Oct. 31, 2015 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:58:23
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| And boom! | ||
| Daniele Bolelli, my friend! | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| Dude, I am loving, rather, I should say, your new podcast, History on Fire, and it's just wonderful to hear your sultry Italian accent waxing poetically on the path. | ||
| That's because I just never learned to speak English right. | ||
| But you do speak... | ||
| It's very confusing to me because you do speak perfect English. | ||
| You understand it. | ||
| You're very articulate. | ||
| Your choice of words is excellent. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But it comes out this way. | ||
| Like, how come I can do that, but you can't do that? | ||
| Can you try to talk like me? | ||
| You know, I... If you can believe it, I think I do. | ||
| Half of the time, I'm like, what do you think? | ||
| What accent? | ||
| I'm talking perfect English. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| I have a horrible ear for accent. | ||
| I just don't hear it. | ||
| You don't hear it. | ||
| You know, when I hear my recording, then I go back, I'm like, Jesus Christ, I really speak like that? | ||
| Oh, fuck, no way. | ||
| But, you know, when I'm talking right now, I hear my own voice. | ||
| I'm like, no, perfect. | ||
| There's no accent. | ||
| That is one of the great things about doing a podcast, that it forces you to listen to yourself. | ||
| And you can learn a lot about how you sound. | ||
| You really can. | ||
| You learn a lot about little things you do. | ||
| Like, the word like. | ||
| That's one thing. | ||
| People say like fucking way too often. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A lot. | |
| That's a real problem. | ||
| That word like. | ||
| Like, I've tried to shorten it or to eliminate it, but it fucking creeps its way in. | ||
| Like, you know, man, like, it's like this guy, like it. | ||
| Some people, and the problem is if I fixate on it, if I fixate on someone saying it, like, then it breaks me. | ||
| I had the same thing. | ||
| I was talking with some guy who was really smart, really brilliant, and kept saying, you know, every four words, right? | ||
| And after a while, I could not follow the conversation with him. | ||
| He was making great points, too, so I was missing out because every other sec was like, you know, it's like... | ||
| It's a tick. | ||
| It's a speech pattern. | ||
| It's basically a version of uh. | ||
| I've always said that's what people do with the word fuck sometimes. | ||
| It's a use of the word fuck. | ||
| This fucking guy with this fucking thing with the fucking... | ||
| Yeah, it's a filler. | ||
| It's a filler, yeah. | ||
| That's why I'm super impressed with people like Sam Harris that talk with no filler. | ||
| They just... | ||
| My brain doesn't work like that. | ||
| I'm always scrambling for certain words. | ||
| I wonder if my vocabulary was better. | ||
| Maybe I would be less likely to use fillers. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think it's like during conversation sometimes you need that micro mental break to just see okay where do I want to go with next you know but you don't want to leave an awkward pose so you're like throwing something out there just go like okay this is where I want to go next. | ||
| Yeah and you also don't want someone to like Jump in thinking you want them to talk, and you're in the middle of trying to form the sentence, and if they do jump in, then you'll totally lose it. | ||
| So you want to, um, um, just to let them know. | ||
| I'm still here. | ||
| I'm still working on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Instead of just going, Yeah, exactly. | |
| Italy is painful that way because, you know, normally you give two seconds, pause between somebody starting and somebody beginning the next conversation. | ||
| Italy, there's no pause. | ||
| Everybody's just there waiting for you to not stop, but slow down so that they can jump in. | ||
| And then you see people take a deep breath, kind of like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like, Jesus, man. | |
| It's a full contact sport, talking to somebody. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| What a language. | ||
| Your language is so poetic. | ||
| It's a flowing, beautiful language. | ||
| In fact, it's great for, you know, English language is awesome if you want to rule an empire, right? | ||
| It's like you tell people, do this, get stuff done. | ||
| You know, it's very to the point. | ||
| It's quick. | ||
| It's to the point. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| Italian is great for flowery, oh, sweetheart, look at the beautiful moon out there kind of thing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| 10,000 words to really say something that could have been saying five, but, you know, it's the vibe that you create that... | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of work, but it's flowing. | ||
| It's like wine and poetry. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| It's got this sort of... | ||
| Whereas American is just like, hey, what's up, fuckface? | ||
| When I was starting to write in English, it was so damn hard for me because I was so used to this long, flowy sentence that's like... | ||
| There was this rhythm, right? | ||
| Very musical. | ||
| And any sentence that I would write like that in English, I lose half of the readers within three seconds because they're like, too many words. | ||
| Get to the point. | ||
| What are you trying to say? | ||
| And so it's like... | ||
| And I thought, ah, English sucks. | ||
| There's no poetry to it. | ||
| In reality, there is. | ||
| You know, there are ways to express yourself beautifully, but it's different. | ||
| You need to definitely tone down the length of the sentence, cut it a little shorter. | ||
| There are ways to do it still in a beautiful way, but it's completely different. | ||
| What about the attention spans of people in Italy versus the people in America? | ||
| Because the Italian attention span seems to be much longer. | ||
| There is some of that. | ||
| I don't know if it's still true. | ||
| I don't know if it's a generational thing or not because I've been, I got there back on vacation, so I don't have the pulse of the situation anymore the way you used to. | ||
| It may be a generational thing. | ||
| It was that way. | ||
| Certainly when I was growing up, there was clearly more attention spent. | ||
| But then again, that was before all the 3,000 things that we used to distract ourselves all the time where it's like somebody's talking to you, but I'm like, ah, let me send this email. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's great. | ||
| Good point. | ||
| But you're doing something else at the same time. | ||
| Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but like a classical Italian meal, like in a restaurant, like you would sit there for hours. | ||
| It's not like America where you're in and out in 40 minutes. | ||
| No, definitely. | ||
| Yeah, there's much more of this slow pace. | ||
| Tripping me out the other day, Aubrey Marcos gave me a call, and within about a minute I was thinking, And I love Aubrey, but the vibe for me was like, okay, great. | ||
| Hi, hi, what's up? | ||
| Now, what do you want? | ||
| And then I realized that he wasn't calling because he wanted anything. | ||
| He just wanted to say what's up and chat. | ||
| And I was like... | ||
| I forgot what it's like to be that way. | ||
| It's nice. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| You know, that's a good feeling where you just... | ||
| We are just talking because we like to talk to each other. | ||
| It's not like, hey, I need something or, you know... | ||
| I'm so used to that conversation now that everything is for a reason. | ||
| It's like we're trying to get stuff done. | ||
| And it was so refreshing. | ||
| I was feeling... | ||
| This is beautiful. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I miss it. | ||
| That's how it should be. | ||
| It's nice if you can catch someone that's on the same vibe. | ||
| But when you're like, hey, man, everything good? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I'm just getting some shit done. | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's up? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Just called to say hello. | ||
| It's like, okay, well, hi. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| See you later. | ||
| Click. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gotta go. | |
| I'm running an empire. | ||
| Running the empire of Mike. | ||
| And, I mean, we do have... | ||
| I don't know how it got that way, but we do have intense, busy lives. | ||
| So sometimes that organic, relaxed, let's hang out, let's let things transpire and play. | ||
| Half of the time, it's like, okay, it's noon. | ||
| At one, I need to be out of here. | ||
| This is my fun time. | ||
| So it's 12.15. | ||
| Motherfucker, I'm not having fun yet. | ||
| Make it fun right now because I need... | ||
| You can do that. | ||
| I was listening to this TED talk on the nature of happiness. | ||
| I forget the gentleman who was doing the speaking. | ||
| He had developed an app. | ||
| In the app, it would hit you with reminders and ask you questions like, what are you doing right now? | ||
| Are you enjoying what you're doing right now? | ||
| Is this what you want to do? | ||
| Things along those lines. | ||
| Then they would gather data. | ||
| So they added all their data from all the people that use the app, and one of the things they found was one of the least conducive things to happiness, one of the indicators that people are not happy, is when your mind is wandering. | ||
| Like, you're just sitting around, thinking of nothing, just sitting, doing nothing, and in those moments... | ||
| For whatever reason, people just don't feel good. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Their mind will wander to the negative things. | ||
| But when you're in the moment and you're occupied in something, whether you're creating something or whether you're writing something, whatever you're doing, those are the moments where people feel fulfilled and happy. | ||
| No, definitely. | ||
| And there's something to be said for meditation in that regard of learning to be in the moment when... | ||
| Because, you know, a lot of the times we can be in the moment when we're doing something. | ||
| But to be in the moment when you're not doing something, just like, let me take a deep breath. | ||
| Let's be here. | ||
| Let's look around. | ||
| That's not as easy to do as one would think. | ||
| Yeah, that's why a class, whether it's a martial arts class or a yoga class, is really good for people because someone's telling you what to do. | ||
| Like, okay, now we're going to work on arm bars from the mount. | ||
| Get to the mount. | ||
| Okay, shift your hips to the left, grab the arm, pin it down. | ||
| In going through those steps, you're forced to concentrate on that thing, and because it's so intense, you're forced to be in that moment. | ||
| And that, for a lot of people, is a real, not just the physical relief of exercise, which is fantastic for the mind, but the relief of focus and concentration alleviates a lot of the bullshit that builds up when the mind is wandering. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Big time. | |
| I know this when I finally had a chance to start rolling again the last month or two. | ||
| I was just like, oh my god, I forgot. | ||
| Not only physically, as you say, how good it feels, but in that moment, you know, if your mind wanders too much, the guy's choking you, the guy's arm barring you. | ||
| You can't wander. | ||
| You have to be totally present in what you're doing. | ||
| And it It's just such a mental break that I thought I had all these issues when I walk into class and I walk out. | ||
| I'm like, huh, those problems? | ||
| You call those problems? | ||
| That's a joke. | ||
| Come on, no big deal. | ||
| Because suddenly you have lightened up. | ||
| You got rid of this heavy load that you're carrying. | ||
| And there's nothing like it, you know, something that puts you in the moment, but also your body. | ||
| Puts your body, your mind, everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The gift of perspective. | ||
| And some people get it from running. | ||
| I know some people, they just love running hills especially because it's just so difficult. | ||
| And then when you reach the top of that hill, you have a milestone. | ||
| You hit that milestone, you get to that hill. | ||
| And just whatever it is, that effort of doing that, which is very intense, very difficult, just... | ||
| And when it's over, just everything else seems like relaxed. | ||
| Big time. | ||
| Even weights. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Weights feel awesome. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Anything. | ||
| Just do something that you have to concentrate on. | ||
| If you're lifting something heavy, like if you're trying to bench press or squat or something like that, while you're doing that, that is what you're concentrating on. | ||
| Isn't that amazing, though, that that's what the mind needs sometimes? | ||
| Just one primary, singular thing to focus on, and to focus on it intensely, and it's almost cleansing in a way. | ||
| It forces the pipes free. | ||
| Yeah, it's kind of like when you're having sex for too long and then you'd wait and suddenly everything in your brain switches. | ||
| All this shit that I thought I had on me, all this tension, all this stuff that I thought were real problems, you just haven't had sex for too many days either, right? | ||
| Oh, haven't had sex for a long time. | ||
| Yeah, if you will. | ||
| I thought you were saying you've had sex for too long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like, man, what kind of fucking is Daniel Bolleri doing? | |
| There is no such a thing. | ||
| He's doing some sessions, some session work. | ||
| Marathon. | ||
| Yeah, that could fuck people up, man. | ||
| I mean, I, to this day, think that that is, especially for men, the primary reason why a lot of men exhibit, like, really pathetic behavior. | ||
| Because they are trying so hard to get women to like them, and nothing is working, and so they have fallen into this trap of becoming this, like, She-male thing. | ||
| This super feminist sort of always identifying with women's issues and trying to get women on your side. | ||
| It doesn't fucking work. | ||
| Dave Rubin, a guy who was on the podcast the other day, by the way, great guy and great podcast. | ||
| I had a great time with him. | ||
| But he tweeted something the other day, and it was a billboard that some poor fool had put up, and it said, Dear women, on behalf of all men, I'm sorry. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The PS to that would be, I'm really trying to get laid. | ||
| Really trying. | ||
| Please. | ||
| So hard. | ||
| Can you help me with that? | ||
| Just someone touch my dick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Please. | ||
| That would have been more honest here to just put that on the billboard. | ||
| It's like, with the number at the end. | ||
| It's like, oh, poor guy. | ||
| I get it, you know. | ||
| It's Not that there's anything wrong with siding with women if you agree that they've been fucked over or looking out for them or sympathizing or empathizing. | ||
| That's not the point. | ||
| It's just the behavior. | ||
| It's also an anti-masculine behavior, an anti-male behavior. | ||
| Maybe it's because they identify those characteristics with bullies or with people that were mean to them or people that caused them pain or frustration. | ||
| But it's also like this, it's traitorous. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's like you're a gender traitor, like in some ways. | ||
| And to me, there's that bullshit dichotomy there where you either have the tough, strong, macho asshole who also kind of doesn't care about anybody's feelings, but you're strong. | ||
| That's the good side. | ||
| Or you have the sweet, mellow, sensitive, but if you say boo, then you go hide in a corner. | ||
| And it's like both models suck. | ||
| Neither one is a desirable way to be. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the problem is that in trying to get rid of the asshole male side, people have also gotten rid of the good stuff about being a man, about the strength, the determination, the stereotypical masculine quality. | ||
| And it's like, that's not what we're trying to get rid of. | ||
| That's the good stuff. | ||
| You want to keep that. | ||
| You want to get rid of the... | ||
| 1700s, gender role, I'm the man, I'll slap you around, go back in the kitchen kind of thing. | ||
| Yeah, I can see how that would be less than ideal, but getting rid of that doesn't mean getting rid of the good stuff at all. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Have you heard the term toxic masculinity? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| That's an adorable term. | ||
| That social justice warriors will throw around toxic masculinity. | ||
| The real problem with men adopting this idea is that they ignore the negative things that women have done. | ||
| Because it's not about women. | ||
| It's not about men. | ||
| It's about nice people. | ||
| That's really what it is. | ||
| I mean, there's feminine qualities that are beautiful and there's male masculine qualities that are beautiful and there's There's people on both sides that are out of their fucking mind and batshit crazy. | ||
| And to side with women on every occasion just because you're a man, you're saying, I'm sorry for all men before me and my apologies. | ||
| That's weak shit. | ||
| You know what you're doing. | ||
| You need to run hills. | ||
| You need to go to class. | ||
| You need to take a yoga class. | ||
| Do something. | ||
| And get laid. | ||
| Get laid. | ||
| Get someone to touch you. | ||
| And it's funny because when you don't come from a place of need, suddenly women like you ten times as much as before. | ||
| There was a period where I did not... | ||
| I wasn't running anymore on the typical scripts that I've had for most of my life where it's like, hot woman, I want your attention. | ||
| Look at me. | ||
| I'm great. | ||
| Because I want something from you. | ||
| There was a period where... | ||
| Things happen in a way where I didn't care. | ||
| I was just like, if we hang out, I hang out because I'm happy to, but I don't want, yeah, you're a beautiful one, that's great, but I don't want anything from you. | ||
| And of course, the second that my brain switched away, suddenly we meant like 10 times more than before. | ||
| And he was like, look at how that works. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Isn't it? | ||
| But there's something about being comfortable in your own skin and just not constantly acting because you're trying to impress somebody or you want somebody to, whether it's sex, whether it's attention, whatever that may be, because you want something from them. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| This is who I am. | ||
| You dig it, you dig it, you don't, you don't. | ||
| I'm still comfortable with who I am. | ||
| That makes such a difference in the way people will relate to you. | ||
| I think also that regardless of the words that you choose and the way that you say them and the sentences that you structure, I think people can feel intent and there's something about it. | ||
| There's an intangible quality to a needy person that even if they do say the right things and do it in the right order... | ||
| Some women or some men are like, not this dude. | ||
| That's why you can read all the books in the world about the stuff you should say, but that's barely half of the game. | ||
| It's who you are. | ||
| It's not what you say, what the image you put. | ||
| Even because it's painful, you have to constantly keep up this image that's not really you, and you have to say all the right things. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| Fuck, life is too short for that. | ||
| Have you ever paid attention at all to pickup artists? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And pickup artist game? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're like... | ||
| They'll judge... | ||
| It's hilarious. | ||
| I've seen some videos online where they're actually critiquing people's approaches and strategies for getting women to talk to them. | ||
| There's like videos on it where a guy will have a hidden camera and he'll talk to a girl and like then the guys in the comments will be like, interesting, like opening, great game, I like how he's doing this. | ||
| Like they have like... | ||
| Like, moves. | ||
| Like, it's talking about, like, jujitsu or something. | ||
| Or chess. | ||
| The way you lean to the right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| Talking to her. | ||
| That's, like, too much. | ||
| But it's not real. | ||
| That's what's crazy about it. | ||
| I mean, I guess it will work on, like, some really fucking dumb girls. | ||
| That's how, like, girls will find out, like... | ||
| Deep into a relationship, like months later, that the guy's heavily in debt and wanted by the FBI and beats his mom. | ||
| You don't find that shit out because the guy tricked you with all this strategy. | ||
| And if you can't read that, then you're not going to know that something's going on. | ||
| That, to me, is if you have a really bad radar and you can't get vibes out of people, then you are dependent on what they say. | ||
| Some people have bad radar. | ||
| But what they say is a smokescreen. | ||
| You know what they say? | ||
| Maybe real, maybe not. | ||
| People put on a show all the time. | ||
| To me, it's like, really, you didn't feel sitting next to the guy for 35 seconds that the guy is a freak or that woman is evil. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Man, you feel it. | ||
| It's not what they say. | ||
| But it's hard. | ||
| It's hard to have sovereignty. | ||
| It's hard to have personal sovereignty. | ||
| It's hard to be at a place where you don't need anybody. | ||
| Or you're not needy. | ||
| Or when you're around a beautiful girl where you don't give a fuck. | ||
| That's hard, man. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| Most men, I would say like 99% of men, when they're around a really beautiful girl... | ||
| They just panic. | ||
| Even if there's no chance that girl's going to fuck you, your behavior alters. | ||
| It gets weird. | ||
| My solution to that is illegal in 49 and a half state, but I think that going to 49 and a half... | ||
| Because it's legal in rural counties in Nevada. | ||
| But going to insanely hot hookers calm people down. | ||
| For a man's standpoint, it would be like, okay, if I want to get laid with an insanely hot woman, I can. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You've done the money. | ||
| Go. | ||
| You're nice to them. | ||
| They're nice to you. | ||
| Done. | ||
| So if you do that, then in the back of your brain, it's not like every time you see a hot woman, it's like, I want this. | ||
| It's like, I can't get this any other time in another way if you don't have game and you can't get laid in other ways. | ||
| At least you go to the nice, friendly hooker, you get laid with hot women, then hot women don't immediately trigger... | ||
| I need something from you. | ||
| It's like, oh, you're another hot woman. | ||
| I was having sex with a hot woman yesterday. | ||
| So what? | ||
| You know, it doesn't have that same pressure to it. | ||
| So I have a vague feeling that I'm not going to get a TV program and a Dr. Phil recommended. | ||
| Just go to hookers. | ||
| It will make your life better. | ||
| But that's my take. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'll tell you right now, that is the wrong approach. | |
| It ain't about the woman being hot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's about love, sir. | |
| Sir. | ||
| God, my right ball just dropped by my ankle. | ||
| Your balls, they'll rot if you hear that long enough. | ||
| They gangrene, they fall right off. | ||
| Yeah, I think that the idea of going to a hooker in America is a disgusting idea. | ||
| Like, that's how we look at it as our culture. | ||
| You know, our culture looks at prostitution as something foul. | ||
| And you and I both have daughters. | ||
| We don't want our daughters to become prostitutes. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| If, you know, if somebody else's daughter wants to do it... | ||
| What else is wrong to say? | ||
| It's how you are... | ||
| There are cases where somebody becomes a hooker because their life sucks, they are on meth, they are this and that. | ||
| That's clearly not... | ||
| But I've... | ||
| I know women who did become sex workers who speak multiple languages, graduated from UCLA. They have jobs. | ||
| They have money. | ||
| And their ways, they have the power in the exchange because the way they are going to play it is that they consider it kind of like dating except that I pick my clients. | ||
| So it's like I'm sleeping around a lot, but I get paid bank for doing that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's a whole different kind, you know, not all prostitution is the same. | ||
| That's a whole different game. | ||
| That's somebody who comes from a position where they are in power rather than the typical, you know, straight hooker kind of thing. | ||
| That's a whole different game. | ||
| Yeah, I've met girls that have done that, that have actually, like, had, like, wealthy men that they've had sex with. | ||
| And then they only had a few of them, and they fucked them a couple times a month, and that was how they made all their money. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But they didn't take other clients on. | ||
| And I was like, that is just weird. | ||
| But why is it weird? | ||
| Because when you look at a really hot woman, like the Donald Sterling situation, that old troll-looking raisin man, and he had that girl, the one that ratted him out and made those recordings... | ||
| She was hot. | ||
| She was young and hot with a nice body. | ||
| What do we think is going on there? | ||
| Why do we think he bought her a multi-million dollar condo and a Bentley and all that? | ||
| Is it okay to just buy people so you can exchange gold coins? | ||
| Can you exchange gold coins just not paper? | ||
| How's that work? | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Can you buy someone a house you just can't give them cash? | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| Why is the exchange... | ||
| When the exchange is actual money, not something you can convert to money, but the actual money itself, it becomes an issue. | ||
| Prostitution exists across the board in many, many relationships. | ||
| I have friends that are married to prostitutes. | ||
| They really are. | ||
| They just happen to be monogamous prostitutes. | ||
| They're monogamous prostitutes, but these guys are wealthy guys, and these women that they're dating really don't even particularly like them. | ||
| They have to buy them things all the time, and they have to constantly keep the fires of this style of relationship lit. | ||
| That I find weird. | ||
| Isn't it easier to just pay for a cold girl, go there each time? | ||
| It is, but then, you know... | ||
| The problem is people want companionship. | ||
| They want someone to be there for them. | ||
| Yeah, but you're not gonna get it by paying somebody for that. | ||
| No. | ||
| Sometimes it works. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's like saying it can never work. | ||
| I just think that a lot of people would be way better off, a lot of people, if sex wasn't such a big deal. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And I think that is a big part of what's going on. | ||
| Part of what's going on with campuses where they have this massive amount of attention that's being paid to sexual assault is very good in a lot of ways. | ||
| Because sexual assault, actual real sexual assault is horrific. | ||
| Yeah, it's fucked up. | ||
| It's disgusting. | ||
| It's fucked up. | ||
| And the idea that my son could do it or that I could have done it when I was young is terrifying to me and disgusting to me. | ||
| But, equally true, the idea of someone being accused of sexual assault, where it really was just regret. | ||
| There's a lot of people that are trying to say that if two people get drunk and they have sex, then somehow or another that's rape. | ||
| It's just people having sex. | ||
| There's no violence. | ||
| There's no forcing. | ||
| That's crazy talk. | ||
| A lot of that comes from the idea, these puritanical ideas, that sex is somehow a bad thing. | ||
| Because if two people got together and they got drunk and just cuddled, no one gives a shit. | ||
| Yeah, that's fine. | ||
| But suddenly there's penetration. | ||
| Where does it end? | ||
| What if you just cuddle and you both have shorts on and a t-shirt and the guy gets a boner? | ||
| What happens there? | ||
| Is that bad? | ||
| What if you're cuddling and the guy and the girl don't have shirts on but they have their pants on? | ||
| What the fuck are we doing? | ||
| If they're drunk and they hug, everyone's okay. | ||
| But if they're drunk and they fuck, it's a real problem. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If someone says no and the other person forces them, then it's a problem. | ||
| Sure, that's right, of course. | ||
| But if it's just two people that drink and then do something and the other person wakes up in the morning and goes, I can't believe I fucked that guy. | ||
| Shit! | ||
| And then their friend says, oh my god, were you drunk? | ||
| Well, you could not consent. | ||
| That is rape! | ||
| It's not rape! | ||
| He was drunk too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| There was this... | ||
| I forget what the protest was, but these guys had these signs that said, regret is not rape. | ||
| And there was this fucking terrible backlash, but that is what it is. | ||
| It's regret. | ||
| Whatever happened to fucking up? | ||
| Whatever ever happened to making mistakes? | ||
| And also, why is it that one gender gets a get-out-of-jail-free card, like you got raped, whereas every guy that I've ever met We're good to go. | ||
| But then, of course, you get into this Bill Cosby territory where a guy is purposely getting someone drunk or purposely getting someone fucked up. | ||
| Well, of course, that's where it gets weird, right? | ||
| That's where it all turns into an actual crime or an actual negative interaction. | ||
| Verifiable, bona fide, you know, assault. | ||
| Yeah, that's different, even because the intent is different. | ||
| It's not like you're both drunk once you get to another. | ||
| Okay, whatever. | ||
| That's one story. | ||
| That one is, I'm trying to get you to a vulnerable position because I want to take something from you that you don't want to give. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm coercing you and being sneaky about it. | ||
| Yeah, that's a different story. | ||
| Yeah, that's a dark thing that it happens. | ||
| It happens to a lot of women, man. | ||
| A lot. | ||
| I've talked to several women who have been roofied. | ||
| That's so fucked up. | ||
| When I was in high school, I had once, there was this pretty hot girl who was just passed out drunk, and there was two guys at the party who were clearly just moving in in that direction. | ||
| They were clear and obvious about what was going on. | ||
| That was like There was no ambiguity there. | ||
| It's like, that is, you're trying to rape somebody. | ||
| That's not... | ||
| So I remember just, I had my good Samaritan day of my life where I just kind of picked her up, walked her outside, help her throw up, and all the whole... | ||
| Because I was like, no, this is a bad scenario right here. | ||
| This is not a pleasant one. | ||
| And it's not, again, the one where everybody's drunk and it's different, there's no intent. | ||
| This is somebody who say, oh, vulnerability, I'm going after that. | ||
| I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on places that have legalized prostitution, where there are more or less sexual assaults. | ||
| From what I remember, and I do believe I've seen studies about it, I think it was less. | ||
| Jamie? | ||
| Head to Google. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, I would assume that when it's not something that's almost impossible to attain. | ||
| Because you think about it like the average guy who makes a good living, you know, maybe occasionally you could afford to spend $500 on a prostitute or whatever the hell it costs, but... | ||
| The idea of getting that prostitute to be in a sexual relationship with you voluntarily is almost out of the question. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But if you're a goofy-looking dude, you can pay that girl, and she'll fuck you, and the weight of that exchange has sort of been lifted. | ||
| I mean, there's a potential that you could get addicted to going to prostitutes, but you can get addicted to going to a pool hall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| Do anything. | ||
| You can get addicted to swimming. | ||
| I know people, every morning they get up and they fucking swim. | ||
| They have to swim. | ||
| I didn't swim today. | ||
| And if you have the money, there was a Don Winslow novel. | ||
| I don't know if you ever read that guy. | ||
| He's a master writer. | ||
| Don Winslow? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A lot of thrillers. | ||
| Really good writer. | ||
| Never heard of him, actually. | ||
| If I have, I forgot. | ||
| He's the guy who did the movie Savages. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Savages. | ||
| The Oliver Stone movie, I believe. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| That was based on a Don Winslow novel. | ||
| Was that a good movie? | ||
| I haven't seen it, to be honest. | ||
| I read the book. | ||
| The book was good. | ||
| The movie, I didn't hear anything that made me want to see it. | ||
| So I was like, eh, I'll pass. | ||
| But the guy is a good writer. | ||
| He has this one line at one point. | ||
| I forgot which novel it is. | ||
| But he has this line where one guy is like, you know, she's only with you because of your money. | ||
| And the other dude is like, well, good thing I have money then. | ||
| I thought it was awesome. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, what does that mean? | ||
| She's only with you because of this. | ||
| Well, whatever. | ||
| She's only with you because of your big dick and your broad shoulders. | ||
| Shut up, stupid. | ||
| I'm glad I had that. | ||
| Good. | ||
| We're done. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| She's only with you because you're more attractive and more intelligent and more successful than me. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Okay, well that just diminished me to the point where I can no longer enjoy the sexual favors of this young lady. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| What does it mean? | ||
| People that try to diminish you. | ||
| You're only because of this. | ||
| Well, and about this stuff that we're talking about, the sex work, I find it hilarious when people look down on it, kind of like, oh my god, I don't I'm like, do you work the job you have? | ||
| Is that a job that you would have if nobody pays you? | ||
| Would you do that same stuff anyway? | ||
| And 99% of people would say, no, it's because I want to get paid. | ||
| So explain to me exactly how you're different from a hooker. | ||
| Embrace your inner hooker, man. | ||
| You're doing it for the money. | ||
| That's where it's at. | ||
| Embrace your inner hooker. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Researchers decriminalized prostitution in Rhode Island led to fewer rape and fewer gonorrhea cases. | ||
| My point. | ||
| But that's not even legal. | ||
| That's just decriminalized. | ||
| So that means you can't get arrested for it. | ||
| I was finding stuff on both ends of it, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| What's that? | ||
| I was finding articles on both ends. | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was going up and down. | |
| There's people saying both. | ||
| Classic. | ||
| The statistics clearly show that it increases. | ||
| No, the statistics clearly show that it decreases. | ||
| That kind of stuff. | ||
| Yeah, there's studies for whichever side you really want to pick, really. | ||
| It's like the Bible. | ||
| You see, decriminalized, though, is not legalized. | ||
| What you want is a nice brothel. | ||
| Nice and clean, like a beautiful establishment, like a Burke-Williams spa. | ||
| Burke-Williams of Hooker. | ||
| Burke-Williams of Hooker. | ||
| You know, if you go to a Burke Williams spa, they give you a glass of water with lemon in it. | ||
| It's nice and they have the chimes going and the incense. | ||
| You walk in there, scented candles. | ||
| Ah, they give you a nice massage. | ||
| But, you know, they're not supposed to have sex with you. | ||
| See, that's a problem. | ||
| But if you can go to one of those places and they had sex with you, you'd be like, what a great exchange. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| I'm nice to you. | ||
| You've got a bunch of money. | ||
| You're nice to me. | ||
| Everybody wins. | ||
| It's puritanical. | ||
| It totally is. | ||
| Because if you really break it down, why would it be illegal to do something that you can do for free? | ||
| If you can do it for money, why... | ||
| I mean, if you can do it for free, why can't you do it for money? | ||
| Because everything else you can do, like massage. | ||
| You can give people foot massages all day. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But if it's a sexual thing, suddenly it's illegal and it's terrible. | ||
| I find it hilarious. | ||
| This is... | ||
| Puritanical, religious crap that we carry with us from, you know, another time and it's just still around in people's mentality. | ||
| Because when you think about it, I think it's complete bullshit. | ||
| It warps our minds, too. | ||
| Because it turns sex into some forbidden, dirty act. | ||
| Yep, yep, yep. | ||
| You know, I don't know. | ||
| It's... | ||
|
unidentified
|
The whole, like... | |
| The pattern of it is very difficult to break, though. | ||
| I mean, I think they broke it somewhat in the 60s, you know, Summer of Love, but they were all on acid. | ||
| That helps. | ||
| That definitely helps. | ||
| I mean, that is what acid does. | ||
| That's what mushrooms do. | ||
| That's what DMT does. | ||
| That paradigm-shifting reset button where you go, oh, why am I doing it this way? | ||
| Why am I new? | ||
| That's where all those songs like Love the One You're With came from. | ||
| It was a free love generation. | ||
| It was different, right? | ||
| Isn't that interesting? | ||
| That's all it took. | ||
| Just a little bit of drugs and people went from Father Knows Best to Love the One You're With inside of 10 years. | ||
| 1960s are a trippy time, right? | ||
| Even just music-wise. | ||
| You listen to what people were listening to in 1961 and what they were listening to by 1968 and it feels like 300 years have gone by. | ||
| It's such a nice night and day kind of thing. | ||
| They are like, how did that even happen in that little period of time? | ||
| It's, you know, you go from your mellow Motown to Jimi Hendrix. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It doesn't even sound remotely closed. | ||
| Everything, the clothes? | ||
| They start wearing bandanas and bell bottoms and freaky vests and shirts with flowers on them. | ||
| Like the whole thing just fucking completely flipped on his head. | ||
| Just some drugs. | ||
| That's what people don't really, truly comprehend. | ||
| And I didn't truly comprehend until I got older. | ||
| Because when I was a kid and I was in school... | ||
| Okay, I graduated from school in 1985. That's when I graduated from high school. | ||
| And if you stop and think about that, 20 years before that was the height of all that freaky shit. | ||
| It was alive and popping in 1965. That's like... | ||
| That's not that long ago, man. | ||
| That's 1995 to us. | ||
| Like, 1995 seems like just a few years ago. | ||
| To think about 1995 just being freaks and hippies and Woodstock and chaos, and then the government just threw water on the whole thing. | ||
| Put that fire out! | ||
| And everything calmed down in the 70s, and in the 80s they gave everybody Coke, and then Miami Vice, and Don Johnson didn't have any socks on. | ||
| He's driving around a little... | ||
| Ferrari Testarossa. | ||
| And it all sort of got to this different place. | ||
| Like they took the drugs out of the equation and there was this big void and no one knew what to do. | ||
| And it just sort of like had this chaotic bouncing against the wall thing where it was trying to find its equilibrium and find its harmonious vibration to get back to where it would have been. | ||
| But inexorably altered. | ||
| Because of this one decade. | ||
| Big time. | ||
| I mean, even the drugs. | ||
| It's not like in the 80s people weren't doing drugs, but nastier drugs. | ||
| You go from psychedelics to hard stuff. | ||
| Crack! | ||
| We're not talking the same drugs here. | ||
| It's a very different kind of game. | ||
| Amazing! | ||
| It's really amazing when you get older and you realize that 10 years is nothing. | ||
| It's such a, like, 10 years ago was 2005. That is exactly like today. | ||
| What is the difference between 2005 and today? | ||
| No iPhones. | ||
| Other than that, what's the difference? | ||
| We were all online. | ||
| Everybody had email. | ||
| I mean, there was less social media and things along those lines, but ultimately, there's very little difference between today and 2005. If you had a 2005 car, that's a nice car. | ||
| You could drive that around and be just like a modern car, or a 2015 car. | ||
| No different. | ||
| Not much difference in the music. | ||
| You know, you can listen to some music from 2005. It's pretty similar. | ||
| Big time. | ||
| Yeah, you could take a song from 2005, you could totally release it today. | ||
| Like a hit, and it'd be a hit today. | ||
| But the difference between a hit from 1955 and a hit from 1965, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Jesus, what a Which is why, to this day, people about the 1960s either love it or hate it. | ||
| People either are like, the 60s, they ruined American culture, everything got terrible. | ||
| Or they're like, oh, thank God for the 60s. | ||
| That's where all the cool stuff started happening. | ||
| It's very rare to find people who are neutral about it. | ||
| The difference is the people that got the drugs and didn't get any drugs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| The people that were getting crew cuts and fucking goddamn hippies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They never got it. | ||
| They didn't understand. | ||
| They missed the boat. | ||
| Yeah, let's nuke Vietnam. | ||
| They didn't let us win. | ||
| That's what happened. | ||
| It's fascinating to think that the culture can shift and change so quickly. | ||
| That must have been terrifying for the old guard. | ||
| You know, the people that were... | ||
| I mean, you also have to think the ability to communicate about these things, about these complex issues, didn't exist back then. | ||
| So all you could do is go down to your local bar and complain or your... | ||
| I guess they didn't even have coffee shops back then, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| No coffee shops? | ||
| Serious? | ||
| Well, there was like diners, but they didn't have a Starbucks. | ||
| That shit didn't even exist. | ||
| Man, that's nuts. | ||
| When I was a kid, you would go to Dunkin' Donuts and get coffee, but that was it. | ||
| There was no Starbucks. | ||
| And no place like the mom and pap store wasn't just open tables where people could sit down and chat, was just go eat and get your coffee, get out. | ||
| No, I mean, it was all local. | ||
| I remember, like, if you were a worldly person in Boston, you would get the New York Times. | ||
| Like, that was to show everybody that you were worldly. | ||
| You would read the New York Times. | ||
| If you were a dummy, you would get the Herald. | ||
| And if you were, you know, local, but, you know, you're on the ball, you get the Boston Globe. | ||
| I used to deliver all three of them. | ||
| The New York Times was very rare, and whenever I would deliver the New York Times, the dude always had like a BMW or a Saab or something like that, you know? | ||
| They always had like some cool car, and they lived in a cool house, and they just, they wanted to be more into, they didn't want to live in New York necessarily, or if they did, they didn't have the funds to move there, but they wanted to be worldly. | ||
| And sounded like they had the money. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's how you got a hold of the real news. | ||
| That's how you had your finger on the pulse. | ||
| And you had to be active. | ||
| Like, I remember, you know, like, there was this guy that I knew that would, you know, he would read all the papers. | ||
| He'd read the Times, he'd read the Herald, and I would ask him, like, why, you know, why do you read all these different papers? | ||
| Why not just pick one and read them? | ||
| He's like... | ||
| To really get a sense of what's going on in the world, you really got to read all of them. | ||
| Like, the New York Times will cover some subjects globally that the Boston Globe won't. | ||
| The Boston Herald doesn't give a fuck about what's happening anywhere but Boston. | ||
| And there was, like, this thing where you had to kind of, like, search around to get a sound, like a distant sound of the Earth, of, like, what's actually going on on the planet. | ||
| Whereas today, it's unavoidable. | ||
| Today, you actually got to hide from information. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| No, spoiler! | ||
| I don't want to know about that! | ||
| Don't fucking tell me about The Walking Dead yet! | ||
| No, I know. | ||
| When I was growing up, me being in Italy too, which was even further removed from some of the news, I love basketball. | ||
| And I remember when I was maybe eight, nine years old, I wanted to find out who won the NBA Finals. | ||
| There was the game on Sunday. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| And I literally would have to call the one magazine in Italy that dealt with basketball that would come out once a month. | ||
| And I would call them and they had talked to their friend in New York who had told them who won. | ||
| Otherwise, I would have had to wait probably three weeks until that next issue come up who tells you who won the NBA final a month earlier. | ||
| That's the world that I grew up in. | ||
| And so it's like, when you think about today, you can be on the top of the Himalaya, and if you find the right connection, you can watch the game live. | ||
| It's like, that's a whole other game altogether. | ||
| Yeah, you were reading about basketball that happened weeks ago. | ||
| Yeah, and get all excited. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like, man, I can't believe I'm going to find out now about that game. | |
| When were the first organized sports? | ||
| There was 1800s already. | ||
| Late 1800s in US, you start having a whole bunch. | ||
| There's an awesome story about the development of football in the United States, which was by no means the first. | ||
| Baseball was before and everything. | ||
| But football was funny because there's this story that late 1800s, there's no more frontier. | ||
| There are no more Indian wars because everybody's been conquered. | ||
| So there was not anymore this tradition for kind of upper class males to go in the military, fight the Indians, that kind of stuff. | ||
| So many of the old guard felt that their kids were growing up to be wimps. | ||
| It's like, what? | ||
| You haven't even killed a few Indians? | ||
| What's wrong with you? | ||
| You're not a real man. | ||
| So they would send them to all the Ivy League school that were beginning to pop up. | ||
| But they felt like, yeah, you read books. | ||
| You don't kill anybody. | ||
| I don't know about your masculinity, really. | ||
| So somebody was like, OK, we can play this game where they beat the shit out of each other. | ||
| It's going to be this manly physical game where they just brutalize each other. | ||
| Then at least, you know, it's not as good as bringing home a good scalp, but it's something, you know, it's like it saves their masculinity and stuff. | ||
| And that's how a lot of... | ||
| So if you see all the big football programs of the late 1800s, even early 1900s, they were all Ivy League school. | ||
| Stuff that today you never... | ||
| You know, Harvard, Yale, they had the top football programs. | ||
| And it's like, how the hell did that even... | ||
| And a lot of it was because it was a way to show, look, I read books, but I'm still a man, okay? | ||
| I'm still tough. | ||
| Wow, that's... | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So it was a substitute for war. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Which totally makes sense. | ||
| I mean, that's kind of exactly what it is. | ||
| If you watch a game, you're winning. | ||
| You're attacking. | ||
| You're trying to defend. | ||
| You're crossing a boundary, which is like the border to the city, the gates to the brothel or to the castle or to wherever you're trying to break into. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And they even had these, all the top schools were Ivy League, upper class, you know, super rich people. | ||
| And then one of the top schools was Carlisle Indian School, which was the lowest of the law, like poorest people in the United States, Indian kids who got sent there in boarding schools. | ||
| They had nothing to do. | ||
| They would play football. | ||
| And so what they would do is that they would study the rulebook, try to figure out what is that nobody's doing. | ||
| The technical is legal, but what kind of loophole can we play with? | ||
| And they would start using some tactic that nobody had used, kill everybody in the process. | ||
| So then the league goes, okay, we can't have them Indians beating Harvard, so let's change the rules. | ||
| That thing they do, make it illegal. | ||
| Like what things were? | ||
| You know, I wish I remember. | ||
| I read through the list. | ||
| There were some that were released, but basically they developed the game of football in terms of how, you know, this constant game between the league and the Indian school where these guys use some loophole, the league comes in, makes it illegal. | ||
| And then the next time they use a different loophole and then the league comes in. | ||
| And so a lot of the rules of football were shaped to start, okay, those guys do it, let's stop it. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Lucky for them, black people weren't playing back then. | ||
| Yeah, serious. | ||
| They wouldn't change all the rules. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That's what they've done now. | ||
| They just give up. | ||
| It's mostly black. | ||
| So you can't run. | ||
| You can't run. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can't run. | |
| You can get really big and white and block the runners. | ||
| Or you can get good eyesight, hand-eye coordination, but you can throw the ball at black people who run really fast. | ||
| It's so rare. | ||
| You get like a super speedy white guy when one comes around like, look at him go! | ||
|
unidentified
|
He runs like a black guy! | |
| It's hilarious. | ||
| It is fucking hilarious. | ||
| And it's funny how the stereotypes change over time, because you had Thad Russell on the show, like in his book, how he breaks down how many of the early natural Jewish athletes, which you're like, what? | ||
| Or a lot of the early boxers are all Irish. | ||
| A lot of Jewish boxers back in the day. | ||
| Big time. | ||
| Well, they were people that were fucked with. | ||
| They were the early immigrants and they were struggling. | ||
| That's what it always seems to be. | ||
| It seems to be the group that is the most recent immigrants. | ||
| Now you get a lot of Russians. | ||
| A lot of Russians in both Europe and in America with so many Russians in MMA. Dagestan, a lot of Dagestan people. | ||
| A completely disproportionate amount of elite fighters, too. | ||
| A lot of really fucking tough guys from Russia. | ||
| Well, if you are used to, I mean, it's almost stereotypical, but if you are used to toughness throughout your life, then climbing in the ring doesn't seem like much. | ||
| If you are all sheltered and protected, climbing in the ring is scary as hell. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's exactly what it is. | ||
| It's exactly what it is. | ||
| And it's also like the hunger that you have because your life has been like just filled with despair and Struggle and in a lot of abuse they're like violence becomes like some sort of an automatic response to reaching out for abuse you know reaching out and In response for the abuse you've suffered. | ||
| That's where a chip on your shoulder comes from, right? | ||
| It's like someone just waiting for someone to say some shit because you've just been dealing bottled up. | ||
| You have this rage that is like, please just cross that line so I have an excuse to beat the shit out of you right now. | ||
| A few generations later, your kids are pussies. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And then you look at them like, go play football, damn it! | ||
| What kind of man are you? | ||
| But it's weird because isn't it kind of a good thing that they become pussies? | ||
| Because that means we've become civilized and everyone's sort of calmed down. | ||
| There's this weird fine line that we walk because ultimately we would like to have no violence. | ||
| Ultimately we would love it if you never had to worry about a threat of violence. | ||
| Just go through your entire life, never worry about anybody shooting you or stabbing you or beating you up and that'd be beautiful. | ||
| But along the line, you kind of lose out on a lot of the stuff that comes along with living a hard life. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| The character that you develop. | ||
| Like everybody that I know that grew up in a tough neighborhood, they have a sharpness to them, you know? | ||
| And there's a character that they have, that they possess, that the people that grew up super cushy and some, you know, Connecticut country club estate type situation. | ||
| I've noticed... | ||
| I didn't grow up in the roughest environment, but it definitely was not upper class, rich, anything. | ||
| So to me, dealing with gangsters was kind of normal. | ||
| It was like, you know, just a gangster. | ||
| There are clear rules of the game. | ||
| You know how to deal with them. | ||
| And so to see people who don't have that experience and when they deal with somebody was by nature, by... | ||
| What kind of gangsters? | ||
| Like mafia guys? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| Not formally, no. | ||
| Usually not mafia. | ||
| More just like, you know, people who deal, people who rob, you know, that kind of thing, where it's like the guys who are some serious artists of just shoplifting, who just can go into a store and walk out, and they would do it pretty much professionally, where they make a living by, you know, stuff like that, where it's always like crossing, definitely doing illegal stuff. | ||
| Not... | ||
| I mean, I've met some guys who are probably more well-connected in a more formal way, but that was not the normal thing. | ||
| But the normal thing was guys who do a lot of illegal stuff, or maybe they are not technically against it in a strict sense, but people who get into a lot of fights, that kind of thing, where it's sort of outside of the normal rules of civilized society. | ||
| But to me, there are clear rules of what you do with those guys. | ||
| Usually, if you treat them with respect and you don't show yourself to be a wimp, they treat you fairly well if you know how to play the game. | ||
| If you don't, these guys will test you. | ||
| And if they smell weakness, then they'll clamp down on you. | ||
| Or if you look down on them, they will clamp down on you. | ||
| There's a very clear rule of the game that if you play it right, you can have very mellow, pleasant interactions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But people who don't have that experience that I see them interact with, I'm like, don't say that! | ||
| You cannot say that to that guy! | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, that's just not gonna end well. | |
| That's bad. | ||
| Well, some people have a real issue with letting people in to their life. | ||
| Like, you would see that, like, that was what people always said about, like, rap music. | ||
| And one of the big problems with rap music is these guys would make it, and they would become legit, and then they would let, like... | ||
| Gangsters in their life because they wanted to be seen with these people. | ||
| They wanted to be legit. | ||
| And then all of a sudden these people are like completely intertwined in their life. | ||
| Apparently that happened with Edward James Olmos when he did that movie American Me. | ||
| Do you know the story behind that? | ||
| That was scary business. | ||
| Yeah, it was a heavy-duty movie, and the movie was all about these Mexican gangbangers, and apparently he had become friends with these guys, in air quotes, friends, while filming this movie, and just got way too close, and they just started extorting him. | ||
| And they started demanding money, and they knew where he lived, and it became a real fucking issue. | ||
| Yeah, you are their lunch at that point. | ||
| And again, if they think that there's any weakness there, then you're screwed. | ||
| That's why there's a predatorial aspect to that game where you need to know how to play it, otherwise you're fucked. | ||
| And I'm sure he wanted to be down, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, of course. | |
| He's doing this movie, he's got to play this gangster cholo, but then the movie had all this gay sex in it. | ||
| Yeah, that was really good. | ||
| Hey, you're not supposed to talk about that. | ||
| Still traumatized now, I think. | ||
| That was a heavy movie, man. | ||
| Yeah, there was a lot of weirdness in that movie. | ||
| It's like, what is going on? | ||
| Yeah, that was rough. | ||
| Definitely bad stuff. | ||
| But that whole, like, becoming tight with gangsters, like, that's a common tale. | ||
| That's a... | ||
| It has repeated itself over and over and over again, like with Hollywood actors that wanted to be tough guys. | ||
| And that weakness right there, because if they smell that you want something from them or that you look up to them in some way, then that's weakness. | ||
| If they see you putting them down, that's also a challenge. | ||
| So you're kind of screwed if you do one thing, you're screwed if you do another. | ||
| There's sort of a narrow way. | ||
| It's not too narrow. | ||
| There's a way to do it, but if you step outside of it, yeah, you're fucked. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's the same thing as getting into fights. | ||
| If you are too aggressive, you will get into fights because you're challenging people and you're backing them in against the corner and they have to fight you back. | ||
| But if you are too mellow, then people won't respect you and they see you as weak and they come after you. | ||
| You kind of have to have that boundary where you're polite to people, you're nice, but the message is, look, I'm nice because I choose to. | ||
| If you decide to cross that line, I'm going to fuck you up right now. | ||
| And that vibe where it's like, you can bring up the goods when it comes down to throwing down, but you don't volunteer it. | ||
| You're not this macho guy who's like trying to get into a fight. | ||
| That's what usually people who are out for a fight tend to respect and bug away from. | ||
| It's like, that guy, I'm not going to pick that guy. | ||
| I'm going to pick the next one. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, obviously there's a lot of variables and sometimes you just run into the wrong person at the wrong time. | ||
| Shit happens, of course. | ||
| But there's a parallel with the animal world. | ||
| I mean, you think about like dogs, like certain dogs. | ||
| If you're around dogs and you panic and you run, they'll chase you and bite you. | ||
| It's like instinctive on their part. | ||
| They almost can't help it. | ||
| Whereas if you encounter dogs or even some wild animals, you know, and they say you have to stand your ground or yell at them, like mountain lions especially. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| You know, they say you're supposed to look big and make noise, and they're like, all right, fuck this. | ||
| I'm out of here. | ||
| This is too much work. | ||
| You know, they don't want to get injured. | ||
| So they're looking for something easy. | ||
| But when they sense weakness, I think it's almost nature. | ||
| Like nature wants them to go after you. | ||
| You guys, look at this weak bitch. | ||
| Let me just eat him. | ||
| Let's just eat this dude. | ||
| No, that's what it is. | ||
| That's the predatory. | ||
| I remember once when I was a kid, I was probably like 18, 19 years old, and I found myself in one of the situations. | ||
| I was like, what the fuck am I doing here? | ||
| Because I basically ended up in the middle of two, not exactly gangs, but close to, that they were about to get into a fight. | ||
| Like West Side Story type shit? | ||
| Kind of, you know, so it's not real mafia or blood and creeps, real gangster, but it's, you know... | ||
| Tough guys. | ||
| Yeah, and... | ||
| I was dealing with some guys and then this other group come along and I'm in the middle and you can't really walk away because daddy are a bitch. | ||
| It's like, oh Jesus, really do I have to be in the middle of this shit? | ||
| And, you know, they start in this ritualized way where they start talking shit and so you can almost set your clock. | ||
| It's like, okay, we're two and a half minutes away from the fight, right? | ||
| It's like they are going through their dances, then they're going to do a push, then they're going to throw down. | ||
| And I remember I was talking with some of these guys from quote-unquote the other side, assuming that I was with one side, but... | ||
| And my vibe with these guys was like, look, if we really want to do this, okay, fine, let's do this. | ||
| But honestly, I was thinking I had a date tonight, I want to go out with this hot woman, we're going to go to a movie... | ||
| I kind of rather would do that than this, but I don't know. | ||
| Maybe you guys have nothing better to do. | ||
| I mean, if we don't, let's fucking do it. | ||
| That's Italians. | ||
| You guys are sitting there having these long conversations, sit down, have a coffee, a little spaghetti. | ||
| And it was hilarious because in the meantime, the two main guys were kind of... | ||
| Building it up. | ||
| And by the time they turned around, nobody wanted to fight. | ||
| They were all like, no, you're right. | ||
| I kind of want to do this other thing. | ||
| Fuck this. | ||
| I don't feel like it. | ||
| And, you know, they said they would lift their shirt and they had chains on. | ||
| They were like, you know, I come ready, but you're right. | ||
| Fuck this. | ||
| Chains? | ||
| They were ready to fight with chains? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because, you know, nobody has guns. | ||
| So it's a chain fight. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| So I thought, that's a win. | ||
| I felt like, okay, that was one of my better days in terms of how I played it. | ||
| Because again, if you show too much fear, then you get squashed. | ||
| But if you show too much aggressiveness, then you invite the fight. | ||
| There's also a natural thing when groups of men meet. | ||
| It's almost like it's a tribal thing that's in our DNA back to when you would run into people, you know, out in the field, and it would turn into a war, almost like an instinctive bonding thing. | ||
| I wonder if that's where, like, because a lot of... | ||
| That human beings have ever created or committed rather they they've committed in the process of war right now They say that during the process of war like people are capable of horrific terrifying things they would never do ordinarily and then also they say that When you have like this mob mentality like people will do things like Gang rapes or gang murders gang beatings lootings lighting places on fire like | ||
| The behavior escalates to this really insane place that is very, very rare for someone to go to on their own as an individual. | ||
| I wonder if that's ingrained in us because of this It's a long history of war in the human race that when you get a bunch of men together and a bunch of men on the other side, we just immediately go to fucking scorched earth. | ||
| It's immediately cutting off heads and lighting bodies on fire and catapulting them onto rooftops. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| Human history does read like Game of Thrones. | ||
| To me, Game of Thrones is a fictionalized documentary. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| That's how it is, right? | ||
| And dragons. | ||
| Yeah, and dragons. | ||
| Yeah, minus the dragons. | ||
| But other than that, it's just most of human history has been like that. | ||
| And then you get into those things where maybe you don't want to start it, but you remember, remember those fuckers? | ||
| They got Little Johnny the other time, and they burned him, and so now you feel entitled. | ||
| Get him back! | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And then it never ends, because it's the other guy started it. | ||
| I'm not choosing this game, but hey, they started it, and then they remember that you did it. | ||
| It's like, you never got out. | ||
| Yeah, I tried to explain that to somebody once when I was talking about street fights. | ||
| And I was saying that, you know, if you get into a fight with someone, you're not just getting into a fight. | ||
| You're signing a contract that you will be in conflict with them back and forth until it's resolved. | ||
| It's not as simple as you get in a fight. | ||
| It's very rare that two people get in a fight and then after that fight's over, like, it's over. | ||
| We'll shake hands and walk away. | ||
| Even often in a contest, like a jujitsu match or a kickboxing match or something along those lines, After it's over, people are still upset if they lose, and they still want to get that guy back. | ||
| But a fight fight, like an actual fight on the street fight, oh my god, that can go on for years. | ||
| What was the famous feud in America? | ||
| The Hatfields and the McCoys, right? | ||
| These two wacky families killed each other back and forth for years. | ||
| They just couldn't resolve it. | ||
| That's why once you start, you better finish it. | ||
| If you're going to go down that way, then you have to go down all out. | ||
| Then you just need to really put an end to that situation where nobody from the other side can come get you. | ||
| But then in a war, you're talking genocide. | ||
| That's not exactly the most pleasant solution in the war that you want to get into. | ||
| But the reality is that beating somebody is only postponing the next fight. | ||
| It's kind of like World War I and World War II. They are mad because they got beaten. | ||
| They are reaching for a chance for revenge. | ||
| And the first time they have it, they'll jump on it because they are pissed off. | ||
| And understandably so. | ||
| So unless it's resolved in some way where everybody can say, we're done, right? | ||
| We're not saying we're happy, but can we live with the current compromise? | ||
| The stuff that we reach after the fight, the balance of power, can you live with it? | ||
| Then it becomes a lot... | ||
| That's why World War II, you know, dumping a ton of money into Germany and much of Western Europe rebuilding it. | ||
| They took away that resentment that otherwise would have been there. | ||
| Like, those fuckers put us in this situation and it ruined our life and that's why our economy sucks. | ||
| That's why everything, you know, being extra generous in that regard wasn't just generous out of the goodness of your heart. | ||
| It's because you want to make sure you don't fight World War III in 10 years down the road. | ||
| And that works. | ||
| That's a good alternative to genocide. | ||
| Yeah, smart people learned how to negotiate. | ||
| They go, look, let's just work this out. | ||
| Let's figure out a way, a mutually agreeable way, where we can walk away and have some dignity. | ||
| It's really fascinating. | ||
| I had this conversation with Duncan once, and it was the first time I ever thought this, but I said that the history of the human race is essentially military history. | ||
| I've been obsessed with this thought because next time I chat with Dan Carlin, that's what I want to bring up. | ||
| And the one question I want to ask him is exactly about this. | ||
| He's like, I love what Dan does. | ||
| I love a lot of history. | ||
| I dig it from so many different angles. | ||
| And yet, why do we always end up talking about horrible stuff? | ||
| And I do it too. | ||
| My first two episodes of History on Fire are all about some nasty, Yeah, it sinks. | ||
| Insane shit. | ||
| Why is it the stuff that we remember? | ||
| Why is it that the stuff that makes the history book is all the horrible atrocity, massacre, war, set people on fire? | ||
| Is it that just we don't do anything else or that it doesn't catch our attention? | ||
| I wish there was a way to also put the spotlight in history on some more mellow aspects of people who figured out ways to live a good life in the middle of all the shit that was going down. | ||
| It seems so much of it is, as you're saying, it's all military stuff. | ||
| It's all fight, war, explode the other side. | ||
| That's really the big events, though. | ||
| I mean, when you look at the history of the United States, what are the events that people talk about? | ||
| Well, arguably, the whole slavery, right? | ||
| Arguably, that's a war because it's a war on these people's sovereignty. | ||
| It's a war on their freedom. | ||
| And then a real war breaks out between the North and the South over the rights to this and then the economic aspects of it. | ||
| And then you look at World War I, of course, and World War II. | ||
| So we've got to fight the Nazis and then we got freedom and all this. | ||
| I mean, it's the entire country, like the history of this country is war. | ||
| And then you go back to Europe. | ||
| Well, the history of Europe is all war, too. | ||
| Now, other than figuring out the printing press and a bunch of different cool inventions. | ||
| One of the great podcasts that Dan Carlin did on history that's not necessarily about war is Riddled with Violence, The Prophets of Doom, about Martin Luther. | ||
| I mean, that's not about war, but it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| Yeah, it's still violence. | ||
| It's fucking horrific. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Horrific, amazing, horrific violence. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But I think a lot of it is there's a bias in the record because it's a cheap, easy way to get people's attention. | ||
| And so most of our history, it's an easy way for us to go down that path. | ||
| And I do it too, right? | ||
| If I look at 90% of the episodes I'm preparing for History on Fire, I'm like, oh, great. | ||
| It's another beheading of this, and it's another... | ||
| But why don't we—and I don't mean we as in—I mean in general. | ||
| It's like people who write history, our way of thinking. | ||
| Why—I'm not denying that part. | ||
| That's an important part, and we should look at it. | ||
| But why don't we also look at other things? | ||
| It's like, what's wrong with studying about, you know, putting the accent more on stuff about people dropping acid and having sex outside of marriage a lot more and listening to cool music and coming out with Jimi Hendrix? | ||
| And why is that that less important than the Cold War? | ||
| It's not. | ||
| To me, that just is... | ||
| I mean, how many people's life has it touched or has transformed that way? | ||
| A lot, as much as, you know, sometimes we think whose precedent is history. | ||
| In fact, in most of our lives, whose precedent is at most mildly important, at most, and there are so many other things that count for so much more. | ||
| But why is it that then when we write a history, it's about whose precedent and what war took place when there's so much other stuff in our lives that... | ||
| Account for more. | ||
| When we were talking about the 60s, isn't a big part of the 60s, though, the Vietnam War and the resistance to the Vietnam War? | ||
| And that sort of fueled that sort of crazy hippie behavior because they realized that these old assholes and their shitty, stupid ways had led us into the South Pacific in this crazy war that nobody wanted. | ||
| I mean, that's a big part, I think, of the rebellion of the 1960s. | ||
| It's almost unavoidable because that's the worst thing that can happen. | ||
| See, the worst thing that can happen is someone kills you or kills your loved ones, right? | ||
| So when that happens en masse, you know, like in war, well, those become the biggest blips on the social radar. | ||
| Yeah, you're right. | ||
| So I guess embrace our inner Game of Thrones and just deal with it. | ||
| Well, it kind of seems... | ||
| Like, it's unavoidable. | ||
| Well, what's unavoidable, it seems like, at least historically, I'm not saying about for the future, but war seemed unavoidable. | ||
| Because it was never avoided. | ||
| I mean, it's hard to argue that war is avoidable when it's never been avoided. | ||
| It's like, you kind of, at a certain point in time, you know, if a girl acts like a cunt all the time, she's always screaming and yelling and clawing and pulling chicks' hairs, and she's like, I'm not a cunt. | ||
| But you're a cunt every day! | ||
| You might be a cunt. | ||
| If you wear it today, you wear it the day before. | ||
| You fucking keyed three people's cars today. | ||
| You threw a fucking bag out the window. | ||
| You're a cunt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm glad you don't feel that way, but the evidence seems to say... | |
| I don't understand you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, people are warlike. | ||
| No, we're not. | ||
| We're not, man. | ||
| We're not. | ||
| Okay, but human history says you're wrong. | ||
| It really does. | ||
| Like, there's not a single moment in time in human history where someone, somewhere, wasn't killing. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| Let's look at it this way. | ||
| I believe firmly that if you, me, and Jamie all lived together on an island, we would not kill each other. | ||
| If we had plenty of food and we didn't argue over resources, we got along great, I don't think we would kill each other. | ||
| Assuming that there are at least three women there. | ||
| At least one girl that's got a lot of endurance. | ||
| That could work as well, okay. | ||
| That could also do it. | ||
| But even if there wasn't, right? | ||
| Even if we just went and jerked off in bushes for the rest of our lives. | ||
| You would say, okay, the odds of us killing each other are extremely, extremely small. | ||
| So if there was only three of us on the planet, there would be no war. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That would be it. | ||
| There would be no war. | ||
| But as soon as you get more than three, As soon as you get more than 10, like if there was 10 of us, if it was 10 of us living on an island, man, the odds of somebody getting jacked, it goes up. | ||
| They start, yeah. | ||
| You get to 20, ooh, things get weird. | ||
| Something could happen, things could get weird. | ||
| How about if it's 20 and 17 are guys and three are women? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Someone's going to die. | ||
| Yeah, at that point, it's a guarantee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a guarantee. | |
| It's not even up for debate. | ||
| It's a number thing, right? | ||
| You get to a certain number of people, and then war becomes inevitable. | ||
| And there's never been a time, ever, in the history of the human race where someone, somewhere, wasn't killing somebody. | ||
| It's literally never happened. | ||
| Not that we know of. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you need to read the Bible and go back to the time of Jesus! | |
| Adam and Eve never did anything to each other. | ||
| I think there's a certain point in time where you go back and people were essentially dealing with predators. | ||
| And that might have been the only time we weren't killing each other. | ||
| We're just constantly worried about getting eaten. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But even then, like giraffes kill each other. | ||
| I didn't know until this year that giraffes kill each other. | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| I just found out now. | ||
| Dude, you gotta see the way they do it. | ||
| What do they do? | ||
| They beat each other with their necks. | ||
| They use their head like a whip. | ||
| You know those weird knobs that they have on their heads? | ||
| They whip each other with those things. | ||
| They use their head literally like a whip. | ||
| It's the weirdest thing to... | ||
| Pull that shit up, Jamie. | ||
| They beat each other to death, though. | ||
| Like, commonly. | ||
| Beat each other to death. | ||
| Until I started hunting, I didn't know that deers kill each other all the time. | ||
| They stab each other all the time. | ||
| What a horrible dog-eat-dog world. | ||
| Imagine you grow swords on your head and just run around stabbing each other. | ||
| But giraffes, it's so odd to do it because it's a whipping thing. | ||
| Look. | ||
| See? | ||
| They whip each other. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Bang! | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| They stand side to side. | ||
| Yeah, they stand side to side and they push on each other and then they whip each other with their heads. | ||
| What are they thinking right now? | ||
| Look at how they do it. | ||
| This seems like it's sped up, Jamie. | ||
| Is it sped up? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Oh, it's not sped up. | ||
| No, it is sped up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's sped up. | ||
| This is not sped up. | ||
| Okay, this one's not sped up. | ||
| That's more realistic. | ||
| I think the first one in the... | ||
| This is a video series of giraffe... | ||
| What is the name of this video? | ||
| Giraffes fighting giraffe battles. | ||
| But they always do it the same way. | ||
| They go side to side, just like two dudes standing shoulder to shoulder, and then head-butting each other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Weird. | |
| Yeah, it's so strange, man. | ||
| And these guys at least are clinching this one. | ||
| The previous ones were in this stand side to side, walk each other, and then take five seconds where they are thinking about the next move. | ||
| But look, they get back to the same position. | ||
| They always get back to the shoulder-to-shoulder position. | ||
| When they clinch up, it's just to get back to the side-by-side position so they can fucking headbutt each other. | ||
| So strange. | ||
| These guys are hardcore. | ||
| And they use their head to the body. | ||
| See, they attack the body with those antlers. | ||
| They're like nubs, whatever it is. | ||
| But they'll go to the same spot over and over again, like right to the ribcage. | ||
| Can you imagine if giraffes had actually deer antlers? | ||
| They would just gore the shit out of each other. | ||
| They would. | ||
| But see, if you go to the zoo, you would never imagine that this takes place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Because one of the cool things about giraffes is that they're an animal that's so universally gentle that you can have babies feed them. | ||
| Like my daughter, when she was two years old, they give you lettuce and you hold out the lettuce and the giraffe comes over with this crazy tongue that's like an arm and they reach out with their tongue and it wraps it around the leaves and it pulls it. | ||
| But they're so confident in their behavior around people They let babies feed them. | ||
| But you get these two motherfuckers together and they fight over some pussy. | ||
| That's what he told. | ||
| It's exactly what this is. | ||
| That's exactly what the deer don't fight. | ||
| You know, deer get together in bachelor groups when they're not breeding, when the rut is over. | ||
| And they're all right. | ||
| And they're buddies. | ||
| They're all buddies together. | ||
| That's like one of the best ways that people hunt them out of the rut is to find bachelor groups. | ||
| They get done with those bitches. | ||
| They don't even want to hang out with them. | ||
| As soon as they get done fighting, or as soon as they're done fighting and fucking, they're like, let's just hang out, guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on. | |
| Let's go wander through the countryside. | ||
| Let's go camp. | ||
| Let's go hang out. | ||
| Tell some stories. | ||
| Come on, guys. | ||
| I know we stabbed each other a couple of weeks ago, but that's over, bro. | ||
| It's over. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You survive. | |
| I survive. | ||
| We can be friends again. | ||
| Let's get out of here. | ||
| They heal up quick, too. | ||
| That's another bizarre thing about deer. | ||
| It's like they'll stab each other, and they put these horrible gashes in their body, and then like a week later, it's like completely sealed up, and they're just walking around like nothing happened. | ||
| Wolverine power? | ||
| They're just super, super high metabolism, and probably just... | ||
| You know, they only live like seven years. | ||
| So I think whatever injuries they have just seals up quick. | ||
| Because there was this video of this guy. | ||
| He went bow hunting and he missed this deer. | ||
| He missed a good spot. | ||
| You know, he missed the vitals and he hit it in the shoulder. | ||
| So the deer got an arrow in its shoulder and then they found the deer a week later walking around like nothing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Arrow fell off. | |
| The hole in the shoulder had healed up, just sealed itself. | ||
| It's like, what the fuck? | ||
| That's freaky. | ||
| Well, they have to be like that. | ||
| In their world, they're getting stabbed all the time by swords that these dudes are growing on their heads. | ||
| They were competing for sex. | ||
| Competing for sex. | ||
| That goes back to my point. | ||
| If they were giraffe hookers or deer hookers, these guys would suddenly get along. | ||
| Well, the crazy thing about deer is it's not just about sex. | ||
| It's literally only about sex one time a year. | ||
| It just... | ||
| One time a year. | ||
| That increases the pressure. | ||
| It's like, this is my one chance, man, and I only live seven years, so how many chances do I really have in my life? | ||
| Three, four, five at most? | ||
| At most. | ||
| If you're in my way, I'm going to fucking kill you. | ||
| Most of them, they freeze to death. | ||
| They freeze to death, they starve to death. | ||
| Like, they'll wear their teeth down to nothing, and they can no longer process grains. | ||
| Ooh, that's not a good way to go. | ||
| It happens to a lot of deer. | ||
| Like, a lot of people will kill an old deer, and then they open its mouth up, and they go, wow, he would have never made it through the winter, because their teeth are gone. | ||
| They just have a very finite resource with those teeth. | ||
| At that point, you're really doing them a favor, because that's an avid way to go by slow starvation. | ||
| That's fucked up. | ||
| Or they get even worse. | ||
| They're on their way to getting starved and the coyotes find them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're weak. | ||
| And then you get eaten alive. | ||
| Asshole first. | ||
| That's how they get you. | ||
| There was a thing that I tweeted today, Jamie. | ||
| Did you see a thing about there's literally a new species that is evolving before our eyes. | ||
| It's a mix of coyotes, wolves, and dogs and domestic dogs. | ||
|
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|
No way. | |
| And that a hybrid of these three is incredibly successful. | ||
| And it's like the koi wolves are coyotes and wolves. | ||
| And we've known about them for a while. | ||
| And that's really a fascinating thing because it's a larger coyote. | ||
| But look at this. | ||
| New species evolving right before our eyes. | ||
| An ultra-successful mix of wolves, coyotes, and dogs. | ||
| It's a really interesting article. | ||
| But it's an actual... | ||
| This is from The Economist. | ||
| This is actually... | ||
| They're mating with each other. | ||
| And they're creating an actual species. | ||
| Really fast. | ||
| Wow, that's creepy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The inbreeding began up to 200 years ago as European settlers pushed into southern Ontario and cleared the animal's habitat for farming and killed a large number of wolves that lived there. | ||
| It also allowed coyotes to spread from the prairies, and the white farmers brought dogs into the region. | ||
| Over time, wolves began mating with their new, genetically similar neighbors, and the resulting offspring, which had been called the Eastern Coyote, or to some, the Coy Wolf, now number in the millions according to research of North Carolina State University This is really interesting stuff, man. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| 55 pounds? | ||
| No. | ||
| Not small at all. | ||
| No. | ||
| 437. This is cool. | ||
| An analysis of 437 hybrid animals found that the coyote DNA dominates its genetic makeup with about one-tenth of its DNA from dogs, usually from a larger dog such as Doberman, Pinchers, and German Shepherds, and a quarter from wolves. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's freaky. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Dabbled in size compared to a coyote. | ||
| That's big. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's fascinating to think how a species evolved in the first place. | ||
| How did a wolf become a wolf? | ||
| How did a giraffe become a giraffe? | ||
| And to see something like this happening and have a very clear line, like a genetic line, this is what caused this. | ||
| This is amazing stuff, man. | ||
| It's fucking trippy, though. | ||
| Sure is. | ||
| That's always where you wonder about evolution going wrong. | ||
| When you see those animals, you know, you think about wolves and then you see some of the dog species today, I'm like, how the fuck did you come about? | ||
| You're not suited for anything, man. | ||
| And they've been doing it for thousands of years. | ||
| That's like a modern dog has been around for thousands of years. | ||
| We didn't They don't even know the original origin. | ||
| There's a lot of speculation. | ||
| They believe that the wolves that were around human beings, they became different because they wanted the people to like them. | ||
| So they became the more successful ones that stayed with the ones that are a little more timid and more beta. | ||
| Playful. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They did a study on foxes, a really interesting study that they highlighted in this Radiolab podcast. | ||
| But they were talking about genetic diversity in foxes where they only allowed the foxes that were timid and more accepting of human touch and to be around humans, they only allowed them to live. | ||
| And they sort of like bred Let those breed with other ones. | ||
| And over like 10 years, they had completely changed the fox DNA. They had completely changed to the point where their ears were no longer pointed. | ||
| They flopped. | ||
| They didn't stick straight up. | ||
| They flopped. | ||
| Their jaws became more feminine. | ||
| In ten years. | ||
| Yeah, and their colors started changing. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ten years. | ||
| It's like three generations maybe for foxes or something. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, probably more than three generations because, you know, a generation isn't exactly the entire lifetime. | ||
| It's like how long it takes you to breed into successful... | ||
| You know, you might leave... | ||
| A couple of years or something, so maybe five generations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's crazy, though. | ||
| Still not much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Five generations is nothing. | ||
| Well, that's what they're finding now more and more, the more they study life, is that life can evolve and change and shift and adapt incredibly quickly. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| My favorite story of that is the Congo. | ||
| Because the Congo used to be like a grassland. | ||
| It used to be a savanna. | ||
| And then the climate changed and it became this really lush rainforest. | ||
| But a lot of these animals that were like savanna animals, they got trapped. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They are stuck. | ||
| They're stuck inside this rainforest. | ||
| So, like, there's this BBC documentary on the Congo, and one of the cool things is seeing this swampy, crazy rainforest, and then seeing these deer run through the water of the rainforest. | ||
| These antelopes. | ||
| And you're like, whoa! | ||
| They're supposed to be in grasslands, and they're just trapped in this insanely dense rainforest. | ||
| Did they change anything like their habits, anything about their physical features that was dramatically different? | ||
| Some of them. | ||
| One of them is called a diker and a diker is a very small antelope but it can swim underwater for up to 100 yards and it eats fish. | ||
| What the hell? | ||
| I don't know what I would picture. | ||
| 100 yards underwater to eat fish. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| It became something that adapted to that environment. | ||
| They can eat fish. | ||
| But they found that deer eat birds. | ||
| They didn't know that until really recently. | ||
| And one of the ways they found it was through camera traps. | ||
| Because they have these trail cams that people put up when they're hunting. | ||
| And when they put up these trail cams, as the trail cams got more and more sophisticated, they started using video trail cameras. | ||
| And as the video trail cameras started, you know, they get the data back from them, they started finding, like, occasionally birds, like deer would eat ground-nesting birds. | ||
| It's so ruined in my Disney fantasies. | ||
| You just told me that giraffes spit the shit out of each other, that deer eat birds. | ||
| There are no certainties in life anymore. | ||
| I know, they're all evil. | ||
| Those goddamn animals, the ones that we have anthropomorphized into these beautiful creatures that exist solely on the power of love. | ||
| They did some sort of a study where they were capturing... | ||
| Certain birds with nets, and they'd set the nets up, and the birds would run into the nets and get caught. | ||
| Well, the deer would just walk right up to the birds in the nets and just start eating them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Just chewing them alive while they're in the net. | ||
| So much for the innocent male deer, huh? | ||
| Because it wasn't like they were just testing, like trying it out. | ||
| Like, is this food? | ||
| No, they just went right to it. | ||
| So deer apparently eat ground-nesting birds all the time. | ||
| Being a ground nesting bird, that looks like shitty human... | ||
| That's just bad evolution right there. | ||
| What a dog shit life. | ||
| What were you thinking? | ||
| You're a bird. | ||
| What the hell are you doing on the ground? | ||
| That's just a bad idea. | ||
| Don't you know how to put sticks and twigs in the trees, you dumb fuck? | ||
| Not that that helps a lot. | ||
| It's like where I live, there's regularly, almost on a monthly basis, there's like some cute little birds nesting, the eggs are hatching and everything, and the hawk regularly come by and just rip the shit out of them, and I find Pieces of birds everywhere, and it's pretty nasty. | ||
| Yeah, my friend Tom was sitting out on his back porch. | ||
| He was one of the directors of news radio back in the day. | ||
| Tom Saronis, great guy. | ||
| And he was in Studio City. | ||
| And he goes, I'm sitting on... | ||
| He had this sort of Georgia accent. | ||
| I'm sitting on my porch, enjoying my coffee, and I see a dove, or some sort of a bird, maybe it was a dove, sitting on the fence. | ||
| And then, out of nowhere, a hawk comes and snatches that bird up. | ||
| And he goes, and part of me felt lucky to see that. | ||
| Right, yeah. | ||
| Like, lucky, because that doesn't happen every day, but it also, like, made you realize, like, it's hard out there for a pimp. | ||
| It's a tough ward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And birds eat birds! | ||
| That's another fucked up thing. | ||
| Yeah, what's with that? | ||
| I never thought of that. | ||
| I saw, not so long ago, I was coming back home and I hear this bird just yapping away, just making this crazy noise. | ||
| I'm like, what the hell? | ||
| And I look up in the tree and I see this one bird just... | ||
| Just mad, just going... | ||
| And then I see that right next to it, like maybe 10 feet away, there's this hawk that has another bird in his mouth that looks exactly like the one that's yelling. | ||
| So this one is probably like saying, you son of a bitch, you are just eating my wife. | ||
| That's not right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's like... | |
| I was like, man, that's a rough life right there. | ||
| Yeah, hawks jack everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Everybody gets jacked. | ||
| Except I saw once a YouTube video of a hawk committing suicide by eagle. | ||
| Decide to attack an eagle's nest. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| It's not a good idea. | ||
| You see this eagle who's just like minding his business. | ||
| It's this big, bold eagle. | ||
| And then clearly before even the camera picks up, because the camera, I guess, was set on the nest to capture whatever was going on there. | ||
| You see this eagle just suddenly see something and busts up, like ready for the fight. | ||
| And the next thing you see is this hawk coming in, just fighting with the eagle. | ||
| And it lasts about six seconds as the eagle just goes whack, whack, and just rip the hawk to pieces. | ||
| It's like, you know, I'm glad you beat all the other birds, but an eagle is an eagle. | ||
| Step away. | ||
| You're beginning to overestimate your skills here, man. | ||
| It got drunk. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| It got drunk and started to take on an eagle. | ||
| Maybe ate some fermented berries or something. | ||
| They're Fucking eagle, they think they are all that. | ||
| I'm gonna show them right now. | ||
| And yeah, that did not work. | ||
| It's interesting that birds fly in flocks, right? | ||
| Like Canadian geese and ducks and sparrows. | ||
| But not the ones that eat meat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| The ones that eat meat. | ||
| You're on your own, bitch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| You know? | ||
| There's probably this competition. | ||
| Something about that flesh. | ||
| Something about eating that meat just changes the whole dynamic of the situation. | ||
| The ones that eat the meat. | ||
| Speaking of which, after seeing your Instagram picture of your elk dinner, I'm like, I want in. | ||
| I'm going to be knocking on the Rogan side. | ||
| Dude, I got some elk for you. | ||
| Fuck, I wish I had gone to the... | ||
| I have to... | ||
| Get some, but I have a freezer in the back. | ||
| I'll hook you up. | ||
| Next time I see you, I'll bring you some elk steaks. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| You'll love it. | ||
| I'll teach you how to cook it, too. | ||
| It's a little different because there's very little fat. | ||
| You have to cook it quick. | ||
| The easiest to cook, I'll give you some ground elk is the easiest to cook, like elk burgers. | ||
| Super high protein, too. | ||
| I think it's 22 grams of protein per pound, which is way more than domestic beef. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I think the highest is elk and the second highest is moose. | ||
| Those are the highest of that type of animal that you can get. | ||
| But it's really delicious too, man. | ||
| So good. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| So good for you too. | ||
| And you don't have to feel guilty about factory farming and all that other. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I mean, if you're going to eat meat, might as well. | ||
| It's better that wild and had a good life and that's it. | ||
| You know, factory farming sucks. | ||
| Have you ever seen an eagle in the wild? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wild to see, right? | ||
| When you see one in real life, you're like, God, those things are big. | ||
| South Dakota. | ||
| Yeah, I've seen them. | ||
| South Dakota? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a crazy video online from Alaska of this kid and his whole family. | ||
| Their lawn is covered with bald eagles, and they were throwing out fish. | ||
| They had some salmon, so they had filleted the salmon, and then they had the bottoms, the ribs and the heads and all that stuff, and they had thrown it out for these eagles, and their fucking lawn is just overwhelmed with bald eagles. | ||
| So we like to think of bald eagles as being something extremely endangered and protected. | ||
| Alaska is a different story, I guess. | ||
| It's a totally different story. | ||
| They're protected in some places, but in Alaska they're not protected. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, not that they're not protected, I should say. | ||
| They're endangered in a lot of places, but they're not endangered in Alaska. | ||
| They're still protected. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here it is. | |
| Like, look at all these. | ||
| No way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what's the name of this video, Jamie? | ||
| It says 1 p.m. | ||
| on a summer night in... | ||
| How is that a summer night? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's 11 p.m. | |
| Oh. | ||
| You can't see the other one. | ||
| I was like, you inbreds. | ||
| It's not night just because it's p.m. | ||
| But look at all these eagles, man. | ||
| And the ones that aren't black with white, those are the immature ones. | ||
| Those are the young ones. | ||
| And sometimes those young ones are fucking enormous, man. | ||
| Yeah, they don't look small, that's for sure. | ||
| No, they're all over this guy's lawn. | ||
| And they throw these buckets of fish out for them. | ||
| But they have eagles all over the place up there. | ||
| In California we have some eagles still. | ||
| We have golden eagles. | ||
| They still find them. | ||
| But they're just not, for whatever reason, not nearly as common as they are up there in Alaska. | ||
| I guess it's also probably because they have a lot of food up there with all the salmon. | ||
| The salmon runs. | ||
| This is just one part of the video. | ||
| This video is pretty long. | ||
| But see, they're sitting around waiting for this guy to chuck fish heads for them. | ||
| It's just an amazing animal. | ||
| This animal, this flying raptor that really is probably exactly like what the dinosaurs are like. | ||
| It's fascinating when they find more and more evidence that many dinosaurs had feathers. | ||
| And I think there's really probably not much difference between some birds... | ||
| Like eagles, and some dinosaurs. | ||
| And then they know that some birds, even birds that lived fairly recently, like the terror birds, They were these large, flightless, six-foot, seven-foot-tall birds. | ||
| He's going to go for the head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at him. | |
| He's like, should I get that head? | ||
| I want to get that head, but that fucking dude with the camera. | ||
| He's still close. | ||
| He's thinking about it. | ||
| Look at his little baby steps. | ||
| Oh, pussy. | ||
| Backing out. | ||
| Pussy. | ||
| No head for you, faggot. | ||
| He's swooping in, trying to get a hole. | ||
| This one is more mature. | ||
| He's got a little bit more confidence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jack! | |
| There you go. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I love how they just swoop in and grab it. | ||
| Goddamn, they're awesome animals. | ||
| I find the world of nature to be unbelievably beautiful and exciting and crazy, but for whatever reason, I'm way more thrilled by the predators. | ||
| When I see things like this, when I see raptors, that's what excites me. | ||
| If I see some sparrows or something like that, I think we can relate more in the sense of, you know, as human beings, we have, you know, hunting and gathering has been, what, 95% of the time we've been around. | ||
| It's what we did. | ||
| It's what has been the norm for human beings for the longest period of time. | ||
| Yeah, but there's just something about dangerous things. | ||
| I want to show you this picture that somebody sent me. | ||
| This family friend has chickens, and they caught a bobcat eating their chickens. | ||
| Look at this fucker, Jamie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| Yeah, hold it up to the camera, see if people can see it. | ||
| This is... | ||
| This is like, I think they live in Woodland Hills. | ||
| Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff out there. | ||
| They're not far away from here at all. | ||
| That's what's trippy is that, you know, now, for the longest time, I live closer to the water. | ||
| Now that I'm living inland, I'm kind of close to Glendale, to the hills, up in Eagle Rock and stuff. | ||
| It's crazy the stuff that you find running around in the middle of houses you see everywhere. | ||
| Skunks, foxes, raccoons. | ||
| Yeah, all the time. | ||
| The other day was fucking hilarious. | ||
| I'm coming back home. | ||
| I was teaching a night class. | ||
| So I come back home. | ||
| It's probably like 10.30 p.m. | ||
| or something. | ||
| I arrive. | ||
| I'm walking through my garden. | ||
| It's pretty pitch black. | ||
| And just maybe 20 feet to my right, I hear just something growling at me, right? | ||
| And I don't know, it completely skipped my rational brain. | ||
| There was no thought in my mind. | ||
| The next thing I hear is this meaner, heavier growl and I realize, oh wait, that's me. | ||
| It's me growling at whatever other fucking thing was there. | ||
| What was it? | ||
| Just pissed off, right? | ||
| I never know because whatever the other thing was decided, okay, you're fucking crazier than me so I believe it because I had it. | ||
| I honestly don't think he was anything big. | ||
| I think he was probably like some pissed off raccoon trying to show that they are tough and they are not really. | ||
| I don't think he was any. | ||
| Because coyotes wouldn't growl. | ||
| If they want you, they come after you, but they're not going to growl. | ||
| And they don't, because they are small, so they mind their business. | ||
| Mountain lion wouldn't, and it's very rare anyway, so it's probably a stupid raccoon or something. | ||
| Yeah, he probably got too close to his garbage stash. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And he was all trying to... | ||
| Yeah, this was a bobcat. | ||
| This fucking crazy mangy looking creepy animal. | ||
| And like I said, this is like real close to where the studio is. | ||
| And this is a guy had a chicken coop and this thing figured out how to get in his chicken coop and was eating one of his chickens in his coop and found it. | ||
| What a creepy looking face on that fucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at that. | |
| Looks like a mean bastard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, he's out there earning. | ||
| He's earning his keep. | ||
| He's not getting any welfare in the form of cat food. | ||
| Yeah, nobody's handing. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| He's giving him shit. | ||
| How big do Bobcats get? | ||
| They get like 30 or 40 pounds, right? | ||
| They're pretty big. | ||
| Yeah, but I would imagine our coyote is bigger, somewhere around there. | ||
| I bet coyotes don't fuck with Bobcats. | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| Yeah, I bet it's too much work. | ||
| I mean, they probably could kill them if they got a bunch of them together, but it probably tastes like shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's probably like chewing a shoe. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like it's old muscle, there's no softness. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what apparently tastes good? | ||
| It's mountain lion. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I know this guy in Colorado. | ||
| In Colorado, they're pretty... | ||
| There's a bunch. | ||
| They're good about taking care of them, too. | ||
| They have mountain lion seasons, and they try to keep the populations down. | ||
| Some people argue, saying that they're killing too many, and this and that. | ||
| You shouldn't kill them, but... | ||
| There needs to be some sort of a balance. | ||
| Otherwise, they start appearing on people's lawns and killing people's animals. | ||
| California has a real problem because they don't allow people to hunt them. | ||
| They have a lot of coyotes or a lot of mountain lions, and that's one of the reasons why the deer population in California is so low. | ||
| They're up, of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And some people like it that way. | ||
| They think, well, that's the natural balance. | ||
| Really shouldn't have that many deer around. | ||
| And ultimately, I mean, I can see that point where it's probably better to have a lot of mountain lion than it is a lot of Lyme disease from ticks and a lot of deer slamming into cars like you do in places that don't have high mountain lion populations. | ||
| You know, like Michigan or something like that, where they have a lot of them. | ||
| What the fuck was my point? | ||
| That we should eat mountain lions. | ||
| Oh, they taste good. | ||
| These guys that I know that hunt them in Colorado. | ||
| And I said, really? | ||
| I'm like, what does it taste like? | ||
| And he goes, it's a lot like pork. | ||
| It tastes like pork loin. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They take the back strap from a mountain lion and, you know, they roast it. | ||
| That's weird because usually the big muscular predators are not exactly what you think of what you want to eat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Apparently it tastes really good. | ||
| They said it tastes really good. | ||
| Like this one guy that I was talking to, it's one of his favorite meats. | ||
| He said it tastes just like a pork roast. | ||
| They make it with like a blueberry sauce. | ||
| I'm getting nature school today. | ||
| I found out that giraffes are cunts, that deer eat birds, that you can eat a mountain lion. | ||
| You know, all sorts of goodies. | ||
| There's all sorts of things to be learned out there about the wild natural world. | ||
| Like I said, there's something about the predators that I find just unbelievably fascinating. | ||
| And I think it's because they have to be so explosive and so quick and so dangerous in order to get what they want to get. | ||
| They can't just walk around and chew on grass. | ||
| Like cows. | ||
| Nobody gets excited when they see a cow. | ||
| Because it's just... | ||
| Even if it wasn't so common, they're fucking boring. | ||
| Buffalo, they're the same, but at least they have cool hair. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They make some grunting sounds that are... | |
| Yeah, buffaloes are cool. | ||
| I ended up once in the middle of a herd of buffalo in... | ||
| Custer State Park in South Dakota. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Where I took like, they have, you know, the irregular roads that you can take with the car. | ||
| Then they have some dirt roads that you can still take with the car. | ||
| So I was kind of off the beaten path. | ||
| And all of a sudden, I find myself in the middle of like probably 300 buffaloes. | ||
| So I kind of stop the car, wait there, and they are going everywhere around me, right? | ||
| There's like one side to the car, the other in front of me, behind me. | ||
| And they are big, powerful animals. | ||
| You know, you see them, you're praying not to piss them off because they are solid, you know, they don't mess around. | ||
| He was awesome, though. | ||
| I mean, once I figured, okay, these guys don't want to fuck with me, they just want to move around me and they don't care, he was great because you see all the calves running after them. | ||
| They're beautiful. | ||
| They're really awesome animals. | ||
| And, yeah, that's the thing with all wild species that are cooler than, you know, all the domesticated species tend to be dumber, tend to be a lot like, Oh, somebody's going to bring me food anyway. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In the wild, you die, you know. | ||
| You need to be on... | ||
| It's like when you see a dog and you see a coyote. | ||
| Coyotes are silent. | ||
| You don't hear them make a damn noise. | ||
| You see them and you're like, oh, is that a dog? | ||
| And in three seconds, you know it's not a dog because the way they move, the way they... | ||
| It's a whole different game. | ||
| Most dogs are all damp and happy and they're like, oh, oh, oh, I'm here, I'm doing... | ||
| They are way noisier. | ||
| It's... | ||
| Coyotes are sneaky. | ||
| Yeah, the wilder version is always... | ||
| You don't cut it if you're not smart in the wild. | ||
| It's a hard life. | ||
| It's a hard life. | ||
| And they have this air about them. | ||
| They're just trying to catch something, trying to sneak it around. | ||
| The first time I saw a coyote was in Burbank in 1994 when I first moved here. | ||
| I was staying at the Oakwoods. | ||
| The Oakwoods, they have these pre-furnished apartments. | ||
| That's where I lived. | ||
| And I was driving to my place and I saw this dog on the road and another dog next to him. | ||
|
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And I was like, Oh shit, that's a wolf. | |
| And I realized, oh that's a coyote. | ||
| That's a live coyote. | ||
| And I realized, those are wild coyotes. | ||
| And they're just wandering through Burbank. | ||
| How fucking strange that they can just exist on the streets. | ||
| I figured if you lived in the rural areas, you'd encounter them. | ||
| But I didn't realize that they had actually gone deep, deep, deep into the cities in search of cats and shit. | ||
| Big time. | ||
| I found one in my yard not so long ago, and it was getting a bit too comfortable. | ||
| It was just kind of roaming around. | ||
| I was like, first, you're like, oh, this is so cool. | ||
| I can't believe I'm seeing this. | ||
| After a while, like, okay, they're getting a little too comfortable in my backyard. | ||
| Especially because you have a kid. | ||
| And I walked out, and, you know, so the coyotes are moving away, and then I realized, what the hell am I doing? | ||
| I'm putting a wild animal with his back against the fence. | ||
| That can be a good idea. | ||
| That's... | ||
| But that was my sweet illusion because my idea of the fence, like I took a look at me and was like, you call this a fence? | ||
| It was like probably a good six-foot fence and he just jumped it in one thing without even just, it's like, these will keep out a dog. | ||
| Those stupid things you may keep around, but me, I got something else going on. | ||
| And I was like, okay, wild animals are a whole different game, but... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I had a coyote kill one of my chickens. | ||
| Hopped my fence like it was nothing. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, I watched him hop the fence with the chicken in his mouth. | ||
| I was like, wow. | ||
| That was... | ||
| They're powerful. | ||
| Motherfucker. | ||
| Well, when chickens brood, you have to remove them from their regular nest because they'll sit in the nesting box and they'll pull their feathers off and they get sick. | ||
| And they can do it for like a month and a half at a time. | ||
| So what you got to do is you got to put them in a small cage for a couple days where they have to stand on a rail. | ||
| They have to clutch and sit on this rail. | ||
| And you do that for a couple days and then they'll get over their brooding instincts and get normal again. | ||
| It's just a cycle because they're not having sex. | ||
| Oh, is that what it is? | ||
| Yeah, because they're not having sex. | ||
| Like, when you eat an egg, I didn't know this until really late in life, but an egg is... | ||
| Get you ready for a new piece of information. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| I thought an egg would become a chicken. | ||
| This is how retarded I am. | ||
| I thought the only way that a chicken makes an egg is if she gets fucked by a rooster, and then an egg comes out, and then they sit on the egg, and it becomes a chicken, and you just got to get the egg before the chicken hatches, and you cook it. | ||
| That's not the case. | ||
| That's my understanding of it, so please enlighten me now. | ||
| They actually lay eggs all the time with no males involved whatsoever. | ||
| So I have 22 chickens, I have no males, they're all females, and they lay usually, if not an egg a day, at the very least an egg every other day. | ||
| Close, okay. | ||
| And those eggs will never be chickens. | ||
| Never. | ||
| So people that are vegetarians that don't eat eggs, Like, you're really silly, because it's animal protein that doesn't hurt anybody. | ||
| These chickens, they lay these eggs, whether you like them or not. | ||
| And if you don't eat them, they just rot. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You just, you know. | ||
| But these chickens, I would take them when they were brooding, and then I'd put them in this other box. | ||
| And the other box was outside of their coop. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| And it was, you know, fairly secure, but this coyote had figured out how to tip it over and got the chicken, and he had them in his mouth. | ||
| And I watched him hold it in his mouth and run through my yard with it in his mouth. | ||
| I'm like, this motherfucker! | ||
| And I opened the door thinking, like, maybe I would be able to get to him before he could jump the fence with the chicken. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Not even closer. | ||
| Just leapt over it like it was nothing. | ||
| Boing! | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Their ability is amazing. | ||
| And a mountain lion? | ||
| Way crazier. | ||
| They can just do ridiculous shit. | ||
| They can jump like 12 foot fences. | ||
| That would freak me out. | ||
| In the wild, the mountain lion, if you don't have any weapons on New York, that's not a good thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's scary shit. | ||
| Definitely scary shit. | ||
| There's a video of this guy hiking and he's hiking and as he's hiking this mountain lion just sitting there staring at him watching him. | ||
| He's on this trail and he starts making noise and smacking sticks against the ground but it's like that guy probably came super close to getting eaten. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And if he was smaller especially if he was like a small woman. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| There was a case a few years ago in Griffith Park there was some lady got eaten by a mountain lion while hiking. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| I'm not surprised. | ||
| They're out there. | ||
| There's a lot of them. | ||
| They track quite a few of them, but I guess when it comes to large, big predators, it's probably one of the best ones to have around because they have plenty of shit that they eat. | ||
| They keep away from people for the most part. | ||
| But it is weird that we just... | ||
| Not only do we want to help them, they're setting up these... | ||
| They're like bridges that go across the highway because one of the ways that mountain lions die is trying to cross the highway. | ||
| They try to cross to 101 and they get nailed. | ||
| I say fuck them. | ||
| You're too stupid. | ||
| You're so stupid. | ||
| Learn how to cross traffic. | ||
| Dumb fucking cat. | ||
| It's so stupid, you run into traffic. | ||
| It's not a cat that needs to be around. | ||
| That's nature's way of thinning the herd. | ||
| There's a lot of them. | ||
| We don't really need to protect them that much. | ||
| They need to spend millions of dollars building a bridge. | ||
| How about clean up Skid Row? | ||
| How about work on those animals? | ||
| I like to go to Big Bear because, you know, it's only two hours away from me or something, but it's awesome. | ||
| It's like a whole other environment. | ||
| It's beautiful, the trees, everything. | ||
| So I like to go out there. | ||
| And the place where I usually go, I was chatting with some neighbors and they were telling me, yeah, you know, these days bears have stopped coming around. | ||
| I'm like, why? | ||
| What's up? | ||
| He's like, oh, because a mountain lion moved into the neighborhood and even they are freaked out by him. | ||
| I mean, the bears in Big Bear are not this huge They're black bears. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And appearing to this mountain lion is extra aggressive and the bears decided, let's move to a nicer neighborhood. | ||
| Oh, so one gangster mountain lion moved in? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And so I was hiking around and it was probably 6 p.m. | ||
| and I'm like, do I really want to do this at this time? | ||
| This does not seem like the best plan in the world right now. | ||
| No weapons. | ||
| Yeah, I don't like this too much. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta go with like a fucking full hockey outfit on. | ||
| Maybe a football pads and some chain mail. | ||
| They're not gonna get you though. | ||
| They have things to eat. | ||
| They have plenty of things to eat. | ||
| Most of the time mountain lions don't want to have anything to do with people. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, of course. | |
| It's the sick old ones that they need food so bad that they're willing to take a chance on a person. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But for the most part, even if you do like... | ||
| The natural selection process has probably eliminated people from their diet because every mountain lion that chose to eat a person was killed. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Somehow or another... | ||
| They know. | ||
| Yeah, they know. | ||
| Don't fuck with those bipedal... | ||
| But if they think they can get away with it... | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But, you know, as beautiful as they are, they are... | ||
| They're terrifying and they're ferocious and everything. | ||
| But I would be way more thrilled to see one of those than I would to see something that doesn't kill things. | ||
| It's weird, right? | ||
| I think it goes back to the same thing we were talking about regarding history. | ||
| Why is it that we're fascinated with that? | ||
| And we are. | ||
| There's no denying it. | ||
| And it would be bullshit to pretend. | ||
| No, I like peace and mellow and I like to see people shake hands. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| There's a beauty to some mellow, peaceful stuff, but we dig. | ||
| Why do we fight it? | ||
| It's what it is, right? | ||
| That's the game. | ||
| In nature, we like it. | ||
| We like it among history. | ||
| Consequences. | ||
| Half of it is about the conflict and the wars. | ||
|
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It's all about that stuff. | |
| Conflict and consequences. | ||
| If you were in the ocean and you saw a big marlin, like, wow, that'd be cool. | ||
| Wow, look at that marlin. | ||
| But if you saw a shark eat the marlin, it'd be way more exciting. | ||
| Whales are cool to see. | ||
| They're beautiful to see. | ||
| But a killer whale is way cooler than a regular whale. | ||
| There's that something's gonna happen here. | ||
| Something exciting and dramatic is going on. | ||
| A shark. | ||
| A shark is way cooler than a regular fish. | ||
| Yeah, there's something about those type of animals. | ||
| I would love to go to Africa in a safari if it wasn't for malaria and Ebola. | ||
| If it wasn't for those 57 reasons, yes, that would be... | ||
| Fucking parasites and all kinds of crazy shit. | ||
| I would love to go to Africa just in the off chance of seeing a lion take something down on a safari. | ||
| I would love to go and see that. | ||
| I'd love to witness that. | ||
| I wonder how often that takes place, like when you go on one of those safaris. | ||
| I wonder how often you actually see something get jacked. | ||
| Yeah, even just because they are hunting doesn't mean they're going to be successful because, of course, a bunch of times you fail. | ||
| And I think that's part of the interesting conflict is something's going to happen and the two sides, whoever the two sides are, are trying opposite things. | ||
| So there's this conflict of will and somebody's going to get their way and somebody isn't. | ||
| So there's that element of excitement that almost makes you want to bet on it like, Who's going to win? | ||
| Who's going to step up with their A game and succeed? | ||
| Who's going to fall miserably? | ||
| It's cool when you watch fights. | ||
| It's cool when you watch anything. | ||
| Even if it's not a fight, if it's the lion chasing the gazelle, it's like, can the gazelle speed leave the lion in the dust and just leave him pissed off and hungry? | ||
| Or is it going to... | ||
| There's that question there. | ||
| It's like, let's see how they play their cards when life is on the line, you know? | ||
| Yeah, and that contemplation of how the outcome's gonna go down, like, that, for whatever reason, is one of the most compelling things that people can watch. | ||
| We're so strange in that regard. | ||
| That is, like, one of the most interesting things for people. | ||
| I mean, that's why the Romans, I mean, when they were feeding lions or Christians, that's what that was all about. | ||
| It's like to see how long that guy can last in there. | ||
| Just to gross out your listeners, check this out. | ||
| This is a nasty story that I did not know about. | ||
| So one thing that would happen was after they would have the beasts either fight each other or they would have the lions eat Christians or something, then a typical thing is that after the end of the day when a whole bunch of these animals have been killed in one fight or another, The Roman emperors, to kind of look cool and popular with the crowds, would then distribute the meat to all the poor people of Rome. | ||
| So all the animals killed in the arena would then be eaten by all the poorest people in Rome as a freebie. | ||
| Because you're a poor person, and you're more likely than not, a lot of people in Rome were pretty close to starving a lot of the times, nothing got to be thrown away. | ||
| You eat anything, right? | ||
| You eat the whole animal. | ||
| Whatever they give you, you eat it. | ||
| So what does that mean? | ||
| That means that among other things that would end up as weird exotic dish on a Roman table, sometimes you get also the interiors of animals that have just been eating people. | ||
| So through via second hand you're also eating people since you're eating stomach contents of a lion that just got killed in the arena and that lion just finished feeding on a Christian so you're having a lion Christian burger for yourself. | ||
| This is just something you just found out about? | ||
| Maybe three, four years ago. | ||
| I was doing some research on gladiators and games and all of that. | ||
| And I started picking that same information in a bunch of sources. | ||
| I'm like, okay, so this is not bullshit. | ||
| This is... | ||
| So is that something they discussed in the history texts? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Like, they discussed that people would talk about accidentally eating people? | ||
| Or, like, how would they say it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Essentially, they were like, hey, people ate the whole thing. | ||
| There was no—nothing was thrown away. | ||
| The whole thing was—and I guess—I don't know if there were primary sources that referred to this that were reported. | ||
| I forget the exact, you know, the smoking guns that say, yeah, this is what happened. | ||
| But I remember seeing it in enough secondary sources to say, okay, there's something to that story. | ||
| I didn't know there was any history at all of people eating lions. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't as a choice. | ||
| But if you are a starving plebeian in Rome, it's nothing else. | ||
| And the emperor says, look what a nice guy I am. | ||
| I'm giving you a lion's stomach. | ||
| Please, have fun. | ||
| That is the civilization that we always point to when we talk about excess leading to chaos, leading to... | ||
| The decline of civilization. | ||
| We always talk about Rome, but isn't the United States way more fucked up and decadent than Rome ever was, except for feeding Christians to lions? | ||
| Other than that, if you look at the overall numbers of death Yeah, there's a lot of strange stuff going on. | ||
| The shit that we've done to the environment, shit that we've done, I mean, just a sheer number of human beings you're dealing with, 350, what is it, somewhere 350 million? | ||
| Yeah, it's a lot. | ||
| It's crazy that they got to the point where they were entertaining themselves by bringing in gigantic predators. | ||
| Like, how far is Rome from Africa? | ||
| How the fuck do they get lions? | ||
| Yeah, they would have hunters in Africa trap them. | ||
| How'd they trap them? | ||
| I guess set up a bait on something. | ||
| They would fall in a big pit where they can climb their way out. | ||
| And then, I don't know exactly how they get a cage on them. | ||
| I'm sure a lot of people died to provide the lions for Rome, and then you ship them by boat through Sicily, then they send up to Rome. | ||
| And they did it to a level that they say that the animal population of North Africa changed completely because of the Roman games. | ||
|
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Really? | |
| Because they were killing thousands upon thousands of them, that they literally, they drove some species extinct in North Africa, at least in that part, you know. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| Yeah that's on such a massive scale they were doing it. | ||
| All for the games. | ||
| And the Roman... | ||
| The guys were setting up the games. | ||
| They were kind of like... | ||
| Remember when Pride was on and there was this wacky Japanese matchmaking where they would have like, let's throw the 600-pound hood against the 150-pound. | ||
| Let's see what happens. | ||
| You know, it's like... | ||
| Roman's matchmakers were like Japanese matchmakers. | ||
| They had those ideas. | ||
| It's like, I wonder what happens if we throw a lion and a bear. | ||
| Let's see what... | ||
| You know, let's try... | ||
| They would do that stuff all the time. | ||
| Was there a civilization... | ||
| Like that before them? | ||
| Or did they invent these kind of games? | ||
| Probably the gladiatorial stuff was ancient in Greece. | ||
| And some people think about the Etruscans as well. | ||
| There may have been some origin there. | ||
| Because the story about the gladiators is that it started out as human sacrifice. | ||
| That they would do it rather than... | ||
| Originally, they probably sacrificed somebody on the grave of some important person. | ||
| Because the idea was that their blood was feeding the spirit of the dead. | ||
|
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| Then probably somebody said, hey, how about instead of sacrificing me, I give you entertainment so we have a nice big fight. | ||
| I get the other prisoner of war. | ||
| We go at it. | ||
| One of us die. | ||
| It doesn't have to be me. | ||
| I have at least a shot. | ||
| One of us, the blood will feed the dead, and the other one got to walk home alive. | ||
| And they decided, hey, cool. | ||
| It's like we got entertainment on top of the sacrifice. | ||
| That's one of the popular theories. | ||
| Do you think it was the prisoner's idea, or do you think it was like some... | ||
| I would think there would more likely be some sadistic ruler's idea. | ||
| Like you want to live? | ||
| Yeah, there's that, probably. | ||
| You have a chance. | ||
| I throw one sword into the cage. | ||
| That could be, but at the same time, if I'm the one about being sacrificed, I'm like, hey, I'm going to make it fun for you guys. | ||
| Just bring me somebody else. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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Wow. | |
| But yeah, either case, it started out probably as a religious thing, and then it evolved into, oh, this is fun, screw the religion, but just let's have a good time. | ||
| Well, we always point to the decadence of the Roman Empire as being like the pinnacle of excess, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's how we look at it. | ||
| But then you go to Disneyland and you see people on scooters everywhere you go where they've eaten themselves into these gelatinous beanbag style human beings. | ||
| I was just at Disneyland. | ||
| Every time I go, there are more scooters. | ||
| There's more and more people just getting so big that they can't walk. | ||
| Yeah, let's make it easier for people to lead themselves to that because that's what we want. | ||
| One of the reasons why I think it's interesting for many people in the U.S. to study Rome and there's this fascination for Rome is because the parallels are not that hard to see. | ||
| You see that super powerful civilization that keeps growing and growing in power. | ||
| And eventually hit the tipping scale of excess gets more and more. | ||
| People have a confier life, so they do get softer. | ||
| And then you are getting ready for the fall in the face of somebody else, tougher and stronger, who comes from a harsher life, who's going to It's the same stuff as the Roman Empire, right? | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| You eventually stop sending your guys to fight your wars because it's like, I don't want my kids to go to war. | ||
| That's what we did. | ||
| It's our heritage, but I don't want to do that anymore. | ||
| Let's hire some poor motherfucker to fight for us. | ||
| In the process, your civilization gets weak until eventually the other motherfucker you're hiring doesn't want to fight for you anymore. | ||
| They turn on you and your civilization falls. | ||
| We never learn. | ||
| No, it's a tough balance between living too harshly, where, yeah, you become this war machine, but that's a sucky life, and living too softly, when it's a real delicate game. | ||
| And I mean, you know how it is. | ||
| With your kids, you want things easy for them. | ||
| You want to make everything as easy, as pleasant as possible, but if you make it too easy, you turn them into wimps. | ||
| And so if you make it too hard, they'll hate your guts because it's like, fuck you, you're needlessly making my life hard. | ||
| So it's like that very delicate game of making feel people loved, giving them support, helping them when needed, but then also teaching them how to be strong. | ||
| And that does not happen through softness. | ||
| It doesn't happen through making everything easy for them. | ||
| I've had that conversation many times with Brian Callen where he and I were talking about, you know, one of the reasons why... | ||
| Brian lived a very strange life. | ||
| He went to boarding school for a lot of the time. | ||
| He grew up all over the world. | ||
| He lived in many different countries. | ||
| He just faced a lot of adversity because he couldn't make friends. | ||
| He was constantly moving. | ||
| And because of that, he's this really interesting guy. | ||
| And everyone that we know that's really interesting had some sort of a fucked up life. | ||
| And yet, we don't want our kids to have a fucked up life. | ||
| It's that weird. | ||
| You don't want your kid to be interesting, I guess. | ||
| What's that Chinese proverb with the curse? | ||
| May you live in interesting times? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| It's... | ||
| Yeah, I wonder if that's the only way to create someone or to engineer the life of a human being that has character. | ||
| There's got to be ways that you can teach them through difficult tasks or through athletic endeavors. | ||
| I mean, my life was definitely fucked up up until the time where I was in high school, but all of my, I think my real character development, who I became, The harder parts was when I was in a really nice neighborhood. | ||
| I lived in Newton, which is like a really nice suburb of Boston. | ||
| But that was when I was doing martial arts. | ||
| That's when I was competing. | ||
| So I... like consciously or Purposely did something really difficult because that was what I was interested in I wasn't thinking oh this difficult thing will make me a real You know interesting man when I grow up and this will provide me with all this character development No, | ||
| it's like that was what I really wanted to do for whatever reason I was compelled to it and then the byproduct of that was I developed character I developed the ability to push myself and discipline and But I did it without having to go through horrible neighborhoods. | ||
| I mean, people beat me up in the gym, but nobody beat me up in the street. | ||
| Nobody robbed me. | ||
| I didn't get shot or stabbed. | ||
| But I developed character in a way that's similar to what someone would probably go through if they went through some really bad, violent times. | ||
| And I think you nailed it right there because you're bringing up something that's not... | ||
| You're going to get tough because we're going to throw you in the street and you're going to fight every day against some crazy kids with knives and you survive. | ||
| You're going to be tough. | ||
| It's like, well, that's a little. | ||
| But at the same time, it's not let's have you sheltered. | ||
| And I think martial arts in that regard is perfect. | ||
| You know, combat sports are great because they do teach you toughness, but they're still within a relatively protected environment. | ||
| Nobody's going to pull out a gun on you. | ||
| Nobody's going to, you know... | ||
| It's tough, but it's civilized stuff. | ||
| It's not throw people to the walls and pray for the best. | ||
| So it's a nice medium. | ||
| And I think the more we make our life easier, which we want to, we do need to engage in things that keep the toughness alive, at least to some degree. | ||
| You know, it's like you're not gonna be tough the way the one guy who survived out of a hundred was being thrown to the wolves, but at the same time, you still have that muscle there. | ||
| It's not completely gone because you are just all about... | ||
| Because then now you end up with people who are very pleasant, very nice, very sweet, and complete wimps and don't have a spine, and then it's like... | ||
| That's not the solution either. | ||
| Yeah, they have no resiliency. | ||
| They don't have any experience in overcoming difficult situations. | ||
| I oftentimes think about that when I think about animals. | ||
| Because, you know, I have dogs and I have cats, and my animals have zero... | ||
| I mean, I guess they would kill something, but they're not mean at all. | ||
| But if you see a wild animal, an animal that has to Get its own food. | ||
| They're so different. | ||
| And the only way you can get an animal that's tame is you have to provide them with all their food and that you have to bypass all of their natural predatory instincts that every dog has and every cat has. | ||
| And there's a way to bypass it. | ||
| You just got to give them steady food and love, steady food and love, steady food and love. | ||
| And in doing that, you quote unquote, domesticate them, right? | ||
| And that's kind of also what's happening with people. | ||
| You know, what we are doing with human beings is turning people into these fluffy sort of kitty cat type people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Where if everything goes wrong and you find yourself on a deserted island, you can go feral. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And you try to figure out a way to survive. | ||
| You're eating raw mussels and chewing on roots and stuff. | ||
| But the reality is what you've become is a domesticated person. | ||
| You know, if you ever see like... | ||
| When they catch people, they find people that have been living in the wild by themselves. | ||
| It's only been a few times that they've found actual wild, feral people, but they resemble feral animals in a lot of ways. | ||
| That's how you survive. | ||
| Who does live in the wild and succeed? | ||
| Wild animals. | ||
| A human being is going to do that. | ||
| It's going to be along those lines. | ||
| But what we value from people, a lot of what we value is domesticated people. | ||
| Like what I like is people that I go up to, I hug them, I know they're not going to try to bite my neck and eat me. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I tend to... | ||
| I'm weird that way as well. | ||
| Yes, I tend to enjoy the same thing. | ||
| No, it's... | ||
| Like anything, it's a balance. | ||
| And the balance is not 50-50, maybe 90-10, but you still need to have a little of that other side. | ||
| It's always that there's a... | ||
| Once you go 100-0, then you really lost something. | ||
| It's like, where exactly is that balance in a desirable place, where you are a strong person, but you're also pleasant and sweet and nice, and you can do all the things that we want in a civilized conversation without you being weak? | ||
| Because that's the other aspect. | ||
| When people lack the tough side, Then I don't buy their niceness either because it's like you're nice because that's the only thing you can be. | ||
| You don't even have the option not to be nice because you don't know how. | ||
| You don't know what it takes to instead step up and be extra assertive and extra tough. | ||
| You don't have... | ||
| So your niceness is not a choice. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's a survival mechanism. | ||
| You're like a cat that shows their belly. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If somebody doesn't have to be that way and chooses to be that way, then I buy it. | ||
| Then it's legit because you're choosing that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If someone is generous because they want to be generous, not because they have to be generous. | ||
| Yeah, it's a strange fine line. | ||
| Why I've been focusing on this and obsessed with this lately is... | ||
| I've gotten this weird idea in my head. | ||
| Not necessarily weird, but this inescapable thought about human beings domesticating themselves with supermarkets. | ||
| And that supermarkets are in many ways a lot like serving a cat a bowl of cat food every day. | ||
| And that in removing the equation of having to go out and cut the wheat and pick the vegetables and kill the animals that you eat and instead just show up at the supermarket, buy it, throw it in the cart, that what we've done is we've developed like a system of domestication and the supermarket or the fast food restaurant or wherever you're getting your food in a lot of ways serves the same purpose that a master does to a pet. | ||
| And that we're slowly domesticating the human animal in that way. | ||
| I think there's a lot of parallels there. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons also I think why people get angry. | ||
| Even people that eat meat when they find other people hunt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think that they're reacting to this path that they're on and it's a path of domestication. | ||
| Even if it's irrational, even if they eat meat, and I've had the most irrational, which is people that are strict vegetarians or vegans, but they have animals they feed meat to. | ||
| It's like, yeah, that doesn't... | ||
| I know, man. | ||
| A lot of this stuff makes no sense. | ||
| No, it doesn't make sense. | ||
| But the rationalizations, I feel like they form such a common pattern that you almost have to take into consideration the fact that those rationalizations may in fact be natural protective mechanisms for this domestication process to take place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that as we become more and more peaceful and more and more civilized, like, I would say, and I think everyone agrees, that this is probably the safest time for human beings to live ever. | ||
| Well, you're a historian. | ||
| You know a lot about history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You would probably say that, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, when you look at so much of human history, there's always the guys from over the hill who are going to come up and slaughter your family at the drop of a dime. | ||
| So now the fact that most people in many countries in the world are not in that situation, it's kind of unique. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| It's not something that in most of recorded history you can find evidence of. | ||
| You don't find any evidence, right? | ||
| If you think about a cruise ship pulling up to your harbor and a bunch of people get out, you welcome them now. | ||
| Strangers from a strange land, and you're like, oh, this is great. | ||
| They're going to come over here and they're going to buy my trinkets. | ||
| They're going to buy a poncho. | ||
| Whereas before, they were going to come with fucking swords and kill your family. | ||
| I saw... | ||
| Did you watch the TV series Vikings? | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| It's pretty badass. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, I like it. | ||
| See, I'd never heard anything about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| No, it's good. | ||
| The cinematography is awesome. | ||
| The script is pretty good. | ||
| And there's this one scene that I was watching from the third season where there's this group of Vikings standing outside of Paris. | ||
| So you see Paris in the distance, all the shape, and it's beautiful. | ||
| And you see these pissed off, semi-naked Vikings with torches, and they are starting to scream, It's axe time! | ||
| It's sword time. | ||
| It's like the preparation. | ||
| That's what they're screaming? | ||
| It's axe time and it's sword time? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Wow, it's hammer time. | ||
| What about hammer time? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Hammer, they skip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop. | |
| Hammer time. | ||
| And that's a lot of human history right there. | ||
| That's a lot of human history. | ||
| People that have and people that have not and have not show up at the gates. | ||
| Yep, and they are hungry and they are more motivated than you because they are hungry. | ||
| It is amazing that this is one of the only times that we've ever recorded where people show up in places where they don't know anybody and they're welcome. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You're welcome all over the world. | ||
| Yeah, I know Chris, Ryan, there are many people who have the theory that, like, Way, way, way in a distant past, in hunting and gathering time, people were not more mellow. | ||
| There was less war. | ||
| And then there's the other campo that argues, no, no, hunting and gathering times were a crazy conflict. | ||
| It didn't happen that often because there were few people, so they don't run into each other that much. | ||
| And the reality is, I don't know who's right. | ||
| I don't think either one is completely right in the sense that I don't think it was a peace and love scenario because that's not how human beings operate. | ||
| And I don't think it was this model that only states can save you from violence because otherwise everybody's always killing each other. | ||
| I don't necessarily think that's either... | ||
| But clearly, I mean, we do have evidence that people bash each other's brains forever, you know, for a long time. | ||
| How frequent that was, that's the question, and there are different schools of thought in that regard, and it's kind of hard to come up with a conclusive answer. | ||
| But other than that scenario, which is so far in the past that we don't have that much solid evidence on, for much of the history that we do have records about, yeah, people do nasty shit to each other all the time. | ||
| Yeah, I think Chris is talking about tribal cultures that live, you know, indigenous people that live in the jungle and shit like that. | ||
| I think when it's resource dependent, I think when there's a lot of resources and there's plenty of women to fuck, Everybody's happy. | ||
| Chris Ryan also, he loves those polyamorous societies. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Who doesn't? | ||
| I mean, I agree with him. | ||
| It's like, I'm down. | ||
| Yeah, he loves the concept of these cultures that existed that didn't have... | ||
| They weren't able to trace lines of male paternity, and so the entire villages would raise children. | ||
| Raise kids. | ||
| Which exists right now in some parts of the world, you know? | ||
| I mean, that's how some indigenous cultures still operate to this day. | ||
| But yet there's also indigenous cultures like the ones in New Guinea, which are the sperm warriors of New Guinea, which is, you know that story, right? | ||
| Remind me later. | ||
| I know some of the insane fighting going on. | ||
| What's up with the sperm warrior? | ||
| Awful, awful pedophilia. | ||
| They would take children at a very young age and make them consume cum, both in their ass and in their mouth. | ||
| To make you a real man, yes. | ||
| They call you, they leave their parents and go stay with what they call their anus father. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| Yeah, there's, oh God. | ||
| And they've been doing this for thousands of years. | ||
| For whatever reason, this became a style of living. | ||
| Somebody was really into little kids one day and said, you know what? | ||
| The gods have spoken and this is how you make a real man. | ||
| I'm getting a message from up on high. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's how we're going to do this from now on. | ||
| No, that's why, in fact, romanticizing it is silly, but at the same time, demonizing it is... | ||
| And I don't mean this, because yeah, this is fucked up, but I mean tribal culture. | ||
| There's great stuff there. | ||
| There's awful stuff there. | ||
| There's human stuff there, right? | ||
| There's the whole spectrum of it all. | ||
| And I do like what Chris is doing in terms of I don't know who's historically 100% right in that debate about how cool or not so cool ancient tribal societies were, but I do like where Chris is going with it in terms of what is that we can learn either from the actual history or from something that sounds cool that may not exactly have happened away, but it gives us an idea. | ||
| Because ultimately, who the fuck cares what they did 10,000 years ago? | ||
| It's about what you can do now. | ||
| So if that gives you an idea of what you can do now to make life better, I don't care whether it really happened or not. | ||
| If it makes life better now, I'm happy. | ||
| That's a really good point. | ||
| That's a really good point. | ||
| Like, what is possible now? | ||
| I firmly believe now is the best time ever. | ||
| I mean, I think we're incredibly lucky to live right now. | ||
| And as long as we don't hit some sort of a natural disaster or if someone fucks up and accidentally starts a nuclear war, I think it's a great time. | ||
| It's not perfect, but there's nothing going to be perfect. | ||
| We were talking about just the sheer numbers of humans. | ||
| You know, 20 people on an island with three girls, 17 men. | ||
| You're going to have death. | ||
| That's a given. | ||
| I don't think one night goes by without it. | ||
| You hear China recently, they changed their one-child rule. | ||
| Did they? | ||
| Yeah, like within the last few days. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That can go both ways. | ||
| I mean, on one hand, yeah, the whole female infanticide was fucked up. | ||
| On the other hand, China growing dramatically in population, that's not exactly a good thing either. | ||
| Well, Oh, how are they gonna do it? | ||
| Because there's only like 15 girls. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| You guys fucked up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This idea that you would only have men because the men would be able to take care of you. | ||
| Well, you guys threw a monkey wrench in your whole generation. | ||
| They sure did. | ||
| What a fucking cluster. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Big time. | ||
| Can you imagine being a guy and you're growing up there and you're on that island with 17 dudes and three women? | ||
| Like, what in the fuck? | ||
| I know. | ||
| That's a shitty deal right there. | ||
| Oh, it's got to be the worst. | ||
| Trying to get laid as a man in China must be fucking hard. | ||
| Yeah, I can see how that would not be easier. | ||
| I would imagine people... | ||
| High school, young males would be pretty pissed off. | ||
| Condom shares fall after China abandons one-child policy. | ||
| Shares in companies that make... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Nappies, prams, and baby milk up? | ||
| Oh, I guess like baby stuff. | ||
| Up on Friday after Beijing announces plans to change family planning laws. | ||
| I just don't know how they're going to engineer their population. | ||
| I mean, this was in response to overpopulation. | ||
| That's why they decided to have a one-child policy. | ||
| That's just not good when everybody wants a man. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| They didn't think it through in that scenario. | ||
| Because, I mean, I can see the idea. | ||
| You have too many people, too few resources. | ||
| You got fucked up. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| But at the same time, now it's like, okay, nobody is going to have baby girls. | ||
| Let's all have boys because that's what I want. | ||
| There's this dumb dad that I talk to sometimes. | ||
| Every now and then I get stuck talking to him. | ||
| And he's just like, he has daughters and he wants sons. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm like, dude, your fucking daughters are healthy. | ||
| What is wrong with you? | ||
| I have a friend who is a child that has like severe autism and all these terrible behavioral disabilities and he's a mess. | ||
| I'm like, you're lucky. | ||
| You're extremely fortunate. | ||
| Healthy children in America. | ||
| You hit the goddamn lottery. | ||
| And your dumb ass is whining that you don't have a son to play softball with. | ||
| And even then, why? | ||
| Because you can't fucking teach a girl to play softball because that's not girly? | ||
| They don't want to play softball, maybe. | ||
| You know, the idea that your son is an extension of you is one of the stupidest fucking attachments that some people have. | ||
| It's a human being. | ||
| It's a human being. | ||
| You're fortunate enough to be the parent of this human being. | ||
| This idea that you're upset that it's one gender or another, just shut the fuck up, you monkey. | ||
| And that goes back to the stupid stereotypes of masculine and feminine, of what it means to be a man or a woman. | ||
| Of course there are genetic stuff, and that's a given. | ||
| There's not even an argument that some of it is natural. | ||
| But then there's also a bunch of it that is nurture and that is also how you raise. | ||
| And somebody may have a tendency going one way, but if you teach them, you can balance it out in other ways. | ||
| To me, even the most interesting people are the ones I have both, that have the stereotypical sensitivity from the supposed to be female, but they are also tough. | ||
| And who the hell said that being... | ||
| Emotionally sensitive is only for women or that being tough is only for men. | ||
| I get bored with both people. | ||
| Unless you have both, unless I can relate to you on multiple levels, it's boring. | ||
| It can be, for sure. | ||
| The typical girly girl is like, Jesus, I'm out of here in three seconds. | ||
| It's like this is killing me. | ||
| It's so boring. | ||
| But also the typical guy who breaks a beer bottle off his head, burping, watching football, that's not exactly, okay, that's great for about 10 minutes and then I'm out. | ||
| To me, it's like develop human beings that are strong and sensitive. | ||
| What the hell is wrong with that idea? | ||
| Yeah, that's why one of the biggest problems growing up is if you're stuck in a neighborhood. | ||
| If you're stuck in a neighborhood, and the people in your neighborhood are all stupid, and there's no one interesting to draw from, there's no one to find that you can relate to. | ||
| Like, I remember being a kid, and, you know, you have a few good friends that you really enjoy hanging out with, and when they weren't around, you would hang out with dummies, and you'd be like, oh my god. | ||
| It's so taxing. | ||
| If you have the wrong... | ||
| Just by a roll of the dice, find yourself in a neighborhood where people are prejudiced or ignorant or aggressively ignorant or aggressively prejudiced. | ||
| You can just have a terrible time. | ||
| You just want to stay home and be locked in your environment. | ||
| And I think until the internet came around, that was the biggest issue in children growing up. | ||
| You were a subject to your environment or a victim of your environment sometimes, a product of your environment. | ||
| That's why even what we're doing right now, the idea that somebody in Sweden can download and listen to what's happening, That's pretty... | ||
| I mean, shit, I would have loved to have grown up with that possibility of listening into conversation so that I'm not trapped into the immediate world that is in the few miles for where you are born and where you are raised, but you get access. | ||
| And then you realize, well, there are people out there who have a different way of thinking other than... | ||
| I mean, think about even when TV came around and somebody in the middle of the United States in a town of 5,000 people suddenly could see people who look different, hear different conversations. | ||
| It must have been the most freeing thing in the world. | ||
| Unless you were black. | ||
| And you're like, where the fuck are all the black people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're all white. | ||
| Until Sanford and Son came on the air. | ||
| You're like, what in the fuck? | ||
| There's got Jeffersons. | ||
| Finally! | ||
| But he said that funny that in the 1950s, all the advertisers, all the programmers thought, in order to attract people, we need to make the content as Not controversial. | ||
| Like, the most uncontroversial thing possible. | ||
| We make it very square. | ||
| We make it very safe. | ||
| No sex. | ||
| No violence. | ||
| We make it no... | ||
| And you see what we are attracted to today is like 180 completely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like, give me Spartacus with, you know, orgies and violence and that, you know... | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's suppression, right? | ||
| That's also interesting, like advertisements. | ||
| Like advertisements today, like on the internet, like podcasts. | ||
| This is a perfect example. | ||
| No one has ever, when I do a podcast ad, say, don't swear. | ||
| Or don't say something fucked up. | ||
| I say fucked up things sometimes in these ads because I'm winging it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| But as long as I'm not saying something... | ||
| When I say fucked up things, they're obviously jokes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| As long as I'm not saying anything that's actually racist or homophobic or sexist or anything like that, people are fine with it. | ||
| And you could never have one of my ads on a television show. | ||
| Oh, no way. | ||
| But the people that watch the television show are the same people that are going to download a lot of podcasts. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Like, if someone's listening to Howard Stern in the morning, right, and they're hearing all this crazy shit, that's the same person that might watch the Big Bang Theory or America's Got Talent at night, and it's squeaky clean. | ||
| Well, it's the same human being. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| But for whatever reason, they decide that this human being can accept it In this form, but can accept it in that form. | ||
| You might watch something that's totally squeaky clean, and the advertisers are... | ||
| But the same person might go to a rated R movie and watch crazy violence and death and some fucking horror film. | ||
| It's weird what we decide people can and cannot be subjected to, cannot be exposed to. | ||
| Especially with nudity, where it's like if you show any kind of nudity, automatically it's the highest possible restriction because that's going to fuck up your brain, right? | ||
| If you see a boob, now you're going to be screwed for life. | ||
| It's like, really? | ||
| That's what you're scared to show your kids? | ||
| Well, do you remember Vincent Gallo? | ||
| No, it wasn't Vincent. | ||
| Vincent Gallo, that's his name, right? | ||
| Vincent Gallo, the actor? | ||
| That's his name, right? | ||
| Isn't it Vincent Gallo? | ||
| He was a very respected actor, like a really intense guy, and he did this movie. | ||
| He produced it and starred in it, I think it was called Brown Bunny. | ||
| And it was with this chick, Chloe Svangie. | ||
| I don't know how the fuck you say her name. | ||
| She's a very good actress. | ||
| Excellent actress. | ||
| But they had a real sex scene in the movie. | ||
| And in the movie, she sucks his cock. | ||
| She really blows him. | ||
| And he comes in her face and on her mouth. | ||
| And it's real. | ||
| And people were fucking furious. | ||
| People that went to see the movie hated him. | ||
| And they were furious. | ||
| And it fucking tanked his career. | ||
| I mean, tanked his career. | ||
| Never even heard of that. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Well, he's done some stuff since then, but not much. | ||
| And he's done some vodka ads, some vodka commercials. | ||
| But before that, he was this guy that was this go-to guy if you wanted this really intense character. | ||
| And he's a very good actor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And just like, you know, a guy who just decided, look, I'm going to take a crazy chance. | ||
| Like, look, we have these Quentin Tarantino movies where guys are getting their ears cut off, where they're taking these crazy chances with violence and Pulp Fiction, where the guy gets shot in the head and the brains splatter over the back seat and there's all these racial slurs being thrown around by white people to black people. | ||
| This is all fine. | ||
| But a guy getting his cock sucked in a movie. | ||
| You could see, like, if she dropped down to her knees and you only saw the back of her head and she was sucking his cock, that would be okay. | ||
| It's fine, exactly. | ||
| It's gonna be okay. | ||
| I know. | ||
| But to see his actual penis in her actual mouth, for whatever reason, people were like, no fucking way. | ||
| That's it for you, dude. | ||
| We're done. | ||
| Yeah, that's... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That raised me out. | ||
| I always find it so weird. | ||
| Meanwhile, everybody wants their dick sucked. | ||
| If you have a dick, you want it sucked. | ||
| It is the one universal truth. | ||
| Because even if you're gay, you want it sucked by a guy. | ||
| If you're straight, you want it sucked by a girl. | ||
| Everybody loves blowjobs. | ||
| They're amazing. | ||
| It's one of the greatest inventions that anybody ever figured out was that if someone sucks your dick, it feels fantastic. | ||
| But to watch it in a movie is somehow horrifically offensive. | ||
| Totally consensual. | ||
| We're not watching rape. | ||
| We're watching a totally consensual sex act in a movie. | ||
| Meanwhile, the same people that were offended probably watch porn. | ||
| Right, of course. | ||
| But as long as the windows are closed and the shades are shut and the door is closed and no one can hear them, then they can... | ||
| They can jerk off in their hypocritical world, and they think it's okay. | ||
| I don't remember if I mentioned that to you before or not, because it cracks me up so much. | ||
| But there was a study in Utah a few years ago, because the way the Supreme Court had set up the obscenity laws, they basically said that it boils down to the standards of the community, of whether the community finds obscene or not. | ||
| So in Utah, they were saying, well, we are a very conservative community, so we want all the hotel chains in Utah to not be able to allow to use porn. | ||
| They cannot sell, you know, porn is the number one thing on the pay-per-view in hotels. | ||
| They're like, nope, because it offends the standards of our community. | ||
| So then they did this research and found out that porn consumption in Utah is actually way higher than in most other places under the file. | ||
| What people say and what people do are completely different things sometimes. | ||
| And that's what I find. | ||
| It goes back to that thing about being comfortable in your own skin. | ||
| To me, it's like, look, you like porn. | ||
| Embrace it. | ||
| Just accept it. | ||
| It's who you are. | ||
| As long as you're not killing people, as long as you're not doing anything horrible to other human beings, Don't put forward this image of what you think you should be when you're not that person. | ||
| If you're not that person, there's a reason why. | ||
| It probably is not that healthy for you. | ||
| It's not the way you're built to be. | ||
| There's something there. | ||
| Deal with the reality. | ||
| Deal with where you're at. | ||
| And if you want to change yourself, then take a few baby steps away from that. | ||
| But start accepting the fact that this is who you are, this is what you like, this is what you don't. | ||
| Then if you decide you want to change, you can work on the edges. | ||
| You're not going to change dramatically because you don't change the essence of who you are, but you can smooth the edges if you really, really want. | ||
| But that never happens unless you start with realizing what it is that you are and you stare at it and accept it for what it is. | ||
| It's interesting too because I think that a lot of what people are worried about is other people's perceptions of them. | ||
| And those same people are shielding their own reality from other people worried about their perceptions. | ||
| They might all be into the same thing. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| The book I sent you the other day, the one that I left coming up, I sent it to Aubrey a while back and he was reading through. | ||
| And one thing that he was cracking up about is like, man, you have zero filter. | ||
| It's like the stuff you say about what you think, that's not the kind of thing that most people would admit to. | ||
| That's the kind of stuff that it's... | ||
| Especially most people who are professors. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Never mind that. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's a big one in your world, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Where does this image of how we are supposed to be? | ||
| And to me, it's like, that's such bullshit. | ||
| It's like, be a human being. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Do you feel extra freedom because you have podcasts and because you can express yourself through that and you can actually make money doing that too? | ||
| So you have these other outlets for expression. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, I think I realized I had this really stupid idea for a long time that I could get a regular gig in academia as a good, serious professor, and then I could have also the space to do all the other stuff. | ||
| And then I realized... | ||
| This was actually... | ||
| I remember being in my office one day after the realization that most academics don't like me sunk in. | ||
| Most academics don't like you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Because, A, students like me, which if they don't like them, that means, oh, you must be too easy or too something. | ||
| Or so the fact that I get along very well with students and that's not always the case with them, that's usually strike against me. | ||
| And also, when I was having this, oh, why is it that I don't like me? | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| I kind of step outside and saw it from above. | ||
| And it was, I mean, my office hours, I'm playing Eminem in my office, and around my neck are strapped gloves that I just used to spar with one of my students during a break. | ||
| In my hand is my medical marijuana renewal, and I'm wondering... | ||
| But why don't they like me? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't understand. | |
| I'm just like, well, if they like you, there would be something weird in this way. | ||
| What do you expect? | ||
| They are what they are, and that's fine. | ||
| That's the way it is. | ||
| But you can't expect to be just because you're polite and you open the door for people. | ||
| That's nice, but you're still a very different animal from what they are. | ||
| And so, of course, they are not going to embrace you as one of them. | ||
| But there's a few guys like, I bet you and Thaddeus Russell, if you were on the same staff, you'd get along great. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| There's a few, there's people out there that are... | ||
| No, absolutely. | ||
| And in fact, I'm not saying all people, all academics are all equally stiff, boring assholes. | ||
| That's not the case. | ||
| There are some very cool people, but the culture, the general culture of what you're supposed to fit in, it's a very stiff one. | ||
| Do you feel like, I mean, you've been a professor for a while. | ||
| Do you feel like the culture is shifting? | ||
| Ah, the culture outside of academia shifts a lot faster than the culture inside. | ||
| I think like all institutions, they tend to be the last places to change. | ||
| It's like when everybody else gets to accept something that maybe they will. | ||
| It's kind of like politics, you know, where it's like after 99% of people in the US will be pro-legalization of marijuana. | ||
| Then some politician will say, we'll do this really daring thing and try to, you know, it's not going to start from the inside. | ||
| because any establishment is built on keeping the status quo. | ||
| So that's nowhere. | ||
| So a lot of, if anything, a lot of academia I'm seeing is becoming more and more bureaucratic. | ||
| There's more of do measurable things, do stuff that everything can be accounted for so we don't get sued. | ||
| Make sure to do. | ||
| There's a lot less flexibility and allowing people to kind of run the show as they like it. | ||
| Because they're like, what if somebody runs it the wrong way and then we get sued? | ||
| Sure, that is a concern, but you're also eliminating the possibility of people doing cool things in the process. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| I don't see tremendously good changes in that regard. | ||
| What about the changes as far as political correctness or the ideologies on campus? | ||
| They seem to be more extreme and more left-wing now than they have at any time in the most recent history. | ||
| At least, obviously, I'm not in school, but from people that are reporting on it and professors that I've interviewed. | ||
| I'm confused on that because, honestly, I hear about it a lot. | ||
| I read it in the newspapers. | ||
| I hear about it from other people telling me. | ||
| I don't see it. | ||
| What do you see? | ||
| The whole extreme level of political correctness is not one that I witness a lot. | ||
| I get to do what I do. | ||
| I say what I say. | ||
| Nobody gets pissed off. | ||
| Nobody yells at me over it. | ||
| It tends to be fairly... | ||
| In that regard, there's still a little... | ||
| And I don't see my students getting offended at everything, the way you would read based on websites and all of it. | ||
| I'm not saying that that doesn't exist. | ||
| I'm sure it does. | ||
| I mean, it must be based on something. | ||
| I just don't think it's quite as... | ||
| Either I'm extremely lucky for some reason, or it's not quite as pervasive as it sounds on paper. | ||
| But I don't know, because, you know, of course, all I know is my experience, and that may not be representative of what's out there. | ||
| It's also probably indicative of the sheer numbers of people that are in school. | ||
| It's like, did you ever see that old Bill Hicks bit? | ||
| Bill Hicks had this really funny bit about CNN, about how you, every time you turn the news, murder, death, rape, pit bulls. | ||
| And he goes, and then you go look out the window and you hear chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. | ||
| He goes, where the fuck's all this shit happening? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I think the sheer numbers of human beings that are in school, if you're dealing with how many millions of kids are in school, I don't know how many there are, but out of those, you're going to be able to cherry pick some extreme examples of social justice warriors, political correct thinking, progressive thinking run amok, diversity run amok. | ||
| I think that's what's going on. | ||
| I think that makes for a story that people are going to read and get all pissed off about. | ||
| Whereas if you talk about, it's the same as why we like war. | ||
| It's the extreme out there kind of thing that makes people emotionally involved in the story. | ||
| You report it and people get into it. | ||
| Whereas if you really talk about what a lot of the time happens, it's not that glamorous and so it's not as reported. | ||
| Have you had any backlash at all from doing, like, controversial podcasts? | ||
| Because, you know, you don't hold back. | ||
| No, definitely not. | ||
| One thing that I think helps is that probably these are not the same people who listen to podcasts or care or they probably... | ||
| This is how good it is. | ||
| I was in a history department meeting. | ||
| I won't mention the school. | ||
| Not that it makes my difference because it's the same thing, probably 99% of them, but they were talking. | ||
| And this is like 30 people or whatever many people who are historians. | ||
| That's what they do, right? | ||
| And when I mentioned Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, nobody knew what I was talking about. | ||
| And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? | ||
| You know, it's like, you are a historian. | ||
| That's the number one history podcast out there. | ||
| It's one of the top podcast period of any kind. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| The guy's a god at playing this game. | ||
| And you haven't even heard of him. | ||
| Like, you didn't even bother checking what's... | ||
| That tells me that you're so locked in a tower out there that you have no idea what's... | ||
| I was blown away. | ||
| I mean, even I was surprised, and I have generally bad feelings about academia to begin with, and that was too much even for me. | ||
| How is someone in the world of history not find out about that? | ||
| It's such a revolutionary way to distribute history. | ||
| Yeah, precisely. | ||
| But that tells you how insulated that word is, where it's about what's in the footnote on page 357 of the monograph that has been read by four people they may know about. | ||
| That's a weird world. | ||
| But, you know, that weird world is what got people to this age today, where we can do things like hardcore history. | ||
| I mean, it was all created by the knowledge that was taught through schools. | ||
| And Dan did bring that up in one of his podcasts, where he said, look, in the past, history was a bit more holistic in nature, where good historians were also good storytellers. | ||
| And they may have not been quite the same level of researchers, but they were really good storytellers. | ||
| History has moved more and more in the direction of good nerds who hit the library, or now you don't have to go to the library, you do it online, but that are hardcore into research of primary sources, and you need it. | ||
| You know, of course you need that skill, because otherwise you don't have the data to spin a good story about it. | ||
| But if that's all the history that's out there, you can have the most accurate history in the world and nobody want to hear it because these guys can't tell it. | ||
| Because it's dry. | ||
| You need both. | ||
| You know, you need the hardcore researcher with dicks out little tidbits here and there. | ||
| And then you need the ones who can spin it in a way that can communicate with other human beings, that people, that can make them care, that can make them interested, that can... | ||
| And these are often not the same people because it requires very different talents, you know? | ||
| Yeah, that's what a lot of people say about Neil deGrasse Tyson as well, that he's not just a brilliant man, but a brilliant communicator. | ||
| Like that his real skill is in making it entertaining and exciting and absorbable. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Whereas the dry lectures that you might listen to from a physics professor... | ||
| Nobody cares. | ||
| ...it just not get in there for whatever reason. | ||
| But you need that guy. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You need it. | ||
| It has that desire to acquire that information. | ||
| The problem with academia is that they've made that guy the only... | ||
| that's the measuring stick of what a historian is. | ||
| That's one side of it. | ||
| It's an important one, and I give you that. | ||
| It is an important one, but it cannot be the only one. | ||
| There's a reason why every single one of the best history books I've ever read It's always written by a journalist. | ||
| It's never written by a historian. | ||
| Because journalists, they are paid to know how to tell a story. | ||
| The reason why you're paid is because you need to hook a reader in that doesn't have to read that story, that makes you want to. | ||
| Then, his background was as a journalist. | ||
| It's about people who... | ||
| Nobody owes you their attention. | ||
| Intrigue them and so they want to pay attention. | ||
| That's that skill. | ||
| Most of the people who are professional historians in a traditional sense That talent is not encouraged. | ||
| You may have it by luck, because that's how you are as a human being, but it's not something that you are encouraged to develop as part of being a good historian. | ||
| That's seen as, ah, that's popularizing it. | ||
| What's wrong with that? | ||
| To be able to make something accessible to people. | ||
| Isn't that the whole point? | ||
| Isn't that funny, though, that would be shunned? | ||
| Popularizing something that's as important as the historical record? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| It's one of the most important things for human history, or for human beings rather, is to understand history because then you can learn from the mistakes of the past and then understand the parallels of what's going on in the current time. | ||
| When you look at the Roman Empire and you talk about the Great Excesses and how that civilization crumbled under the weight of its own excess, You look at us now, you go, well, there's some parallels here. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| There's people on scooters in Disneyland. | ||
| I mean, it might not be feeding Christians to the lions, but I mean, there's definitely some fucking crazy shit going on right now that they're going to look back on. | ||
| When you look at the average American diet and the fact that... | ||
| I was in Disneyland the other day, and I told you they were on scooters. | ||
| But one of the other things is they had to change the boats out in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. | ||
| So everybody's too big? | ||
| Because people are too big. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They've done this several times. | ||
| They've had to change the boats, and they had to dig a deeper trench on It's a Small World. | ||
| Because over the years, people have gotten heavier and heavier. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And they have to accommodate, and they have to take into account the possibility of 600-pound people. | ||
| That's what they're doing now. | ||
| Because I saw several 600-plus pound people that are just overflowing on their scooters. | ||
| And they also have to help those people from their scooters onto these rides. | ||
| So these rides have to be reinforced in order to take the weight of several people. | ||
| I mean, a lot of these rides are like you're supposed to only get two people in. | ||
| The average two people, you get two people together, you know... | ||
| Maybe 400 pounds for two people. | ||
| Well, now you've got one person that weighs 600 pounds. | ||
| And so this ride's not really designed for this. | ||
| So that's discrimination. | ||
| You've discriminated against our large citizens. | ||
| This is one of the most disgusting stories that I've ever heard or said. | ||
| I told you to Duncan once on my podcast. | ||
| It's so gross. | ||
| But since my wife had told me when she was working in hospital, she said, oh man, I got pulled over by a colleague. | ||
| They told me this story. | ||
| It's scarred my brain ever since, so we'll gladly scar the brain of everybody listening right now. | ||
| So this couple went in to the doctor and they were complaining about how, you know, they keep trying to get pregnant and she's not getting pregnant. | ||
| And, you know, the woman was like probably a good 500 pounds, something like that, just rolls of fat everywhere, the whole thing. | ||
| And the doctor was like, okay, you know, let's see what's up, let's see what's going on. | ||
| And lift the fat folds left and right, and suddenly he realizes, oh shit, these people thought they were having sex, but based on the residue I'm seeing here between the fat folds, they weren't exactly having sex. | ||
| The guy was fucking the fat folds, thinking that he was in when he wasn't, and then they were wondering why they were not getting pregnant. | ||
| This should have let him keep fucking the fat folds. | ||
| You're real close. | ||
| You're real close. | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| I was like, when they told me that, I'm like, oh my god, my brain. | ||
| I cannot get that out of my brain now forever. | ||
| I would feel like that would be a standard move. | ||
| It's just titty fucking fat folds. | ||
| I'm not shocked at all. | ||
| That didn't even make me feel sick. | ||
| No, well, these, I don't know. | ||
| I've seen too much. | ||
| Yeah, I think you've seen too much. | ||
| The thing about lifting the fat folds and finding the rest of you from all the failed attempts, it seems, I don't know. | ||
| See, I was thinking that they were going to find a fetus in there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was thinking you were going to say that they gave birth and it just got stuck in the fat folds. | |
| Oh, that's even better. | ||
| Okay, yeah, you win. | ||
| I can see why. | ||
| That's what I was thinking it was going to be. | ||
| No, that's better. | ||
| I give you that. | ||
| How does someone who's that fat think they're going to take care of a child? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You know, when the little toddlers start running around, what are you going to do? | ||
| Get your scooter and chase them around in the park? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, you probably stuff them with food day and night. | ||
| They'll sit next to you and be 200 pounds by the time they're three years old. | ||
| I've talked about this a bunch of times on the show, but in the... | ||
| You know, at the possibility of overindulging this thought, I stopped eating sugar. | ||
| Well, I didn't stop, but I cut it. | ||
| I cut it out completely for two weeks, and then I cut it way back since then. | ||
| And I will occasionally, every few days or so, allow myself one thing, like a piece of, I like this chili mango, you know, mangoes of chili that has sugar in it, but very, very little sugar. | ||
| I lost like 8 pounds from that. | ||
| Just doing nothing but that. | ||
| Working out the same amount. | ||
| My energy level is completely different through the day. | ||
| I don't get tired towards the end of the day anymore. | ||
| It just stayed normal. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| That's where nature is fucked up because sugar tastes so damn good and yet it's so bad for you. | ||
| Well, it's supposed to taste good in the form of fruit because it comes with the reward of vitamins and fiber and all this other good stuff that's in fruit. | ||
| But we've somehow or another hijacked that, extracted it from the fruit and shoved it into a liquid that comes in a nice aluminum can. | ||
| You pop the top and you get that corn syrup deep into your heart. | ||
| But the average American diet is just overflowing with sugar and these poor people are just becoming bigger and fatter and corn syrup and simple sugars and they're just overwhelmed with this excess sugar and it's that's the I think that's the primary issue that people have when it comes to weight loss sugars and and simple sugars and carbohydrates and And, | ||
| you know, simple carbs like pastas and breads and all that stuff which converts to sugar. | ||
| Alcohol, which converts to sugar. | ||
| It's all sugar. | ||
| But even that, you know, probably there's also sitting on your ass forever and never moving. | ||
| Because, I mean, I see how, like, when I go back to Italy, I see how people eat. | ||
| And people eat a monstrous amount of pasta, right? | ||
| And they're like, how are you even? | ||
| And yet you see them and... | ||
| Skinny. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| If you see me, what I eat when I have pasta, you would be like, really? | ||
| You're hitting half the box of the whole thing. | ||
| They're like, yeah, easy. | ||
| And I feel actually pretty good. | ||
| I can go for more, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's like... | |
| Do they have the same wheat in Italy? | ||
| That's where I have the question marks. | ||
| Clearly, something is different there. | ||
| You know, something is not because you cannot, if it was just the carbs, then that should do it. | ||
| Then everybody should be huge. | ||
| And that's not the case. | ||
| So something is going on. | ||
| I mean, I've seen it even with, like, if I eat tomatoes in Italy versus tomatoes out here, tomatoes in Italy are awesome tasting and they are filling it. | ||
| You know, you eat some tomatoes, you feel like that can be a big chunk of your lunch right there. | ||
| I eat tomatoes here. | ||
| I feel like I'm drinking water in a red package. | ||
| They taste like nothing, and they don't fill me. | ||
| I'm like, it's theoretically the same fruit, but clearly something has been done different in the way they have been. | ||
| GMOs, man! | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't fucking know what, but I know they're... | |
| No idea why or what, but clearly the result is different. | ||
| Well, selective breeding. | ||
| I mean, they've selectively made these tomatoes a much more hearty tomato that doesn't taste very good. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They've bred out all the juiciness because they don't last. | ||
| Like, I have some heirloom tomatoes at home. | ||
| I just bought them the other day. | ||
| They're already really soft. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I got to eat them tonight. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I think people are lazy. | ||
| They don't go grocery shopping often enough. | ||
| And so it's like, I want to buy a tomato today. | ||
| The last three weeks from now, it's going to look just as new. | ||
| And the fact is, well, it's going to look new, but you have no nutrition and no taste. | ||
| Well, it's really in the shipping. | ||
| The shipping is the big issue, like being able to get them across the country in a big truck. | ||
| But the heirloom tomatoes, I didn't even know they existed until 10 years ago or whatever it was when I first had one. | ||
| They're fucking delicious. | ||
| They are. | ||
| That's what a tomato is supposed to be like. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's like we have this rare tomato. | ||
| That's the way it's all right there. | ||
| That is real tomatoes. | ||
| I hope we don't run out of heirloom tomato seeds. | ||
| That would suck. | ||
| I would really cry. | ||
| I love tomatoes. | ||
| If we get to a point someday... | ||
| I'm hoping that with all these like... | ||
| There's this new emphasis on craft restaurants and craft breweries and craft... | ||
| People are really into farm-to-table restaurants. | ||
| This is a great one near me. | ||
| I get eggs there. | ||
| And the eggs have a dark orange yolk, just like my eggs. | ||
| And the food is all from a local farm. | ||
| And they'll tell you what farm they're sourcing their beef from. | ||
| It's a great little restaurant. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| But I'm hoping that with that sort of trend... | ||
| That more and more people embrace that, and then we'll keep the idea alive of, you know, real, natural foods. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I even like... | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| No, it's okay. | ||
| I was going to say, but, you know, in other ways, like things like golden rice, like genetically modified rice that is much higher in protein, that's helped a lot of people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Kept a lot of people from starving. | ||
| No, I'm all for people having choices. | ||
| The thing I don't like is when one model becomes the only model that you don't let anybody else have a choice. | ||
| Well, there's a problem there. | ||
| I don't even care which one is winning. | ||
| The point is if you start having one model only, there's a problem there. | ||
| So you do have the people who want none of this shit and we outlaw it or the opposite is like we're going to saturate the market so much that we squeeze every other possibility out. | ||
| But Mm-hmm. | ||
| And that they're thinking that eventually that model of really shitty food, fast food, is going to be gone. | ||
| And they're going to be replaced by things like In-N-Out Burger, which is delicious. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They cook it to order. | ||
| It takes a little bit more time, but it's infinitely better. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And that these five guys, places like that, that's the new model. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then that's what you're going to get. | ||
| And then the idea is like, have you been to LAX recently? | ||
| Have you been flying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, one of the things you notice if you go to LAX is the restaurant choices have gotten dramatically better. | ||
| Like, you can get really good food at the airport now. | ||
| Like, really cool restaurants. | ||
| They're not chains. | ||
| And, like, this is a brilliant idea. | ||
| There's a food truck there. | ||
| It's got a truck of face. | ||
| And then, you know, there's a little restaurant behind it. | ||
| But the idea is they're going to give you food like you would get from a food truck. | ||
| And so they're establishing this... | ||
| New sort of a place to get, which used to be like you'd get Chili's, you know, you'd get like Applebee's. | ||
| It was like chain restaurants or McDonald's, stuff like that. | ||
| But now you get like a really nice salad. | ||
| You get a kale salad with like real cucumbers and stuff on it and stuff. | ||
| I think people are realizing that just because this is the only way we've had before, that you don't have to have it this way. | ||
| You know, I saw this thing, one of Anthony Bourdain's shows was on San Francisco. | ||
| And one of the guys that runs this really nice restaurant was going to open up an all-vegetarian healthy food option, a very cheap place, in the Tenderloin, which is like one of the worst places in San Francisco. | ||
| And the menu was going to vary between $2 and $6. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And everything on the menu was between $2 and $6. | ||
| And they had like a really healthy veggie burger that actually tasted good, like Bourdain ate one. | ||
| And it's like, this is actually good. | ||
| I would actually order this. | ||
| And they're going to try to provide healthy, semi-fast food for people. | ||
| I think that's a great idea. | ||
| Why can't it be done? | ||
| I think, and it's not that difficult because a lot of healthy stuff, there's the stereotype that all the healthy stuff is crazy expensive. | ||
| Not all of it. | ||
| It's just a matter of digging in enough and finding things that can be nutritious and not crazy expensive. | ||
| Because there are those options. | ||
| It's not that simple of, oh, you need to have a bank in order to eat healthy or you eat cheaply crap. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's some of it it's true, but not completely. | ||
| There are options where you can eat delicious meals that, I mean, you like to cook. | ||
| I've done times where I cook at home and I think about what I just spent and it's nothing and it's fucking delicious and it's good food and it's nutritious and I'm like... | ||
| What's wrong with that plan? | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| And I think with what you were saying earlier also that intrigued me, something I've been obsessing a bit, the distance that goes from people eating the food to the food being produced, and I don't mean just how far it travels, but even how disconnected we are. | ||
| I don't care even if it comes from three miles from here. | ||
| I mean, it's better, of course, but I'm into the idea of people having, at least to some degree, some contact with the food you eat, so you do have... | ||
| I remember you had it on the show, the image of the guy that in Milan did the vertical woods or whatever they call it. | ||
| It looked like a skyscraper where they put a bunch of trees all over it. | ||
| One of his plans now was trying to figure out how to put on all rooftops, put gardens, so that people can have their vegetable gardens, even on top of like four-story buildings or something, that there can be the building garden that everybody goes. | ||
| Now, I don't know how it's going to work in terms of, that was my tomato, fuck you, I'm going to kill you. | ||
| But having that idea where it may not be old, you're not self-sufficient, it's not all of your food, but you have some contact with the food that you end up eating. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I think everybody should have it to one degree or another. | ||
| And partially it's hard because most people don't have the space, the situation to do it in their backyard. | ||
| But figuring out ways on the cheap to make that happen, figuring out ways on an architectural standpoint, on multiple ways to try to make the link between people and eating food a direct one so that people... | ||
| Have a sense of where food comes from, that they raise their own food to one degree or another. | ||
| I think that would be awesome. | ||
| I don't know how realistic that is or how practical, but why not take a few steps in that direction? | ||
| Figure out how it can be done. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, everyone who has a backyard should have a garden. | ||
| It's not that difficult to grow something. | ||
| And just even if you only grow a meal a month... | ||
| Just a salad. | ||
| There's something particularly satisfying about picking a cucumber that you grew, chopping it up, putting it in a salad, cooking a squash that you grew. | ||
| It's really nice. | ||
| And I think it's primal. | ||
| I think it connects us in some sort of a way. | ||
| You appreciate it a lot more, that's for sure. | ||
| It's like you remember all the time and energy that went into getting this stuff from this big to... | ||
| Ah, there's a story behind it. | ||
| My friend Remy Warren was on the podcast yesterday and he has a show on the Outdoor Channel called Apex Predator. | ||
| And it's all about he follows these different animals and tries to learn how they hunt. | ||
| And how they survive. | ||
| And one of them, it was about bears, and he tried to forage the way a bear forages. | ||
| And he was shocked by how little you could find to eat. | ||
| Even if you know what you're doing. | ||
| It's hard, man. | ||
| And we were talking and he was saying, you look around at all these plants. | ||
| Everywhere we look, we see trees and bushes and gardens, but none of it you can eat. | ||
| Like, why do we grow so many plants? | ||
| We could just grow food everywhere. | ||
| And I was like, I never even thought about that. | ||
| Instead of palm trees, have food trees. | ||
| Like, everywhere food. | ||
| Could you imagine if everyone... | ||
| Anywhere you looked, everywhere you go, there was grapes growing and tomatoes and fucking peaches and shit. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I agree 110% with that. | ||
| It's like we need to work in that direction. | ||
| It seems like it's totally possible. | ||
| If there's all these bushes and trees, every city street has bushes and trees, but none of them are growing food. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| It makes no sense whatsoever. | ||
| It doesn't. | ||
| And it's not like those, like an apple tree is a beautiful tree, like a cherry tree. | ||
| That's a beautiful tree. | ||
| Why don't we do... | ||
| I don't get it! | ||
| I don't get it either. | ||
| It's strange. | ||
| It's like somewhere along the line we lost the plot. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Growing a bunch of shit we don't need. | ||
| That seemed like a really smart concept. | ||
| Yeah, that's so dumb. | ||
| Yeah, it's very strange. | ||
| It's very strange that we don't have food around us all the time. | ||
| Like, we have to rely on it getting shipped in in trucks. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, seriously, like any major American city, or for no matter, most cities in the world are this far away, like they are one big blackout away from everybody turning into the walking dead. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's where things get really ugly really quick because nobody has any idea how to get food. | ||
| Sigh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tanielli Bellelli. | |
| Do we have to end on a low note like that? | ||
| No, let's pick up. | ||
| We're almost out of time now. | ||
| We have very little time here left. | ||
| What do you got there? | ||
| What's the book you got? | ||
| Oh, this is... | ||
| I'm doing research. | ||
| This is a book about Caravaggio, the Italian painter. | ||
| I'm doing... | ||
| Because I prepare a bunch of the research. | ||
| For History on Fire, I prepare a lot of research ahead because otherwise what Dan Carlin ended up doing is that you do need to have these humongous gaps between one episode and the next to research because it takes... | ||
| I was doing the math the other day just because I was bored and I figured it... | ||
| Take me to produce a two-hour episode for History on Fire. | ||
| It takes me probably about 200 hours of work of preparation and research and read the book and take the notes and do this and that. | ||
| So, I mean, that's a full-time job. | ||
| I can't release episodes often if I'm doing other things. | ||
| So what I did is for the last two years, I basically prepared to start History on Fire. | ||
| So you knew you were going to do this? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For the last couple of years I've been working at it. | ||
| Not all the time, you know, while I do another thing, but I basically prepare eight episodes so I would have the research ready to roll. | ||
| I just need to record it and that's it. | ||
| So it buys me a little time so I can release episodes every six weeks now. | ||
| eventually the research catch up with me and then I'll be on a done-carling schedule. | ||
| But hopefully I'm, so now I'm researching episode nine while I am on still on episode two is out. | ||
| So I'm like trying to, you know, eventually we'll catch up with me. | ||
| Probably won't be that long until catch up with me. | ||
| But until then, by delivering episodes on a relatively often schedule, I can also hook up more people. | ||
| And by that point, they may be more forgiving if I take longer to do the research, but. | ||
| Well, it's such an intensive style of podcasting. | ||
| It's really not just educational, but it's like You're kind of doing a lecture. | ||
| It's like an audio lecture. | ||
| Yeah, when I did episode two, I was really happy with episode one. | ||
| I thought, it kicks ass. | ||
| It's good. | ||
| It's everything I wanted that I picture in my mind is coming out. | ||
| I did episode two. | ||
| I listened to it, and I'm like, this is a B effort. | ||
| This is not what I wanted. | ||
| But I did the whole thing. | ||
| I recorded it over a few days. | ||
| I'm like... | ||
| No, come on! | ||
| And then I was like, you know what? | ||
| Fuck it. | ||
| Delete. | ||
| Let's start over. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You deleted it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was like, no, I don't want to do it specially. | ||
| Definitely not at the beginning, but in general. | ||
| Did you release it and then delete it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no. | |
| I just recorded it. | ||
| We were about to put the intro, the outro, that kind of thing. | ||
| And I was listening. | ||
| And I'm like, no, it doesn't have that punch that I want. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so I was like, no, fuck it. | ||
| So do you do it on an outline? | ||
| Yeah, it's a fairly detailed outline. | ||
| Now, you don't want to script it, because of course then it doesn't sound natural, but you want to have it pretty clear of where you are going, and so if you have the quotation that you need to quote, it's right there. | ||
| You know exactly where it's going, so it's semi-scripted, but then you do it where you can. | ||
| It's kind of like if I deliver a lecture in class. | ||
| I'll take a peek at my notes, and I'm like, oh, that's where I need to go next. | ||
| But then you deliver it in a more natural style. | ||
| So I'll write a good chunk of notes, but then of course you don't read the notes, you just have them there to keep you on track so that you know where you're going next. | ||
| I'd be really curious to see if your accent is the same by episode 9. I honestly doubt it's going to change because, again, if I could hear it... | ||
| You know, actually, I got in trouble because I said it on your podcast, I think the first time I was on your podcast. | ||
| And as a joke, I said, you know, no, I used to speak perfect English. | ||
| I just am using it for women, right? | ||
| And people took it seriously. | ||
| They thought that I really... | ||
| You fucking pig! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And by the fact, if I could pull that off, I actually would do it because still, if I can get women that way, I would do it. | ||
| But it really just, I don't hear it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, you have a green light to do it because you're Italian. | ||
| If I moved to Italy and I started talking like this, then I would be a poser. | ||
| You're not a poser. | ||
| But the fact is also, it would take an insane amount of work to change because I don't hear it. | ||
| So I would have to really sit down and just spend forever doing... | ||
| You have the most extreme version of a completely fluent English language that I've ever heard. | ||
| With a heavy ass accent. | ||
| Anthony Bourdain's wife is from Italy and she has a very strong Italian accent, but she's way clearer than you. | ||
| I mean, you and I have been friends for a long time, so I know exactly what you're saying, what you're saying. | ||
| But if I didn't know you, I'd probably be like, what the fuck did he just say? | ||
| There's a flow to it, though. | ||
| And some people have zero problems, right? | ||
| Most people are like, oh, no, I understand everything you say, no problem. | ||
| And then there are people who have no idea of one word I'm saying. | ||
| I had a friend, we were talking on the phone, and they were like, Oh, so I'm going to cook tonight. | ||
| And I'm like, what do you want to eat? | ||
| And they said, I don't know. | ||
| I said, I was thinking of making some salmon. | ||
| And they're like, what? | ||
| Salmon? | ||
| What? | ||
| Salmon? | ||
| Sorry, I... Fish. | ||
| Oh, fish. | ||
| Okay, great. | ||
| What kind of fish? | ||
| Salmon. | ||
| They're like... | ||
| Because, of course, you don't say salmon, right? | ||
| That's a moron. | ||
| They can't put two and two together? | ||
| No. | ||
| But also my pronouns say salmon. | ||
| I'm pronouncing every single letter, whereas in English it's... | ||
| Salmon. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Thank you, my one. | ||
| But I can't... | ||
| And no one says salmon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's not how you say it. | ||
| You're making up words. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I spell out every single thing. | ||
| Because in Italian, every letter that's there is meant to be pronounced. | ||
| So you read every single damn letter. | ||
| In English, that's not the case. | ||
| And so that's confusing most of the time. | ||
| But there's also some weird things, like two Cs or an H. Sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And two Ls or a Y. Things get weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's the phonetic differences between the way letters, like that's a big issue obviously with Portuguese to English too, with the Brazilians or the R's or H's and everything gets very weird when you try to translate it back and forth. | ||
| Well that was one I wanted to ask you earlier, but I had actually forgotten. | ||
| When we were talking about translating, when you're talking about the difference between learning English and seeing how short and abrupt the sentences are as opposed to like the Italian, How difficult is it when they're translating ancient historical texts? | ||
| It's crazy hard. | ||
| It's crazy hard. | ||
| That's why a lot of translations are... | ||
| It's an art form. | ||
| Some translators are awesome, and who knows if they are really true to the original language, but some translators can produce something amazing, and some don't. | ||
| I love Tao Te Ching, you know, when you read Taoism. | ||
| Some translations are painful. | ||
| I don't give a fuck. | ||
| It's like, this is boring as hell. | ||
| I don't know what they are talking about. | ||
| And you read the next translation, it's the best book you've ever read. | ||
| And it's like, how can that even be? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, there's some sort of an artistic license in the translations. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| That's what really kind of has to be taken into account when you're talking about any really ancient thing that's in a language. | ||
| You have to take into account the time that they wrote it, the way people communicated back then. | ||
| Even if you read ancient English stuff, like the way they talked. | ||
| I mean, even just read the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| The way people describe things and communicate it, it's odd. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It's hard to wrap your head around, you know? | ||
| Big time. | ||
| Yeah, it's translation from one culture to another, one time period to another, and all those combined, like ancient Italian literature, translating that into modern American English. | ||
| It's got to be, like, super bizarre. | ||
| Yeah, you're kind of rewriting it to some degree. | ||
| It's a cooperation between the writer and the translator, and it's... | ||
| That's why when I... There were a lot of books that I read in Italian because my English sucked and I couldn't really read in English. | ||
| And when I finally got to read them in English, I'm like, well, that's another book. | ||
| That's completely different. | ||
| There are some similarities, but it's a whole different style. | ||
| It's not even close. | ||
| Yeah, I would think that would be the case absolutely with the Bible. | ||
| To really understand the Bible, you have to truly understand... | ||
| Whatever translation you're getting, Aramaic. | ||
| You would have to truly understand ancient Hebrew. | ||
| But ancient Hebrew is like a real squirrely language anyway, right? | ||
| Nobody speaks it exactly the way it was, so it's kind of... | ||
| There's a lot of guesswork, of course. | ||
| Well, this is one of the weirdest ones because it's also a number. | ||
| It's a numerical language, like the letter A is the number one. | ||
| They don't have numbers. | ||
| The letters served as numbers as well. | ||
| So it's like words had numerical value. | ||
| Good luck translating that. | ||
| And there's a bunch of words today. | ||
| There's a debate about what percentage are still under debate. | ||
| It's like what it actually means and what it doesn't mean. | ||
| Imagine if you could learn ancient Hebrew exactly how they did it. | ||
| Then you would understand what they were trying to say. | ||
| But even then, you wouldn't understand it unless you were in the context of the culture that existed. | ||
| You had to know how they thought about things. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's why most of the time you don't really know what that guy said. | ||
| This translation sounds better, so I'll go with that one. | ||
| But you don't really know which one they meant. | ||
| Well, it's got to be one of the most difficult aspects about history, too, because it was written by people who decided how they wanted people to remember the turn of events. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Whether or not that's exactly how it went down. | ||
| There are cases where there's, like, the Egyptian guy who left the record of, like, oh, we met the Hittites, and we kicked their ass, and we wiped them out, and the pharaoh is the best, and then you read the Hittite account, and it's like, whoa, that does not look like the same battle they're talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, it's how do you know what the fuck really happened? | ||
| I mean, we have this vague sense of what happened. | ||
| We know, like, facts. | ||
| Like, these people aren't around anymore, so somebody killed them. | ||
| You know, well, we found this pile of bones, and this is where we think we found Troy, because this is a spot. | ||
| Like, fuck, man. | ||
| There's a ton of guesswork involved in history. | ||
| You know, we make it sound like it's this super hard science, and, you know, you want to be as scientific as possible, but there's a lot of guesswork at the end of the day. | ||
| That's so weird. | ||
| It's so weird that we're trying to piece together the past to understand how we got here. | ||
| Almost like a giant crime scene of the world. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're slowly like brushing fingerprint dust on things and trying to figure out where the fucking blood splattered from and what happened. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| What the fuck happened? | ||
| And then you have to go over some shit that people wrote down. | ||
| You don't even know what the hell they were saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You get a bunch of scholars. | ||
| There's one episode I want to do next. | ||
| There's no primary sources. | ||
| It's all archaeology. | ||
| And it's this guy. | ||
| I don't know if you remember the story. | ||
| That guy that they found the body perfectly preserved from 5,000 years ago up in the Alps. | ||
| The Iceman? | ||
| Yeah, the Iceman. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And it's an awesome story because through archaeology, you find out so much. | ||
| You can find out what this guy was eating 5,000 years ago, all of this stuff. | ||
| And yet, ultimately, you don't know what the hell it was, but it's the mystery, right? | ||
| You know enough to tease you, but just not enough to actually know what was up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's amazing, though, that you can find something like that preserved and at least get a short window into that time. | ||
| Jamie just gave me the two-minute mark, so we've got to wrap this bitch up. | ||
| It's over, baby! | ||
| We just did it. | ||
| Three hours, my friend. | ||
| These are so much fun. | ||
| Flew by! | ||
| Flew by! | ||
| I love it every time. | ||
| History on Fire. | ||
| Two episodes are available, and episode zero as well, right? | ||
| Like a little pilot episode to let everybody know what's up. | ||
| And anything else? | ||
| Got a book coming out next month, so early December. | ||
| People can, if they're interested, they can check out on Amazon. | ||
| We'll tweet about it, we'll let everybody know, and I'll have you back in once the book's out, too. | ||
| My brother, thank you so much, sir. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Alright, my friends, that's it for this week. | ||
| We'll be back next week. | ||
| Till then, see you soon. |
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