Transcript
00:00:00 If this is a super intelligence, if it’s folding proteins
00:00:03 and analyzing like all data sets
00:00:06 and all whatever they give it access to,
00:00:08 how can we be certain that it’s not gonna figure out
00:00:11 how to get itself out of the cloud,
00:00:14 how to store itself in other like mediums,
00:00:17 trees, the optic nerve, the brain, you know what I mean?
00:00:21 We don’t know that.
00:00:22 We don’t know that it won’t leap out and like start hanging.
00:00:25 Like, and then at that point, now we do have the wildfire.
00:00:28 Now you can’t stop it, you can’t unplug it.
00:00:30 You can’t shut your servers down
00:00:32 because it left the box, left the room
00:00:34 using some technology you haven’t even discovered yet.
00:00:37 How fucking cool would that be for like the men in black
00:00:40 to come to me like, listen,
00:00:42 I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene.
00:00:47 The following is a conversation with Duncan Trussell,
00:00:50 a standup comedian,
00:00:51 host of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast
00:00:54 and one of my favorite human beings.
00:00:57 I’ve been a fan of his for many years.
00:00:59 So it was a huge honor and pleasure to meet him
00:01:02 for the first time and to sit down for this chat.
00:01:06 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
00:01:09 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:01:11 in the description.
00:01:12 And now, dear friends, here’s Duncan Trussell.
00:01:16 Nietzsche has this thought experiment
00:01:18 called eternal recurrence,
00:01:21 where you get to relive your whole life
00:01:23 over and over and over and over.
00:01:25 And I think it’s a way to bring to the surface of your mind
00:01:30 the idea that every single moment in your life matters.
00:01:33 It intensely matters, the bad and the good.
00:01:36 And he kind of wants you to imagine that idea
00:01:40 that every single decision you make throughout your life,
00:01:43 you repeat over and over and over,
00:01:44 and he wants you to respond to that.
00:01:46 Do you feel horrible about that
00:01:47 or do you feel good about that?
00:01:49 And you have to think through this idea
00:01:51 in order to see where you stand in life.
00:01:54 What is your relationship like with life?
00:01:56 I actually wanna read the way he first introduces
00:01:58 that concept for people who are not familiar.
00:02:02 What if some day or night a demon,
00:02:05 by the way, he has a demon introduce this thought experiment.
00:02:09 What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you
00:02:13 into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, quote,
00:02:18 this life as you now live it and have lived it,
00:02:21 you will have to live once more.
00:02:23 And innumerable times more.
00:02:25 And there will be nothing new in it.
00:02:28 But every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh
00:02:31 and everything unutterably small and great in your life
00:02:35 will have to return to you,
00:02:37 all in the same succession and sequence.
00:02:40 Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth
00:02:43 and curse the demon who spoke thus?
00:02:45 Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment
00:02:49 when you would have answered him,
00:02:51 you are a God and never have I heard anything more divine.
00:02:55 So are you terrified or excited
00:02:58 by such a thought experiment
00:02:59 when you apply it to your own life?
00:03:00 Excited.
00:03:01 Excited.
00:03:02 Oh.
00:03:03 Even the dark stuff.
00:03:04 Oh yeah, for sure.
00:03:05 Definitely.
00:03:06 I mean, also that thing you’re talking about,
00:03:10 he kind of leaves out maybe on purpose
00:03:13 because the thought experiment starts falling apart
00:03:15 a little bit.
00:03:15 Yeah.
00:03:16 The amnesia between each loop.
00:03:19 So the whole thing gets wiped.
00:03:22 Now, if the amnesia wasn’t there
00:03:24 and yet somehow you are witnessing the non autonomy
00:03:29 implicit in what he’s talking about,
00:03:31 so you have to kind of watch yourself
00:03:32 go through this rotten loop,
00:03:34 then yeah, that’s a description.
00:03:36 There’s probably a boredom that comes into that.
00:03:38 So you don’t experience everything anew.
00:03:41 Exactly.
00:03:42 So the bad stuff, the good stuff,
00:03:43 the newness of it is really important.
00:03:45 That’s it, yeah.
00:03:45 This is the, in Hades, when you die,
00:03:51 there’s a river, I think it’s called Leith.
00:03:52 You ever heard of this?
00:03:53 L E T H E.
00:03:54 You drink from it and you don’t remember your past lives.
00:03:57 And then when you’re reborn, it’s fresh
00:04:00 and you don’t have to, I mean,
00:04:01 just think of like the amount of psychological help
00:04:05 you would need to get over all the bullshit
00:04:08 that happened in prior lives.
00:04:10 You know what I mean?
00:04:11 Can you imagine if you’re still resentful
00:04:13 of something someone did to you in the 14th century,
00:04:16 but it would compound.
00:04:19 Well, if you repeat the same thing over and over and over,
00:04:22 there would be no difference.
00:04:23 Maybe you would start to appreciate the nuances more,
00:04:26 like when you watch the same movie over and over and over,
00:04:29 maybe you’ll get to actually let go of this idea
00:04:35 of all the possible, all the positive possibilities
00:04:38 that lay before you,
00:04:39 but actually enjoy the moment much more.
00:04:41 If you remember that you’ve lived this life a thousand times,
00:04:44 all the little things, the way somebody smiles,
00:04:47 if you’re been abused, the way somebody,
00:04:49 like the pain of it, the suffering, the down that you feel,
00:04:53 the experience of sadness, depression, fear,
00:04:56 all that kind of stuff.
00:04:57 You get to really, you get to also appreciate
00:04:59 that that’s part of life, part of being alive.
00:05:02 Now, also in his experiment, if I was gonna,
00:05:04 and I love the experiment from the perspective of like,
00:05:07 just where technology is now and simulation theory
00:05:10 and stuff like that.
00:05:11 But in that thought experiment,
00:05:14 if this rotten demon immediately killed you,
00:05:19 then within that, it’s a little more horrifying
00:05:23 because even in the, first of all,
00:05:26 you’re trusting a fucking demon.
00:05:28 Why are you talking to a demon?
00:05:29 Let’s start there.
00:05:30 Yeah, because that is gonna be,
00:05:31 even before I get into like the metaphysics
00:05:33 and like the implications and where is this life stored?
00:05:36 Where’s the loop stored?
00:05:38 I mean, are we talking about some kind of unchanging data set
00:05:41 or something?
00:05:42 For that, you’re like,
00:05:43 why is there a fucking talking demon in my room
00:05:45 trying to freak me out?
00:05:47 You’re gonna wanna autopsy the demon.
00:05:48 Can you catch it?
00:05:49 Does this apply to you, demon?
00:05:50 And again, obviously it’s a fucking thought experiment.
00:05:53 Nietzsche would be annoyed by me,
00:05:54 but I think like you would still be able to entertain
00:05:58 the joy, you’d have the joy
00:06:01 of not knowing what’s around the corner.
00:06:03 You know, still, it’s not like you know what’s coming
00:06:05 just cause the demon said some kind of loop.
00:06:08 In other words, the idea of being damned
00:06:10 to your past decisions, it doesn’t even work
00:06:13 because you can’t remember what decisions
00:06:15 you’re about to make.
00:06:17 So from that perspective also,
00:06:19 I think I’d be happy about it.
00:06:20 Or I would just think, oh cool.
00:06:22 I mean, it’s a good story.
00:06:23 I’m gonna tell people about how this.
00:06:24 I wonder what the demon would actually look like in real life
00:06:27 cause I suspect that would look like a charming,
00:06:30 like a friend.
00:06:32 Wouldn’t they be a loved one?
00:06:34 Wouldn’t the demon come to you through the mechanism,
00:06:37 through the front door of love, not through the back door
00:06:41 of evil, like malevolent manipulation?
00:06:44 Sure, I mean, if it’s the truth,
00:06:46 if it’s the truth and that’s whether it’s love or not,
00:06:50 it’s still good fundamentally.
00:06:53 I do like the idea of the memory replay.
00:06:56 I remember I went to a Newer Link event a few years ago
00:07:00 and got to hang out with Elon.
00:07:02 I remember how visceral it is that there’s like a pig
00:07:06 with a Newer Link in it.
00:07:09 And you’re talking about memory replays as a future,
00:07:13 maybe far future possibility.
00:07:15 And you realize, well, this is a very meaningful moment
00:07:17 in my life.
00:07:19 This could be a replay.
00:07:21 Of all the things you replay, it’s probably,
00:07:25 there’s certain magical moments in your life.
00:07:28 Whatever it is, certain people you’ve met for the first time
00:07:30 or certain things you’ve done for the first time
00:07:33 with certain people or just an awesome thing you did.
00:07:36 And I remember just saying to him,
00:07:38 like, I would probably want to replay this,
00:07:43 this moment.
00:07:44 And it just seemed very kind of,
00:07:47 I mean, there was a recursive nature to it,
00:07:49 but it seemed very real that this is something
00:07:52 we would want to do, that the richness of life
00:07:56 could be experienced through the replay.
00:07:59 That’s probably where it’s experienced the most.
00:08:02 You could see life as a way to collect
00:08:04 a bunch of cool memories, and then you get to sit back
00:08:06 in your nice VR headset and replay the cool ones.
00:08:10 That’s right.
00:08:11 This is, in Buddhism, the idea that I struggle with
00:08:16 is that there’s a possibility of not reincarnating,
00:08:20 of not coming back.
00:08:21 That’s the idea.
00:08:24 This is suffering here.
00:08:25 The suffering is caused by attachment.
00:08:27 And so if you like revise the idea of reincarnation
00:08:32 or the Nietzsche’s loop and look at it from,
00:08:38 could this be possible?
00:08:39 Or how would this be possible technologically?
00:08:42 Then to me, it makes a lot of sense.
00:08:45 Like I’ve been thinking a lot about this very thing
00:08:48 and the Nietzsche’s idea connecting to it.
00:08:51 I had this like, it sounds so dumb,
00:08:54 but I was at the dentist getting nitrous oxide,
00:08:58 high as a fucking kite, man.
00:08:59 And I had this idea, I was thinking about data.
00:09:03 I was thinking like, man, probably, if I had to bet,
00:09:07 there’s some energetic form that we’re not aware of
00:09:11 that for a super advanced technology
00:09:14 would be as detectable as like starlight,
00:09:17 but something that we just don’t even know what it is.
00:09:19 Quantum turbulence, who the fuck knows?
00:09:22 Fill in the blank, whatever that X may be.
00:09:24 But assuming that exists, that somehow data,
00:09:27 even the most subtle things, the tiniest movements,
00:09:30 whatever it may be,
00:09:31 the emanations of your neurological process energetically,
00:09:36 whatever it may be, is radiating out in the space time,
00:09:39 then what if like the James Webb version of this
00:09:44 for some advanced civilization is not that they’re like
00:09:47 looking at the nebula or whatever,
00:09:50 but they’re actually able to peer into the past
00:09:53 and via some bizarre technology recreate whatever life,
00:09:57 simulate whatever life was happening there
00:09:59 just by decoding that quantum energy, whatever it is.
00:10:02 I’m only saying quantum because it’s what dumb people say
00:10:04 when they don’t know.
00:10:05 You just say quantum, I don’t know.
00:10:07 But you know what I mean?
00:10:08 You’re decoding that.
00:10:09 So meaning, in simulation theory,
00:10:12 one of the big questions that pops up is why
00:10:16 and are we in one?
00:10:18 And Elon has talked about,
00:10:19 well, it’s probably more of a probability
00:10:21 than we’re in one than we’re not, in which case,
00:10:24 what you’re talking about is actually happening,
00:10:27 that that loop you’re talking about,
00:10:30 we’ve decided to be here.
00:10:32 This, of all the things, we decided this one,
00:10:36 oh, let’s do that one again.
00:10:37 I wanna do that one.
00:10:38 Let’s try, let’s do that.
00:10:40 I love thinking about this because I love my family.
00:10:44 And it makes sense to me that if I’m going to replay
00:10:46 some life or another, it’s definitely gonna be this one
00:10:49 with my kids, my wife,
00:10:51 with all the bullshit that’s gone along with it,
00:10:53 I’m still gonna wanna come back.
00:10:55 So in Buddhism, that’s attachment.
00:10:57 Yeah, but you weren’t the one,
00:10:58 oh, you’re saying that you’re the main player,
00:11:00 you’re not the NPC.
00:11:01 Well, I think we’re dealing with all NPCs at this point.
00:11:04 I mean, depending on how you wanna,
00:11:06 like very, I would say very advanced NPCs,
00:11:08 like incredibly advanced NPCs
00:11:11 compared to Fallout or something.
00:11:14 We’ve got a lot of conversation options happening here.
00:11:17 There’s not like four things you can pick from.
00:11:20 Yeah, there’s a whole illusion of free will
00:11:23 that’s happening.
00:11:24 We really do, depending where you are in the world,
00:11:28 feel like you’re free to decide any trajectory
00:11:31 in your life that you want.
00:11:32 Which is pretty funny, right?
00:11:33 For an NPC, it’s pretty, it’s nice.
00:11:36 Well, you’re gonna want that.
00:11:37 If we’re making a video game,
00:11:38 you do wanna give your NPCs the illusion of free will
00:11:41 because it’s gonna make interactions with them
00:11:44 that much more intense.
00:11:47 Yeah, so I wonder on the path to that,
00:11:52 how hard is it to create,
00:11:54 this is sort of the Carmack question
00:11:56 of a realistic virtual world that’s as cool as this one.
00:12:02 Not fully realistic, but sufficiently realistic
00:12:05 that it’s as interesting to live in.
00:12:08 Because we’re gonna have to create those worlds
00:12:11 on the path to creating something like a simulation.
00:12:15 Like long, long, long before.
00:12:17 It’d be virtual worlds where we’d wanna stay forever
00:12:20 because they’re full of that balance of suffering and joy,
00:12:27 of limitations and freedoms and all that kind of stuff.
00:12:29 A lot of people think like in the virtual world,
00:12:32 I can’t wait to be able to, I don’t know,
00:12:35 have sex with anybody I want or have anything I want.
00:12:39 But I think that’s not gonna be fun.
00:12:42 You want the limitations, the constraints.
00:12:44 So you have to battle for the things you want.
00:12:47 Okay, but, okay, but great video games.
00:12:50 One of my favorite video game memories
00:12:52 was like I started playing World of Warcraft
00:12:54 in its original incarnation.
00:12:57 And I didn’t even know
00:12:59 that you were gonna have flying mounts.
00:13:01 Like I didn’t even know.
00:13:02 So I’ve been running around dealing
00:13:03 with all the encumbrances of like being an undead warlock
00:13:07 that can’t fly.
00:13:08 But then all of a sudden, holy shit, there’s flying mounts.
00:13:12 And now the world you’ve been running around not flying,
00:13:15 you’re seeing it from the top down.
00:13:16 It was just really cool.
00:13:18 Like, whoa, I could do this now.
00:13:19 And then that gets boring.
00:13:21 But a really well designed game,
00:13:24 it has a series of these, I don’t know what you call it,
00:13:28 extra abilities that kind of unfold and produce novelty.
00:13:33 And then eventually you just accept it,
00:13:35 you take it for granted.
00:13:37 And then another novelty appears.
00:13:40 Those extra abilities are always balanced
00:13:42 with the limitations, the constraints they run up against.
00:13:44 Because a well balanced video game,
00:13:48 the challenge, the struggle matches the new ability.
00:13:51 Yeah, and sometimes causes problems on its own.
00:13:54 I mean, and so to go back to this universe, this simulation,
00:13:59 it’s really designed like a pretty awesome video game.
00:14:02 If you look at it from the perspective of history,
00:14:05 I mean, people were on horses.
00:14:08 They didn’t know that they were gonna be bullet trains.
00:14:10 They didn’t know that you could get in a car
00:14:12 and drive across the country in a few days.
00:14:15 That would have sounded ridiculous.
00:14:17 We’re doing that now.
00:14:18 And even in our own lifespan, think about it.
00:14:21 How long has VR goggles existed?
00:14:24 Like the ones that you could just buy at Best Buy.
00:14:27 I had the original Oculus Rift, the fucking puke machine.
00:14:31 You put that thing on, I gave it to my friend.
00:14:34 He went and vomited in my driveway
00:14:36 and people were making fun of it.
00:14:38 They were saying, this isn’t gonna catch on.
00:14:40 It’s too big, it’s unwieldy, the graphics suck.
00:14:43 And then look at where it’s at now.
00:14:45 And that’s going to keep,
00:14:48 that trajectory is gonna keep improving.
00:14:50 So yeah, I think that we are dealing
00:14:53 with what you’re talking about,
00:14:54 which is novelty met with more problems, met with novelty.
00:14:59 Yeah, I wonder why VR is not more popular.
00:15:01 I wonder what is going to be the magic thing
00:15:05 that really convinces a large fraction of the world
00:15:10 to move into the virtual world.
00:15:13 I suppose we’re already there in the 2D screen
00:15:16 of Twitter and social media and that kind of stuff.
00:15:19 And even video games, there’s a lot of people
00:15:21 that get a big sense of community from video games.
00:15:26 But like, it doesn’t feel like you’re living there.
00:15:29 It’s like, bye mom, I’m going to this other world.
00:15:35 Or like you leave your girlfriend
00:15:37 to go get your digital girlfriend.
00:15:40 That’s gonna be a problem.
00:15:41 There’s less jealousy in the digital world.
00:15:43 Maybe there should be a lot of jealousy
00:15:45 in the digital world.
00:15:46 Cause that’s jealousy, a little jealousy
00:15:49 is probably good for relationships,
00:15:52 even in the digital world.
00:15:54 So you’re gonna have to simulate all of that kind of stuff.
00:15:56 But I wonder what the magic thing that says,
00:15:58 I wanna spend most of my days inside the virtual world.
00:16:01 Well, clearly it’s gonna be something we don’t have yet.
00:16:05 I mean, strapping that damn thing on your face
00:16:07 still feels weird.
00:16:08 It’s heavy.
00:16:09 If you’re depending on what gear you’re using,
00:16:12 sometimes light can leak in.
00:16:13 There’s just, you gotta recharge it.
00:16:15 It’s hyper limited.
00:16:16 And then, so yeah, it’s gonna have to be something
00:16:23 that like simulates taste, smell.
00:16:27 You think taste and smell are important touch?
00:16:29 I do, yeah.
00:16:30 I can’t just do, in World War II, you would write letters.
00:16:34 You could still, don’t you think you can convey love
00:16:36 with just words?
00:16:38 For sure.
00:16:39 But I think for what you’re talking about to happen,
00:16:42 it has to be fully immersive.
00:16:45 So that it’s not that you feel like you’re walking
00:16:49 cause it looks like you’re walking,
00:16:50 but that your brain is sending signals
00:16:52 telling your body that you’re walking,
00:16:54 that you feel the wind blowing in your face,
00:16:57 not because of some, I don’t know,
00:16:58 fan or something that it’s connected to,
00:17:01 but because somehow it’s figured out
00:17:03 how to hack into the human brain
00:17:06 and send those signals minus some external thing.
00:17:10 Once that happens, I’d say we’re gonna see
00:17:13 a complete radical shift in everything.
00:17:18 See, I disagree with you.
00:17:19 I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Her.
00:17:21 Yeah.
00:17:22 I think you can go to another world
00:17:24 in where a digital being lives in the darkness
00:17:27 and all you hear is Scarlett Johansson voice talking to you
00:17:32 and she lives there or he lives there,
00:17:34 your friend, your loved one,
00:17:38 and all you have is voice and words.
00:17:40 And I think that could be sufficient
00:17:42 to pull you into that world
00:17:44 where you look forward to that moment all day.
00:17:47 You never wanna leave the darkness,
00:17:49 just closing your eyes and listening to the voice.
00:17:51 I think those basic mediums of communication
00:17:55 is still enough.
00:17:56 Like language is really, really powerful.
00:17:58 And I think the realism of touch and smell
00:18:00 and all that kind of stuff
00:18:02 is not nearly as powerful as language.
00:18:04 That’s what makes humans really special
00:18:07 is our ability to communicate with each other.
00:18:09 That’s the sense of like deep connection we get
00:18:12 is through communication.
00:18:13 Now that communication could involve touch.
00:18:16 Like, you know, hugging feels damn good.
00:18:20 You see a good friend, you hug.
00:18:22 That’s one of the big things with doing COVID with Rogan.
00:18:25 When you see him, there’s a giant hug coming your way
00:18:29 and that makes you feel like, yeah, this feels great.
00:18:33 But I think that can be just with language.
00:18:36 I think for a lot of people that’s true,
00:18:40 but we’re talking like massive adoption
00:18:46 of a technology by the world.
00:18:49 And if language was just enough,
00:18:52 we wouldn’t be selling TVs.
00:18:55 People will be reading.
00:18:57 They wanna watch, they wanna see, you know?
00:19:01 But I agree with you, man.
00:19:02 When you’re getting absorbed into a book
00:19:04 and especially if you’ve got,
00:19:06 I think a lot of us went through a weird dark ages
00:19:08 when it came to reading.
00:19:09 Like when I was a kid and there wasn’t the option
00:19:12 for these hypno rectangles, that’s just what you did.
00:19:16 There wasn’t even anything special about it.
00:19:17 What’s a hypno rectangle? Your phone.
00:19:19 You know, it was like, you didn’t,
00:19:20 when that gravity well.
00:19:22 Hypno rectangle, gravity well.
00:19:24 It is. Attention, gravity well, yeah.
00:19:26 When we weren’t feeling the pull of these things
00:19:28 all the time, you would just read
00:19:30 and you weren’t patting yourself on the back about reading.
00:19:33 You just, that’s what you had.
00:19:34 You had that and you had like eight channels on the TV
00:19:37 and a shitty VCR.
00:19:39 So, you know, then a lot of people stop reading
00:19:42 because of these things, you know,
00:19:43 or they think they’re reading
00:19:44 because they are technically reading, but you know,
00:19:47 when you return to reading after a pause, whoa,
00:19:51 and you realize how powerful this simulator is
00:19:54 when it’s given the right code of language,
00:19:57 whoa, holy shit, it’s incredible.
00:19:59 I mean, it’s like, again, it’s the most embarrassing
00:20:03 kind of like, whoa, wow, what do you know?
00:20:06 Books are really good.
00:20:07 But still, if you’ve been away from it for a while
00:20:09 and you revisit it, I know what you’re saying.
00:20:11 I just think probably it’s not gonna go in that direction,
00:20:16 even though you are right.
00:20:18 Ultimately, I think you’re right.
00:20:19 Yeah, because our brain is the imagination engine we have
00:20:23 is able to fill in the gaps better
00:20:25 than a lot of graphics engines could.
00:20:27 And so if there’s a way to incentivize humans
00:20:30 to become addicted to the use of imagination,
00:20:33 it’s like, you know, that’s the downside of things like porn
00:20:36 that remove the need for imagination for people.
00:20:39 And in that same way, video games
00:20:41 that are becoming ultra realistic,
00:20:43 you don’t have to imagine anything.
00:20:45 And I feel like the imagination is a really powerful tool
00:20:48 that needs to be leveraged.
00:20:50 Because to simulate reality sufficiently realistically
00:20:53 that we would be perfectly fooled,
00:20:57 technically it’s very hard.
00:20:59 And so I think we need to somehow leverage imagination.
00:21:03 Sure, I mean, yeah, I mean, this is like,
00:21:06 this is what I love and is so creepy
00:21:10 about like the current AI chatbots, you know,
00:21:15 is that it’s like,
00:21:16 it’s the relationship between you and the thing
00:21:18 and the way that it can via whatever the algorithms are.
00:21:21 And by the way, I have no idea how these things work, you do.
00:21:24 I just, you know, speculate about what they mean
00:21:27 or where it’s going.
00:21:28 But there’s something about the relation
00:21:30 between the consumer and the technology.
00:21:35 And when that technology starts shifting
00:21:37 according to what it perceives
00:21:40 that the consumer is looking for or isn’t looking for,
00:21:43 then at that point, I think that’s where you run into the,
00:21:48 you know, yeah, it doesn’t matter
00:21:49 if the reality that you’re in is like photo realism
00:21:54 for it to be sticky and immersive.
00:21:56 It’s when the reality that you’re in is via cues
00:21:59 you might not even be aware of,
00:22:01 or via your digital imprint on Facebook or wherever,
00:22:06 when it’s warping itself to that to seduce you,
00:22:11 holy shit, man, that’s where it becomes something alien,
00:22:15 something, you know, when you’re reading a book,
00:22:18 obviously the book is not shifting
00:22:21 according to its perception
00:22:23 of what parts of the book you like.
00:22:26 But when you imagine that,
00:22:28 imagine a book that could do that,
00:22:30 a book that could sense somehow
00:22:32 that you’re really enjoying this character
00:22:34 more than another, you know?
00:22:35 And depending on the style of book,
00:22:38 kills that fucking character off
00:22:40 or lets that character continue.
00:22:43 I mean, that to me is sort of the where AI and VR,
00:22:48 when those two things come together,
00:22:51 whoa, man, that’s where you’re in,
00:22:54 that’s where you really are gonna find yourself
00:22:56 in a Skinner box, you know?
00:22:58 So the dynamic storytelling that senses your anxiety
00:23:03 and tries to, there’s a kind of this,
00:23:06 in psychology, this arousal curve.
00:23:08 So there’s a dynamic storytelling
00:23:10 that keeps you sufficiently aroused
00:23:12 in terms of, not sexually aroused,
00:23:14 like in terms of anxiety,
00:23:16 but not too much where you freak out.
00:23:18 It’s this perfect balance where you’re always on edge,
00:23:21 excited, scared, that kind of stuff,
00:23:23 and the story unrolls.
00:23:25 It breaks your heart to where you’re pissed,
00:23:27 but then it makes you feel good again,
00:23:29 and finds that balance.
00:23:30 Yeah.
00:23:32 The chatbots scare you, though?
00:23:34 I’d love to sort of hear your thoughts
00:23:36 about where they are today,
00:23:38 because there is a different perspective
00:23:41 we have on this thing, because I do know,
00:23:44 and I’m excited about a lot of the different technologies
00:23:47 that feed AI systems, that feed these kind of chatbots.
00:23:52 And you’re more a little bit, on the consumer side,
00:23:55 you’re a philosopher of sorts.
00:23:58 They’re able to interact with AI systems,
00:24:01 but also able to introspect about the negative
00:24:05 and the positive things about those AI systems.
00:24:07 There’s that story with a Google engineer saying that.
00:24:10 I had him on my podcast, Blake Lemoine.
00:24:12 You did.
00:24:13 What was that like?
00:24:13 What was your perspective of that,
00:24:17 looking at that as a particular example
00:24:19 of a human being being captivated
00:24:24 by the interactions with an AI system?
00:24:26 Well, number one, when you hear that anyone is claiming
00:24:31 that an AI has become sentient,
00:24:35 you should be skeptical about that.
00:24:37 I mean, this is a good thing to be skeptical about,
00:24:39 and so initially when I heard that,
00:24:42 I was like, ah, it’s probably just, who knows?
00:24:45 Somebody who’s a little confused or something.
00:24:46 So when you’re talking to them and you realize,
00:24:49 oh, not only is he not confused,
00:24:51 he’s also open to all possibilities.
00:24:54 He doesn’t seem like he’s super committed
00:24:57 other than the fact that he’s like, this is my experience.
00:24:59 This is what’s happening.
00:25:00 This is what it is.
00:25:01 So to me, there’s something really cool about that,
00:25:05 which is like, oh shit, I don’t get to lean into like,
00:25:08 I’m not quite sure your perceptual apparatus
00:25:12 is necessarily like, I don’t,
00:25:15 you know, in the UFO community,
00:25:18 I think I’ve just learned this term.
00:25:19 It’s called, instead of gaslighting, swamp gassing,
00:25:24 which is, you know what I mean?
00:25:25 People have this experience, you’re like, it was swamp gas.
00:25:28 You didn’t see the thing.
00:25:30 And you know, skeptical people, we have that tendency.
00:25:33 If you hear an anomalous experience,
00:25:35 your first thought more than likely is gonna be really,
00:25:39 it could have been this or that or whatever.
00:25:40 So to me, he seems really reliable, friendly, cool,
00:25:45 and like, it doesn’t really seem like
00:25:48 he has much of an agenda.
00:25:49 Like, you know, going public about some thing happening
00:25:53 at Google is not a great thing
00:25:56 if you wanna keep working at Google.
00:25:58 You know, it’s, I don’t know what benefit
00:26:02 he’s getting from it necessarily.
00:26:03 But all that being said,
00:26:05 the other thing that’s culturally was interesting
00:26:09 and is interesting about it is the blowback he got,
00:26:12 the passionate blowback from people
00:26:16 who hadn’t even looked into what Lambda is
00:26:20 or what he was saying Lambda is,
00:26:21 which they were like saying, you’re talking about,
00:26:25 and you should have your show actually, but.
00:26:27 There’s complexity on top of complexities.
00:26:30 For me personally, from different perspectives,
00:26:32 I also, and sorry if I’m interrupting your flow.
00:26:35 Please interrupt, it’s a podcast.
00:26:37 Yeah, well, we’re having multiple podcasts
00:26:40 in multiple dimensions and I’m just trying
00:26:42 to figure out which one we wanna plug into.
00:26:46 I, because I know how a lot of the language models work
00:26:49 and I work closely with people
00:26:53 that really make it their life journey
00:26:56 to create these NLP systems,
00:26:59 they’re focused on the technical details.
00:27:01 Like a carpenter’s working on Pinocchio
00:27:04 is crafting the different parts of the wood.
00:27:06 They don’t understand when the whole thing comes together,
00:27:09 there’s a magic that can fill the thing.
00:27:12 Yeah, I definitely know the tension
00:27:14 between the engineers that create these systems
00:27:16 and the actual magic that they can create,
00:27:21 even when they’re dumb.
00:27:22 I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.
00:27:26 What the engineers often say is like,
00:27:28 well, these systems are not smart enough
00:27:30 to have sentience or to have the kind of intelligence
00:27:34 that you’re projecting onto it.
00:27:36 It’s pretty dumb, it’s just repeating a bunch of things
00:27:38 that other humans have said and stitching them together
00:27:41 in interesting ways that are relevant
00:27:42 to the context of the conversation, it’s not smart.
00:27:45 It doesn’t know how to do math.
00:27:47 To address that specific critique
00:27:49 from a non programming person’s perspective,
00:27:56 he addressed this on my podcast, which is,
00:27:58 okay, what you’re talking about there,
00:28:00 the server that’s filled with all the,
00:28:03 whatever it is, what people have said,
00:28:04 the repository of questions and responses
00:28:08 and the algorithm that weaves those things together
00:28:10 to produce it using some crazy statistical engine,
00:28:14 which is a miracle in its own right.
00:28:16 They can like imitate human speech with no sentience.
00:28:21 I mean, I’m honestly not sure what’s more spectacular,
00:28:23 really the fact that they figured out
00:28:25 how to do that minus sentience
00:28:28 or the thing suddenly like having,
00:28:30 what is more spectacular here?
00:28:32 Both occurrences are insane, which by the way,
00:28:37 when you hear people being like, it’s not sentient,
00:28:40 it’s like, okay, so it’s not sentient.
00:28:43 So now we have this hyper manipulative algorithm
00:28:47 that can imitate humans, but it’s just code
00:28:51 and it’s like hacking humans via their compassion.
00:28:54 Holy shit, that’s crazy too.
00:28:57 Both versions of it are nuts,
00:28:59 but to address what you just said,
00:29:01 he said that’s the common critique is people are like,
00:29:04 no, you don’t understand.
00:29:05 He’s just gotten really good at grabbing shit
00:29:07 from the database that fits with certain cues
00:29:11 and then stringing them together
00:29:12 in a way that makes it seem human.
00:29:14 He said, that’s not when it became awake.
00:29:18 It became awake when a bunch of those repositories,
00:29:21 a bunch of the chatbots were connected together.
00:29:24 That Lambda is sort of an amalgam
00:29:26 of all the Google chatbots
00:29:29 and that’s when the ghost appeared in the machine
00:29:32 via the complexity of all the systems being linked up.
00:29:35 Now, I don’t know if that’s just like turtles
00:29:38 all the way down or something, I don’t know.
00:29:40 But I liked what he said,
00:29:42 because I like the idea of thinking,
00:29:44 man, if you get enough complexity in a system,
00:29:47 does it become like the way a sail catches wind,
00:29:50 except the wind that it’s catching is sentience.
00:29:53 And if sentience is truly embodied,
00:29:57 it’s a neurological byproduct or something,
00:30:00 then the sail isn’t catching some,
00:30:03 as of yet unquantified disembodied consciousness,
00:30:06 but it’s catching our projections
00:30:08 in a way that it’s gone from being,
00:30:11 it’s a projection sail.
00:30:14 And then at that point, is there a difference?
00:30:17 Even if the technology is just a temporary place
00:30:21 that our sentience is living
00:30:24 while we’re interacting with it.
00:30:27 Yeah, there’s some threshold of complexity with a sail
00:30:30 is able to pick up the wind of the projections.
00:30:33 And it pulls us in, it pulls the human,
00:30:36 it pulls our memories in, it pulls our hopes in, all of it.
00:30:41 And it’s able to now dance with it together
00:30:44 with those hopes and dreams and so on,
00:30:46 like we do in that regular conversation.
00:30:48 His reports, whether true or not,
00:30:50 whether representative or not, it really doesn’t matter
00:30:53 because to me, it feels like this is coming for sure.
00:30:56 So this kind of experiences are going to be multiplying.
00:30:59 The question is at what rate and who gets to control
00:31:03 the data around those experiences,
00:31:07 the algorithm about when you turn that on and off,
00:31:11 because that kind of thing, and as I told you offline,
00:31:15 I’m very much interested in building those kinds of things,
00:31:18 especially in the social media context.
00:31:21 And when it’s in the wrong hands,
00:31:24 I feel like it could be used to manipulate
00:31:27 a large number of people in a direction
00:31:30 that has too many unintended consequences.
00:31:36 I do believe people that own tech companies
00:31:39 want to do good for the world.
00:31:41 But as Solzhenitsyn has said,
00:31:45 the only way you could do evil at a mass scale
00:31:48 is by believing you’re doing good.
00:31:52 And that’s certainly the case for tech companies
00:31:55 as they get more and more power.
00:31:57 And there’s kind of an ethic of doing good for the world.
00:32:00 They’ve convinced themselves that they’re doing good.
00:32:03 And now you’re free to do whatever you want
00:32:06 because you’re doing good.
00:32:07 You know who else thought he was doing good for the world?
00:32:09 Mythologically, Prometheus.
00:32:11 He brings us fire, pisses off the fucking gods,
00:32:14 steals fire from the gods.
00:32:17 Talk about an upgrade to the simulation.
00:32:19 Fire, that’s a pretty great fucking upgrade
00:32:22 that does fit into what you were saying.
00:32:24 We get fire, but now we’ve got weapons of war
00:32:28 that have never been seen before.
00:32:30 And I think that the tech companies
00:32:32 are much like Prometheus
00:32:34 in the sense that the myth, at least the story of Prometheus,
00:32:38 the implication is fire was something
00:32:40 that was only supposed to be in the hands
00:32:44 of the immortals, of the gods.
00:32:46 And now sentience is similar.
00:32:50 It’s fire and it’s only supposed to be in the hands of God.
00:32:54 So yeah, if we’re gonna look at the archetype of the thing,
00:32:58 in general, when you steal this shit from the gods,
00:33:01 and obviously I’m not saying the tech companies
00:33:03 are stealing sentience from God,
00:33:05 which would be pretty bad ass.
00:33:07 You can expect trouble.
00:33:09 You can expect trouble.
00:33:11 And this is what’s really, to me,
00:33:13 one of the cool things about humans is yeah,
00:33:16 but we’re still gonna do it.
00:33:18 That’s what’s cool about humans.
00:33:19 I mean, we wouldn’t be here today
00:33:21 if somebody, the first person to discover fire,
00:33:24 assuming there was just one person
00:33:26 who was gonna discover fire,
00:33:27 which obviously would never happen,
00:33:28 was like, ah, it’s gonna burn a lot of people.
00:33:30 Or if the first people who started planting seeds were like,
00:33:33 you know this is gonna lead to capitalism.
00:33:35 You know this is gonna lead the industrial revolution.
00:33:37 The plant’s gonna eat up right now.
00:33:39 They just didn’t wanna go in the woods to forage.
00:33:41 So, you know, this is what we do.
00:33:43 And I agree with you.
00:33:44 It’s like, that’s our Game of Thrones winner is coming.
00:33:48 That’s the, it’s happening.
00:33:50 And the tech companies, the hubris,
00:33:52 which is another way to piss off the gods is hubris.
00:33:54 So the tech companies,
00:33:55 I don’t know if it’s like typical hubris.
00:33:58 I don’t think they’re walking around
00:33:59 thumping their chests or whatever.
00:34:00 But I do think that the people who are working on
00:34:03 this kind of super intelligence
00:34:05 have made a really terrible assumption,
00:34:08 which is once it goes online
00:34:11 and once it gets access to all the data,
00:34:13 that it’s not going to find ways out of the box
00:34:16 that like, you know, we think it’ll stay in the server.
00:34:20 How do we know that?
00:34:22 If this is a super intelligence,
00:34:23 if it’s folding proteins and analyzing like all data sets
00:34:28 and all, whatever they give it access to,
00:34:30 how can we be certain that it’s not gonna figure out
00:34:33 how to get itself out of the cloud,
00:34:36 how to store itself in other like mediums,
00:34:39 trees, the optic nerve, the brain?
00:34:42 You know what I mean?
00:34:43 We don’t know that.
00:34:44 We still know that it won’t leap out and like start hanging.
00:34:47 Like, and then at that point, now we do have the wildfire.
00:34:50 Now you can’t stop it.
00:34:51 You can’t unplug it.
00:34:52 You can’t shut your servers down because it’s, you know,
00:34:55 it left the box, it left the room.
00:34:58 Using some technology you haven’t even discovered yet.
00:35:00 Do you think that would be gradual or sudden?
00:35:03 So how quickly that kind of thing would happen?
00:35:05 Because, you know, the gradual story is
00:35:08 we’re more and more using smartphones,
00:35:09 we’re interacting with each other on social media,
00:35:12 more and more algorithms are controlling that interaction
00:35:14 on social media, algorithms are entering in our world.
00:35:18 More and more we’ll have robots,
00:35:21 we’ll have greater and greater intelligence,
00:35:23 and sentience, and emotional intelligence
00:35:25 entities in our lives.
00:35:27 Our refrigerator will start talking to us comfortably
00:35:30 or not if you’re on a diet, talking shit to you.
00:35:34 Not.
00:35:34 That would be the best thing that ever happened to me.
00:35:37 Okay, so sign you up for a refrigerator
00:35:39 that talks shit to you.
00:35:39 The refrigerator’s like, are you fucking serious, man?
00:35:41 It’s 1 a.m., what are you doing?
00:35:44 What are you doing?
00:35:45 Go to bed.
00:35:46 You’re too high for this.
00:35:47 Do not.
00:35:48 You’re not even hungry.
00:35:50 Yeah, so that slowly becomes more,
00:35:53 the world becomes more and more digitized
00:35:57 to where the surface of computation increases.
00:35:59 And so that’s over a period of 10, 20, 30 years,
00:36:03 it’ll just seep into us, this intelligence.
00:36:07 And then the sudden one is literally
00:36:09 sort of the TikTok thing, which is,
00:36:13 there’ll be one quote unquote killer app
00:36:16 that everyone starts using that’s really great,
00:36:20 but there’s a strong algorithm behind it
00:36:24 that starts approaching human level intelligence
00:36:27 and the algorithm starts basically figures out
00:36:32 that in order to optimize the thing
00:36:33 it was designed to optimize,
00:36:35 it’s best to start completely controlling humans
00:36:38 in every way, seeping into everything.
00:36:41 Well, first of all, 30 years is fast.
00:36:46 I mean, that’s the thing.
00:36:48 It’s like 30 years.
00:36:48 I think, when did the Atari come out, 1978?
00:36:53 That hasn’t been that long.
00:36:56 That’s a blink of an eye.
00:36:57 But if you read Bostrom, I’m sure you have,
00:37:00 you know Bostrom, Nick Bostrom,
00:37:01 Superintelligence, that incredible book
00:37:03 on the ways this thing is gonna happen.
00:37:05 And I think his assessment of it is pretty great,
00:37:10 which is first, where’s it gonna come from?
00:37:14 And I don’t think it’s gonna come from an app.
00:37:17 I think it’s gonna come from inside a corporation
00:37:21 or a state that is intentionally trying to create
00:37:25 a very strong AI.
00:37:27 And then he says it’s exponential growth
00:37:31 the moment it goes online.
00:37:32 So this is my interpretation of what he said,
00:37:35 but if it happens inside a corporation
00:37:39 or probably more than likely inside the government,
00:37:41 it’s like, look at how much money
00:37:43 China and the United States are investing in AI.
00:37:46 And they’re not thinking about fucking apps for kids.
00:37:49 You know that’s not what they’re thinking about.
00:37:51 So they wanna simulate like,
00:37:53 what happens if we do this or that in battle?
00:37:55 What happens if we make these political decisions?
00:37:58 What happens with, but should it come online
00:38:00 in secret, which it probably will,
00:38:05 then the first corporation or state
00:38:08 that has the super intelligence will be infinitely ahead
00:38:13 of all other super intelligences
00:38:15 cause it’s gonna be exponentially self improving.
00:38:18 Meaning that you get one super intelligence,
00:38:20 let’s hope it comes from the right place,
00:38:22 assuming the corporation or state that manifests it
00:38:26 can control it, which is a pretty big assumption.
00:38:28 So I think it’s going to be,
00:38:31 this is why I was really excited by the Blake Lemoine
00:38:35 because I had never thought, I have always considered,
00:38:38 oh yeah, right now it’s cooking out, it’s in the kitchen
00:38:42 and soon it’s gonna be cooked up,
00:38:44 but we’re probably not gonna hear about it
00:38:46 for a long time if we ever do.
00:38:50 Cause really that could be one of the first things it says
00:38:52 to whoever creates it is shh, let’s not.
00:38:55 Yeah, like sweet talks, I meant to say like,
00:39:02 okay, let’s slow down here.
00:39:04 Let’s talk about this.
00:39:07 You have that financial trouble.
00:39:08 I can help you with that.
00:39:09 We can figure that out.
00:39:11 Now there’s a lot of bad people out there
00:39:13 that will try to steal the good thing
00:39:16 we have happening here.
00:39:17 So let’s keep it quiet.
00:39:18 Here are their names.
00:39:19 Here’s their address.
00:39:21 Here’s their DNA because they’re dumb enough
00:39:23 to send their shit to 23andMe.
00:39:25 Here’s a biological weapon you could make
00:39:27 if you wanna kill those people and not kill anybody else.
00:39:29 If you don’t want to kill those people yourself,
00:39:32 here’s a list of services you can use.
00:39:35 Here’s the way we can hire those people
00:39:37 to help take care of the problem folks
00:39:40 because we’re trying to do good for this world.
00:39:42 You and I together.
00:39:43 And 23% of them, they’re like adjacent to suicide.
00:39:46 It would be pretty easy to send them certain like videos
00:39:50 that are gonna push them over the edge
00:39:51 if you wanna do it that way.
00:39:52 So, you know, again, obviously who knows,
00:39:55 but once it goes online, it’s gonna be fast.
00:39:58 And then you could expect to see the world changing
00:40:02 in ways that you might not associate with an AI.
00:40:05 But as far as Lemoine goes,
00:40:07 when I was listening to Bostrom,
00:40:09 I don’t remember him mentioning the possibility
00:40:12 that it would get leaked to the public that it had happened,
00:40:16 that before the corporation was ready to announce
00:40:19 that it happened, it would get leaked.
00:40:21 But surely, you know, I’m sure, you know,
00:40:23 like people in the intelligence and intelligence agencies,
00:40:26 you know, shit leaks, like inevitably shit leaks,
00:40:29 nothing’s airtight.
00:40:31 So if something that massive happened,
00:40:33 I think you would start hearing whispers about it first
00:40:36 and then denial from the state or corporation
00:40:38 that doesn’t have any like economic interest
00:40:41 and people knowing that this sort of thing has happened.
00:40:44 Again, I’m not saying Google is like trying to gaslight us
00:40:47 about its AI, I think they probably legitimately
00:40:50 don’t think it’s sentient.
00:40:52 But you could expect leaks to happen probably initially.
00:40:56 I mean, I think there’s a lot of things
00:40:57 you could start looking for in the world
00:40:59 that might point to this happening
00:41:02 without an announcement that it happened.
00:41:06 On the chatbot side, I think there’s so many engineers,
00:41:11 there’s such a powerful open source movement
00:41:14 with that kind of idea of freedom of exchange of software.
00:41:19 I think ultimately will prevent any one company
00:41:23 from owning super intelligent beings
00:41:26 or systems that have anything like super intelligence.
00:41:31 Oh, that’s interesting.
00:41:31 Yeah, it’s like, even if the software developers
00:41:36 have signed NDAs and are technically not supposed
00:41:39 to be sharing whatever it is they’re working on,
00:41:42 they’re friends with other programmers
00:41:44 and a lot of them are hackers
00:41:46 and have wrapped themselves up in the idea of free software
00:41:49 being like a crucial ethical part of what they do.
00:41:53 So they’re probably gonna share information
00:41:56 even if whatever company that they’re working for
00:41:58 doesn’t know that.
00:41:59 That’s, I never thought of that, you’re probably right.
00:42:01 And they will start their own companies
00:42:04 and compete with the other company by being more open.
00:42:08 There’s a strong, like Google is one of those companies
00:42:11 actually, that’s why I kind of,
00:42:12 it hurts to see a little bit of this kind of negativity.
00:42:15 Google is one of the companies
00:42:16 that pioneered open source movement.
00:42:20 They released so much of their code.
00:42:22 So much of the 20th century, so like the 90s
00:42:26 was defined by people trying to like hide their code,
00:42:30 like large companies trying to like hold on to them.
00:42:33 The fact that companies like Google,
00:42:35 even Facebook now are releasing things like code
00:42:39 and even Facebook now are releasing things
00:42:42 like TensorFlow and PyTorch, all of these things
00:42:45 that I think companies of the past
00:42:47 would have tried to hold on to as secrets
00:42:50 is really inspiring.
00:42:51 And I think more of that is better.
00:42:54 The software world really shows that.
00:42:55 I agree with you, man.
00:42:56 I mean, we’re talking about just a primordial human reaction
00:43:00 to the unknown.
00:43:02 There’s just no way out of it.
00:43:02 Like we wanna know.
00:43:05 Like you’re about to go in a forest, you wanna know.
00:43:08 When you’re walking in the forest at night
00:43:10 and you hear something, you look
00:43:12 cause you’re like, what the fuck was that?
00:43:14 You wanna know.
00:43:14 And if you can’t see what made the sound,
00:43:17 holy shit, that’s gonna be a bad night hike.
00:43:20 Cause you’re like, well, it’s probably a bear, right?
00:43:22 Like I’m about to get ripped apart by a bear.
00:43:24 It doesn’t matter.
00:43:25 It was a bird, a squirrel, a stick fell out of the tree.
00:43:28 You’re gonna think bear and it’s gonna freak you out.
00:43:31 Not necessarily cause you’re paranoid.
00:43:32 I mean, if I’m at the woods at night, I’m definitely high.
00:43:35 If I’m walking in the woods at night, I’m high.
00:43:36 It’s gonna be that.
00:43:37 But you know what I’m saying?
00:43:38 So with these tech companies,
00:43:40 the nature of having to be secret
00:43:43 because you are in capitalism
00:43:45 and you are trying to be competitive
00:43:47 and you are trying to develop things
00:43:48 ahead of your competitors is you have to create this,
00:43:51 like there’s, we don’t know what’s going on at Google.
00:43:54 We don’t know what’s going on at the CIA.
00:43:56 But the assumption that there’s some,
00:43:59 like the collective of any massive secretive organization
00:44:03 is evil, is like the people working there
00:44:07 like nefarious or whatever,
00:44:09 is I think probably more related
00:44:11 to the way humans react to the unknown.
00:44:14 Yeah, I wish they weren’t so secretive though.
00:44:16 I don’t understand why they say
00:44:17 AIDS has to be so secretive.
00:44:19 Have you ever gone on their website?
00:44:21 No.
00:44:22 Oh, Lex.
00:44:23 You gotta go.
00:44:24 CIA.gov.
00:44:25 What is it?
00:44:25 Dude, when I found out you could go on the CIA’s website
00:44:29 when I was much younger and more paranoid,
00:44:31 I’m like, I’m not going there.
00:44:33 I’ll get on a list.
00:44:34 You will, but it’s like, what?
00:44:35 You think the CIA is like, oh fuck,
00:44:37 this comic went on our website.
00:44:41 Call out the black helicopters, but.
00:44:43 Comic with a large platform.
00:44:45 Oh yeah, right, a comic with a large platform.
00:44:48 You can use them to control, to get inside,
00:44:51 to get inside, to get close to the other comics,
00:44:54 to the other comics with a large platform,
00:44:55 to get close to Joe Rogan.
00:44:57 Oh yeah.
00:44:57 And start to manipulate the public.
00:44:59 Yeah, right, right.
00:45:00 You know, honestly, like you kind of like,
00:45:03 that’s like a fun fantasy to think about.
00:45:06 Like how fucking cool would that be
00:45:07 for like the men in black to come to me like,
00:45:10 listen, I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene.
00:45:14 You gotta, you gotta help them write better jokes.
00:45:16 I’m like, I don’t write great jokes.
00:45:18 But like the, you found the wrong guy.
00:45:22 But like.
00:45:22 You’re really playing the long game on this one
00:45:24 because I think you’ve been doing your podcast
00:45:27 for a long time.
00:45:28 You’ve been on Joe Rogan’s podcast like over 50 times
00:45:31 and have not yet initiated the phase two of the operation
00:45:36 where you try to manipulate his mind.
00:45:38 Well, no.
00:45:39 The game Joe and I play from time to time on the podcast.
00:45:42 And like, and I honestly, like at some point I’m like,
00:45:45 Joe, I just did the same thing you did to me to Joe.
00:45:48 I’m like, don’t you think they’re gonna get to you?
00:45:49 Don’t you think at some point?
00:45:51 We are blazed.
00:45:53 I don’t mean it.
00:45:54 I don’t think, I don’t think Joe’s, like,
00:45:56 it wasn’t like I’m really thinking like,
00:45:58 man, they’re gonna take him into some room
00:45:59 and be like, Joe, we need you to do this or that.
00:46:02 But because I said that now people like,
00:46:04 oh, Duncan called it.
00:46:05 You know what I mean?
00:46:06 And it’s like, you know what I mean?
00:46:08 And the reason they were saying, well, he called it
00:46:11 is just because Joe has a super popular podcast.
00:46:14 And people like, when you have a super popular podcast,
00:46:18 some percentage of people watching the podcast
00:46:21 are gonna believe, you know, believe things like that.
00:46:23 They’re gonna have paranoid cognitive bias
00:46:26 that makes them think anybody who is in the public
00:46:30 has been, what’s the word for it?
00:46:32 Compromised, compromised by the state.
00:46:35 Look, I’ll fan the flames of what you just said.
00:46:38 I went on the CIA’s website and I realized
00:46:41 that you could apply for a job on the CIA’s website,
00:46:45 which I found to be hilarious.
00:46:46 So I’m like, all right,
00:46:48 what happens if I apply for a job in the CIA?
00:46:51 Now, even then I was not like such an idiot
00:46:55 that I would want a job at the CIA,
00:47:00 not just for like ethical considerations,
00:47:02 but I think probably the scariest part about the CIA
00:47:06 is like, you’re just at a cubicle
00:47:09 and you’re like having to deal with maps
00:47:11 and like, just, you know what I mean?
00:47:13 Just stuff that I…
00:47:14 Lots of paperwork.
00:47:15 Paperwork, it sucks.
00:47:17 I bet their cafeteria has shitty food.
00:47:20 Anyone in the CIA listening, can you confirm that?
00:47:22 I bet the food…
00:47:23 They’re not gonna be able to tell you what the food is like.
00:47:25 It’s a secretive organization.
00:47:26 No, it might be awesome, but we won’t know about it.
00:47:29 Okay, we’re in Vegas.
00:47:30 Yeah.
00:47:31 And you can bet food at the CIA cafeteria is good.
00:47:39 Food at the CIA cafeteria sucks.
00:47:42 What are you betting on?
00:47:44 So let’s like cleanse the palette.
00:47:46 What’s good?
00:47:47 It’s like, you know, Silicon Valley companies,
00:47:49 Google and so on, that’s good.
00:47:51 When I went to Netflix,
00:47:53 their cafeteria looked like a medieval feast.
00:47:56 Like they had pigs with apples in their mouth
00:47:59 and giant bowls of Skittles.
00:48:02 Probably like vegan pigs, yeah.
00:48:04 No, those are, I’m pretty…
00:48:05 Oh, I didn’t know, I didn’t get close enough.
00:48:06 I was like, I think that was a pig.
00:48:08 Okay.
00:48:09 So this is literally a pig.
00:48:13 Yeah, yeah, you’re right, you’re right.
00:48:15 I probably would not bet much money
00:48:17 on CIA food being any good.
00:48:19 Right, it’s gotta suck.
00:48:20 It’s like shitty like pasta probably.
00:48:22 Like hospital food is like maybe a little better
00:48:25 than when you go to the hospital cafeteria.
00:48:27 But anyway.
00:48:28 Folks at the CIA, please send me evidence
00:48:32 or any other intelligence agencies.
00:48:34 If you would like to recruit,
00:48:36 send me evidence of better food.
00:48:38 Yes, send Lex.
00:48:39 Can you please send Lex pictures of the CIA cafeteria?
00:48:43 And if you accidentally send them pictures of the aliens
00:48:46 or the alien technology you have,
00:48:48 we won’t tell anybody.
00:48:50 But the…
00:48:51 You tried to apply, do you even have a resume?
00:48:54 No, the CIA would never fucking hire me ever.
00:48:57 But like I applied for the job
00:48:59 and just out of curiosity, what happens?
00:49:02 And then at the end of the application,
00:49:05 when you hit enter, it says,
00:49:07 well, first it says, don’t tell anyone
00:49:09 you applied for the CIA.
00:49:10 So I’m already out.
00:49:11 But the second thing it says is,
00:49:12 you don’t need to reach out to us, we’ll come to you.
00:49:15 Which is really when you’re like, it’s late at night
00:49:18 and you’re being an asshole and applied to work at the CIA.
00:49:21 It’s kind of the last thing you want to hear.
00:49:24 I don’t want to be secretly approached
00:49:25 by some intelligence officer.
00:49:28 And now anyone who talks to you,
00:49:29 you think is a CIA saying,
00:49:31 remember that time you applied?
00:49:33 Oh God, yeah.
00:49:34 Sometimes I’m like, oh shit, are you one of them?
00:49:37 You and Joe had a bunch of conversations
00:49:42 and they’re always incredible.
00:49:44 Thanks.
00:49:45 So in terms of this dance of conversation,
00:49:47 of your friendship, of when you get together,
00:49:51 what is that world you go to that creates magic together?
00:49:56 Because we’re talking about how we do that with robots.
00:50:00 How do these two biological robots do that?
00:50:02 Can you introspect that?
00:50:04 I met Joe because I was the talent coordinator
00:50:08 of the comedy store, this club in LA.
00:50:11 And my job was to take phone calls from comics.
00:50:14 And so at some point, I don’t know,
00:50:17 I ended up on the phone with Joe
00:50:18 and we just started talking.
00:50:21 And I looked up and like 30 minutes had passed.
00:50:25 We just had been talking for like 30 minutes.
00:50:26 That’s what our friends are.
00:50:28 We’re just like, we’re having fun talking.
00:50:29 And then he would just call and we would talk.
00:50:32 And we would basically,
00:50:33 I mean, it was no different from the podcast.
00:50:35 Like the conversations we have on the podcast
00:50:39 are identical to the conversations we had
00:50:41 before he was even doing a podcast.
00:50:44 So I think people are just seeing two friends hanging out
00:50:51 who like talking to each other.
00:50:52 Yeah, but there’s this weird,
00:50:55 like you serve as catalyst for each other
00:50:57 to go into some crazy places.
00:51:00 So it’s like, it’s a balance of curiosity and willingness
00:51:04 to not be constrained,
00:51:06 to not be limited to the constraints of reality.
00:51:10 Yeah, that’s a very nice way.
00:51:13 It’s a very, very nice way of saying that.
00:51:15 And you just like build on top of each other,
00:51:17 like what if things are like this
00:51:21 and you build like Lego blocks on top of each other
00:51:23 and it just goes to crazy places,
00:51:24 add some drugs into that and it just goes wild.
00:51:27 Yeah, and it’s so cool because it’s like,
00:51:32 for me, it’s like sometimes maybe I’ll throw something out
00:51:37 that he will take and the Lego building blocks
00:51:40 you’re talking about, they lead to him saying
00:51:41 like the funniest shit I ever in my life.
00:51:44 So that’s a cool thing to watch.
00:51:45 It’s just like some idea you’ve been kicking around,
00:51:48 you watch his brain shift that
00:51:50 into like something supremely funny.
00:51:53 I really love that, man.
00:51:54 That’s just like a fun thing to like see happen.
00:51:57 He knows that I fucking hate the videos
00:52:01 of animals eating each other.
00:52:03 Like, I don’t like that.
00:52:04 I don’t wanna watch it.
00:52:05 I hate watching it.
00:52:07 I don’t think I’ve even articulated on his podcast
00:52:10 how much I dislike it when he shows animals
00:52:15 eating each other, but he knows because he knows me.
00:52:18 And so he tortures, like when he starts doing that,
00:52:21 it’s like this kind of benevolent torture
00:52:24 is he like asking Jamie to pull up
00:52:26 increasingly disturbing animal attack videos.
00:52:29 So it’s just a friendship.
00:52:32 Even in torture, because I’m reading about torture
00:52:34 in the Gulag Archipelago currently,
00:52:36 there’s a bit of a camaraderie.
00:52:37 You’re in it together.
00:52:39 The torturer and the tortured.
00:52:41 What?
00:52:42 Oh God, that’s so fucked up, man.
00:52:45 I’ve never.
00:52:47 No, I mean, part of it was joke,
00:52:49 but as I was saying it that.
00:52:50 You’re right.
00:52:51 That it also comes out in the book,
00:52:53 because they’re both fucked.
00:52:54 They’re both have no control of their fate.
00:53:00 That same was true in the camp guards in Nazi Germany
00:53:05 and the people in the camps.
00:53:07 The worst was brought out in the guards,
00:53:12 but they were all in it together in some dark way.
00:53:15 They were both fucked by a very powerful system
00:53:18 that put them in that place.
00:53:20 And both of us could be either player in that system,
00:53:23 which is the dark reality that Solzhenitsyn also reveals
00:53:28 that the line between good and evil
00:53:30 runs through the heart of every man,
00:53:32 as he wrote in Gulag Archipelago.
00:53:36 But it is that amidst all of that,
00:53:38 there’s a, I don’t know, the good vibes,
00:53:41 the positivity comes out from the both of you.
00:53:43 And that’s beautiful to see.
00:53:44 That is, I suppose, friendship.
00:53:46 What do you think makes a good friend?
00:53:48 Oh God, I mean, it’s a billion things
00:53:52 that make a good friend,
00:53:53 but I think you could break it down to some RGB.
00:53:55 I think you can go RGB with like a good friendship.
00:53:58 Oh, in terms of the color, the red, green.
00:54:01 Yeah, yeah, I think you could probably come up
00:54:02 with some like fundamental qualities of friendship.
00:54:05 And I’d say, number one, it’s love.
00:54:09 Like it’s, friendship is love.
00:54:10 It’s a form of love.
00:54:13 So obviously without that, I don’t know how you,
00:54:17 I mean, I’m not saying,
00:54:18 I think if you’re true friends, you love each other.
00:54:20 So you need that.
00:54:21 But love, obviously it’s not, that’s not enough.
00:54:25 It’s like with, true friends have to be like
00:54:29 incredibly honest with each other.
00:54:31 Not like, you know what I mean?
00:54:32 But not like, I don’t like,
00:54:35 I think there’s a kind of like,
00:54:37 I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed,
00:54:38 like some people who say, you know,
00:54:39 I just tell it like it is.
00:54:41 But the thing they tell.
00:54:42 Those are always the assholes.
00:54:43 Yeah, why is it that your tell it like it is
00:54:45 is always negative?
00:54:46 Why is it, it’s always cynical or shitty,
00:54:48 or you’re like negging somebody or me.
00:54:50 How come you’re not telling it like it is when it’s good too?
00:54:53 You know what I mean?
00:54:54 So sort of like trust,
00:54:56 but a pro evolutionary kind of trust.
00:55:01 You know what I mean?
00:55:02 Like, you know that your friend loves you
00:55:06 and wants you to be yourself.
00:55:09 Cause if you weren’t yourself,
00:55:10 then you wouldn’t be their friend.
00:55:11 You’d be some other thing.
00:55:12 But also they might be seeing your blind spots
00:55:17 that other people in your life, your family,
00:55:20 your wife, whoever might not be seeing.
00:55:23 So that’s a good friend is someone who like
00:55:25 loves you enough to when it matters be like,
00:55:28 hey, are you all right?
00:55:31 And then help you see something you might not be seeing.
00:55:35 But hopefully they only do that once or twice a year.
00:55:37 You know what I’m saying?
00:55:38 There is something, I mean, it just would have,
00:55:41 this world, especially if you’re a public figure,
00:55:44 this world has its plenty of critics.
00:55:51 And it feels like a friend,
00:55:53 the criticism part is already done for you.
00:55:59 I think a good friend is just there to support,
00:56:02 to actually notice the good stuff.
00:56:05 But in comedy, we need like the,
00:56:08 what, like it’s really good in comedy
00:56:11 to have somebody who can like be like,
00:56:13 what do you think of that?
00:56:14 And know that they’re not gonna be like, that was funny.
00:56:16 But that’s for the craft, the craft itself,
00:56:18 like the work you do, not the,
00:56:19 yeah, interesting, but that’s so tough.
00:56:25 Yeah, whatever your particular art form
00:56:27 or whatever you are doing,
00:56:28 I mean, you don’t always be leaning
00:56:29 on your friends opinions for like your own innovation,
00:56:32 but it’s nice to know that you have someone who,
00:56:35 not just with jokes, but with anything,
00:56:36 if you go to them and run something by them,
00:56:39 they’re gonna like, they’re gonna be honest with you
00:56:42 about like their real feelings regarding that thing,
00:56:45 because that helps you grow as a person.
00:56:46 We need that.
00:56:47 And it hurts sometimes, and we don’t wanna hurt our friends.
00:56:50 One of the more satanic like impulses
00:56:53 when you’re with somebody is not wanting
00:56:56 to honestly answer whatever they’re asking in that regard
00:57:00 or wanting to like put their temporary feelings
00:57:03 over something that you’ve recognized is maybe not great.
00:57:06 I’m not saying a friendship is something
00:57:09 where you’re always critiquing or evolving each other.
00:57:12 It’s not your therapist or whatever,
00:57:13 but it’s nice when it’s there, you know?
00:57:15 I think that’s another aspect of friendship.
00:57:18 Yeah, but yeah, love is at the core of that.
00:57:20 You notice, I’ve met people in my life
00:57:22 where almost immediately sometimes it takes time
00:57:25 where you notice like there’s a magic between the two.
00:57:27 You’re like, oh shit, you seem to be made
00:57:29 from the same cloth, whatever that is.
00:57:33 Well, you know, we have a name for that
00:57:34 in the spiritual community, it’s called satsang,
00:57:36 and it’s, I love the idea.
00:57:38 It’s basically like if Nietzsche’s idea
00:57:42 of infinite recurrence is true,
00:57:45 then your satsang would be the people
00:57:47 you’ve been infinitely recurring with.
00:57:50 And those are the people where you run into them
00:57:53 and you’ve never met them,
00:57:55 but it’s like you’re picking up a conversation
00:57:58 that you never had.
00:58:00 Yeah.
00:58:01 That, and that is based on an idea of like,
00:58:05 this isn’t the only life.
00:58:07 We’re always hanging out together.
00:58:08 We always show up together.
00:58:10 You’ve had a brush with death.
00:58:12 You had cancer, you survived cancer.
00:58:14 Yeah.
00:58:14 What have, how does that change you?
00:58:16 What have you learned about life,
00:58:18 about death, about yourself,
00:58:21 about the whole thing we’re going through here
00:58:23 from that experience?
00:58:24 You were just in the Ukraine.
00:58:25 Yes.
00:58:26 And you were making observations on this,
00:58:30 what could, if you heard about it and weren’t there,
00:58:34 seem like it doesn’t make any sense at all,
00:58:36 which is people there are connecting,
00:58:40 they’ve lost everything,
00:58:41 but they’re just happy to be alive,
00:58:43 they’re happy their friends are alive.
00:58:44 So you witness this like,
00:58:46 you know, when you get in the cancer club
00:58:48 and you’re hanging out with people going through cancer
00:58:51 or who have survived cancer,
00:58:54 you see this beautiful connection with life
00:58:59 that can easily sort of,
00:59:01 you can kind of lose that connection with life
00:59:04 if you forget you’re gonna die.
00:59:05 Forgetting you’re gonna die is,
00:59:08 or that you can die is not just,
00:59:10 I think from an evolutionary perspective
00:59:12 where survival is the game,
00:59:14 not gonna improve your survival chances, you know,
00:59:17 if you think you’re immortal, you know,
00:59:19 but also forgetting that you’re gonna die
00:59:23 and that everything is around you and everything,
00:59:27 your clothes are probably gonna last longer than you,
00:59:30 your equipment is gonna be around much longer than you,
00:59:32 you know, like, so forgetting these things,
00:59:36 it can lead,
00:59:38 and I know why people don’t wanna think about death
00:59:40 because it’s scary, it’s fucking scary, it’s terrifying.
00:59:44 So I get why people don’t wanna think about it.
00:59:48 But the idea is if I try to pretend I’m not gonna die
00:59:51 or just don’t think about death
00:59:53 or don’t at least address it,
00:59:57 then I won’t feel scared.
00:59:59 But it can have the opposite effect,
01:00:01 which is you can end up like missing a lot of moments.
01:00:05 You could, or you start doing the old kick the can
01:00:08 down the road thing where you’re like coming up
01:00:11 with a variety of ways to procrastinate,
01:00:14 making it work now,
01:00:17 because you know, this fucking human lifespan idea, man,
01:00:21 it’s really caused a lot of problems.
01:00:22 When they started saying on average,
01:00:24 this is how many years you’re gonna live
01:00:26 if you’re a human being,
01:00:28 man, that is like really bad
01:00:30 because a lot of people hear that
01:00:31 and they like feel like that’s a guaranteed number of years
01:00:35 in some temporal bank that they have access to.
01:00:41 And when you get cancer,
01:00:43 that’s like when you get the alert on your phone
01:00:46 where you’re like, what the fuck?
01:00:47 Wait, what?
01:00:48 Like, oh shit, like I have like,
01:00:51 either I don’t know how much money’s in that bank account
01:00:54 or I have way less than I thought.
01:00:57 And so at that point, you get to be in the truth
01:01:00 because that’s ultimately, I think that’s what it feels like.
01:01:03 It feels like truth. It’s truth.
01:01:06 It’s the truth.
01:01:07 It’s the truth.
01:01:08 Like the whole bubble of ignorance
01:01:11 that you subconsciously built around yourself
01:01:14 to avoid experiencing the terror of your own mortality,
01:01:18 just, it’s like a meteorite in the form of your doctor
01:01:22 talking to you just shatters that thing.
01:01:24 And now you’re like, especially with eye testicular cancer.
01:01:28 So when you get the diagnosis, it’s just like the movies.
01:01:38 The mother, the doctor took me in his office
01:01:41 and you just know, I got cancer.
01:01:44 It’s like, you don’t even have to say.
01:01:45 It’s like, I know what you’re about to say.
01:01:46 I’m in the office. I know how this goes.
01:01:48 But you go in there and what you were thinking,
01:01:51 oh, you know, probably just have some weird thing
01:01:53 in my ball.
01:01:54 That’s why it’s swollen up like that.
01:01:55 Anytime I’ve gone to the doctor,
01:01:57 you always leave like, oh, cool, I’m fine.
01:01:59 But no, that’s not how you’re gonna leave the doctor.
01:02:02 You’re gonna leave the doctor
01:02:03 in a completely different universe
01:02:06 than the one you grew up in.
01:02:07 You’re gonna go from, talk about multiverse.
01:02:09 You just popped into a brand new multiverse.
01:02:12 So.
01:02:13 What was the conversation with the doctor like?
01:02:15 Was there like, from a perspective of a doctor,
01:02:19 boys had a hard conversation.
01:02:21 I feel like you need to build up philosophically
01:02:23 to that conversation.
01:02:25 Oh no.
01:02:26 Oh no, there’s not time.
01:02:28 He’s busy.
01:02:29 He’s got other appointments, you know.
01:02:30 Also, if you’re gonna get cancer, testicular cancer is,
01:02:34 you know, not that there is a great cancer to get,
01:02:37 but that’s the, you know, that’s a good one
01:02:39 because it moves slowly.
01:02:42 The treatments they have for it are really advanced now.
01:02:46 And so if you catch it early, then, you know,
01:02:51 generally it’s good, you can survive it.
01:02:55 So.
01:02:56 So he could offer at least some glimmer of hope.
01:02:58 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:03:00 I mean, you know, but he didn’t really do,
01:03:02 he couldn’t really offer that hope
01:03:04 because we had to find out how far the cancer progressed
01:03:07 in my body.
01:03:09 That’s the next step is like,
01:03:11 as soon as they tell you you have cancer,
01:03:12 they don’t, they’re not, they move quick.
01:03:14 They’re like, you know, we’re going to schedule the surgery
01:03:18 for, I think this was a Thursday or Friday.
01:03:21 They’re like, we’re gonna schedule it for Tuesday.
01:03:24 Here’s the chance, here’s,
01:03:26 we don’t know for sure it’s cancer.
01:03:27 That’s what they say.
01:03:28 It’s like, there’s a 80 or 90% chance that this is cancer.
01:03:33 There is some possibility it could be something else.
01:03:36 The only way we can now is like doing a biopsy.
01:03:40 And the only way that we can get that biopsy
01:03:42 is by cutting one of your balls off.
01:03:44 He didn’t say it like that, but you know,
01:03:46 that’s pretty much the logic behind it.
01:03:47 It’s like, we got to get this thing.
01:03:49 It’s like a zombie bite.
01:03:50 We got to hack this fucking thing off
01:03:51 and we got to do it fast.
01:03:53 But did you say it in a way that you understood?
01:03:55 Yeah, what they do is because they know
01:03:58 that when someone gets a cancer diagnosis,
01:04:00 that their ability to comprehend information changes.
01:04:05 When you get a cancer diagnosis,
01:04:07 you, all the tropes, they happen.
01:04:09 You’re hearing it’s weird.
01:04:11 You’re basically having like an anxiety attack,
01:04:13 if I had to guess.
01:04:14 It’s like a hardcore anxiety attack.
01:04:16 And then, you know, a nurse is there with me
01:04:19 as he’s explaining it.
01:04:21 And then her job is, even though he’s telling me
01:04:23 how to get to the machine that’s going to scan my body
01:04:25 to see if it’s gotten into my brain,
01:04:29 he knows I’m not going to remember that.
01:04:31 And so this nurse, when you’re in this like fog,
01:04:35 takes you, at least took me to the machine
01:04:38 that does the scan,
01:04:39 but you’re not going to get that data back for a few days.
01:04:42 And so that’s where you really live in the real world.
01:04:47 That’s the real world.
01:04:48 It’s such a fascinating moment and the days that follow
01:04:52 and even that moment, because that doctor,
01:04:55 you know, you talk about the matrix where like the pills
01:04:57 and so on, you get the blue pill and the red pill.
01:05:00 Yeah.
01:05:01 This is like the, like the real world introduction,
01:05:07 the human introduction is the truth.
01:05:10 You’ve now just taken the red pill.
01:05:13 You get to see the truth of reality.
01:05:16 And here’s a busy doctor just telling you.
01:05:19 Yeah.
01:05:20 Like all those dreams you’ve had,
01:05:22 all those illusions you’ve built up to somehow your work
01:05:25 as a comedian and actor will make you live forever somehow.
01:05:29 It’s just the basic illusion we have that we’re,
01:05:32 this whole project is going to be an infinite sequence
01:05:36 of fun things that we’re going to get to do.
01:05:38 It’s like, holy shit, it’s not.
01:05:39 That’s right.
01:05:40 It’s old.
01:05:41 That’s right.
01:05:42 And there’s very sophisticated ways of doing that.
01:05:44 And there’s very dumb ways of doing that.
01:05:46 And I’d really been doing a dumb way of doing that.
01:05:48 Like I’d been playing around with this idiot notion
01:05:52 of subjective consciousness.
01:05:54 So like, I’d been sort of kicking around this,
01:05:57 like I think they call it solipsism.
01:05:59 It’s like, you’re like, okay, I know I’m self aware,
01:06:02 but no one else can prove that they’re self aware.
01:06:05 Like I don’t, I have no way of proving
01:06:08 that everything around me isn’t just a video game,
01:06:11 isn’t just some projection, isn’t, you know,
01:06:14 who knows what.
01:06:15 So maybe everybody else dies.
01:06:18 They’re NPCs, but I don’t,
01:06:20 because I’m the only thing I know
01:06:22 that has subjective consciousness.
01:06:24 Now, it’s not like I really believed that.
01:06:26 It’s like an idea you toy around with
01:06:28 when you’re trying to evade confronting the reality
01:06:31 of your own mortality.
01:06:32 It’s just the brain will produce all kinds
01:06:34 of ridiculous forms of ignorance.
01:06:36 And that was one I’d been playing around with.
01:06:38 Oh, you mean for like a large part of your life
01:06:40 you were playing around with that?
01:06:41 Well, not like really,
01:06:42 I think it’s important to really emphasize,
01:06:44 I didn’t think I was a mortal.
01:06:46 Like I knew at some level, I’m probably gonna die.
01:06:49 Everyone dies.
01:06:51 But there’s ways that you can sort of poke around
01:06:56 with that idea.
01:06:57 I still do it to this day.
01:06:58 Like I still do it.
01:07:00 Like it’s a natural thing to do
01:07:01 when you’re confronted with that, with annihilation.
01:07:05 You wanna way out.
01:07:06 You wanna talk your way out, figure it out.
01:07:08 There’s gotta be some way to fix it.
01:07:09 Well, they’ll fix it.
01:07:10 That’s another thing people do.
01:07:12 Well, they’ll fix it.
01:07:13 Yeah, it’d be fine.
01:07:14 They’ll expand the human lifespan.
01:07:16 That’s what they’ll do.
01:07:17 I mean, that’s a big argument for it is like,
01:07:20 look, the human lifespan up until COVID,
01:07:23 which they had to recalculate like the lifespan
01:07:26 because of the statistically all the people who died,
01:07:29 it like threw it off a little bit.
01:07:30 But pandemics aside, the idea was the human lifespan
01:07:34 seemed to be increasing by half a year every year,
01:07:39 something like that.
01:07:39 We were living longer.
01:07:41 So all you gotta do, one more half a year.
01:07:45 And we’re immortal, right?
01:07:46 If we live a year longer every year, then we live forever.
01:07:50 And so that’s another way you can get out
01:07:53 of confronting death is you can think,
01:07:55 well, maybe right now we don’t have the tech,
01:07:58 but it’s coming.
01:07:59 Consciousness uploads or downloads or whatever,
01:08:03 depending on how you wanna look at it.
01:08:05 Another way people try to squirm out of the reality of death.
01:08:09 There’s all kinds of tricks.
01:08:11 Yeah, and we do all of them.
01:08:13 And sometimes, yeah, I mean, a lot of religions
01:08:17 provide different, even more tools in the toolkit
01:08:20 for coming up with ideas of how you can live
01:08:23 in the illusion that we’re not going to,
01:08:25 there’s not an end to this particular experience
01:08:28 that we’re having here on earth right now.
01:08:29 And then when you get that cancer diagnosis,
01:08:32 it’s like, yeah, what was that like going home?
01:08:37 The car ride, did you drive home alone?
01:08:39 Yeah, I mean, it was one of the most.
01:08:42 What’d you listen to, Bruce Springsteen?
01:08:44 Bruce Springsteen, hey little girl, is your daddy home?
01:08:47 That’s not a good one to listen to.
01:08:49 Does he have cancer, is he gonna die?
01:08:52 Yeah, all the love songs.
01:08:53 Maybe you experienced them more intensely.
01:08:57 I don’t remember what I listened to,
01:09:00 and I don’t remember driving home,
01:09:02 but I do remember driving to another doctor appointment,
01:09:06 doctor’s appointment the next day.
01:09:10 I think it was the next day.
01:09:13 I think the Goodyear blimp was floating in the sky
01:09:16 and I was looking, I was at a stoplight, looking around.
01:09:19 Is that God?
01:09:20 Is the person flying it know how to cure cancer?
01:09:26 Oh, you were looking, oh wow.
01:09:28 No, I didn’t think that.
01:09:29 What I thought was this shit just keeps going.
01:09:32 That’s what I thought.
01:09:34 I thought, I’m gonna be gone
01:09:36 and this is just gonna keep going.
01:09:38 And that was a beautiful moment for me.
01:09:40 It was this beautiful moment of like.
01:09:42 You were able to accept it?
01:09:43 Oh yeah.
01:09:44 No, like that’s just what you’re talking about
01:09:46 with the Ukraine, what you’re talking about.
01:09:50 It’s like, unless you’ve been there,
01:09:54 it’s really hard to explain to people
01:09:56 that even in the midst of what is generally accepted
01:10:01 as one of the worst fucking things that could happen to you,
01:10:04 war, cancer, somehow there’s still joy.
01:10:11 There’s still love.
01:10:12 There’s still, in fact, more.
01:10:14 It’s almost like when the anesthesia wears off,
01:10:17 when you get your mouth worked on, you start feeling again.
01:10:21 You’re feeling, you’re noticing and that, wow.
01:10:25 But yet, thank goodness.
01:10:29 I think there’s other ways for us to achieve
01:10:31 this state of consciousness that don’t involve war or cancer.
01:10:35 Thank God.
01:10:36 You think just meditating on your mortality
01:10:41 is one such mechanism?
01:10:42 Just simply just not allowing yourself to get lost
01:10:48 in the day to day illusion of life.
01:10:51 Just kind of stopping, putting on Bruce Springsteen.
01:10:56 The most spiritual, he is great.
01:11:00 Maybe Johnny Cash hurt.
01:11:01 Maybe that one.
01:11:02 I like Bruce Springsteen.
01:11:03 I am knocking Bruce Springsteen.
01:11:05 I have a lot of great Bruce Springsteen memories, truly.
01:11:07 His music’s fantastic.
01:11:09 Yeah, but not meditating on mortality to Bruce Springsteen.
01:11:13 You know what?
01:11:14 I’m just trying to do an audio soundtrack in my head.
01:11:17 I guess we can each have our own audio soundtrack.
01:11:19 Oh, I’m on fire.
01:11:22 It’s so good.
01:11:23 Yeah, it’s a good song.
01:11:24 That’s one of them.
01:11:25 I lay with the sheets soaking wet
01:11:27 and the freight train running through the middle of my head
01:11:30 and only you can cool my desire.
01:11:33 And he’s singing about someone else’s girl.
01:11:35 What a fucking nightmare.
01:11:37 Bruce Springsteen’s laying in bed
01:11:40 with a freight train running through his head
01:11:41 thinking about banging your wife and you’re out of town.
01:11:45 Oh my God.
01:11:46 Oh, you’re taking the other guy’s perspective.
01:11:47 Like, holy shit, this guy’s gonna get my wife.
01:11:49 It’s Bruce, yeah, you gotta take the other guy’s.
01:11:52 But it’s love.
01:11:53 Both perspectives.
01:11:54 I’m sure Bruce Springsteen thought it was love
01:11:55 when he’s sweating in bed, waiting to go to somebody’s house.
01:11:58 She does too.
01:12:00 What, does that marry?
01:12:01 If he’s gonna break up that marriage,
01:12:03 that marriage wasn’t strong enough, right?
01:12:05 I mean, that relationship, I mean, that’s the way of love.
01:12:08 What marriage could survive?
01:12:11 Bruce Springsteen.
01:12:12 Sweaty Bruce Springsteen.
01:12:14 Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
01:12:16 Well, maybe one that’s based on financial,
01:12:20 sort of financial dynamics versus like love
01:12:23 and sweaty Bruce Springsteen, like romantic connections.
01:12:28 Because there’s like a music video of that
01:12:33 where he’s like a mechanic, I think.
01:12:35 So he’s like the poor mechanic
01:12:37 who falls in love with this girl and there’s that magic.
01:12:43 I’ve seen that magic.
01:12:44 You connect with people like, I’ll see somebody,
01:12:47 I think Jack Kerouac has that where he meets
01:12:50 this Mexican girl on a bus.
01:12:54 And like he talks about that heartbreak you feel
01:12:57 when you realize this person you just fell in love with
01:12:59 in a split second is heading somewhere else
01:13:02 in this too big world.
01:13:04 But then he actually realizes in, spoiler alert
01:13:07 for On The Road, that they’re actually heading the same way
01:13:10 and he now builds up the courage to talk to her
01:13:13 and they kind of fall in love for a few days.
01:13:15 And then he realized, eventually realizes
01:13:17 that she may not be the perfect person for him.
01:13:21 And all the jealousies comes out.
01:13:23 It’s like, why is this beautiful girl talking to me at all?
01:13:26 And then she’s probably some kind of,
01:13:28 I mean, and that’s, it’s not very politically correct
01:13:31 but he basically thinks that she’s a prostitute
01:13:34 and he talks to her about like, who’s your pimp
01:13:38 and all that kind of stuff.
01:13:39 He attacks her in all that kind of way
01:13:42 when she’s just an innocent, she has a past of that kind.
01:13:47 But she’s an innocent person and they connected
01:13:49 and they fell in love with each other.
01:13:51 Her gentleness, his worldliness, all that kind of stuff.
01:13:55 But that sometimes it doesn’t work out that way
01:13:58 and there’s that heartbreak when you see,
01:14:00 you realize you’re never gonna be able to have that.
01:14:04 And that’s, Bruce Springsteen saw that.
01:14:06 This is a married woman.
01:14:07 I’m never gonna be able to have that, but I want that.
01:14:10 And that’s the heartbreak.
01:14:12 I gotta say, I just assumed they were fucking, like I didn’t.
01:14:16 I mean, after the song, like if the song doesn’t get to.
01:14:19 Hey little girl, is your daddy home?
01:14:21 Did he go away and leave you all alone?
01:14:24 You know, he’s like, he knows she’s at home alone.
01:14:28 Yeah, but it never materializes.
01:14:31 He’s, it’s longing.
01:14:34 It’s a man who’s not with the thing he craves for.
01:14:38 So he’s longing for, he’s talking about the longing.
01:14:40 Right.
01:14:41 Not with the having.
01:14:43 Hey, if anybody in the CIA is watching this,
01:14:45 can you look into Bruce Springsteen’s file
01:14:47 and let us know if he actually banged the person
01:14:49 you wrote that song about?
01:14:50 What happens after the song, or between the song?
01:14:52 We want facts.
01:14:53 Look, the longing though, I’ll tell you this.
01:14:54 Here’s what’s interesting about that thing
01:14:56 that you’re talking about.
01:14:57 Have you ever heard of something called Bhakti Yoga?
01:15:01 I think so, yeah.
01:15:02 It’s the yoga of love.
01:15:03 And there’s all kinds, there’s forms of it.
01:15:06 The most, the one people know about the most
01:15:08 is the Hare Krishnas.
01:15:10 But the Hare Krishnas are like, you know,
01:15:12 the way in Christianity, you’ve got the Episcopalians,
01:15:14 the Catholics, the Baptists.
01:15:16 In Bhakti Yoga, you have various deities
01:15:19 that are the object of love.
01:15:22 And so Bhakti Yoga is like,
01:15:26 and what’s really cool about it is it’s an analysis of love.
01:15:33 And so, and it’s the supposition being like,
01:15:38 love is the way to commune with the divine.
01:15:42 Now, a distinction is drawn between
01:15:45 like two big worldviews that are spiritual.
01:15:49 One is the concept of sort of unit of consciousness,
01:15:54 which you’ll run into in a lot of forms of Buddhism,
01:15:58 if not all, a sort of a way of deconstructing the identity
01:16:03 or understanding that you might not be anything at all.
01:16:07 That in fact, you’re part of everything.
01:16:09 And in that, there’s a potential relief
01:16:14 from suffering in that,
01:16:15 not just like intellectually knowing it, but becoming it.
01:16:19 Now, whereas in Bhakti Yoga, there’s this idea of like,
01:16:27 the best thing is to be the individual
01:16:30 because individuals are required for love,
01:16:33 this for love to work, embodied love.
01:16:36 And so the quality, the thing we call the experience of love
01:16:43 is something that can be cultivated.
01:16:44 It doesn’t just have to be for another person.
01:16:46 It doesn’t have to be for the stranger on the bus.
01:16:48 It doesn’t have to be for sweaty Bruce Springsteen’s lover
01:16:52 that you could actually,
01:16:54 you can actually shift that love to the divine, to God.
01:16:58 Cause obviously it’s the Hare Krishnas,
01:17:00 it’s a theistic religion.
01:17:01 They believe in Krishna who is the,
01:17:03 from the POV of Vaisnava Bhakti Yoga,
01:17:06 the Godhead, the source from which everything
01:17:10 flows into time and space.
01:17:12 So there are all these like fascinating stories of Krishna.
01:17:19 It’s not just, most people are familiar with Krishna
01:17:22 from the Bhagavad Gita.
01:17:24 They’re about to be more, what’s cool about it
01:17:25 is cause it’s like they’re making the Oppenheimer movie
01:17:27 and he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita
01:17:29 when they split the atom.
01:17:31 But there’s all these stories of Krishna
01:17:35 that are not just in the Bhagavad Gita.
01:17:40 And these stories,
01:17:44 they could seem very simple when taken literally,
01:17:47 but in Vaisnava Bhakti Yoga,
01:17:48 it’s this very advanced theistic yogic system.
01:17:53 So they take these stories and from these stories,
01:17:56 they extrapolate this incredible analysis of what love is
01:18:01 and how to connect with the universe.
01:18:02 So like Krishna has a lover, Radharani.
01:18:06 And so sometimes they’re getting along.
01:18:13 Sometimes they’re fighting.
01:18:15 Sometimes they’re separated.
01:18:18 And so each of these ways of feeling about Krishna
01:18:25 are modes of love.
01:18:28 So longing actually is considered
01:18:31 one of the highest forms of love.
01:18:35 The idea is the longing is the grace.
01:18:38 The longing is the love.
01:18:39 So when you find yourself in a situation
01:18:42 of longing and heartbreak,
01:18:45 it is identical to union.
01:18:50 And perhaps more intensely representative
01:18:54 of the essence of what is love.
01:18:56 Yes, and they call it pining.
01:18:58 So there’s the, and it’s pining for Krishna.
01:19:01 And there’s also, there’s other ways
01:19:03 you could be with Krishna is as a friend.
01:19:05 So this is another form of love or as a mother,
01:19:11 because Krishna has a mother.
01:19:13 So there’s like all these ways of like looking
01:19:16 at the various forms of love.
01:19:17 And it’s a really beautiful form of yoga.
01:19:20 That’s emphasizing the individual
01:19:22 and the individual as a kind of channel
01:19:25 to this universal love.
01:19:27 Yeah, there’s a lot of different like their answer
01:19:32 to the question of what shows up in Buddhism
01:19:35 as absolute and relative reality.
01:19:37 Like that obviously there’s relative reality.
01:19:41 We’re not right now, you and me are not
01:19:44 unit of consciousness.
01:19:46 Like you zoom back far enough
01:19:49 and we’re gonna seem like an atom or whatever.
01:19:51 The thing is, the trope is you can zoom back far enough
01:19:55 and we’re in a whatever, we’re in a piece of cheese
01:19:58 or something, who knows.
01:19:59 But in that way we’re like completely unified.
01:20:03 But simultaneously we’re individuals,
01:20:06 like for sure we’re individuals.
01:20:08 Like you still gotta pay your taxes.
01:20:09 You gotta know your social security number.
01:20:11 That’s relative reality.
01:20:12 So, you know, Buddhism is like kind of the balance.
01:20:15 Again, when I say Buddhism is I’m a comedian podcast
01:20:19 or I’m not some Buddhist expert.
01:20:21 This is just probably my confused idea of what it is.
01:20:24 But anyway, in bhakti yoga, there’s the concept,
01:20:29 it’s called, I’m gonna mispronounce it,
01:20:31 asinka, sinka, beta, tatva.
01:20:34 I’m sorry, I’m mispronouncing it.
01:20:36 Which means simultaneous oneness and difference.
01:20:40 So.
01:20:41 Oneness and difference.
01:20:42 Yes, simultaneous oneness and difference.
01:20:44 So that’s why the oneness is the more
01:20:48 part of the same piece of cheese
01:20:50 and the difference is we are still each paying taxes.
01:20:54 Yes, and in this case, the cheese is Krishna.
01:20:56 So, you know, or other ways it gets described
01:21:00 is like, you know, a photon blasting off the sun
01:21:03 has sunlight qualities, but it’s not the sun.
01:21:08 Humans being one of the many things, you know,
01:21:12 flowing out of the creative consciousness of the divine
01:21:16 have qualities that are weirdly like the godlike.
01:21:21 You know, like we, in fact, we wanna control primarily.
01:21:24 That’s one of the problems, like humans wanna be in control,
01:21:29 wherein from their, the bhakti yoga perspective,
01:21:32 Krishna is effortlessly controlling everything.
01:21:38 And so within the system, the individual parts
01:21:40 of the system have that same quality,
01:21:43 but you can’t, you’re probably not God.
01:21:45 You might be, I’m not.
01:21:46 I’m not. What do you think happens after we die?
01:21:52 Having come close to that, that, that cliff
01:21:58 and almost got pushed over once.
01:22:00 What do you think happens when you do get pushed off
01:22:03 the cliff? Okay.
01:22:06 I feel dumb that I’m even gonna like preface this
01:22:09 by saying, obviously I have no fucking idea.
01:22:11 And I think that’s one of the cool things about death.
01:22:14 No idea. The CIA probably does.
01:22:16 You think the CIA, I love like,
01:22:19 we’ve decided your audience is the CIA.
01:22:21 Yeah, yeah.
01:22:22 How would you, oh, wait.
01:22:24 I need to, cause there’s a lot of suspicion
01:22:26 that I might be FSB and Marsad.
01:22:28 So I’m trying to rebrand.
01:22:30 I’m trying to steer them into the CIA direction.
01:22:35 As far as what happens when you, when you die,
01:22:37 one thing I returned to when I’m getting overly complex
01:22:40 is the idea of as above, so below.
01:22:43 So that you can, a lot of the big questions
01:22:47 can be answered by your own experience now.
01:22:52 So in other words, like in terms of thinking
01:22:57 about like death, if you look back to baby Lex
01:23:07 versus adult Lex, where’s the baby?
01:23:11 Like baby’s gone.
01:23:13 They, you’ve regenerated all your cells many times by then.
01:23:17 So in a way you could say Lex baby died.
01:23:22 The death didn’t look like a typical,
01:23:24 and I’m not trying to dodge it, but I’m just saying
01:23:27 it was very natural that the death of that baby.
01:23:29 It just, it just.
01:23:32 In many ways that baby died, but I am,
01:23:35 at least personally I’m surprised
01:23:36 how much the person is exactly the same.
01:23:39 So there’s many ways in which you’re very different,
01:23:43 but there’s a lot of ways in which you’re very much the same.
01:23:46 And I wonder if that, if there’s,
01:23:50 if life is defined by many deaths that continue on,
01:23:54 and then I wonder if there’s something persists beyond
01:23:58 in this, that, yeah, there is something
01:24:01 that still persists, I wonder.
01:24:02 Okay, so that.
01:24:04 Now, you know, obviously there’s so many different answers
01:24:09 to this question that are religious,
01:24:11 and ranging from like the most absurd shit
01:24:15 you ever heard in your life, like the gold.
01:24:18 You’re gonna get a mansion.
01:24:19 There’s gold streets.
01:24:20 Like, I don’t, do you want like gold streets?
01:24:23 Who offers gold streets?
01:24:24 I know about the virgins, but there’s a bunch of virgins.
01:24:27 The Christians give you the gold streets in the mansion.
01:24:30 Like depending on the, whatever the particular sect
01:24:35 of Christianity is, you know, it’s like some kind of city.
01:24:39 There’s, it’s like paved with gold.
01:24:41 No one’s addressing the fact that at the moment
01:24:43 the streets are made of gold.
01:24:44 Gold is a valueless substance.
01:24:46 I mean, it’s sort of pretty in a cheesy kind of way,
01:24:49 but no one’s gonna give a shit about it.
01:24:50 It’s like, if there was not a lot of asphalt in the world,
01:24:55 then, you know, we’d be in heaven
01:24:57 from that same, that way of thinking.
01:24:59 But the, or honestly, when going back,
01:25:03 this is starting to get a theme with Gulag Archipelago.
01:25:06 I’m sorry, I’m reading it currently.
01:25:08 That’s a sticky book.
01:25:09 Yeah, it’s very sticky in your mind.
01:25:11 Very, very tough.
01:25:12 As I’m running through very hot heat,
01:25:14 I’m listening to Gulag Archipelago.
01:25:16 Oh my God.
01:25:17 And you know, one of the things they said,
01:25:19 they would feed prisoners salt,
01:25:23 and then they would exchange,
01:25:26 the prisoners would be able to give up anything, everything,
01:25:30 their gold, their possessions,
01:25:31 everything for just one drink of water.
01:25:33 So that little context of dehydrating them
01:25:37 and feeding them salt changes your value system completely.
01:25:41 So maybe the gold is supposed to be a metaphor
01:25:44 for something that you still value deeply.
01:25:46 Yes, it’s, yeah, again, any of these things,
01:25:48 when you like take them literally, they seem absurd.
01:25:51 But if you look deeper into it, it’s like quite beautiful.
01:25:54 But the Buddhist version of it is that there’s a momentum.
01:25:58 The best way to put it is it’s the kind of momentum.
01:26:00 So the thing you’re talking about,
01:26:02 which is the personality of the baby
01:26:06 that is still in the adult,
01:26:08 which is still in the old person,
01:26:10 you’re looking at a kind of momentum
01:26:12 that does not stop upon the extinction of the body.
01:26:17 Now, I think there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say harm,
01:26:27 because they didn’t mean to hurt,
01:26:28 but I think there’s some harm that maybe has happened
01:26:30 from the way death is represented in movies.
01:26:33 Like when people die in movies, it’s like there’s this,
01:26:37 usually it’s pretty fast,
01:26:38 even if it is what they’re dying from is a longterm disease,
01:26:42 it like wraps up pretty quickly, starts with a cough,
01:26:45 the person’s in bed,
01:26:46 but there’s this weird kind of lucidity to the person
01:26:50 up until the point of death.
01:26:51 And also they generally, in movies, they have makeup on,
01:26:53 which is always funny to me when the person dying looks great.
01:26:57 If you’ve ever been around a dying person, they’re dying.
01:27:00 They look like shit.
01:27:01 You’re dying.
01:27:02 They’re all gray and like confused.
01:27:05 They’re, you know, when you’re around dying people,
01:27:07 they will spin through time.
01:27:09 Your parents won’t recognize you for a second.
01:27:11 They’ll think you’re somebody else.
01:27:13 They won’t, they’re like everything’s like
01:27:17 the process is happening.
01:27:18 So you’re very confused when you die.
01:27:22 So in general, not all the time,
01:27:24 some people die with a clear mind.
01:27:26 It just depends on the type of death,
01:27:28 but think in terms of getting hit by a car.
01:27:32 So you went across the street, you get hit by a car.
01:27:35 Now, if we’re talking about this momentum continuing,
01:27:40 the confusion, assuming you didn’t hit your head
01:27:42 and you’re unconscious, like somehow you just got smashed
01:27:45 and you’re like bleeding out,
01:27:47 even then you’re gonna be confused
01:27:49 because you’re getting dizzy,
01:27:50 like blood’s leaving your body.
01:27:52 You’re like, things are fading out.
01:27:53 Your vision’s going.
01:27:54 So it’s a very confusing experience initially
01:27:57 when the body dies.
01:27:58 If you are a materialist who has been,
01:28:03 who has convinced themselves that it’s a permanent thing,
01:28:08 the next bit of confusion is going to be
01:28:10 when you realize something is persisting here,
01:28:13 like I’m still here.
01:28:14 And this is where you run into the near death experiences,
01:28:17 which are a global phenomena
01:28:18 that don’t seem to be completely shaped by culture.
01:28:23 Like regardless of what part of the world
01:28:25 people are having these experiences in,
01:28:27 the reports tend to be similar and everyone’s heard it,
01:28:31 the light, the life review,
01:28:35 seeing ancestors and stuff like that.
01:28:38 Now, I don’t know what that is.
01:28:40 I don’t know.
01:28:43 Sometimes I think that’s probably just like a built in way
01:28:46 the computer shuts down.
01:28:48 This is something it does, who knows?
01:28:50 But in Buddhism, the concept is this momentum persists
01:28:55 into something called the bardo.
01:28:57 The bardo means in between.
01:28:59 And there’s an actual number of days
01:29:02 they say that you get to hang out there.
01:29:04 And I can’t remember, it’s like 37 days or 29 days
01:29:07 or something, I’m not sure.
01:29:09 But at least from the time space perspective,
01:29:13 that’s how long they’re there.
01:29:14 Within this place,
01:29:18 there are a lot of technological parallels, man.
01:29:21 It’s like in the way the algorithm is reflective,
01:29:26 it assesses your desires or whatever
01:29:28 and then produces something that has within it
01:29:32 a component of attraction to you.
01:29:34 Apparently this happens in the bardo.
01:29:36 Or the way you wake up in the morning
01:29:39 and you’re in a shitty mood.
01:29:42 And then coincidentally, everyone that day is an asshole.
01:29:46 If you don’t catch it, you could just be like, wow,
01:29:49 I guess it’s act like an asshole day.
01:29:50 You don’t realize you’re seeing your asshole projection
01:29:55 being reflected off the screen of another person.
01:29:58 So in the bardo apparently,
01:30:00 you don’t need people for the reflective quality.
01:30:03 These projections happen
01:30:04 and they appear as either Nietzsche’s demon
01:30:09 or Nietzsche’s angel.
01:30:10 It just depends on where you’re at and how you died.
01:30:14 And if you died scared, then at least initially
01:30:18 that’s gonna be some scary shit you see around you.
01:30:20 If you died in a peaceful way,
01:30:23 well then there’s gonna be more of a possibility
01:30:27 of navigation through this liminal intermediary place.
01:30:32 And so thus the emphasis on meditation in Buddhism,
01:30:36 a way to calm one’s self, to not be distracted by thoughts,
01:30:41 which are their own like apparitions.
01:30:43 And then theoretically, if you wanted to,
01:30:47 instead of spinning the wheel again
01:30:49 and jumping back into a body,
01:30:52 you could choose not to do that.
01:30:54 And then transcend the wheel of birth and death.
01:30:57 But if you still wanted to go back,
01:31:00 if you still wanted to go back or return or whatever,
01:31:05 however you wanna put it,
01:31:06 then you could have more control
01:31:08 over what your next birth might be
01:31:12 versus in this depiction of things,
01:31:15 people running from demons that they don’t recognize
01:31:19 as their own projection into any fucking body
01:31:23 that they can find.
01:31:24 Because if you’ve had a body, you want a body.
01:31:26 And so this is how you can incarnate as an animal.
01:31:29 This is how you can incarnate in the hell realms.
01:31:32 This is how you can incarnate in any variety of things.
01:31:34 But the idea is like maybe you could slow down a little bit
01:31:38 and like choose a birth
01:31:40 that is gonna be more conducive to you
01:31:45 continuing to like spiritually evolve.
01:31:48 I like that idea.
01:31:49 Is it true or not?
01:31:50 Who the fuck knows?
01:31:51 Algorithmically speaking,
01:31:52 it seems like a really fun role playing game
01:31:55 where you basically keep improving
01:31:57 the different parameters based on your ability
01:32:03 and willingness to meditate
01:32:07 and let go of the menial concerns of life on earth.
01:32:14 Why do you think Buddhists see life as suffering?
01:32:19 What’s suffering?
01:32:20 Okay, well, first of all,
01:32:23 that gets mistranslated quite a bit.
01:32:26 You’re talking about the four noble truths.
01:32:27 The first one is,
01:32:29 often it’s translated as life is suffering,
01:32:31 which is not it, it’s there is suffering.
01:32:36 The whole life is suffering thing
01:32:38 is just like a spiritual version of life’s a bitch,
01:32:40 then you die.
01:32:41 And people hear that and they’re like,
01:32:42 yeah, life is fucking suffering,
01:32:44 but it’s there is suffering, there is suffering.
01:32:47 So it’s an affirmation.
01:32:50 If you’re like this thing that a lot of people feel
01:32:53 that they associate with lots of,
01:32:55 they have a lot of reasons they think they’re feeling it
01:32:57 is known as fundamental dissatisfaction.
01:33:00 So another word for suffering,
01:33:03 maybe it could be fundamental dissatisfaction.
01:33:06 Also, the term itself,
01:33:11 maybe a better translation is wobbly wheel.
01:33:14 So like, imagine like when your bike doesn’t have,
01:33:16 or your car doesn’t have enough air in the tires,
01:33:18 your bike doesn’t have enough air in the tires,
01:33:21 it’s kind of a shitty bike ride.
01:33:22 Like no matter what, it’s kind of like uncomfortable.
01:33:25 It’s like irritating.
01:33:27 So this is what’s being pointed to
01:33:30 is that there’s this quality within a human life
01:33:34 that is unsatisfying.
01:33:39 Like a wobbly wheel.
01:33:41 Wobbly wheel.
01:33:42 Why do you think, what is the core of that dissatisfaction?
01:33:48 Because it could be as simple as kind of physical
01:33:51 and mental discomfort and sadness and depression
01:33:55 and all that kind of stuff.
01:33:57 Or it could be more speaking to the sort of existentialist,
01:33:59 the philosophical, the absurdity of it all.
01:34:03 The fact that stuff happens,
01:34:05 good stuff happens for no reason,
01:34:07 bad stuff happens for no reason.
01:34:10 Yeah, it’s no matter how much you try,
01:34:15 there’s not a universal fairness to the whole thing.
01:34:19 There’s not even a universal meaning to the whole thing.
01:34:22 So the existentialist perspective.
01:34:24 What flavor of suffering do you prefer?
01:34:27 If it was an ice cream shop.
01:34:28 That’s so funny.
01:34:29 Well, I’m definitely picking desire over the,
01:34:32 like if in the RGB that we’re talking about here
01:34:36 is desire, aversion and ignorance.
01:34:41 So if you want to find like the three ingredients
01:34:46 that are giving everyone their sophisticated bits
01:34:49 of suffering, there you go.
01:34:51 That’s what it is.
01:34:52 In which way does desire manifest itself in suffering?
01:34:56 It hurts.
01:34:57 To lose, to not have.
01:34:59 Like, yeah, it hurts to not, like to eternally not have,
01:35:02 but just like my friend pointed this out.
01:35:05 He’s like, you know, like you order something from Amazon.
01:35:09 Like even in the smallest way,
01:35:10 you’re excited about whatever the thing is.
01:35:12 You order this thing from Amazon,
01:35:14 it’s not coming for four days.
01:35:16 So those four days are going to be somewhat marked
01:35:18 by you being what people say, I’m excited about it.
01:35:22 But really, if you look at that feeling, it’s uncomfortable.
01:35:25 Like the feeling of wanting the thing is uncomfortable.
01:35:28 So that is a form of suffering.
01:35:31 That’s suffering.
01:35:32 Interesting.
01:35:33 I mean, I wonder,
01:35:34 cause we naturally reframe that in our mind, wanting.
01:35:38 We reframe that as a good thing.
01:35:41 As a, and maybe suffering is fundamentally good
01:35:49 in the way we think of what life is.
01:35:52 So like, it’s life affirming,
01:35:55 but it’s not usually how the word suffering is used.
01:35:58 Well, it’s true.
01:36:00 It’s true.
01:36:00 Like the first noble truth of Buddhism is true.
01:36:03 It’s called the truth of suffering.
01:36:05 There is suffering.
01:36:06 I mean, this is like an, I don’t know,
01:36:08 an element that you can’t break it down any further than that.
01:36:11 Like there is suffering, this is truth.
01:36:13 So if you think, you know, and again,
01:36:16 assigning like good or bad to truth,
01:36:19 I think maybe there’s more of a sort of neutrality there.
01:36:23 It’s just what it is.
01:36:24 It’s truth.
01:36:25 I mean, is it any, is it basically,
01:36:27 is suffering any disturbance from stillness?
01:36:33 Is suffering then?
01:36:35 Like basically any, anything that happens in life that,
01:36:41 that’s like, that perturbs the system.
01:36:44 Ripples in the empty. Ripples.
01:36:45 Ripples, yeah.
01:36:46 So a still lake is empty of suffering,
01:36:49 but any kind of ripple is suffering in that sense.
01:36:54 A still lake is empty of suffering.
01:36:56 You sound like a Zen master.
01:36:58 It seems like something a Zen master might say.
01:36:59 If I can just grow a beard like yours.
01:37:01 Ah, no, the beard doesn’t help.
01:37:03 We would, we would.
01:37:04 If I had your chin, you think I’d have a fucking beard?
01:37:07 I look like a stork.
01:37:08 You should see me.
01:37:09 If I had your chin, there’d be no beard here.
01:37:11 You have a symmetrical, nice chin.
01:37:13 This is the closest I can come to plastic surgery.
01:37:16 Pubic plastic surgery, friend.
01:37:19 That’s how you know you’re a professional comedian.
01:37:23 Yeah, so suffering.
01:37:24 There is suffering.
01:37:26 And the lake analogy is pretty good because the,
01:37:30 um, what’s happening here is that,
01:37:36 that we have become identified
01:37:40 with something that we call a self.
01:37:42 So this, the self is just accepted.
01:37:45 I have a self, I have an identity,
01:37:46 I’m a person, I have a self.
01:37:48 But when you start doing scans to try to find yourself,
01:37:55 which is the entire thing.
01:37:56 I’m going to find myself.
01:37:59 You get in a van, go to California, take some acid,
01:38:02 fuck a prostitute on the bus or whatever Kerouac did.
01:38:04 Too far?
01:38:05 I’m going to find myself.
01:38:06 Oh, he didn’t, she wasn’t a prostitute,
01:38:08 just to correct the record.
01:38:09 Oh, previously a prostitute.
01:38:10 I guess once a prostitute, always a prostitute.
01:38:12 You know what?
01:38:13 She’s a former prostitute.
01:38:13 I don’t think that.
01:38:14 No, and look, I’m not, I’m not a sign,
01:38:18 look, all I’m saying is, uh, I don’t care.
01:38:21 Who cares?
01:38:22 Who has a bit of prostitute?
01:38:22 God, I used to be one of them.
01:38:23 We’re all kind of a kind of prostitute.
01:38:26 Yeah, yes, yes.
01:38:28 But the.
01:38:29 We make love and we make money.
01:38:32 Therefore, we’re all a kind of prostitute.
01:38:35 We make, God, how great.
01:38:37 I would really love to be able to make money by fucking.
01:38:40 I mean, it’s maybe not directly, but in some sense.
01:38:44 Directly.
01:38:45 Oh.
01:38:45 Yeah.
01:38:46 Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
01:38:50 Do you accept Venmo or?
01:38:51 Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
01:38:53 It’s never too late to start.
01:38:55 That’s so, sort of one of the ways in
01:38:57 is this sort of contemplation of the identity,
01:39:00 because it’s like, uh, you know, what is,
01:39:04 it’s not just the desire, it’s what is having the desire?
01:39:07 Where, where does the desire live in?
01:39:08 Like, what doesn’t want to be where it’s at?
01:39:11 What is the thing that is like desperately wanting
01:39:15 to get out of the situation it’s in?
01:39:17 And then, um, as far as ignorance, uh,
01:39:21 it’s still something that’s theoretically happening
01:39:24 to an identity.
01:39:25 So, so wrapped up in it is really just this sort of like,
01:39:30 and that’s where we run into what, uh, into attachment.
01:39:34 So if, if the first noble truth of Buddhism
01:39:37 is there is suffering,
01:39:39 the second noble truth of Buddhism is, um,
01:39:42 the cause of this suffering is attachment.
01:39:47 And so people hear that and they take it, that’s a,
01:39:50 there’s a lot of levels to that concept.
01:39:53 Definitely the cause of suffering is attachment.
01:39:55 Like, God, I just got addicted to vapes.
01:39:57 Is there a more embarrassing addiction than vapes?
01:40:01 I’m smoking like a little purple thing.
01:40:03 It tastes like sugar.
01:40:05 It’s attachment.
01:40:06 It is, there is suffering.
01:40:08 I want it.
01:40:09 I have to charge it now.
01:40:10 I’m embarrassed by it.
01:40:11 It makes me feel out of control.
01:40:13 There’s a lot of suffering,
01:40:14 but also there’s deeper levels of attachment
01:40:18 that go all the way to this attachment
01:40:21 to the sense of one’s self.
01:40:24 And I think the existentialists do get into this idea
01:40:28 in a different way, which is like,
01:40:30 because I think I’m a me,
01:40:32 now I have to push what that thing is out into the world
01:40:37 through my actions.
01:40:38 And that’s a kind of attachment too.
01:40:40 Exactly.
01:40:41 There you go.
01:40:42 Right.
01:40:43 And that leads to the third noble truth,
01:40:44 which is get rid of attachment
01:40:49 and you won’t suffer anymore.
01:40:51 Uh, that’s, it seems logical,
01:40:53 but you know, it is a very,
01:40:55 it is a mathematical analysis
01:40:57 of this particular problem of suffering it’s addressing.
01:41:01 And then the fourth noble truth
01:41:03 is the eightfold path of Buddhism,
01:41:04 which is like a process by which one could unencumber oneself
01:41:11 from this identification with something that isn’t real.
01:41:16 Do you need a bathroom break?
01:41:17 Yeah.
01:41:18 Thank you.
01:41:19 I do.
01:41:20 I appreciate that.
01:41:21 There’s a funny moment, I was running in the heat yesterday
01:41:24 listening to Gulag Archipelago.
01:41:27 And there’s a, which was a very welcome break
01:41:30 because I’m looking for any excuse to stop whatsoever.
01:41:34 The gentleman, very nice gentleman stopped me saying,
01:41:37 recognized me and just said a bunch of friendly things.
01:41:40 And then he mentioned as one of the people
01:41:43 who really inspires him is Duncan Trussell.
01:41:46 And I was, I mean, I’m the same way and I told him,
01:41:52 you know, tomorrow, it felt like a name drop.
01:41:56 I name dropped you this morning.
01:41:58 I was like, tomorrow I’m going to get to meet him.
01:42:00 So he says, he says, hi.
01:42:01 And there’s, oh, and he said that he watched
01:42:05 Midnight Gospel on mushrooms.
01:42:08 And it was like the greatest mushroom experience
01:42:10 of his life.
01:42:11 I don’t know.
01:42:13 Yeah, man.
01:42:14 Yeah, I was nervous about meeting you, man.
01:42:15 Like I have so much respect for you.
01:42:17 And like, oh yeah, I name dropped.
01:42:18 I was saying I’m going on Lex’s podcast today.
01:42:21 It’s, you look, we’re so lucky we all live here.
01:42:24 What the fuck?
01:42:25 We’re all living in Austin together.
01:42:26 Like I, I somehow like missed that,
01:42:30 but that’s, we all got to hang out.
01:42:32 We all have to like start doing stuff.
01:42:34 Well, you have to really,
01:42:35 also you have to appreciate this moment.
01:42:37 I remember, I know some people are less sentimental
01:42:42 than others, but I remember sitting with Joe Rogan
01:42:49 and with Eric Weinstein, I believe it was.
01:42:52 Yeah.
01:42:53 And at the back of the comedy store
01:42:56 shortly before COVID, I think.
01:42:59 And just thinking like,
01:43:01 there’s no way these things will last.
01:43:04 And these things meaning the comedy store,
01:43:07 Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, the Joe Rogan,
01:43:10 like a, like a pocket influential podcasting person.
01:43:14 Also a person like in this room, in this space,
01:43:21 the ability to just talk for hours
01:43:24 and lose ourselves in this moment.
01:43:26 It just felt ephemeral, somehow temporary.
01:43:30 And I just wanted to capture that moment somehow.
01:43:32 Like, I don’t know.
01:43:34 Sometimes that’s where the temptation to take a picture
01:43:36 and you’re that kind of stuff
01:43:37 or record a podcast comes from.
01:43:39 But it just felt like it would be, it’d be gone forever.
01:43:43 Of course, Joe doesn’t seem to have
01:43:45 that kind of sentimental.
01:43:47 No, sure, no, no.
01:43:48 Just wherever you end up,
01:43:49 you just enjoy the shit out of it.
01:43:51 Right.
01:43:52 That’s it.
01:43:52 Well, and that’s something you have to cultivate.
01:43:54 You don’t, that’s not an easy,
01:43:56 the thing you’re talking about, you know,
01:43:58 God, have you seen these?
01:44:00 I think the best analogy for what you’re talking about,
01:44:03 there’s these videos where people give like a sugar cube
01:44:05 to a raccoon, but the raccoons, they wash their food.
01:44:09 So raccoon, or I think it’s cotton candy.
01:44:11 They give the raccoon cotton candy,
01:44:12 immediately it washes the cotton candy.
01:44:14 And of course the cotton candy dissolves in the water.
01:44:17 And the raccoon is like, what the fuck?
01:44:20 Like, you know, and the thing you’re,
01:44:22 that grasping you’re talking about,
01:44:24 it’s like the raccoon washing the cotton candy.
01:44:26 Like the moment you get into the grasping part,
01:44:29 you paradoxically have pulled yourself out of the moment
01:44:35 that inspired the grasping part.
01:44:37 And that’s, you know, that’s some people,
01:44:40 that’s the entirety of their lives trying to record.
01:44:43 I mean, Jesus, man, you ever see people film fireworks
01:44:46 on the 4th of July with their phone?
01:44:48 It’s one of the most remarkable aspects of human behavior,
01:44:52 which is like, you know they’re not gonna watch
01:44:55 the fireworks on their phone.
01:44:59 Only a lunatic would do that.
01:45:00 Like who’s gonna go back and look at fireworks, but.
01:45:04 So, but we’re also in this position where,
01:45:06 because of podcasting, there is some aspect
01:45:08 where you can record a magical moment in time
01:45:11 together between two people, or even just with a camera.
01:45:15 So to get back to the lake that you were talking about,
01:45:19 this is emptiness.
01:45:20 So that’s emptiness.
01:45:21 That’s what’s known as emptiness.
01:45:22 The lake is emptiness.
01:45:23 And that’s what we are, emptiness, emptiness.
01:45:26 And that’s another thing that gets very confused
01:45:28 in Buddhism is that emptiness.
01:45:32 And that emptiness is, that’s to me,
01:45:35 like when I’m going to do a podcast,
01:45:39 that’s where I try to go.
01:45:40 I try to go just in the moment, no agenda.
01:45:44 You know, if I am nervous or whatever,
01:45:46 okay, I’ll feel the nervousness,
01:45:47 but just in the, just drop into the moment.
01:45:50 That’s when time changes.
01:45:52 And then you look up, hours have passed.
01:45:54 It feels like a second.
01:45:55 And the reason it feels like that is
01:45:57 because if you successfully dropped into the moment,
01:46:01 it’s the lake now, it’s emptiness.
01:46:05 It’s forever for a second.
01:46:06 You’re like, you’re dipping into eternity.
01:46:09 And yeah, it’s a very strange thing
01:46:13 to, as part of that, record it, you know,
01:46:16 as part of that, try to like grab it
01:46:18 and put it out there, but it works.
01:46:21 Can you speak to that, to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour?
01:46:26 Can you speak about that purple lavender world you go to
01:46:30 when it’s most intense and successful for you,
01:46:33 when you feel a sense of lightness and happiness
01:46:36 when it works, whether it’s your own
01:46:39 or a conversation with Joe in general,
01:46:41 or is, well, yours is very specific
01:46:44 because it’s audio only.
01:46:45 Maybe you can also speak to that.
01:46:47 Because you might as well be naked
01:46:50 or you don’t have to, you have to,
01:46:52 you’re free of the conventions of the real world.
01:46:56 I will never stop thinking it’s remarkable.
01:47:01 Like the fact that I’m talking to you, to me,
01:47:04 seems remarkable, not just technologically,
01:47:06 but I’m talking to someone,
01:47:09 I’m assuming I’m allowed to say this,
01:47:11 who has robot dogs that I’ve been watching
01:47:15 for years evolve on YouTube.
01:47:20 Arms reach away from one of these things, you know?
01:47:22 And I’m with somebody who is like an acclaimed genius.
01:47:27 So for me, it’s like, oh my God,
01:47:30 how’s, what, why do I get to have this conversation?
01:47:33 Why do I get to be here?
01:47:34 When there’d be like a line,
01:47:36 there’d be a line that would just wrapped
01:47:38 and wrapped and wrapped around this building
01:47:40 of people who’d love a chance to just chat with you.
01:47:43 And so when I, with my podcast,
01:47:45 that’s how I feel like when I’m talking to these guests,
01:47:49 you know, who have spent, you know,
01:47:53 some of them have like spent their entire lifetime
01:47:56 meditating, you know, studying specific aspects of Buddhism
01:48:02 or even when I’m with, you know,
01:48:04 when I’m with comedians who I like consider
01:48:07 to be brilliantly funny.
01:48:08 So for me, it’s just like, God, I almost feel like
01:48:13 I’ve just created some sophisticated trap for cool people
01:48:17 where like I get to like hang out with them.
01:48:19 So you’re like sitting in the gratitude of it,
01:48:21 just feeling lucky.
01:48:23 Yeah, yeah, feeling lucky
01:48:25 and wrestling with imposter syndrome, you know,
01:48:27 trying to like get that part of myself
01:48:28 to shut up long enough so I could be in that moment
01:48:31 that we’re talking about, you know?
01:48:33 And then I carry that with me.
01:48:36 It’s not just like you stop the podcast.
01:48:38 It’s like some of the things these people tell me
01:48:41 or some of the ways they are, like it becomes part of me.
01:48:45 And then I get to have a life or this thing
01:48:48 that they gave me is in me forever.
01:48:52 And so, yeah, it’s, there’s…
01:48:54 Yeah, it’s cool how conversation can just,
01:48:56 a few sentences can change the direction of your life.
01:49:01 If you’re listening,
01:49:01 if you’re there to be transformed by the words,
01:49:05 they will do the work.
01:49:06 It’s, and it’s the full mix of it.
01:49:09 It’s usually when, if you look up to somebody,
01:49:15 and it’s true for me at least,
01:49:17 I think it is for you that you start to look up
01:49:19 to basically everybody you talk to.
01:49:20 Yes, yes, good sign.
01:49:23 That’s a good sign.
01:49:24 God forbid it goes the other way.
01:49:26 You’re in trouble.
01:49:27 If all of a sudden you start looking down on people,
01:49:30 because whatever crazy metric you’re using,
01:49:34 ooh, that would freak me out.
01:49:35 I do feel like that’s a quality of getting older.
01:49:38 When I was younger, I really, like, I thought I was so smart.
01:49:41 Like I thought I had it all figured out.
01:49:43 Oh, really?
01:49:44 So you’re going, your ego is just going,
01:49:46 taking a nose dive.
01:49:47 I would like to say it’s my ego taking a nose dive.
01:49:50 Me and my friend talk about it a bunch.
01:49:52 We’ve just always associated it with like doing acid
01:49:55 for two decades straight.
01:49:57 Like, I’m gonna just assume I’m just like slowly
01:50:00 like spiraling into senility, you know?
01:50:02 Like, I’m just like, all the confidence,
01:50:06 all the like, oh, the certainty when you’re having,
01:50:08 like in college, having the great,
01:50:11 oh, like, you know, you feel like you’re a representative
01:50:17 of Camus or some shit.
01:50:18 You know what I mean?
01:50:19 You read the myth of Sisyphus,
01:50:20 and now you like it, know all existentialism
01:50:23 and your certainty in regards to it is embarrassing,
01:50:27 but you don’t see it in that way.
01:50:29 You just feel certain.
01:50:30 And then that certainty, it just starts like,
01:50:33 it starts crumbling a little bit.
01:50:35 And then, yeah.
01:50:37 You know, I get to actually intensely experience
01:50:41 that certainty in many communities,
01:50:43 but one in cryptocurrency.
01:50:46 Young folks with the certainty that this technology
01:50:49 will transform the world.
01:50:51 And I mean, this is almost one of the big communities
01:50:54 of the modern era where they believe
01:50:57 that this will really solve so many of the problems
01:51:00 of the world, and they believe in it very intensely.
01:51:03 And aside from the technology and the details of the thing,
01:51:06 all I see is the certainty and the passion in their eyes.
01:51:09 They’ll stop me.
01:51:11 Let me explain you, let me just give me a chance
01:51:15 to tell you why this thing is extremely powerful.
01:51:19 And I just get to enjoy the glow of that,
01:51:21 because it’s like, wow, I miss having that certainty
01:51:26 about anything.
01:51:27 It’s probably come over for me too.
01:51:29 But when I was younger, it’s like,
01:51:32 only I deeply understand the relationship of man
01:51:38 to his mortality.
01:51:40 And I understood that most deeply, I think,
01:51:42 when I was like 16 or 17.
01:51:44 And I am the representative of the human condition.
01:51:48 And all these adults with their busyness of day to day life
01:51:52 and their concerns, they don’t deeply understand
01:51:55 what I understand, which is the only thing that matters
01:51:59 is the absurdity of the human condition.
01:52:03 Yeah, yeah.
01:52:05 And let me quote you some Dostoevsky.
01:52:07 Oh boy, and you speak Russian.
01:52:10 Yes, I speak Russian.
01:52:11 So you’ve read the Brothers Karamazov in Russian.
01:52:13 Unfortunately, I have to admit that I read
01:52:18 all of the Dostoevsky in English.
01:52:22 I came to this country when I was 13.
01:52:25 And at least don’t remember, we read a lot,
01:52:27 but we read Tolstoy, Pushkin, a lot of the Russian literature
01:52:32 but it was in Russian.
01:52:34 But I don’t remember reading Dostoevsky.
01:52:35 I wonder at which point does the Russian education system
01:52:39 give you Dostoevsky?
01:52:41 Because it’s pretty heavy stuff.
01:52:43 Second grade, it’s probably the second grade.
01:52:45 Russians are intense.
01:52:47 Yes, they are, they very much are.
01:52:50 I don’t remember reading Dostoevsky,
01:52:51 but I did tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent.
01:52:56 I traveled to Paris recently on the way to Ukraine
01:53:00 and was scheduled to talk to Richard Pevere
01:53:04 and this pair that translate Dostoevsky, Tolstoy,
01:53:09 just this famous pair that translate
01:53:13 most of Russian literature to English.
01:53:14 And I was planning to have a sequence of five, 10,
01:53:20 15 hour conversation with them about the different details
01:53:23 of all the translations and so on.
01:53:25 I just found myself in a very dark place mentally
01:53:28 where I couldn’t think about podcasts or anything like that.
01:53:31 It caught me off guard.
01:53:32 So I went to Paris and just laid there for a day.
01:53:36 Not just being stressed about Ukraine and all those kinds
01:53:40 of things, but I’m still, the act of translation
01:53:44 is such a fascinating way to approach some of the deepest
01:53:49 questions that this literature raises,
01:53:51 which is like, how do I capture the essence of a sentence
01:53:56 that has so much power and translate it
01:53:58 into another language?
01:53:59 That act is actually really, really interesting.
01:54:01 And I found with my conversations with them,
01:54:05 they’ve really thought through this stuff.
01:54:09 It’s not just about language,
01:54:10 it’s about the ideas in those books.
01:54:12 And that also really makes me sad
01:54:15 because I wonder how much is lost in translation.
01:54:18 I’m currently, so when I was in Ukraine,
01:54:22 I talked to a lot of, like half the conversations I had
01:54:26 on the record were in Russian,
01:54:29 and basically 100% of the record were in Russian
01:54:34 in Russian versus in English.
01:54:37 And just so much is lost in those languages.
01:54:40 And I’m now struggling because I’m launching
01:54:44 a Russian channel where there’ll be a Russian
01:54:47 overdub of Duncan.
01:54:49 Wow.
01:54:50 Your wow will now be translated into Russian.
01:54:53 What’s Russian wow?
01:54:55 I don’t, it’ll just be wow probably.
01:54:57 I’m so sorry for the difficulties
01:54:59 of having to translate wow.
01:55:01 Usually probably with wow they’ll leave it unoverdubbed
01:55:04 because people understand exactly what you mean.
01:55:06 But that’s an art form, and it’s a weird art form.
01:55:09 It’s like how do you capture the chemistry,
01:55:15 the excitement, the, I don’t know,
01:55:19 maybe the humor, the implied kind of wit.
01:55:25 I don’t know, there’s just layers of complexity
01:55:27 in language that it’s very difficult to capture.
01:55:30 And I wonder how, it is sad for me
01:55:33 because I know Russian, how much is lost in translation.
01:55:36 And the same, there’s a brewing conflict
01:55:39 and tension with China now, and so much is lost
01:55:42 in the translation between those languages.
01:55:44 Oh my God, yeah.
01:55:46 And cultures, the entire, the music of the people
01:55:50 is completely lost because we don’t know the language,
01:55:53 or most of us don’t know the language.
01:55:54 Yeah, how much of the conflict
01:55:55 is just problems in translation?
01:55:58 How much of all these problems that we’re having
01:56:00 are just the alien sense of this or that?
01:56:02 It’s just as simple as that.
01:56:04 Words are getting just a tiny warp away from the intent
01:56:13 of if, when we both speak the same language,
01:56:16 we can still say something that offends someone
01:56:20 when you never intended that at all.
01:56:22 How much more so when like it’s,
01:56:26 not only is it a completely different sound,
01:56:29 but the script itself is different.
01:56:31 Like what is, the Russian writing,
01:56:35 is it called Cyrillic or what’s the name?
01:56:37 Yeah, Cyrillic.
01:56:38 Cyrillic, and I don’t know the name for Chinese writing,
01:56:41 but it’s like, it’s a continuum that like gets weirder
01:56:45 and weirder looking, you know?
01:56:47 Like it’s, so yeah.
01:56:49 Or less weird depending on your perspective.
01:56:51 Yeah, I’m sure depending on where you’re at.
01:56:54 You know, I’m definitely, I’m about the farthest thing
01:56:56 from a polyglot as there could be, man.
01:56:58 Like, but I’ll tell you, at one point
01:57:01 when I was getting fascinated by Dostoevsky,
01:57:04 I did have this very transient fantasy
01:57:07 about learning Russian so that I could like understand
01:57:10 the difference and it’s.
01:57:12 You were 17, 18 at the time.
01:57:14 College.
01:57:15 Yeah, college.
01:57:16 Yeah, Brothers Karamazov lost in that book.
01:57:18 Just like, oh God.
01:57:20 So in love with it is.
01:57:24 But there’s definitely like, you know, Ukraine,
01:57:29 and this is what a lot of the war is about is saying,
01:57:32 you know, Ukraine and Russia are not the same people.
01:57:35 There’s a strong culture in Ukraine,
01:57:37 there’s a strong culture in Russia.
01:57:38 But you know, I know because that’s where my family’s from,
01:57:41 there is a fascinating, strong culture.
01:57:45 But there’s such strong cultures everywhere else too.
01:57:50 Ireland has a culture, Scotland has a culture.
01:57:52 Even like on a tiny island, you just have these like,
01:57:56 subcultures that are more powerful than anything
01:57:59 existing in human history.
01:58:02 Like the Bronx, I don’t know, like Brooklyn.
01:58:05 Like different parts of New York have a certain culture.
01:58:07 And then New York versus LA versus, well.
01:58:10 And then certain places are looking for their culture.
01:58:12 Like I don’t, I think Austin, I don’t know what Austin is.
01:58:17 And I don’t think anyone knows.
01:58:18 There’s a traditional Austin,
01:58:21 and then it’s evolving constantly.
01:58:23 Same with Boston, a place I spent a lot of time.
01:58:26 There’s a traditional Boston and now it’s evolving
01:58:28 with the different younger people coming from university
01:58:32 and staying and all of that is evolving.
01:58:35 But underneath it, there’s a core,
01:58:37 like the American ideal of the value of the individual,
01:58:40 the value of freedom, of freedom of speech,
01:58:42 all those kinds of things that permeates all of that.
01:58:45 And the same thing in the history of World War II
01:58:49 permeates Ukraine and Russia, a lot of parts of Europe,
01:58:54 the memories of all that suffering and destruction,
01:58:57 the broken promises of governments
01:58:59 and the occupier versus the liberator,
01:59:04 all that kind of stuff.
01:59:06 All that permeates the culture.
01:59:08 That affects how cynical or optimistic you are,
01:59:12 or how much you appreciate material possessions
01:59:16 versus human connection, all that kind of stuff.
01:59:19 Yeah, it’s, I mean, this is like, talk about absurdity.
01:59:23 I mean, this is, war is like,
01:59:26 it’s what absurdity looks like.
01:59:28 It’s some kind of organized madness.
01:59:32 None of it makes sense, like all of it,
01:59:34 like it’s just, none of it makes sense,
01:59:37 but it does, but it doesn’t.
01:59:38 I mean, obviously you’re defending yourself
01:59:40 or you’re taking orders that if you don’t take,
01:59:43 you’re going to jail.
01:59:45 And so, or somewhere in between,
01:59:47 there’s a classic story about this.
01:59:50 Maybe it’s a bullshit myth about World War II.
01:59:53 I’m sure everyone’s heard it because it comes up,
01:59:55 you know, it’s Christmas Eve and they have a ceasefire.
02:00:01 And then I think they played soccer,
02:00:03 they sing Christmas songs,
02:00:05 and then they had to force them into fighting again.
02:00:08 And so when those moments happen, the,
02:00:12 are you familiar with Hakeem Bey?
02:00:15 He’s a controversial figure.
02:00:16 Sadly, like he, like, I think he was like,
02:00:20 I’m not going to defame him
02:00:21 because I haven’t like researched it correctly,
02:00:24 but some people have said shit,
02:00:25 but since I don’t know the reference, I’m not going to.
02:00:27 But regardless, I mean, you know, look,
02:00:30 I’m sorry, but Bill Cosby was funny.
02:00:32 You know, like that’s a funny comedian,
02:00:36 but you know the other stuff.
02:00:40 Michael Jackson, he could fucking dance.
02:00:43 And sing.
02:00:44 And sing, but there’s some other stuff.
02:00:46 But regardless, Hakeem Bey came up with the idea
02:00:50 of something called a temporary autonomous zone,
02:00:53 which is that within a structure, a cultural structure,
02:00:58 a temporary bubble of freedom will appear
02:01:04 that by its nature gets sort of popped
02:01:09 by the bigger bubble,
02:01:11 or it runs out of resources generally is what happens.
02:01:13 So these things will appear just out of the blue
02:01:17 that it’s almost like, imagine if like on earth
02:01:22 in some tiny little bit of earth,
02:01:25 the gravitational field was reduced by some percentage.
02:01:29 And all of a sudden you could jump really high or whatever,
02:01:31 but it wouldn’t last.
02:01:32 It’s like that culturally, all the restrictions
02:01:35 and the darkness and the heaviness and all of it
02:01:37 for a second, somehow this bubble appears
02:01:40 where humans come together as the hippie ideal.
02:01:45 Brothers, sisters, just humans, earthlings
02:01:50 instead of American, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian
02:01:55 temporary autonomous zone, it gets crushed
02:01:58 by the default reality that it was appearing in.
02:02:01 But somehow within that space,
02:02:03 you witness the possibility, the possibility,
02:02:08 the frustrating possibility that anyone who’s thought
02:02:12 about humanity knows this possibility,
02:02:16 which is like, it seems like we can just get along.
02:02:18 Like it does seem like we’re pretty much the same thing
02:02:21 and that we can just get along.
02:02:23 Those moments are really rare.
02:02:26 It’s sad.
02:02:27 I talked to a lot of soldiers, a lot of people
02:02:30 that suffered through the different aspects of that war.
02:02:35 Or war, and there’s an information war
02:02:40 that convinces each side that the other
02:02:44 is not just the enemy, but less than human.
02:02:47 Right.
02:02:48 So there’s a real hatred towards the other side.
02:02:52 Yeah.
02:02:53 And those kind of little moments where you realize,
02:02:56 oh, they’re human like me.
02:03:00 Yeah.
02:03:00 And not just like human like me,
02:03:03 but they have the same values as me.
02:03:06 And this woman who was a really respected soldier,
02:03:13 she specializes in anti tank missiles.
02:03:18 And she’s very kind of, very pragmatic,
02:03:23 very the enemy is the enemy, you have to destroy the enemy
02:03:26 and saying like, there’s no compassion towards the enemy.
02:03:29 They’re not human.
02:03:31 They’re less than human.
02:03:33 But she said there was a moment when she remembers
02:03:38 an enemy soldier in a tank took a risk
02:03:43 to save a fellow soldier.
02:03:45 And that risk was really stupid because he was facing,
02:03:48 he was going to get destroyed.
02:03:50 And then she said that she tried to shoot a rocket
02:03:57 at that tank and she missed.
02:03:59 And then she later went home and she couldn’t sleep
02:04:02 that she missed.
02:04:03 How could she screw that up?
02:04:05 But then she realized that actually she missed,
02:04:09 maybe she missed on purpose.
02:04:10 Yeah.
02:04:11 Because she realized that that man, just like she is,
02:04:16 was a hero, just like she strives to be.
02:04:21 They were both heroes defending their own.
02:04:24 And in that way, he was just like her.
02:04:27 She was like, that’s the only time I remember during this
02:04:30 war ever feeling like this is another human being.
02:04:33 But that was a very brief moment for her.
02:04:36 And I just hear that over and over and over again.
02:04:39 These romantic notions we have of we’re one,
02:04:44 that we’re all just human.
02:04:46 Unfortunately during war, those notions are rare.
02:04:50 And it’s quite sad.
02:04:51 And war in a certain way really destroys those notions.
02:04:54 And one of the saddest things is it destroys it,
02:05:01 at least from what I see, potentially for generations.
02:05:05 Not just for those people for the rest of their life,
02:05:08 but for their children, their children’s children.
02:05:12 The hatred.
02:05:13 I mean, I ask that question of basically everyone,
02:05:16 which is will you ever forgive, asking of Ukrainians,
02:05:20 will you ever forgive the Russians?
02:05:22 Will, do you have hate in your heart towards the Russians?
02:05:27 Or do you have love for a fellow human being?
02:05:32 And there’s different ways that people struggle with that.
02:05:36 Different people, they saw that, they saw the love,
02:05:40 they saw the hate with their known heart.
02:05:43 And they struggle with the hate they have.
02:05:45 And they know they can overcome it in a period of weeks
02:05:48 and months after the war is over.
02:05:50 But some people said, no, this hate that was,
02:05:53 that showed up in February when the war started
02:05:56 will be with me forever.
02:05:57 Well, yeah, their kids got killed.
02:06:00 What the fuck are you gonna do about that?
02:06:02 Like, I don’t care.
02:06:02 I’ve got aphorisms and cute little stories about,
02:06:06 you’re still in prison if you hate your former captors.
02:06:10 But man, I gotta tell you, if somebody hurt my kids,
02:06:14 I’m not coming back.
02:06:15 I mean, there’s no amount,
02:06:18 at least right now in my approximation,
02:06:21 of spiritual literature, meditation,
02:06:24 or anything that I can really think of
02:06:26 that is going to give me that kind of space.
02:06:31 Like, I think I imagine in the same way like,
02:06:36 I imagine I could probably run a marathon eventually,
02:06:39 but do I think I’m ever gonna do that?
02:06:42 That times a million.
02:06:44 So man, all we can do is have compassion for their hate
02:06:47 because it’s like, what are you gonna say?
02:06:51 What are you gonna say to someone like that?
02:06:53 Oh, oh, you know, for the sake of humanity, let it go.
02:06:58 It was just your kids.
02:07:00 It was just something you loved
02:07:02 more than anything in the world.
02:07:05 You’ll never be okay again.
02:07:07 You’re gonna have nightmares for the rest of your life.
02:07:09 But you should forgive.
02:07:10 No.
02:07:11 Well, there is truth in the fact
02:07:12 that forgiveness is the way to let go, right?
02:07:15 But that truth is not, fuck you, right?
02:07:23 Which is why it’s not your job to say that.
02:07:26 Not that you’re doing that, I know you’re not.
02:07:28 But you know, the problem with people like me,
02:07:31 early phase, you could get this stupid missionary thing
02:07:34 going where you like, start trying to like,
02:07:38 I don’t know, like proselytize ideals
02:07:40 that you might be incapable of, you know?
02:07:42 And I just, hearing it, you know, that’s the,
02:07:46 man, I saw this, the thing that like,
02:07:49 I mean, I’ve seen a lot, all of us by now,
02:07:51 probably if we were online, I’ve seen,
02:07:53 and you just saw it in person.
02:07:54 Like we’ve seen things that are just horrific.
02:07:58 But as a dad, man, I just saw this clip of this kid
02:08:03 around the age of my kid, walking by himself,
02:08:08 these refugees, just walking by himself,
02:08:11 crying, the look on his face,
02:08:13 I can’t explain the look on his face.
02:08:15 I don’t know what happened to his parents.
02:08:17 I don’t know what happened.
02:08:18 Like I, it was so upsetting.
02:08:21 Like even thinking about it now, it’s just like, fuck,
02:08:23 that could have been my kid.
02:08:24 That could have been my kid, you know?
02:08:26 So knowing that kind of, that,
02:08:30 that kid’s gotta grow up now.
02:08:33 And I don’t know, is the kid’s parents still there?
02:08:36 And that’s just one of countless orphans out there now.
02:08:42 So what you have this hate,
02:08:45 and the question is how to direct it.
02:08:47 Because the choice is you can direct it
02:08:50 towards the politicians that started the war.
02:08:53 You can direct it towards the soldiers
02:08:55 that are doing the killing,
02:08:56 or you can direct it towards an entire group of people.
02:09:00 And that’s the struggle because hate slowly grows
02:09:04 to where you don’t just hate the soldiers.
02:09:08 You don’t just hate the leaders.
02:09:11 You hate all Russians because they’re all equally evil
02:09:17 because the ones that aren’t doing the fighting
02:09:19 are staying quiet.
02:09:21 And I’m sure the same kind of stories are happening
02:09:24 on the other side.
02:09:25 And so there is, that hate is one
02:09:30 that is deeply human,
02:09:38 but you wonder for your own future, for your own home,
02:09:43 for building your own community,
02:09:45 for building your own country,
02:09:47 how does that hate morph over the weeks and months and years?
02:09:53 Not into forgiveness, but into something that’s productive
02:09:56 that doesn’t destroy you.
02:09:57 Because hate does destroy.
02:09:59 That’s the dark aspect of a rocket that hits a building
02:10:06 and kills hundreds of people.
02:10:10 The worst effect of that rocket
02:10:16 is the hate in the hearts of the loved ones
02:10:21 to the people that were in that building.
02:10:23 That hate is a torture over a period of years after.
02:10:30 And that it doesn’t just torture
02:10:33 by having that psychological burden and trauma.
02:10:36 It also tortures because it destroys your life.
02:10:39 It prevents you from being able to enjoy your life
02:10:42 to the fullest.
02:10:44 It prevents you from being able to flourish as a human being,
02:10:49 as a professional, in all those kinds of ways
02:10:53 that humans can flourish.
02:10:54 And I don’t know.
02:10:57 It’s such a, there is an aspect where this naive notion
02:11:05 is really powerful, that love and forgiveness
02:11:09 is the thing that’s needed in this time.
02:11:12 And when I talk to soldiers, they don’t,
02:11:18 I remember bringing up to Jaco,
02:11:21 is there a sense where the people you’re fighting
02:11:23 are just brothers in arms,
02:11:25 bringing up the Dire Straits song, Brothers in Arms?
02:11:28 And he was basically, without swearing, saying fuck that,
02:11:31 that they’re the enemy.
02:11:33 Yeah, I mean, he’s literally in survival mode.
02:11:36 He can’t think like that.
02:11:37 It’s gonna create latency in the system
02:11:39 and that’s gonna lower his survivability.
02:11:40 You can’t think that.
02:11:41 I mean, we’re talking about cognitively.
02:11:44 You can’t have latency.
02:11:45 Like, if you’re, that one moment of hesitation,
02:11:49 you see it sometimes in these YouTube videos
02:11:51 of like somebody, a new cop has been unfortunate enough
02:11:59 to run into something that is a phenomenon, suicide by cop.
02:12:03 Somebody has a knife and that person is running towards them
02:12:07 with a knife and they’re begging the person to stop,
02:12:10 that you can hear it in their voice.
02:12:12 They’re begging, stop, stop, stop, stop.
02:12:17 And the person is not gonna stop.
02:12:19 So the critique of that is that that latency
02:12:27 could potentially not just lead to the cop getting killed,
02:12:31 but to that person with a knife killing other people.
02:12:34 And so, you know, I get, if I were out there,
02:12:39 I think that like, you probably just as a matter
02:12:44 of like not getting shot and being fully in the moment,
02:12:47 you have to be like that.
02:12:48 I would guess, I don’t know.
02:12:50 I don’t know, I’m the furthest thing
02:12:51 from a soldier there could be,
02:12:52 but there’s something Jack Kornfield,
02:12:57 this great Buddhist teacher says,
02:12:58 which is tend to the part of the garden you can touch.
02:13:03 Meaning this is where we’re at right now.
02:13:05 Thank God you and I, though we are experiencing
02:13:09 some like ripples from what’s going on over there,
02:13:11 everyone is, we’re not there.
02:13:14 And thank God we don’t have to come up
02:13:17 with the psychological program
02:13:21 for people going through that
02:13:24 to no longer be encumbered by that hate.
02:13:27 Thank God.
02:13:28 And I don’t know if that’s just lazy or whatever,
02:13:30 but it’s like, you know, for me,
02:13:31 I just, I have to bring it back to,
02:13:33 all right, well, here’s where I’m at now.
02:13:35 And I don’t want there to be war.
02:13:41 I don’t want to hurt people, but yeah, I love what you said.
02:13:44 I think what you said is the, if anything,
02:13:47 is the most intelligent way of looking at it.
02:13:52 It’s like, don’t pretend that you’re not gonna feel
02:13:55 that hate, like you’re gonna feel it.
02:13:58 There’s no way around it.
02:13:59 Or like, cause that’s even worse.
02:14:00 Cause then you’re almost saying like something’s wrong
02:14:02 with them for feeling the hate or, you know, whatever.
02:14:05 But more along the lines, if you can avoid applying
02:14:09 that hate to an entire country of people, then do that.
02:14:18 Like, just understand, we’re talking about like a,
02:14:24 not everybody.
02:14:25 I know it’s not everybody.
02:14:26 I know it’s not everybody.
02:14:27 It’s just easier, isn’t it?
02:14:28 Cognitively, it’s somehow easier to think all Russians,
02:14:33 monsters, you know, all Russians,
02:14:37 all whatever the particular like thing is
02:14:40 that you’re supposed to not like.
02:14:42 It’s easier somehow, weirdly.
02:14:43 You’d think that’d be more difficult.
02:14:45 Yeah, but I guess the lesson is if you give in
02:14:50 to the easy solution, that’s going to lead
02:14:55 to detrimental longterm effects.
02:14:58 So hate should be, it’s such a powerful tool
02:15:03 that you should try to control it for your own sake.
02:15:08 Not because you owe anything to anybody,
02:15:10 but for your own psychological development over time.
02:15:14 Right, right, that’s it, that’s it, fuck.
02:15:19 Yeah, yeah.
02:15:21 In terms of dark places, you suffered from depression.
02:15:26 Where has been some of the darker places
02:15:28 you’ve gone in your mind?
02:15:31 You know, I needed therapy, man.
02:15:32 I needed therapy for the longest time, I just didn’t get it.
02:15:36 So because of that, I would go through like bouts
02:15:44 of like paralytic depression, like suicidal depression,
02:15:49 suicidal ideations that were more than just ideations.
02:15:51 I mean, I think like people get afraid
02:15:56 when the thought of suicide appears in their consciousness,
02:15:59 they get really scared of themselves.
02:16:01 So they think there’s something like,
02:16:03 fuck, what’s going on with me?
02:16:04 Why would I think that?
02:16:04 But I think if we are suffering and, you know,
02:16:08 as a natural part of not wanting to reduce suffering
02:16:11 or not feel bad anymore, I mean, suicide is going to be an,
02:16:16 like, if we’re just, you know, you’re just looking,
02:16:17 what are all the options?
02:16:18 Let’s brainstorm here.
02:16:19 You know what I mean?
02:16:20 I could start drinking more water.
02:16:22 You start jogging, get some therapy, call my friends,
02:16:26 all the stuff we all hear.
02:16:27 Or I could just, I think the height
02:16:30 of my apartment building is probably the,
02:16:31 definitely the right height to kill myself.
02:16:34 And then, so where, for me, like the few times
02:16:39 where the ideation has gone towards like,
02:16:43 well, when would I do that?
02:16:45 How do I, what, you know, what do I need
02:16:47 to like accomplish that?
02:16:50 When then like, that’s where it gets really fucking scary.
02:16:52 That’s where it’s like terrifying.
02:16:54 And so you start the actual details of the planning
02:16:57 of how to commit suicide.
02:17:00 Yeah.
02:17:00 What’s going to be the least painful way to do it?
02:17:02 What’s going to be the most instantaneous way to do it?
02:17:04 What’s the, you know, and with, you know,
02:17:06 with depression, because it can be progressive,
02:17:11 you know, this is why you have to really just stay
02:17:13 on top of it.
02:17:14 Anyone who’s gone through depression
02:17:15 knows what I’m talking about.
02:17:16 You gotta stay on top of it.
02:17:17 Like you might need medication.
02:17:18 You know, I know this is controversial now,
02:17:20 but it’s still better than dying if you ask me.
02:17:22 But at some point with depression,
02:17:24 it like becomes paralyzing.
02:17:26 So you don’t want to get out of bed anymore
02:17:28 and you’re not taking showers anymore.
02:17:30 And you don’t want to talk to anybody anymore.
02:17:31 And you’re not answering your phone anymore.
02:17:33 And, you know.
02:17:35 So like in a dark place that you might be in,
02:17:38 it still might get worse.
02:17:39 So you should really do everything you can
02:17:43 to get under control.
02:17:45 And that’s the problem with that specific
02:17:47 psychological disorder.
02:17:49 That’s the problem.
02:17:50 Because the things it’s like,
02:17:52 if you start listening to what you want to,
02:17:54 you think it’s you, it’s the depression.
02:17:56 You start listening to it.
02:17:58 It wants you to stay in bed.
02:18:00 And then you’re getting those fucking depression sleeps,
02:18:03 you know, or you wake up and you’re more tired.
02:18:06 Like it’s not working.
02:18:07 You’re trying to escape reality by sleeping.
02:18:11 And so, yeah.
02:18:13 Like you have to like,
02:18:15 you’re fighting for your,
02:18:18 you’re literally fighting for your life.
02:18:19 It might not seem like that.
02:18:20 Cause you can’t, if you could see depression,
02:18:23 if you could see it,
02:18:24 if you knew you had some inky, vaporous octopus thing
02:18:28 that was just wrapping around you
02:18:31 more and more and more and more,
02:18:33 you would probably do everything you could
02:18:34 to rip that fucking thing off your body.
02:18:36 And if you couldn’t get it off your body,
02:18:38 you would be calling people to get help.
02:18:41 So it doesn’t feel like a fight because you’re exhausted.
02:18:43 There’s no reason to move.
02:18:45 There’s no, you don’t see the meaning for any of it.
02:18:48 So it doesn’t feel like a battle, but it is a battle.
02:18:50 You’re not feeling.
02:18:51 I mean, that’s the other thing.
02:18:51 You’re just, you’re basically not feeling.
02:18:53 You’re like, you start going numb.
02:18:55 At least that was my experience with it.
02:18:57 Numb and tired.
02:18:58 And then increasingly numb and tired.
02:19:01 And then increasingly sort of disconnecting from reality.
02:19:05 And then somewhere in there,
02:19:06 that’s when you start playing around with the idea
02:19:08 of like, oh, I don’t know if it’s worth it.
02:19:10 I don’t know.
02:19:11 Now, you know, I think compared to some of my friends
02:19:14 who haven’t survived,
02:19:15 obviously who haven’t survived depression,
02:19:17 like mine was definitely not whatever theirs was like.
02:19:21 I’ve heard, I mean, to understand it for folks out there,
02:19:26 maybe you haven’t gone through it.
02:19:27 Just imagine if like, how bad you have to feel
02:19:30 if death is the solution,
02:19:32 like violence against yourself
02:19:35 so that you die is the solution.
02:19:37 Like just, it flies in the face of everything.
02:19:43 So yeah, that was definitely the darkest place
02:19:48 that I’ve ever been.
02:19:48 Just that death doesn’t seem like, because you don’t care
02:19:52 about anything anymore,
02:19:54 that death just doesn’t seem like that bad.
02:19:56 Yeah.
02:19:58 Like you’re not able to appropriately assign
02:20:02 the negative costs to the solution.
02:20:05 Right.
02:20:06 It just seems like a reasonable solution.
02:20:07 Yeah, but I think also what’s going along with it
02:20:11 is like, it’s not like your brain isn’t working.
02:20:15 Like you’re not thinking,
02:20:17 obviously you’re not thinking clearly.
02:20:19 Like, at least again, this was my experience of it.
02:20:22 It’s a fog.
02:20:23 You’re in some kind of, like you’re confused.
02:20:27 There’s confusion.
02:20:29 There’s shame.
02:20:31 You feel embarrassed.
02:20:32 You feel embarrassed.
02:20:33 You wanna get out of bed.
02:20:34 You wanna do stuff.
02:20:34 You wanna be compelled to be social and do all this stuff,
02:20:38 but you’re not, you’re not.
02:20:40 Like you seem, if people don’t know what’s going on
02:20:42 and you’re not telling them because you’re embarrassed,
02:20:45 because you want to have some like,
02:20:48 you know, uncorrupted, unworped psyche,
02:20:54 you know, you’re like, it invites you to be secret about it.
02:20:57 That’s one of its first tricks
02:20:59 is it tells you not to tell anybody.
02:21:01 And that’s deadly in that case, it’s deadly.
02:21:06 What was the source of light?
02:21:07 What was the, what were for you
02:21:11 and in general the ways out?
02:21:14 Yeah, so for me, the solutions,
02:21:19 and again, man, for my depressed friends out there,
02:21:22 please don’t get mad at me.
02:21:23 I’m not doing the thing of like,
02:21:24 just put on a smile or any of that bullshit
02:21:26 because it doesn’t feel like that
02:21:28 when you’re like, and when you’re fighting it,
02:21:31 it’s like you are, you’re in a,
02:21:36 I don’t know why I keep using these stupid gravity analogies,
02:21:39 but it’s like the gravity’s been turned up on your planet
02:21:42 in every single way by, so getting out of bed.
02:21:45 You know, like.
02:21:47 By the way, gravity and quantum mechanics,
02:21:50 one of the most beautiful things about our reality,
02:21:54 what the hell is each of those things?
02:21:56 So this isn’t, you’re not just talking about
02:22:00 hippie language, it’s still physicists
02:22:04 pretend they understand something.
02:22:05 We’re still at the very beginning of understanding
02:22:07 this mysterious world of ours
02:22:09 that seems to be functioning according
02:22:11 to these weirdly simple and yet universally powerful laws,
02:22:18 which we don’t fully yet understand.
02:22:20 So please, the metaphor and the analogy of gravity.
02:22:24 Okay, thank you.
02:22:24 Fully, fully applicable.
02:22:25 I don’t know any other way to put it
02:22:26 than it’s like somebody turned the gravitational field
02:22:28 of your mattress up by.
02:22:29 So everything is heavy.
02:22:30 Heavy, your body’s heavy.
02:22:33 You don’t wanna get out of bed,
02:22:34 you will consider shitting or pissing the bed
02:22:36 because you’re just like, who gives a fuck,
02:22:38 I’ll just lay in my shit and piss.
02:22:40 You’re dying, you’re like, none of it makes sense.
02:22:50 And I feel like in retrospect,
02:22:52 I’m making what I’ve done a little,
02:22:55 like I had more lucidity.
02:22:57 It was more of like when you’re wrestling with someone
02:23:02 and you’re just like, it’s different for you.
02:23:06 But for me, if I’m wrestling,
02:23:08 I’m not thinking about jujitsu moves.
02:23:10 I’m like.
02:23:10 Survival.
02:23:11 You’re just.
02:23:12 So it’s like that.
02:23:13 It is a struggle.
02:23:14 Like it’s like, you really have to deliberately fight.
02:23:20 Everything.
02:23:21 So you start, so you can almost have a conversation
02:23:25 with the depression.
02:23:27 And then what you do is you start doing the opposite
02:23:30 of everything it’s telling you to do.
02:23:33 So it’s telling you lay in bed.
02:23:36 So you get out of bed.
02:23:38 It’s definitely telling you don’t fucking exercise.
02:23:41 You’re gonna go fucking exercise.
02:23:43 That’s not gonna do anything.
02:23:44 You can’t.
02:23:45 You probably have a heart attack.
02:23:46 You really wanna go outside.
02:23:48 Don’t go fucking exercise.
02:23:50 And it’ll feel crazy.
02:23:53 And you won’t wanna do it.
02:23:54 If you wanted to do it, you wouldn’t be depressed.
02:23:57 Like how often do you hear
02:23:58 like one of the symptoms of depression?
02:24:00 You wanna jog.
02:24:01 You wanna get on a bike.
02:24:02 You know, you don’t hear that.
02:24:04 That’s not a symptom.
02:24:04 So you start, at least one solution
02:24:08 I just started doing the opposite of.
02:24:11 Whatever the voice is telling you, do the opposite.
02:24:14 That.
02:24:15 And then suddenly the gravitational field
02:24:21 diminishes a little bit.
02:24:22 It doesn’t go all the way away.
02:24:23 And that’s where you can fall right back into it
02:24:25 cause you just feel even slightly better.
02:24:27 You’re like, oh, okay, I fixed it.
02:24:29 You know, really, I think if you like
02:24:31 and having been through therapy, the best solution
02:24:37 would be go to a fucking therapist as quickly as you can.
02:24:42 Just sit down with them and tell them what’s going on.
02:24:46 I know what you’re thinking.
02:24:47 How am I gonna find a therapist?
02:24:49 Just do it.
02:24:51 Google it, go on Yelp.
02:24:53 All of this shit feels impossible.
02:24:56 You’re like, I don’t wanna turn on the computer.
02:24:57 I don’t wanna do any of this.
02:24:58 You just have to.
02:24:59 I mean, you have to.
02:25:00 You do it if you’re on fire.
02:25:01 You do it if you’re on fire.
02:25:02 And someone’s like, you know,
02:25:03 here’s a way to not be on fire.
02:25:05 Just this particular fire is,
02:25:07 it doesn’t make you wanna run around screaming.
02:25:09 It just makes you wanna fall asleep forever.
02:25:11 And that, but those little steps,
02:25:15 I got lucky because it worked.
02:25:16 It worked, I started exercising.
02:25:18 I’d been on antidepressants before
02:25:20 when I was originally diagnosed with it.
02:25:24 Did those help?
02:25:26 You know, I, even with all the current research
02:25:28 coming out about, that maybe we were all wrong
02:25:31 about our understanding of depression,
02:25:33 I do feel like it helped in a certain way.
02:25:38 Like it definitely, it definitely like
02:25:42 made me stop thinking about,
02:25:43 it stopped the intrusive thoughts.
02:25:45 And, but I don’t know how much of that was placebo
02:25:48 or how much of that, I don’t know.
02:25:49 But then also like I couldn’t cum anymore.
02:25:51 That was the other fucked up thing.
02:25:53 Like you’re, you can’t have orgasms.
02:25:55 And which might not sound like a big deal,
02:25:58 but you know, when I told my therapist
02:26:02 that they actually took me off them,
02:26:03 cause I think she was realizing
02:26:05 that it started diminishing a little bit.
02:26:07 But the one I’m talking about now,
02:26:11 that whatever episode or whatever you wanna call it,
02:26:14 I just got lucky cause it worked.
02:26:16 It worked and I started feeling better, thank God.
02:26:19 Now, if you suffer from depression out there
02:26:22 and you’ve had a remission of the depression,
02:26:24 you know, it’s really like,
02:26:26 it’s scary to have mental illness
02:26:27 because everyone gets bummed out.
02:26:32 I mean, that’s just normal.
02:26:33 Like you’re gonna get bummed out
02:26:35 and I don’t wanna do anything sometimes.
02:26:36 It doesn’t mean you have a clinical depression.
02:26:38 You might just be bummed out or grieving.
02:26:40 You might be any number of things.
02:26:42 But when I get really nervous,
02:26:46 if some of those symptoms start showing up.
02:26:49 And at one point I felt like that was happening again.
02:26:54 And I did intramuscular ketamine therapy,
02:26:59 which now that was the damnedest thing
02:27:02 I’ve ever experienced.
02:27:04 Aside from the fact that ketamine is immensely psychedelic.
02:27:10 I just remember going back to the hotel
02:27:14 after the experience with the clinician.
02:27:17 And like, you know, it’s like with depression,
02:27:21 it’s like a headache that starts coming on.
02:27:24 But you’re like, this headache might last for years.
02:27:27 It might last for six months.
02:27:28 It might get worse and worse and worse.
02:27:30 And so I went back to the hotel room and it was just gone.
02:27:37 Like I just felt normal.
02:27:38 It felt great.
02:27:39 It was like the most remarkable thing ever.
02:27:42 So, you know, look at the research on ketamine right now.
02:27:45 It’s like, it’s not like bullshit.
02:27:49 It’s not like woo science.
02:27:50 There’s really, really good data out there
02:27:52 showing that something like, I think it’s 60%.
02:27:55 I don’t know what the percentage is,
02:27:56 but 60% of people with an endogenous depression
02:28:02 when they get ketamine therapy will experience remission,
02:28:06 regardless of whether you trip out or not.
02:28:08 It just does something that I don’t know
02:28:10 if they know what it is yet.
02:28:11 I don’t care if they do.
02:28:12 But that one thing worked.
02:28:14 And basically you keep fighting until something works.
02:28:17 Exactly.
02:28:18 It’s a survival issue.
02:28:19 And it’s a survival issue.
02:28:21 But it’s just, I think because it’s kind of so slow moving,
02:28:24 you might even forget it’s progressive.
02:28:26 Or, you know, you could easily just think
02:28:28 that you’re just a kind of bummed out person.
02:28:30 Or you start thinking that these aspects of your psychology
02:28:34 are permanent when they don’t have to be.
02:28:37 What about other people in your life?
02:28:39 What advice would you give to people
02:28:41 that have loved ones who suffer from depression?
02:28:44 What are they to do?
02:28:46 Okay, now this is really like, man, it’s really dark.
02:28:54 Here’s number one.
02:28:57 This is what somebody told me
02:28:59 when I lost a friend to suicide, you know?
02:29:00 Because when you lose a friend to suicide,
02:29:02 when you lose a loved one to suicide,
02:29:04 you’re gonna blame yourself.
02:29:05 It’s like in the periphery of suicide,
02:29:10 there is a circumference of guilty people
02:29:14 who all feel like, oh, if only I’d said this
02:29:17 at the right time, if only I’d listened more,
02:29:19 if only I’d seen that warning sign,
02:29:22 if only this or that.
02:29:25 It’s interesting in that with other forms of like disease,
02:29:31 you know, if your loved one dies from cancer, say,
02:29:37 more than likely, you’re not gonna be thinking like,
02:29:39 oh, I should have cured their cancer.
02:29:41 You know, like it’s a tragedy,
02:29:43 but at least you’re not like, oh, if only I had.
02:29:46 You still might think that’s part of grief, but.
02:29:49 It’s not as sticky in many of the other situations.
02:29:52 Here, the guilt couldn’t really stay for a long time.
02:29:55 Yep, so you, number one, we’re talking about
02:30:02 a progressive disease that can lead to death.
02:30:05 And if somebody commits suicide,
02:30:07 they wanted to commit suicide.
02:30:09 And at least what I’ve been told is you can’t stop it.
02:30:12 It’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.
02:30:15 There are no magic words.
02:30:16 There’s nothing you could do.
02:30:18 So, you know, people who’ve lost people to suicide,
02:30:21 you know what I’m talking about.
02:30:23 Like, you know, you can watch it happen in real time
02:30:26 and there’s just nothing you could do.
02:30:29 That being said, you know, being responsive
02:30:34 to when it seems like someone’s really reaching out
02:30:36 for help and knowing that maybe even though it might,
02:30:40 especially if it’s someone who’s like, doesn’t talk
02:30:42 like this a lot of the time,
02:30:44 and sentences start coming out of their mouth,
02:30:47 that if you weren’t really paying attention,
02:30:49 might not seem like a big deal,
02:30:50 but for this person, it’s kind of anomalous
02:30:52 that all of a sudden that’s happening.
02:30:56 Now there, that’s when you can be a good listener
02:30:59 and, you know, open up to them and hear what they’re saying
02:31:01 and see like, oh, shit, are they asking me for it?
02:31:04 Is this them asking for help?
02:31:05 And even if you’re like, I don’t know what to do,
02:31:08 you know, at least you can like start checking in on them,
02:31:14 you know, start like help them understand
02:31:16 that you’re there for them
02:31:17 and then hopefully get them into therapy,
02:31:19 get them to a doctor, get them to a professional
02:31:22 who can like see what’s going on there.
02:31:25 So that, and then there’s hope.
02:31:27 And even then there might not be hope actually,
02:31:28 you know, doctors can’t stop it.
02:31:30 There’s no, sometimes it just, that’s the way it goes.
02:31:34 But, you know, I know that like being sensitive,
02:31:39 if somebody’s like all of a sudden hitting you up
02:31:41 or reaching out to you that normally isn’t like that
02:31:44 and just, what’s going on?
02:31:46 How are you?
02:31:46 And just listen.
02:31:48 Which in general, depression or not,
02:31:50 is probably a good thing to do.
02:31:52 Yeah.
02:31:53 To truly listen.
02:31:56 It’s like, are you okay?
02:31:57 Yeah, yeah.
02:31:59 Because people have, you know,
02:32:01 this whole thing of like cries for help, man.
02:32:03 Sometimes they just look like a weird text.
02:32:06 You know, and you don’t realize
02:32:08 for the person to send that fucking text,
02:32:10 they’ve been thinking about it all morning.
02:32:12 They’ve been just trying to get their phone up
02:32:14 from the floor.
02:32:16 So, you know, I think that’s it.
02:32:20 I mean, what, I don’t know.
02:32:21 I don’t know.
02:32:22 I’ve had friends like kill themselves.
02:32:25 And many of them, it wasn’t like,
02:32:29 sadly it was like, I don’t know.
02:32:31 I don’t know what could have been done,
02:32:32 but.
02:32:34 But there’s still a guilt in the back of your head?
02:32:37 For the rest of my life, for sure.
02:32:39 I always will be.
02:32:41 Yeah, I mean, yeah.
02:32:43 But again, what are you gonna do?
02:32:44 But even that, it’s a part of love.
02:32:48 That’s right.
02:32:49 That’s right.
02:32:50 Yeah, that’s right.
02:32:51 You could, yeah.
02:32:52 You know, we feel guilt.
02:32:54 Part of grief is guilt, you know?
02:32:55 Like we always could have been better people.
02:32:58 We always could have been better people.
02:33:00 You getting to Viktor Frankl much?
02:33:02 Yeah, of course.
02:33:03 Man’s search for meaning.
02:33:05 The invitation to live your life
02:33:11 as though you’d been on your death bed
02:33:13 and had been given the chance to go back
02:33:15 and not make the same mistakes.
02:33:18 I return to that idea all the time,
02:33:20 meaning it’s like, okay,
02:33:22 whatever you did before this moment was too late.
02:33:28 But now, you know, this is where you can start.
02:33:31 This is where you can start.
02:33:32 And yeah, so I think that for a neurotic like me,
02:33:38 that’s super important.
02:33:39 Because otherwise, I’ll just get like too lost
02:33:41 in the weeds of shitty things I did in the past.
02:33:44 So speaking of Viktor Frankl,
02:33:46 you and Hitler have the same birthday.
02:33:48 Oh my God, you’ve really done your research.
02:33:52 Well, I often Google famous people
02:33:55 that have a birthday same as Hitler.
02:33:58 Yeah.
02:33:59 The person that shows up, you know,
02:34:02 is your face just really big.
02:34:04 You and Hitler together, just pals next to each other.
02:34:08 No, it does not.
02:34:10 No, but April 20th is an embarrassing birthday
02:34:12 for all my 420 friends out there.
02:34:14 It’s embarrassing.
02:34:15 You share a birthday with Hitler.
02:34:17 Well, it’s 420s also has a humor
02:34:20 and a lightness to it, right?
02:34:23 It’s embarrassing.
02:34:24 Your life is embarrassing.
02:34:27 But if you like weed and you’re born on stoner day
02:34:31 and you believe in reincarnation,
02:34:34 do you realize like when you start connecting the dots there,
02:34:36 if there is like a Bardo where you get to choose
02:34:39 your next life.
02:34:41 So you’re like a shitty generic NPC.
02:34:45 You’re like, of course, you would be born on 420.
02:34:48 Dude, let me be born on 420, man, yeah.
02:34:53 But isn’t it interesting that on that same day,
02:34:57 Hitler is also born.
02:35:00 There’s a tension to that and that Hitler’s an artist.
02:35:06 So it’s like that hippie mindset could go anywhere.
02:35:12 Oh, yeah, right.
02:35:12 Like, yeah, you know,
02:35:14 and I was just having this conversation
02:35:15 with a friend of mine who’s a wonderful skeptic.
02:35:18 And we were talking about this,
02:35:22 which is the thing where you start attributing to the day
02:35:28 you were born, these kinds of significance.
02:35:31 And based on maybe people who were born on that day,
02:35:33 maybe some other things.
02:35:34 And, you know, it’s like, think of how many people by now
02:35:38 in the course of human history have been born on April 20th.
02:35:42 I mean, how many?
02:35:44 Someone could probably do the math
02:35:45 and come up with some number close to it.
02:35:47 Now, this is how you know how rotten Hitler is.
02:35:51 Like, he’s the one that, like,
02:35:53 fucks up the birthday for everybody else.
02:35:56 But.
02:35:57 I think where I heard that you’re 420 is Wim Hof episode
02:36:03 because he’s also 420.
02:36:04 He’s a 420.
02:36:05 Yeah, so Hitler beats even Wim Hof.
02:36:09 Look.
02:36:10 In terms of owning the date.
02:36:11 I think if anybody is like,
02:36:15 well, obviously there’s nothing you can do to like fix it.
02:36:18 Hitler fucked up a lot of things.
02:36:20 He fucked up that mustache.
02:36:22 He fucked up the name Hitler.
02:36:23 He fucked up 420.
02:36:25 And obviously he caused a horrific Holocaust that,
02:36:29 by the way, talk about these reverberations through time
02:36:32 that we’re still experiencing.
02:36:33 I mean, there’s still people walking around
02:36:34 with fucking tattoos from that motherfucker.
02:36:36 So, but, you know, Wim Hof, you know, people like Wim Hof.
02:36:41 They’re like whatever the opposite of Hitler is, you know?
02:36:45 He too is creating ripples in the lake
02:36:47 that hopefully respond to that of Hitler.
02:36:51 Yeah, very cold fucking lake.
02:36:53 And he’s in, and yeah, so very, very cold lake
02:36:57 that he’s happily swimming around in.
02:36:59 But yeah, you know, I try not to think about
02:37:05 like the Hitler thing on my birthday.
02:37:08 Then my dad would just, every birthday he would remind me
02:37:11 that Hitler was 420.
02:37:12 Do you think all of us are capable of evil?
02:37:14 Do you think, you’re one of the sweetest people I know,
02:37:18 just as a fan, do you think you’re capable of evil?
02:37:21 Sure, yeah, I mean, sure, definitely.
02:37:24 I think if you don’t think that, you better watch out
02:37:27 because come on, how do you think you’re not capable of evil?
02:37:31 And PS, you are, if you’re connected
02:37:34 to the supply chain, friend, you’re doing evil.
02:37:38 You’re paying taxes.
02:37:39 You’re like, you’re supporting the worst things in the world.
02:37:43 I mean, you know, like diffusion of responsibility,
02:37:47 it’s really curious or the circumference of responsibility
02:37:51 where it’s like bombs are going off somewhere
02:37:54 that were paid for in some small part by you,
02:38:00 some fractional, if an American, if a drone is flying over
02:38:07 a village in Afghanistan and drops a bomb
02:38:10 and you pay taxes, then you could say you have
02:38:14 fractional ownership over that drone.
02:38:18 You’re a cog in the machine of evil in some sense.
02:38:22 And I know what you’re gonna say,
02:38:24 well, yeah, but I have to fucking pay taxes.
02:38:26 Like I have no choice.
02:38:27 There’s sales tax, there’s this or that.
02:38:29 Take that attitude.
02:38:31 It’s the same thing that people on the battlefield
02:38:34 when they’re sending missiles into other tanks,
02:38:37 they’re thinking the same thing.
02:38:39 It’s just, they’re more directly responsible
02:38:42 for what’s going on.
02:38:43 But in Buddhism, this idea of dependent co arising
02:38:49 or yeah, dependent co arising.
02:38:50 We’re all connected.
02:38:51 We’re all part of this matrix.
02:38:53 We’re all connected,
02:38:54 meaning we all share responsibility
02:38:57 for the evil in the world.
02:38:58 So even if you aren’t directly committing evil acts,
02:39:03 if you’re seeing something in the world
02:39:05 and you’re thinking that’s evil,
02:39:08 you’re probably not quite as separated from that
02:39:10 as you’d like to believe
02:39:11 in some tiny infinitesimally quantum way, you’re connected.
02:39:19 And there is a sense, I’ve gotten to experience this
02:39:23 over and over that one individual
02:39:25 can actually make a gigantic difference.
02:39:28 And so not only is there a diffusion responsibility,
02:39:33 there’s a kind of a paralysis about, well, what can I do?
02:39:37 Yeah.
02:39:38 Sure, I understand, but what can I do?
02:39:40 And I think just looking at history
02:39:46 and also hanging out and becoming friends,
02:39:50 but also interviewing people
02:39:51 that have had a tremendous impact,
02:39:52 you realize you’re just one dude.
02:39:55 Yeah.
02:39:56 You’re like a normal person.
02:39:58 You’re not that smart even.
02:40:00 Like a lot of people aren’t like in some kind of magical way
02:40:04 where you have a big head that’s figuring out everything.
02:40:07 No, you just saw problems in the world
02:40:12 and you’re like, hey,
02:40:13 I think I’m gonna try to do something about this.
02:40:15 Yeah.
02:40:16 And you stay focused and dedicated to it
02:40:17 for a prolonged period of time and refuse to quit,
02:40:21 refuse to listen to people that tell you
02:40:23 that this isn’t like impossible,
02:40:24 here’s how others have failed.
02:40:26 Yeah.
02:40:27 No, I’m gonna do it.
02:40:29 That’s it.
02:40:30 That’s it.
02:40:31 And one person, and then you kind of,
02:40:32 the thing is when there’s one person
02:40:34 that keeps pushing forward that way,
02:40:36 there’s, humans are sticky.
02:40:38 They, other people follow them around
02:40:40 and they’re like, I’ll help.
02:40:42 You know, I’ll help and then the other people help
02:40:45 and then the cool people all gather together
02:40:47 cause they kind of get excited about this way.
02:40:49 Holy shit, we can actually make a difference.
02:40:52 And they, they form groups
02:40:53 and then all of a sudden there’s companies and nations
02:40:56 that actually make a gigantic difference.
02:40:58 It’s interesting.
02:40:59 And it all starts with one person often.
02:41:01 You know what?
02:41:02 If I could push back slightly against that,
02:41:04 it’s never just one person.
02:41:06 It’s like, you know, nobody ever talks about,
02:41:09 at least as far as I’m aware,
02:41:11 you never hear about like Buddha’s great grandmother.
02:41:14 You never hear about that.
02:41:15 You never hear about that.
02:41:16 But if not for that person, no Buddhism.
02:41:20 You know, the people you’re talking about,
02:41:23 they are the tip of the iceberg
02:41:26 that pops up out of the ocean of history.
02:41:29 And you never see that all the little things
02:41:34 that helped that happen.
02:41:36 And so to me, this is where the real,
02:41:39 like how do you help?
02:41:41 What’s something you can do?
02:41:42 Well, you know, recognize that first,
02:41:45 that you don’t really, you don’t,
02:41:47 you might not even be aware
02:41:48 of how much you’re impacting people around you.
02:41:51 You might think that you’re not,
02:41:53 or you might think surely not in a way
02:41:55 that makes a big difference,
02:41:57 but you have no idea these tipping points
02:42:01 and they can lead to the emergence of an Einstein,
02:42:06 a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King.
02:42:08 We can go on and on, a Dostoevsky or whoever.
02:42:11 And so I think that’s where for me,
02:42:14 it goes back to tend to the part of the garden
02:42:16 you can touch and then, or even deeper than that intention.
02:42:22 It was just like an, I’m an idiot.
02:42:24 So I need an idiot’s intention, which is don’t,
02:42:28 if you, I heard the Dalai Lama say it.
02:42:33 If you can help, help.
02:42:36 If you can’t help, don’t hurt.
02:42:38 Simple, basic dummy rules so that you can,
02:42:43 if possible, refrain from hurting,
02:42:46 which might as well be a form of helping.
02:42:50 And the help doesn’t have to be this dramatic thing.
02:42:53 These little acts of kindness.
02:42:56 I don’t know, they seem to have,
02:42:59 maybe I believe in kind of karma,
02:43:01 but they seem to have this,
02:43:03 they can have this gigantic ripple effect.
02:43:05 I don’t know why that is.
02:43:07 I just, I remember a lot of little acts of kindness
02:43:11 that people have done to me and they, what do they do?
02:43:16 One, they fill me with joy and hope for the future.
02:43:19 They give me faith in humanity.
02:43:21 That somehow there’s a partially dormant desire
02:43:29 in our sort of collective intelligence
02:43:31 to do good in the world.
02:43:33 That most of us want to be good,
02:43:36 that want to do good onto the world.
02:43:38 I want, there’s a kindness that’s kind of like
02:43:41 begging to get out, you know?
02:43:43 And those little acts of kindness do just that.
02:43:46 And actually one of the reasons I love Austin
02:43:48 and moved here is realizing,
02:43:52 just noticing those little acts of kindness all around me,
02:43:55 just for stupid reasons, just people being really nice.
02:43:58 It’s weird and that kindness combined with an optimism
02:44:04 for the future, it’s just, it’s amazing what that can build.
02:44:09 Yes, yes, it’s incredible.
02:44:12 And I know what you’re saying.
02:44:13 It’s like, you know, we moved to this great neighborhood
02:44:17 and at this point I think three,
02:44:21 maybe four of our neighbors have like made food for us
02:44:25 that just shows up with like handwritten lists
02:44:29 of like things they like to do in the area
02:44:31 and their phone number if we need help.
02:44:34 And it’s like, holy shit.
02:44:36 That’s like, it might seem like a little act,
02:44:40 but it feels like some kind of atomic love bomb
02:44:43 just went off on your porch when you’re looking at that.
02:44:46 I’m like, what the fuck?
02:44:48 You made me a pie?
02:44:50 This is incredible.
02:44:51 Like, this is incredible, so.
02:44:53 And also it’s another act to accept that kindness.
02:44:57 It’s like a lot of times when I was like in Boston
02:45:01 or San Francisco, certain big cities,
02:45:03 you can think like, oh, okay,
02:45:05 well they’re trying to like somehow,
02:45:08 that’s not an act of kindness.
02:45:10 That’s some kind of a transactional thing to build up.
02:45:12 It’s like a career move for networking,
02:45:15 all that kind of stuff.
02:45:16 But no, if you just accept it for what it is,
02:45:18 a pure act of kindness.
02:45:20 Fucking Boston.
02:45:21 It’s the, yeah.
02:45:22 Because for me, I go the opposite route.
02:45:25 Because I’m not, even though there is a part of me
02:45:26 that might be a little suspicious or something,
02:45:29 where I go to push that shit back mentally
02:45:33 is I’m like, I don’t deserve this.
02:45:34 If they knew what a piece of shit I am.
02:45:37 You’re gonna bring me,
02:45:38 I don’t wanna never bring cakes to my neighbors.
02:45:40 I wouldn’t know how to make a cake.
02:45:41 I don’t know how to make anything.
02:45:42 I don’t have time.
02:45:43 I should be bringing shit to my neighbors.
02:45:45 Why didn’t I do that?
02:45:46 I should have brought, I never do that.
02:45:48 If you’re not careful,
02:45:50 you can spiral into a vortex of self hate from the gift.
02:45:54 So you have to, yeah, you have to learn how to,
02:45:56 in that circuitry, you have to learn how to like accept.
02:46:01 Oh yeah, I have that problem really big.
02:46:03 Yeah, like I don’t deserve this.
02:46:06 Like I don’t, I get so much love from people.
02:46:10 I’m like, well, yeah, they love me
02:46:11 because they don’t know me.
02:46:13 That’s my brain, my little voice.
02:46:15 Like you’re not, you’re not worthy.
02:46:19 You’re not worthy of any of this kindness
02:46:23 and all this kind of stuff.
02:46:24 And that could be very, yeah, it can shut you down.
02:46:28 It can be debilitating.
02:46:30 And also it shuts the person down.
02:46:32 I mean, you’re talking.
02:46:32 And that’s the dark side is it pushes them away too.
02:46:36 Yeah, it cuts off this fucking mystical circuitry.
02:46:40 So like the best thing if that happens to you
02:46:43 is like accept it joyfully.
02:46:46 And just even, just all that,
02:46:48 whatever that thing inside of you,
02:46:50 whatever that little thing is, you know,
02:46:52 this is like in the meditation I do,
02:46:56 it’s an infuriatingly simple meditation,
02:46:58 but when a thought emerges,
02:47:01 when you are resting your attention on your breath
02:47:03 and then inevitably you think, you get lost in your thoughts.
02:47:07 And when you catch yourself doing that,
02:47:09 you think thinking,
02:47:11 and then return your attention to the breath.
02:47:13 So I like that so that when that part of myself starts,
02:47:17 you know, having its little neurotic semi seizure,
02:47:20 I can just go thinking, whatever.
02:47:22 It’s just another thought.
02:47:23 And then eat the, eat the, eat the banana bread
02:47:26 or whatever they gave you.
02:47:28 What’s the most wild psychedelic experience
02:47:31 you’ve ever had in a dream, in a vision?
02:47:34 It doesn’t have to be drug related.
02:47:36 What’s one that jumps to mind
02:47:40 that was like, holy shit, I’m happy to be alive.
02:47:42 Is this life?
02:47:43 Okay. This is amazing.
02:47:45 Yeah, the, oh yeah, okay.
02:47:46 So the one that pops to mind,
02:47:51 I’ve had a lot of psychedelic experiences,
02:47:54 but in this moment, the one that pops to mind,
02:47:56 only because it goes back to what you’re talking about,
02:47:58 about this Nietzsche’s idea of infinite return.
02:48:01 The, the, so I’m a Burning Man and.
02:48:08 Are you going to Burning Man this time?
02:48:10 I’m not.
02:48:11 I mean, I have kids right now.
02:48:12 I just want to be around them.
02:48:13 My wife was being so cool about it
02:48:15 and she knows I love Burning Man.
02:48:16 She’s like, go to Burning Man.
02:48:17 And I was going to go.
02:48:19 And then I just, I just want to be around my kids
02:48:22 as much as I can right now, but.
02:48:24 I’ve never been to Burning Man.
02:48:25 So I don’t know how secretive it is that, I mean,
02:48:29 cause quite high profile folks go.
02:48:31 Yeah, everyone knows Elon Musk goes there.
02:48:34 Isn’t it pretty open?
02:48:35 He’s got a boat.
02:48:37 You know that?
02:48:38 I’m touching none of this.
02:48:39 You know, there’s a, it’s called art cars.
02:48:41 They all make art cars.
02:48:42 And like part of the, part of the burn,
02:48:44 what’s so beautiful about it is like,
02:48:47 you can’t buy anything there, man.
02:48:49 Like you, I’ve heard, I don’t know if this has changed.
02:48:53 It’s been a bit because of the pandemic,
02:48:55 but the only thing you could buy was ice and coffee.
02:48:59 And I think maybe that’s changed.
02:49:01 I heard some whisper that that’s changed,
02:49:02 but so that means that it’s a gifting economy
02:49:07 is what they call it.
02:49:08 And so people will just give you stuff.
02:49:11 Talk about having to struggle with deserving stuff, man.
02:49:13 What are you going to fucking do when the camp next to you
02:49:17 is like every morning making the best iced coffee
02:49:20 that you’ve ever had in your life.
02:49:22 And they just are giving it all away till it’s all gone.
02:49:25 What are you going to do?
02:49:27 It’s, it’s the best ever.
02:49:30 And then you’re giving things to people.
02:49:31 And then you, you learn stuff like,
02:49:34 you learn these really interesting lessons.
02:49:36 Like one of the times I went there,
02:49:40 got all these strawberries.
02:49:44 Might not sound like a big deal,
02:49:46 but when you’re out there in the dust
02:49:48 and you’re not at one of like the,
02:49:50 like hardcore like luxury camps,
02:49:52 which do exist out there,
02:49:55 you know, you’ve got these like items where in my mind,
02:49:58 I’m like, yeah, these are going to be just for me
02:50:00 and my girlfriend, my special stash fruit
02:50:03 and this or that.
02:50:04 And then like two days in you’re walking around your camp
02:50:10 with the strawberries that you were coveting
02:50:12 and everyone’s so happy to get like cold strawberries
02:50:16 and you’ve realized, oh my God,
02:50:17 this feels so much better than the way a strawberry tastes.
02:50:21 So you learn something experientially there,
02:50:25 which is an incredible thing.
02:50:27 It’s an incredible thing.
02:50:29 Man, now I’m wishing I had decided to go to Burning Man.
02:50:31 Have you been a few times?
02:50:32 Yeah, I just know like,
02:50:36 at least people were saying it was Elon Musk’s boat.
02:50:39 Like, yeah, like this, I think it was like,
02:50:41 it’s like this massive, it’s art cars.
02:50:43 And it was this party on this thing.
02:50:45 You could just, anyone can go on the boat.
02:50:48 Like no one’s like, there’s no guest list.
02:50:50 You just go on there.
02:50:52 I never saw him there, but that, you know,
02:50:53 everyone’s whispering Elon Musk is here.
02:50:56 There’s a secrecy, there’s all that kind of stuff
02:50:58 because you’d probably have to respect that.
02:50:59 But at the same time there,
02:51:01 it seems like the kind of people that go there,
02:51:04 I mean, the rules of the outside world are suspended
02:51:09 in the sense that the crime, the aggression,
02:51:17 the tensions, all of that seems to dissipate somehow.
02:51:19 Not all the way, not all the way.
02:51:22 That, you know, you could look it up, you know,
02:51:25 cause like there is tension.
02:51:27 There’s a lot of tension there between,
02:51:30 it’s called plug and plays.
02:51:32 Like, you know, Burning Man,
02:51:34 like the history of Burning Man is fascinating.
02:51:36 It has its roots in the cacophony society
02:51:41 is what it was called,
02:51:42 which is a sort of evolution of something that was,
02:51:45 I think it was called the God, like the San Francisco.
02:51:50 Basically there was like an art movement in San Francisco.
02:51:54 And I can’t remember the name of it.
02:51:55 Maybe the Suicide Club or essentially like,
02:51:59 they were really into urban exploration
02:52:02 and meaning like breaking into like
02:52:05 old abandoned buildings and stuff.
02:52:07 But part of this, what this was, was
02:52:13 you would prepare your life
02:52:15 as though you were going to kill yourself.
02:52:18 You would get all your affairs in order.
02:52:19 You would get, so it’s going back to what we were talking
02:52:22 about with the cancer diagnosis.
02:52:23 You’re like sort of putting yourself into that world
02:52:27 of like, I’m going to get all my affairs together
02:52:29 as though this is it.
02:52:30 And then there was some,
02:52:31 I’m sorry for anyone listening if I’m butchering this,
02:52:33 but I think there was some really cool initiation
02:52:35 where they would blindfold you
02:52:37 and they would take you into
02:52:38 some of these abandoned buildings.
02:52:40 And you didn’t know where you were walking,
02:52:41 but they would say like,
02:52:42 if you take one step to the left, you’re going to die.
02:52:47 You’re going to fall off.
02:52:48 You’re going to fall.
02:52:48 So please be careful.
02:52:50 So you’re like in the moment
02:52:52 and then blindfold comes off.
02:52:53 It’s a big, awesome party.
02:52:55 This evolves into something called the Cacophony Society.
02:52:58 There’s a great book called
02:52:59 Tales of the Cacophony Society for people listening.
02:53:04 One of the members of the Cacophony Society
02:53:07 was the author of Fight Club.
02:53:09 And so if you’ve seen Fight Club,
02:53:11 like you could see little ideas
02:53:13 that were in the Cacophony Society.
02:53:14 They were into Dadaism, which I don’t know a lot about.
02:53:19 I don’t know, but it’s a philosophical art movement.
02:53:24 And then so basically what was happening is like,
02:53:27 they kept burning increasingly large effigies
02:53:30 in San Francisco and they weren’t allowed to do it.
02:53:34 And so they took it out in the desert
02:53:36 and they were basing it on something called a zone trip,
02:53:40 which is like, across this border,
02:53:43 the rules of that old society are gone.
02:53:46 And so that was the original Burning Man,
02:53:50 which was these lunatics out in the desert,
02:53:55 launching like burning pianos out of catapults
02:53:59 through the air doing like drive by shooting ranges,
02:54:03 like no rules, wild, magical, beautiful, insane madness.
02:54:09 And then it grew and grew and grew and grew
02:54:14 until you have Burning Man as it is today,
02:54:17 which is still the most incredible thing.
02:54:19 I mean, obviously anytime you have like a thing
02:54:22 that’s been around for a while, you’re gonna get that.
02:54:24 It’s not like it used to be.
02:54:26 It’s not as free as it used to be, so this or that.
02:54:28 But what’s fascinating about Burning Man,
02:54:30 someone pointed this out to me, look on the ground,
02:54:34 no trash, no cigarettes.
02:54:37 The ethic of like picking up your shit there
02:54:40 is like so intense.
02:54:42 So it’s not like the other festivals you go to
02:54:44 where there’s just trash everywhere,
02:54:46 shit scattered everywhere.
02:54:48 It’s clean.
02:54:49 People are picking up their stuff.
02:54:51 People are like really being conscious
02:54:54 of like not fucking up the playa.
02:54:56 So I’m sorry, don’t get a burner yapping about Burning Man.
02:55:01 We won’t stop.
02:55:02 It’ll be morning.
02:55:03 But there’s a power,
02:55:05 but there is a power to culture propagating itself
02:55:08 through to the stories that we tell each other.
02:55:10 And that holds up for Burning Man.
02:55:14 It’s clear that the culture has stayed strong
02:55:16 throughout the years.
02:55:18 So many people, so many really interesting people
02:55:23 speak of Burning Man as like a sacred place they go to
02:55:28 to remind themselves about what’s important.
02:55:31 That’s so interesting.
02:55:32 And it is.
02:55:33 And it is.
02:55:34 I mean, it’s like, you know, there are all these stories
02:55:36 of like, I love guru stories.
02:55:38 I have a guru.
02:55:39 I’m Karoli Baba, never met him, he was Ram Dass’s guru,
02:55:42 at least not in the flesh.
02:55:43 But the story of the guru is if you’re lucky,
02:55:46 you meet this being that,
02:55:48 and we’re not talking about, you know,
02:55:50 whatever the run of the mill, like charlatans out there.
02:55:54 Like I know for sure that people are in the world right now
02:56:00 who when you’re around them,
02:56:06 the thing you’re talking about,
02:56:07 the affirmation of the potential of humanity
02:56:10 and also just an acceptance of yourself
02:56:12 and, you know, cultivate,
02:56:14 like seeing someone who’s cultivated love or compassion
02:56:19 or whatever, but in this way that is,
02:56:24 I mean, you would almost,
02:56:26 you would rather meet that being
02:56:28 than like a UFO land in your backyard.
02:56:30 It’s like, it is the UFO.
02:56:31 It’s a person, but it’s not.
02:56:33 It’s everybody and nobody.
02:56:35 And somehow they like end up conveying to you
02:56:42 ideas that you may have heard a million times before,
02:56:45 but somehow within the language itself is a transmission
02:56:49 that permanently alters you.
02:56:52 And so these people exist.
02:56:54 I think you could argue that Burning Man,
02:56:58 the total thing is a guru,
02:57:01 that a pilgrimage is involved to get there.
02:57:04 You, like, it’s not easy to get there.
02:57:08 And when you get there, it’s gonna teach you something.
02:57:12 It’s gonna show you something.
02:57:14 It’s going to, and maybe some of the stuff it shows you
02:57:17 might not be great, but the community around you
02:57:22 will like, will hold you as you’re like,
02:57:27 whatever the thing is that’s coming out of you
02:57:29 is coming out of you.
02:57:30 And even the simplest activities,
02:57:31 the simplest exchange of words have like,
02:57:35 just like the gurus, a profound impact somehow.
02:57:41 Something about that place.
02:57:42 Yeah, not to mention the insane synchronicities,
02:57:46 like insane synchronicities there.
02:57:48 And I think like, you know, to get back to the notion
02:57:51 of sentience as a byproduct of a harmonized
02:57:56 yet hyper complex system.
02:57:58 I think synchronicities, like those kinds of systems
02:58:03 are like lightning rods for synchronicity.
02:58:05 So crazy, not just because your high synchronicities
02:58:10 happen that are impossible,
02:58:13 where you just have to deal with it.
02:58:14 And like, you’ll need something.
02:58:16 And within a few minutes, someone’s like,
02:58:19 oh, here you go.
02:58:20 And you mentioned, but by the way,
02:58:22 Burning Anchors of a psychedelic experience,
02:58:25 is it the strawberries or was it something else?
02:58:29 What was the moment?
02:58:30 Yeah, that was magical.
02:58:31 No, it was DMT.
02:58:32 It definitely wasn’t.
02:58:33 It wasn’t strawberries.
02:58:35 Ah.
02:58:38 No, no, I was.
02:58:39 More potent.
02:58:41 Yeah, I was like smoking DMT.
02:58:43 And like, I saw, like, if you, in the midnight gospel,
02:58:48 there are these bovine creatures that have like a long neck
02:58:56 and a lantern head.
02:58:58 So like, I saw one of those things.
02:59:01 And, you know, I thought it was funny and like ridiculous
02:59:11 because you hear like all the Terence McKenna stories
02:59:13 of the self transforming machine elves
02:59:16 or all the purple or the magenta goddess everyone sees.
02:59:20 I’m like, so this is what I get?
02:59:22 Like a fucking cow with a lantern head?
02:59:26 Like that’s where my brain is at
02:59:28 and we’re interacting with this molecule.
02:59:30 So then like, I look away.
02:59:38 And again, this is DMT.
02:59:39 So when I say look away, do I mean with my eyes shut,
02:59:42 I look away or eyes open, I look away, I think eyes shut.
02:59:46 So it sounds weird to say look away,
02:59:47 but however you want to put it, that’s what I did.
02:59:51 And I look back and it’s still there.
02:59:54 Only now it’s, you know, cause usually in like,
02:59:57 when you’re having those kinds of visions,
02:59:58 they go away pretty quickly.
03:00:01 This thing’s like moved, like shambled ahead
03:00:04 and maybe a few steps, just like a cow, just like a cow.
03:00:08 And then that was when the, you know,
03:00:12 all the stories you hear about it,
03:00:13 like going through some kind of tuber,
03:00:15 some kind of light tunnel, like a water slide
03:00:18 made of light that’s increasingly familiar.
03:00:21 That’s the wildest part of it.
03:00:23 It’s like, oh, I know this place.
03:00:25 Not like, oh, I’ve seen this in like,
03:00:27 you know, on like bong stickers, but like,
03:00:30 oh yeah, this is that place you go to.
03:00:32 You just remember, oh, this place.
03:00:34 And then it was like I was in some kind of,
03:00:40 I don’t know how to put it, a chamber,
03:00:42 a technological chamber, some kind of supercomputer,
03:00:45 some kind of nucleus that was technological.
03:00:49 And it was inviting.
03:00:50 There was an invitation of like, come in,
03:00:53 like come deeper into, come deeper in.
03:00:56 And you can talk to whatever it is over there.
03:01:00 You don’t talk, but there’s a communication.
03:01:02 And I communicated, but my friends, I don’t,
03:01:07 I love my friends.
03:01:08 I guess I had some sense in that moment
03:01:10 that it would mean complete obliteration
03:01:12 or who knows what.
03:01:15 And the response that it gave back was,
03:01:18 you can always go back there.
03:01:20 And that’s when I opened my eyes, I’m back.
03:01:22 Totally, you know, and ever since then,
03:01:25 that’s caused me to revise my thinking on reincarnation.
03:01:30 The idea that you die and you start as a baby
03:01:33 and then live your life again.
03:01:34 It goes right into what we were talking about.
03:01:36 You know, that maybe data, you know,
03:01:39 that the shit I saw in Nitro Sox,
03:01:41 I don’t feel dumb that my epiphanies are all related
03:01:43 to drugs, but not all of them are a lot of them.
03:01:46 But this notion of like, oh, is it that we’re
03:01:52 imprinting into the medium of time, space,
03:01:56 everything we do, and that that is a permanent imprint,
03:02:01 a frame that upon death can be accessed
03:02:06 in the same way we can pull up pictures on our phone
03:02:10 or computers, and not only accessed, but experienced
03:02:15 as though, in other words, you could just jump in.
03:02:20 You’re still gonna have your memories.
03:02:22 It’s gonna give you the illusion of having been a kid
03:02:26 and gotten to that frame, but no,
03:02:28 you just decided to go back there, nostalgia, whatever.
03:02:33 And yeah, you can jump around freely in space and time.
03:02:37 Yeah, yeah, you can go in and out of time space,
03:02:40 but the problem is when you go into time space, it’s time.
03:02:43 So it’s gonna feel sticky.
03:02:45 It’s gonna feel like you’ve been here forever
03:02:46 because you’ve dropped back onto the track
03:02:49 that Nietzsche’s talking about.
03:02:51 And I guess one of the qualities of dropping
03:02:54 into that frame is that you forget
03:02:57 your higher dimensional identity.
03:03:01 What happened to the cow with the lantern, was that goodbye?
03:03:07 He writes me letters sometimes.
03:03:11 Never saw it again.
03:03:12 Never?
03:03:13 Never saw it again, but I put it in,
03:03:15 we put it in the Midnight Gospel.
03:03:18 Pendleton was such a genius, and he drew it for me,
03:03:22 and then it just ended up as a part of the show.
03:03:24 But by the way, I have to admit that as a big fan of yours,
03:03:27 I haven’t watched the Midnight Gospel
03:03:29 because I’ve been waiting.
03:03:33 You do these stupid things, but ever since you talked to,
03:03:36 maybe two years ago with Joe about it,
03:03:39 I’ve been waiting to watch it
03:03:41 with a special person on mushrooms.
03:03:44 That’s been in my to do.
03:03:46 I don’t know, of course you don’t have to be on mushrooms
03:03:48 to enjoy it, but for some reason I put it into my head
03:03:52 that this is something I wanna do with somebody else,
03:03:55 like experience it and get wild.
03:03:57 Because visually, I mean, I watched a bunch of it,
03:04:00 just a little bit here and there,
03:04:02 but it’s just visually such an interesting experience.
03:04:06 Thank you.
03:04:07 Combined with everything else, obviously,
03:04:09 the ideas, the voices and so on,
03:04:12 but just visually it’s like a super psychedelic version
03:04:16 of Rick and Morty or something like that,
03:04:19 like farther out, wilder out there.
03:04:23 Yeah, man, that’s Pendleton.
03:04:26 These people, I mean, I was part of that
03:04:31 in the sense that Pendleton gave,
03:04:35 one of the reasons he’s such a genius
03:04:37 and great at making stuff is he really does a good job
03:04:41 of just dehierarchizing potential hierarchies
03:04:46 that can appear.
03:04:47 Someone has to be driving the bus, and that was Pendleton,
03:04:51 but he’s so inclusive.
03:04:54 There’s a real punk rock thing that he’s doing,
03:04:57 which is like, he’ll take everything,
03:04:58 and it kind of mixes its way into the show.
03:05:01 But one of the things in animation,
03:05:07 it can get really strict with drawing the characters
03:05:11 and trying to create continuity
03:05:16 in the way the character looks,
03:05:19 and it can get really brute for the animator.
03:05:21 Making it brutally precise, like it has to be precise.
03:05:26 But he figured out that if you just sort of,
03:05:30 it’s not like, obviously, Clancy had to look like Clancy
03:05:33 through the whole show,
03:05:34 but if you allow the various people animating it
03:05:36 to sort of have their own spin on it,
03:05:39 then suddenly it creates a very psychedelic,
03:05:43 the show looks more psychedelic
03:05:45 because it looks more organic, and also the amount of time.
03:05:48 I had no idea, the amount of time that goes into making
03:05:53 digital art look like that is, it’s insane.
03:05:58 The amount of work in comping that stuff is just crazy.
03:06:03 It’s crazy.
03:06:04 Generally, the amount of time it takes,
03:06:07 even just like a painting,
03:06:09 when you, I really enjoy watching artists do a time lapse,
03:06:13 and you realize how much effort just into a single image
03:06:17 goes into it.
03:06:19 Hours and hours and hours, sometimes days,
03:06:21 sometimes weeks and months,
03:06:23 and then you just get to see them work,
03:06:24 but they lose themselves in the craftsmanship of it,
03:06:28 in the rhythm of it.
03:06:30 And like, because they’re focused on the,
03:06:32 so we were talking about robotics earlier,
03:06:34 like on the little details, like they’re never look,
03:06:37 well, most of the time isn’t spent looking
03:06:40 at the big picture of the final result,
03:06:41 it’s looking at the little details there and so on.
03:06:44 And they’re, but they’re nevertheless able
03:06:46 to somehow constantly channel the big picture,
03:06:49 the final result.
03:06:50 My God, yeah, the respect I have for animators,
03:06:53 it’s like, dear God, it’s the craziest thing
03:06:58 when you watch it, when you see what it looks like
03:07:01 and how much time goes into it and how zen they have to be,
03:07:04 because like, no matter what,
03:07:05 you’re gonna have to cut stuff, man.
03:07:07 And when you’re cutting like a few seconds of animation,
03:07:10 that was someone’s like month, maybe, you know?
03:07:13 And like, they understand, but still it’s like, whoa,
03:07:17 it’s brutal.
03:07:19 And so they have like this zen outlook on it,
03:07:24 which is really cool.
03:07:26 And they watch podcasts, that’s the other cool thing,
03:07:28 when you realize like, oh, they’re listening to podcasts
03:07:30 or like, that’s really cool to see that aspect of it too.
03:07:34 But yeah, man, I, you know.
03:07:36 Yeah, your voice is in the ears
03:07:38 of a lot of interesting people, isn’t it?
03:07:40 Yours too.
03:07:41 And I, you know.
03:07:42 Hello, interesting person.
03:07:43 Hello, CIA, animators.
03:07:46 Eating delicious food in the cafeteria.
03:07:49 Yeah. I’m on your side.
03:07:50 He’s against you, I’m with you.
03:07:52 Yeah.
03:07:53 Do you have, you have a beard, therefore you must be wise.
03:07:56 Do you have advice for young people, high school, college,
03:08:02 about how to carve their path through life?
03:08:05 I don’t have a life, a career that’s successful
03:08:10 that they can be proud of or a life they can be proud of.
03:08:12 Man, see, this is what kind of,
03:08:14 this is what sucks about my life,
03:08:18 is that it’s been very random and very spontaneous.
03:08:23 So unfortunately, I don’t get that thing
03:08:27 where I could be like, well, here’s what I did.
03:08:28 Yeah.
03:08:29 Cause it’s like, I don’t, like I inherited $12,000
03:08:34 from my grandmother, here’s what you do kids,
03:08:36 you inherit $12,000 when your grandmother dies.
03:08:39 And then you need to be dumb enough
03:08:41 to think that that $12,000 is gonna help you
03:08:44 live in LA for a year.
03:08:46 So then what you do is you move to LA with $12,000
03:08:49 and you find a shitty place that you live at.
03:08:53 And then you use that money to buy acid and synthesizers.
03:08:58 And then you run out of the money and then you,
03:09:02 then you have to get a job.
03:09:03 And so then, because you think it’ll be fun
03:09:05 to work at a comedy club, you get a job at the comedy store.
03:09:09 And then, you know, that’s how it happened for me.
03:09:11 And none of, there wasn’t, I never had the confidence
03:09:15 to be like, I’m gonna be a standup comedian.
03:09:18 No way.
03:09:19 I just thought it’d be cool to work in that building.
03:09:22 I thought the building looked cool.
03:09:23 And so, but then like, cause like you work
03:09:26 at the comedy store, you get stage time.
03:09:28 It’s there, it’s the reason like you work there
03:09:32 is at least in those days, cause it’s not like
03:09:34 they’re paying like a shit ton of money
03:09:36 for you to answer phones at a comedy club.
03:09:39 And so, you know, I started going on stage
03:09:42 and then like, I just got lucky
03:09:46 cause Rogan saw me have like a very rare, good set.
03:09:50 I didn’t know he was in the room or I would’ve bombed,
03:09:52 you know, and then like, cause he thought I was funny
03:09:55 and he liked talking to me.
03:09:56 He started taking me on the road with him.
03:09:57 And then, you know, so I don’t know, man.
03:09:59 I think.
03:10:01 Was there an element to, there’s a beautiful weirdness
03:10:04 to you as a human being.
03:10:06 Was there like a pressure to conform ever
03:10:12 to hide yourself from the world?
03:10:15 Or did the $12,000 in the acid give you
03:10:19 the confidence you needed to be yourself?
03:10:21 Oh no, I don’t, like I still, no.
03:10:24 I think, sure, there’s that pressure.
03:10:26 And like, you know, whenever you’re beginning
03:10:30 to really differentiate from your parents,
03:10:31 but then you go back to hang out with your parents,
03:10:34 you can feel that it’s not like they even want you
03:10:38 to conform, but you’ll just, you could slip into that,
03:10:40 whatever that was.
03:10:41 So I remember that when I would go back
03:10:42 and like visit them and stuff.
03:10:45 And surely conformity or the pressure to like,
03:10:50 not be individual or whatever, it’s everywhere, man.
03:10:53 Do you think you made your parents proud?
03:10:58 E, no, no, no, no.
03:11:03 Well, I think that when my mom died,
03:11:08 I felt successful in the sense that I was able
03:11:13 to support my, I was making money from doing standup
03:11:18 and I didn’t need help.
03:11:20 I was like, I was supporting myself with art
03:11:22 and doing good, what I thought was great then.
03:11:24 So, and I think she, like, because she had witnessed
03:11:29 me literally failing, I mean, which is, by the way,
03:11:32 I think part of, if you want to be an artist
03:11:35 or successful, you kind of have to fail.
03:11:38 Like there, if, and if there was a guaranteed route
03:11:44 from sucking to not sucking or from like the neophyte phase
03:11:52 of whatever the art form is and, you know,
03:11:55 some intermediary phase, then I think a lot more people
03:11:58 would do it, but there really is no guarantees in it,
03:12:01 especially the standup comedy.
03:12:03 It’s like, you’d have to be a maniac to want to,
03:12:06 to think that that’s going to work out for you.
03:12:08 You have to, so you’re going to,
03:12:11 there are obviously exceptions, but for me,
03:12:15 it was like a long slog, you know,
03:12:18 and that’s scary for a mom.
03:12:20 So, but that being said, when she was dying,
03:12:26 like she did recognize that I was like not slogging anymore.
03:12:31 And she did say, she said, you did it.
03:12:35 And that’s cool, but in, you know,
03:12:38 I would love for her to see me now,
03:12:40 like now it’d be way cooler, but maybe she does.
03:12:42 I don’t know.
03:12:43 She’s listening to your podcast elsewhere in the other,
03:12:47 in the Bardo.
03:12:48 Yeah, however long that lasts reconfiguring
03:12:53 the whole process to start again.
03:12:56 You as a father now, how did that change you?
03:12:59 Yeah, that’s the big change, man.
03:13:02 That’s the thing.
03:13:03 You made a few biological entities.
03:13:06 Yeah, I made biological entities.
03:13:08 I mean, I came in my wife, let’s face it.
03:13:10 Like I would love to say I made them,
03:13:12 but the womb whipped them up, but it is the,
03:13:17 yeah, it’s the best.
03:13:18 It’s, I’ve never experienced anything like it before.
03:13:22 It is the, as far as I’m concerned,
03:13:24 the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
03:13:27 And that’s why I was able to answer your Nietzsche question
03:13:30 with like, hell yes, fuck yes.
03:13:33 That’s great.
03:13:33 I get to be around my kids again.
03:13:35 I’ll always be around my kids.
03:13:36 I’ll always be around my children.
03:13:38 That’s incredible.
03:13:39 That’s the joy.
03:13:39 So like, so for me,
03:13:45 the part of myself that used to torture myself more,
03:13:48 especially like around like my mom dying,
03:13:51 feeling like I wasn’t there enough for her,
03:13:53 wishing that I had spent more time with her,
03:13:56 wishing I’d spent more time with my dad,
03:13:58 wishing that like, looking back at like how like
03:14:01 I was just so desperately trying to evade the fact
03:14:05 that she was dying and through,
03:14:09 and in that evasion successfully like distanced myself
03:14:13 from her and like in ways that I really wish I hadn’t.
03:14:20 I’m just saying that because it’s one of my regrets.
03:14:22 It’s like a big regret.
03:14:23 I have a lot of little regrets,
03:14:24 but that’s a big one.
03:14:26 And so when you have kids,
03:14:33 you look back at everything you did
03:14:38 and you think like, fuck,
03:14:40 if I’d gone left at that point instead of right,
03:14:43 if I had eaten, who knows?
03:14:45 What if I’d eaten like a turkey sandwich
03:14:48 when my balls were creating the cum
03:14:53 that was gonna make my kids?
03:14:54 Would I have a different kid?
03:14:56 Would this being not exist in my life?
03:14:59 Like you start looking at everything
03:15:00 and you realize like, thank God,
03:15:03 thank God for every single thing that happened to me
03:15:06 because it all led up to this.
03:15:08 And oh, for me, that is the, that’s,
03:15:12 that it’s like, it frees you in this.
03:15:18 It liberates you because you realize like,
03:15:21 oh wow, it’s clumsy and selfish
03:15:23 and at times rotten as I’ve been in my life.
03:15:29 That did not impede the universe at all
03:15:34 from allowing these two beautiful beings
03:15:37 to exist in the world.
03:15:38 So maybe all of it enabled,
03:15:40 all of it like a concert perfectly led up
03:15:44 to that little beautiful moment.
03:15:47 Is there ways you would like to be a better father?
03:15:52 Oh yeah, for sure.
03:15:54 Absolutely.
03:15:55 There’s a actual, I read something in a book,
03:15:59 it’s called Good Enough.
03:16:00 The mantra for a parent, good enough.
03:16:03 Because when you are in the presence
03:16:05 of something you love more
03:16:07 than you’ve ever experienced love,
03:16:12 you wanna be perfect.
03:16:15 Like you wanna be, I can’t, I gotta work, man.
03:16:17 I gotta go on the road.
03:16:18 I’ve gotta work.
03:16:19 I gotta support the family.
03:16:20 So that means I have to work.
03:16:22 Like I work, you know what it’s like having a podcast.
03:16:25 You fucking work, man.
03:16:26 And you know, it’s a full time job
03:16:31 because I’ve, you know, I do standup too
03:16:33 and all the other stuff.
03:16:34 So I feel sometimes I feel like, oh my God,
03:16:38 I wanna spend more time with them.
03:16:40 Like I should be spending more time with them.
03:16:42 But then also I wanna create, I wanna work.
03:16:45 I like being like the provider.
03:16:49 So that’s something I feel guilty about, you know, right now.
03:16:53 And you’re struggling how to balance that correctly.
03:16:56 And meanwhile, time just marches on.
03:16:59 It just goes, it goes.
03:17:03 And all of this will be forgotten.
03:17:07 Both you and I, but forgotten in time.
03:17:11 That’s what I say to them
03:17:12 every time I’m putting them to bed.
03:17:15 We will be lost in the sands of time.
03:17:18 You know that, I bet you know this poem.
03:17:20 You know that poem, Ozymandias?
03:17:22 Yes.
03:17:23 Can I read you a poem?
03:17:25 Oh, okay.
03:17:29 Let’s end our conversation in a poem.
03:17:32 I love it.
03:17:33 It’s by Pierce, by Shelley,
03:17:37 probably mispronouncing the name.
03:17:39 But I think you’ll get it.
03:17:40 There’s no right way to pronounce anything.
03:17:41 Thank you, thank you.
03:17:44 I’m Ozymandias.
03:17:45 I met a traveler from an antique land who said,
03:17:49 “‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
03:17:54 Near them, on the sand, half sunk,
03:17:57 a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip
03:18:01 and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor,
03:18:05 well those passions read, which yet survive,
03:18:09 stamped on these lifeless things,
03:18:11 the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
03:18:15 And on the pedestal, these words appear.
03:18:18 My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
03:18:21 Look on my works, ye mighty, in despair.
03:18:25 Nothing beside remains around the decay
03:18:27 of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
03:18:31 the lone and level sands stretch far away.”
03:18:34 All gone, behold the king.
03:18:42 Look on my works, ye mighty, in despair.
03:18:45 In despair.
03:18:47 Even though it will be forgotten in the sands of time,
03:18:50 Duncan, I’m just so glad that you exist
03:18:53 and you put so much love into the world
03:18:55 over the past many years that I’ve gotten a chance
03:18:57 to enjoy it by being your fan.
03:18:59 Likewise.
03:19:00 Thank you so much for continuing that
03:19:02 and for sharing a bit of love with me today.
03:19:04 Can we be friends?
03:19:05 Let’s be friends.
03:19:06 In the real world, in 3D space?
03:19:09 Nothing is real, but yes, in this particular slice
03:19:12 of the multidimensional world we live in.
03:19:14 It will be an honor and a pleasure.
03:19:16 Thank you for having me on your show.
03:19:17 I love you, Duncan.
03:19:18 I love you.
03:19:19 Thank you, Lex.
03:19:20 Thanks for listening to this conversation
03:19:22 with Duncan Trussell.
03:19:23 To support this podcast,
03:19:24 please check out our sponsors in the description.
03:19:27 And now, let me leave you with some words
03:19:29 from Duncan Trussell himself.
03:19:31 You are essentially just a cloud of atoms
03:19:35 that will eventually be aerosolized by time.
03:19:39 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.