00:32:34.000 I think?

00:32:49.000 It's the same thing as a Snickers bar, except the difference is we're Snickers.

00:32:55.000 We're making it.

00:32:57.000 And we're behaving like junkies, like rabid junkies.

00:33:01.000 If you look at, I don't know what percentage of Twitter discourse ends in people being angry with each other, but it seems like it's half at least.

00:33:10.000 I mean, it's just there's so much rabid discourse. 0.85

00:33:14.000 There's just people pissed at each other and insulting each other and it's so unlike anywhere else in the world, unless you're in a fucking war zone, like the way people talk to each other.

00:33:24.000 If people talked to each other in real life the way they talked on Twitter, the emergency ward would be filled with people with broken faces and shattered eye sockets. 0.81

00:33:35.000 It'd be chaos.

00:33:37.000 It's how you treat the person in the other car that's cut you off.

00:33:42.000 Because they've been dehumanized.

00:33:43.000 They're isolated.

00:33:45.000 Twitter just allows you to...

00:33:47.000 And social media, in certain ways, facilitates being angry in the way that you get angry at other cars. 1.00

00:33:52.000 You honk, and you're like, fuck! 1.00

00:33:55.000 You know what also causes that? 1.00

00:33:57.000 The reason why people do that in road rage?

00:33:59.000 It's because your sensors are heightened.

00:34:00.000 Because you're moving so fast.

00:34:02.000 Because you're aware that split-second decision-making is important to survival. 1.00

00:34:08.000 So when you're going 65 miles an hour and you're looking around at everybody and this guy gets a free motherfucker! 0.99

00:34:12.000 Like you're already at 7 or 8. And I think this is also a part of the problem today online because of the coronavirus and because of the lockdown and economic instability. 0.95

00:34:23.000 And we're at unprecedented joblessness right now.

00:34:27.000 I mean, people are really hopeless.

00:34:29.000 There's a lot of people that we got one $1,200 check from the government and then that's it.

00:34:35.000 And then, you know, you hear that Kanye West got this giant loan and Judd Apatow got this giant loan.

00:34:40.000 These really wealthy people are getting all this money but meanwhile salon owners, small business owners didn't. 0.94

00:34:45.000 A lot of people are just fucking furious at everything because it's like driving a car.

00:34:51.000 You're already heightened. 0.98

00:34:53.000 So this information that comes at you Maybe it wouldn't have pissed you off under normal circumstances, but now you're fucking furious. 0.98

00:35:00.000 Right. 0.95

00:35:00.000 It's like stress eating or something. 0.95

00:35:02.000 So we have this...

00:35:02.000 I hadn't really thought about that with Road Rage, but it does make sense, right?

00:35:05.000 So when you're already at that level, then you're going to be even more likely to need that kind of information, want to participate in that kind of dialogue.

00:35:15.000 It's not dialogue, but whatever it is.

00:35:16.000 No, it's not.

00:35:17.000 Yeah.

00:35:18.000 Yeah.

00:35:19.000 And there's ways we can stop it.

00:35:21.000 I really think we can...

00:35:24.000 Stop it by focusing on problems with the system and problems with ourselves, right?

00:35:31.000 It's both of us because we're the ones manufacturing it and we're the ones consuming it.

00:35:34.000 So we can do things about it.

00:35:36.000 And it ranges from, you know, I mean, I don't like, I don't have, I still don't have a smartphone.

00:35:40.000 You don't?

00:35:41.000 No.

00:35:42.000 You're a flip phone guy?

00:35:42.000 I have a flip phone.

00:35:43.000 Wow.

00:35:44.000 Yeah.

00:35:44.000 On purpose?

00:35:45.000 Yeah.

00:35:46.000 I mean, in part, not because...

00:35:47.000 But you tweet a lot.

00:35:48.000 I do.

00:35:49.000 So when I... That's not good.

00:35:50.000 Well...

00:35:51.000 It is.

00:35:51.000 I know it's compulsive.

00:35:52.000 I think the reason I don't have it is because if I had a smartphone, man, it'd be all over.

00:35:55.000 I'd be on it all the time.

00:35:57.000 I mean, when I'm at home, because I work from home sometimes, my wife has a smartphone.

00:36:02.000 And so I'll always be like using her phone.

00:36:04.000 She's like, what are you doing?

00:36:05.000 Like, if you don't have a phone, you can't just go use my phone, right?

00:36:07.000 And then I'm installing things on my computer, like Freedom, which is this app that blocks you from.

00:36:12.000 I mean, it's literally like, you know, with food, right?

00:36:14.000 We'll have those locks that only open.

00:36:16.000 So I have an app that locks me out of these sites.

00:36:18.000 I have a folder on my desktop or on my, I guess, yeah, my desktop of my phone that says Junkie.

00:36:28.000 And that's all of my Instagram and Twitter and all that stuff.

00:36:33.000 I was going to show it to you, but...

00:36:34.000 It's important.

00:36:35.000 That's that kind of thing.

00:36:36.000 So we need I think we all need to collectively take steps in that way.

00:36:39.000 But also we need to realize and this is really important, right?

00:36:41.000 It's not just about natural, unnatural.

00:36:43.000 It's not just about technology.

00:36:44.000 We've had this kind of junk food information around forever.

00:36:49.000 And this is where I think for me is a as a scholar of religious studies.

00:36:53.000 Right.

00:36:53.000 If you look at myths and folk tales and fairy tales and if you look at the structure of religions, there are ways To tell stories to get people heightened.

00:37:05.000 There are ways to tell stories to make people feel belonging.

00:37:09.000 There are ways to tell stories to demonize people, right?

00:37:11.000 These tropes have been around forever, right?

00:37:15.000 What do you do?

00:37:15.000 You create a villain.

00:37:18.000 You tell a story about redemption.

00:37:20.000 You tell a story about a fall.

00:37:23.000 You tell a story in which the people who are hearing the story, just by hearing it, become heroes.

00:37:30.000 These are things that have been around for a long time in the same way that if you go back 2,000 years, if you were super rich and had access to lots of delicious, salty, sugary, fatty food, you could get fat.

00:37:42.000 It was just a lot harder back then.

00:37:45.000 And in the same way, Now we've facilitated the manufacture of this kind of – these junk narratives that in small doses I think are fine.

00:37:54.000 But if it's all we're consuming, it's a disaster.

00:37:59.000 And we're going to end up I think with some kind of – with some problems that are analogous to the health problems that we're seeing because of what we eat.

00:38:06.000 Except there are going to be problems in our soul, right?

00:38:08.000 We're going to get mental diabetes.

00:38:09.000 Yeah.

00:38:10.000 I mean it's not – I feel like it's a – I mean, I'm not like a sort of organized religion person myself, but I would say it's not just mental, it's like our souls.

00:38:19.000 There's something deeply Corrupting of our humanity.

00:38:24.000 And I catch myself doing it.

00:38:27.000 So that tweet that you were talking about, I had written a piece a week before that about Trump visiting the church and holding up the Bible.

00:38:37.000 It was this really angry piece.

00:38:39.000 And I was like, I'm going to write about how terrible this is and put this out there and do something.

00:38:44.000 The way he set it up, too, by tear gassing all the protesters to clear the area.

00:38:48.000 I was like, what a horrible thing.

00:38:49.000 I'm going to tell everybody how horrible this is.

00:38:51.000 I'm going to get my anger out. 0.99

00:38:52.000 And then when the article came out, I just realized that I was just sending it into the fucking machine, right? 0.96

00:38:57.000 And it was going to get ground up and the people who already agreed with it were going to read it and be like, yeah, it's terrible. 0.98

00:39:03.000 And the people that disagreed with it are either never going to read it or they're going to see it and they're going to be like, see people keep attacking Trump, like they're all crazy.

00:39:11.000 And it was sort of like a crisis.

00:39:13.000 I was just like, I don't want to be doing, I don't want to be putting anything into this machine.

00:39:19.000 If it's just gonna get processed into junk information so that we can feed our habit.

00:39:27.000 And this is a habit that we really don't know how to navigate.

00:39:29.000 We've only been dealing with this habit for...

00:39:31.000 When did Twitter get invented?

00:39:33.000 2007?

00:39:34.000 Very recent.

00:39:35.000 Yeah, that's not enough time for us to figure out how to do it right.

00:39:38.000 I mean, remember like during the...

00:39:41.000 I'm 52, so when I was a kid...

00:39:45.000 Watching television for kids all day was fairly new, right?

00:39:50.000 It had only been like a generation or two that that was even possible to just watch TV all the time.

00:39:55.000 And it was constantly thought of as the corrupting thing.

00:39:59.000 Like, get away from the TV. All you do is watch TV. Get up.

00:40:02.000 Get outside.

00:40:03.000 And that was sort of the first indication that there's a potential for an unhealthy relationship with technology and with distributed content, right?

00:40:14.000 I think Twitter is far more toxic than that because you're actually putting the content out yourself and then you're waiting to see how people respond and you shift the way you interact with people based on how they respond to your tweets.

00:40:30.000 Right, it's the belonging thing.

00:40:31.000 Yes, or your Facebook post or what have you.

00:40:34.000 It created, I mean it's interesting you say that like thinking again about food because I'm obsessed with like the first book I wrote was about food.

00:40:40.000 And like how we came to fear certain foods like fat or salt or sugar.

00:40:44.000 And thinking about it in this way, right?

00:40:46.000 You need a technology to be able to process something to get it cheap enough so that it can be widely consumed, right?

00:40:53.000 So information that allows you to belong, right?

00:40:56.000 For a long time, only certain people, I mean, for a while, right?

00:40:59.000 It's only people who could read and write, right?

00:41:00.000 So that's all you've got.

00:41:02.000 Those are the only people who could produce it.

00:41:03.000 And then now, it's so cheap.

00:41:07.000 To produce information that makes you a part of a community.

00:41:10.000 It's free, right?

00:41:11.000 We do it all the time.

00:41:14.000 And like you said, We haven't figured out how to navigate it.

00:41:17.000 And that's another confusion I think that people have with natural versus unnatural, which is that we also just have problems with novelty as human beings, right?

00:41:24.000 Something new comes up.

00:41:25.000 We still don't know how to navigate our food system.

00:41:27.000 We still don't know how to stop people from eating too much.

00:41:32.000 We don't know how to do it.

00:41:33.000 Collectively as a society, we clearly have not solved this problem.

00:41:37.000 And yet it's important to remember that for most of the world, the problem is still not having enough.

00:41:41.000 So there was a time when the problem was people had no information.

00:41:46.000 You just didn't know anything.

00:41:48.000 You knew nothing. 0.82

00:41:49.000 That sucked too, right? 0.83

00:41:50.000 So it's great that we have the internet. 0.94

00:41:52.000 That was far worse.

00:41:53.000 Yeah, that was far worse.

00:41:55.000 Or at least not...

00:41:56.000 It was really bad and it was bad in a profoundly different way.

00:42:00.000 I mean, this goes back to with the hunter-gatherer thing, right?

00:42:03.000 Whether it was better in a state of nature.

00:42:05.000 I often hear people...

00:42:06.000 There's a great book called Against the Grain written by a guy who...

00:42:11.000 He's at Yale and he thinks that we need to be easier on the past and harder on the present in this book.

00:42:16.000 And one of the things he points out is like, oh, people these days, like humans, modern humans, you and I, we go out and we don't know what a plant is or we don't know what an animal is.

00:42:23.000 And he's right, right?

00:42:24.000 Most people don't have the knowledge of the natural world that hunter-gatherers do.

00:42:30.000 But at the same time, they don't know about the germ theory of disease.

00:42:33.000 They don't know about, you know, planetary cycles.

00:42:36.000 And so...

00:42:38.000 It's always important for me, at least, as soon as I start to get sucked into one of these binaries.

00:42:43.000 It's so bad now today to remember that it was also bad in different ways in the past.

00:42:50.000 And we can't make the mistake of thinking that the problem with information and our consuming of it today...

00:42:57.000 We can't make the mistake of thinking that the evil is in the form.

00:43:02.000 We can make it good.

00:43:03.000 We can make it better.

00:43:04.000 We can learn how to deal with this, I think.

00:43:08.000 I hope.

00:43:08.000 As long as we're conscious of the problem.

00:43:10.000 I think we can the same way we learn how to deal with liquor stores.

00:43:13.000 I mean, liquor stores are everywhere, but I'm not drunk.

00:43:16.000 You're not drunk.

00:43:17.000 We don't go there and drink all day.

00:43:18.000 And I think it's the same thing as dealing with this kind of compulsion to use social media.

00:43:24.000 You don't have to do it all the time.

00:43:26.000 It's there, but you've got to learn restraint and you've got to really be cognizant of the impact that it has on you.

00:43:34.000 Absolutely.

00:43:34.000 It should be.

00:43:34.000 Well, so what I mean, you know, bringing up alcohol, right?

00:43:37.000 I mean, one thing is, you know, taboos, cultural taboos are really important for controlling our relationship to things that we would otherwise be compulsive about, like eating too much or having sex with everybody.

00:43:48.000 And so we institute these sort of taboos.

00:43:50.000 I don't understand why it's not more of a taboo.

00:43:54.000 Why it's not taboo when you're on social media. 1.00

00:43:56.000 If you're an asshole, everyone should pile on to you for being an asshole on social media. 0.99

00:44:02.000 I mean, personally, and I don't know, you may feel differently about this, but I'm just grossed out by people sharing videos of random people and mocking these people. 1.00

00:44:13.000 I think it's just kind of creepy.

00:44:18.000 I'm not saying sharing videos of police or people in positions of authority I just mean...

00:44:23.000 I know what you're saying.

00:44:24.000 Yeah.

00:44:24.000 I don't know.

00:44:25.000 Well, it's terrifying when you see...

00:44:28.000 Like, here's an example.

00:44:30.000 And I don't think this person was correct, but it was weird watching this.

00:44:34.000 There was a girl who was on TikTok and she was talking about Black Lives Matter. 0.97

00:44:41.000 And she said, basically, if you say to me, all lives matter, she goes, I'm going to stab you. 0.93

00:44:47.000 And while you're bleeding out, you see this? 0.98

00:44:49.000 Yeah.

00:44:50.000 While you're bleeding out, I'm going to show you my paper cut.

00:44:52.000 And I'm going to go, look, you know, I'm cut too.

00:44:56.000 You know, she goes, that's the difference between all lives matter. 1.00

00:44:59.000 You know, like she was just screaming and yelling, I'm going to fucking stab you. 0.99

00:45:01.000 But it's just a bad analogy from a person who's trying very hard to virtue signal. 0.99

00:45:06.000 Cut to next video.

00:45:08.000 She was crying.

00:45:10.000 That people had found the video and they were attacking her and then she got fired and she got fired from this job that she really loved and there was in the comments of this there was all these laughing emojis with the laughing with the tears coming out where people were taking pleasure out of the fact this person made this misstep she's a young she looked like she was in her 20s she made this She thought she was like putting something out in the world to stand up for people that are being maligned and mistreated

00:45:41.000 and wronged by society and that there should be a balance and to understand the balance.

00:45:47.000 And she made a terrible analogy.

00:45:49.000 It wasn't good.

00:45:50.000 But the fact that people were taking pleasure in the fact that this person got fired from it was very disturbing.

00:45:58.000 I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking, like, why have I seen this?

00:46:02.000 Why have you seen this?

00:46:03.000 Like, you knew.

00:46:04.000 It's like, why did we consume that?

00:46:06.000 I didn't know what it was.

00:46:07.000 Why did that get part of my soul share?

00:46:09.000 If there's stomach share, like, why is that video?

00:46:13.000 Even a part of my brain.

00:46:15.000 It should not be in there.

00:46:17.000 There's no reason for it.

00:46:18.000 There's a million better things that could occupy that slot.

00:46:23.000 But there's a fascination, the same way there's a fascination of people jumping off buildings to a pool and missing and hitting the concrete.

00:46:29.000 I mean, I've seen a lot of those.

00:46:31.000 There's something...

00:46:32.000 There's something about missteps because you know it could be you. 1.00

00:46:36.000 Look, I'm a moron. 0.99

00:46:37.000 If I was on a roof with one of my good friends and I had a couple of beers in me and they're like, you want to make the jump? 1.00

00:46:40.000 I'm like, fuck, should we? 0.98

00:46:42.000 Like, especially if I was 18, I probably would have jumped. 0.99

00:46:44.000 You know, like there's a lot of people that do... 0.98

00:46:46.000 If I was her and I was 18, I probably would have made a similar dumb video. 1.00

00:46:50.000 The thing is, okay, so with the swimming pool, right? 0.97

00:46:54.000 This is...

00:46:54.000 It's one thing...

00:46:56.000 I actually think it's one thing to mock someone for just doing some stupid shit. 1.00

00:47:00.000 It's another thing when the background, and this again gets back to this idea of ultra-processed information, when the background, when what makes it so exciting is not that they're stupid or they did something or it could have been you, but that they're evil, right? 1.00

00:47:14.000 Ah, I get to watch evil and I'm just good. 0.95

00:47:18.000 I'm good just because I'm feeling evil.

00:47:21.000 That this person's evil.

00:47:22.000 And that part, it's very different from America's Funniest Home Videos.

00:47:27.000 That was not a show where you were tuning in to find out who the evil people were.

00:47:33.000 And then being like, look at those people.

00:47:34.000 They deserve what they got.

00:47:37.000 That would be crazy.

00:47:38.000 Just thinking about our attitude.

00:47:42.000 I don't know.

00:47:43.000 It's really intense.

00:47:45.000 Yeah, I mean, it's not good.

00:47:48.000 And meanwhile, I've watched a lot of them.

00:47:50.000 I watched one today where a bus driver body slammed this guy. 0.97

00:47:54.000 Apparently there was some jerk who was bothering these bus drivers and he was picking a fight with his other bus driver and this second bus driver who he had apparently fucked with before comes up from behind him, picks him up and body slams him on the concrete and knocks him unconscious. 0.99

00:48:09.000 It's horrible. 0.99

00:48:09.000 But I watched it three times. 0.99

00:48:11.000 It's compulsive, right?

00:48:12.000 I mean, it's the same way you can't step away from, I mean, not you, but like, you know, in general, like the same thing with the food.

00:48:18.000 You know, you can't help it.

00:48:21.000 Yeah, it really is bad for your brain. 0.99

00:48:25.000 But that one at least is like, here's a person who's physically fucking with people and assaulting people and they got theirs. 1.00

00:48:32.000 But the girl with the paper cut analogy, it's like, she's just dumb. 1.00

00:48:37.000 You know, she's just a dumb kid who did a dumb thing and she thought she was being cool or she was fitting in and she thought a bunch of people would be like, yeah, you go, girl. 1.00

00:48:46.000 And instead it came back and really fucked her. 1.00

00:48:51.000 Although, you know, it's funny. 0.99

00:48:53.000 So I've seen, you know, there's a and you know about this, like you've had some people like this on your show.

00:48:57.000 Like there's a there's the tendency again to divide the world up in the same way as natural and unnatural.

00:49:03.000 Right now, another dichotomy that's emerged is like woke people.

00:49:06.000 Mm hmm.

00:49:07.000 Right.

00:49:26.000 The unwoke are evil, but the anti-woke people are doing the same thing.

00:49:30.000 They're like, look at those woke people tearing everybody down. 0.79

00:49:34.000 Those are the bad people.

00:49:36.000 And if we just get rid of all the woke people, then everything will go back to the paradise of free thinking and rationality where we could all speak our minds.

00:49:44.000 And I'm looking at these people and I'm like, do you not understand?

00:49:48.000 The paradox, especially because these people are often like fairly smart, like philosophically minded people and they're like, I hate people that create demons and try to cast them out of society.

00:49:57.000 We need to get rid of those people and cast them out of society.

00:50:00.000 And once we have that, we'll go back to paradise. 0.89

00:50:02.000 And I'm like, no, there is no paradise.

00:50:03.000 It's complicated, right?

00:50:04.000 Like even with the social media, it's terrific.

00:50:08.000 That lay people who didn't have power once can hold powerful people accountable. 0.51

00:50:14.000 It is a good thing that we get videos of cops Doing bad stuff that before would have been hidden, right?

00:50:23.000 So again, it's more complicated.

00:50:26.000 Like, I like that.

00:50:27.000 I'm happy about that.

00:50:28.000 And I'm happy about the way in which our technology has empowered people to find communities, right?

00:50:32.000 Also, just like loners, like people that had weird hobbies, people that felt alone in their small town.

00:50:37.000 And get out news.

00:50:38.000 Yeah.

00:50:39.000 Especially if you're dealing in a place where reporters can't get to.

00:50:43.000 People on the ground can get information out to people.

00:50:46.000 Exactly.

00:50:46.000 There's a lot of positive benefits to social media.

00:50:48.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:50:50.000 If used correctly, I think it's very valuable.

00:50:52.000 But I just think the power of it...

00:50:55.000 Is very intoxicating to people and much like processed food, which is where I think you had that great analogy.

00:51:01.000 I think it's just very dangerous to become completely...

00:51:05.000 Like if you're eating processed Twinkies nine hours a day, you're going to be sick.

00:51:09.000 Well, if you're on Twitter nine hours a day arguing with people, you're going to be sick.

00:51:13.000 Yep, you are.

00:51:14.000 And you really are.

00:51:14.000 I know people that have had real problems where they get tremendous anxiety, they're sweating, and they're involved in these back and forth with people all day and they can't sleep.

00:51:25.000 Yeah, there's a classic cartoon, right?

00:51:27.000 Where it says, like, honey, I can't come to bed, someone's wrong on the internet.

00:51:31.000 I was just like, that's perfect.

00:51:33.000 I've had that, right?

00:51:34.000 My wife's like, what are you doing? 1.00

00:51:36.000 I'm like, hold on one second.

00:51:37.000 If I just tweet one more time, this person's going to have a conversion experience.

00:51:41.000 I think with wokeness, and this is something that James Lindsay had pointed out, and Douglas Murray has a great book about it in a lot of the areas that we're talking about.

00:51:55.000 What's going on is a religion. 0.56

00:51:58.000 I mean, it really is.

00:51:59.000 It's got all of the elements of a religion.

00:52:02.000 You can get cast out.

00:52:05.000 You can get attacked for non-compliance.

00:52:09.000 It demands this very rigid ideology that you can't stray from.

00:52:13.000 And it keeps getting more and more rigid as time goes on.

00:52:18.000 Things that were acceptable just a few years ago can now get you...

00:52:23.000 You can get cancelled.

00:52:24.000 You can get fired.

00:52:25.000 You can lose your job.

00:52:27.000 I mean, we're getting to this, like, you can lose your job and be attacked for saying all lives matter, which seems insane, just in terms of, I mean, it's understandable where people are going from, that this is like, no, you're in denial of this movement,

00:52:45.000 but just the term all lives matter should be universally acceptable, but it's not anymore.

00:52:50.000 Wasn't there also a cop, though, that got...

00:52:52.000 I think there was a cop who got fired for sharing Black Lives Matter.

00:52:55.000 This was very recently.

00:52:57.000 Really?

00:52:58.000 And that's not to say that...

00:52:59.000 A cop?

00:53:00.000 Yeah.

00:53:00.000 This was in New York.

00:53:01.000 I mean, don't quote me on this.

00:53:03.000 Well, quote me on it.

00:53:04.000 I just got quoted on it.

00:53:05.000 It's too late.

00:53:06.000 It's too late.

00:53:07.000 No, I'm pretty sure it happened.

00:53:09.000 But again, that's...

00:53:09.000 This is another problem with social media, right?

00:53:12.000 It's like once it's said, it's out there, and the amount of energy someone has said, the amount of energy it takes to, like...

00:53:17.000 You know, real back-in misinformation is just disproportionate to the amount it takes to get the misinformation out there to begin with.

00:53:25.000 Or a lack of understanding of, like, what a person does when they're thinking and expressing themselves.

00:53:30.000 Like, think about what we're doing.

00:53:31.000 You and I talked for three minutes before we sat down and did this.

00:53:35.000 I gave you a little tour of the place. 0.98

00:53:37.000 We shot the shit about Laird Hamilton's Superfood Coffee, and we sat down and started talking. 0.98

00:53:42.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:53:42.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

00:53:43.000 I mean, we don't know each other, right?

00:53:45.000 So we're talking We're just—there's no preparation here.

00:53:50.000 We're just saying things out of the blue.

00:53:52.000 I want to push back on these anti-woke people, though, a little bit, because I think it's important, especially because they're very sharp, and so they make very good arguments.

00:54:00.000 And I think that part of their problem is they do something called nutpicking.

00:54:04.000 Have you heard about this?

00:54:05.000 No.

00:54:05.000 So this is a phrase that— I think a guy at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum, I think he coined it.

00:54:11.000 It's like cherry picking.

00:54:12.000 And basically what you do is you trawl through any given group, university professors, some blog, whatever it is, and you pick the nuttiest things you can.

00:54:21.000 And then you say, look what these – and this is actually what our whole information ecosystem does.

00:54:27.000 It nutpicks for us.

00:54:28.000 And so then what do you see?

00:54:30.000 You see the craziest representations of any given group, right?

00:54:34.000 So you see – if you're thinking about academia, right?

00:54:38.000 You see some professor get kicked out of a university or you see – Some professors say some kind of crazy thing about like, you know, I don't know, like biological sex not being real in animals or whatever, you know, whatever the crazy thing is.

00:54:51.000 And then that becomes how you see that entire institution.

00:54:57.000 You've nut picked that institution.

00:54:59.000 Right.

00:54:59.000 And it's easy to mock.

00:55:01.000 It's fun.

00:55:02.000 But like the truth is, if you sat these people down even.

00:55:06.000 Right.

00:55:06.000 Like if you sat down the nuts from both sides.

00:55:08.000 Right.

00:55:08.000 And they had a conversation.

00:55:11.000 They're complicated people, right?

00:55:12.000 They have complicated thoughts.

00:55:14.000 They want to be able to explain themselves better.

00:55:16.000 And I'm frustrated because what I really want is for people to be able to have complicated conversations about touchy subjects.

00:55:27.000 The most touchy subjects.

00:55:28.000 It's part of the problem with what you're describing, though, that these aren't conversations.

00:55:31.000 They are not.

00:55:32.000 Someone spit something out, and even if it's preposterous, like animals don't have biological sex.

00:55:38.000 No one's talking to them.

00:55:40.000 There's no one in the room with them, especially not a biologist of equal standing.

00:55:46.000 You know, someone who can go, actually, that's ridiculous to say.

00:55:49.000 And then you're having a conversation.

00:55:50.000 Part of the problem is with just statements.

00:55:52.000 Or even if someone's writing a blog, there's a problem with no one being able to talk while you're talking.

00:56:00.000 That's absolutely true.

00:56:01.000 I mean, for me...

00:56:04.000 I just, I'm surprised by how much I don't know, right?

00:56:06.000 I mean, this is something I actually really appreciate about you.

00:56:08.000 Like, I don't know a lot of stuff.

00:56:09.000 So I'm out, when I was researching natural, right?

00:56:11.000 I have a chapter on economics.

00:56:12.000 I don't know anything about economic theory.

00:56:14.000 So I had to research that and talk to experts.

00:56:15.000 I got a chapter on sports.

00:56:17.000 I don't know anything about sports.

00:56:18.000 So I gotta go talk to people who are experts on, you know, whether a cheetah blade for your leg, you know, how do you figure out whether that's fair or not or whatever, right?

00:56:26.000 So I'm sitting down and I'm talking with these people.

00:56:28.000 And what I realized is that Everything's very complicated, right?

00:56:32.000 These are complicated issues. 0.98

00:56:34.000 And when there's no one to push back on you, and when there's no room for a dialogue, you just get the absolute stupidest, most extreme versions of whatever position it is that someone holds. 0.98

00:56:48.000 And the more touchy the subject. 0.99

00:56:50.000 Right.

00:57:07.000 Yeah, I think what you're saying, too, is really important, is that you're trying to, this idea of a sloganized version of it, you're trying to reinforce your argument without any pushback from the other side, where a lot of these things are nuanced and complex, and they're not black and white, and it's not a one or a zero.

00:57:23.000 It's like there's a lot of pros and cons, and a lot of these things, like...

00:57:28.000 One that I, you know, it's an uncomfortable one to get into is abortion.

00:57:32.000 It's a very, what I call a human problem, not just that it's humans having abortions and you're aborting a human, but it's a human problem in that very few people are going to have a problem with it if it's like three cells.

00:57:45.000 But then when it's three months old, people are going to have more of a problem.

00:57:49.000 When it's six months old, most people are going to have a problem with it.

00:57:53.000 So it becomes this very weird, like, to say, no abortion should ever happen.

00:57:58.000 Well, what about the morning after pill?

00:58:02.000 You don't think that someone should be able to, if they get drunk and they make a mistake and they accidentally get pregnant from sex, you don't think they should be able to take a pill and end the pregnancy the day of? 0.94

00:58:12.000 The day of conception, some people will say, no, you have to carry it forever and raise that kid until it's 20. But other people will say, you should be able to have an abortion up until the day the baby's out of your body.

00:58:22.000 And I think that's fucking crazy, too. 0.98

00:58:24.000 It's one of those things where it's... 0.98

00:58:29.000 It's a complicated, very nuanced subject.

00:58:32.000 No, no.

00:58:33.000 It's just pro-life or pro-choice.

00:58:35.000 That's it, right? 1.00

00:58:35.000 It's so stupid. 1.00

00:58:36.000 What an unproductive way to think about it. 1.00

00:58:40.000 And again, you bring up abortion, right?

00:58:42.000 But...

00:58:43.000 This is like what I said before.

00:58:44.000 It's the touchy, complicated issue.

00:58:46.000 Sex in general, right?

00:58:46.000 Because God or the gods always care about sex, right?

00:58:49.000 So it's...

00:58:49.000 Sex in general has always been talked about in this way.

00:58:54.000 People want to draw neat, bright lines, whether it has to do with age of consent, whether it has to do with who you should be having sex with and why, right?

00:59:03.000 Again, this is something that naturalness came into again, right?

00:59:05.000 Because people are like, okay, well, we got to figure out what kind of sex you should be having with who.

00:59:09.000 Well, how do we do it?

00:59:11.000 If it's not God, right, and that's who it was for a long time telling people who to have sex with and how, we'll look to nature.

00:59:17.000 We'll figure out, you know, you got people writing books about how, well, actually the natural way to have, you know, to be sexual is polygamy. 0.97

00:59:24.000 So clearly that's good and we should have, you know, monogamous relationships are going to be terrible, right?

00:59:29.000 And then there's other people like, well, no, obviously if you look at every culture, monogamous marriages have emerged naturally.

00:59:35.000 So that's the natural thing.

00:59:37.000 And then some people are like, well, heterosexuality is natural.

00:59:40.000 So you should never have sex with people of the same sex. 0.99

00:59:43.000 And then other people like, well, actually, we found these animals here that are gay. 1.00

00:59:47.000 So being homosexual is actually OK. It's been proven by nature. 1.00

00:59:51.000 I'm just looking at this like.

00:59:53.000 It's obviously very complicated, right? 0.56

00:59:55.000 Who you should have sex with and how. 0.67

00:59:57.000 Incidentally, while researching contraception and naturalness, I ran into a book called Holy Sex, which is a Catholic's guide to—and I'm paraphrasing the title here—mind-blowing, toe-curling, 0.89

01:00:13.000 divinely sanctioned sex, right?

01:00:17.000 And I'm reading through it, and there was a section on whether or not—so Catholic theories— Really intense Catholic philosophers will deny this, but they'll say natural means something else and they'll kind of like do all this complicated reasoning, but it's not really true.

01:00:30.000 They're drawing on what's natural and what isn't in the sense of what's in nature.

01:00:34.000 And the idea is that sex has to be natural.

01:00:37.000 So for a long time, it was that...

01:00:40.000 Sex has to be tailored to procreation, right? 1.00

01:00:44.000 So you can't have anal sex. 1.00

01:00:45.000 You can't have oral sex. 1.00

01:00:48.000 You can't do coitus interruptus, which is pulling out, right? 1.00

01:00:52.000 All of those are bad because what God wants, what he's designed naturally, is for a penis to go into a vagina and ejaculate into it to make a baby. 1.00

01:01:00.000 So that was it. 1.00

01:01:01.000 That was the criteria.

01:01:02.000 But then we had too many people in the world.

01:01:05.000 And Catholics were getting upset.

01:01:06.000 They were like, well, I don't want to have any more kids.

01:01:08.000 I don't want seven kids.

01:01:09.000 I don't have a farm.

01:01:10.000 Like, there's all these reasons that people didn't want to have kids.

01:01:12.000 So they came up with the Rhythm Method.

01:01:14.000 So you got the Rhythm Method, right?

01:01:15.000 And the Rhythm Method, this guy Latz, the author of the Rhythm Method, he spends most of the ethics section of that book, which was an enormous bestseller.

01:01:25.000 Because God didn't tell people about the Rhythm Method until, like, the 20th century.

01:01:30.000 He could have told them earlier, but he didn't.

01:01:32.000 So Lat spends this whole book talking about how natural it is.

01:01:35.000 And he's like, look, this is natural.

01:01:37.000 These are natural cycles.

01:01:39.000 And there's a great quote, some guys, like, in the Catholic Church, you can use mathematics to prevent contraception, but not physics or chemistry, right?

01:01:47.000 I was like...

01:01:48.000 Right?

01:01:48.000 It doesn't make any sense.

01:01:49.000 Like, how is this?

01:01:50.000 How is it natural to sort of plan your sex around rhythms?

01:01:54.000 And this all goes back to the book, the holy sex book, which is that so then if the rhythm method is natural, right, then it can't be that sex has to be directed to procreation, right?

01:02:05.000 Because you got a bunch of people who are having sex at exactly the times where it won't result in procreation.

01:02:11.000 So they change their understanding of what natural sex is to just depositing. 1.00

01:02:14.000 It ends with depositing semen in a vagina. 1.00

01:02:18.000 And in this book, there's a whole section on like, well, what about like, you know, anal sex and dildos? 1.00

01:02:23.000 And basically he's like, if you follow the one rule... 0.99

01:02:27.000 And it ends in the right way, then you can do everything else.

01:02:31.000 And I'm reading this book.

01:02:32.000 One rule.

01:02:32.000 What rule is that?

01:02:33.000 Deposit the semen in the vagina. 1.00

01:02:35.000 So you can do all that stuff as long as when you ejaculate, it's inside a vagina. 1.00

01:02:40.000 That's exactly right. 0.99

01:02:40.000 And I'm reading this and I'm like, how can you say this is natural? 0.99

01:02:43.000 And through his whole book, he's saying it too. 0.98

01:02:44.000 He's like, you know, if you don't ejaculate, if you don't end by ejaculating the vagina, all kinds of bad things happen to you biologically, right? 0.98

01:02:49.000 Your serotonin levels go down or whatever. 0.98

01:02:51.000 All the same kinds of rationalizations that people give whenever they're trying to show that something...

01:02:56.000 Was designed by nature to be a certain way.

01:03:02.000 And to me again, it's like, no, with abortion or with contraception or whatever, we should be asking ourselves, What works?

01:03:09.000 What is it that we want?

01:03:10.000 And what is it that works?

01:03:11.000 And that's a complicated question.

01:03:12.000 It's going to be different depending on your culture, depending on the needs that you have at any given time in history, right?

01:03:19.000 It's also an inherent problem with religion is that a lot of what they're doing is just controlling.

01:03:25.000 They're controlling people.

01:03:26.000 And what people want is freedom.

01:03:28.000 They want the freedom to be able to do whatever they want.

01:03:30.000 If two people get together and they just want to use dildos on each other, Why would anybody have a problem with that?

01:03:38.000 Do you want to do it?

01:03:39.000 Does she want to do it?

01:03:40.000 Everybody's happy?

01:03:42.000 Have a good time.

01:03:44.000 Why does God care if God invented dildos? 0.95

01:03:47.000 Well, that goes back to the natural thing, right?

01:03:49.000 So that's exactly right.

01:03:51.000 So now they'll be like, no, God didn't invent dildos.

01:03:54.000 People invented dildos.

01:03:56.000 God invented the idea of dildos. 1.00

01:03:57.000 Every idea that you have comes from God.

01:03:59.000 Don't ask me to defend stuff.

01:04:01.000 God invented people.

01:04:02.000 People invented strap-ons.

01:04:03.000 God invented strap-ons.

01:04:04.000 But here's the thing, right?

01:04:06.000 Again, and this goes back to my changing my mind, is that There is some way in which you can use what's natural as a kind of criteria.

01:04:15.000 There's actually this idea called the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, the EEA. And what this says is basically, you know, there's a vague time that sort of determines how humans evolved, right?

01:04:27.000 So there are certain things that humans have evolved for, and they evolve for those things in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.

01:04:34.000 And so then when we depart from that environment, when we put vending machines in places, or when we give people books to read, We're good to go.

01:04:40.000 One hypothesis you can have is that maybe that will have negative consequences for us because we're not adapted for it, right?

01:04:49.000 So that's a fine hypothesis generating heuristic, right?

01:04:53.000 But what people do instead is they decide beforehand that it's necessarily bad.

01:04:57.000 If it wasn't in the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness, if it wasn't there in the Garden of Eden, then it must be bad.

01:05:04.000 And that's...

01:05:06.000 So it's not necessarily bad to say, well, hey...

01:05:11.000 Is this thing, is it natural?

01:05:13.000 Like, is it something that we are evolved to deal with?

01:05:16.000 But that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, if it's not natural, that it's bad.

01:05:20.000 It just means maybe that we need a way to deal with it.

01:05:22.000 I mean, a good example is reading things.

01:05:24.000 I don't know.

01:05:25.000 You don't have glasses on.

01:05:26.000 I don't know if you have contact lenses.

01:05:28.000 No, but I need glasses to read.

01:05:30.000 Yeah.

01:05:30.000 So, like, reading is not natural.

01:05:32.000 That's just not a natural thing.

01:05:33.000 And there's a bad result, right?

01:05:35.000 Which is that we have worse vision because we're squinting at things.

01:05:37.000 But we fixed it.

01:05:39.000 We came up with glasses.

01:05:40.000 And we're good.

01:05:41.000 Now, so that's it.

01:05:43.000 So that's great.

01:05:43.000 Now we get reading, which is awesome, you know, and like looking at small things all the time.

01:05:48.000 And we fixed it with glasses.

01:05:49.000 So that's terrific.

01:05:50.000 Now, if the result had been that like our eyeballs melted and we couldn't figure out how to solve that problem.

01:05:55.000 Reading would be bad.

01:05:56.000 Reading would be bad.

01:05:57.000 Right.

01:05:57.000 Knowledge would be bad.

01:05:58.000 Be the devil's work.

01:05:59.000 It kills your eyeballs because God doesn't want you to know anything more than what he put in your head.

01:06:03.000 And that's exactly what people would say, though.

01:06:05.000 They'd be like, if reading melted your eyeballs, people would be like, well, of course it does.

01:06:09.000 It's unnatural.

01:06:11.000 Well, wasn't that the argument that they used during the time of Martin Luther to keep people from reading his phonetic interpretation of the Bible?

01:06:19.000 The anti-reading thing goes back to Socrates, which actually sounds a little bit like some of the stuff you were saying about dialogue, where he says, if you have, you know, I'm paraphrasing, not my area of expertise.

01:06:30.000 If you have the written word, this is going to be a disaster because one of the things that happens with the written word is it can't respond to the interlocutor.

01:06:38.000 This is what he says.

01:06:38.000 So when you write things down, instead of saying them, people are going to take that and interpret it for themselves.

01:06:43.000 It's going to be terrible.

01:06:45.000 You know, of course, this is paradox because you're reading it.

01:06:47.000 It's good and it can be bad.

01:06:49.000 I mean, that's really what it is.

01:06:51.000 But it is also incredibly valuable just for storing information, just for distributing information.

01:06:59.000 It's unprecedented.

01:07:01.000 It's changed the world.

01:07:02.000 But it also can be bad because it can have a distorted version of the reality of what you're writing about.

01:07:09.000 Right.

01:07:10.000 That's exactly it.

01:07:10.000 And that's, you know, I think that I think the reflexiveness of wanting.

01:07:15.000 So I'm sort of I think I'm slowly turning into an evangelical agnostic.

01:07:18.000 I think this is what I am, because, like, the baseline.

01:07:23.000 The baseline should be uncertainty.

01:07:25.000 I think.

01:07:26.000 I think the world is an uncertain and mysterious place.

01:07:29.000 And that's a wonderful thing, right?

01:07:30.000 Wonder is a word that actually has built into it both loving the world, right?

01:07:36.000 Like this is wonderful, but it also means you don't know.

01:07:38.000 I wonder, right?

01:07:38.000 There's a way in which wonder is tied to doubt and uncertainty.

01:07:43.000 And that, I wish that were our default position.

01:07:46.000 Global uncertainty.

01:07:48.000 I don't know what's going on.

01:07:49.000 This is a mysterious place.

01:07:50.000 I want to figure it out.

01:07:51.000 And then local certainties, right?

01:07:53.000 You have a decision you need to make at a given time and you're like, you know what?

01:07:56.000 Given what I know, looks like the right thing to do here or the right thing to believe here is this.

01:08:02.000 But that certainty shouldn't be...

01:08:04.000 The default.

01:08:05.000 It should be local certainty, global uncertainty.

01:08:07.000 Well, there's things you're certain of and there's things that you aren't certain of and it's very important to be clear on the difference between those and not attach yourself to whether or not you're correct or incorrect because Human beings with language and with dialogue,

01:08:24.000 we're playing a game.

01:08:26.000 Like if you and I were in dispute about something, and even if you were correct, if my ego got involved, I would want to be correct.

01:08:33.000 So I would try to manipulate my version of reality in order to trounce you.

01:08:39.000 And people do that.

01:08:40.000 Absolutely.

01:08:41.000 It's a horrible thing to do.

01:08:42.000 And it's a message that I try to get out as much as possible.

01:08:46.000 You are not your ideas.

01:08:47.000 And you cannot be married to them.

01:08:50.000 If you're wrong, if you're like, oh, I thought it was this.

01:08:53.000 I am very quick to say that.

01:08:55.000 And it's something that I've developed.

01:08:58.000 It's something that I have worked very hard to cultivate.

01:09:02.000 To not be attached to any idea that I have or that I espouse.

01:09:07.000 And that if I'm incorrect to say very quickly, as soon as I find out, I'm incorrect about this.

01:09:13.000 I'm incorrect this.

01:09:14.000 It's so messed up that with politicians, for example, people accuse a politician of flip-flopping as if it's like, no, you don't want to log.

01:09:21.000 Actually, if there's someone who has the sort of Wherewithal to change their mind?

01:09:26.000 Why would we shame them for saying, whoa?

01:09:29.000 Well, it's obvious because politics are a game.

01:09:32.000 It's a game of victory.

01:09:33.000 I mean, it's not just a game.

01:09:35.000 It's a game with time periods, right?

01:09:37.000 You have till November.

01:09:39.000 You have X amount of weeks.

01:09:40.000 You have your primaries are coming up.

01:09:42.000 It really is a game.

01:09:44.000 So there's very little room for nuance.

01:09:47.000 You have a time period.

01:09:48.000 I mean, buzzers up.

01:09:50.000 You miss the three-point.

01:09:51.000 The game's over.

01:09:52.000 It doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong.

01:09:54.000 It's about winning.

01:09:55.000 I just don't get the why people – I mean I guess I do and I don't get it, right?

01:09:58.000 But why would you demand that of your politicians, right?

01:10:00.000 So if I'm looking at a politician, what I would want – and not just a politician, right?

01:10:04.000 A teacher, a friend.

01:10:05.000 I'm looking for someone who is able to change their mind, whose ego isn't wrapped up with sticking to their guns, whatever happens, right?

01:10:15.000 Isn't the problem with their opponents though?

01:10:18.000 Because their opponents are the ones who are going to call them out on it. 1.00

01:10:20.000 Yeah, well, what if the general public was like, stop calling him out for changing his mind, you moron. 1.00

01:10:26.000 It was awesome that he changed his mind. 0.99

01:10:28.000 Well, if you say it that way, it's going to create more problems.

01:10:30.000 You're right.

01:10:32.000 See, I just did it.

01:10:33.000 I just did it.

01:10:34.000 It's normal.

01:10:35.000 It's normal to lapse.

01:10:36.000 Oh, it's those people who are bad, right?

01:10:37.000 If we just get rid of those people, Joe, we'll solve a reality.

01:10:39.000 You're just enthusiastically expressing yourself, but you're doing so with an insult.

01:10:44.000 You know what? 0.56

01:10:45.000 Okay, so one of the things I do, you know how you have like the junk, the junkie folder?

01:10:50.000 Yes.

01:10:50.000 So to remind myself, Of how blind I might be and how I could, like how I need to change my mind, right?

01:10:57.000 I talk about this with my students, but I keep it with myself.

01:10:59.000 I actually have a, this is touchy, I have a Confederate monument in my wallet right here.

01:11:05.000 So I keep, I don't know if you know, so the Confederate $2 bill.

01:11:09.000 Oh, wow.

01:11:11.000 That's a real Confederate $2 bill?

01:11:12.000 That's a Confederate $2 bill.

01:11:13.000 And that guy on it right there, that's Judah Benjamin.

01:11:18.000 He's the only Jew Whoever made it onto American currency, if you want to call it. 0.99

01:11:26.000 And it's Confederate money?

01:11:27.000 It's Confederate money.

01:11:28.000 Can I see that?

01:11:28.000 Yeah.

01:11:28.000 Go for it.

01:11:29.000 What year is this from?

01:11:32.000 Let's see.

01:11:33.000 What does it say on there?

01:11:34.000 I don't remember the exact year on the bill.

01:11:35.000 This is weird, man.

01:11:36.000 It's paper.

01:11:38.000 Yes, paper.

01:11:38.000 But it's like really flimsy paper.

01:11:40.000 I would think you would want to keep this under glass or something.

01:11:43.000 No, it's not.

01:11:44.000 I mean, they're not like super valuable.

01:11:45.000 It's not?

01:11:46.000 No.

01:11:47.000 Historically, I mean, it's so touchy, right? 1.00

01:11:50.000 Even saying anything about Confederacy, like, of course it's not valuable, you fucking idiot. 1.00

01:11:54.000 But they won't do that. 1.00

01:11:55.000 I'll tell you why.

01:11:56.000 Because here's why I keep that in my wallet.

01:11:58.000 People won't do that. 0.85

01:11:59.000 I mean, maybe they'll take that soundbite and it'll get ultra-processed and people will be like, he was arguing for Confederate monuments, but that's stupid because I keep that in my wallet because that guy celebrated Passover. 0.94

01:12:08.000 That guy celebrated Passover, which is a Jewish holiday, all about how slavery was bad. 0.97

01:12:15.000 Meanwhile, it looks like he's got a little Hitler mustache. 0.70

01:12:17.000 He had slaves.

01:12:19.000 Whoa.

01:12:20.000 So here's this guy who's a Jew in America in the 1800s, who's one of his most important holidays, is a celebration of the Jews' liberation from slavery, who had, most likely, slaves in his house Serving him the Passover dishes and certainly washing them.

01:12:43.000 And what that means to me, at least, is like there's going to be something in my life that I'm as blind to as that guy was to the evils of slavery. 0.97

01:12:52.000 And if you can have your most important holiday, be a holiday where you're celebrating the liberation of your people from slavery and still end up on a fucking Confederate bill. 0.99

01:13:02.000 Crazy. 0.99

01:13:03.000 God knows what we're blind to right now, right?

01:13:06.000 What is it that we're not seeing right now?

01:13:08.000 What people can justify is very strange.

01:13:11.000 Right. 0.97

01:13:11.000 And it means that no matter what, there's probably some kind of thing that a hundred years from now is going to seem like, how could Alan, how could this idiot have not seen that, 0.97

01:13:26.000 right? 1.00

01:13:27.000 It was right in front of his eyes.

01:13:29.000 Yeah.

01:13:29.000 What do you think that thing would be?

01:13:31.000 Have you ever tried to think about it?

01:13:33.000 Yeah, I have tried to think about it.

01:13:35.000 Well, so there's a couple of things I think it could be.

01:13:38.000 One of them is the fact that we've essentially exported slave labor.

01:13:43.000 So, you know, people are going to be like, all these people who were talking about how slavery is bad, right?

01:13:49.000 And chattel slavery is a very, very different thing from other kinds of slavery.

01:13:55.000 But there are ways in which people are trapped in horrific situations who are manufacturing the goods that I have.

01:14:03.000 Now it gets complicated, right?

01:14:04.000 Because people are like, well, you know, that's better that than no job at all.

01:14:06.000 I'm not sure exactly how it all plays out, but I can imagine a future in which people look back at me and you and the things we are consuming and saying, how were they blind to the conditions?

01:14:19.000 Sure.

01:14:21.000 Well, one of the best examples is someone tweeting about slavery on an iPhone that's made by someone who works at Foxconn who has these giant nets around the building to keep people from jumping off because they live such horrific lives that they leap to their deaths so often they have to protect the building with nets. 0.96

01:14:40.000 And this is the exact point at which, if you wanted to ultra-process this conversation, You'd take that sound bite and you'd say, look at these two assholes comparing working in a Foxconn factory to chattel slavery. 0.96

01:14:55.000 Yes. 0.98

01:14:55.000 Which is precisely not... 0.98

01:14:57.000 Explain chattel slavery. 0.88

01:14:58.000 Chattel slavery.

01:14:59.000 Well, so sometimes...

01:15:00.000 So, for example, when people are trying to justify the Bible and the fact that...

01:15:02.000 So, why didn't Jesus...

01:15:03.000 Here's this guy who came down and he shocked everyone, right?

01:15:06.000 Why didn't he also say, like...

01:15:08.000 You know, also slaves need to be released ASAP. Slavery is bad.

01:15:12.000 He didn't say that.

01:15:13.000 So one of the things people will point out is that there are different forms of slavery.

01:15:16.000 So chattel slavery specifically where people are turned into property and bought and sold and have no opportunity to earn their freedom is a specific kind of slavery that was the kind of slavery we had in the United States.

01:15:30.000 It's uniquely, horrifically bad.

01:15:33.000 And so that kind of slavery is not the same thing as working in a Foxconn factory.

01:15:40.000 But, you know, when I think about, you know, I'm thinking about this right here, I am on like, you know, what's going to happen when that parallel gets made?

01:15:47.000 I think it's actually an instructive parallel, right?

01:15:49.000 I'd like us to think about the goods that we're using and consuming and where they're made.

01:15:55.000 I also don't want people to think that, for a moment, that chattel slavery is the same thing as working in a Foxconn factory.

01:16:02.000 No, it most certainly isn't.

01:16:03.000 But it is...

01:16:05.000 But it's bad.

01:16:05.000 It's bad.

01:16:06.000 Working in a Foxconn factory is bad.

01:16:08.000 You don't want your children to be there.

01:16:10.000 Joel Salatin will tell you.

01:16:11.000 Another thing is eating factory farmed animals.

01:16:16.000 Yes.

01:16:16.000 I mean, it's messed up.

01:16:21.000 I don't know.

01:16:21.000 I do it.

01:16:22.000 I go out.

01:16:23.000 I eat meat that I know comes from a place where You know, where the animals are not treated...

01:16:31.000 Where they're in hell.

01:16:32.000 It's animal hell.

01:16:33.000 You know?

01:16:34.000 And we have these animal hells.

01:16:36.000 When do you do that?

01:16:38.000 I mean, just yesterday when I went out and ate, like, baby back ribs down the street.

01:16:44.000 I guarantee those baby back ribs didn't come from Joel Salton's poly-faced farm. 0.96

01:16:49.000 And I think that...

01:16:52.000 You know, that's something I think about, but I do it anyway.

01:16:55.000 I can imagine a time when we look back on our current eating habits and we're like, why wasn't everyone arguing for ethically sourced meat?

01:17:04.000 Like, how was it that people didn't want to, you know, force everyone collectively to pay more for meat that was raised in a way like the kind of way that Salatin pioneers, right? 0.96

01:17:14.000 In this, I'm really on board with Salatin.

01:17:16.000 I think he's...

01:17:17.000 I think he's right to say, look, there are contexts in which animals are happier and less happy. 0.99

01:17:24.000 They're happier on my farm and they're fucking miserable. 0.86

01:17:27.000 But I thought it was very interesting in your book when you talk about Michael Pollan pressing him on whether or not you could feed New York City that way. 0.99

01:17:33.000 And he's like, do you really need New York City?

01:17:35.000 Yeah.

01:17:35.000 Well, so Salatin's got it right.

01:17:37.000 And Salatin thinks, I mean, he thinks about this, right?

01:17:39.000 Like you saw in the book in explicitly divine terms, right?

01:17:42.000 God has designed the world.

01:17:43.000 But I'll tell you, this is a story I tell at the end of the book.

01:17:46.000 I was eating Salton's delicious pork.

01:17:48.000 It's an incredible place, Polyface Farms.

01:17:50.000 And I was eating his pork and like the people there are awesome.

01:17:52.000 He's awesome.

01:17:53.000 And he announces to everyone.

01:17:55.000 He says, look, we're going to be doing a bit of a change.

01:17:58.000 We have a new thing that we're going to be doing.

01:17:59.000 We are going to be...

01:18:02.000 Producing chickens for a growing segment of our market that doesn't want soy fed to their chickens.

01:18:10.000 So Salton's chickens get a lot of their calories not from his farm.

01:18:14.000 They get a significant portion of their calories from non-GMO soy that's grown at another place outside of polyphase.

01:18:20.000 So it's not a self-contained system.

01:18:21.000 He says, but there's some people that don't want soy fed to their chickens.

01:18:24.000 They feel like they react to soy.

01:18:25.000 They don't want it.

01:18:26.000 So they're going to start feeding their chickens.

01:18:27.000 There's a certain...

01:18:30.000 We're good to go.

01:18:53.000 There's nothing wrong with feeding your chickens fish meal.

01:18:57.000 If some people want chickens that are fed fish meal and you're treating your chickens in a way you think is ethical, there's not some kind of purity test that you need to apply to your farm, even though it's on a road called Pure Meadows Lane, right?

01:19:08.000 But it's like you don't need a purity test for your farm.

01:19:10.000 You're a good guy who cares.

01:19:12.000 I mean, I really think he's a guy who really cares about his animals.

01:19:15.000 I do too.

01:19:17.000 It just kind of made me sad that he thought of that as some sort of hypocrisy.

01:19:23.000 Well, the only hypocrisy that you could see in it is factory farmed fish is awful.

01:19:28.000 I mean, it's really bad.

01:19:30.000 I mean, it's bad for the environment.

01:19:32.000 It's bad for the fish.

01:19:33.000 There's not a lot of sustainable factory farm fish operations.

01:19:38.000 It wouldn't make you wince if you actually saw how they process all that fish meal.

01:19:43.000 Factory farm fish.

01:19:44.000 Another thing, I didn't know any of this stuff until I started this research.

01:19:46.000 So I'll tell you a story, crazy story.

01:19:48.000 I was in the Netherlands researching the food chapter of this book, which is about vanilla, which I could talk to you about vanilla, which sounds very boring, right?

01:19:55.000 Which is why I picked it.

01:19:56.000 It's vanilla.

01:19:58.000 I'm researching vanilla and people want natural vanilla.

01:20:02.000 And I don't know if you know, do you know where vanilla comes from?

01:20:04.000 Vanilla beans?

01:20:05.000 Yeah.

01:20:05.000 Do you know where those come from?

01:20:06.000 No.

01:20:07.000 That was the end of the line for me, right?

01:20:09.000 So we've got vanilla beans in the house.

01:20:10.000 So they're actually on an orchid.

01:20:12.000 This beautiful white orchid vine is where vanilla beans grow.

01:20:17.000 That makes sense.

01:20:17.000 Vanilla ice cream has that orchid on the...

01:20:19.000 Yeah.

01:20:19.000 All of a sudden I was like, oh wait, that's why my yogurt looks like that.

01:20:22.000 Every single one of those is artificially inseminated.

01:20:25.000 So there's a person who goes, and you can watch YouTube videos if it's crazy.

01:20:28.000 Have they always been like that?

01:20:32.000 No.

01:20:32.000 So vanilla used to be only in Mesoamerica.

01:20:37.000 That was the only place where it grew naturally.

01:20:40.000 So everyone thinks of Madagascar, right?

01:20:42.000 Madagascar vanilla.

01:20:43.000 Only place vanilla was growing was in Mesoamerica.

01:20:46.000 It was these Mayan silviculturists, which is like forest gardeners, who grew this.

01:20:51.000 And it was pollinated by its only known natural pollinator, which was this thing called a melapona bee.

01:20:56.000 I don't know if I pronounced that right, but whatever.

01:20:58.000 So that's the only place it was.

01:20:59.000 And when...

01:21:01.000 People came from Europe.

01:21:02.000 They were like, this is incredible, vanilla, amazing.

01:21:04.000 And they wanted to grow it, but they couldn't because they didn't know how to pollinate it.

01:21:08.000 And then a 12-year-old slave named Edmund Albius discovered how to artificially pollinate vanilla flowers.

01:21:18.000 And just like that, you now have the ability to grow vanilla orchids in non-natural habitats, right?

01:21:27.000 It's still expensive because you can only grow them in Madagascar or Tahiti.

01:21:30.000 I don't know if you know this, but vanilla beans are incredibly expensive.

01:21:34.000 Natural vanilla is just really expensive ingredient.

01:21:36.000 And that's because there's not a lot of places it can be grown.

01:21:38.000 So they're looking for ways to make natural vanilla cheaper.

01:21:43.000 And the Netherlands is where all of the best growing technology or a lot of the best growing technology is.

01:21:49.000 So I went to a university there where they have a greenhouse.

01:21:52.000 Where they're growing vanilla orchids, pineapples, bell peppers, like coconuts.

01:21:58.000 I mean, you name it.

01:21:59.000 Everything they figured out how to grow all of these natural plants, right?

01:22:04.000 But I'm sitting in here and I'm like, you've got vanilla orchids growing out of these buckets in this highly technological environment.

01:22:11.000 You know, it's all temperature controlled, right?

01:22:13.000 And for what?

01:22:13.000 So that you can have cheap vanilla beans that can be labeled legally.

01:22:19.000 Natural.

01:22:19.000 And that whole story comes back to the salmon and the fish that you were talking about before.

01:22:24.000 Because in that same place, there was a machine like at a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with like pink sludge whooshing through it.

01:22:31.000 This was, you know, a couple of places down from the vanilla orchid house.

01:22:36.000 I was like, what's that?

01:22:37.000 The guy who's showing me around says, that's algae that we're growing here because people want their salmon, their farmed salmon, to be pink.

01:22:47.000 And it's not pink because it doesn't eat the diet that it gets in nature.

01:22:51.000 So it's naturally gray, but people won't pay for that.

01:22:54.000 So he's farming algae.

01:22:56.000 Which is natural.

01:22:57.000 So that's the stuff, the pink stuff.

01:22:59.000 And then they feed that to the farmed salmon just so it can be naturally pink.

01:23:04.000 So when you go into your Whole Foods or whatever and you see that your salmon is all natural and it's pink...

01:23:09.000 And I'm just looking at this whole thing and I'm like, what is wrong with us human beings that we've gotten to this point where we want stuff natural so bad that we're developing new technologies to figure out how to...

01:23:22.000 Have our cake and eat it, too.

01:23:23.000 They dye salmon.

01:23:23.000 It's really an orange, but they dye it.

01:23:25.000 They do.

01:23:26.000 Yeah, the orange, just orange-pinkish color.

01:23:27.000 But there's also a way...

01:23:29.000 So estaxithin, I think, is the chemical that...

01:23:32.000 And you can have it artificially, but then people don't want artificial color.

01:23:35.000 Can't they just feed them the bugs that they eat that make them...

01:23:38.000 Way too expensive.

01:23:39.000 Really?

01:23:40.000 Yeah, for when you want it on that scale.

01:23:42.000 Oh.

01:23:43.000 So they feed them this algae. 0.94

01:23:44.000 And I was like...

01:23:47.000 I get what we're doing.

01:23:49.000 I get what we want, right?

01:23:51.000 We want stuff that's better for the planet.

01:23:52.000 We want natural.

01:23:53.000 And so then, yeah, so what do we do?

01:23:55.000 But it's so complicated, right?

01:23:56.000 Like what you were saying, like what do we do with factory farm fish?

01:23:58.000 You're like what you were saying about Joel Salatin.

01:24:00.000 How do you get Joel Salatin's meat to people that can't afford it?

01:24:05.000 Right.

01:24:06.000 How do you?

01:24:07.000 If I knew the...

01:24:08.000 Well, some people would say lab-grown meat, right?

01:24:10.000 But that's not the same as Joel Salatin's meat, at least.

01:24:12.000 Well, not for now.

01:24:13.000 Not for now.

01:24:14.000 I'm really curious about lab-grown meat.

01:24:16.000 I'm not curious about the, like, impossible burger type stuff, because I just...

01:24:22.000 It's not...

01:24:23.000 It's neither...

01:24:24.000 First of all, I don't like the idea of pretending something's meat if you don't want to eat meat. 0.67

01:24:30.000 It just seems ridiculous.

01:24:31.000 And I get it as sort of like... 0.93

01:24:34.000 I mean, it's like a gateway drug.

01:24:38.000 You're tricking people into becoming vegetarian by giving them a burger.

01:24:41.000 And like, look, you can have a burger and still be vegetarian.

01:24:43.000 Look, we've got you.

01:24:44.000 But that's not healthy.

01:24:46.000 Like, if you want to eat healthy vegetables, you should eat vegetables.

01:24:51.000 You should eat vegetable dishes that are actually made with vegetables.

01:24:53.000 Well, so what's meat?

01:24:54.000 What do you think counts as real meat?

01:24:56.000 Like, if you grow a steak in a vat?

01:24:57.000 Yeah, that's interesting.

01:24:59.000 I think that, well...

01:25:01.000 They are probably going to be able to do that with alarming accuracy within the next 10 years, where they're going to make a ribeye.

01:25:10.000 It's going to have marbling.

01:25:11.000 It's going to taste like a ribeye.

01:25:13.000 And I'm all 100% down for that.

01:25:15.000 I'm 100% down for that.

01:25:16.000 Do we get to call that steak?

01:25:19.000 Because the steak lobby, there's going to be a meat lobby that's like, you know, it's like the almond milk.

01:25:22.000 You can't call it milk.

01:25:23.000 There's going to be a bunch of people that are like, unless it came from a cow...

01:25:25.000 Yeah, well, the almond milk lobby, I mean, they're right for milk.

01:25:29.000 You mean it's not milk?

01:25:30.000 Because it's not milk.

01:25:31.000 Like, milk has to come from a breast.

01:25:33.000 Like, it's absolutely not milk.

01:25:35.000 Well, doesn't a steak have to come from a creature?

01:25:36.000 Well, it comes from a lab, but it essentially has the exact same properties as a steak.

01:25:42.000 That's the difference.

01:25:43.000 Almond milk is in no way, shape, or form milk.

01:25:47.000 It's not milk.

01:25:48.000 It's weird water. 0.99

01:25:49.000 You've just done some weird shit to water to make it white. 0.97

01:25:52.000 You know, it's not milk. 0.99

01:25:54.000 But if you can recreate steak, if you can 3D print steak, it's still going to be steak.

01:26:02.000 Now, if you're the type of person that wants to eat the soul of the animal, and you want to be there when the animal gets killed, and you want to slice the piece off and throw it on the fire, and you want to know, you want to be like boots to the ground and know, well, that's a different thing.

01:26:17.000 You're asking for a different thing.

01:26:18.000 But if you're asking for meat that has the same amount of essential fatty acids as a grass-fed ribeye steak, you can do that, I think.

01:26:27.000 I think they're probably going to be able to do that.

01:26:33.000 So talking about what counts as a steak, right?

01:26:35.000 This idea, I mean, naturalness again comes in here because the word nature, right?

01:26:40.000 It actually means birth, natura, origins.

01:26:42.000 So naturalness has to do with the origins of a thing.

01:26:45.000 And we think about origins a lot when we think about what a thing is, right?

01:26:50.000 We want to know where it came from.

01:26:52.000 And that tells us What it is, right?

01:26:55.000 And so with a steak, there's going to be a lot of people who are going to say, you can't call it a steak unless its origin is a cow.

01:27:05.000 There's going to be other people who are going to say, no, if it looks just like and is chemically composed identically to a steak that comes from an animal, then it's an animal.

01:27:15.000 But I'll give you an example to push back on what you were saying a little bit.

01:27:18.000 Take a lab-grown diamond.

01:27:20.000 I mean, I guess...

01:27:21.000 Well, actually...

01:27:21.000 Oh, no.

01:27:22.000 I think I might have put my foot in my mouth.

01:27:23.000 Some girls don't like that. 1.00

01:27:25.000 I've had this conversation.

01:27:26.000 They get upset.

01:27:27.000 It's because it's not the same thing.

01:27:29.000 Well, it's cheaper.

01:27:30.000 That's the only reason why.

01:27:31.000 No, it's magical.

01:27:33.000 No, they want you to pay for something. 1.00

01:27:36.000 They want a slave to dig that thing out of the side of a fucking mountain. 1.00

01:27:39.000 There's something weird about that. 0.99

01:27:41.000 Don't you think there's also romance to the idea of a mineral that was made by pressures under the earth over millions of years?

01:27:47.000 You think it's just about...

01:27:49.000 I think there maybe is some romance to that.

01:27:52.000 But I think with women, there's something nonsensical that's been drilled. 1.00

01:27:57.000 Not all women, sorry. 0.99

01:27:59.000 Don't fucking generalize! 0.99

01:28:00.000 I'm not, I swear to God. 0.99

01:28:01.000 But I think some women have this idea that's been drilled in their head by marketing that you should spend three months of your fucking salary on a rock. 1.00

01:28:12.000 And it's complete nonsense. 0.99

01:28:14.000 First of all, if you understand the De Beers, what they've done with the diamond market, you probably do. 0.92

01:28:19.000 You know, it's like ridiculously overinflated.

01:28:22.000 There's far more diamonds.

01:28:23.000 They're far more efficient at getting diamonds out of the ground than they ever were before.

01:28:26.000 So they have this insane backlog of diamonds. 0.99

01:28:30.000 I mean, diamonds aren't rare, but they're stupid expensive. 0.99

01:28:34.000 And they really shouldn't be. 1.00

01:28:35.000 But they've done an amazing job of keeping them stupid expensive. 0.96

01:28:39.000 That said, if someone can artificially create something that's absolutely indistinguishable from a diamond, there's a part of some women that will think that because that was created by a machine, it's not as valuable, 0.99

01:28:55.000 it doesn't mean as much, and it's not worthy of the same sort of appreciation and I'm sure you've seen women look at each other's rings and check out the rings.

01:29:09.000 It's a symbol of so many different things.

01:29:12.000 It's like, how much does your man love you?

01:29:14.000 How wealthy is he?

01:29:16.000 How well did you do in choosing a mate? 0.66

01:29:19.000 There's so many things involved with this ridiculous ritual of diamond rings.

01:29:24.000 That for whatever reason, those women that have fallen into this nonsense, they're not interested in some sort of a workaround, you know, some sort of a 3D printed diamond ring. 1.00

01:29:35.000 Even if it's perfect, they don't want it.

01:29:39.000 It's marketing.

01:29:41.000 I don't know.

01:29:42.000 I don't know, man.

01:29:42.000 For me, I mean, maybe if I was being given a diamond ring and the prices were identical, I think, and this is where I changed my mind, right?

01:29:49.000 This is about where the naturalness stuff comes in again, right?

01:29:51.000 That stone...

01:29:53.000 That pyrite Even if making that gold cube were actually more expensive than getting it out of the ground, there's something about where it came from that enchants it, right?

01:30:07.000 That sort of makes it magical.

01:30:08.000 That's part of Yellowstone, right?

01:30:09.000 Is that, you know, they talk about, okay, the genetics of our, you know, our bison.

01:30:15.000 They don't come from outside.

01:30:17.000 Even if it's indistinguishable to people looking in at the animals, there's something about I think?

01:30:45.000 No, I'm sure he would, but let me push back on the genealogical thing, because Yellowstone, in particular, has some of the most domesticated elk that you'll ever be around.

01:30:54.000 It's so bizarre.

01:30:55.000 I was there with my children, and we were taking selfies with the elk, and they were like 30 or 40 feet away from us. 0.97

01:31:02.000 It was probably more like 20 yards, but close enough that in nature, that would fucking never happen. 0.86

01:31:07.000 They would run like hell if they saw people, or they saw any animal that looked like it was an eyes-facing-forward predator. 0.95

01:31:15.000 And in Yellowstone they're so accustomed to people and they've actually adapted their behavior to congregate around the parks because they're less likely to be killed by wolves there. 0.84

01:31:26.000 So they'll go around these like visitor areas and there was a fucking vending machine and then 30 yards away from the vending machine is an elk and I have a photo of me standing in front of this Coca-Cola machine looking like this and then behind me is an elk.

01:31:41.000 You know they used to feed the bears there? 0.89

01:31:44.000 Oh yeah.

01:31:44.000 I was there when they fed the bears.

01:31:46.000 No!

01:31:47.000 Yes!

01:31:47.000 When I was a kid, me and my parents went through Yellowstone when I was like seven or eight years old and there was cars in front of us that would put food out the windows and the bears would put their paw on the car and take food from them.

01:32:01.000 I think the elk example is a good one for...

01:32:03.000 I mean, I might be wrong, but for what I was arguing, which is that you seeing the domesticated elk there, right?

01:32:08.000 If Yellowstone, for me, when I visited, right?

01:32:10.000 It was like...

01:32:10.000 Look at this.

01:32:11.000 Look at these bears.

01:32:11.000 Yeah, it's incredible.

01:32:13.000 Hello?

01:32:14.000 Hello?

01:32:15.000 Yeah, it's so strange.

01:32:16.000 Yeah, I witnessed this firsthand when I was a kid.

01:32:19.000 They would also congregate.

01:32:22.000 Look at that.

01:32:22.000 That's really crazy.

01:32:24.000 Look at this lady. 1.00

01:32:25.000 Out of her fucking mind. 1.00

01:32:26.000 She's going to climb out of the thing. 1.00

01:32:28.000 I'm sure a lot of people got killed that way, too, by the way.

01:32:32.000 The heads of the people that headed up Yellowstone encouraged this stuff.

01:32:37.000 Yeah, they didn't know any better.

01:32:39.000 It took a while before they figured that out.

01:32:42.000 Also, the bears, the problem is bears are uniquely...

01:32:49.000 They have habits that they form in terms of where they get their food, which is why it's really a problem if a bear gets into your garbage, because they'll never stop going into your garbage.

01:32:58.000 They have to kidnap the bear and move it to a zoo or take it to another mountain really far, far away, or they have to kill it.

01:33:06.000 There's no other way.

01:33:07.000 So this is the elk that you saw at that vending machine.

01:33:11.000 And you tell me, I'm curious how you felt about it.

01:33:13.000 To me, seeing that kind of thing in Yellowstone is a little disappointing.

01:33:18.000 And it's disappointing because I think of Yellowstone as like, you know, and it's advertised this way, right?

01:33:22.000 Come here to see...

01:33:24.000 And it's on all the books and the tourist shops.

01:33:26.000 Come here to see pure nature.

01:33:29.000 Okay.

01:33:30.000 First of all, there's no way.

01:33:32.000 There's no way you're going to have buildings and cars in pure nature.

01:33:36.000 It's not real.

01:33:38.000 I... I'm a hunter, so I go into the woods.

01:33:42.000 I get most of my meat from mountains.

01:33:45.000 I bow hunt.

01:33:47.000 And one of the reasons why I do this, I started out in 2012 because I was either going to become a vegetarian or I was going to become a hunter.

01:33:54.000 I was watching too many of these PETA videos, and I was like, this factory farming thing, it's insane.

01:34:00.000 Once you know, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

01:34:03.000 Oh, this is something you are also...

01:34:04.000 Yeah.

01:34:04.000 I mean, I had tried to figure out a way to...

01:34:11.000 Morally, I was coming to this point in the road where I was like, I've got to do something.

01:34:16.000 I either have to figure out a way to acquire my own meat and be comfortable enough.

01:34:21.000 I've never killed an animal. 0.99

01:34:22.000 I need to be able to kill this animal and eat it and be comfortable with it. 1.00

01:34:27.000 Or not. 1.00

01:34:28.000 Like, I don't know if I am.

01:34:30.000 And once I went hunting, I realized, okay, this is probably the most insanely connected way.

01:34:36.000 And it really hits some switches inside of your body, inside of your DNA that I didn't even know were there.

01:34:44.000 And these switches that, like, connect you.

01:34:46.000 It's almost like a psychedelic experience.

01:34:48.000 It's very strange.

01:34:48.000 Like, being in the wilderness stalking an animal and locking eyes with it and hunting it and then wind up eating it over a fire.

01:34:56.000 It's all these switches go on.

01:34:59.000 It's very strange in a very positive way, in a very reverential way.

01:35:04.000 Like, you revere this animal.

01:35:06.000 Like, you appreciate it in this really intense way.

01:35:10.000 But these are wild, wild animals.

01:35:14.000 You're domesticating an animal if they're hanging out on a lawn.

01:35:18.000 Like, I was looking at a house once in Colorado.

01:35:21.000 With my family, and we went out into the backyard, and there was a giant deer, like a huge buck, that was just standing there staring at us.

01:35:29.000 And it was in Boulder, Colorado.

01:35:30.000 And I don't know if you've ever been to Boulder, Colorado, but it's like a lot of hippies, and obviously no one's hunting in Boulder, Colorado.

01:35:36.000 So these deer are completely relaxed.

01:35:39.000 They're just chilling.

01:35:40.000 And so this deer is, I mean...

01:35:43.000 No more than a hundred feet away from us.

01:35:45.000 Just staring at us.

01:35:46.000 Just looking at us.

01:35:47.000 And then just moves around a little and eats some grass and looks at us again.

01:35:51.000 And my wife is like, I didn't even think that was real.

01:35:53.000 I thought it was a statue until it started moving.

01:35:56.000 I would never kill that deer. 1.00

01:35:57.000 Not in a fucking million years. 1.00

01:36:00.000 That's like killing someone's dog. 1.00

01:36:02.000 There's no way. 0.99

01:36:03.000 I mean, I would have to be starving to kill that deer.

01:36:05.000 But if I was in the woods and I saw a deer that big, I would be very excited.

01:36:10.000 I'd be like, wow, that's like hundreds of pounds of meat.

01:36:13.000 Look at the size of that deer.

01:36:15.000 It's an amazing specimen.

01:36:16.000 And it's a big, old, mature deer.

01:36:18.000 Which means that it's passed its genes on for many, many years.

01:36:22.000 And a deer only has, if they're really lucky, they have nine, ten years, and then they get killed by wolves or mountain lions or whatever.

01:36:30.000 That would be the perfect animal to hunt.

01:36:32.000 But in this scenario, there was none of those switches went off.

01:36:37.000 I'm like, that's a domesticated animal.

01:36:39.000 That might as well be, you know, a chihuahua. 0.94

01:36:41.000 Right, yeah. 0.98

01:36:42.000 And that's part of the criteria you're using for whether it's okay to kill it.

01:36:47.000 I mean, that's one of the things with the bison hunt in Yellowstone that seems so weird, right?

01:36:51.000 It's bizarre.

01:36:52.000 It's these animals that have no idea what's waiting for them cross this line, and then all of a sudden they're magically available...

01:37:00.000 To be shot.

01:37:01.000 That's a complicated issue.

01:37:03.000 One of the reasons why it's a complicated issue is because buffalo contain brucellosis.

01:37:07.000 They have brucellosis, which can be very dangerous to domestic cattle.

01:37:11.000 And whether or not they transmit it to domestic cattle, the same argument could be said about elk.

01:37:16.000 They also occasionally have brucellosis and there's a lot of ranchers who want to shoot elk That wind up eating their hay and eating their grass.

01:37:23.000 So when these bison drift off of Yellowstone and they go into public land or they go into private land, it's an issue of resources oftentimes.

01:37:34.000 Oh, you have to cull them.

01:37:36.000 I'm just thinking of this and I'm not a hunter.

01:37:37.000 Although, interestingly, I went to Yellowstone.

01:37:39.000 Again, this is this whole I'm not sure about stuff.

01:37:41.000 I didn't know anything about hunting.

01:37:43.000 I assumed hunting was...

01:37:46.000 I don't know, bat, like people go out, they kill endangered species, right? 0.93

01:37:49.000 Like whatever I had seen, that was it.

01:37:50.000 And when I went to Yellowstone, you know, when I discovered that Doug Smith, who's the guy that reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone, when he was like, I hunt.

01:38:01.000 And my first reaction was, wait, what?

01:38:03.000 I thought you loved animals.

01:38:05.000 How could this man who cares about nature?

01:38:07.000 And what became clear, as you know and many hunters know, is that it doesn't work like that.

01:38:13.000 Hunting doesn't mean you don't care about nature.

01:38:16.000 It doesn't mean you don't care about animals.

01:38:19.000 And that was a wake-up call for me that I didn't understand how people relate to the natural world and that I had been fed a kind of I don't know, oversimplified, ultra-processed version of what it was to hunt.

01:38:36.000 At the same time with those bison, you got to cull them, right?

01:38:39.000 So you got to get rid of them.

01:38:40.000 And like you said, right, there's this resource, you know, you don't want them wandering on a rancher's land.

01:38:43.000 And that's something that, you know, the people in Yellowstone will, you know, activists are happy to tell you, yes, these kinds of things are problems.

01:38:51.000 As a hunter, though, I imagine that you wouldn't be super excited to just like camp out and shoot a bison It would only be for meat.

01:39:05.000 It would be that you wanted organic meat and you wanted to be able to do it that way.

01:39:08.000 But not the excitement of what you were talking about.

01:39:10.000 No, it wouldn't be predator versus prey and it wouldn't be what you would call fair chase.

01:39:15.000 I mean, it would be technically fair chase because the animal does wander out, but you have to admit that those animals have been grossly domesticated.

01:39:24.000 I mean, when we were in Yellowstone, bison were everywhere.

01:39:27.000 You could just stand there and stare at them.

01:39:29.000 I brought binoculars.

01:39:31.000 I was handing them to my kids, and they're standing like, look at this one over here.

01:39:34.000 They weren't even remotely concerned about us. 0.99

01:39:36.000 I mean, that's also why a 70-year-old woman was gored just three days ago, because this crazy lady decided she wanted to take a selfie with a fucking bison. 0.99

01:39:45.000 You know, there are wild animals. 0.99

01:39:48.000 I mean, they are wild, but they're not wild like a wild animal.

01:39:52.000 They're not wild like a wild animal that doesn't have a real relationship with people.

01:39:56.000 But bison, this is where it's tricky.

01:39:59.000 When there was no Yellowstone and when there was no place where they could be domesticated, they were still an easy animal to hunt.

01:40:10.000 They've always been easy because they're so big that they're not concerned about wolves.

01:40:15.000 They're not concerned about anything.

01:40:17.000 In fact, one of the ways that Native Americans would hunt them is they would kill wolves.

01:40:22.000 And they would wear a wolf coat and they would crawl around like a wolf or a coyote coat.

01:40:26.000 So they would put it on their head and they would walk on all fours up close to it and then shoot it with a bow and arrow.

01:40:32.000 And there's actually a famous painting of this Wild West famous painting of these two Native American hunters that are wearing these coyote skins and they're crawling in this field up to these bison.

01:40:45.000 And a friend of mine, my friend Remy Warren, who's a host of a television show called Apex Predator, actually used this method to hunt a bison.

01:40:57.000 You mean like I had a...

01:40:58.000 Yes.

01:40:59.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:41:00.000 He actually put a coyote skin on and crawled up to a bison, to a free-range bison, and hunted it this way, just to see if it would work just like this famous painting.

01:41:10.000 So bison, one of the reasons why they were able to almost extirpate them from the United States was that they're really easy to hunt because they're not scared of anything. 0.98

01:41:22.000 Nothing can fuck with them in the real world because in the real wild world, wolves can't fuck with bisons. 1.00

01:41:28.000 They'll stomp a wolf. 1.00

01:41:29.000 The wolf doesn't even have a chance.

01:41:31.000 Like, grizzly bears can, and they have.

01:41:33.000 And there's actually a video, really recently, from about a month ago, of a grizzly bear killing a bison in Yellowstone while all these people were watching. 0.98

01:41:43.000 There's cars parked, and this fucking grizzly bear jumps on the back of a bison and is bringing it down. 0.98

01:41:49.000 It's a long... 0.99

01:41:50.000 There it is right there.

01:41:51.000 It's a long, drawn-out process, too.

01:41:53.000 That's a small bison.

01:41:55.000 But you know big enough and this bear is fucking huge and look at this bear is like I mean it's like that's probably like a two-year-old bison or something like that It's not a full-grown bison, but I mean this is all This this video is like seven minutes. 0.64

01:42:11.000 What is it long? 0.97

01:42:12.000 It's 114 there It's edited, yeah.

01:42:15.000 So, I mean, you see him in all these different scenes, these cutscenes, and here he finally gets them, and he kills them in this river.

01:42:22.000 But he's attacking them on a bridge, he's attacking them on a road.

01:42:26.000 It's a long, drawn-out process for this grizzly bear to kill this bison.

01:42:31.000 Yeah.

01:42:32.000 So they don't really have that much to worry about.

01:42:35.000 Calves have to worry. 0.99

01:42:37.000 So this is the video.

01:42:38.000 That's the famous painting.

01:42:41.000 And see, bisons have zero concern for wolves because they'll just stomp them. 0.98

01:42:46.000 I mean, they're enormous animals and their hide can be like 12 inches thick of hair.

01:42:52.000 I mean, especially in the wintertime, like, the Native Americans that would wear the bison robes, like, it was the most incredible protection from cold, because you're wearing this insane natural thing that has shielded bison to the point where they can just walk out in a blizzard. 0.99

01:43:09.000 They don't give a fuck. 0.96

01:43:10.000 They're not even a little concerned about it. 0.99

01:43:13.000 That painting, and I was like, that sounds familiar, like he's talking about that.

01:43:17.000 It was on the cover of a book called The Ecological Indian.

01:43:21.000 I think it's called by a guy named Shepard Kretsch, which is, he was looking at the history.

01:43:25.000 I mean, for one, speaking of Native Americans and Yellowstone, how crazy is it that because we think of natural as not human involved, one of the things to make Yellowstone natural is he got rid of all of the... 1.00

01:43:35.000 Like, humans.

01:43:37.000 Yeah, right.

01:43:37.000 That were living there.

01:43:38.000 Yeah.

01:43:39.000 Naturally.

01:43:40.000 I mean, I remember I went, there was actually, when I was there, there was a hunting blind that was left over from when Native Americans were in Yellowstone.

01:43:47.000 Really?

01:43:48.000 Yeah, it was really cool.

01:43:49.000 My guide showed me, just like, it's, you know, just a little hunting blind that they would use.

01:43:53.000 And it also, yeah, again, right, it made me realize, right, Yellowstone is not pure nature, that even our understanding of nature and naturalness, if you get rid of, like, getting rid of humans.

01:44:04.000 Right.

01:44:05.000 Is getting rid of a part of the naturalness of what this place was before.

01:44:10.000 Or just having humans in cars in close proximity to these animals and getting them conditioned to it.

01:44:17.000 That becomes unnatural.

01:44:20.000 Or does it?

01:44:21.000 Well, yeah.

01:44:22.000 I think it does, right?

01:44:23.000 I would have wanted to say a long time ago, oh no, there's no such difference. 0.98

01:44:27.000 But yeah, no man, a fucking road is less natural than... 0.99

01:44:30.000 No road. 0.99

01:44:31.000 I don't know.

01:44:32.000 And the same thing happened with sports, which was, I mean, with Yellowstone, right?

01:44:36.000 There is more and less natural, right?

01:44:38.000 And it would be sad if Yellowstone became much more unnatural.

01:44:42.000 It would take away from, you know, if they put in like an amusement park or whatever it is they're trying to do to like figure out how to raise funds at these places.

01:44:49.000 And it's because part of what we value about Yellowstone, even though it's impure and even though it's imperfect...

01:44:56.000 Is that we get to see something more natural than a zoo.

01:45:00.000 Yeah, than a zoo.

01:45:01.000 Exactly.

01:45:02.000 It's far superior to a zoo.

01:45:03.000 Exactly.

01:45:03.000 Because you can see that.

01:45:05.000 You can see a grizzly bear.

01:45:06.000 No one's feeding the grizzly bears.

01:45:08.000 The grizzly bear has to eat by killing that bison.

01:45:10.000 Right.

01:45:10.000 That's far superior.

01:45:12.000 And that's the same thing with sports.

01:45:15.000 So that was another one of the things that really convinced me that I needed to rethink my relationship with naturalness, which is that...

01:45:21.000 So I went to a...

01:45:23.000 Natural bodybuilding competition.

01:45:25.000 I know you had Ronnie Coleman on, like I'd never been to a bodybuilding competition before.

01:45:30.000 And so I went in and it was a natural bodybuilding competition.

01:45:33.000 And these, you know, these people were, they had, you could smell the spray tan from, you know, I was in the room with them backstage.

01:45:42.000 I was like, these are the most unnatural people I've ever seen, right?

01:45:46.000 They've been, what is it called?

01:45:47.000 Sodium cycling or something to like cut their subcutaneous fat so that they, I mean, they've done everything you could possibly do to get their bodies into this form.

01:45:56.000 And I'm like, what?

01:45:58.000 This is a great example. 0.99

01:46:00.000 This was going to be my example that I used to show that naturalness in sports was stupid because all it really meant was that you weren't taking a certain list of drugs. 0.99

01:46:08.000 That's it. 0.99

01:46:09.000 That's all it meant.

01:46:10.000 Everything else about it was unnatural, right from the tans. 1.00

01:46:13.000 But the truth is...

01:46:16.000 That sports are about naturalness.

01:46:20.000 That they are a celebration of natural talent.

01:46:24.000 There's no way, you know, people call it God-given talent, right?

01:46:27.000 Which is, again, the connection between God and nature.

01:46:29.000 But you can't have sports, as we understand them, without thinking about them as a celebration of what the human body can do, right?

01:46:37.000 When you see that guy, Alex Honnold, is that his name?

01:46:40.000 Yeah.

01:46:41.000 Free climbing like that, a part of what you're thinking, I think, I mean, it's not just that he's like, he could die, right?

01:46:47.000 But it's also like, look at what the human body, unaided by anything else.

01:46:53.000 Look what it can do.

01:46:54.000 And that's why we care when Elliot Kipchoge, you know, when he runs his marathon record, it makes sense to ask, How much was in the shoes?

01:47:03.000 Right.

01:47:03.000 Not because I could run that fast, you know, with those shoes on.

01:47:06.000 Explain what you mean by that.

01:47:07.000 Yeah.

01:47:08.000 So when you're setting a marathon record, there's an incredible marathoner named Elliot Kipchoge.

01:47:15.000 And Nike had these new shoes called Vaporflies.

01:47:19.000 And he was using these shoes.

01:47:21.000 And after he broke the marathon record, just shattered it, people were like, wait a second, how much of that can be attributed to him and how much of it is just the technology in the shoes, right?

01:47:36.000 And this set off again, one of these like back and forth.

01:47:38.000 It was totally useless online where some people were like, I can't believe you're taking his accomplishment away from him.

01:47:42.000 And other people were like, it's all, you know, it's obviously the shoes.

01:47:45.000 But for me, it's just a broader conversation about, well, so what is it that we care about in sports, right?

01:47:50.000 If you put a pair of shoes on someone and all of a sudden they're 5%, 10% faster...

01:47:56.000 That matters, right?

01:47:57.000 Jamie, you actually know about this, right?

01:47:58.000 You're a runner.

01:47:59.000 I have a version of it.

01:48:02.000 The pair he has is very, very specific to what he was trying to do.

01:48:08.000 Is that the pair he has?

01:48:09.000 Yeah, they tailored the course to be specific for it also.

01:48:12.000 They brought in top-level pacers to cycle in every 100, probably every mile.

01:48:20.000 I don't know exactly how they did it, but...

01:48:22.000 When they first started making these pair of shoes, they're called the 4% because they made you 4% faster.

01:48:27.000 Really?

01:48:28.000 There was a titanium plate placed in the middle of it.

01:48:32.000 Even the shoe I have now, you can bend this in half and whatnot.

01:48:36.000 You can't do this with that shoe.

01:48:39.000 Because the plates, as you hit, it launches you kind of forward.

01:48:43.000 Like a spring.

01:48:45.000 It's not a spring, so it's just a very minute assistance, but since it's the best runner in the world, it helped them get 159.40.

01:48:52.000 They're actually selling these insoles that are made out of carbon fiber.

01:48:57.000 Similar to that.

01:48:58.000 Now, that big-ass heel on the back, which is so... 0.99

01:49:02.000 My wife has a pair of those, and I'm like, what the fuck is that heel? 0.99

01:49:05.000 It seems so crazy to walk around with that. 0.93

01:49:07.000 They're really weird to walk around, and I don't think I've ever worn them here.

01:49:10.000 I have a pair at home.

01:49:13.000 They're specifically for running on the road fast.

01:49:17.000 So on the street.

01:49:19.000 Not sprinting.

01:49:19.000 Yeah.

01:49:20.000 Yeah.

01:49:20.000 So that's why it's got all the cushion.

01:49:22.000 Right.

01:49:22.000 They're very specific for that.

01:49:23.000 To protect your knees.

01:49:23.000 Yeah.

01:49:25.000 Yeah, so that's a real good question, right?

01:49:26.000 Is that how much of a factor?

01:49:29.000 I would think you'd have to wear a regular pair of shoes if you want to break a record.

01:49:34.000 And you would never do this with a mathematician, right?

01:49:38.000 If a mathematician had a new proof, you'd never be like, now hold on a second.

01:49:42.000 Were you drinking coffee?

01:49:43.000 Yeah.

01:49:44.000 Wait, did you like...

01:49:45.000 No one cares.

01:49:47.000 When you invented that new car, what kind of substance...

01:49:51.000 You want nootropics.

01:49:52.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:49:52.000 No one cares because the way we evaluate mathematical...

01:49:56.000 What we care about with a mathematical proof or a new invention isn't showcasing the natural talent.

01:50:02.000 Whatever that means, because it's a tough thing of the mathematician.

01:50:05.000 Whereas with Kipchoge's record, what we're wondering in part is...

01:50:10.000 What is he doing in a way that is separate from what his shoes are doing?

01:50:17.000 And that means that, in sports at least, I have to admit that naturalness is an important factor.

01:50:24.000 It is an important factor, but...

01:50:29.000 It's a weird one because it's not an even slate.

01:50:32.000 It's not an even playing field.

01:50:35.000 Like some people have just incredible genetic gifts and some people don't.

01:50:40.000 Now if a person doesn't and they take some creatine and a bunch of different substances and they They get in a cryo tank every day after training and then they're in a sauna every day and then they're doing all these different things where they have electronics strapped to them to try to monitor their heart rate and make sure that they're getting the exact right amount of training and no more and no less and that the recovery is perfect before they train harder. 0.51

01:51:04.000 How fucking natural is that? 0.73

01:51:05.000 Not very natural. 0.99

01:51:07.000 That's the problem.

01:51:07.000 It's funny, you said The Gift.

01:51:09.000 Isn't Phil Heath, I mean, I found out all this stuff about, but I think his nickname is The Gift.

01:51:12.000 And someone called, Randy Coleman, is that his name?

01:51:17.000 Like, Freak of Nature, right?

01:51:19.000 We'll say this about people.

01:51:20.000 You mean Ronnie Coleman?

01:51:21.000 Ronnie Coleman, sorry, yeah.

01:51:22.000 He's like, I mean, people will say like, oh, could I get, like, could you get built like that?

01:51:26.000 Ronnie's the first to admit it.

01:51:27.000 Yeah, on the podcast he talked about it pretty openly.

01:51:29.000 Even with what Jew and whatever, right? 1.00

01:51:31.000 This is like when I talked to one of the natural bodybuilders backstage.

01:51:34.000 He was like, man, I don't...

01:51:35.000 If people want to juice, they can juice.

01:51:37.000 There's no way...

01:51:38.000 These people are still...

01:51:40.000 Ronnie Coleman's still like an incredible...

01:51:43.000 Well, Ronnie didn't choose for many, many years into his bodybuilding career.

01:51:47.000 And then once he started doing it, he did it because he got tired of losing to people that he didn't think he should lose to.

01:51:53.000 Right.

01:51:54.000 But going back to what you're saying, which is true, is how natural is it if you're doing all of these things?

01:51:59.000 So yes, sports is impure. 0.97

01:52:00.000 In the same way, how fucking natural is Yellowstone? 0.98

01:52:02.000 There's a road going through it. 0.91

01:52:03.000 At the same time, You can't take that criteria away entirely, right?

01:52:10.000 Or, I mean, to give you an example, right?

01:52:11.000 Let's take Marcus Rem or Oscar Pistorius, who people know about, right?

01:52:15.000 The guy with the no legs. 0.84

01:52:17.000 The murderer with blades. 0.96

01:52:19.000 South African runner.

01:52:21.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:52:21.000 South African runner.

01:52:22.000 So you can't just let him put on any kind of leg.

01:52:28.000 He can't have rocket launchers on his legs.

01:52:30.000 That would be unfair.

01:52:31.000 And he can't have pistons or whatever.

01:52:35.000 Exactly.

01:52:36.000 And even let's imagine that you could just invent a leg with no mechanics in it.

01:52:42.000 But it just made him incredibly fast, much faster than any human being.

01:52:45.000 You'd be like, nope, that's unfair.

01:52:48.000 We don't allow that.

01:52:49.000 That is the argument about those cheetah legs, right?

01:52:51.000 That's exactly right.

01:52:52.000 So then what do you have to do?

01:52:53.000 You have to test.

01:52:54.000 So a recent case happened.

01:52:55.000 They allowed Pistorius in, but there's a German guy, Marcus Rem, who also wanted to compete and was using one of these legs and they did all these tests, right?

01:53:05.000 And they ran tests on, you know, they do these pressure plates.

01:53:08.000 It's really incredible what they do to see whether his leg gives him an advantage over what?

01:53:14.000 A natural leg, right?

01:53:15.000 So the baseline comparison here is, does your artificial leg give you an advantage over a natural leg?

01:53:23.000 But then whose natural leg?

01:53:25.000 Is it your natural leg or is it Usain Bolt's natural leg?

01:53:28.000 Well, I think in his...

01:53:29.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:53:30.000 So in his case, it's that what they tried to do with these blades is they're like, okay, let's figure out...

01:53:35.000 Because he's, you know, all of these guys are world-class athletes, right?

01:53:38.000 So it's some weird hypothetical, right?

01:53:40.000 Where if Marcus Rem had a leg...

01:53:43.000 Would he be performing at about the same level as he does with his artificial leg?

01:53:49.000 And as weird as it is, as paradoxical as it is, I think it makes sense, right?

01:53:56.000 It makes sense.

01:53:56.000 And it depends on the sport, too.

01:53:58.000 Like UFC, I looked this up.

01:53:59.000 So I was like, I wonder if there's anyone with an artificial limb in UFC. And then I was thinking, because I did judo, and I was like, wait a second, that'd be crazy.

01:54:06.000 Because you couldn't allow someone to have...

01:54:10.000 Right.

01:54:27.000 I can't imagine a scenario in which a prosthetic arm...

01:54:30.000 Or even a hand.

01:54:31.000 Yeah, or even a hand.

01:54:32.000 Because it would be metal.

01:54:33.000 That's exactly right. 0.93

01:54:34.000 You just beat the crap out of it.

01:54:35.000 Yeah, you wouldn't break it.

01:54:36.000 No.

01:54:36.000 You would have to, like, if someone had their hand replaced, you'd have to literally engineer bones that had a breaking point that were similar to organic bones.

01:54:45.000 Exactly.

01:54:46.000 Natural, right?

01:54:46.000 You'd have to engineer it to be, like, less good than carbon fiber bones.

01:54:51.000 Right.

01:54:52.000 You'd have to make it worse.

01:54:53.000 Yeah.

01:54:54.000 Yeah.

01:54:54.000 And then you'd have scientists, right?

01:54:55.000 You would have USC fighters who are like, no, I still think the prosthetic hand is giving this person an advantage, right?

01:55:00.000 And then that person would be like, well, we got to call in the scientists and they're going to like do all these bone breaking tests, you know, which is what they did with these two athletes, which is what they're doing also with transgender athletes who want to compete.

01:55:14.000 It's the same kind of logic, right?

01:55:16.000 Which is...

01:55:19.000 What's the comparison between, say, in the case of a transgender woman who is competing?

01:55:26.000 What's the baseline natural comparison?

01:55:30.000 In other words, does being a transgender woman give you an advantage of Over being a biological woman.

01:55:39.000 The only difference is there's an inclination towards allowing them to compete because it makes you seem more progressive There's a there's a motivation to allowing transgender women athletes to compete because if you look at the oppressive You know,

01:55:54.000 if you have an oppression scale, they are one level or two levels past being a biological woman. 1.00

01:56:02.000 Being a biological woman is more oppressed than being a biological woman. 1.00

01:56:06.000 When a woman kicks a man's ass, we're all happy. 1.00

01:56:08.000 When a man kicks a woman's ass, we're very upset, right? 1.00

01:56:12.000 Yeah, I mean, I think there is right now, in this cultural moment, I think there's... 0.99

01:56:16.000 In the same way that there was...

01:56:17.000 I mean, women didn't box in the Olympics until 2012? 0.89

01:56:23.000 Because for a long time it was thought that women aren't, they're not naturally suited to boxing, right? 0.99

01:56:29.000 I think the first sports they played in the Olympics were, I don't know, they did like sailing and gymnastics.

01:56:34.000 Even later, like the very earliest Olympics, there weren't any, the guy who founded the Olympics was like, not women, women will just, you know, women will stay out of this. 1.00

01:56:41.000 And right now, I mean, I think you're right that there is...

01:56:43.000 Because sports are so symbolically important, right?

01:56:45.000 I mean, you see this with everything, with Colin Kaepernick, with whatever.

01:56:48.000 Sports are really important to people.

01:56:50.000 Sports stars are heroes.

01:56:52.000 And so I do think that a part of the transgender rights movement is going to be securing the ability for transgender athletes to compete under the gender that they identify as.

01:57:07.000 And...

01:57:08.000 I understand that.

01:57:09.000 I think it makes sense.

01:57:10.000 I think it makes sense to want that because you want cultural representation.

01:57:14.000 At the same time, I don't think you're going to find maybe you'll nutpick them, right? 1.00

01:57:19.000 You can find them online.

01:57:20.000 You're not going to find a lot of athletes who think that there shouldn't be any regulations on How transgender athletes compete.

01:57:49.000 It doesn't matter.

01:57:50.000 Let anyone compete without any regulations.

01:57:53.000 So the real question on the ground, I think, that people are arguing about is not whether there should be regulations, but what regulations should there be?

01:58:03.000 And that question, I mean, I don't know how, I mean, you probably follow this a lot, but like, same question is like, what do you do with testosterone levels, right?

01:58:09.000 So Dutichand, right?

01:58:11.000 Let's say you're hyperandrogenous, but you're XX chromosome. 0.98

01:58:15.000 Yeah, explain that woman who's... 1.00

01:58:17.000 This is the issue with her.

01:58:19.000 Yeah, so one of the things that people try to do in sports, because it's important to have...

01:58:23.000 There's some philosophers who argue it's not, but I think it's crazy.

01:58:26.000 It's important to have men's sports and women's sports, right? 0.99

01:58:28.000 It's important because sports are symbolically important, and we want to have women competing at the very highest levels, and we want men competing at the very highest levels.

01:58:36.000 And there's a, you know...

01:58:38.000 There's a significant difference in strength between men and women.

01:58:39.000 Yeah, it's plus or minus 10%.

01:58:41.000 They've studied this, right?

01:58:42.000 Depending on the sport, right?

01:58:43.000 So...

01:58:43.000 You know, powerlifting, it's a huge difference.

01:58:46.000 There's certain sports where it's not like ultramarathony.

01:58:48.000 That's why the IOC has banned transgender athletes from competing in powerlifting.

01:58:53.000 So this stuff is...

01:58:56.000 It's important to have these categories, right?

01:58:57.000 But then how do you distinguish?

01:58:58.000 So going back to Dutichand, right?

01:59:00.000 So if you make a testosterone rule...

01:59:04.000 For example, so you can only have testosterone, you know, you can only compete as a woman if your testosterone is below a particular level. 0.77

01:59:11.000 That's the problem with that is they would have to test it every day and they would have to test it multiple times a day because it's not just how it is when you're competing.

01:59:19.000 It's what it's like when you're training.

01:59:20.000 So how much recovery, how much muscle have you retained?

01:59:23.000 There's there's a lot of factors.

01:59:25.000 And the fact that there are women who are XX who are hyper-androgynous, right? 0.70

01:59:31.000 And that's just like, I mean, we were talking about being a freak of nature, right, or having a gift.

01:59:34.000 There's people with high blood cell counts, right?

01:59:36.000 There's people with really long arms or, you know, webbed hands or whatever.

01:59:40.000 So it's like, well, and this woman actually made her argument.

01:59:42.000 And I totally I mean, it's incredible.

01:59:45.000 It's really powerful when you read it.

01:59:46.000 She's like, here I am.

01:59:47.000 I have naturally high testosterone.

01:59:51.000 And they're going to tell me that I have to artificially lower my natural testosterone levels so that I can compete in the Olympics.

02:00:01.000 It's a particularly sexist argument, too, because they don't do that with men.

02:00:07.000 There's men that have competed in the Olympics that have naturally high testosterone, and they've dominated other men, particularly in wrestling.

02:00:17.000 Do you know where Alexander Carellin is?

02:00:19.000 No.

02:00:20.000 Alexander Karelin is a very famous Russian wrestler who they used to call the experiment because his parents are both like 5'5 and 5'7. 0.98

02:00:27.000 They're like smaller folks and he's fucking enormous and he's terrifying. 0.93

02:00:31.000 Go to that picture that I put on my Instagram. 1.00

02:00:33.000 I put up a picture on my Instagram that I look at this picture every couple months or so just to remind myself what a tremendous pussy I am. 1.00

02:00:41.000 That's Corellin Corellin used to take men. 0.97

02:00:44.000 I mean we're talking about men that were 300 pounds and They would flatten themselves out on the ground to try to avoid being picked up by him and he would scoop his hands under their belly and Hoist them up in the air like they were a pillow and throw them onto the ground Literally look at that picture of him with the red shirt the one right there. 0.97

02:01:03.000 No right there Look at the size of that motherfucker I mean, just unstoppable for years and years in the Olympics. 0.92

02:01:12.000 And, I mean, I don't know whether that's science or nature, but if it's just nature, you can't tell me that this guy doesn't have some kind of crazy genetic advantage that the average man just does not. 0.98

02:01:26.000 And that's what we celebrate, right?

02:01:27.000 I mean, that's what we love seeing.

02:01:28.000 In some ways, yeah.

02:01:29.000 You know, when we watch sports, I mean, sure, Alex Honnold, like, he probably has some kind of genetic thing where he's just not scared of the same stuff, or he loves being scared, whatever it is, right?

02:01:38.000 I don't think it's genetic at all with Alex.

02:01:40.000 I've had Alex on a couple of times.

02:01:41.000 Really?

02:01:41.000 Does he just love it?

02:01:42.000 He really loves climbing, and the way he says it, he's like, you're in control, and it's pretty mellow.

02:01:49.000 He's like, when, you know, that's how he talks.

02:01:51.000 He talks, like, really...

02:01:53.000 You know really calm and smooth and that's how he climbs.

02:01:56.000 He's like if there's a thrill something's really wrong. 0.99

02:02:00.000 Like if I feel like if there's an actual thrill I'm kind of fucked. 0.93

02:02:04.000 He goes everything is very mellow. 0.90

02:02:06.000 It's very slow and very mellow.

02:02:08.000 That's not that is not built into me.

02:02:10.000 I'd be absolutely I think it's a thing that his his His managing of that environment and that sort of situation is part of the thrill of it for him.

02:02:22.000 It's trained or something?

02:02:24.000 Yes, for sure.

02:02:26.000 I mean, he's been climbing forever.

02:02:27.000 It's the ability to stay calm where he's at least subconsciously aware of the consequences of slipping and falling.

02:02:36.000 But he's figured out a way to stay in this zone.

02:02:40.000 And there's some sort of a tremendous reward in staying in this zone.

02:02:44.000 So much so that he wants to do it without any aid.

02:02:47.000 He wants to do it without any ropes.

02:02:48.000 Would you be disappointed if you...

02:02:50.000 And I'm thinking about how I would feel too as I ask this question.

02:02:52.000 If you found out that he took some kind of downer...

02:02:55.000 Oh, like a beta blocker?

02:02:57.000 This is like the steroid version.

02:02:59.000 Yeah.

02:03:00.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:03:01.000 Yeah, I mean, beta blockers are real.

02:03:04.000 I mean, beta blockers are a real problem in the world of competitive archery.

02:03:07.000 Really? 0.94

02:03:08.000 Yeah, but they take beta blockers so that when the shit's on the line and this is like the final match and they're looking at a 60-meter target... 0.97

02:03:18.000 They just stay calm and they can keep their arms steady and let that arrow fly. 0.95

02:03:23.000 I didn't know that, but that's another great example of what is it that you care about?

02:03:27.000 Well, a part of it is you're like, okay, under normal, right?

02:03:30.000 What is this person's natural ability or what is their non-chemical or whatever it is, right?

02:03:34.000 Whatever you want to call it.

02:03:35.000 I've never taken beta blockers.

02:03:36.000 I actually...

02:03:38.000 I got them prescribed to me once by a doctor because I wanted to try them, and I wound up never trying them.

02:03:44.000 I just wanted to see what it was like to do something...

02:03:46.000 Just for my own curiosity, I wanted to see what it was like to do something nerve-wracking while I was on beta blockers.

02:03:53.000 Yeah, I was going to use them on a hunting trip, but I didn't because I felt like I would be disappointed in myself if I did that, which is really crazy because on a hunting trip you'd think the most important thing is making an ethical shot, but I was...

02:04:06.000 My thought process was I trained so hard to make an ethical shot and to be accurate and to practice my shot-making routine until it's like drilled into my head.

02:04:18.000 I don't want to take a pill.

02:04:19.000 I still have them somewhere.

02:04:22.000 I don't even know if they're any good because they're like six years old, but I want to know what that feels like.

02:04:28.000 It would probably feel really weird to have no adrenaline when you know you should.

02:04:34.000 And like what you were saying, too, is it takes away...

02:04:37.000 There are certain experiences where part of what you value about the experience is how you manage it and how you train yourself.

02:04:46.000 Like you said, you don't want it to be a pill that did it.

02:04:50.000 And sports is one of those things, whereas it would be crazy...

02:04:54.000 To, you know, to think to yourself, well, I'll give you an example.

02:04:57.000 Well, this is, it's funny, right?

02:04:58.000 Childbirth, right?

02:04:58.000 So it'd be crazy to go in the dentist's office and be like, you know, I'd be really disappointed in myself if the way I manage this filling is by using, you know...

02:05:08.000 Novocaine.

02:05:08.000 Yeah, Novocaine, right?

02:05:09.000 It's like, I'd just be, I'd be really sad about myself.

02:05:13.000 You know, please don't give me anything.

02:05:14.000 I'm going to handle it myself.

02:05:16.000 That's insane, to me at least.

02:05:18.000 But people do that with childbirth because childbirth, like sports, Is one of those experiences where a part of what some people want is a sense of kind of primal connection.

02:05:31.000 And that was something I didn't understand.

02:05:32.000 I thought it was totally I was like, why would anyone ever?

02:05:36.000 Want to experience, like, you could just have an epidural.

02:05:40.000 Yeah.

02:05:41.000 You know?

02:05:42.000 Yeah, you could just have no pain.

02:05:43.000 Right.

02:05:44.000 Well, that would be better.

02:05:44.000 That sounds like a great option, right?

02:05:47.000 You know?

02:05:48.000 Yeah.

02:05:49.000 But like you were saying, right, so with sports, but back to Judy Chan, right? 0.95

02:05:52.000 Because I think it's really important because this is going to come up and in our fucking cultural environment, it's going to be nuts, right? 0.93

02:05:56.000 And I want people... 0.94

02:05:57.000 I hate the, like...

02:06:00.000 I hate how bad the conversations are, honestly, about transgender athletes because they are so binary and so simplistic that I think that they're going to... 0.71

02:06:10.000 On both sides.

02:06:11.000 Yeah, on both sides.

02:06:12.000 That when there is actually an athlete competing in the Olympics who is transgender, it's going to happen soon. 1.00

02:06:18.000 It's going to rip everyone apart.

02:06:19.000 And instead, what I would like to see...

02:06:25.000 I think?

02:06:49.000 Women essentially grow up as women, and they look like women, they compete as women, and then they have a chromosome. 0.99

02:06:56.000 They have a test, right?

02:06:57.000 And they find out that they're XY, but they're androgen insensitive.

02:07:00.000 And this was an issue in the Olympics as well in 1985. There was a woman who's now a physician who had been competing as a woman her whole life. 0.86

02:07:08.000 Then the test came back, and she was like, well, that's crazy.

02:07:10.000 Was she hermaphrodite?

02:07:12.000 She was not.

02:07:13.000 I mean, as I understand it, she was just androgen insensitive. 1.00

02:07:17.000 So she was not intersex.

02:07:19.000 This woman wasn't. 1.00

02:07:20.000 So did she have a penis? 1.00

02:07:21.000 She did not. 1.00

02:07:22.000 So she had a vagina? 1.00

02:07:23.000 That's correct. 1.00

02:07:24.000 But she had a Y chromosome?

02:07:26.000 That's right.

02:07:27.000 Wow.

02:07:28.000 Right?

02:07:28.000 But then what ends up happening, and again, I've read so many of these arguments, and I want people to have interesting discussions about this, is people will say...

02:07:37.000 They'll look at this, and on one side of the argument, people will be like, well, then she was just, you know, if it's XY, she's a man.

02:07:45.000 That's it. 1.00

02:07:45.000 Like, she's just a man without a penis, right? 1.00

02:07:47.000 She's the outlier of all outliers, right? 0.99

02:07:49.000 So people use outliers to try to break down all of the category.

02:07:52.000 On the other side, people will be like, well, since there are outliers, clearly the categories themselves don't make sense.

02:07:59.000 But that's not true either, right?

02:08:00.000 Obviously the categories for sports of biological males and biological females are very important categories that do make sense.

02:08:08.000 And there are also outliers that make it hard to decide.

02:08:13.000 That's it.

02:08:14.000 And then we have a conversation about the difficulties with the outliers and we try to, at least for my part, we try to embrace the complexity of those situations.

02:08:26.000 Yeah, it's so weird with sports, because with sports, first of all, did you ever see the documentary Icarus?

02:08:34.000 Yes, I did.

02:08:35.000 Well, it highlights, if you haven't seen it folks, it highlights how prevalent cheating is.

02:08:43.000 And so, when you're talking about sports, you're talking about people that are willing to, first of all, push their body, literally, to the brink of failure for success.

02:08:54.000 And then they're also willing to take exogenous drugs to succeed.

02:08:59.000 Then they're also, in this case, Russia was complicit in aiding them and perhaps even forcing them to do this.

02:09:06.000 And they had this elaborate system set up at the Sochi Olympics to cheat.

02:09:10.000 And so when you're talking about sports, that's part of the thing.

02:09:13.000 It's like, everyone wants fair, right?

02:09:18.000 They're looking for fairness. 0.98

02:09:19.000 But what the fuck is fairness? 0.98

02:09:21.000 It's very, very difficult. 0.98

02:09:22.000 It's very weird.

02:09:23.000 And this is something that I've admitted openly with the transgender argument.

02:09:29.000 There are outliers, and there's outliers that are female athletes. 1.00

02:09:34.000 Like, first of all, African American females have the same bone density as a lot of Caucasian men. 0.73

02:09:43.000 The bone density argument's a weird one, because men generally have thicker bone density, particularly men that lift weights have denser bones than females.

02:09:54.000 But some women have dense bones. 1.00

02:09:56.000 You know, there's some women, like... 1.00

02:09:59.000 There's some women fighters that have real knockout power, and then there's some women fighters that just don't. 1.00

02:10:06.000 They just don't, for whatever reason.

02:10:09.000 Structurally, they don't generate the same amount of force.

02:10:12.000 Like, what's fair?

02:10:13.000 What is fair?

02:10:14.000 Because there's some people that are just gifted.

02:10:16.000 They're just gifted physically.

02:10:18.000 This is why sports is so weird.

02:10:19.000 I have no idea how things break down along racial lines, but with Men and women, it's a particularly clear thing and it's also something that we have as a category, right?

02:10:31.000 So then that forces the question on us in a way that That is difficult, right?

02:10:37.000 Like you were saying, what is fair?

02:10:39.000 Every single athlete at a world-class level, in a certain sense, is a freak of nature, right?

02:10:43.000 They all have certain kinds of gifts.

02:10:49.000 Many of them.

02:10:50.000 Some of them are freaks of just will and determination.

02:10:55.000 And that means that...

02:10:58.000 Fairness is going to be a really, really hard thing to pin down.

02:11:01.000 And like you said too, they're going to have training regimens.

02:11:03.000 They're going to be taking all kinds of supplements.

02:11:05.000 They're going to be doing all of these things that are obviously not natural.

02:11:10.000 But at the same time, we want to have rules about what kind of shoes they can wear and what kind of drugs they can take. 0.90

02:11:17.000 And sports are so important to people.

02:11:19.000 They're so symbolically important that I get scared.

02:11:28.000 Honestly, I get scared.

02:11:29.000 I mean, this brings us back sort of to the beginning of the conversation.

02:11:32.000 But I get really scared about the way in which people are going to be able to ultra-process whatever happens.

02:11:41.000 And this is on every side of the debate.

02:11:43.000 What's going to happen is people are going to take whatever they see and they're going to go nuts with it.

02:11:49.000 Right.

02:11:49.000 But that's...

02:11:50.000 That's sort of on them. 0.91

02:11:52.000 It sucks, but it is sort of on them.

02:11:55.000 We really should be embracing these nuanced discussions because this is what's critical for understanding the true nature of things. 0.89

02:12:03.000 And these people that are willfully distorting people's messages and taking these ultra-processed versions, whether it's a clip or a soundbite or even worse, in quotes, a segment with dot, dot, dot at the end, The idea that you can do that and reframe what is really a really nuanced conversation where people are exploring the very nature of Yeah.

02:12:34.000 Yeah.

02:12:36.000 Yeah.

02:12:50.000 It's on them if they want to do that.

02:12:53.000 It sucks that people do do that and that they pretend that your argument is different than it really is, but that's on you. 1.00

02:12:59.000 You're just being a fool. 0.99

02:13:01.000 It sucks that so many people get sucked into these kind of debates and these conversations, but you can't do that to someone face-to-face. 0.99

02:13:08.000 You can't have that conversation with someone in a real setting of sitting down, talking, looking at each other eye-to-eye, because that's the only way people are really supposed to be talking.

02:13:18.000 You can't do it, but it's not...

02:13:20.000 I mean, even if it's on them sort of morally, doesn't it...

02:13:23.000 I mean, it worries me because it ends up changing society.

02:13:26.000 It ends up changing people's lives, for sure.

02:13:29.000 Some people get fired for deception for the same reason, because people are deceptive about what they meant and what they were trying to portray.

02:13:36.000 Or also...

02:13:38.000 That someone could just make a statement, and instead of there being a discussion about that statement, they're fired, and their life is ruined, and they're publicly shamed, and then we get to share it and laugh and mock them, whether it's through an article or a video like that girl with the finger cut, the Black Lives Matter girl. 1.00

02:13:53.000 Or we end up focused on stupid shit, right? 0.99

02:13:55.000 It's like right now, just to take the current example, like police reform, right? 1.00

02:14:00.000 I think that what happens is we get distracted and divided by fringe issues that are fed by the ultra-processed information.

02:14:08.000 So we end up focusing on them, which makes it very difficult to actually...

02:14:12.000 And politicians, like you were saying, right?

02:14:13.000 They're looking at this and they're like, okay, I'm going to have to weigh in on those issues.

02:14:17.000 And so that ends up dividing politicians when, in fact, people agree...

02:14:22.000 On a lot of things.

02:14:23.000 They agree on a lot of things.

02:14:24.000 People want, for example, with the police.

02:14:26.000 As I understand, the vast majority of Americans want police held accountable for using excessive violence.

02:14:34.000 Maybe it is on people for eating the wrong information.

02:14:39.000 It's on me or whatever, becoming polarized.

02:14:41.000 But it ends up making us as a society incapable of getting together and making the changes that we actually all agree on.

02:14:52.000 If we were only able to sit down and talk.

02:14:55.000 I don't think it's on people that eat the wrong information.

02:14:58.000 I think that's very unfortunate.

02:15:00.000 It's on the people who distribute the information deceptively.

02:15:05.000 The people that are distorting, willfully distorting, like someone like you were saying, if we have this conversation, look, we've talked about a bunch of hot-button subjects that could get us canceled. 1.00

02:15:14.000 And you could take any segment of a conversation like that and likely find a few things that people could take out of context and it would spur this whole debate on what a piece of shit you are. 0.99

02:15:27.000 And this is something that people like to do for whatever reason. 0.99

02:15:32.000 They like to willfully distort a nuanced discussion and take a segment out of context and change the narrative and turn it into something it's not.

02:15:42.000 That's on them.

02:15:43.000 That is on them.

02:15:44.000 It's not on the people that listen to it and get sucked into it.

02:15:48.000 I feel for them and I'm sorry and I don't enjoy it when it happens to me.

02:15:53.000 But the people who do that willfully, you are wasting your life distorting reality because you wish things to be a different way or because you're deceptive or because you're bitter or spiteful or angry or hateful or You see in you this other person that you're targeting. 0.98

02:16:11.000 You see in them something that you don't like in yourself or something in a past lover or something in your father or whatever the fuck it is. 0.99

02:16:18.000 You know, that's on you. 0.99

02:16:20.000 That's on you.

02:16:21.000 I can't I can't worry about that.

02:16:22.000 There's not enough time in this life.

02:16:24.000 Yeah, no, it's it's I do agree with I think you're right to like focus on so I'm gonna tell you Let me tell you a story about a terrible person.

02:16:34.000 I feel like we should cue up some spooky music.

02:16:37.000 Yeah, right.

02:16:37.000 So there's this guy.

02:16:39.000 I hope I don't get sued by this guy.

02:16:41.000 Just don't say his name.

02:16:42.000 Yeah.

02:16:43.000 Well, I'm about to say the place that he runs.

02:16:45.000 This is a guy who tells people that he can cure their cancer.

02:16:50.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:16:51.000 You know, cure their cancer naturally, right?

02:16:52.000 He's got the whole, you know, he gives them wheatgrass smoothies, right?

02:16:57.000 And he tells them that if they just think positively and, you know, that big pharma is corrupt and chemotherapy is a sham, and if they just come to his place, which I went to in Florida, Did you go to interview him?

02:17:12.000 I did.

02:17:13.000 I did.

02:17:13.000 I went to interview him because – and he looks like – I mean he just looks like – he's like a caricature of a snake oil salesman.

02:17:19.000 He's got this like artificially tanned skin and like a pointy goatee.

02:17:22.000 And so I think you're totally right.

02:17:26.000 It's on this guy. 0.98

02:17:28.000 This this fucked up guy who is who is getting people's hope up, right? 0.99

02:17:32.000 It's not right because it's also he gets to the people and they could have Seeked sought out real big treatment. 1.00

02:17:40.000 Yeah could be cured and live and people die people die because they go there and the people that were there This was the crazy thing and this is this again gets back to how the ultra processed information is happening These were not idiots man. 0.90

02:17:51.000 These were people who I I don't know what it's like because I've never had, knock on wood, I've never had cancer. 0.92

02:18:00.000 A person very close to me has never had cancer.

02:18:03.000 Like, these are people who, you know, when that happens, you're looking for anyone.

02:18:08.000 You're looking for anyone to tell you a story that gives you a sense that things are actually not chaotic, right?

02:18:13.000 That things are simple, that there's an answer, that there's a community that can help you.

02:18:18.000 And so they go, right?

02:18:20.000 And he taps into that and he gives them what they want, right?

02:18:25.000 In a sense, he gives them what they want, which is a feeling of certainty and belonging and hope.

02:18:33.000 And he's a terrible, terrible human being.

02:18:35.000 But it ends up being really bad for these people. 0.70

02:18:41.000 And it ends up being bad for society in certain ways.

02:18:47.000 And so I struggle, right?

02:18:48.000 And the problem is if you attack that guy, I don't know if you've run into this at all, but if you attack the charlatans, They've been turned into saints by the people that look up to them.

02:18:57.000 So when you attack them, you also end up attacking all of the people...

02:19:03.000 That believe them.

02:19:04.000 Yeah.

02:19:04.000 I've been there before with chiropractors.

02:19:07.000 Yeah.

02:19:07.000 Wait, say a little more?

02:19:09.000 Well, I don't know if you know the history of chiropractors.

02:19:13.000 I do.

02:19:13.000 I have to figure out where you come down on this before I... I think it's nonsense.

02:19:17.000 Yeah, okay. 0.80

02:19:18.000 It's 100% nonsense.

02:19:19.000 It's this.

02:19:20.000 Ready?

02:19:20.000 Right.

02:19:20.000 Me cracking my fingers?

02:19:22.000 That's what they're doing to your back.

02:19:23.000 It's not fixing anything.

02:19:24.000 Chiropractic medicine was created by a guy who was a magnetic healer who came about it through a seance.

02:19:31.000 The idea that he was going to manipulate people's spines and cure them of tuberculosis and blindness. 0.98

02:19:36.000 He was murdered by his son who drove over him with a fucking car and then took over the practice. 0.99

02:19:42.000 And somehow or another this has been grandfathered in. 0.99

02:19:46.000 I told this to a friend of mine the other day who was talking to me about chiropractors.

02:19:49.000 I go, do you know how much time A chiropractor spends in medical school.

02:19:53.000 They go, how much?

02:19:54.000 I go, zero.

02:19:55.000 Zero time.

02:19:56.000 They're a doctor of chiropractic medicine, but they're not a doctor.

02:20:00.000 There's people flipping out right now, though, who have been to their chiropractor, who feel like they've gotten relief, who respect their chiropractor.

02:20:05.000 Well, there's some relief in someone manipulating your body, folks.

02:20:08.000 You should get a deep tissue massage, and you should get an MRI and find out what's really wrong. 0.87

02:20:12.000 I came through this because I used to go to a doctor, a chiropractor, excuse me, and I had a bulging disc, and it was fucking me up for a long time.

02:20:19.000 It was really bothering me.

02:20:20.000 And this chiropractor was assuring me it definitely was not a bulging disc, and there's probably a muscle tear, and we're going to fix it by manipulating this.

02:20:28.000 I'm going to change that and crack and see, oh, I got it there.

02:20:31.000 Let me adjust this, boom, in your hip, this. 1.00

02:20:33.000 It was all horse shit. 0.99

02:20:35.000 But he was a saint compared to another one that I went to. 1.00

02:20:39.000 I'll tell you a story about a guy who was ripping people off.

02:20:42.000 This guy was really ripping people off.

02:20:44.000 He was doing this thing that he called zone healing.

02:20:47.000 Are you ready for this?

02:20:48.000 He would...

02:20:48.000 I'm not bullshitting.

02:20:49.000 He would touch your head and he would press your head here and press your head here, press your head here, and then press it really hard here.

02:20:57.000 And he goes, oh, you feel that?

02:20:59.000 And I go, yeah.

02:21:00.000 And he'd be like, yeah, that's L4 is off. 1.00

02:21:04.000 And I'm like, no, you squeezed hard on my fucking head. 1.00

02:21:06.000 I'm not stupid. 0.99

02:21:07.000 And then he would adjust you and tell you that this is going to fix whatever autoimmune disease you have, whatever this.

02:21:13.000 And so I was going to him because all these other jujitsu people were going to him.

02:21:18.000 And they were all telling me, oh, this guy's great at cracking backs.

02:21:20.000 And he's amazing.

02:21:21.000 He fixed my neck.

02:21:22.000 He fixed my this.

02:21:23.000 Because people want...

02:21:24.000 Someone to fix their thing right if you have a neck injury and you just spend time off and it gets better and you get some treatment from a Chiropractor will heal things heal your body knows how to heal and he goes all he fixed my neck no your fucking neck healed okay things do heal but this person touching your back saying he's fixing your gallbladder is a scam artist right so I had this guy and I'm talking to him and And so I said,

02:21:49.000 well, how does this work?

02:21:50.000 And he's explaining to me, he's got a chart, this is a zone here, this is how we're fixing this and that and that and this.

02:21:54.000 And I said, but all you're doing is pushing down on my back.

02:21:56.000 How are you fixing all these things?

02:21:58.000 And so he tries to give me the shenanigans and a little song and dance.

02:22:01.000 Hey, hey! 0.96

02:22:01.000 And I keep going. 0.96

02:22:02.000 And I say, how are you fixing this?

02:22:04.000 You tell me what is going on here.

02:22:05.000 And so it goes down to the placebo method.

02:22:08.000 He literally tells me.

02:22:09.000 Oh, he said it to you?

02:22:10.000 If you believe, if you believe in these things. 0.99

02:22:12.000 I go, so you're telling me I have to be so fucking dumb To think that if you push on my back, it's going to fix my liver. 0.99

02:22:19.000 And then it will fix my liver. 0.99

02:22:21.000 He goes, well, you do know the placebo method does work.

02:22:24.000 I go, so you're taking money from people to lie to them.

02:22:28.000 So we have this tense conversation in his office. 0.89

02:22:32.000 And I'm looking at him, and I know this guy's got a nice house, and he's got a nice car, and he's just fucking stealing money from people by giving them these false hopes. 0.98

02:22:41.000 It's creepy shit, man, and it's really creepy shit when you're alone with a guy and you're talking to him about it, and you get him to say it's the placebo method. 0.99

02:22:49.000 And meanwhile, other than that, nice guy, which is even more fucked up. 1.00

02:22:54.000 Like, I knew him. 0.97

02:22:56.000 Like, he seemed like a nice guy.

02:22:57.000 I didn't even know chiropractor I mean, the history of it, I mean, like you said, right, if you look into it, it's sort of hard to believe that people, like, it's still a thing.

02:23:08.000 It's hard to believe that insurance covers it.

02:23:09.000 Yeah, and this goes back to the religion stuff, too.

02:23:12.000 I mean, I got into all of this stuff.

02:23:14.000 So, like, my actual area of academic expertise is classical Chinese philosophy.

02:23:20.000 So, like...

02:23:20.000 That's what I did as an academic.

02:23:25.000 And I read all these ancient Taoist texts and stuff like that.

02:23:28.000 And there's all these promises in there about, you know, if you take my, you know, mercury mixed at night with this, and you eat in this way.

02:23:36.000 And I'm looking at this stuff.

02:23:38.000 You know, this seems very familiar, right?

02:23:41.000 There's a lot of that going on today.

02:23:44.000 And then you look at the history of chiropractic, and there are these vital forces, right?

02:23:49.000 Homeopathy is a similar thing.

02:23:50.000 There's vital forces that are actually what's causing illness.

02:23:53.000 And if you look at the history of that, it's quasi-religious.

02:23:55.000 Reiki, which is like the energy healing, right?

02:23:58.000 They didn't even touch you, right?

02:24:00.000 Right.

02:24:00.000 And it's these words.

02:24:01.000 I mean, it's really interesting.

02:24:02.000 These words, energy.

02:24:04.000 Is one of these words that can easily slide from explicitly religious to seemingly secular, right?

02:24:11.000 It's like, oh yeah, energy.

02:24:12.000 That's in physics.

02:24:13.000 They have energy, right?

02:24:14.000 But it's like...

02:24:15.000 No, this is a thing.

02:24:16.000 They're not manipulating your energy.

02:24:18.000 There's not something scientific happening here.

02:24:20.000 This is a religious ritual, a healing ritual disguised as some kind of science.

02:24:27.000 And yet, as you know, and this is what I discovered with my first book, I used to joke with people like, I got out of religion because I didn't want to talk about touchy stuff.

02:24:34.000 And then I started talking about food and medicine.

02:24:37.000 And that was when people really got pissed.

02:24:40.000 When you start to talk about what they eat.

02:24:43.000 So you got out of religion just because you didn't want these uncomfortable conversations?

02:24:46.000 I'm joking.

02:24:47.000 I stopped doing religion.

02:24:51.000 Not stopped doing, because I still do scholarship stuff.

02:24:54.000 But I wanted to talk about it in a way that was relevant.

02:24:59.000 I think?

02:25:15.000 You know, acupuncture is natural, right?

02:25:17.000 Or whatever.

02:25:18.000 And that's and that's part of why it works.

02:25:19.000 Like acupuncture, they got stainless steel phyloform needles.

02:25:22.000 You think those who were around when the Yellow Emperor was writing his classic?

02:25:24.000 Like, no, they don't.

02:25:26.000 And when people talk about Chinese medicine, they don't talk about, you know, exorcism.

02:25:30.000 Exorcism is not a thing.

02:25:31.000 It was very popular back in the day, but that's not something people embrace.

02:25:34.000 And so I saw these weird uncritical embraces of of dietary regimens and healing rituals.

02:25:42.000 That to me were just obviously right out of, you know, ancient China or, you know, any ancient context where people would never believe them.

02:25:50.000 And yet today, you know, you're going in and you're having your back cracked.

02:25:54.000 It's so weird that it's so prevalent.

02:25:56.000 But push back on it.

02:25:57.000 Oh, I've experienced it.

02:25:59.000 I'm going to experience it now.

02:26:00.000 Oh, no.

02:26:00.000 It's not what's going to happen.

02:26:02.000 100%.

02:26:03.000 I don't read social media, luckily, so I'm not going to hear from it.

02:26:07.000 And let me do say this.

02:26:08.000 There's a bunch of people that are chiropractors that do use some valid methods for rehabilitation.

02:26:14.000 There's a lot of them that use deep tissue massage, cold laser therapy, actual real methods.

02:26:19.000 A lot of them use rolfing.

02:26:23.000 There's a lot of them that use a bunch of different methods of stretching that are very beneficial. 0.99

02:26:28.000 But the practice of cracking backs to cure disease is fucking nonsense. 0.99

02:26:33.000 And that's a problem. 0.99

02:26:34.000 And the practice of calling yourself a doctor of that is also nonsense.

02:26:40.000 It really is.

02:26:41.000 And it's a problem.

02:26:43.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:26:44.000 Absolutely.

02:26:45.000 But at the same time, again, and I don't know, I keep saying you know this, but it must be...

02:26:53.000 Difficult.

02:26:53.000 When people are in pain, right?

02:26:55.000 When people are in pain, when you're in pain, either psychic pain or physical pain, you really need someone to tell you they have an answer for you and to explain it and fit it into a system.

02:27:09.000 They can say to you, I know why you're sad.

02:27:12.000 I know why you feel empty. 1.00

02:27:13.000 I know why your fucking back hurts. 1.00

02:27:15.000 It's because of this simple thing. 1.00

02:27:18.000 And I have the answer.

02:27:20.000 I'm going to fix it.

02:27:21.000 I'm going to fix it.

02:27:22.000 And actually just hearing that itself is therapeutic.

02:27:26.000 It really is.

02:27:27.000 And that's the problem with going to a healer.

02:27:31.000 Because there's many people that have gone to people that have claimed to be a healer.

02:27:36.000 And just this process of embracing this new...

02:27:41.000 New situation there's like I am here.

02:27:44.000 I'm getting healed.

02:27:45.000 Oh my god, it's happening and you're a lot of what makes people ill is Anxiety is stress and the placebo effect of having some sort of a in your mind Perceived solution does have tangible physical benefits for some strange reason which is really weird like what what goes on the human mind there is an unbelievably crazy I think it's a Netflix special.

02:28:12.000 It's a guy who's a magician, a professional magician, but he also comes from like a religious background where he would go to these faith healing revivals.

02:28:20.000 And he does a show where he tells his audience this flat out.

02:28:25.000 He says, I'm a magician.

02:28:26.000 I specialize in manipulating your minds. 1.00

02:28:28.000 And I know that the way that faith healing works is bullshit. 0.99

02:28:33.000 And I'm going to show you by faith-healing people tonight in this audience. 0.98

02:28:38.000 I'm going to do it right now, but I want you to know that I'm just manipulating you, right?

02:28:42.000 Is it Darren Brown?

02:28:43.000 Is that his name?

02:28:45.000 And then he goes and heals people.

02:28:47.000 Darren's been on the podcast.

02:28:48.000 He's amazing.

02:28:49.000 I'm watching them and they're going up and he's like, and was it your back?

02:28:52.000 And was it this?

02:28:53.000 And they're like, oh my God, how did you know?

02:28:54.000 I feel better.

02:28:55.000 I've never felt this good in my life.

02:28:57.000 And it's unbelievable, really, because you realize that Certain forms of communication are just inherently powerful.

02:29:07.000 They're symbolically powerful and they can make people feel...

02:29:11.000 Yeah, it is Dan Brown.

02:29:12.000 Dan Brown's amazing.

02:29:15.000 I mean, it was just unbelievable.

02:29:16.000 Yeah.

02:29:17.000 He's a really brilliant human being in many ways.

02:29:21.000 And talking to him about his process of how long he sets these things up and some of the things that he...

02:29:29.000 He's done several of these Netflix specials.

02:29:32.000 Incredible.

02:29:32.000 He's amazing.

02:29:33.000 This is what people do with natural stuff, though.

02:29:35.000 This is what they do.

02:29:36.000 You go into a store.

02:29:37.000 You're stressed out.

02:29:38.000 You don't know what's going on.

02:29:39.000 You've got a chronic condition.

02:29:41.000 There is a way in which buying something natural and consuming it, the ritual of that says to you, You're gonna be better.

02:29:48.000 You're a part of a system that is simple, in which there are good things and bad things, and there's a solution to your problems.

02:29:54.000 But there is also the reality of some natural foods being incredibly good for you.

02:30:00.000 That's true.

02:30:00.000 And there's also the reality of some diets being incredibly poor in nutrients, and really the result of that, of eating those diets, is you get really sick, and if you eat the nutrient-rich diets, your body turns around.

02:30:14.000 That's true, too.

02:30:15.000 That's also true.

02:30:15.000 That's exactly.

02:30:16.000 I wish that that's true, too.

02:30:19.000 Yeah.

02:30:21.000 Yeah, that's exactly it.

02:30:24.000 And that's and that's where I mean, you know, what's weird is that most of the experts I talked with for my book, they were actually nuanced.

02:30:33.000 You know, I talked to environmental activists who were there.

02:30:37.000 They are activists, right?

02:30:38.000 They really want to change the world for the better.

02:30:40.000 They care a lot about this stuff, but they're also very nuanced.

02:30:42.000 They're like, you know, nuclear energy is a complicated issue.

02:30:44.000 Like, here's why I think it's complicated, or here's why genetically modified organisms...

02:30:47.000 Like, they were always relentlessly stressing how nuanced things are and how complicated things are.

02:30:54.000 And I feel like if there's one thing, although now I'm making it simple, right?

02:30:57.000 But if there's one thing that's going to...

02:30:58.000 Look, the one thing that will fix everything is nuance. 1.00

02:31:02.000 Sort of a stupid take. 1.00

02:31:05.000 That's a funny way of putting it, right? 1.00

02:31:07.000 Yeah.

02:31:09.000 But nuance and not being married to your ideas is very, very important.

02:31:13.000 Yeah, so let's not hold people accountable for it.

02:31:15.000 But that's a big part of why people are using the internet.

02:31:19.000 They're trying to score points and shoot people down and cancel people and expose people and get mad at people.

02:31:27.000 And they're doing it to elevate themselves.

02:31:29.000 It's a big part of why they're doing it.

02:31:31.000 Really, it's just you're robbing yourself of time and focus and energy that you could be spending on important things.

02:31:38.000 And this is not, again, to say like what you were talking about before about exposing police brutality or corruption.

02:31:42.000 There's important things to expose that are really, like, there's people who are being victimized.

02:31:48.000 But that's not what we're talking about here.

02:31:50.000 What we're talking about is a general human tendency to tear people down.

02:31:54.000 And it's very negative.

02:31:56.000 And it feels like you should be doing it for some strange reason.

02:31:59.000 While you're doing it, there's like some satisfaction. 0.77

02:32:00.000 Like if you have a rock and you see a window, and you just fucking chuck that rock at the window and it smashes, and a bunch of people behind you go, yeah! 0.81

02:32:07.000 It feels good. 0.82

02:32:08.000 And I don't know why.

02:32:09.000 It's part of being a person.

02:32:11.000 It's the same reason, I guess, eating junk food feels good.

02:32:16.000 It's tapped into all of these things.

02:32:18.000 Just use the internet to find out about stuff.

02:32:21.000 Just even in this show, how many times have we been able to bring up a video of something or a shot of something?

02:32:28.000 It was constructive.

02:32:29.000 I learned things.

02:32:30.000 There are plenty of ways...

02:32:33.000 To use the internet well, and I do think you're right.

02:32:36.000 We've got to hold people. 0.64

02:32:36.000 If people are fucking designing social media to make it compulsively addictive, We didn't think there's anything wrong with that when it was first instituted. 0.64

02:32:47.000 That's the problem. 0.99

02:32:48.000 I remember.

02:32:49.000 I was undergrad at Stanford when Facebook was first happening.

02:32:53.000 This guy smoked bowls with and played guitars.

02:32:55.000 Now developed the Facebook feed.

02:32:57.000 Oh my god. 0.98

02:32:58.000 He's the devil. 0.99

02:33:01.000 He didn't know what he was doing. 0.98

02:33:03.000 I know, I'm sure.

02:33:03.000 He was just like some kid that was like, this is incredible.

02:33:06.000 But then they didn't design it.

02:33:08.000 They didn't design it with everybody's best interests in mind.

02:33:11.000 They didn't design it to really make sure that people would use it the right way and not the wrong way.

02:33:18.000 Well, that's the thing about the YouTube algorithm.

02:33:20.000 My friend Ari had this experiment that he did.

02:33:23.000 People were talking about the YouTube algorithm that it sort of – there's one thing about Facebook and YouTube and a lot of these things.

02:33:30.000 People will make this argument that the algorithm favors arguments.

02:33:35.000 It favors – it pulls up things that you get upset with, particularly Facebook.

02:33:40.000 And that it's trying to manipulate you into using it much more often because it turns out that people engage much more in things they disagree with than things they agree with.

02:33:51.000 So what he decided to do was only YouTube puppies.

02:33:55.000 And so he just YouTubed all these videos of puppies.

02:33:59.000 So his feed was just filled with puppy stuff.

02:34:02.000 And all his suggestions were puppy stuff.

02:34:04.000 And he's like, no, it's not that it's trying to make you upset.

02:34:08.000 It's that you're trying to make yourself upset.

02:34:11.000 And it's taking advantage of that.

02:34:13.000 This goes to Salatin, something Salatin talked about.

02:34:16.000 Here's another analogy, I think, for information that's really helpful.

02:34:19.000 Monocultures versus polycultures, right? 0.77

02:34:21.000 I think that our current information ecosystem is set up to give us all a monoculture of information.

02:34:28.000 It's like, okay, here's what this person wants.

02:34:31.000 I'm just going to feed them a lot of puppies and only puppies.

02:34:36.000 Here's the information this person wants.

02:34:37.000 I'm going to feed them more of that.

02:34:39.000 And what you end up is...

02:34:41.000 A homogenization of what it is that's coming into you when what you need is a kind of intellectual polyculture, right?

02:34:47.000 You want something resilient where there's people, you know, where there's different systems in place so that you don't just have one big system so that you can have other ideas.

02:34:56.000 I mean, intellectually, this is what comedians often did, right?

02:34:59.000 Or jesters.

02:35:00.000 I mean, this is something I work on academically is this idea like, you know, you have the king and the king is the authority, but the king will have a jester.

02:35:08.000 I think?

02:35:26.000 Monoculture.

02:35:27.000 Intellectual and moral monoculture.

02:35:30.000 And I honestly think, I mean, I think you were talking about South Park the other day, but one thing that I struggle with now is that I feel like the jesters these days They're just confirming what it is that their viewers already believe.

02:35:46.000 So with South Park, I didn't know whether I was going to agree with what they were mocking or whether I was going to be shocked.

02:35:52.000 You never knew.

02:35:53.000 That's a gross generalization, though, in terms of gestures because there's so many different styles of comedians.

02:35:58.000 Well, you can access them in a way that makes it so that you don't have to hear anything you don't want.

02:36:03.000 But you don't know what they're going to say.

02:36:06.000 I kind of know what John Oliver is going to say.

02:36:08.000 Well, John Oliver is a different kind of an animal.

02:36:11.000 And his stand-up, what he's doing is he's got this show where he mocks things and it's got a very heavy left-wing bend to it.

02:36:23.000 Right.

02:36:23.000 Well, Jon Stewart, I felt like I knew what Jon Stewart was going to say.

02:36:26.000 And it's not to say I didn't like it.

02:36:28.000 He was funny.

02:36:28.000 And I agreed with him and I watched him.

02:36:30.000 I mean, a lot of maybe this is just what people, you know, conservatives say this.

02:36:32.000 And I think they're right, is that there's a bent to late night.

02:36:34.000 Like, I'm not going to tune into Stephen Colbert and be shocked.

02:36:39.000 That he's mocking something that I didn't expect him to mock.

02:36:42.000 Well, what's interesting, that's true.

02:36:43.000 But Colbert, he's a Catholic.

02:36:47.000 Heavy-duty Catholic, which is really weird. 0.70

02:36:49.000 I wish he would talk about that more.

02:36:51.000 He has a few times.

02:36:53.000 Does he?

02:36:53.000 But it gets real weird.

02:36:55.000 It gets almost like he's holding a hot potato and he can't wait to drop it.

02:37:01.000 I wonder if that's because it doesn't fit with the...

02:37:05.000 I don't know.

02:37:05.000 I don't know, man.

02:37:06.000 I mean, first of all, there was the character that he was doing, you know, when he was doing the Colbert Report, which was this, like, really cocky Republican character.

02:37:14.000 And then he went over to do the Stephen Colbert show, and now it's not that anymore.

02:37:20.000 Now it's like he's hosting a talk show.

02:37:23.000 But it's the guy that we knew who was, like, super ultra-cocky and really funny from The Daily Show that was like a parody of a right-wing guy It's very odd.

02:37:35.000 It's a weird progression.

02:37:37.000 I wonder that you think that there are jesters because I want to...

02:37:39.000 Although I think he's very funny.

02:37:40.000 Yeah, he's hilarious.

02:37:41.000 Well, that's the thing.

02:37:41.000 Being funny doesn't...

02:37:43.000 There are plenty of funny people who aren't jesters, right? 0.99

02:37:45.000 I like when he fucks with Trump. 0.98

02:37:47.000 I think it's hilarious. 0.99

02:37:48.000 That he gets Trump to reply, and he's like, you made a mistake.

02:37:51.000 You replied.

02:37:52.000 Like, you reacted to me.

02:37:54.000 It was crazy to be in that.

02:37:56.000 So tell me a gesture, because I want, what I want, I want to be able to, I want to be able to watch people who are going to sometimes make me feel like I was I was right and they're gonna be mocking someone that I that I disagree with and then I also want and then two seconds later I mean this happens a little bit with Dave Chappelle I see like oh Dave's the best at it But there's a guy named Andrew Schultz who's thriving during this lockdown because he can't do stand-up and he's doing on his Instagram

02:38:27.000 He does these really well-produced videos where he'll take down a subject I don't even want to give you an example, but he's got a bunch of them out there, but he's fantastic at it.

02:38:40.000 He's really good at it.

02:38:41.000 And he's also independent, and he's a wild, young, really funny comedian, and he doesn't have any affiliation.

02:38:49.000 He's not stuck in this left-wing paradigm, or he's not a right-wing person.

02:38:54.000 He's not in any way, shape, or form. 0.99

02:38:56.000 So he's just like, what's this bullshit? 1.00

02:38:59.000 Here's the problem with these motherfuckers. 1.00

02:39:01.000 And then he goes on these. 1.00

02:39:03.000 That's him right there.

02:39:03.000 He's fantastic.

02:39:04.000 Oh, yeah, he's got a new one.

02:39:06.000 Fake woke activism no one asked for.

02:39:09.000 But they're great.

02:39:11.000 And they're all like 10, 15 minutes long. 0.99

02:39:14.000 And then he fucking nails it. 0.98

02:39:16.000 It's really, really good stuff. 0.98

02:39:19.000 Is there anyone out there who mocks the anti-woke people?

02:39:22.000 The anti-woke people.

02:39:23.000 You know what I mean?

02:39:24.000 The people that are like, all you need is rationality and free thinking.

02:39:27.000 I'm sure.

02:39:28.000 Yeah, I'm sure there's someone out there.

02:39:31.000 There's probably some heavy-duty left-wing people that are mocking.

02:39:35.000 Oh, you're right.

02:39:36.000 Yeah.

02:39:36.000 Yeah, I'm sure.

02:39:37.000 Maybe it's on me.

02:39:39.000 Well, I mean, we got a problem in ideology world, right?

02:39:44.000 We've got a problem with these very strict left versus right things.

02:39:49.000 You know, it's really weird.

02:39:50.000 And I've been acutely aware of it because I've been so often accused of being right-wing for the most bizarre reasons.

02:39:57.000 Mostly because of the way I look and because I'm a commentator for the UFC. And, you know, I'm a meathead.

02:40:04.000 I look like a meathead.

02:40:04.000 I'm a hunter.

02:40:05.000 All these different things.

02:40:06.000 I get accused of being...

02:40:08.000 And then, you know, it turns out I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter, and I lean way more towards progressive ideas, but I also support the Second Amendment.

02:40:16.000 It's like people have this idea in their head that you have to be in these hard lines, and if you're not, you're not a part of a tribe, and you get ostracized by that tribe.

02:40:25.000 And there's a very real stigma attached to that, and you feel that stigma when people attack you for your ideas.

02:40:31.000 And so people lean in to what gets them love and lean away from what gets them chastised.

02:40:36.000 Yeah, well, I feel like I don't have a...

02:40:37.000 I mean, one thing that I feel these days is I feel very politically homeless.

02:40:42.000 Yes.

02:40:43.000 And I think there's a deep...

02:40:45.000 Because...

02:40:46.000 And I don't like the moderates either because I don't feel moderate because there's some stuff I'm not moderate about. 0.97

02:40:51.000 It's like, no, there's some shit that's really bad and we need to change it. 0.97

02:40:54.000 Right. 0.99

02:40:55.000 Now.

02:40:56.000 Yeah.

02:40:56.000 And so the, you know, and like you were saying, right, I think it's just that we want labels and simplicity, right?

02:41:02.000 And so if you have, if we look at things on an issue by issue, case by case basis, then we don't have a category to fit ourselves into.

02:41:09.000 And that's obviously since the beginning of time, right?

02:41:11.000 This is what religions often provide, right? 0.99

02:41:12.000 It's like, well, here is what I believe in.

02:41:14.000 I am this kind of person and that word, you know, I'm Muslim or I'm Christian or Protestant, that word describes who I am.

02:41:21.000 It gives me an identity.

02:41:22.000 But then that locks you into all kinds of stuff.

02:41:25.000 Yes, it does.

02:41:26.000 It does.

02:41:26.000 And people lean into that.

02:41:27.000 And oftentimes people don't even have their own opinions.

02:41:30.000 They have an established set of opinions they've adopted because they're this or they're that.

02:41:35.000 They're right or they're left.

02:41:36.000 They're Christian or they're atheist.

02:41:39.000 I really think, as we were talking about earlier, that being woke is very akin to being religious.

02:41:45.000 Being anti-woke is akin to being atheist.

02:41:48.000 There's a lot of people that are rabidly atheist, the same way someone is an evangelical Christian.

02:41:54.000 I mean, they have no room for religion being positive.

02:41:58.000 And if you say there's some positive aspects of religion, I think it's a moral scaffolding for people.

02:42:03.000 I think it gives people hope.

02:42:04.000 It improves the quality of their life.

02:42:06.000 It establishes a community amongst other people that also share values.

02:42:09.000 And there's real positive benefits to that.

02:42:11.000 That's exactly how I was with the natural thing.

02:42:14.000 I went in like an atheist, right? 1.00

02:42:16.000 I was like, this is so stupid. 1.00

02:42:18.000 These people are all stupid. 1.00

02:42:19.000 And then I came out and I was like, no, there are some good things about it. 1.00

02:42:22.000 That's exactly it.

02:42:24.000 There's actually, it's funny, like one of the things, so a project I was working on way back in the day was a podcast about people who shift.

02:42:31.000 It's called Shift.

02:42:32.000 And we were looking at people who fundamentally, who changed their minds on really, really important things.

02:42:38.000 So we did one episode on this guy, Scott Shepard.

02:42:41.000 You actually had Daryl Davis on.

02:42:42.000 So this is a related thing.

02:42:43.000 So Scott Shepard was this guy.

02:42:44.000 It's an insane story who was, and I don't want to give away too much about this, but like he started very much not a racist.

02:42:52.000 Ended up in the KKK and then left the KKK. And what I wanted to understand, and what I think maybe this is something we just need to investigate right now, is what is it that causes people to break out of whatever ideological label it is that they have?

02:43:11.000 There was another guy that we did another episode on.

02:43:13.000 That was where it ended for now.

02:43:15.000 So he was like a Greenpeace activist.

02:43:18.000 Like, he was one of those guys who would go in, tear up GMO crops, right?

02:43:21.000 Now he's pro-GMO. I don't care about whether or not GMOs are good or bad.

02:43:28.000 That's not the point of the episode for me.

02:43:30.000 For me, it's like, how does that happen?

02:43:32.000 What is it that changes you?

02:43:33.000 You should interview Candace Owens.

02:43:36.000 Yeah!

02:43:36.000 Yeah, because Candace Owens ran an anti-Trump website, and then she became a hard-line right-winger.

02:43:42.000 Right, and I just want to know, how does that happen?

02:43:44.000 What are the things?

02:43:45.000 And it's obviously going to be all kinds of stuff, right?

02:43:46.000 Because it's the people around you.

02:43:48.000 There's so many variables, but it's also what you choose to focus on.

02:43:52.000 You know, sometimes there's a lot of gravity in shifting to another perspective.

02:43:58.000 Like, and people start rewarding you for that and praising you for that.

02:44:02.000 And then the wrong people criticize you for that so you feel like you're on the right track. 1.00

02:44:07.000 You know, you get morons that call you an asshole for having a different perspective. 1.00

02:44:12.000 Yeah, and that one thing, right? 1.00

02:44:13.000 One moment of being hurt or one discovery of betrayal or whatever.

02:44:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:44:22.000 Yeah, we're at an adolescent stage of interpretation of ideas.

02:44:26.000 That's what I think.

02:44:27.000 We really are.

02:44:28.000 And of communication.

02:44:29.000 And I think that what we're doing with social media and the internet in general is we are far more connected than ever before, but in many ways far more segregated and segmented and far more rigid in our ideas and the echo chambers have never been stronger.

02:44:48.000 And I think that The next leap of technology, and I've had Elon on, and he discussed his Neuralink, which is really fascinating stuff because it's going to require surgery.

02:45:00.000 Like, people are literally going to get holes drilled.

02:45:02.000 Very unnatural. 0.99

02:45:03.000 Fucking super unnatural. 0.99

02:45:04.000 I mean, as unnatural as fillings. 1.00

02:45:06.000 But they're going to drill holes in your head, and they're going to put literal wires into your brain, and you're going to have a device attached to your skull.

02:45:16.000 And he said it's like a quarter-sized device. 1.00

02:45:20.000 Device on your fucking head. 0.94

02:45:22.000 It's gonna Bluetooth up to your phone and you're gonna be able to access information and your bandwidth that you're gonna be able to access information now is gonna be radically increased and The way he describes it It varies between the way he describes it when it seems like he's trying very hard to make it palatable versus when he sees the actual future potential of it, 0.97

02:45:48.000 which is we're not going to be the same thing anymore.

02:45:51.000 Just like, you're not the same thing.

02:45:54.000 It's like when I was a kid, people would lie about stuff.

02:45:57.000 And you really, there's no way to check.

02:45:59.000 You know, they could say, like, I won the Olympics 16 times and I was the fastest man ever. 1.00

02:46:03.000 And you'd be like, whoa, who the fuck are you? 0.99

02:46:05.000 Like, there's no way to check. 1.00

02:46:07.000 Now you could go, what's your name? 1.00

02:46:09.000 And then you pull out your phone and in five seconds, you know the person's full of shit. 0.99

02:46:13.000 So we've changed radically in our ability to assess whether things are accurate or inaccurate and whether someone's a liar or not. 0.98

02:46:20.000 I think much like that, the next leaps of technology are going to completely change Our understanding of motivation, of emotions, of what is causing someone to have a deceptive narrative that they're trying to push forth,

02:46:37.000 and we're going to be able to see these things.

02:46:38.000 We're going to be able to access this information in a very different way, and it's going to change what we are as human beings.

02:46:45.000 We're going to have some sort of cyborg capacity, and it's going to radically elevate our ability to understand things and to communicate, and that's Weirdly enough, probably our only hope.

02:47:00.000 You think it'll be good?

02:47:01.000 I mean, here we are talking about ultra-processed information.

02:47:03.000 But we're stuck with this.

02:47:05.000 We're stuck with this.

02:47:07.000 Ultra-processed information is here.

02:47:09.000 And unless we can technology our way out of this, I don't think we're going to get better at this.

02:47:17.000 If someone said, okay, no more social media.

02:47:20.000 The social media we have now, we keep forever.

02:47:23.000 Nothing but YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.

02:47:28.000 That's it!

02:47:29.000 Forever!

02:47:29.000 And, you know, they can randomly decide you violated their terms of service and ban you.

02:47:34.000 And there's no room for conservative thought.

02:47:37.000 And they'll blackball people for the most ridiculous ideas because most of these people that are running these organizations are super woke.

02:47:44.000 So what happens then? 1.00

02:47:45.000 Well, we're fucked. 0.99

02:47:46.000 And it's literally pushing us towards the point of at least an ideological civil war. 1.00

02:47:53.000 That's where we're at right now.

02:47:54.000 Just solving it with a brain implant feels like solving the food system with bariatric surgery.

02:47:59.000 You know what I mean?

02:48:00.000 It's just like, okay, we've got this food system, so what we're going to do...

02:48:03.000 I'm not necessarily thinking that a brain surgery is the only way to solve it, but I do think that technology and more emergent technology is probably what's going to get us out of this.

02:48:15.000 What you were talking about earlier in the tweet that really resonated with me about ultra-processed information, I think we need something that has far more depth to it.

02:48:31.000 Something that works and distributes information in a far more nuanced and a far more transparent way and I think we're going to move in that direction and we're gonna move in that direction because it seems like technology is moving everything Towards greater and more prevalent connectivity,

02:48:52.000 right?

02:48:52.000 You can get better internet access everywhere.

02:48:55.000 Everything is instant.

02:48:56.000 We're live streaming and tweeting and all this different stuff.

02:48:59.000 It's moving us towards some ultimate moment of intense connectivity.

02:49:05.000 And I think we're going to be able to read each other's minds.

02:49:07.000 That's one of the things that Elon said.

02:49:08.000 He said, you're going to be able to talk without using your mouth.

02:49:12.000 And I think he's right.

02:49:13.000 And I think that's what's going to happen.

02:49:15.000 God, we're turning so bad, though.

02:49:17.000 I don't know if that's necessarily the future, though.

02:49:19.000 It could be better.

02:49:20.000 I think we're going to be able to read thoughts and emotions in a way where you'll know that someone's being a baby.

02:49:27.000 You know someone's being a child.

02:49:29.000 You'll know someone's being deceptive.

02:49:31.000 You'll be able to see these things.

02:49:51.000 What a terrifying world.

02:49:52.000 And that, I understand where they're coming from, right?

02:49:55.000 It's like this thought that, like, we're all sort of laid bare to each other.

02:49:58.000 But also, like, it's great that we can keep things private.

02:50:01.000 Like, what we live in right now is this sort of grassroots, I mean, I call it a grassroots panopticon, right?

02:50:06.000 We're all watching each other, but it's not the government.

02:50:08.000 It's not Big Brother.

02:50:09.000 We're Big Brother, right?

02:50:10.000 And that, I want to keep stuff, I like, I like, like, I don't want you to look at my brain.

02:50:17.000 Yeah.

02:50:17.000 I know what you're saying, and I agree with you to a certain extent.

02:50:20.000 However, I'm a stand-up comic, and one of the things that I love about being a stand-up comic is my friends are all brutally honest, and they fuck with me, and we fuck with each other. 0.97

02:50:32.000 Like if I said, do you like this shirt? 1.00

02:50:33.000 And he'd be like, no, dummy, it looks stupid on you. 0.99

02:50:36.000 They would say something like that, and we'd both be like, ah! 1.00

02:50:38.000 They would say to them, like, do you think I gained weight? 1.00

02:50:40.000 Like, you know you gain weight, motherfucker? 1.00

02:50:42.000 Get on the scale, you fat fuck. 1.00

02:50:43.000 And they'll say that to you, and they start laughing. 1.00

02:50:47.000 There's no, in the comedy world, like in the world of my friends, there's no room for dishonesty.

02:50:53.000 And if they think you're bullshitting, they don't want to talk to you, because it's no fun.

02:50:56.000 I think comedians are uniquely strong in that way, though.

02:50:59.000 So as someone, too, right?

02:51:00.000 For me, my thing was rationality.

02:51:02.000 I liked rationality.

02:51:03.000 I was like, oh, we have a good argument.

02:51:04.000 I'll just have a logical argument with you, right? 1.00

02:51:06.000 But one of the things I realized, and this one, when I was there at that place in Florida where this fucking charlatan is killing people, We're good to go. 0.99

02:51:33.000 That's just not the, that's not, they're gonna suffer. 0.99

02:51:36.000 I agree.

02:51:37.000 They're gonna suffer.

02:51:38.000 No, I agree.

02:51:39.000 I think you're right about that, that there's certain people that you really shouldn't like, you know, if you're talking to a delicate person, and they ask you a question, and there's nothing wrong with just being complimentary.

02:51:49.000 You look great!

02:51:50.000 You look great!

02:51:51.000 I like doing that too.

02:51:52.000 I have a kid!

02:51:53.000 One of my things, my wife.

02:51:55.000 So my kid would come to me with drawings, right?

02:51:56.000 You're like, you know, kid comes with a drawing, right?

02:51:58.000 And she'd be like, Dad, look at this.

02:51:59.000 And I'd be like, oh. 1.00

02:52:00.000 That looks like shit. 0.99

02:52:01.000 I was like, Hazel, that's not your best work. 1.00

02:52:04.000 And my wife is like, what the, you fucking monster? 1.00

02:52:07.000 What is wrong with you? 1.00

02:52:08.000 And I was like, well, I should just, I don't want her to like, and she's like, no, it's a kid.

02:52:12.000 She just wants love from her dad.

02:52:14.000 You tell her like, that's a great, you know, did a great job.

02:52:16.000 And I don't want to infantilize adults, but like, there are times when I am, when I just need, You know, love or like I need someone to keep their thoughts to themselves.

02:52:25.000 And yeah, I don't know.

02:52:28.000 I know what you mean.

02:52:29.000 I don't know.

02:52:30.000 I haven't been in a lot of pain, Joe, is the truth.

02:52:32.000 I haven't.

02:52:32.000 I've been.

02:52:33.000 I've led this charmed life.

02:52:34.000 I've led it on.

02:52:34.000 Someone said like I've led it on difficulty level, like pretty easy setting, you know, my personally life.

02:52:41.000 And like I've been lucky.

02:52:43.000 I haven't been, like, super sick.

02:52:45.000 Like, who knows what kinds of crazy healing therapies I would be into.

02:52:49.000 I mean, there's a guy at Duke who specializes in ALS, Rick Bedlack.

02:52:55.000 Photos of him are incredible because he dresses in wonky outfits, like flashy, like tuxedos and crazy ties and stuff.

02:53:02.000 And I was like, Rick, why do you dress in all these outfits?

02:53:05.000 And he's like, because it's the best thing I can offer ever.

02:53:09.000 My patients is these is I don't I can't tell them the scientific studies.

02:53:13.000 They're not here for that, right?

02:53:15.000 I don't have anything to offer my ALS patients in terms of like science or rationality.

02:53:19.000 But what I can do is just make them feel lighthearted for a moment.

02:53:24.000 And I was like, do you tell them like when they come into the office, do you tell them like the truth?

02:53:27.000 You know, which is like basically like you're you're done for, you know, and he's like, you know, obviously not right.

02:53:32.000 You don't just tell people who are in pain.

02:53:37.000 The truth or at least you don't there's there's I don't know for me.

02:53:40.000 I've really pulled back from I've really pulled back really recently from the idea that truth-telling is the way to engage with people who are in pain, right?

02:53:53.000 I think a lot of what we're seeing right now with Black Lives Matter, a lot of what we see with transgender activism, all of the hot-button political issues often, right?

02:54:01.000 Change is there are groups of people who have been in pain for a very long time and individuals within those groups have been in pain.

02:54:10.000 And I don't know.

02:54:11.000 I think it's just important to sort of acknowledge that.

02:54:13.000 And I had a lot of trouble doing that.

02:54:14.000 I would be like, well, here's the truth.

02:54:16.000 Like, here's your situation and here's how you need to fix it.

02:54:17.000 And like, but that's not, I don't know.

02:54:19.000 That's not necessarily, it doesn't work and it's not necessarily what people want.

02:54:23.000 Yeah, well, in those two particular subjects too, you're dealing with people that are, that will get very upset if you do offer anything that, anything that contradicts their narrative.

02:54:41.000 If someone's in pain or if someone's like literally trying, I mean if you're trying to change a situation for the better, You can always throw nuance in.

02:54:49.000 You can always have a logical argument about something.

02:54:52.000 But I've become...

02:54:53.000 And I'm not saying, like, don't say stuff.

02:54:55.000 I'm very on board with, like, you want freedom, right? 0.99

02:54:57.000 Like, I want to be able to say chiropractors are bullshit. 0.99

02:55:00.000 I want to do that. 0.98

02:55:01.000 But, like, if there's someone who was struggling with chronic back pain forever and found a chiropractor and they come back from that chiropractor and they say to me, Alan, for the first time in my life, I feel like there's some hope.

02:55:13.000 This chiropractor helped me.

02:55:16.000 If I have that thing in my brain...

02:55:18.000 I don't say it.

02:55:19.000 Yeah, I'm with you.

02:55:20.000 I'm with you.

02:55:20.000 I'd be like, that's great.

02:55:21.000 I'd be like, that's great.

02:55:22.000 But Alan, that's just being kind.

02:55:24.000 Yeah.

02:55:24.000 You value kindness.

02:55:25.000 And I think that's an awesome thing to value.

02:55:27.000 And I value that as well.

02:55:28.000 And I think that's something that I've learned as I've gotten older is that you don't always have to say what you think.

02:55:34.000 You could just be nice.

02:55:35.000 And I've seen, I saw you do this.

02:55:37.000 Like, I love this moment.

02:55:37.000 I don't know.

02:55:38.000 I forget which podcast it was on.

02:55:39.000 You were like, you were talking about something.

02:55:40.000 And then you were like, you looked down and you were like, wait, I think we're making fun of this person, is what you said.

02:55:48.000 And I feel like, and that was a moment, right?

02:55:51.000 It was like, you want to be kind, right?

02:55:53.000 And honesty, that's the difficult, the sometimes ridiculous things or illogical things are the kind thing.

02:56:03.000 And I'm really struggling now, and I just wish everyone were struggling to realize that those are sometimes incommensurable values.

02:56:14.000 You can't sometimes be honest or tell the truth and also be kind at the same time, right?

02:56:18.000 There's this book...

02:56:19.000 God, what is it about a kid who's...

02:56:21.000 I can't believe I'm blanking on the book now, but it's a kid who's severely disfigured.

02:56:25.000 And it was a book for young adults.

02:56:27.000 And there's this moment in that book where the teacher puts on the board, when you're given the choice between being right and being kind, always choose being kind.

02:56:34.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:56:35.000 When I first read that, I was like, that's so stupid, man. 0.99

02:56:38.000 The way to be kind is by helping someone be right and tell them the truth, right? 0.99

02:56:42.000 I used to share that thought, but I'm now in the group of be kind.

02:56:47.000 And as I've gotten older, first of all, I never went out With the idea that I would create something that millions of people would see.

02:57:00.000 Never.

02:57:01.000 This was just something that happened along the way.

02:57:03.000 And as it was happening, I became more and more aware of the impact and then the responsibility that comes with that impact.

02:57:13.000 And just through that process has made me a far nicer person because I'm really aware of I don't want to attack people.

02:57:25.000 I don't like it.

02:57:27.000 I'd rather just not.

02:57:29.000 If someone says to me before the podcast, and they have before, hey, would you do me a favor and not talk about this weird thing that happened to me?

02:57:36.000 I'm like, I don't want to make you uncomfortable.

02:57:37.000 I don't.

02:57:38.000 We could talk about a million things.

02:57:39.000 You're a human being.

02:57:40.000 I'm a human being.

02:57:41.000 I don't want gotcha moments.

02:57:44.000 If you want to talk about something that's in your heart that you want to get out, I'll talk to you about it.

02:57:50.000 But I'm not a mean person.

02:57:54.000 When I was younger, I was. 0.99

02:57:55.000 And when I was younger, I was in the group of, fuck that, tell them the truth. 1.00

02:58:01.000 They need to face reality, get your fucking shit together. 1.00

02:58:04.000 And then as I've gotten older, I've realized that's me worried about myself falling short. 1.00

02:58:13.000 That's me worrying about my own failures.

02:58:16.000 And then wanting to sort of reinforce my own philosophies in other people because I was insecure.

02:58:23.000 Well, I mean, it's interesting what you're saying, right?

02:58:25.000 Like, talking to millions of people.

02:58:26.000 And this goes back to the stuff you were saying about written language and the fact that you can't respond to stuff.

02:58:31.000 The difference between a conversation is, you know, such and such.

02:58:34.000 So, here we are.

02:58:36.000 We can talk to each other.

02:58:38.000 I can have an argument with you about, you know, whether, like, turmeric coffee works or whatever it happens to be, right?

02:58:44.000 Or supplements or whatever it is.

02:58:45.000 We can talk about chiropractic, right?

02:58:48.000 But there's someone else out there who really did just go to a chiropractor.

02:58:51.000 Right.

02:58:52.000 And so it puts you, especially, not me, right?

02:58:54.000 I'm not, I don't have like a podcast reaching millions of people.

02:58:57.000 Oh, you got a Twitter, dude.

02:58:57.000 They're coming at you too.

02:58:58.000 Don't worry about it.

02:58:59.000 I'm sure they are.

02:58:59.000 But you know, yeah, Twitter, I think, I mean, Twitter I see as a spiritual exercise.

02:59:02.000 I've said this before.

02:59:03.000 I go on Twitter to force myself to be kind.

02:59:06.000 Like, how can I balance, how can I be on Twitter?

02:59:09.000 And communicate with people like QAnon, right?

02:59:12.000 Instead of just mocking QAnon, like, can I engage with a QAnon person? 0.89

02:59:15.000 Do you do that?

02:59:16.000 I do.

02:59:16.000 What do they say back?

02:59:18.000 They really want to talk to you about QAnon.

02:59:20.000 And then I ask them questions about it.

02:59:22.000 And I try to be...

02:59:23.000 Have you had like meaningful dialogue?

02:59:25.000 You know, I have had meaningful dialogue.

02:59:27.000 I've even had meaningful dialogue on Twitter with people who were...

02:59:31.000 I mean, honestly, my favorite moments on Twitter are where I engage with someone and it starts angry.

02:59:37.000 And then I'm like, okay, Alan, can we get this to a place where we're being kind to each other?

02:59:43.000 If I can do it on Twitter, I mean, that's like the gymnasium of the soul, right?

02:59:46.000 If you can be kind to someone on Twitter.

02:59:48.000 But I was saying, like, you're in a shitty situation in part because when it comes to this kind of thing, because you're communicating to friends.

02:59:55.000 5,000 different types of audiences all at the same time.

02:59:58.000 You're talking with me.

02:59:59.000 You're talking with the people who are watching this right now, all of whom range from people who are not in pain to people who are in pain.

03:00:05.000 Some of those people need honesty to help with their pain.

03:00:10.000 You know what I mean?

03:00:11.000 And I don't even know how you handle...

03:00:13.000 And then you don't want to be lying.

03:00:15.000 You want to be telling the truth? 1.00

03:00:16.000 You have to evolve as a human and get better at your own bullshit and your own... 1.00

03:00:24.000 What are you trying to get out? 1.00

03:00:26.000 What is your message?

03:00:27.000 What are you saying?

03:00:28.000 What is in your head?

03:00:29.000 And are you using words to accurately relay what's in your head? 0.99

03:00:32.000 Or have you fucked that up? 0.96

03:00:34.000 You get better at that. 0.66

03:00:35.000 But there's some benefit, no doubt, to engaging with people online.

03:00:40.000 I mean, it's just untenable for me.

03:00:43.000 There's too many people.

03:00:44.000 But do you know who Megan Phelps is?

03:00:46.000 Yes!

03:00:47.000 Yeah!

03:00:49.000 She's an amazing person.

03:00:50.000 I've had her on the show too. 0.96

03:00:51.000 Megan Phelps is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, who is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, one of the most vicious, nastiest, evil religious groups ever that would have these God hates fag signs and hold it up in front of when soldiers would die. 0.98

03:01:08.000 They would go to their funerals. 1.00

03:01:09.000 The craziest shit! 1.00

03:01:11.000 And she grew up in this horrible environment and then through Twitter, Interacting with her husband on Twitter, that fucking dude, that angel, whoever he is, that dude converted her. 1.00

03:01:22.000 And he just talked to her back and forth and they became friends and then eventually they became married and then they have a child together and they're happy. 0.98

03:01:29.000 It's a cliche.

03:01:30.000 I mean, it's interesting when you said that's being kind, right?

03:01:32.000 I mean, there are these cliches and I hate how we also live in this like ultra ironic time now where like every, you know, oh, it's a cliche.

03:01:38.000 It was like, no, kindness and love.

03:01:39.000 Yeah.

03:01:40.000 It's valuable.

03:01:41.000 They work.

03:01:42.000 It sounds corny, but it's valuable.

03:01:44.000 It's what every saint and sage They've said it since the beginning of time and you can be like, oh, that's a cliche or it's more complicated than that.

03:01:50.000 And it is more complicated always, right?

03:01:53.000 But like, I don't know, the kindness I don't know.

03:01:59.000 It's hard, too, because I don't want to even be...

03:02:01.000 I keep thinking, right?

03:02:02.000 It's like you get in this, like, inception of nuance, right?

03:02:05.000 But, like, you and I can say, hey, we need to be kind.

03:02:08.000 Or, you know, I need to be kind.

03:02:10.000 I can speak for myself.

03:02:10.000 But, like, there are some people who actually...

03:02:12.000 They're going to say back, no, I'm being fucking hurt, right?

03:02:16.000 Like, for me, I need to fight back. 0.94

03:02:18.000 I need to not be kind.

03:02:19.000 If you're in an abusive relationship, right?

03:02:21.000 Or whatever.

03:02:21.000 Or if you're in a position where you're fighting for something you believe in.

03:02:25.000 So I don't even want to be telling...

03:02:28.000 Other people, all I feel comfortable with right now, and this is sort of where I landed after, you know, I mean, people were pushing me.

03:02:34.000 Like, this subtitle on this book, man, that was pushed on me.

03:02:38.000 I'm going to be honest. 0.96

03:02:39.000 How faith in nature's goodness leads to harmful fads, unjust laws, and flawed science, it makes it sound like it's a fucking takedown. 0.95

03:02:47.000 You know, they were like, we need you.

03:02:49.000 You know, this is how a subtitle needs to work.

03:02:51.000 It needs to tell people like this simple truth where there's like- So just as a marketing ploy, that was just their idea.

03:02:56.000 The British book has a different subtitle, just the seductive myth of natural goodness.

03:03:01.000 Ooh, that's better.

03:03:02.000 I mean, I understand where they were coming from though, right?

03:03:04.000 Because my publisher's like, look- They want to sell a lot of books.

03:03:07.000 Yeah, and people want this.

03:03:09.000 They don't, you know, people don't want kindness.

03:03:11.000 Kindness doesn't sell, right?

03:03:12.000 Like controversy sells.

03:03:13.000 And so- I, it's hard, you know, again, you know, I think about this a lot because, you know, I want people to read my book.

03:03:21.000 I want people to listen to me.

03:03:22.000 I would love to have, you know, I'd love to be able to talk about, you know, my, you know, I'm going to be talking about quantification in my next book, right?

03:03:27.000 So I, I want people to hear what I have to say about how quantification gets abused, right?

03:03:33.000 But I'm also like, well, the best way to get people to hear me might be to ratchet up the controversy.

03:03:40.000 I don't think so.

03:03:41.000 You don't think so?

03:03:42.000 No, I don't think so.

03:03:43.000 I really think what you're talking about, don't tell people what to do.

03:03:47.000 You're like, I want to be kind, but I don't feel like I should be telling people.

03:03:50.000 But here's the thing, man, you don't have to.

03:03:52.000 You don't have to tell people.

03:03:53.000 Just lead by example.

03:03:54.000 Just do what you're doing and do it at your best.

03:03:56.000 And if you can be kind, that will have a greater impact than anything.

03:04:01.000 I mean, it's like being a parent, right?

03:04:02.000 You can tell your kids what to do, but one of the best things that I've found is to just live life in a way that your kids see the right way to do things and the wrong way to do things.

03:04:12.000 And one of the things I always do, whenever I correct my kids, I always say, hey, let me tell you something.

03:04:17.000 I did way worse than that. 1.00

03:04:19.000 I'm way dumber than you. 0.99

03:04:21.000 And this problem that you created or this thing that you did wrong, I've done way worse. 1.00

03:04:26.000 I've definitely done that.

03:04:27.000 I'll tell you the things I've done.

03:04:29.000 I always tell my kids all the things I screwed up on.

03:04:31.000 I love telling them that.

03:04:33.000 I love telling them, like, let me tell you what I used to lie about.

03:04:35.000 And I'll tell my kids lies that I used to tell.

03:04:38.000 I'll tell my kids all the screw-ups that I used to tell.

03:04:40.000 And I tell them that just so that they know first I'm not picking on them.

03:04:46.000 I'm a grown man.

03:04:49.000 I pay taxes.

03:04:51.000 I'm talking to a 10-year-old.

03:04:52.000 There's no way this is fair.

03:04:54.000 So I always criticize myself first. 0.96

03:04:57.000 And whenever they do something wrong, I always say, listen, before you know, just so you know, brother, I fucked this up already, too. 0.83

03:05:04.000 But you're in a... 0.91

03:05:05.000 I don't know, man.

03:05:07.000 I guess what I would say is it does work for you.

03:05:10.000 For example, to take one thing that I've talked about, something you do on your show that I encourage my students to do is I say, look, if you don't know something, say, I don't know.

03:05:19.000 Say, I don't know.

03:05:20.000 If I've used a word in class or if you don't know the answer, say you don't know.

03:05:25.000 And you doing that makes people feel comfortable with admitting they don't know things.

03:05:30.000 It's a kind thing to do.

03:05:32.000 For a person, especially a person in position of power, to say, I don't know. 0.99

03:05:35.000 But the problem is there's also a lot of authority and cultural currency in pretending to know shit. 0.85

03:05:42.000 And there are far more people out there who have risen to positions of power pretending they know everything than admitting that they don't know things. 1.00

03:05:53.000 It's so dumb. 0.99

03:05:54.000 There's zero benefit. 1.00

03:05:56.000 Zero benefit in pretending you have information that you don't have.

03:05:59.000 Zero.

03:06:00.000 There's zero benefit.

03:06:01.000 Because, first of all, you'll get exposed.

03:06:04.000 People will find out.

03:06:07.000 Also, it doesn't make you look any better if you pretend you know something.

03:06:11.000 There's actual strength in saying, what does that mean?

03:06:13.000 I don't know that.

03:06:15.000 Oh, okay.

03:06:16.000 Or, oh, I thought it was the other way. 1.00

03:06:18.000 Oh, my God, I'm an idiot. 1.00

03:06:19.000 There's power in that. 1.00

03:06:20.000 I totally disagree.

03:06:21.000 There's power in admitting you don't know, but I think there's a lot of benefit in pretending you know stuff that you don't.

03:06:25.000 Not ultimately.

03:06:26.000 Ultimately, no, because you get exposed.

03:06:29.000 And then they'll never listen to you again.

03:06:30.000 People will never trust you.

03:06:31.000 It's very valuable to tell the truth.

03:06:34.000 Very valuable. 0.98

03:06:34.000 Didn't you just tell me about a guy with a nice house and a car who was doing placebo fucking magic? 0.98

03:06:41.000 Yeah, I mean, he had an okay house. 1.00

03:06:43.000 I don't want to live in that shithole. 0.98

03:06:45.000 I'm just saying, you know what I'm saying? 1.00

03:06:47.000 There's a lot of liars out there. 1.00

03:06:48.000 People know that guy's full of shit now, and I think his business has eroded radically. 1.00

03:06:53.000 It got through the community that he's full of shit. 1.00

03:06:56.000 I mean, but yeah, I know what you're saying. 1.00

03:06:58.000 He was scamming people, but he knows he's scamming people.

03:07:01.000 What you carry in your heart being a con artist and robbing people out of their hard-earned dollars by tricking them into thinking that you're healing them, that in itself is a great punishment.

03:07:15.000 When you say ultimately, you mean sort of like ultimately in like the big game.

03:07:18.000 Well, not just, yeah, in the big game, but just in day-to-day life. 1.00

03:07:22.000 You know you're a fucking con artist. 1.00

03:07:24.000 Like, the way you're paying for your food is through lies. 1.00

03:07:27.000 God, I hope you're right.

03:07:28.000 I just, I've seen, I've met these people, that guy in Florida, these people. 0.99

03:07:32.000 I mean, fucking, come on, Dr. Oz! 1.00

03:07:34.000 Jesus Christ! 1.00

03:07:35.000 You think Dr. Oz...

03:07:36.000 I mean, I don't know, man.

03:07:37.000 This is why, I mean, it's interesting talking to you about it, but like...

03:07:40.000 You think he's going home at night and like, geez, I really shouldn't have had that Reiki healer on, like it's eating me up inside?

03:07:45.000 Does he have Reiki healers on?

03:07:46.000 He's got how many... 0.99

03:07:48.000 Every time I go to the supermarket, there's his smiling fucking face on some magazine with Dr. Oz's easy way to lose weight with these... 0.99

03:07:55.000 You know what I mean? 1.00

03:07:56.000 It's fucking hard to be Oprah. 1.00

03:07:58.000 She lets a lot of these motherfuckers through the net. 1.00

03:08:00.000 There's something on Wondery, which is one of my favorite podcasts. 0.99

03:08:05.000 I don't know if you've ever listened to Wondery.

03:08:07.000 It's amazing.

03:08:08.000 They're really good.

03:08:10.000 And they had a fantastic one on Aaron Hernandez, who's that football player who wound up being a murderer.

03:08:15.000 But they have one now on some con artist, who's some healer person, who Oprah had on.

03:08:23.000 And Oprah elevated this guy and now, and I saw it on my feed today, I was very excited to read it after, or to listen to it, rather, after this podcast, after we're done with our podcast. 0.59

03:08:33.000 But it was essentially another one of those things where some person who Oprah had on snuck through the net and became a bullshit artist. 0.61

03:08:41.000 She's had a bunch of those on. 0.92

03:08:43.000 Remember, there's that one guy who wrote a book.

03:08:44.000 It turned out he made up everything that was in the book.

03:08:47.000 And Dr. Oz, they brought him before Congress because he had some miracle cure that literally melts fat off your body.

03:08:54.000 And they're like, is this a miracle cure?

03:08:56.000 He's like, no, it's not. 0.98

03:08:57.000 How the fuck are you still on TV? Right. 0.98

03:09:00.000 Well, because what's he doing?

03:09:01.000 You know, he's a religious figure, right?

03:09:04.000 You know what he is?

03:09:04.000 He's Oprah's hoe.

03:09:05.000 Oprah's out there, no, no, no, no, no, my hoe's out there working. 1.00

03:09:09.000 I'm going to keep him out there making that money.

03:09:11.000 Well, maybe it's, and this is the flip side of kindness, though, right?

03:09:14.000 I mean, we keep going in this Inception circle, right?

03:09:15.000 But like, there's this Carl Sagan, I think it's Carl Sagan line where he says, you want to be open-minded, but not so open-minded your brain falls out, right?

03:09:21.000 And it's like, you also want to be kind.

03:09:24.000 But not so kind that you become a kind of laundering factory for people like Dr. Us.

03:09:30.000 Right, right.

03:09:32.000 And that, you know, and that's, I don't know, Oprah just wants people to be happy, right?

03:09:38.000 You know, so she's... 0.99

03:09:39.000 I've encountered a few of those people too, man. 1.00

03:09:41.000 Over the years of doing this podcast, there's a few people that I've had on that turned out to be full of shit. 0.96

03:09:45.000 It's hard because you, particularly in the beginning, I really didn't vet them at all. 0.98

03:09:49.000 Someone would tell me, oh, this guy's great.

03:09:51.000 You should talk to him.

03:09:52.000 Then I'd talk to him.

03:09:52.000 Then in the conversation, I'd be like, hey, is what you're saying true?

03:09:56.000 And then it just took a while for me to understand.

03:09:59.000 You got something there?

03:10:00.000 He was on The Secret. 1.00

03:10:02.000 Oh, one of those motherfuckers. 1.00

03:10:05.000 One of the narrators. 1.00

03:10:05.000 The Secret. 1.00

03:10:06.000 One of those motherfuckers. 1.00

03:10:08.000 The Secret. 1.00

03:10:08.000 That's the ultimate of horseshit bullshit. 1.00

03:10:11.000 What they don't want you to know. 1.00

03:10:13.000 You talk to actual physicists about that, and they just go... 0.93

03:10:16.000 People actually study quantum mechanics and you know like the really complicated underlying mechanism of the fucking universe itself and then you see these quacks out there selling horseshit and then when you find out that the secret was actually Well, 1.00

03:10:32.000 not the secret. 0.96

03:10:33.000 That's What the Bleep. 0.99

03:10:34.000 What the Bleep was actually run by that person who claimed to be channeling some fucking thousand-year-old alien or some shit. 0.99

03:10:40.000 You know that lady? 1.00

03:10:41.000 Do you know that?

03:10:42.000 I don't.

03:10:43.000 Do you remember What the Bleep?

03:10:44.000 What was it?

03:10:44.000 I want to write it down.

03:10:45.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:10:47.000 There's a name, too.

03:10:49.000 She goes on and talks.

03:10:51.000 She's like this middle-aged woman who's kind of heavy. 0.97

03:10:55.000 And she's talking in this weird way.

03:10:57.000 She has this crazy name. 1.00

03:10:59.000 Like, what is this lady's name? 0.99

03:11:02.000 What kind of name is that?

03:11:03.000 It turns out that's not her name.

03:11:05.000 That is who she's channeling. 0.98

03:11:07.000 And they don't tell you this when you're watching What the Bleep, but she's channeling some fucking thousand-year-old entity. 0.98

03:11:17.000 But here I am. 0.94

03:11:18.000 Look, now I just need you to make me feel hopeful.

03:11:20.000 I feel like this is what I came here to talk to you about or something. 0.99

03:11:25.000 I just, you really think in the end, like it comes back to bite you in the ass? 0.98

03:11:29.000 That feels like a very sort of redemptive vision, but it's like, here we have a laundry list. 0.99

03:11:34.000 I mean, we could go on and on and on and on and on about charlatans who have risen to the very highest levels of power.

03:11:41.000 And I feel like, I'd like to believe that every day they like cry into their pillows at night and their like soul husks are going to be, you know...

03:11:51.000 I would rather concentrate on good people than concentrate on the bad people that succeed financially.

03:11:58.000 I'd rather concentrate on good people because I think there's plenty of them.

03:12:01.000 There's plenty of really interesting, fascinating people that have a great message.

03:12:04.000 You're saying it works, too.

03:12:05.000 You're saying you can be kind and that'll work.

03:12:08.000 Yeah, there's a lot of them out there, man.

03:12:09.000 There's a lot of really motivating, fascinating people that have lived a life Of value, and they can relay that information to you, and there's like real lessons that you can take out of that that can enhance your own life.

03:12:24.000 I think those people are real.

03:12:25.000 They're out there. 1.00

03:12:26.000 You can concentrate on the bullshit artist, that asshole down in Florida selling people wheatgrass. 1.00

03:12:31.000 You don't have to though. 1.00

03:12:33.000 I mean, I hate that they're real.

03:12:35.000 I hate that they exist.

03:12:36.000 But in some ways, what they do is like, they make it so that you really appreciate kind people and you really appreciate real people. 0.97

03:12:46.000 You know, the assholes and the deceptive people that you run into in this life, they're just going to make you appreciate the exceptional people. 0.95

03:12:55.000 You gotta have rainy days, bro. 0.99

03:12:58.000 Rainy days make you appreciate the sun.

03:13:00.000 Dr. Oz makes you appreciate real doctors, real physicians, real people who are actually trying to help you.

03:13:14.000 Maybe he's trying to help you.

03:13:15.000 He is.

03:13:16.000 That's the thing.

03:13:16.000 I was in Div school, so in Divinity School, although it sounds like I'm going to be a priest, but it's a secular.

03:13:23.000 It was the University of Chicago, so it's a secular university.

03:13:26.000 We were early students in Div school, and we were mocking this guy, Joel Osteen.

03:13:31.000 I don't know if you know him.

03:13:31.000 Oh, yeah.

03:13:32.000 Sure.

03:13:32.000 That's the guy with the gigantic arena.

03:13:35.000 Yeah.

03:13:35.000 He fills up his own jet in a mansion.

03:13:38.000 Oh my god.

03:13:39.000 You know, this guy, right?

03:13:40.000 And we're just like, oh, Joel Osteen, like, can't believe that that, like, people think that's Christianity.

03:13:44.000 You know, we're going off, right?

03:13:46.000 And one of my friends sitting there, and usually he'd be talking, he was quiet the whole time.

03:13:52.000 He finally speaks up.

03:13:53.000 He says, you know what?

03:13:54.000 I get what you all are saying.

03:13:55.000 I get what you all are saying about Joel Osteen.

03:13:57.000 But when I was in high school, my parents neglected me.

03:14:01.000 He had a terrible, terrible childhood.

03:14:04.000 They didn't care about his education. 0.96

03:14:05.000 He was dirt poor.

03:14:07.000 And he was like, I watched Joel Osteen.

03:14:10.000 And Joel Osteen told me that God wanted me to make more of myself.

03:14:16.000 And it helped me.

03:14:19.000 And we're all sitting there looking at each other.

03:14:21.000 And I didn't even know.

03:14:22.000 My brain exploded, right? 0.96

03:14:23.000 Because here's this guy who's just obviously a charlatan. 0.97

03:14:26.000 Like, for me, a terrible person.

03:14:30.000 And here's my friend being like, hey, you're laying into a guy who...

03:14:34.000 And he realizes, right, in retrospect what was going on.

03:14:36.000 But he was also like, you know, he gave me something important.

03:14:41.000 And...

03:14:43.000 I didn't even know what to do with that.

03:14:45.000 It's happened with diet gurus I've laid into.

03:14:47.000 This guy, David Perlmutter, who wrote this book, Grain Brain, and stuff like that.

03:14:50.000 I went back through his history, and I found out that he used to promise everything was a miracle cure.

03:14:55.000 He started with his self-published book called, I don't know, Brainsaving.com or something.

03:15:01.000 And back then, he had a totally different line on it.

03:15:04.000 He was like, you need to eat only lean meat and I've cured all these people of ALS. And then it became, you need to eat saturated fat and I've cured these people of ALS. And I wrote this hit piece on him.

03:15:13.000 I was like, this guy is a horrible human being and I'm going to show you who he is. 0.85

03:15:15.000 I'm going to trace his charlatanry all the way back to the beginning.

03:15:18.000 And there were all these people that were like, I read David Perlmutter's books and they got me eating healthy again.

03:15:24.000 Because he does advocate, you know, like an alternative to junk food.

03:15:27.000 So his charisma, right?

03:15:29.000 These people have charisma.

03:15:31.000 And that charisma can give people hope and meaning, even if it's like fake energy healing.

03:15:39.000 Oof, people are so weird.

03:15:41.000 We're so complicated.

03:15:43.000 We're so complicated.

03:15:45.000 We're unnatural animals, right?

03:15:47.000 We're unnatural animals.

03:15:48.000 Listen, man, we've been talking for three and a half hours.

03:15:51.000 What?

03:15:51.000 Yeah, it's 3.30.

03:15:54.000 Can you believe it?

03:15:55.000 I can't believe it.

03:15:56.000 Really? 1.00

03:15:56.000 There's a fucking time warp in this room, man. 1.00

03:15:58.000 It's very strange. 1.00

03:15:59.000 It happens all the time.

03:16:02.000 Yeah.

03:16:03.000 Humans are weird.

03:16:03.000 I mean, I don't know.

03:16:04.000 I think that's maybe what I really care about.

03:16:11.000 There's so much, right?

03:16:13.000 There's so much to pay attention to.

03:16:15.000 There's so many people.

03:16:16.000 Just in this country alone, there's 320 million people.

03:16:20.000 Yeah.

03:16:20.000 And a lot of them are talking publicly.

03:16:23.000 There's a lot out there.

03:16:25.000 But there's a lot of good out there, too.

03:16:27.000 The key is to just concentrate on the good and just be the best that you can be.

03:16:33.000 That's the key.

03:16:34.000 Just be the nicest you can be, be the kindest you can be, be the most honest you can be. 0.99

03:16:39.000 And you're gonna fuck up. 0.98

03:16:40.000 There's no way around it. 1.00

03:16:41.000 You're a person. 1.00

03:16:42.000 And if you fuck up, you can't be too hard on yourself. 1.00

03:16:44.000 You can't judge yourself on failures. 0.99

03:16:47.000 You gotta recognize that you are the person who's learned from those failures.

03:16:53.000 You're not defined by mistakes.

03:16:56.000 And that's a lot of what people do.

03:16:58.000 They define themselves by mistakes.

03:17:00.000 And then they also judge other people by their mistakes.

03:17:03.000 And they decide that this one moment in time that this person said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing or made a mistake or was incorrect about something, that defines them forever.

03:17:15.000 All these people that you could find good things in, whether it's Joel Osteen or Dr. Oz or what are these people?

03:17:21.000 There's a lesson in data that comes from them about just how weirdly complicated human beings are and how wildly we vary.

03:17:35.000 That's it.

03:17:37.000 It's funny because I think we're comfortable with that, but a lot of times people aren't comfortable with complexity.

03:17:44.000 No.

03:17:45.000 They like to define people.

03:17:46.000 They want to make things very binary.

03:17:47.000 They want to make people good or bad, right or left, one or zero.

03:17:51.000 And that's not...

03:17:52.000 The world's messy.

03:17:53.000 It's a human problem.

03:17:55.000 It's like we were talking about with abortion.

03:17:56.000 There's a lot of human problems.

03:17:58.000 That's a human problem.

03:18:00.000 And I think it's hard to be comfortable with yourself.

03:18:04.000 So it's very hard to be comfortable with other people.

03:18:06.000 That's why I always stress with people like you've got to accept yourself for what you've done wrong.

03:18:13.000 Do your best and also find some difficult shit to do because that gets away a lot of the anxiety that you carry around in your body.

03:18:21.000 A lot of like difficult things make regular life less difficult. 0.92

03:18:26.000 And that sounds so simplistic, but particularly physically difficult things.

03:18:30.000 Because when you do things that are physically difficult, the strain of making yourself do those things, it's very valuable.

03:18:38.000 It's not just valuable like exercise and fitness and martial arts and running and whatever you're doing that's really difficult.

03:18:44.000 It's not just valuable in terms of like health and the way you look, but it's also valuable for your mind, maybe even more so.

03:18:50.000 Because regular life can be confusing and little things that go wrong and little problems that arise are exacerbated by the fact that you're not accustomed to dealing with hardship. 0.54

03:19:01.000 So creating your own bullshit, whether it's through some brutal kettlebell exercise or running up hills or something, is extremely valuable for you also, not just accepting the nuanced perspectives of other people, 0.95

03:19:16.000 but also... 0.99

03:19:18.000 Being able to navigate through this world with some sort of an understanding of just how complex it all is and how weird it all is and not be overly thrown off by every little dip in the road and pothole that you encounter.

03:19:38.000 Focus on the good.

03:19:39.000 Focus on the good.

03:19:39.000 Focus on the good people and have faith, I guess, that that'll work.

03:19:43.000 Know that there are bad people.

03:19:45.000 But, you know, just do your best.

03:19:47.000 Do your best and, you know, and don't get suckered. 0.99

03:19:51.000 There's a lot of suckers out there. 0.97

03:19:52.000 And tell the truth even if you feel like it's going to sell more books to lie. 0.99

03:19:55.000 Yes!

03:19:56.000 Yes!

03:19:57.000 Or, you know, not if it's an old lady and you look great. 0.99

03:20:00.000 Say that.

03:20:01.000 Say that to her. 0.99

03:20:02.000 I don't know.

03:20:03.000 Be nice, right?

03:20:04.000 Choose kindness over truth if you have to.

03:20:07.000 Tell your book one more time, Natural.

03:20:10.000 Hold it up so people can see it.

03:20:11.000 Where am I holding it towards?

03:20:13.000 This camera right here.

03:20:13.000 Yeah.

03:20:14.000 It's Natural, How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science.

03:20:19.000 But you know now that that's just a publicity ploy.

03:20:22.000 It's really very nuanced. 1.00

03:20:23.000 These motherfuckers with their... 1.00

03:20:24.000 Titles. 1.00

03:20:24.000 And your Instagram or your Instagram? 1.00

03:20:28.000 Twitter.

03:20:28.000 I have Twitter at Alan Levinowitz.

03:20:30.000 And also there's, I mean, we got an episode of the Shift podcast up on Apple iTunes.

03:20:35.000 And if you search like Shift Alan on Spotify, we've got like the first episode up there.

03:20:41.000 Beautiful.

03:20:41.000 Which would be cool.

03:20:42.000 All right, Alan.

03:20:42.000 Thank you.

03:20:43.000 I really enjoyed this.

03:20:44.000 I did too.

03:20:44.000 Thank you.

03:20:45.000 Thanks.

03:20:45.000 Bye, everybody.

03:20:47.000 Yay.

03:20:48.000 Between a half hours.

03:20:49.000 Jeez.

03:20:50.000 That is great.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 08, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1504 - Alan Levinovitz

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript