True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 430: Gas Guzzler
Aired: 2025-01-16
Duration: 01:39:26


=== Why We Left Google (06:13) ===

[00:00:00]  Please stop doing Galaxy Gas, Liz.
[00:00:02]  You do too much nitrous oxide, and it makes the podcast hard to listen to.
[00:00:07]  Liz, I love you.
[00:00:08]  Please stop doing so much nitrous oxide.
[00:00:11]  Please stop making me hold the canister while you get so high listening to Skrillex.
[00:00:15]  Please don't try to sell me at Burning Man again.
[00:00:18]  I don't want to go back to the marshmallow hut.
[00:00:20]  Please, Liz.
[00:00:21]  Voice note from your daughter, Liz.
[00:00:23]  I got it.
[00:00:23]  I don't know if you want to hear it again.
[00:00:26]  I love how, like, that it really does sound like a Black Mirror, like, like, fake AI child that is, like, sending you a ransom from strangers.
[00:00:36]  Yeah.
[00:00:37]  I want to know what, like, the use case of some of these are because, like, they don't sound very good.
[00:00:43]  Let's see.
[00:00:44]  Let's see.
[00:00:44]  Mature partner.
[00:00:46]  It's a dream of mine.
[00:00:47]  Brace, I do.
[00:00:49]  I do marry you.
[00:00:51]  Gonna rhyme there.
[00:00:52]  that's like really poetic welcome to the show
[00:01:19]  can i do tiktok voice welcome to the i can't do i don't watch enough tiktoks Well, you've got to get on there before it's gone.
[00:01:26]  All I know is that I remember...
[00:01:28]  What do we have, until the 19th?
[00:01:29]  Is that it?
[00:01:30]  Is that D-Day?
[00:01:30]  That's D-Day.
[00:01:31]  That's the day that...
[00:01:32]  That's what they're saying.
[00:01:33]  Imagine the if, because you know there's gonna be one person who that day.
[00:01:39]  Don't do that.
[00:01:41]  Don't do that.
[00:01:42]  There'll be another app.
[00:01:43]  It'll just be, unfortunately, it'll probably be Israeli.
[00:01:47]  It'll be.
[00:01:48]  It probably will be.
[00:01:50]  Hello, Liz.
[00:01:51]  Hello, Brace.
[00:01:53]  Hello, Jonchotsky.
[00:01:55]  Hello, Brace.
[00:01:57]  And somehow this needs to be completed.
[00:01:59]  I know.
[00:01:59]  Wait.
[00:01:59]  Ask Liz what the podcast is called.
[00:02:01]  Liz, what's this podcast?
[00:02:02]  It's called Truanon.
[00:02:03]  Hello.
[00:02:04]  Hello.
[00:02:04]  There we go.
[00:02:05]  I liked it.
[00:02:08]  We did it different.
[00:02:10]  I want to put it out here that, and I think actually, I don't need to put it out here because I think I say it later in the episode.
[00:02:15]  You're high.
[00:02:16]  I'm high right now.
[00:02:18]  I'm fucking high.
[00:02:20]  I relapsed.
[00:02:21]  Once, it's like four years ago during a Zoom recording of this show or whatever fucking app we use, I was taunting the two of them with, I'm going to relapse, I'm going to relapse.
[00:02:34]  And I had a bottle of duster.
[00:02:35]  And I put it to my lips, forgetting that they now put a bitterant on the end of the duster.
[00:02:40]  And it made my fucking, like on like the little straw.
[00:02:43]  What is it?
[00:02:44]  It's, Liz, I hope you never have to taste the bitter.
[00:02:48]  That's so funny.
[00:02:49]  Bitter hell.
[00:02:50]  Bitter end of duster.
[00:02:52]  Oh, I love duster, though.
[00:02:54]  Would you say that?
[00:02:54]  Did you?
[00:02:56]  I mean, not to the extent.
[00:02:57]  I've met people who are addicted to duster.
[00:03:00]  But have you never done dust?
[00:03:03]  The shit that you use to clean your keyboard?
[00:03:06]  Yeah, not angel dust.
[00:03:07]  The dust of angels.
[00:03:08]  I haven't done either of those.
[00:03:09]  Duster.
[00:03:09]  So you've never inhaled.
[00:03:11]  I have inhaled oxygen.
[00:03:14]  But you've never done it.
[00:03:14]  No, I've never done any.
[00:03:15]  I've never done any of that.
[00:03:17]  Except I've did poppers.
[00:03:19]  That's different.
[00:03:19]  That doesn't count.
[00:03:20]  That's different.
[00:03:20]  Yeah.
[00:03:21]  That's different.
[00:03:21]  Have you inhaled?
[00:03:22]  No.
[00:03:23]  I inhale weed.
[00:03:24]  That doesn't count.
[00:03:26]  That's medicine.
[00:03:28]  Okay, I think I've done almost all inhalants except for ether, ether, which that sounds kind of.
[00:03:36]  I was going to say Lindy, and then I was like, fuck, I can't say Lindy.
[00:03:39]  No, we got it.
[00:03:39]  No, we're classic.
[00:03:40]  But it does feel a little.
[00:03:41]  We are liberal.
[00:03:42]  We don't fuck with that shit.
[00:03:44]  I know.
[00:03:45]  We are fucking liberal now.
[00:03:47]  We are.
[00:03:48]  That sounds, that's old school.
[00:03:51]  That's old school.
[00:03:52]  Ether's hella old school.
[00:03:54]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:54]  Yeah, that's how we talk.
[00:03:55]  I need to, yeah.
[00:03:57]  That's from way back.
[00:03:58]  I need to go back and sort of like reacquaint myself with like Obama era liberal culture because that's the energy that Tronan is trying to bring.
[00:04:06]  We're fucking liberals now.
[00:04:08]  We're fucking liberals now.
[00:04:10]  We're fucking, we're liberals.
[00:04:11]  We're liberals.
[00:04:12]  And people are going to be like, now?
[00:04:14]  Yeah, now.
[00:04:15]  Yeah, now.
[00:04:15]  Who are you?
[00:04:17]  What are you?
[00:04:18]  Oh, you dissident?
[00:04:19]  Oh, you a little dissident.
[00:04:20]  Are you dissident?
[00:04:21]  A little dissident.
[00:04:22]  How's that going?
[00:04:23]  How about you diss it dissent in diss indent of my penis on your cheek in the inside of your cheek?
[00:04:30]  Indented my penis in your cheek.
[00:04:33]  How about that?
[00:04:34]  Dissident, right?
[00:04:37]  We invented a gayer way to be right-wing.
[00:04:40]  It's okay.
[00:04:41]  Give me a break.
[00:04:42]  I guess it's fair because they did invent a gayer way to be a communist.
[00:04:46]  But regardless, welcome to the show.
[00:04:51]  Hello, everyone.
[00:04:52]  Hello.
[00:04:52]  That's very Mark Maron of me.
[00:04:53]  Welcome to the show.
[00:04:55]  Barack Obama.
[00:04:56]  That's also very Obama liberal, Mark Maron.
[00:05:00]  He should do that.
[00:05:01]  Yeah.
[00:05:01]  We're getting all the great references back.
[00:05:03]  We had Obama in this show.
[00:05:05]  gonna do a marvel movie rewatch no that's like that's too no we're doing like another thing Oh, we are.
[00:05:11]  I don't think that's liberal enough.
[00:05:13]  No, the early ones, which I don't even know what they were.
[00:05:16]  I don't know what they were.
[00:05:17]  Iron Man, I think was it.
[00:05:18]  I told you I'm trying to reacquaint myself with that time.
[00:05:20]  So I was watching Inception and I was like, damn, this movie's crazy.
[00:05:25]  But you're saying no to Sorkin.
[00:05:26]  You have to embrace Sorkin.
[00:05:28]  No, but Sorkin is like, it's not.
[00:05:29]  Sorkin is earlier for me because I think of that as Clinton era.
[00:05:32]  I understand the newsroom and I'm right there with you on Jeff Newsroom and what he did.
[00:05:38]  But Sorkin is Clinton to me because I think of the West Wing.
[00:05:44]  But I feel like Chapo owns Sorkin.
[00:05:47]  We can't, that's, that's the, he's probably.
[00:05:49]  No, I know, but I'm just saying, like, that era is, that's like, you know, that's like Bush era cope where everyone was like, oh, I remember when, you know, we had like a real president.
[00:05:59]  Yeah.
[00:05:59]  And that's what I associate with Sorkin.
[00:06:02]  Yeah.
[00:06:03]  What am I like?
[00:06:04]  What was I?
[00:06:07]  Guys, they make Coffeeway stronger now.
[00:06:10]  I'm trying to remember what they were doing in 2008.
[00:06:11]  They make coffee so much stronger now.

=== Chapo Owns Sorkin (04:21) ===

[00:06:13]  Transread IPAs.
[00:06:14]  Oh, yeah, IPAs.
[00:06:16]  But then everything became so like IPA'd.
[00:06:18]  Yeah.
[00:06:19]  The thing is, is like if we want to revisit that, we could just go to like the airport in Minneapolis.
[00:06:24]  Yeah, we really could.
[00:06:25]  Because they're still living in that world.
[00:06:27]  And like the new liberal thing is too self-conscious of being like liberal.
[00:06:31]  You know, it's like Matt Iglesias, where like, well, his liberalism seems to mostly involve binge eating, but like other, like liberalism like is like too, like the guys like that, like liberal, qua, liberal.
[00:06:43]  I actually don't know what qua means, but I said that sounds smart.
[00:06:45]  Very liberal of me.
[00:06:47]  I'm like, we need to start a new kind of liberalism.
[00:06:49]  Interesting.
[00:06:49]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:06:50]  Like a liberal liberalism.
[00:06:51]  Well, we're not wonks.
[00:06:52]  We're just snobs.
[00:06:53]  Yeah.
[00:06:54]  Yes.
[00:06:55]  That's so true.
[00:06:56]  That's so true.
[00:06:58]  The devil's in the details, but you know what?
[00:07:00]  Yeah.
[00:07:00]  And I'm on the side of the angels.
[00:07:03]  That's all I'll say that.
[00:07:04]  Devil's in the details.
[00:07:06]  We have Ezra Marcus on.
[00:07:08]  You thought we were having, you saw the beginning of the thing roll over in your podcast feed and you watched it get to Ezra and then you clicked out of it because you thought it was going to be Ezra Klein.
[00:07:16]  Ezra Klein, I regret to say, has died.
[00:07:21]  I just want to make the announcement here.
[00:07:22]  Ezra Klein has passed away.
[00:07:24]  A new Ezra has taken his place.
[00:07:27]  Ezra Marcus.
[00:07:28]  Ezra Marcus.
[00:07:28]  He does the Ezra thing a little bit differently.
[00:07:30]  A little bit different, but I think still good.
[00:07:33]  Still good.
[00:07:34]  We are talking about whippets.
[00:07:35]  We are talking about all kinds of things.
[00:07:38]  Not the dogs, which is what they call greyhounds.
[00:07:40]  No, we're talking gas.
[00:07:41]  The Anglis fee.
[00:07:42]  We're talking guzzling.
[00:07:43]  We're talking smokeshop culture.
[00:07:45]  We're talking slop world.
[00:07:46]  We got it all.
[00:07:48]  And some horses gossip.
[00:08:04]  Nope, that's not going to work.
[00:08:07]  I can't do the sound anymore.
[00:08:08]  It's been too long since I did it.
[00:08:11]  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show.
[00:08:13]  Ezra Marcus, the gas bag, the king of the galaxy, the tyrant of the tank, Marcus Whippet Cream, some call him.
[00:08:22]  The Cato Kratom King, the horny goatweed goat, the honeypack Hitler.
[00:08:26]  He's the CEO of CBD, the prelate, prelate, prelate, you know, the title of Delta 8, the Dada of the Zaza, and freelance journalist here to talk about his new article on one of my, it's not a drug.
[00:08:44]  I want to be, first of all, it's not a drug.
[00:08:45]  It's just kind of a different kind of air.
[00:08:48]  His article on a different kind of air that's under fire from a lot of Karens, including Ezra seemingly himself, and the fascist U.S. government in certain states like Gretchen Whitmer's and whoever's in charge of Louisiana's.
[00:09:02]  We're talking about galaxy gas, we're talking about whippets, we're talking about all kinds of stuff that makes you feel good for a little bit to escape this crazy world.
[00:09:08]  But people like Ezra and Liz and Young Chomsky want to take you out of that and put you back into reality, which is horrible, horrible things happen in reality.
[00:09:16]  Cambodia, look it up.
[00:09:17]  The killing fields happened.
[00:09:19]  And if you want to forget that, well, too bad.
[00:09:21]  You have to go do something else.
[00:09:23]  You can't just take a little hit of whippet.
[00:09:24]  Forget what you've seen anymore.
[00:09:26]  You have to go revisit that every day, all day.
[00:09:29]  The killing fields.
[00:09:30]  That one, oh, God, the prison they had there.
[00:09:34]  And the Vietnamese came in to stop it.
[00:09:37]  And Ezra would have prevented them from bringing the Cambodians whippets if he had the chance.
[00:09:42]  And if he was above the age of 17 years old, which he is, world's youngest journalist.
[00:09:47]  Ezra, welcome to the show.
[00:09:48]  Great to be here.
[00:09:50]  Yeah, you know, it's true.
[00:09:51]  I do kind of feel like a total op.
[00:09:54]  I mean, I'm just like doing my part to take you know what?
[00:09:58]  I appreciate that.
[00:09:59]  I say op away.
[00:10:00]  We should say the title.
[00:10:02]  I bet you didn't come up with the title for the piece, but it is the next drug epidemic is blue raspberry flavored.
[00:10:10]  How galaxy gas, which I feel crazy just saying that word, how galaxy gas became synonymous with the country's burgeoning addiction to gas.
[00:10:19]  In my day, that would be about the Hummer vehicle.
[00:10:23]  But this is about Nitrous.
[00:10:25]  For me, it's about beans.
[00:10:28]  Ezra, what made you want to write about Galaxy Gas?
[00:10:31]  First, that's a really boring question to ask, but I do want to know.

=== Why Nitrous Became Addictive (14:56) ===

[00:10:34]  You know, I wrote a story about Nitrous like three years ago for the New York Times when that guy, Tony Shea, who's the CEO of Zappos, died in sort of like in the midst of a debilitating nitrous habit.
[00:10:51]  He sort of died in a fire that he seems to have lit while doing nitrous, like trapped in a closet, literally.
[00:10:57]  And he, yeah, and he had been, he had just been completely addicted to it.
[00:11:02]  And so I wrote a story where I just did like kind of a survey of like what Nitris, what role it plays, like what is it?
[00:11:10]  I mean, who's doing it?
[00:11:11]  And it's sort of long trajectory through countercultures of various stripes from, you know, like Grateful Dead, Rave stuff, Fish, what have you.
[00:11:21]  Steve-O got into it, kind of the most famous face of it.
[00:11:25]  You know, Steve-O became an addict while following The Grateful Dead on tour in the 90s.
[00:11:32]  Anyway, and so, you know, I talked to Steve-O.
[00:11:34]  So, anyway, I just sort of had it.
[00:11:36]  I'd written this piece, and I was sort of fascinated by how it seemed to have really come back with a vengeance.
[00:11:42]  Because, you know, I was around in college.
[00:11:45]  It was certainly, you know, I went to college in the early 2010s.
[00:11:48]  It was certainly something that you would see, but it didn't feel like this, it had any kind of above-ground cultural impact.
[00:11:55]  And then suddenly it was sort of popping up.
[00:11:57]  Like, you know, rappers started mentioning it.
[00:12:01]  It was sort of crossing over in a new way.
[00:12:02]  And all these celebrities seemed to be doing it.
[00:12:04]  So anyway, I wrote that piece.
[00:12:06]  And then I heard from this lawyer a couple years later who was working on this case involving a woman who was killed by a driver who was on Nitrous, a young woman.
[00:12:21]  And yeah, this dude just, you know, hit a Whippet in his car and just instantly killed a pedestrian.
[00:12:27]  And this lawyer was like, you know, he had read my piece and he wanted to talk to me.
[00:12:32]  And I talked to him for a while.
[00:12:34]  I didn't do anything with that at the time, but I was kind of keeping track of it.
[00:12:39]  And he ended up getting this insane verdict of $750-some million dollars against the company that manufactures the Whippet brand, which is like one of the more popular kinds of Whippets.
[00:12:56]  And I was fascinated.
[00:12:58]  And he was telling me about just like how these companies work.
[00:13:01]  And his sort of case was that it's basically this massive industry of drug dealing under the guise of making food products, essentially.
[00:13:11]  It's this absurd loophole where you can sell it legally if you say that it's for, you know, for making whipped cream or making like flavored infused beverages, which, yeah, you can do that.
[00:13:26]  But like, you know, it seems like that the bulk of the nitrous being sold in America is probably not for people making flavored whipped cream.
[00:13:37]  Yeah.
[00:13:38]  And so I just was like, I was just, I was just having the back of my mind, like, I'd love to kind of do a story that's a little bit more like getting into the kind of like nuts and bolts of the distribution of this stuff and like what is it and who's buying it, how much money's being made.
[00:13:52]  And then this summer, Galaxy Gas went viral on TikTok after this, you know, just a bunch of like kids in Atlanta started making like these, they kind of got a hold of it and started making these videos that were like, you know, crazy.
[00:14:10]  I mean, you'd see kids like hitting it in school and like passing out.
[00:14:15]  The Stanley Cup of Drugs.
[00:14:16]  Yeah.
[00:14:18]  And so then I just, I talked to my editor and I was like, I mean, this is like, this should be a great time to kind of do not just a piece about galaxy gas, but also just like what is going on with nitrous.
[00:14:32]  Why is it now being sold in like massive tanks, which is a new development, relatively speaking.
[00:14:39]  Yeah, I mean, I'd always, so I've, I've, just going to come out right and say it.
[00:14:44]  I've probably done one billion whippets.
[00:14:46]  Same.
[00:14:47]  I'm not going to shy away from that.
[00:14:50]  I'm not different than you if you're listening.
[00:14:51]  If you're hitting the gas driving that motherfucking Audi listening to this shit, I'm like you, except I can't drive.
[00:14:58]  In the pandemic, we would order them on Seamless from Bodegos.
[00:15:03]  Yeah, there you go.
[00:15:05]  I was introduced to them by Dan Rincon, who also gave me my first bump of cocaine.
[00:15:11]  But no relation to me later destroying my life with drug addiction a few years after.
[00:15:17]  But anyways, I was introduced to Whippets, I think in Austin, Texas, in like 2008, 2007.
[00:15:27]  And I remember doing so many over like a weekend and then feeling dumber, like legitimately being like, I actually think like, you know, people always talk colloquially, like, oh, I destroyed some brain cells.
[00:15:38]  And I was like, I think I can feel my brain being worse.
[00:15:43]  But whippets back then, I mean, they still are, but whippet, the brand Whippets, which has the pretty little mod girl on it.
[00:15:51]  She's kind of like, you know, I don't know if she's holding it.
[00:15:52]  She's going to stop.
[00:15:53]  Don't do this.
[00:15:54]  Like, stop.
[00:15:54]  No, this is going to feel too good.
[00:15:56]  I think she's holding up a Whippet canister or something.
[00:15:58]  But we'd buy them at City Smoke, which is still there, best smoke shop in San Francisco on Mission Street.
[00:16:03]  Mural by George Crampton.
[00:16:04]  But we would go there and buy a little canister of Whippets and like, you know, hang out and do drugs and drink and do Whippets.
[00:16:11]  And it was kind of like an addendum to like whatever.
[00:16:14]  It was kind of a goofy part of a night or something.
[00:16:16]  It wasn't a lifestyle.
[00:16:18]  Later in life, I started encountering people who were severely like, it seemed like addicted to whippets, which blew my mind because they take a lot out of you.
[00:16:31]  And for those who haven't done it, like, how would you, how would you describe the high?
[00:16:36]  It's like you are being choked out while coming for like 15 seconds.
[00:16:49]  Kind of not too untrue.
[00:16:51]  I was.
[00:16:52]  But the thing is, you can all, there's different, like, if you just do like a, a kind of a light, like, you just do one whippet, it's pretty mild.
[00:16:59]  You get a kind of like auditory sensation.
[00:17:02]  But if you, what people would do is you would really, you would pack the wicket whippet dispenser with like two or even three whippets.
[00:17:10]  We'd be like, oh, look, I'm going to do a triple.
[00:17:11]  And then the more you do, you can kind of get to a more and more hallucinatory place.
[00:17:15]  When I talked to Steve-O, you know, he was saying he would do so many that he would actually, you know, people talk about the ayahuasca demon or the machine elves on DMT.
[00:17:26]  He was like, you can meet those people, their own sort of set of Whippet people if you do enough.
[00:17:32]  There's like Whippet demons and angels and stuff.
[00:17:35]  He was like, there's entities if you chase the dragon all the way to the top.
[00:17:40]  Find that interesting because there's the famous elves or whatever on DMT, a drug I have zero interest in.
[00:17:45]  But then when I was on meth, I would encounter the shadow people sometimes, although not as intensely as others.
[00:17:50]  I was mostly hearing them, but glimpsing them occasionally.
[00:17:54]  And it's nice to know that there's Whippet deities, I guess, or like Fae folk that appear once you take it out.
[00:18:02]  I remember being convinced to do them by my good friend who I bore no ill will towards Dan Rincon, being like, come on, man, it's like you live in a Devo song.
[00:18:13]  And then I remember doing it.
[00:18:14]  I was like, I do feel like I'm in a Devo song.
[00:18:17]  Wait, just because of the name?
[00:18:18]  What do you mean?
[00:18:19]  A Whippet.
[00:18:20]  No, no, no, not because of the name.
[00:18:22]  But probably that's what made the connection initially in his head.
[00:18:24]  But no, because it's kind of like, it's kind of, I feel like it's kind of like being in a can record or something.
[00:18:31]  You get this weird Doppler effect of sound.
[00:18:33]  Yeah.
[00:18:34]  But you also.
[00:18:35]  It doesn't last very long, right?
[00:18:36]  No.
[00:18:36]  No, it's a quick thing, which I find, I mean, we'll probably talk about this a little later.
[00:18:40]  I find interesting because the other sort of drug of the moment, although possibly a little bit on the decline here, is ketamine, which is also fairly.
[00:18:48]  Well, these are really, they're both dissociatives.
[00:18:50]  Correct.
[00:18:50]  Correct.
[00:18:51]  And fairly short acting.
[00:18:53]  Yeah.
[00:18:54]  But to do whippet, like to get, to be like on whippets for a while, because again, yeah, they last for like 30 seconds.
[00:19:01]  You kind of have to keep doing them over and over.
[00:19:03]  And like you said, like the effect builds to the point where like if you watch somebody who's been like, there's like videos of guys I've been watching who are like doing them for like an hour straight and they're like, kind of fucking, they're like zombies.
[00:19:15]  But aren't they just like brain dead?
[00:19:16]  Yeah.
[00:19:17]  Yeah.
[00:19:17]  A little bit.
[00:19:17]  Because you're also getting that, what's it called?
[00:19:19]  Hypoxia where you're hypoxia.
[00:19:21]  So what's interesting about it is like, you know, if you go to the dentist and you take nitrous, like what they're doing there is administering what's called medical grade nitrous, where it's mixed with oxygen.
[00:19:35]  So it has that sort of mild effect of, you know, of disassociating, it still has a dissociative effect, but you're still getting oxygen to your brain.
[00:19:45]  Whereas food-grade nitrous, which is what you're doing, what a whippet is, because it doesn't have to be, you know, mixed with oxygen, it's much cheaper.
[00:19:54]  It's like this commercial product, and it's just nitrogen basically entering your bloodstream.
[00:20:01]  So you're not getting any oxygen.
[00:20:03]  So you're essentially being choked out.
[00:20:04]  And that's why it's so intense.
[00:20:06]  And it's, I mean, it really is killing your brain cells.
[00:20:09]  It's like if you're being choked out over and over again.
[00:20:12]  Yeah.
[00:20:14]  Yeah.
[00:20:14]  It's, it's, I mean, I've been looking at like a lot of the like papers about like health effects of it.
[00:20:20]  You've probably had a look at these too.
[00:20:22]  Yeah.
[00:20:22]  I frankly can't remember what they said, but it had something to do with like it.
[00:20:27]  I mean, listen, I did.
[00:20:29]  I did relate into the use of whippets.
[00:20:31]  I'm going to be honest, I am a cautionary tale because I really, when I, before I started doing drugs, I was genuinely a little bit smarter than I am now.
[00:20:37]  No way.
[00:20:38]  I swear to God, Liz.
[00:20:39]  I remember coming out of it and being in like a rehab and be like, oh, fuck, dude, I think I might be dumber.
[00:20:45]  Because math does not do wonders for you either.
[00:20:48]  But heroin's not that bad for you, physically.
[00:20:51]  But Whippets, like, they kind of, they, like, can genuinely, permanently make you dumber.
[00:20:59]  I'll tell the story from my piece of a woman who I spoke to who was a, she is a tattoo artist and OnlyFans performer from Texas.
[00:21:14]  That's kind of your beat.
[00:21:15]  Yeah, I like that kind of, what would you even call it?
[00:21:18]  Like, by the way, I will get into that later.
[00:21:21]  It's the hustler economy.
[00:21:22]  Mythical America, yeah, hustler economy.
[00:21:24]  Anyway, she started doing whippets, you know, with friends at parties and she would then started finding herself getting more dependent on it and would just do it alone.
[00:21:35]  And so she's buying these big tanks, right?
[00:21:37]  Because that's the other thing.
[00:21:37]  It's like back in the day, you know, you're doing the small whippet canisters, eight gram canisters.
[00:21:42]  There's this friction required of like, okay, you have to reload the canister.
[00:21:46]  By the time you've done it, you've gotten sober.
[00:21:48]  Like then you do it again.
[00:21:49]  But there's this like kind of process, which at least puts some friction into doing it.
[00:21:53]  But you get these tanks and you can just hit it repeatedly for a really long time because the tanks, they sell them up to, the biggest one Galhaxicas was selling was 3.3 liters, which is the equivalent of 250 of the small whippets.
[00:22:12]  So it's a massive tank.
[00:22:13]  It's like the size of like...
[00:22:15]  It's like what an emphysema tank would be.
[00:22:17]  Yeah.
[00:22:17]  Yeah, it's like a Labrador or something.
[00:22:20]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:22]  And so she would buy these and she would just, you can just sit there and do it all day, basically.
[00:22:27]  She was like, it became my entire life.
[00:22:29]  I was sitting in my car.
[00:22:30]  I would go to the smokeshop, sit in my car, do it, sit at home, do it.
[00:22:33]  And what happens if you, you know, if you're just doing Whippets the way I would say most people likely do it, which is like occasionally at a party, you're not going to get the effect that you get if you are a repeated heavy user, where it makes it so that your body can't, what's the word, like process or intake vitamin B12.
[00:22:54]  You basically get a vitamin B12 deficiency.
[00:22:56]  Yeah, you like deplete almost all of your B12, which can lead to like serious neurological effects.
[00:23:03]  Yeah, you develop like neuropathy, peripheral neuropathy, so your limbs, they just stop functioning.
[00:23:09]  I mean, your spinal cord essentially degenerates because the nerves in your spinal cord don't work anymore.
[00:23:16]  So your spinal cord kind of loses function.
[00:23:19]  And she started getting seizures.
[00:23:23]  She lost bowel control.
[00:23:26]  She was saying she would just like be in bed, like pissing herself, shitting herself, like doing whippets and just not caring because it's, she was just, you know, so hooked on the need to stay high, basically.
[00:23:40]  So I have a question because you said something about, you said that she was doing it recreationally and then she got more dependent on it.
[00:23:47]  That seems to be a big like change in a lot of this behavior as well.
[00:23:52]  Like it didn't used to be that people would kind of get hooked on this stuff.
[00:23:56]  It used to, I mean, at least from what I remember, I mean, there's always stories of that.
[00:24:00]  But I remember when I had friends, probably around the same time that you were running around San Francisco doing this, like I had a lot of friends that would go, like they'd be in Dolores Park and be like, oh, let's go do Whippets.
[00:24:11]  I did Whippets with your friends, Liz.
[00:24:13]  Oh, there we go.
[00:24:14]  So, but it was always a kind of like, like you said, it was an addition to other stuff, like drinking and other stuff.
[00:24:22]  Like, we'd be like outside the bar doing whippets, but it wouldn't be like, we're having whippet night.
[00:24:28]  Right.
[00:24:29]  You know what I mean?
[00:24:29]  Like, it would be like an addendum.
[00:24:31]  Yeah.
[00:24:32]  And it seems like there's been a shift in that behavior or relationship with this drug and people getting more and more dependent on it.
[00:24:40]  Whereas like I still, even I was like spending a lot of time on the like nitrous Reddit the other night, which is quite active, we'll say, and creative with memes, which I appreciate as much as I don't approve of the lifestyle choices.
[00:24:57]  I also, when I was looking at that, I ended up seeing a lot of photos of the inside of people's mouths or their comparing lesions, frostbites.
[00:25:08]  Yes, frostbite that they're getting inside of their mouth and in their throat, which is fucking crazy.
[00:25:15]  And number one, I don't want to read about like throat frostbite.
[00:25:18]  That's so crazy.
[00:25:20]  But it seems like, like you say, these huge tanks have made it a lot easier for people to just like spend all night hooked on these things.

=== Galaxy Gas Explosion (14:38) ===

[00:25:31]  But also the like ease at buying them and like proliferation of them, which is kind of like the main subject of your piece, which is this company Galaxy Gas, which is different than just the Whippets of yesteryear.
[00:25:48]  So what is Galaxy Gas and how did they kind of shift the market?
[00:25:53]  Yeah, so Galaxy Gas is one of a number of companies that emerged around 2020, 2021 following a sort of a significant uptick in nitrous usage in the pandemic.
[00:26:13]  These companies started coming out that were like brands that were, many of them were kind of associated with the smokeshop industry.
[00:26:21]  Galaxy Gas was started by three brothers who ran a company called Cloud9.
[00:26:27]  It was a chain of smoke shops.
[00:26:29]  And the chain of smoke shops kind of across, they started in Atlanta, but they were across Georgia and a few other states in the region.
[00:26:38]  And they essentially the way that these smoke shops work at the sort of chain level is they are constantly white labeling their competitors' products and just trying to make a cheaper version of it.
[00:26:53]  And so they're both distribution companies and retailers.
[00:26:59]  And they were seeing that the Whippets that they were stocking in their store were selling well.
[00:27:05]  So they were like, okay, we'll make our own version.
[00:27:09]  And they had had a lot of success and the kind of, you know, the prior, I think the precursor in a lot of ways to Whippets is sort of what happened with vapes in the late 2010s where you had.
[00:27:20]  Also got bigger.
[00:27:22]  Yeah, totally.
[00:27:23]  And more flavored and branded in this way that was like...
[00:27:27]  For kids.
[00:27:28]  For kids, yeah.
[00:27:28]  For kids, but also massive rigs.
[00:27:30]  Yeah.
[00:27:34]  And yeah, and with this sort of like streetwear, I want to say like graffiti, like cartoon monkey graphic style.
[00:27:43]  Breathing ape style.
[00:27:44]  Yeah, and I mean, these, these guys, like, so they already manufactured, they made like hookahs and like vape rigs and all this stuff, like cart-flavored cartridges.
[00:27:54]  So they had all sorts of manufacturing contacts in China, and they just started making their own version of the new product that was emerging in the smoke shop industry, which are these big tanks of nitrous, not just the, you know, the small canisters, but they were, but all these, but they, you know, they were stocking some other company.
[00:28:13]  It was called like Infusion Max, I believe.
[00:28:15]  And that was selling like crazy.
[00:28:17]  So they're like, we'll just do our own and we'll call it.
[00:28:19]  And they're, you know, the thing about these guys is like they're the this one Ben Amore, so the oldest of these brothers and sort of started the company, is like he's, it's very like, he's tapped in with Atlanta kind of hip-hop.
[00:28:33]  Like he's, you know, does collabs with like Lil Baby or like Flocka in the store.
[00:28:38]  So and he's had a lot of success with like marketing smoke shop products in a kind of streetwear adjacent lifestyle.
[00:28:46]  Lifestyle, exactly, kind of way.
[00:28:48]  So Galaxy Gas was sort of his masterstroke, was this name that really evokes, you know, it's a lot more blatant about evoking getting high than the Whippet companies had been previously.
[00:28:59]  Because they were, before that, they tried to keep things, you know, relatively, relatively speaking, subtle so that they wouldn't attract, you know, because it is technically illegal to sell this for recreational purposes.
[00:29:14]  And I think Galaxy Gas was really pushing the limit of like, it's just, it's flavored.
[00:29:19]  I mean, it's like, the name evokes, you know, going into the galaxy.
[00:29:23]  I mean, it's got camo branding.
[00:29:26]  And it was just, it had this, the same sort of like cultural positioning as something like a, you know, an elf bar or whatever, whatever kind of vape rig you want to talk about.
[00:29:38]  And it also kind of looks like Celsius.
[00:29:39]  Yeah.
[00:29:40]  Well, it also looks like the fucking the weed packs they started selling.
[00:29:44]  Totally.
[00:29:45]  Yeah, I think, I think, yeah.
[00:29:48]  Like all these, like we were talking about all these stores with like neon SpongeBob like spray paint graphics.
[00:29:56]  And so and this baby joker.
[00:29:58]  Yeah.
[00:30:00]  This this was like very much positioned in that kind of nexus and it and it like was kind of a slow burn at first where it was just mostly selling.
[00:30:07]  It was selling really well at their stores, but they started going to like these big smoke shop conventions and sort of pushing it to like other stores around the country and and they just got really successful.
[00:30:18]  I mean at a certain point it was stocked in like more than 5,000 stores nationwide.
[00:30:24]  And all these like smoke shops are constantly kind of these big chains are always sort of buying from each other and ripping each other off.
[00:30:33]  And so it was just for it was sort of on this upswing and they were making like a significant amount of money selling this stuff.
[00:30:42]  It was like at one point they were saying they were they were doing like nine figures annually in revenue not just from because at a certain point it wasn't just like the retail stores.
[00:30:52]  It's just they were like selling the stuff you know wholesale to other smoke shops on it online.
[00:30:57]  Yeah I mean so that basically that's what it was.
[00:30:58]  They just like successfully branded nitrous in a way that appealed to young people.
[00:31:06]  And I think I want to make a point too like especially young black kids.
[00:31:10]  Like that was a thing that I was sort of like surprised to see because I'm going to be honest I've always associated like Whippets like kind of with like white kind of like 20 Yeah, it's like a white counterculture thing.
[00:31:23]  Exactly.
[00:31:24]  It's like fish.
[00:31:25]  Fish.
[00:31:25]  I once actually saw the Whippet Mafia and I've told this on this show before, but whatever again I'll tell it again.
[00:31:29]  I saw the Whippet Mafia brutally beat a guy in front of City Hall actually in San Francisco because they were playing at the fucking, what is that?
[00:31:37]  Not the Warfield.
[00:31:38]  The big ass venue down there.
[00:31:40]  Selling Nitrous balloons outside of a City Hall meeting.
[00:31:43]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:44]  But they were, I just saw some guy getting beat up and I was like, what's happening with him?
[00:31:47]  And they were like, it's a Whippet Mafia.
[00:31:49]  The Whippet Mafia is a very real thing.
[00:31:52]  Still to this day.
[00:31:53]  They'll go and bury a week before an outdoor concert, they'll go to the venue and bury the tanks and then dig them up while it's happening.
[00:32:02]  And I've seen it.
[00:32:04]  The first time I saw tanks was at this big outdoor punk show in Los Angeles in like 2021, early 2021, I want to say.
[00:32:13]  But I knew that people sold, but they were still selling to buy balloons.
[00:32:17]  And then I started seeing like videos of like 16-year-old black teenagers fucking with these giant galaxy gas things.
[00:32:25]  And I was like, this seems somebody's.
[00:32:27]  No balloon required.
[00:32:28]  No balloon required.
[00:32:29]  But it was like, oh, this is being marketed to them.
[00:32:34]  And then the attendant white kid who really wants to participate in that.
[00:32:38]  Yeah.
[00:32:38]  And I think that had a lot to do with just the kind of culture of Cloud9 as a store because it was, you know, they were all across Metro Atlanta area and they had a lot of tie-ins with local rappers, obviously really influential.
[00:32:53]  And I think like it, and even beyond this, you know, I think, I think even beyond Cloud9 and Atlanta in particular, there had been this sort of like growing usage of nitrous among rappers.
[00:33:06]  Like in 2020, you know, Adam22 like made a video pointing out how he was seeing all these rappers like Gunna and Young Thug were starting to do Nitrous.
[00:33:17]  Kanye, you know, became addicted to Nitrous.
[00:33:20]  Carne had the Nitrous today.
[00:33:22]  And I think it was like just a cultural shift with this thing that had been sort of isolated in these more niche, white, juggalo type groups or, you know, frats as well.
[00:33:37]  But it crossed over.
[00:33:39]  And then when these kids started making, you know, videos about it, the videos were like incredibly magnetic and it just like took off in the way that only like a trend that like cool rappers are pushing can take off.
[00:33:56]  Well, it's funny you mentioned the Adam 22 thing because I think you maybe wrote about that in your article or whatever.
[00:34:02]  I read about it somewhere and I looked up to find the Adam 22 PSA about Whippets.
[00:34:06]  And then the latest thing is him like, I think last year, being convinced by like a 25-year-old rapper to take a hit from a Galaxy Gas.
[00:34:16]  And the dude he's talking to is like unable to form a sentence.
[00:34:20]  Really?
[00:34:21]  Yeah.
[00:34:21]  I mean, just, well, that's a galaxy gas.
[00:34:24]  I watched that and I was like, became fascinated with that guy.
[00:34:26]  And he's like the, I think he is the self-appointed like mayor of Zombieland, like Kensington and Philly.
[00:34:34]  So he's like, he's like the head of fentanyl in America.
[00:34:37]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:39]  Well, I guess it's good that he's just doing the gas then.
[00:34:43]  But yeah, I mean, it blew up.
[00:34:45]  And it's interesting because Galaxy Gas kind of became, because Whippets, I think Whippet just refers to the brand Whippet, but there was other brands that you could buy.
[00:34:54]  Because you buy the little box of the canisters and then you get a cracker and you can get a lot of stuff.
[00:34:57]  There's tons of different brands, yeah.
[00:34:58]  But like we called them all Whippets.
[00:35:00]  And now I feel like people call all the tanks gas for like a galaxy gas.
[00:35:05]  And I do think just to go back a little bit, like, you know, we're talking about how it was the balloon that sort of regulated you on how much you could kind of do at once.
[00:35:14]  With the gas, it's crazy because you can literally, you can potentially take it all to the fucking dome and do it.
[00:35:20]  You know, you mentioned that lawsuit earlier, and I was looking up, I was looking at Cloud9, and there is, in fact, a death that happened.
[00:35:28]  Yep.
[00:35:28]  A 78-year-old man killed while riding his bicycle by a young white kid that looks like he could have stepped out of practically, I would say about 50% of the articles you've written in the past three years.
[00:35:43]  And the guy was just been at Cloud9 smokeshop, had galaxy gas, was hitting it while driving, and ran this guy over.
[00:35:54]  Yeah, I mean, that is like one of the more shocking things that I feel like I came across while reporting this article is not just like the number of nitrous-associated fatalities.
[00:36:08]  If you look it up, there's like just this sort of like steady drumbeat of like local news stories about people getting killed by people that are huffing while driving.
[00:36:17]  But just talking to these like smokeshop employees who worked in these stores and were selling nitrous, they're like, Yeah, we would just see people, you know, drive off while huffing their tank.
[00:36:30]  And to me, that's insane.
[00:36:31]  Like, it's fucking if you've ever done a whippet doing that while driving, I can't even imagine how you could do that.
[00:36:37]  You don't have a motor control, you lose motor control, yeah, literally.
[00:36:41]  It's like I like genuinely, I've done a whippet and just like kind of like collapsed there, you know, like you sort of melt into yourself.
[00:36:47]  You slump, you can't really stand up, you like you certainly can't operate a motor vehicle.
[00:36:52]  And people are just doing it and just like getting instantly murked.
[00:36:58]  And, you know, this, this lawyer I was talking to is saying he's like the issue is, you know, cops don't really know to look for this.
[00:37:06]  And it's also like, if you get pulled over and you've been doing whip it's like there's no, it'll be worn off.
[00:37:12]  You can't get like a DUI for it.
[00:37:13]  So there's just no, you know, it'll be worn off by the time, you know, you're talking to an officer or something.
[00:37:18]  So there's just no sense of like the scale of how much this is happening.
[00:37:22]  But there's this, there's constantly these sort of stories emerging.
[00:37:26]  Yeah, because the lawyer did the case that I talked about, like, he started hearing from like all these other people in the same situations, all these sort of like victims or people whose kids died from driving while doing it.
[00:37:36]  And it's just this like, I mean, that woman who I talked to who became addicted, said she got like in four accidents from huffing while driving.
[00:37:43]  Jesus Christ.
[00:37:44]  I mean, it's the famous like, you know, I mean, I think that was Duster, but the famous like My Strange Addiction where the lady was like, I'm walking on the sunshine, which I thought was crazy until I met people who were addicted at Duster.
[00:37:55]  In fact, a guy died from Duster in my friend's apartment.
[00:37:58]  You know, it's, it's, that's, to me, is crazy.
[00:38:03]  But like you talk about in the article at one point how last summer the Cloud9, because you seem to be interviewed a bunch of Cloud9 employees.
[00:38:13]  And they talk about how shoplifting increases and how like eventually people were pulling guns on them.
[00:38:19]  That to me is like, I know, again, like, I know theoretically you can get addicted to this stuff, but like the way that people are acting is like crackhead.
[00:38:28]  It's like a fiend.
[00:38:29]  Do you know what I mean?
[00:38:30]  It's completely different than how I've ever heard like Whippets talked about recreationally.
[00:38:35]  Yeah.
[00:38:36]  The behavior described in the piece and like from people that you talk to.
[00:38:40]  Like even there's that great quote from one of the employees at one of the smoke shops where he's like, I had to, I mean, this isn't the direct quote, but he says something like, I had to intervene because people were coming over and over and over again.
[00:38:55]  And I basically had to act like a bartender and be like, I'm cutting you off.
[00:38:58]  And he's like, why am I in that position?
[00:39:00]  I just work at a fucking smoke shop, which is pretty crazy to hear about.
[00:39:05]  That was crazy to think about just to zoom out, you know, because I'd been reporting this for a while and I talked to that guy just to zoom out and be like, right, the only limit on how much nitrous is sold and to who it's sold to is the ethical decision making of smoke shop employees who are like 22 year olds working summer jobs.
[00:39:30]  And he was talking about, yeah, this guy who had come in and was visibly addicted and was buying hundreds of dollars a day, coming in multiple times, buying multiple tanks.
[00:39:41]  And something that the smoke shop employees would see, which started to really freak them out, is the same people over the course of a few weeks or months would develop physical signs of addiction.
[00:39:54]  They would start developing limps.
[00:39:56]  They would start developing facial tics.
[00:39:59]  They would slur their words.
[00:40:00]  They just seemed, they didn't seem, they seemed sort of irritable and crazy.
[00:40:04]  And so they were watching people become debilitated in real time.

=== Laughing Gas Addiction Epidemic (14:54) ===

[00:40:10]  And they were like, what are we selling?
[00:40:13]  What are we doing?
[00:40:14]  How is this company allowing this to happen?
[00:40:17]  And they would complain.
[00:40:19]  I mean, they would say like, they would tell their managers, like, do we have to sell this?
[00:40:22]  Do we really have to sell this stuff?
[00:40:23]  And the manager would say, like, unfortunately, yeah.
[00:40:25]  I mean, this is like what we do.
[00:40:27]  And because the bosses, you know, the guys around the company were always pushing them to sell more and more gas.
[00:40:32]  And, you know, one thing I found was like behind the scenes, you know, because when you're selling this stuff, you have to say it's a food product.
[00:40:43]  But behind the scenes, the bosses were incredibly cavalier about talking about what this really is and who's buying it.
[00:40:52]  And at one point, you know, they said something to the effect of This guy, Ben Amore, is in like a meeting where he's doing a sort of like pump-up motivational speech, you know, like Instagram reel motivational content kind of thing.
[00:41:07]  Like that's, that's kind of what his vibe was.
[00:41:09]  And he's saying to a crowd of his district managers, you know, if you can't sell drugs to a drug addict, you're fucking up.
[00:41:16]  Yeah.
[00:41:17]  Jesus Christ.
[00:41:18]  I mean, I, I, yeah, that's, I mean, it's, it's kind of what you said earlier where, like the branding that they had to do publicly was almost like this, wink wink nudge, nudge.
[00:41:28]  Like this is for the kitchen.
[00:41:30]  And so the first time I encountered galaxy gas branding was like some ad that they had.
[00:41:34]  It was like on their website or something.
[00:41:36]  It wasn't like I was served it, but like some ad they had where it was probably Ben the guy.
[00:41:40]  It was the guy who said he invented it, like in a kitchen making whipped cream.
[00:41:45]  I I gotta tell you this again, i've done a billion whippets.
[00:41:48]  I've never worked in a kitchen.
[00:41:49]  I actually don't know how you make whipped cream from a whippet, like I don't even know.
[00:41:53]  I I theoretically I understand, because it's like the gas goes into cream, I guess, and then whips it for you.
[00:41:58]  But like this guy is, like you know, it's this kind of like.
[00:42:01]  Doing it with the big tanks is, as is, incredibly convoluted and like it it really doesn't.
[00:42:08]  I think you can get like 20 000 like servings of whipped cream from one small tank of fucking nitrous too.
[00:42:15]  Yeah it's, it's absurd.
[00:42:16]  Yeah, different kind of health hazard.
[00:42:18]  Exactly exactly I, I guess my question is so like this seems to be like a hugely especially like it got really crazy in 2024.
[00:42:25]  Was there like a public response in from this?
[00:42:28]  Like I know it was a like in Atlanta.
[00:42:30]  I mean it was everywhere, it still is everywhere, but like in Atlanta it was like an epidemic or whatever like.
[00:42:36]  Was there a response from like the government at all?
[00:42:38]  Was there any kind of like public health thing over the course of um 2023 and 2024, as the kind of tank driven nitrous phenomenon really started picking up steam?
[00:42:51]  There's been a number of um of local legislatures that have started to make moves, like Louisiana, um was is the first state to actually ban all commercial nitrous sales, and that was in direct response to people.
[00:43:09]  The the, the director of poison control in the state, said something to the effect of, we're seeing people become addicted and they're they're, it's like they're doing it like meth.
[00:43:17]  And I noticed also that Tulane at some point released a statement about, you know, kids off campus are doing nitrous and they're telling people to watch out for it.
[00:43:28]  So what I think they're, they're, you know, I actually haven't like looked into this, but I would assume that, you know, Bourbon Street, New Orleans probably had a robust nitrous.
[00:43:36]  They did.
[00:43:37]  I was looking it up, and it was actually specifically about Bourbon Street, like people, like nitrous bottles littered everywhere.
[00:43:43]  Yeah.
[00:43:44]  I mean, that's one of the funny side effects of this is like how much you kind of see it out in the world once you start looking for it.
[00:43:50]  Yeah.
[00:43:50]  Like once you're like you'll be walking down.
[00:43:52]  You're going to start recognizing the canisters on the street.
[00:43:54]  Yeah.
[00:43:54]  They're kind of all over the place.
[00:43:58]  But a few other states made sort of less aggressive moves.
[00:44:02]  Michigan criminalized selling.
[00:44:06]  They made it, they enhanced the penalties, I guess, for selling it as a recreational substance.
[00:44:12]  And a few other cities have made some moves.
[00:44:15]  But there hasn't really been much happening at a federal level.
[00:44:19]  I mean, it's something that the FDA has announced that they are keeping under surveillance.
[00:44:26]  I don't really know what that means, but they're RFK, if you're listening to me, legalize whippets for recreational use.
[00:44:32]  Let it open.
[00:44:33]  Let it out.
[00:44:33]  Legalize it.
[00:44:36]  But there has been a number of sort of like, I think there's been a shift where, like, especially after Galaxy Gas went viral, like it got, you know, a lot of like CISA was like tweeting about how it's being marketed to black children.
[00:44:49]  And there was all this sort of like outcry in a way that there hadn't really been before.
[00:44:54]  But I don't know that anything is necessarily going to happen.
[00:44:56]  I mean, the brand, Galaxy Gas, the owners seem to have gotten freaked out and they shut it down.
[00:45:05]  But just as quickly, you know, now a lot of smoke shops in Atlanta carry something called cosmic gas.
[00:45:10]  So there doesn't seem to be any slowing.
[00:45:13]  I mean, you can go to e-smoke on Canal Street in Manhattan.
[00:45:17]  You can go to any smoke shop, really anywhere, and find big tanks of nitrous from all sorts of brands, including Galaxy Gas.
[00:45:22]  I saw just the other day.
[00:45:24]  Interestingly enough, e-smoke does not sell menthol jewel pods, even though menthol should be legal.
[00:45:29]  It is just a flavor of cigarette that is not for kids.
[00:45:32]  Kids don't like menthol.
[00:45:33]  Kids want blueberry.
[00:45:34]  Kids want raspberry.
[00:45:35]  Menthol is for people like me.
[00:45:39]  Where are they getting this gas?
[00:45:42]  Because, well, I know the answer to that, but I want to maybe Socratically ask you, where in China are they getting this gas from?
[00:45:53]  And how come everyone in China isn't addicted to Whippets?
[00:45:57]  You know, something, and right, I'll say they are getting it from China.
[00:46:01]  It's being manufactured in factories.
[00:46:05]  It's being I found it incredibly easy to get in touch with Chinese factories.
[00:46:12]  You can private label anything from China.
[00:46:14]  Yeah.
[00:46:14]  It's seamless.
[00:46:16]  It really took me three minutes to be texting on WhatsApp with a woman named Seven.
[00:46:22]  It's a beautiful loan for a boy or a girl, especially a girl or a boy.
[00:46:25]  Who was asking Mrs. Ezra how many tanks of nitrous she could sell a month?
[00:46:31]  And I was like, could you do, and I responded, like, okay, could you do like millions a month?
[00:46:36]  She's like, no problem.
[00:46:36]  I was like, and these are specifically for people to inhale recreationally to get high.
[00:46:42]  And she was like, yes, friend.
[00:46:44]  So sick.
[00:46:45]  Yeah.
[00:46:45]  I mean, I got to tell you, they're a dream to work with.
[00:46:48]  On WhatsApp?
[00:46:49]  The Chinese nitro sealers.
[00:46:51]  Wholesalers.
[00:46:52]  But yeah, I mean, it's being made there.
[00:46:54]  I think there are a number of industrial gas manufacturers that do helium or whatever.
[00:47:04]  And I don't know how big the industry actually is in China.
[00:47:09]  I don't know to what extent these companies exclusively do nitrous.
[00:47:12]  I think that most likely, from what I could tell they do, it's probably just a small part of a much larger industrial gas manufacturing business.
[00:47:19]  But yeah, I mean, I think it's like one of these things where American companies realize, you know, guys who are just trying to start up a brand like the Amores realized how easily they could get their hands on huge volumes of this stuff.
[00:47:37]  And he actually talked, Sammy Amore, one of the brothers talked on a podcast about how when he first wanted to start selling it, he said there were like four big companies that were controlling the market, which I guess would have been the other big distributors.
[00:47:53]  And he wanted to go around that because there just was a bottleneck of supply.
[00:47:57]  So he started reaching out to factories in China and he found a factory that made fire extinguishers and he got them to convert to making the tanks.
[00:48:07]  And he found a gas supplier somewhere.
[00:48:11]  He had this charming anecdote about a guy named Johnny, who is a Chinese gas supplier.
[00:48:18]  They had a WhatsApp miscommunication because he said that he was going to Sammy, the American guy said he was going to spank the competition and that translated into something erotic on Johnny's Chinese WhatsApp.
[00:48:30]  Anyway, they just very quickly found them.
[00:48:33]  It's incredibly easy to get people in China to make this stuff for you.
[00:48:37]  One thing I heard, which I don't really know the truth of this, but the lawyer, one of the lawyers I talked to was telling me that there were some communications he got a hold of where one of the Chinese distributors was actually taking an American, sorry, one of the Chinese manufacturers was taking one of the American big distribution companies kind of to task for saying like, you guys got to like slow down.
[00:49:02]  You guys are selling too much of this.
[00:49:03]  People in China were starting to get addicted to the government basically put just banned it.
[00:49:09]  And I don't actually know if that's true, but that was something that this lawyer had heard is that it's just like it was, you know, to me, and what I would say is like it feels to me like not out of line with what's happening with like fentanyl, right?
[00:49:24]  Where it's basically manufactured, the precursors are manufactured in China and they're shipping it here.
[00:49:30]  And they're not really, they're not doing fentanyl there.
[00:49:33]  Like the government has got, to some degree, it seems like a hold on that.
[00:49:37]  But they're more than willing to ship whatever toxic thing they want to America.
[00:49:45]  So yeah, I think it's a similar dynamic.
[00:49:47]  I just looked up recreational use of laughing gas in China and there is a Lancet article from 2017, Laughing Gas Inhalation in Chinese Youth, a public health issue.
[00:49:57]  Although it doesn't, I mean, this is from 2017, so if they ban it, but it seems like there's a couple of accompanying articles about use of it as like a party drug.
[00:50:07]  They apparently, not too long ago, dismantled a massive laughing gas distribution network.
[00:50:14]  Really?
[00:50:14]  Yeah.
[00:50:15]  It seems to be something that the government's going after.
[00:50:18]  They also banned the search for laughing gas online, which we absolutely should be banning more stuff.
[00:50:25]  You shouldn't be able to search everything that you can search on the internet.
[00:50:28]  I think you can search it, but I don't know if you can buy it.
[00:50:31]  So, I mean, the UK banned it in 2023.
[00:50:34]  Like, it is a real, like, the thing is, I keep kind of coming back to like the popularity of drugs now that were, I'm phrasing that in a crazy way.
[00:50:45]  But I keep coming back to like the popularity of this stuff and the popularity of ketamine and like disassociatives in general.
[00:50:50]  And like, what does that say about society?
[00:50:53]  What's funny because like ketamine is sort of entering culture via this more, you know, coastal elite, like therapeutic.
[00:51:01]  Berghein.
[00:51:02]  Yeah, like it's these sort of startups with like a natural wine type branding.
[00:51:07]  Yeah, upscale bohemia.
[00:51:09]  Like the shaky letter thing, you know, a swivel letter.
[00:51:13]  Hand drawn.
[00:51:13]  Whereas whereas nitrous.
[00:51:17]  Tin K. Tinfish.
[00:51:20]  Ketamine and Nitrous.
[00:51:21]  Nitrous is coming at us from the kind of like, you know, the belly of the beast of America.
[00:51:26]  Yeah.
[00:51:27]  Totally.
[00:51:27]  Like the juggalo, for loco, like vape cartel nexus.
[00:51:33]  Yeah.
[00:51:34]  But I think it's definitely like a lower class coded drug.
[00:51:39]  For sure.
[00:51:39]  Yeah.
[00:51:39]  But I think that's like the interesting convergence there, right?
[00:51:43]  It's like these two pretty disparate parts of America, which like, yeah, like the coastal elite, be it like wellness, I'm doing this to like, you know, disconnect from my job as a product manager or whatever.
[00:51:54]  Or like from the like party drug kind of, which is crazy because ketamine does not seem like a party drug.
[00:52:01]  And then to like the like smoke shop sort of lifestyle.
[00:52:05]  Everyone just wants to be a fucking Julian zombie.
[00:52:07]  And that to me is like, I find that very interesting.
[00:52:12]  What do you drive from that?
[00:52:14]  I don't know.
[00:52:14]  I think it's just, I think that maybe, I mean, because I just think of the reasons that like people have traditionally done drugs, right?
[00:52:21]  Like at least in my lifetime.
[00:52:24]  Like a lot of the reasons that people did cocaine is that you could stay out later, right?
[00:52:27]  And be more social.
[00:52:28]  And like some for some people, you know, they're more like reserved and it makes them like, it makes it easier, like as a lubrication to like talk to people.
[00:52:37]  For me, I always did Coke because I'd be getting pretty drunk and then someone would be like, you know, we can get Coke from this guy and everyone put in like $8 and then we'd all do the worst Coke in the world.
[00:52:47]  But it allowed you to have like two more drinks at the bar because it kind of set your sobriety meter back a little bit in your mind.
[00:52:54]  But like, you know, it was a way to like actually like, and this isn't how it played out, but like in your mind, it like brings you more connection with other people, right?
[00:53:02]  Like you're at the bar later, you're hanging out with people.
[00:53:04]  Obviously, very much not the case with a lot of people's Coke use, but like in sort of my circle, that was what you did it for.
[00:53:10]  And, you know, with, I think there was the rise of like opiates, which are oftentimes a drug that you do by yourself, not a party drug.
[00:53:20]  And then that was supplanted, not supplanted, but like the next big thing after that, I think, was ketamine.
[00:53:26]  I think it was kind of opiates.
[00:53:27]  I mean, opiates are still the goat, don't get me wrong.
[00:53:30]  Xanax had a huge moment.
[00:53:31]  You're right, actually.
[00:53:32]  Especially as a party drug.
[00:53:33]  Totally right.
[00:53:33]  Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I think Xanax is also an interesting predecessor where it had the same kind of crossover between like rappers and like frat guys and all these different kind of sectors in this culture.
[00:53:45]  And yeah, you know what?
[00:53:46]  That's a really good point because I never really, for me, Xanax, whenever I took it, first of all, it's tough to drink with because you die or you just get too fucked up and you black out.
[00:53:55]  But like, it's also not really a party drug.
[00:53:57]  It's like a drug where you kind of like, it always made me feel kind of like empty.
[00:54:01]  You know, I've read this fascinating book.
[00:54:03]  It's called Among the Bros.
[00:54:04]  And it was a non-fiction account of a Xanax dealing ring at some small southern school in a frat.
[00:54:10]  And it was just fascinating.
[00:54:12]  I mean, beyond just the actual crime, which was insane, at one point they bought like a rocket launcher and they were like, their bodies were dropping in frats.
[00:54:20]  But aside from that, like the writer was describing this like fascinating cultural shift in frats where they all started doing Xanax.
[00:54:30]  And so they just kind of like mellowed out in a way where like, you know, Sunday at like at the frat house became just like, yeah, I'm going to pop like a quarter bar and like make some parlays.
[00:54:42]  You know, they really, they were all kind of like in this, this fugue state as opposed to the kind of beer funnel, you know.
[00:54:51]  Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:54:52]  And then, I mean, and then there's the trends in alcohol too, which I find sort of baffling, like the sort of Celsiusing of beer into fucking hard water or whatever the fuck people are drinking.

=== Trends In Alcohol And Drugs (03:06) ===

[00:55:05]  Zero calorie.
[00:55:05]  Zero cal.
[00:55:07]  But yeah, I mean, it's just to me, like, you know, whippets are interesting because they're kind of a, they're a drug we always did at parties, but now they've become this like really like this thing that people are doing in their own house and just like, you know, I've referred to people referred to as, I just keep seeing people refer to it as smoking gas, which is crazy to me.
[00:55:27]  Even though I know that people call weed gas, they're not talking about that.
[00:55:29]  It's in the context they're talking about nitrous.
[00:55:31]  But like, like Kanye or something, just like doing it at home.
[00:55:34]  Yes, usually while like watching YouTube on a big screen and looking at their at least from the images that I've gleaned on the again very interesting and robust Nitrous Reddit where everyone's got YouTube YouTuber lights rigged up in their bedrooms So many purple lights in people's bedrooms.
[00:55:56]  I think actually seven hours of Kai Sanat and like blue raspberry flavor Nitrous, shit, Friday night actually living inside smoke shops.
[00:56:06]  I think that's actually the major linkage in your reporting is that a good amount of the people you report on will have YouTuber lights in their room despite not being YouTubers.
[00:56:16]  Totally a lot of like LED around the fucking perimeter of the room.
[00:56:23]  Yeah, I don't know, I think maybe I mean this.
[00:56:25]  I don't want to get to whatever with this, but like it, you know it's.
[00:56:27]  It is like a way for you like it is a dissociative and like for so many people spending so much time by themselves.
[00:56:33]  Now you're even more dissociated right, like you're in your bed, but you're not even in your bed anymore.
[00:56:37]  You're like less than in your bed now.
[00:56:39]  And something that's interesting about nitrous is that it used to be something that was part of these like very social environments, like it was something you would do while watching fish in it and it would be used as sort of like a finisher on top of like other drugs you were on or it would be.
[00:56:56]  It would be like a lot of times, acid right.
[00:56:58]  Yeah, that was, that was a huge thing and that was actually something that I I talked to the smokeshop employees about where in at first, like around you know, like before the big tank started bringing these new customers, they had this sort of steady, stable supply of kind of older people, like sort of 30s and up, who are more from the traditional counterculture scene, who had what seemed like a much, you know, relatively healthier relationship with nitrous, where they they they weren't really abusing it in this at the same volume and they were clearly using it, you know,
[00:57:27]  to party but like not yeah, not to like sit in their car and, like you know, huff gas for for eight hours and and they watched that crowd get sort of supplanted by this like younger, a lot more kind of clueless about what they were doing sort of crowd of people that were just like, oh well, you know, i'm used to like buying a weird vape at the store that's flavored and huffing it.
[00:57:50]  I guess I can just do that with this new, you know, this new thing, this new with this new gas.
[00:57:55]  What's the difference?
[00:57:56]  So these were and that, so that that kind of like much more social world of nitrous users was was, was supplanted by this like kind of new, just like kids wanting to, you know, get obliterated.
[00:58:08]  Well, it went from hippie crack to just regular crack.

=== Nitrous's New User Base (03:21) ===

[00:58:11]  Yeah, totally.
[00:58:12]  Um yeah it's, you know, it's I.
[00:58:15]  I had a question too about.
[00:58:16]  So like I have a friend uh, who some of you may know that not listeners um, Showed up with a big bump on his head to a dinner me and the boys were getting, like a month and a half ago, two months ago.
[00:58:31]  And I say, hey, what's the bump?
[00:58:33]  And he says, I was at a park in Manhattan and I was ingesting some gas.
[00:58:40]  And during the process, I passed out and bumped my head.
[00:58:44]  And he had about a fucking golf ball, not a golf ball, like a fucking, like a grapefruit-sized bump on his head.
[00:58:49]  It was huge.
[00:58:51]  And he said that that night, two of the people he was huffing with, and they were doing galaxy gas or some variation, whatever.
[00:58:57]  But one of these, like smoke shop, like the actual, not like a little whippet garbage, like the big gas things.
[00:59:04]  He said that two of the other people passed out at their houses later, like not doing the gas anymore.
[00:59:09]  Oh, wow.
[00:59:10]  Fainted.
[00:59:12]  And that's one thing I noticed on the Reddit too, people talking about like, I don't know, like there's something in these.
[00:59:17]  And I obviously, you know, it's Reddit.
[00:59:19]  I take that stuff with a grain of salt.
[00:59:20]  But like, did you hear anything like that during your reporting?
[00:59:23]  Like, of like this?
[00:59:24]  I mean, I know that like, obviously this stuff is only kind of, it's barely regulated.
[00:59:32]  Yeah.
[00:59:32]  You know, nothing where I could like really definitively say.
[00:59:36]  Yeah.
[00:59:36]  But I mean, for one thing, like I said, I think you're more likely to do a much higher volume, which I'm sure will have more exaggerated effects with the big tanks.
[00:59:45]  But also, there's flavoring in this.
[00:59:48]  And it's like some people I talked to were convinced that that was adding another layer of toxicity because it's like, okay, what is this flavoring?
[00:59:58]  It's from some Chinese.
[01:00:00]  I love it.
[01:00:00]  We'll do a bunch of fucking nitrous, but Americans will be like, no, red dye number five is where I draw the fucking line.
[01:00:06]  I'm worried about my toxicity levels.
[01:00:11]  But yeah.
[01:00:15]  Yeah, I never got anything kind of like definitively saying that it's worse than what people were doing before.
[01:00:23]  But, I mean, I think, like you said, it's, like, completely unregulated.
[01:00:27]  I would imagine, like, some of the factories where this is being made are, well, actually, now that I'm remembering, on one of the podcasts that the brothers who started Cloud9 were on, he was saying that, like, he was bragging about how he had, you know, 99% pure nitrous, unlike some of his competitors who had, like, much lower grade.
[01:00:48]  It's uncut nitrous.
[01:00:49]  And it's like, God, no.
[01:00:50]  Yeah.
[01:00:51]  What is in there then if it's not nitrous?
[01:00:55]  Well, I was, you know, it's funny you mentioned the podcast because you mentioned in the article you read about Ben Amore being interviewed on this podcast called Hustle Up HSTL Up in a podcast episode entitled Riches Are in the Niches.
[01:01:11]  And I was watching it last night and I realized that it's like the classic podcast format of like three guys in like kind of big ass chairs, except there's no mics, like they can't afford them yet or something.
[01:01:23]  So they're just recording off a MacBook that's like in the middle of everybody.
[01:01:26]  I'm like, why is the audio so bad?
[01:01:27]  I realized none of them had microphones and just all on one like computer mic.

=== Hustle Up HSTL Up (11:15) ===

[01:01:32]  But that's all to say, like there is a linkage here, I feel like a spiritual linkage, at least.
[01:01:38]  I mean, the last time we had you on, I was talking about the Miami scene, I guess.
[01:01:45]  But like drop shippers, OnlyFans pimps.
[01:01:50]  you know, fucking crypto guys, NFT people.
[01:01:53]  Like it all seems kind of like there's this, I don't know what to call it, but like it's like, you know, YouTube lights in the bedroom kind of people hustle and grind people that like everyone's also in kind of like a scam industry or like it's like a carney economy.
[01:02:09]  And like it's all fucking like these weird, predatory, scammy, fucked up smoke shop, you know, OnlyFans ass fucking like jobs that people have.
[01:02:22]  And there's just, I mean, I just, I, because I guess my problem is I'm too sheltered because I don't know anybody like this.
[01:02:27]  And I'm probably a little aged out of the demographic and for a couple other reasons too.
[01:02:32]  But like, you know, this seems like a huge kind of, I don't want to call it a subculture because it's not like linked in a kind of classically subcultural way, but it is like a subculture underneath like the general culture of America with all these people who are kind of trying to make it in this like peculiar, but spiritually very similar ways.
[01:02:51]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:02:52]  And a lot of it kind of weirdly does end up having to do with just like the globalized economy where you can get cheap shit from other parts of the world really easily and anyone can do it.
[01:03:08]  You know, in the same way these guys were able to start just like they just were so easily able to source nitrous from China and start white labeling it.
[01:03:16]  It's the same dynamic where like these guys who run OnlyFans agencies can easily hire Filipino dudes to impersonate their models for three bucks an hour.
[01:03:29]  And it does have, yeah, it has this like entrepreneur sort of like kind of vaguely like right-wing coded in Miami at least, like the crypto stuff.
[01:03:39]  It has this sort of like, you know, don't go to college, like just like, you know, make free money online kind of quality to it.
[01:03:48]  And it is interesting because I think a lot of these people are ending up in these in these sort of economies from really different areas.
[01:03:57]  And, you know, I think people aren't necessarily like linked by anything other than just like, you're outside of the traditional like job pipeline.
[01:04:08]  But that does, in America, I think that does lead to a sort of cultural similarity now.
[01:04:13]  And a lot of it's like, you said it's like, it's, it's stuff that's like on YouTube or it's like, it's like Instagram reels.
[01:04:20]  Like it's stuff that's like not or kick.
[01:04:23]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:04:25]  It's like all on the edges of stuff, but it's all like linked up, like you say, this kind of like global edge economy where they're kind of creating new, like finding new loopholes and like creating new marketplaces out of their own like connects and everyone kind of trying to one-up each other or like getting it out, you know, while they can, make money, get out, make it big.
[01:04:50]  Yeah, and then like sell a course to some sucker.
[01:04:53]  I'm like, here's how you do it.
[01:04:55]  Yeah.
[01:04:56]  And then automate the writing of the course with an AI bot and then like automate the selling of the course with an AI chat and the whole thing.
[01:05:02]  The whole thing is about not having to work.
[01:05:05]  It's all about not having to do anything, not even touch product.
[01:05:08]  I mean, this is different.
[01:05:09]  I mean, these guys are just classically just like, these are business guys importing a product.
[01:05:15]  But I do think what you're talking about is right.
[01:05:17]  Like there is something kind of vaguely like slop world about all of it, including the aesthetics and the like actually like fucking slowly killing yourself and turning into slop where like there is something there where it is taking advantage of all of these new new sort of like, you know, digital connection.
[01:05:40]  Whether it means like getting a bunch of shit shipped over to you from China or the fucking labor arbitrage that these guys are run through, you know, the Philippines that are, they're connecting with, you know,
[01:05:51]  precariate workers in Turkey or whatever to make all these things happen or also like levering up a bunch of like fake crypto scam shit in order to like power up an AI that can like fuel this like rent-seeking program that they're going to just keep running to like churn out money.
[01:06:12]  Like it is this sort of like, this is how slop world runs.
[01:06:17]  And these are all sort of like on the edge of this like burgeoning slop regime that I feel like we're all slowly falling under.
[01:06:28]  I mean, it's interesting to think about how neatly Galaxy Gas fit into the kind of like virality economy.
[01:06:36]  Like it was so immediately became, you know, there's this like meme subject and there's like viral videos where they're recreating like Galaxy Gas in Roblox.
[01:06:47]  You know, it's like kids just found like a funny word that also represents this like brain wrought concept of like literally like destroying your brain.
[01:06:58]  And it just, it so perfectly kind of like captured this like post-bored ape, like fried sneakerhead zeitgeist.
[01:07:08]  I mean, even that, like fried, you know, like people, people, people talking about like that, like, oh, he's cooked, he's fried.
[01:07:15]  A lot of the people like in this kind of again, like in the beat you cover, like do seem just like they're completely like literally burned through.
[01:07:26]  And I don't know, it is, it is like fucking slop world shit.
[01:07:29]  Like all these people, sometimes you like look at like AI art, right?
[01:07:35]  Or like NFT art, which is basically the same thing, or is often literally the same thing, but like that kind of the bored ape thing.
[01:07:41]  You're like, who could like look at this and love it, right?
[01:07:44]  You ever see those videos?
[01:07:44]  I'm obsessed with these like Instagram reels that are like AI animals.
[01:07:49]  Yes.
[01:07:49]  And it'll be like, you're faded, who's cooking.
[01:07:52]  And there's one that's like, there's one my friend and I are obsessed with that's like Jasper Borange, and it's like a hyena making like a like a red Red Bull martini or something.
[01:08:04]  It's like insane.
[01:08:05]  Or it'll be like a gorilla named Edgar and it's like he's fire with the wings.
[01:08:10]  Hold on, we're actually gonna watch this.
[01:08:14]  Yeah, it's just these like these animals that, and this account like pumps them out like hundreds of these a day or whatever.
[01:08:24]  And they're all the same shit.
[01:08:25]  And they go, they get so viral.
[01:08:27]  Yeah, it's slot.
[01:08:28]  It's the slop economy.
[01:08:29]  Well, the UK, the Labor Party, I don't know if you saw, but they posted a similar video.
[01:08:34]  That song is crazy.
[01:08:36]  They posted a similar.
[01:08:37]  That should just be behind us when we're talking about the hardware.
[01:08:38]  Yeah, it goes hard every episode.
[01:08:40]  I can do that.
[01:08:41]  But the Labor Party, I know there's actually dozens of these.
[01:08:47]  It says you may like.
[01:08:48]  And on the side, it's all AI animals.
[01:08:52]  And it's weirdly it's like always the same like animal archetypes.
[01:08:55]  Like it's like always like the gorilla or like the like raccoon.
[01:09:00]  And they'll have like sort of similar roles in, because it'll be like, okay, you're drunk.
[01:09:04]  Who's driving you home?
[01:09:06]  And it'll be in the same way that the raccoon is kind of like sort of sneaky in the like you're faded who's cooking one.
[01:09:12]  He's also kind of the like, he'll cut corners while driving in the driving one.
[01:09:17]  Yeah.
[01:09:18]  It's so programmatic.
[01:09:19]  But this is different than the Robbie Williams Monkey Man, right?
[01:09:24]  Yeah.
[01:09:24]  I don't know if any of us are equipped to really talk about that.
[01:09:27]  I don't actually, my friend sent me a video about today and my jaw hit the floor.
[01:09:30]  It is.
[01:09:31]  I saw a clip of it.
[01:09:33]  I thought it was literally a prank.
[01:09:34]  Like I thought it was a joke thing that someone made.
[01:09:37]  I feel like I need to see it.
[01:09:38]  What is it about?
[01:09:39]  It's about a guy named Robbie Williams, who have you, any of you heard of him?
[01:09:43]  Have you heard of him?
[01:09:44]  Robbie, wait, the singer and the actor?
[01:09:46]  Yeah.
[01:09:46]  Yeah, of course I know who Robbie Williams is.
[01:09:48]  He looks like Morris.
[01:09:48]  He kind of.
[01:09:49]  He's like a British pop star.
[01:09:51]  Yeah, a British pop star.
[01:09:52]  But what's the monkey of life?
[01:09:53]  He had a, well, no, he is in.
[01:09:56]  Formerly of Take That?
[01:09:57]  A movie.
[01:09:59]  Yeah, the Robbie Williams movie.
[01:10:01]  Better Man.
[01:10:02]  Yeah.
[01:10:04]  But he's the CGI monkey.
[01:10:05]  He's a CAG.
[01:10:06]  He's a CGI monkey.
[01:10:07]  I think it's like deadly serious.
[01:10:08]  It's like about abuse and things like that.
[01:10:11]  It does seem sort of like a slop world Bridge movie.
[01:10:15]  Like, we haven't gone full, like, Hollywood.
[01:10:17]  It's about abuse.
[01:10:18]  It's about drama.
[01:10:19]  I feel like, no, you don't understand.
[01:10:22]  There's one thing that, like, people love, and that's cartoons about with animals in it, but it's about drama.
[01:10:29]  Yeah, like the Bojack.
[01:10:31]  Bojack.
[01:10:32]  And I'm telling you, I never seen a second of Bojack Horseman, but from the description I've heard, should have been one episode he kills himself because that does not seem like it did anyone any good.
[01:10:40]  Better Man is based on the true story of the meteoric rise, dramatic fall, and remarkable resurgence of British pop superstar Robbie Williams, one of the greatest entertainers of all time.
[01:10:53]  I don't know.
[01:10:53]  I think Robbie Williams wrote this.
[01:10:55]  Under the visionary direction of Michael Gracie, the greatest showman.
[01:10:59]  The film is uniquely told from Williams' perspective, capturing his signature wit and indomitable spirit.
[01:11:04]  It follows Robbie's journey from childhood to being the youngest member of chart-topping boy band.
[01:11:09]  Take that through to his unparalleled achievements as a record-breaking solo artist, all the while confronting the challenges that fame and success can bring.
[01:11:17]  I don't get it.
[01:11:18]  They're just monkeys.
[01:11:19]  But he's a monkey.
[01:11:20]  No, he's just a monkey.
[01:11:21]  Everyone else is real.
[01:11:22]  But why didn't he just play himself?
[01:11:24]  Is that like saying something about a metaphor?
[01:11:27]  Unfortunately, it is the world.
[01:11:29]  It is the year's first box office bomb, as it has grossed slightly over a million dollars.
[01:11:37]  Well, we need to do our part and go see a better man because I need to make sure that you're not going to be able to do a better man where one of the characters is inexplicably a monkey.
[01:11:44]  Yeah, I know.
[01:11:45]  They should just do like recording for a dream or something.
[01:11:47]  I was saying in the 90s, there was a great moment in cinema history.
[01:11:51]  The monkey moment?
[01:11:52]  Monkey movies?
[01:11:52]  No, monkey movie.
[01:11:53]  No, we're talking about just like a character.
[01:11:55]  Or a Jumanji?
[01:11:56]  Yeah.
[01:11:56]  No.
[01:11:58]  What?
[01:11:59]  We've talked about this.
[01:12:00]  Dunstan?
[01:12:01]  Dunstan?
[01:12:02]  That was big.
[01:12:03]  But also Monkey Bone?
[01:12:04]  Monkey, which I watched.
[01:12:06]  Monkey Bone.
[01:12:07]  I watched Monkey Bones.
[01:12:10]  You can't imagine so many monkeys in the daily mega.
[01:12:13]  There you go.
[01:12:14]  This, I got to tell you guys this.
[01:12:16]  This is from Variety, which is obviously my homepage.
[01:12:20]  Still hope for truer non.
[01:12:21]  Better man was produced independently for roughly $110 million, acquired by Paramount for $25 million.
[01:12:30]  Musical Biopeaks have been on the upswing.
[01:12:34]  See how I lighted actually pronouncing that?
[01:12:36]  And it has grossed $1.9 million in the states.
[01:12:44]  So this is Monkey Lopolis.
[01:12:46]  This is Monkey Lopolis.

=== No One Gives a Shit Anymore (07:00) ===

[01:12:48]  I think it's actually done worse than that.
[01:12:49]  And it is a singular vision.
[01:12:50]  It is a singular vision.
[01:12:52]  We got a little off track here.
[01:12:54]  I'm just saying, like, the world, everyone, it seems I've been going crazy.
[01:12:58]  I feel like things people have significantly gotten somehow.
[01:13:02]  I know this can't be true, but can it?
[01:13:05]  I feel like just like everyone's like, it's so stupid.
[01:13:09]  There's a quality of like brainlessness that you encounter in certain content online where it's just like no human hands touch this.
[01:13:19]  Yes.
[01:13:19]  Slap world.
[01:13:20]  Yeah.
[01:13:20]  But it freaks me out.
[01:13:22]  But it's one thing for that to just be generated, but then for people to sit there watching it.
[01:13:26]  And it's like, it does.
[01:13:27]  But then it's like, well, I'm watching it because it's like kind of captivating because it's so selly off.
[01:13:31]  Like I watch the Your Fated Who's Cooking videos all the time.
[01:13:36]  This is I'm faded and I want who's cooking.
[01:13:40]  Well, I mean, I'm sorry, but like the, did you guys see this fucking Labor Party video?
[01:13:44]  This Labor government's planned to, like, they did one of the Labour Party in the UK did one of these.
[01:13:51]  I think that there's something that like I maybe started to perceive during the pandemic where it's like no one gives a shit anymore at some level.
[01:14:02]  No one is trying hard at their job and they realize they didn't have to.
[01:14:06]  Like you first saw it with the cops, right?
[01:14:08]  and the cops like stopped doing their jobs and like stopped enforcing parking tickets and shit and that's sort of like soft strike i feel like that's sort of like spread out into like every layer of a content creation online and just like middle managers are just like jacking off at work Like no one gives a shit.
[01:14:25]  It's extreme.
[01:14:26]  It's not just not giving a shit.
[01:14:27]  It's like antisocial.
[01:14:29]  It's like a withdrawing from society and a kind of primacy of like, I do what I want and I don't give a fuck about anyone else.
[01:14:36]  But it does.
[01:14:38]  It really, a lot of times I'll go somewhere and this is especially true for airports, which is the number one thing I complain about on this show.
[01:14:44]  I fucking hate everything associated with them.
[01:14:47]  But like you go somewhere and you're like, I really don't feel like anybody's in charge here.
[01:14:52]  And that's like true of like a lot of places I go.
[01:14:54]  I'm like, I feel like I can do whatever I want.
[01:14:57]  Yeah, it's a libertarian paradise.
[01:14:59]  And I think there has been a huge upswing of people acting out in airports on airplanes, like literally borne out by data.
[01:15:06]  And I think that's like a symptom of this where everyone's kind of just like, I can do whatever I want.
[01:15:11]  And it's hard not to trace it back to the pandemic.
[01:15:13]  And it's like, it's, it's, because, I mean, that's literally when a lot of this started.
[01:15:17]  I don't say literally so much, but like it doesn't, it really just seems like nobody is at the wheel of anything anymore.
[01:15:26]  And nobody really gives a shit anymore.
[01:15:28]  I mean, you kind of see it like at its like basis level with a lot of the shit you see online.
[01:15:34]  And I think really the only solution is we need to just, we need like a four-year moratorium on the internet or like no more.
[01:15:41]  You've talked about this before, but we like need regulations on how much video content you can upload.
[01:15:45]  No more video.
[01:15:46]  Like no problem.
[01:15:47]  Yeah, maybe no more video.
[01:15:48]  Like it's, I think.
[01:15:49]  It's like a revolution at this point.
[01:15:51]  Too much of the global economy is grafted onto this fucking shit.
[01:15:55]  Like it is, it is, you know, China, I think, is the only society maybe capable of doing this stuff.
[01:16:02]  But like we really need like a way to like just turn large parts of a society on and off as befits the social whole because we live and everyone is fucking antisocial, is fucking crazy, everyone's acting out, everyone's going nuts, they're doing the gas while fucking driving.
[01:16:19]  I was going to say, I mean, you know, this is a more minor point, but to your point about the airports, have you noticed that every fucking time you go through the security line, there's a different set of rules about what you are and are not supposed to have in and out of the boxes.
[01:16:33]  Like some of the airports, you can keep your shoes on.
[01:16:35]  Some of them, the laptop goes in separately from your bag.
[01:16:37]  Some of them, they're like, taking your laptop out.
[01:16:39]  What are you talking about?
[01:16:40]  They talk to you like you're stupid.
[01:16:41]  You're stupid?
[01:16:42]  You're taking your belt off?
[01:16:44]  Who told you to do that?
[01:16:45]  Who the fuck told you to take your belt off?
[01:16:47]  President Xi, America yearns for authoritarian federalism.
[01:16:52]  Here's the thing is, these people have gotten...
[01:16:54]  Please centralize our stupid quilted country.
[01:16:58]  And these people think, and even these, like whenever I see one of these fucking Nazi morons who's like, loves Donald Trump and like thinks that this is going to make America fucking stronger, this is just more slot bullshit.
[01:17:10]  It's all fucking, none of these people are.
[01:17:13]  We're getting maxed out.
[01:17:14]  We're slot maxing.
[01:17:15]  It works.
[01:17:17]  We're about to accelerate the slot.
[01:17:18]  I think, you know, there is like a real political valence to like what the, I don't know, it's like it's like with the Miami stuff.
[01:17:30]  Like there was a there was a real kind of like deregulatory angle to a lot of this and to the underlying kind of kind of mindset.
[01:17:38]  Oh yeah, because that's how you take advantage of all this shit.
[01:17:41]  Well, I see it's like in this kind of like deregulate, you know, they're going to continue to deregulate more and more and more, which is going to open up more and more opportunities for entrepreneurs to take advantage of extreme, like extremely anti-social, terrible shit that should be regulated and illegal.
[01:18:00]  I mean, you know, you see that with the crypto stuff.
[01:18:03]  You see that all over the beat that you're on, right?
[01:18:06]  It's like everyone working in these kind of in-between regimes, right?
[01:18:12]  In between economies, in between like legal loopholes, finding all of these like ways they can connect all of this stuff to get around a bunch of different like legal issues.
[01:18:25]  And stripping that away is only going to make this stuff bloom, you know?
[01:18:29]  Like talking about the crypto stuff, I mean, it's not lost on me that, you know, this fucking high that everyone is chasing is like super quick up and down.
[01:18:39]  It's not too dissimilar to the same fucking high everyone's chasing online, whether that's in a fucking pump and dump, whether that's in what they feel when they go viral on the internet, whether it's like just the idea of virality in itself.
[01:18:51]  Yeah, like so you're saying like galaxy gas kind of it is the sort of narcotic manifestation of the short form video like mindset and the economy and the fucking crypto coin bonanza.
[01:19:05]  I think I think getting out of it.
[01:19:06]  Yeah, yeah, I mean even more like I think that it's it's who's you're faded who's cooking.
[01:19:13]  You know what I mean?
[01:19:14]  It's just like you're kind of just like watching this thing and you do feel it like people talk about how like oh yeah I started looking at TikTok and then like two years two hours later like I realized like oh time to go to bed or whatever.
[01:19:25]  Like it's this thing that just like takes it's deadening and it's it's dulling and people complain about not being able to read books or like have an attention span.
[01:19:33]  And I don't necessarily even think that's because they're like getting too much information or like they're reading too many articles online.
[01:19:39]  Like it's because like your brain is used to this like fucking like dull deadening sort of like barely heartbeat ass fucking straight line across.

=== Constant Stream Autoplay (02:50) ===

[01:19:48]  Well it's the autoplay of it too.
[01:19:50]  Yes, it's the constant stream.
[01:19:51]  It's the like keep it going and go next next pawing pawing pawing at the screen to keep the feed scrolling.
[01:19:59]  Yeah, it's sort of this like this like like reaction against experiencing linear time.
[01:20:06]  Yes.
[01:20:06]  You know it completely takes you out of it, right?
[01:20:09]  I mean you can, you can start looking at fucking like a and this doesn't even work with me, probably works on YouTube to some extent, but like I think the short form autoplay video in particular, you just like look at it and it'll just like, keep you locked in in this thing.
[01:20:22]  If in like yeah yes yeah, and look at it, the most successful streamers they're never turning that shit off.
[01:20:27]  They go and go and go and go.
[01:20:30]  We got to put this podcast on kick.
[01:20:32]  We should just stream this room 24 hours a day, even though we're not in here almost any of those hours, because it's just fucking recording studio.
[01:20:40]  But and just come in here and just you know see, see what happens.
[01:20:43]  I've also always thought about maybe uploading the show on Pornhub because pumped up fun.
[01:20:48]  Oh yeah fuck, did they shut that down?
[01:20:50]  Yet if you were to Ezra, you've talked about a lot of scammers and whatever people people, let's say, who are on the slop side of the economy.
[01:21:00]  If you suddenly, if you were stripped of your journalistic license right now and you had to make a license to this shit, I would hope so.
[01:21:09]  They really should be regulating absolutely, absolutely.
[01:21:14]  If you had to like, go make a million dollars because you had to pay off, because your, your great grandpa's toy business was going under and you had one million dollars and you had to say, Pinocchio, what would you do in this in terms of this, if you had to pick a slop job, how would you make money quickest?
[01:21:32]  This is financial advice for our listeners, You know, I think that you could jerry rig a kind of like multifaceted flywheel involving like OnlyFans and then also like a Twitch streamer kind of reacting to an OnlyFans like girl who does something.
[01:21:56]  Like, you know, you hire somebody to like, oh, this like OnlyFans girl does Galaxy Gas like on her stream or something.
[01:22:03]  You kind of like play a bunch of like overlapping viral meme strands together.
[01:22:08]  And then you like have another guy, you know, you pay like some Twitch streamer to like react to that.
[01:22:13]  And then you like try and generate a buzzword.
[01:22:15]  Then you sell a coin off of that.
[01:22:17]  And you just try and get a flywheel of kind of overlapping quick hit pump and dumps going.
[01:22:24]  That's it.
[01:22:24]  That's it.
[01:22:25]  I think that you're really key on the reaction too because up to the OnlyFans lady because OnlyFans, first of all, looms so large in the imagination of a certain kind of like young person.
[01:22:35]  And I got to tell you that right now, I know a lot of people.

=== Culinary Chaos (10:22) ===

[01:22:38]  I just know a lot of people.
[01:22:39]  I know hundreds of people.
[01:22:42]  I think I know like a few chicks who do OnlyFans, but it's like not a major thing I encounter in my life.
[01:22:47]  But in the imagination of like the 22-year-old American man, they seem to think that every single woman they encounter does in OnlyFans.
[01:22:55]  And there's just no way that's true.
[01:22:57]  Like you always see like these memes of like, I'm trying to like, you know, trying to date as a 22-year-old guy.
[01:23:02]  And like OnlyFans thought, OnlyFans thought, like, I got to get him out of my way.
[01:23:06]  I can't, they're everywhere.
[01:23:07]  What are you talking about?
[01:23:08]  Because they're being fed a bunch of Revantas bullshit.
[01:23:10]  What are you doing?
[01:23:12]  I mean, there's a sort of like separate kind of whole content world of, like you said, these sort of like right-wing guys react to OnlyFans, like those podcasts where they have these girls on.
[01:23:23]  Fresh and fit.
[01:23:23]  Yeah.
[01:23:24]  Whatever, whatever.
[01:23:25]  That's my favorite one.
[01:23:26]  It's basically being like, these whores will never get married or whatever.
[01:23:31]  And yeah, I mean, that's certainly a lucrative line to get into.
[01:23:35]  The kind of like post-Andrew Tate like commentary on cultural issues.
[01:23:41]  I mean, one thing I found recently is, does it seem like all anyone kind of wants to talk about is like dating?
[01:23:46]  It's sort of like, it's all anyone's talking, body count, whatever.
[01:23:50]  A prediction I made, I think in private, but hopefully on the show, like a couple years ago, I was like, this like the politics stuff as such, like very like politics as politics, I think is going to fade out at the 2024.
[01:24:03]  And it's just going to be all boy girl shit.
[01:24:05]  Exactly.
[01:24:06]  Everything is.
[01:24:07]  Everything's about body count dating fucking literally, basically, that's basically it.
[01:24:12]  But like, and like this weird right-wing thing, like there's this porn star.
[01:24:17]  I don't remember it's in British, I think Bonnie Blue is how I've, I never heard it before in my life before, like two weeks ago.
[01:24:25]  And like all, I only see it because I've only shown like Nazi accounts on Twitter.
[01:24:31]  And so it's all these like Nazi guys like posting footage of this porn actress being like, yeah, she's like fucking a thousand guys over the weekend.
[01:24:40]  And like, isn't this so fucked up?
[01:24:42]  Isn't this so fucked up?
[01:24:43]  Like, look at this.
[01:24:44]  What happened to women today?
[01:24:46]  Exactly.
[01:24:46]  Look at this stupid, look at this stupid fucking like whore.
[01:24:49]  Isn't this so fucked up?
[01:24:50]  But it's like all the right-wing thing.
[01:24:51]  It's all, it's crazy because like they're all, it's like how Andrew Tate like kind of like manages to be this guy who's like, I'm a Muslim.
[01:24:58]  Fuck these, you know, fuck these money-grubbing women.
[01:25:01]  I'm a conservative, blah, blah.
[01:25:02]  And then also literally a pimp and a human trafficker on the other hand.
[01:25:06]  And it's like people can't, like, they don't, like, that's acceptable.
[01:25:09]  Like, everything exists at the same time because time doesn't exist.
[01:25:13]  Nothing exists.
[01:25:15]  It doesn't exist when you're, you know, 45 minutes deep into a galaxy gas band.
[01:25:20]  It does not.
[01:25:21]  Yeah, it does not.
[01:25:22]  I guess I get why people do it because it makes this crazy world make sense.
[01:25:26]  I have a question.
[01:25:28]  Actually, I might ask you this last time.
[01:25:30]  Did that guy jack off with the cats?
[01:25:34]  You know, what?
[01:25:37]  I'm sad to say horses.
[01:25:40]  I don't believe that he did.
[01:25:43]  When I first heard the rumor that became the horses story, it was that the restaurateur of the beloved LA institution horses had been jacking off while strangling his cat.
[01:26:04]  Multiple cats, correct?
[01:26:04]  Multiple cats.
[01:26:05]  But yeah, that his wife had caught him in the act with like cat in one hand.
[01:26:11]  Doesn't anyone fucking knock anymore?
[01:26:14]  But the reporting, like, as best I could tell, she never actually made that claim.
[01:26:24]  And that, and she, she did make the claim that she saw him strangling the cat.
[01:26:29]  But it appears from what I have been able to uncover that the masturbation is apocryphal.
[01:26:41]  There were other rumors that, I don't know, just of sort of like the completely unconfirmed.
[01:26:48]  There were just sort of like lots of things flying around involving sexual deviancy of one form or another.
[01:26:53]  I confirmed none of it.
[01:26:55]  don't know anything about it but yeah that somehow became like intrinsically tied to that story was was that rumor which is that was i mean that's really what you ask people have you been to the famous la restaurant horses They'll be like, the cat jack off killer.
[01:27:10]  And then her restaurant just closed.
[01:27:11]  The front club.
[01:27:12]  And the front club.
[01:27:13]  Closed, yeah.
[01:27:14]  Really?
[01:27:15]  Because no one liked it.
[01:27:16]  I got to tell you.
[01:27:16]  I was a really good martini there.
[01:27:18]  Tough few years for animal-named restaurants in Los Angeles.
[01:27:22]  Squirrel and then horses.
[01:27:24]  Yeah, true.
[01:27:25]  And then pig fuckers, obviously.
[01:27:27]  didn't go well, which is sort of my venture into the culinary spirit.
[01:27:30]  That's why you got to stop trying to push British food on everybody.
[01:27:33]  It was a monkey.
[01:27:38]  I told you, monkeys are huge right now.
[01:27:40]  There should be a restaurant just called Cruelty where you like eat a monkey or like, you know, like a fawn.
[01:27:46]  Templo Doom style.
[01:27:48]  Yeah, and they bring out like an iPad on like a like a like a giant, you know, dried mushroom and then play you the animal being killed.
[01:27:55]  Was that thing where you like the Orde Lawn where you cover doing that, but you're just like eating a whatever.
[01:28:03]  Yeah, a monkey chimp.
[01:28:04]  It's head open, you have a spoon and you eat it.
[01:28:07]  I got a brain at 99 Favors once, and they just brought it out in a bowl where it kind of looked like a, it didn't look like a skull, like it wasn't like a skull-shaped bowl or anything, but the whiteness of the bowl with the brain kind of jiggling in there just I thought I was being like, you know, adventurous and I put it in there, I put it in the hot pot, and I'm gonna tell you, it was one of the most disgusting things I've ever had in my life.
[01:28:31]  Yeah, I'm not doing that.
[01:28:32]  I'm not supposed to eat brain.
[01:28:33]  That's just not supposed to happen.
[01:28:34]  I can't do the kind of.
[01:28:35]  Because I absorbed all its dreams.
[01:28:37]  All the French.
[01:28:38]  Like, we're going to give you all these.
[01:28:40]  It's all the parts.
[01:28:42]  Like the taint of the.
[01:28:43]  Oh my God.
[01:28:44]  I can't do it.
[01:28:45]  Yeah.
[01:28:45]  I'm like.
[01:28:46]  You go there.
[01:28:46]  You got to ask them to make sure that none of it's on the menu.
[01:28:49]  The tongue at Wall Street Spa is good.
[01:28:52]  I'll say that.
[01:28:53]  If you go for a bath, get the tongue.
[01:28:55]  I'm not doing that.
[01:28:56]  I love tongue.
[01:28:56]  The horses guy as one of his sort of like ways that he would kind of haze his employees.
[01:29:04]  He would make them do kind of bizarre stuff involving animal parts.
[01:29:09]  And he ordered a, I believe it was a case of frozen rabbit heads and made them extricate the brain and just tossed it just as a way of kind of like team building.
[01:29:22]  Yeah, team building.
[01:29:22]  Yeah, my boy kind of does shit like that.
[01:29:25]  Yeah, the chefs are weird.
[01:29:27]  We need to regulate chefs.
[01:29:29]  We really do.
[01:29:30]  We actually do need to fucking come down hard on you because I was hanging out with a friend of mine, longtime friend of mine who is like a high falutin chef.
[01:29:38]  And the shitty was telling me, I hate chefs.
[01:29:40]  I've talked shit about chefs on this show many times.
[01:29:42]  You're not in Vietnam.
[01:29:43]  You don't have to like stand up smoking like this.
[01:29:46]  Oh, I have to do fucking coke at work.
[01:29:47]  Oh!
[01:29:48]  A lot of people do coke at work.
[01:29:49]  I used to do coke at work.
[01:29:50]  I was a florist.
[01:29:51]  It's fine.
[01:29:51]  It's easy to do.
[01:29:52]  You don't have to do it.
[01:29:54]  But some of the shitty was telling me, I was like, all right, you're crazy.
[01:29:58]  I mean, this is crazy stuff to do.
[01:30:01]  But they still do it.
[01:30:02]  And, you know, whatever, if they need to do that kind of stuff, I guess they need to.
[01:30:06]  I think that it can be high stressful.
[01:30:08]  I think, you know, chefs aside, being a line cook, being on the line, very stressful.
[01:30:14]  I understand.
[01:30:15]  I just think we as a society need to knock the chef down a peg.
[01:30:20]  Well, what we need is like an apocalyptic war, civil war.
[01:30:24]  I don't know.
[01:30:25]  Between chefs and another chef war.
[01:30:29]  Yeah, between station attendants.
[01:30:30]  Between animal chefs.
[01:30:31]  I think all restaurants should have to fight.
[01:30:33]  Obviously, change being broken up into not the you're going to war.
[01:30:37]  What chef is McDonald's?
[01:30:40]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[01:30:42]  If anyone knows any ways to make AI videos of animals doing crazy stuff, that I can make TikTok.
[01:30:48]  They also just need to stop paying people off of views on social media.
[01:30:51]  So they need to shut down the TikTok affiliate program.
[01:30:53]  They need to shut down the Twitter getting paid for fucking tweets on there has been just one of many reasons why it's just impossible to use now.
[01:31:02]  Everything, you can no longer, it has to be pro bono, everything.
[01:31:05]  Everything has to be free.
[01:31:06]  I've noticed that a lot of the most viral videos that you see now have, they're actually, you know, it'll be something shocking.
[01:31:14]  You know, somebody's getting like beat up by a stranger in the store, but it's actually a gambling ad.
[01:31:18]  Like there's a little steak.
[01:31:19]  It's steak.
[01:31:20]  It's a steak ad.
[01:31:21]  Yeah.
[01:31:21]  I think the sports betting is like kind of secretly part of this.
[01:31:24]  Like it is a major part of this.
[01:31:26]  It's a huge part of it.
[01:31:27]  It's not just the money laundering aspect.
[01:31:28]  Yeah.
[01:31:28]  I mean, no, there'll be the steak ad thing on Twitter is crazy because they'll like they'll do anything as long as I really got to wonder.
[01:31:36]  Steak needs to be shut down.
[01:31:37]  And honestly, probably they need to kill the people who the government needs to do this.
[01:31:40]  I'm not suggesting anyone does this, but like they probably need to arrest these people and charge them with something that let's just so you're saying we should have like an anti-slop death squad.
[01:31:50]  I'm just saying like the world needs to change in a major way that nobody's ready for.
[01:31:55]  And I think that's where I'm at.
[01:31:56]  I'm at with it.
[01:31:58]  Ezra, thank you for coming on the show.
[01:32:00]  My pleasure.
[01:32:01]  Do you have anything you want to plug?
[01:32:03]  I don't want to ask, I never asked people that.
[01:32:05]  Honestly, no.
[01:32:06]  No.
[01:32:07]  I have some stories that you'll see them when you see them.
[01:32:10]  Yeah.
[01:32:11]  What is a freelance?
[01:32:12]  What are you going to plug?
[01:32:12]  Your muck rat?
[01:32:16]  Yeah, you can check out my email.
[01:32:18]  You can send emails to me.
[01:32:19]  Yeah, check out his email address.
[01:32:20]  Actually, don't put that on it.
[01:32:21]  But if you really want to, check out his email address.
[01:32:24]  Send me any.
[01:32:25]  I'd love to hear from all of you guys.
[01:32:27]  If you have a tip, send me a tip.
[01:32:28]  Yeah, send me something.
[01:32:29]  Something crazy.
[01:32:30]  Send me a tip.
[01:32:44]  You know who crashed out so fast, by the way?
[01:32:46]  I just wanted to say, real quick, because I haven't heard your take on this.
[01:32:50]  Give it to me.
[01:32:51]  Not that we do takes here.
[01:32:52]  We might start.
[01:32:54]  Vivek Ramaswame has been disappeared.
[01:32:59]  Where is he?

=== Veneers And Verruca Vulgaris (03:25) ===

[01:33:00]  Well, like the true Ramaswamy, he is.
[01:33:04]  He just completely did a little, he went, and fucking bounced out of here.
[01:33:10]  Where'd he go?
[01:33:12]  Dude.
[01:33:12]  TH1 beat it out of the country.
[01:33:14]  Where the hell the fuck?
[01:33:15]  Where the fucking.
[01:33:16]  Ramaswamy, where did you go?
[01:33:18]  We have.
[01:33:19]  Maybe that's what they're looking for in Greenland.
[01:33:21]  You think he's going to be the inauguration?
[01:33:23]  I don't know.
[01:33:25]  That's a great question.
[01:33:26]  I bet he will be, but they might put him behind like a column.
[01:33:29]  Oh, God.
[01:33:29]  They put up him in the bulletproof glass.
[01:33:32]  I hate all of these little freakazoids.
[01:33:35]  But Ramaswamy, I particularly don't like because he's a fake entrepreneur.
[01:33:40]  You know what I mean?
[01:33:41]  I don't want to get into this whole thing.
[01:33:43]  Oh, he basically did like a Martin Shkrelly thing, but worse because he doesn't have that Martin Shkrelly charm.
[01:33:50]  But like, you know, he like did fucking some bullshit with buying a company and doing these things and shorts, whatever.
[01:33:55]  I don't know.
[01:33:56]  But he did some bullet.
[01:33:57]  He never made a thing in his life.
[01:33:58]  He's a fucking bum.
[01:33:59]  He's just tall, skinny, and got big old teeth.
[01:34:02]  Does he have veneers?
[01:34:03]  Let's see.
[01:34:03]  Probably.
[01:34:04]  Let's check this out.
[01:34:05]  Actually, I don't think so.
[01:34:07]  You don't think so?
[01:34:08]  I don't know.
[01:34:08]  I got to look at his.
[01:34:09]  Visit Ramaswamy veneers.
[01:34:11]  Let's see.
[01:34:13]  I don't know.
[01:34:15]  I mean, they're pretty white.
[01:34:17]  The bottom jaw seems veneered here.
[01:34:20]  These look like veneers.
[01:34:22]  These look like veneers.
[01:34:23]  Oh, yeah.
[01:34:24]  No, those look like veneers.
[01:34:26]  Well, no, I don't.
[01:34:27]  Well, look, this is an old photo.
[01:34:30]  And you can see the, I don't think the, I mean, I think he's had some cosmetic work on his teeth, but I don't know if you would call these veneers as such, or if you would just say that he's had, I mean, he's probably had a little bit of, you know, work done.
[01:34:47]  Yeah.
[01:34:48]  He's gotten them kind of filled in a little bit.
[01:34:51]  Liz.
[01:34:51]  Obviously whitened, obviously.
[01:34:53]  Friendship quiz.
[01:34:57]  What work have I gotten done?
[01:34:59]  What, what, what cosmetic thing have I gotten done in my mouth that's still there today?
[01:35:06]  Just your mouth?
[01:35:07]  Just my mouth.
[01:35:08]  Okay, because you don't want me to mention the other stuff.
[01:35:10]  Well, okay, I had a Kybella procedure go terribly wrong, and I do have a pair of goiters that hang beneath my chin.
[01:35:18]  Yeah.
[01:35:18]  Like testicles or like breasts, depending on sort of how I'm feeling that day.
[01:35:22]  The guy from the Moz Isley Cantina.
[01:35:24]  Like the guy from the Moses Cantina.
[01:35:26]  I got a couple balls hanging out.
[01:35:28]  So what cosmetic procedure do I have in my mouth right now?
[01:35:32]  What?
[01:35:33]  Friendship quiz.
[01:35:34]  Are you talking about your fillings?
[01:35:36]  Nope, that's not a cosmetic procedure.
[01:35:39]  Well, it maybe technically is, but no, it's a real, it's a real one.
[01:35:42]  What work have I gotten done?
[01:35:43]  On your teeth?
[01:35:45]  Imagine we're watching a reality show and you're looking at someone's mouth.
[01:35:48]  Do you have a fake tooth?
[01:35:50]  I do not.
[01:35:51]  I don't know.
[01:35:51]  What did you have done?
[01:35:52]  I have a permanent retainer.
[01:35:55]  I don't think I knew that.
[01:35:56]  I'm going to say it right here.
[01:35:57]  I'm coming out of the closet.
[01:35:58]  I have a permanent retainer.
[01:35:59]  I thought you were talking about the forked tongue surgery.
[01:36:02]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:36:03]  I got it so I can suck dick better.
[01:36:04]  No, I got a permanent retainer.
[01:36:06]  It doesn't affect my dick side.
[01:36:07]  You know what else, you know?
[01:36:08]  I'm remembering, and I can't believe I forgot.
[01:36:10]  You have that tongue split surgery.
[01:36:12]  I do have the tongue split surgery.
[01:36:13]  Yeah.
[01:36:14]  Well, it's not the only forked thing.
[01:36:15]  I'm forked everywhere you can be.
[01:36:18]  And I've done this thing where I've sort of melted my toes into two separate things on my feet to like the same group of two.

=== Permanent Retainer Secrets (03:00) ===

[01:36:26]  Well, no, not webbed.
[01:36:27]  I've welded.
[01:36:28]  So I have my pinky toe to my middle toe.
[01:36:32]  Sewn shut.
[01:36:33]  Sewn shut.
[01:36:34]  And then my big toe and the toe next to them, my index toe, also melded.
[01:36:39]  Is this the kind of like Star Trek thing you're doing with?
[01:36:40]  Yeah, so I can pick up things easier.
[01:36:42]  So I can use chopsticks like you've never seen.
[01:36:44]  But also that you come in peace.
[01:36:45]  I don't come in peace.
[01:36:46]  That's the thing.
[01:36:47]  I come in war.
[01:36:47]  That's the hand one is peace.
[01:36:49]  If you feed it like that, it's war.
[01:36:51]  But yeah, I've had a lot of shit done, but it's all beneath the fucking, it's all beneath the clothes.
[01:36:55]  People don't see that shit.
[01:36:57]  I also got, well, we don't talk about that, but I got three cheeks.
[01:37:05]  So thank you for joining us.
[01:37:07]  just wanted to leave that one hanging i think sometimes it's doctor said the same thing Prehensile tails.
[01:37:13]  You don't hear much about those anymore.
[01:37:14]  Tails?
[01:37:15]  The prehensile tails.
[01:37:16]  People born with a little lump.
[01:37:18]  You have to do that.
[01:37:18]  They let it try to escape the tail.
[01:37:20]  I think they usually just take it off.
[01:37:22]  They do.
[01:37:22]  Is it prehensile mean you can pick stuff up with it?
[01:37:25]  I think it means you can move it.
[01:37:26]  Yeah.
[01:37:27]  I don't know if it means you can pick stuff up.
[01:37:28]  I think it means you can move it.
[01:37:29]  I feel like vestigial tails.
[01:37:31]  Vestigial tails.
[01:37:32]  Whatever.
[01:37:33]  The fucking tail.
[01:37:34]  You got the little nub.
[01:37:35]  They shouldn't take.
[01:37:36]  I view that in the same way I now view male circumcision.
[01:37:39]  I think that you should keep the nub.
[01:37:40]  If your child is born with a tail, we should let that because I think the thing is they usually shave those off.
[01:37:46]  We don't know what it's going to turn into.
[01:37:48]  I think we do.
[01:37:49]  No, we don't, because we don't let those children grow because they could have full-on sweeping tails.
[01:37:55]  I don't think that that's going to happen.
[01:37:57]  And that really is good for your balance.
[01:37:59]  So like Simone Biles, she's retired now.
[01:38:02]  She says she's not going to the Olympics next time.
[01:38:04]  We need a tailed girl.
[01:38:06]  I think you know that about Simone Biles.
[01:38:08]  I know about Simone.
[01:38:11]  I follow the things of that style of sport.
[01:38:15]  Ghostly.
[01:38:16]  Yeah, you're really into girls, gymnastics.
[01:38:18]  I'm not into, no, I'm into gymnastics, but girls sometimes are good at it.
[01:38:22]  Women.
[01:38:23]  Well, no, oftentimes girls.
[01:38:26]  In fact, it's a big thing for young girls.
[01:38:28]  For me, women and girls, two separate categories, are both good at it.
[01:38:32]  But girls are often good at it because they're limber and haven't had as many...
[01:38:36]  No, I'm liberal now, not C-Dolls.
[01:38:37]  They haven't as many trans fats.
[01:38:40]  They haven't had as many things.
[01:38:43]  They haven't had as many sodium as older women.
[01:38:47]  And so they can move lither because older women's bodies are full of sodium and water.
[01:38:53]  99%.
[01:38:54]  We're just going to end it right here.
[01:38:55]  I'm Liz.
[01:38:56]  My name is Brace.
[01:38:57]  Why didn't you do that earlier?
[01:38:58]  I don't know.
[01:38:58]  Course driver for Gong Chomsky.
[01:39:00]  I drink an urban mate and I'm feeling crazy.
[01:39:02]  And this is Trinan.
[01:39:03]  We'll see you next time.
[01:39:05]  Bye bye.
[01:39:25]  Come out.