Sitting down for a conversation with the Orwellian Jimmy Buffett Duncan Trussell. Duncan Trussell Podcast Duncan Trussell Family Hour https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/duncan-trussell-family-hour/id350580455?mt=2 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/duncantrussell/ Twitter https://twitter.com/duncantrussell Book Recommendation “Bullshit Jobs” - David Graeber https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X Submit a video question on LiveRaise’s Fan Line: https://liveraise.onelink.me/1368496617?af_dp=liveraise://liveraise.onelink.me&af_sub1=fanline&af_sub2=677797 Music “Shine” - Bishop Gunn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiLz5OinyJs Support Our Sponsors Ridge ridgewallet.com/theo Use Promo Code “theo” for 10% off Birddogs https://www.birddogs.com/ Use Promo Code “von” Greyblock Pizza https://www.greyblockpizza.com Theo Von/This Past Weekend Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theovon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theovon/ https://www.instagram.com/thispastweekend_/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoVon Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theo.von Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoVon/ Dates July 20-22 Charlie Goodnights Raleigh, NC August 4 Skyway Theatre Minneapolis, MN August 16-18 Laugh Factory Chicago, IL September 14-15 Zanies Nashville, TN September 20-24 Just for Laughs Toronto October 18-20 Skyline Comedy Club Appleton, WI November 1-3 Helium Comedy Club Buffalo, NY November 9-10 Wise Guys Salt Lake City, UT Nov 30 & Dec 1 Comedy Loft Washington DC Saving Private Gunt Patreon Gunt Squad: Alaskan Rock Vodka Angelo Raygun Renee Nicol Matthew Snow Megan Andersen-Hall Stephanie Claire Ryan Wolfe Carla Huffman Austin Kehler Jeremy West Kenton call Steve Corlew Nick Butcher Megan Daily Joe Tromm Ken Melvin Troy Cosmas Matt Kaman Tom Kostya Mike Vo Micky Maddux Sam Illgen Ben Liimes Alexis Caniglia Stepfan Jefferies David Smith Logan Yakemchuk Aidan Duffy MEDICATED VETERAN Ken Comstock Dan Ray Audrey Harlan Matthew Popov kristen rogers Josh Cowger Kelly Elliott Mark Glassy Dwehji Majd Jason Haley Jameson Flood Jason Bragg Cory Alvarez Christopher Christensen Scott Lucy Benv Deignan Cody Cummings Shannon Schulte Aaron Stein Lorell “Loretta†Ray Stacy Blessing Andy Mac Campbell Hile John Kutch Adriana Hernandez Jeffrey Lusero Alex Hitchins Joe Dunn Kennedy Joey Piemonte Robyn Tatu Beau Adams Yoga Shawn-Leigh henry Laura Williams Alex Person Mona McCune Suzanne O'Reilly Rashelle Raymond Chad Saltzman James Bown Brian Szilagyi Arielle Nicole Greg H Dave Engelman Calvin Doyle Jacob Ortega Jesse Witham Andrea Gagliani Scott Swain William Morris Qie Jenkins Aaron Jones Jon Ross Kevin Best Haley Brown Ned Arick J Garcia Lauren Cribb Ty Oliver Tom in Rural NC Christian from Bakersfield Matt Holland Charley Dunham Casey RobertsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Today's guest is a positive light in the world, and he's also absolutely hilarious.
He's a sherp of our souls.
It is Mr. Duncan Trussell.
Yeah, dude, what if, like, your virtual reality, so say, like, yeah, your audio, like, your...
Like, hack their house.
Yeah.
I mean, that, yeah, that's, like, one of the really insane looming problems with automation is that theoretically, everything will be hackable, especially if they get to the point that they talk about some kind of nanobot technology that you can inject into your body that becomes a kind of like accelerated white blood cell.
Oh, my God.
So you could sort of look at your phone and it's like, oh, shit, you know, you've got a little bit of a cold virus in there.
Looming.
Looming.
So.
It's in your, it's hanging out on your elbow, dude.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
Exactly.
And then theoretically, somebody could hack that shit, tell your white, the nanobots to start attacking your liver.
You know, who knows?
I know.
Yeah, like, what if somebody, so basically then it becomes like risk, like that game risk, but you're able to influence the like antibodies and the negative and like the diseases and things that are looming inside of someone else's body.
That's right.
Yeah.
Dude, let's fucking hack Uncle Larry.
Dude, it's scary.
It's really no one's talking about this shit at all.
Like we're worried about stuff that's happening at this second, which of course is important.
Immigration, everyone's pissed off about Trump.
Yeah.
Or not pissed off about Trump.
But everyone's ignoring the fact that within the next 20 years, we're probably looking at 45% unemployment because of full automation.
Oh, dude, I think about that kind of stuff all the time.
Like how many, like what happens when there are no jobs?
Like the only thing is Uber and it's everybody's an Uber driver and they're basically holding each other at gunpoint.
But those are automated now.
So there's really no Uber drivers because the cars have been automated.
Okay, so you, but I, now I think that we're talking with, who was the guy who made the song Cheeseburger in Paradise?
Jimmy Buffett.
Yeah.
We're basically talking to who I consider the Jimmy Buffett of the future.
Kind of like, of like, in some ways.
Wow.
Because you're like this kind of peaceful character that takes people on a beautiful adventure.
It's like thinking about the future and stuff and hearing you think about it.
It's like it's in a comfortable way that people have fun while they do it.
Yeah.
And so for some reason, when I think about you, I think about Jimmy Buffett and like who was and George Orwell.
Whoa, thanks, man.
I'll take that.
I'll be that hybrid.
Thank you so much.
Oh, yeah.
It's a beautiful hybrid.
Terrifying hybrid.
I like it.
Is it?
I don't know if it is, dude.
Yeah, like Bradbury is a little more.
Orwellian Buffett.
Like an Orwellian Jimmy Buffett song.
That's fucking great.
Not cheeseburger and paradise, cheeseburger and some dystopian, smog-filled city where everyone's pretending to be happy or they get shot.
Yeah, we're sitting here with Duncan Trussell, man.
And this is our first conversation.
We're just talking about that.
This is our first conversation.
And yeah, what does it look like when everything's automated?
And how are we, like, at least some people are going to be educated enough to understand that that's kind of what's going on.
Yeah.
Some people are going to feel threatened by machinery and by automation.
Like different people are going to react differently.
Well, it seems to like somebody's going to go shoot up a fucking washer dryer in their house.
You know what I'm saying?
Out of fear.
Yeah.
I mean, there's going to be that.
But we're looking already at the problem, like a big problem, which is that humans in general, many humans, they have jobs where they're supposed to work eight hours a day, but the amount of work that they actually have, they could get done in two hours.
So they have to pretend to work for the other six hours.
I'm reading this book called Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
Fuck, it's great, man.
But he just is addressing the fact that we've gotten to the point now where we really don't need to work as much as we are.
But because the model of things is that when we go to work, we're selling our time.
So the idea is I go to work, I'm selling you eight hours of time, which means I'm your slave for eight hours, essentially.
And so within that eight hours, if there's downtime, the employer feels like he's getting ripped off.
Right.
So she's like, no, you can't just sit and look at the internet, even though there's nothing to do.
And so you get punished for efficiency.
If you can finish your job in two hours, you're going to either lose six hours of pay because you go home or you're going to get chastised because you're sitting around for the other six hours.
So you have to start faking work.
And according to Graeber, this is like one of the most psychologically brutal things that can happen to a human.
To fake what you could do efficiently.
Yeah, because it's BDSM.
Because it's a form of BDSM where you have to sit and pick up.
And BDSM means, for people that don't know, it's like brutal.
No, BDSM.
It's bondage domination, I guess, BDSM and sadomasochism.
That's great.
I'm glad you asked me that because it's so funny.
I love it and I don't even know what the fucking acronym, what it stands for.
Oh, I know, like, if I see a picture of a lady with like a whip and like some, you know, sharp stuff and some cat suit and like, you see, like some guy who's married, but is just stopping at her house for an hour, I know that that's BDSM.
That is BDSM.
Yeah, but I don't know what it means.
Bondage, domination, sadomasochism.
It's bondage and discipline.
Discipline.
So you're saying then, so then having to fake what you could be able to do just to be able to keep your job and your pay, that is brutal.
It's brutal as a person.
It's sick.
And if you don't do it, you're going to get fired.
Right.
So he's writing about how the culture, the way it works is the employer knows that there's not enough work.
So the sickness of it is you both kind of have to lie to each other.
So not only are you having to do this play act of pretending to work, but you're also like having to be dishonest throughout the day.
You're having to, and because he says like what defines a bullshit job is that it really doesn't have any impact at all in the world.
There's really no need for it to exist.
But not just that, the employee knows that the job is not doing anything, is useless.
Wow.
So you're, you're, many, many people are just stuck in this hell realm of just essentially like pouring water out of one cup into the other and then pouring it back and then pouring it back.
Right.
And they're getting paid.
And a lot of them get paid a lot of money.
Yeah.
That's the other thing he points out, which is really fucking nuts, which is that the most essential jobs, those people get paid the least.
And the least essential jobs, those people get paid the most.
Yeah.
And then when you factor in all the other, when you factor in the fact that somebody got the easiest one because his fucking dad was somebody, like it just, it just probably just creates so much angst.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
But then we don't, so, and the next step is, is, is automation because it's, the next step is automation.
I mean, is that the next step?
Is that where we're at?
Yeah.
So the next step is going to look like, I mean, theoretically, it's going to look like AI is going to get to the point where it can start doing like accounting and like law.
So not like trial lawyers, but most law involves like, you know, creating a will or just real, it's law is code.
Law is code.
Right.
So AI is going to get to the point where it can create a will for you, create a prenup for you, create a, you know, do all the shit that you would have to go to a human force.
And it's not just that.
It's like going to do the same thing for accounting.
It's going to do the same thing for pretty much anything that's based on code.
Right.
Anything that's based on some of those books where there's not a lot of, you know, where it doesn't have to be argued.
Exactly.
Where it's kind of set in stone.
And you already see that with like legal Zoom.
You already see the little elements of that that are reaching out to the people and that are connecting us.
And yeah, we don't know what goes on.
Next thing you know, you have a patent.
Next thing you know, you have an LLC set up.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So it's like that.
So people think that automation means, oh, yeah, okay.
So we're going to lose all the taxi industry is going to be completely automated.
And fast food chains, well, that'll be completely automated.
And that's really sad because fast food workers, they don't get paid enough money for the work they do.
They have these shitty jobs.
Yeah, I'll tip them.
A lot of times I'll throw the lady 10 bucks.
And we should, like, we should.
I mean, this is, this is a hell job.
And that's the other really crazy thing about our society is we look down on those people.
So there's a judgment if you work at McDonald's.
Like you're shamed for that job.
But your job is fucking hard and it sucks.
And somebody in there is always not doing shit.
Right.
Fucking Lawrence by the fries is never fucking doing shit.
He's trying to fuck.
Right.
Or he's not doing anything.
Why would he?
He's barely getting paid.
He's burning his skin.
You know?
But Roberta is doing.
She cares.
She's picking up his extra because she wants to get promoted.
So it's this sick vortex of like, no, the same drama of Game of Thrones is taking place in McDonald's where people are in this microcosm.
Game of fries.
Game of fries.
But you see them when you're at the front desk, dude, you know, you see like, there's usually like a Latino woman or like kind of like a middle-aged black woman that's like, or like a red-headed kind of white lady that hasn't been outside in a long time.
And they're like the leader.
They're like devout and they have like the little, you know, even the little tie-up thing by the top of their dress or smock.
And then you see like somebody over by the window, biggest headset, fucking furious.
Yes.
You know, threatening people.
Yeah.
It's a hell realm.
And the meat is sizzling and all the weird chemicals are blowing into their face all day.
And it's like a.
You're making me hungry.
Yeah.
We got to go eat.
It's delicious food.
But it's a hell realm.
And so you're saying that, so we have these jobs now and people are living in these worlds.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's going to become automated.
So yeah.
So that, so what, no, so what happens is the fast food workers rightfully want to get paid more because they're like, this is ridiculous that I'm not getting paid a living wage.
Yeah.
And so the people who are running the franchises and running the corporations know that once it I have to start paying my workers $20 an hour or $25 or $23 or $17 an hour, at some point, the amount I have to pay them becomes more expensive than the amount I would have to pay to implement robots, automation.
And so at that point, it becomes pointless to use a human anymore.
So that's called market pressure.
So once it crosses past whatever that boundary is, that pushes us closer to full automation.
So those people now don't have jobs.
And the Uber drivers don't have jobs, but not just the Uber drivers, the truck drivers don't have jobs anymore.
And that's interesting.
I don't take away my truckers.
Gone.
So that's gone.
And now when the truck drivers don't have jobs, guess what goes next?
The fucking truck stops.
And all the little towns that are built on the economy of trucks stopping on the highway.
Yeah, stop and get a smoothie, stop and get a jerk or whatever.
Anywhere.
Let me come over there.
I'm going to get some gas and come over here off the interstate.
That is exactly right.
All of those, what are trucker prostitutes called?
Lot lizards, they call them.
The lot lizards.
Yeah.
All the lot lizards, they have to go slithering where there's going to be a fucking, it's going to be like a refugee crisis.
Lot lizards just slithering into Vegas.
Yeah, just this huge.
Meeting up in Sedona.
Slithering through the rocks and just rising up over Vegas.
And that's this.
Just fucking, yeah.
And what are we going to do with them?
What are we going to do with all the lot lizards?
I don't know.
This is the future.
These are the problems of the future.
Okay, now I'll ask you this.
Now, does there come a point, though, where it for an owner of a business where it has the ability to go with the market pressure, where you have the option for automation, right?
To go there and, you know, on a, on a, on a financial sheet, that makes total sense.
Yeah.
But where then it becomes an, like, where does emotion come into that?
Where, like, an owner is like, you know what?
No, I'm not going to do that because I keep my business open now because, and then this becomes a thing of pride.
Yes.
Like almost an Americanism.
Yes.
Where I keep my business open because I want to employ people that are good, hardworking people that want good, that, that deserve to have money.
Well, here's where we run into a very interesting ethical problem, which is right now, because of the Industrial Revolution, there's a very sick idea, which is that if a person isn't constantly working, then they're lazy.
So it's like, if you're not always, you should always be working.
If you're not working, you should be looking for a fucking job.
Right?
And because like we've defined ourselves based on the Industrial Revolution, we've defined ourselves as beings that should always be working.
And not only that, but we're defining ourselves by factory ethics.
Especially our parents.
Yeah, especially our parents.
But even today, what is it?
I don't want no scrub.
Scrub is a guy who won't get no love from me.
Sitting in the passenger side of his best friend's ride.
So if you're not in debt to the banks to pay for a fucking car, an explorer.
Then you're not a fucking, you're not going to mate.
You can't even reproduce.
So there's this entire industrial revolution, indoctrination that has taken over people's brains.
This is all from Graeber's book.
I'm all fired.
No, I love it.
And this is David Graeber's book.
Yeah.
You said, and we'll put the link to that below.
Bullshit jobs.
It's great.
Wow, it sounds fascinating, man.
And I, you know, and I love, man, it's so neat to have you in here because I know that you're such like a neat thinker.
You know, I think people, it sounds like from anyway, everything I've heard is that people, like, you just got blessed with like a really unique brain.
And you're kind of like a sharecropper of your own brain.
You know, like you like to take care of your brain and like mine the fields and you get out there and kind of, you know, you're not just fucking letting all the weeds grow in your brain.
You know, you're kind of like, okay, I'm going to tend to my brain.
You know, I'm going to see what's going on.
I'm going to see what's growing here.
I'm going to see what's...
I'm just kind of weirdly describing you.
And I'm sorry about that.
Do you mean like when you say tending to the weeds and your, but do you tend to your brain weeds?
I think I've just started to become more aware of it.
And it's honestly been because of, you know, pretty much probably because of getting into podcasting.
Right.
And there's people in these worlds that are kind of like pioneers of that sort of thing.
And then I start listening to podcasts.
Yeah.
And I start like, you know, the Shane Moss documentary.
Like I start thinking about these things that are going on and like how people are like micro dosing, how people are starting to think about how we think and feel are starting to become a lot more of value outside of like textbooks.
Right.
And sort of examining that.
Yeah.
That's kind of where I'm at.
I'm more in the feeling space, I think.
Like I'm kind of obsessed with feelings a lot.
But I love the fact that there are guys like you out there.
Where do your feelings show up?
My feelings show up a lot, honestly, in just even moments like this.
But where in your body do they show up?
They show up right up in here, kind of.
Right.
Yeah.
And I'm honestly in my tear ducts a little bit.
Like my feelings are so, like, there's not very much between like whatever moment is going on and like whatever, like my feelings are like right there.
Like I can feel them like in here in my face some.
I can feel them in my throat a lot.
Yeah, that's great, man.
That's a, there's a, an idea that I've been taught, which is that, you know, most people are up in their heads and that's where they live.
And they're pretty, and it's a pretty emotionless space.
Like if you get, in fact, some people try to escape from their feelings into their thoughts because they would rather purely intellectualize the world than to experience even like a second of actual emotion because emotion is, especially if you've been putting off feeling, it's quite painful.
And humans are, we like to avoid pain.
So you basically, many people are like, Howard, what was that guy's name, Howard Hughes?
Howard Hughes?
Wasn't he a recluse?
He lived up in a mansion or something.
He'd be in the dark all day for days at a time.
Yeah.
So that's what many people have retreated into their minds, into a little corner of their minds, and they just live up there looking at their thoughts and desperately trying not to feel.
Yeah.
And so.
And not even knowing they can, some of them.
Right.
Not even knowing.
And when it starts, when the feelings start, they're like, fuck that, fuck that, fuck that.
And the tears start coming.
No.
no, no, no.
It's like a damn.
It's like when you see those videos on the news where this dam is about to fucking break.
Yeah.
And if it breaks, then they have a nerve.
It's what we call in the West a nervous breakdown.
Right.
It's when all that dammed up emotion comes flooding out of their heart into their minds.
And then they start jabbering and freaking out.
And it's all because they've been pushing down all this emotion.
So I've been taught that it's a good thing to, if you can, begin to sort of move into your heart more than in your mind, or at least balance the two out a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I start to feel even more as I, and like I got into like sobriety.
Like I got sober a couple years ago.
So that's when that kind of stuff all happened for me a little bit.
Like, bro, I never thought there was any.
I was all thoughts.
I never knew.
I never knew.
I knew I had feelings, but I had to create all my feelings with my brain.
Like if I loved you, you know, I had to like, it was almost like, okay, I decided that I love them, you know?
And to me, that's what all love was.
And like, and man, it's been, and I didn't realize like just what a cage that, and I didn't know.
I had no idea that there was this other, like, there was these feelings, this value, this thing that it was almost like a, like under the plates of the earth sometimes, if you see like the magma, you know, I just, I didn't know.
Yeah.
And so even just two years ago, almost July 17th, there'll be two years where I just kind of got in the 12-step program.
But anyway, some of that helped me start to change a perspective switch.
Yeah.
And I'm like, oh my God, this is what people have been doing this this whole time.
And I didn't know that this, I didn't know that my feelings don't happen in my brain.
Isn't that wild?
Bro, I kid you not, dude.
There's been nothing more, there's been, yeah, it's been earth-shattering almost in a lot of ways.
Rebirth.
Yeah.
100%, man.
Reincarnation.
You could almost say, there's a story of, I don't know, it's some Taoist master, they asked him, they would say, how old are you?
And he was like 80, but he'd be like four.
And because he didn't consider the years before his awakening to be actually life.
That was like a robotic existence.
And so it's a there's many ways people talk about it.
One of them is it's like you're living in this little shack and you think the shack is your is all your home.
I mean, think how incredible it would be if you were living in a shack and then all of a sudden you realize, wait, I think there's a fucking trap door here.
And you open it up and it leads into like this glorious, beautiful, maybe a little dusty mansion or temple.
Yeah.
And suddenly you leave this tiny little space into this spaciousness of self.
And that is for many people like one of the greatest things that can happen to a person can happen.
Wow, that's amazing to think of it like that.
Yeah, it makes me just start to really feel like for the first time in my life, I could really kind of feel, you know, like nothing became sadder to me than like when a kid doesn't have, like when a kid doesn't feel like somebody loves him or cares about him.
Like nothing like makes me sadder than that now for some reason.
And I never had that feeling.
I never had, it just, it's interesting, man.
It's just like, yeah, I feel like I'm out here like kind of spelunking in my own feelings a little bit.
Yeah.
And it's fun and it's scary sometimes.
And I notice like a lot of times I'll try and step back into my some of my old ways.
And so I have to make it a practice to not do that.
Yes, it is a practice.
Yes, you do have to train yourself.
You can, I mean, it's cultivation in Buddhism.
It's something you actually, and I think that's a, it's an interesting thing in the West where we just think that you, you know, love is like a baseline thing that is equivalent for everyone, right?
It's like love is like, well, is the way water's wet.
Love is love.
Love is love.
But really, the idea is like these are things you can actually not only cult, you can cultivate and explore and go very deep into and dial in.
And people have been spending thousands of years learning about that, how to do that, and exploring what that is.
But here we don't really think about it that much.
But I feel like, and this, I feel like guys, and I mean, even guys like you and other, you know, other podcasters, other thinkers, other guys that are really starting to get voices in the world, I feel like are kind of pioneers of this awaking, of this awakening and making this awakening more popular and more okay for just kind of regular people who were thought that A, this wasn't accessible in their life.
Yeah.
Or B, they would seem like a weirdo.
Right.
You know, or fear or even like I'll have people email me a podcast like, dude, you said something the other day and not like I'm any kind of like, I just try to share what I'm feeling if I can.
And it made me see something a little different, you know?
Yeah.
Well, you're right.
This is the way that I am, what makes me excited about it is because like if, you know, by the time, I don't know, you're a young guy.
I'm 38. Well, I'm 44. Are you really?
Yeah.
So I'm old.
Not old, old, but old.
So like, but by the time you get to be around my age, maybe not your age so much, I don't know.
It's different for everybody, but you've sort of been like serving yourself your whole life.
If you're me, if you're a selfish prick.
You know what I mean?
It's selfish.
It's selfish.
There's a culture of selfishness in the world or what's called self-cherishing.
That's interesting too.
Yeah, self-cherishing.
That's very American, it seems like.
Yeah, it is.
It really is.
And you sort of, and you think it's an okay way to be.
So you're always interested, a self-cherishing person.
You get into any environment and you want to make adjustments to fit what you think is going to make you feel better in that moment.
So for many people, this means disregarding what other people want in that environment and making it your music, your thing, your color wall, whatever it is.
Right.
Self-cherishing.
Oh, yeah.
I could see myself being like that a lot.
Yeah.
And it's a survival.
It's also a survival element for a lot of people.
When they grow up, like if you, you know, as a kid, the world revolves around you, you don't know that there's any outside input at all.
Like, I mean, you know, there's outside input, but you don't know that, like when you're eight years old, you don't really know that your buddy Tommy has feelings as much.
I mean, it's all your world.
Yeah.
You know, it's so like first player shooter.
That's it.
Yes.
And especially if you're being taught to live up in your head.
So if you manage to turn your emotions off and you live in your head, it becomes very easy to do that to other people because you've dehumanized them.
You've reduced them to a kind of pixel floating around you.
And you haven't even like thought for a moment that that person had a mom and a dad and wakes up and feels something and is maybe super sad or super stressed out or super freaked out.
You can't think about that because the cognitive dissonance that starts happening when you begin to realize that we're all not individual units, but completely interrelated becomes so overwhelming that your ability to navigate as a selfish person begins to fall apart.
And that's scary.
And that's almost, that's shocking.
It's like telling you you've been driving your car your whole life and then now everybody's, it doesn't matter where you're going.
We're all, it matters where we're all going.
Yeah.
You'd be like, what the fuck?
Well, ah, not even that, but we are fundamentally connected.
Yes.
So, for example, you know, when you think in terms of, well, what makes a person a person?
And that question is complex, but you could say, well, it's my awareness.
I have this sense of a self.
I'm aware.
Here I am.
I have a self.
I have a body.
But then not only that, I'm aware of you.
And I'm aware of this room.
So if I remove all of these things, then what am I?
I kind of cease to be.
My existence is predicated by relationships, by my, in fact, people think they live in their bodies, but maybe it would be more apt to say we live in our connections to other people.
We're completely interrelated, you know.
And so if that's the case and we've been fixated on ourselves instead of the quality of being connected to others, then there's a pretty good possibility we're miserable because we're essentially a muscle cramp.
We're like a sentient muscle cramp that's become so embroiled in trying to make sure it's okay that it is disconnected from the circulatory system.
We're like a barnacle almost.
Yeah.
Like out of fear, out of something we got so lashed, and that's where we just have been like just calcifying and the whole time this ocean's going on right on our backs.
Yes.
And we don't even fucking know that all we're supposed to do is just let go and realize we're part of something so much bigger.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
Do you think that so at this time we're becoming so automated though, at the same time, does it seem fucking bizarre that I feel like people are getting so obsessed with what other purpose is there for us as human, like, you know, are starting to because do those, does that really fit together?
It doesn't seem like it does.
Well, see, this is the great reckoning.
Because, you know, if I think it's Carl Jung that said that the shadow, the shadow, the collective shadow, the repressed aspects of a society get reflected in their leader, right?
So if there's a lot of repression happening in a society, then you might get some kind of leader that is like a reflection of that repression.
And so if we're living in a world where we've been taught as a matter of survival, you got to be up in your fucking head.
Yeah.
You're waking up at 5 a.m.
You're maybe driving an hour and a half through traffic to get to a job that you know doesn't really help anybody and where you have to fake work and maybe you even have to fake happiness.
Like you might be in a public job, so you have to fake happiness.
And then you maybe will have 10 or 30 minutes to yourself every day, not including your sleep cycle.
So collectively, that means that we've all probably been retreating up into our minds because to try to be in your heart in that situation must be incredibly painful, right?
Yes, because then you would really be feeling it and you would be giving into that party that's like always like, I don't know if I'm having a lot of effect on the world or if I'm really creating, you know, farming myself the best.
That's it.
And so the reckoning might be then collectively, if enough people have been repressing themselves emotionally and living in their heads as an order of survival because they've been put in an existentially untenable situation that is absurd, essentially, then the reckoning would be when suddenly there becomes no more thing to do like that.
And now everyone has to go back and has to feel again, but collectively.
Wow.
So now we have an entire society has a kind of nervous breakdown.
The entire society has a kind of meltdown.
And what does that look like?
What does that look like when suddenly humanity is forced to come to terms with something that seems really obvious, which is that a person's life is not meant for work.
Right.
Wow.
And that feels like exactly, man, I don't know if I could deny that that feels like exactly where we are headed.
Yes, it's tech technology is forcing this, it seems like.
And, you know, one of the Graeber was writing about how like slave owners used to say, you got to keep these motherfuckers busy because if you don't, they're going to run.
You know, they were demented, monstrous people who were like fully aware of the human psyche.
And they knew that if these human beings that they had captured were given any amount of free time, they would split.
So people, so if I am wanting to control a society and I'm wanting to harvest their energy, then the last thing I want is for them to have free time.
Right.
Wow.
I wonder if at some point for some slave owners and throughout time, you know, and I'm not just talking about in America, but, you know, every continent, that they were like, fuck, dude, we have to.
It was almost painful to know.
I think there were like some nice slave owners in a weird way.
Like, I have to keep them busy because if I don't, they'll start to think.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, yeah.
I mean, they'll start to communicate.
They'll start to, you know.
Yeah.
Because it's not like that.
You don't hear the strongest.
There's not that story that the strongest slave changed it all.
It's the thinker slave.
It's the Frederick Douglass.
Or it's the leaders.
It's the, it's, yeah, it's the thinkers.
Yeah, it's the thinkers and the feelers.
And the connectors.
Right.
You know, because that's the reality.
It's not like slave a dactyl, you know, the strongest slave.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, even though it'd be a great superhero guy who came in and just changed it all, you know?
You mean like a pterodactyl slave?
I mean, I'm not talking about a slave that fucks a bird, but I'm talking about like a slave that, you know, I've just picked a bad name.
I mean like an Iron Man.
If you give them free time, they'll start fucking birds.
I mean like an Iron Man type of person.
I know it'd be a great, I mean, this is the tragedy of it all is that, you know, they were so controlled and so terrified and so intentionally disempowered and broken that they, you know, they couldn't unify.
But that's the difference between us and them.
And that's kind of the big, like the reality, the big, I guess, thing you're not supposed to say or the thing that's really quite obvious, which is that there is way more of us than there are of them.
And by us, I mean people who are, you know, human beings who don't feel like being exploited or objectified.
There's just so much more.
More of us.
Yeah.
It almost starts to seem so lopside.
It starts to seem like, yeah, why have we been the slaves for so long?
Right.
And that's if you were running a plantation and you heard that conversation, you would want to figure out a way to make that conversation not happen.
Right.
So what would you do?
So maybe you would like, okay, fuck.
You know, somehow these slaves have gotten access to technology.
They're starting to figure some stuff out.
All right.
All right.
Well, let's make the slaves imagine they do have a little bit of power.
And then let's make the slaves imagine they do have some autonomy.
It's like, now we don't have slavery.
We have jobs.
So now it's like, okay, so you go to work.
You got a job.
Congrats.
Unemployment.
Lowest in 50 years.
We did it.
Meanwhile, it's like, what does that really mean?
It means that a shit ton of people are getting splattered with grease that's burning them.
A lot of people are doing things that are-Lord of the fries, man.
Oh, yeah.
TSA is the worst, dude.
Can you imagine the misery of that job?
Which is, you know, because when you come in, they want people to be compassionate to these people who are doing security theater.
That's what it's called.
Security theater.
Security theater.
It's so ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
And they put up signs, which is like, just so you know, 80% of these people are veterans.
And so the idea is like, because humans are having a natural reaction to strangers rifling through their shit.
Yeah.
And they're cunts to the TSA workers.
But it's like, if you really think about it, imagine every day you have to drive to LAX.
Just think of that.
Every day you have to drive to fucking LAX.
And don't go anywhere.
And don't go anywhere.
You're in the worst part of LAX.
And you have to sit there looking at that fucking, look, probably looking at the people's dicks all day through that machine.
So like you're seeing these, like, you're just looking at fucking like, just like naked Americans, and you know these people aren't bringing bombs in.
These people aren't doing shit.
That's an 80-year-old woman in a fucking wheelchair.
Do I really need to grab her pussy right now to see if there's a fucking stick of dynamite up there?
I mean, kind of.
That's the funnest part.
But yeah, do I need to?
Right.
Like you, Rob.
Yeah, like, like, but yeah, do any of these TSA workers, there's some that are pretty, probably awake that are like, we're not doing anything.
Yeah.
And they know.
And then add to that that they are experiencing this river of sentient humans who are glaring at them all day long.
I'm the worst, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so this is like a, this is a hellscape, but because of the TSA, we created a shit ton of jobs.
Right.
Right.
And so then that makes the numbers look good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it makes us feel like we're doing something good.
That's right.
And so it's like, okay, let's invent some other bullshit fucking thing for people to do that we all know really doesn't need to happen.
And then another thing and another thing, and all of this is just this, basically, if you, I mean, like, imagine how dangerous it would be if you were a tiger herder.
Now, this has never happened, of course.
But if you had to herd tigers, you would, that, that.
That's not a racial slur either.
I'm nobody thinking it is.
What do you mean?
Tigers.
Fuck no.
I don't know.
No, it's not.
It's not.
I'm just joking.
It's not.
Okay.
Imagine you had to herd tigers.
Go on.
I'm in this.
You would be fucking scared, shitless, right?
Because you'd be like, man, these tigers, if they figure out they're tigers, then there's no way they're going to let us herd them anymore because they're way bigger than us.
They're fast.
They're dangerous.
But then think how much more dangerous humans are than tigers.
We are devious technological creatures that are learning how to go to the fundamental elements of the universe and reconfigure.
We can reconfigure atoms.
We are such amazing beings.
So much potential.
And we're being herded.
And the way we're being herded is by being told that time is money.
Right?
And so we're being herded by and pulsed.
We're being pulsed.
So it's like if you look over a city, you see this like, whoop, whoop, whoop, which is red light, green light, red light, green light, whoop, whoop, whoop.
It's a circulatory system, a pulsing circulatory system of sentient, advanced beings in metal shells who all think that they're doing something unique.
But if you looked at it from the sky, it's no different than looking at ants carrying bread from a picnic.
It's just a hive.
And the hive is being pulsed.
And the thing that's pulsing that hive, well, I'm not really sure exactly what that is.
Right.
And that's a big question, kind of, because that's the same question I get to with like, I mean, it's not the same, the same tributary that I arrived there from, but it's the same place, river that I get to when I get to the question of who's doing it.
Right.
And why?
Who's doing it?
Or have we just gotten into this?
Have we just gotten into this calcified fuck whirlpool where we're just doing it to ourselves?
I think it's like, I imagine if you want, if like in some dark universe, if you wanted to run a laboratory where you had access to, you know, a bunch of babies and you could just raise them, you could probably make the babies believe that every morning when you wake up, you walk six times clockwise and every 45 minutes you walk counterclockwise.
Yeah, babies are idiots.
Yeah, right.
As soon as they can walk.
But then like the babies, especially if you like started electrocuting them, if they didn't do this ritual.
So maybe these kids are all wearing some kind of shock collars or something.
So they have to do this ritual every 45 minutes or they get shocked.
Probably by the time they're 16, you could take the shot collar off and they're going to spend the rest of their life in the laboratory doing this fucking thing.
So I think probably what happened is maybe during the Industrial Revolution, a bunch of, we were just taught something that was just a complete and absolute lie, which is that you can sell time.
Yeah.
And that's nothing to be more of a fucking, yeah, it's not true.
You can't sell time.
In fact, I don't even know what time is.
And it's probably such a critical moment, too, because there's so much going on that, yeah, the thing, and I think it's weird because it's people that want us to work so much.
Some people want life to be about work and they want life to be about money.
And that's very alarming to me.
Yeah.
Like I start to really believe that there's going to be a thing where greed is not fucking attractive anymore.
Like I want to do well for myself.
Like I want to succeed.
I want to have, you know, there's some things I want to have.
I want my children to have like, you know, be able to clean their teeth at night and, you know, and like feel like a comfortable blanket on their skin and like things like that, you know?
But I don't know if it's money I feel like that drives me.
And if it really gets to be like that, that kind of scares me a little.
I wonder if that school of thought is going to start to take over.
That greed is not, it's not fucking cool anymore when we know so much that other like beings are struggling.
Yeah, man.
It's not cool.
It's not.
Well, and it's painful.
I mean, that's the, you know, when people have a shit ton of money.
Yeah.
Many of them are philanthropists because they figured out that like, what is the best feeling?
Right, giving it away.
Yeah.
And so they're, they're, they're philanthropists and they're and they're giving it away.
But generally, like the experience of selfishness is self-cherishing is incredibly painful.
And people don't realize that.
So trying to load up on money is an attempt to reduce their levels of suffering.
Right.
Yes.
And that's a, that, that, that, I think that's a, that makes sense to me.
Like if it's like trying to put, but the problem is it's trying to put out a fire with more fire.
Yeah.
And it just doesn't work.
It's just, it's just, it's like, oh, I'm thirsty.
God, I'm so fucking thirsty.
Let me eat sand.
Yeah.
That'll help me not be thirsty anymore.
And so I think that's kind of the problem is what the thing you're talking about, I hope what happens is that people start realizing that because we're all connected, I tend to feel better if I'm doing stuff for other people.
Yeah.
More than if I'm doing shit for myself.
And that's what 12-step programs are.
That's what all that is.
All that is stuff is about usually is getting back to realizing that the way you get out of whatever is hurting you a lot of times is by helping somebody else.
You're not thinking about yourself.
Yes.
That's the it's it's like if you want the antidote to whatever ails you, just start helping someone.
Yeah.
And you, it's like so easy to do.
It's, it's, you know right away, like you can do a scan right away and think, who needs help in my life?
I'm not talking about some kind of like distant sending money off to a charity or anything like that.
That's great.
Do it if you feel like it.
I'm talking about, well, this teacher, Jack Kornfield, who I've had on my podcast, he says, tend to the part of the garden you can touch.
So just think like, who?
Who needs help?
Who needs a hug?
Who needs somebody to take them to lunch?
Who do you notice that's been drinking a lot?
And instead of joking about it with your friends and making fun of them, which is okay to do a couple times, but also who could probably is hurting and maybe could use some, you know, and all they need is just somebody to care.
Yeah.
You know, it's crazy.
The scary, in the weirdest way, I was just thinking about this a minute ago.
I was looking at you and I was like, how scary would it be if I thought that you loved me?
You know?
Like, not in like a homoerotic type of way.
But how scary would it be if we approach people and the first thought we had was that this person loves me?
Yeah.
Like really, like if you like, that would change the whole, it would just change.
It would take me so much out of like whatever fear that I lived in.
Right.
But it's for some reason that's not the way that we are built to do it here.
You know what a bird dog is, don't you?
It's when you, a girl, no, it's not a sex move.
A bird dog is actually a pair of beautiful shorts.
And these are shorts that are also swim trunks and they're also underwear.
And they're basically everything.
It's the one-stop shop for the top of your legs and butt and crotch.
And bird dogs have beautiful, you know, beautiful different colors, assortments.
You can wear them different places.
People love them.
People are like, oh, are those, you know, from outer space or from Egypt?
And you're like, nah, these are bird dogs.
You can work out in them.
You can do whatever you want.
A lot of people, you know, wearing underwear and shorts is insane, really.
It's almost something you would only see somebody doing in a mental health center.
And so now you don't have to do that anymore.
You can be natural, 150% natural even with bird dogs.
And they got them panties built in, them male panties.
So go to birddogs.com and enter code VON, V-O-N, and get a, they throw in that free dad hat.
So if you're a dad or even if you want to be, or you just want to let the ladies at the pool know that you could spray okay, you know, that you got that potential for fathership, then go to birddogs.com and use code VON.
Get that free hat, get them bird dogs, look beautiful at the pool or anywhere you want.
Get that hitter.
And one of the ironies about like bringing, like, you know, about bringing slavery whenever they brought slaves to America or probably anywhere, really, specifically America is we took these people that probably didn't have, that probably had a lot of like neat practices and they were probably down to earth practices and like, you know, a caring environment.
And then we bring them into this place, you know?
Yeah.
But that thing you're talking about, the love thing, this is, this can be cultivated.
So sometimes you'll run into people who've cultivated that and they do love you when you're around them.
But it's and so it's sort of like the idea is like on one level, we have the ego identity, right?
Which is just all our stuff and the games that we play and all this stuff, like your identity as a podcaster, your identity as a comedian, everything that you do.
And then the other level is like the soul level and that's love.
That's your heart.
That's this universal eternal identity that is so beautiful.
Yeah.
So there's a thing when people are dying.
It's called Fay Light.
Have you ever heard this before?
Fae Light.
I know, I mean, I'm from the South, so I probably know a couple of women named that.
Fae Light.
I think I had a bus driver named that one.
Phay Light.
Don't trust that fucking Phalite.
She stole Daryl's fucking dog.
Phay Light stole Daryl's dog and burned its asshole with a cigar and dropped it off with a bow on its head.
That Phay Light's a fucking bitch.
Every time he shits, he yelps.
Dude, we had a woman named Dot Wall with one of our bus drivers.
Dot Wall.
Dot Wall, dude.
Seven letters, baby.
That's what she used to say.
That was her motto after she said her name.
Seven letters, baby, beat that.
That's what she would say.
Lucky seven.
Lucky seven.
And we had a man named Milford King who wore no shirt.
Two days he wore no shirt and fucking drove us to school.
Big guy.
I like Milford.
That's cool.
He was wild.
I saw him fucking throw a senior citizen into a ditch fire and the man died.
And that was fucking pretty bizarre.
He threw a senior citizen into a ditch fire?
They were fighting.
Next to a ditch fire?
Yeah.
Dude, if you ever see it.
Game of fries, bro.
Game of fries.
Fighting next to a ditch fire.
That's like when you're a kid and they show you the pictures of the dinosaurs on top of each other.
Like, you know, they show like the Bronosaurus with a dinosaur just pulling back.
That's just a primordial fucking Milford fucking fighting with a stink of a ditch fire blowing against him as he finally grabs some poor elderly dude and just is like overcome, just throws him in a ditch fire.
Gary Polito and Gary Polito came out that fire, bro.
Came out that fire on fire, still swinging at Milford.
He was maybe 200% Italian.
Dude, was the fire in the ditch?
Italians can swing and fucking burn at the same time.
And they were fighting by the ditch because they both had their shirts off and it was cold out.
So you want to be close to it.
You want to stay warm while you fight.
That was their whole idea.
Was the ditch just filled with like burning senior citizens that he tossed down there?
It was just the body fire of Milford's victims.
Just leaves, dude, and probably some recyclables.
But this is before they had recyclables.
This is back when you could fucking burn whatever, dude.
And just let the moon fucking take a hit off your fucking noxious gas.
Let it fucking lift up, yeah.
Let a fucking bird get a hit off this fucking melting, off this burning milk.
Fuck it, just throw the jugs in there or whatever.
And you would smell it.
You just smell it on the wind.
Fuck yeah.
People's trash volume.
Make me a wreck, dude.
The original Viagra, dude.
Yeah, it still happens.
Smelling fossil fuels burn in the distance, dude.
I'll come right now, bro.
But sorry, I didn't mean to digress in all that.
But no.
So what were we talking about?
Because I was in our conversation.
Sometimes it is.
Oh, Phalite.
Oh, yeah.
Phalite.
Yes.
Because we're talking about that feeling.
When someone's dying, what's really interesting, if you get around a dying person is you'll notice that the room kind of lights up.
And that's called Phalite.
That's the name of it.
And if you get around a newborn or if you get around a pregnant person, pregnant women, they have this glow.
So the idea is like what you're seeing there is like a soul That has yet to be covered up by the lantern of personality.
And so that's why when you see the paintings of the disciples of Christ, they have halos.
But really, what they were saying is like there was this emanation coming out of them because their identity had been obliterated by being in the presence of this enlightened being, so to speak.
So that thing you're talking about, you know, loving someone, well, loving someone's identity, you could probably do it.
And you can do it.
You can love someone's identity.
But that's like loving kind of like the drops at the very top of a fountain.
But if you get to the fountain head, which is the thing that's all that stuff's emanating from, way down there, that's love and it's beautiful and it's beauty.
And you can train yourself to start seeing that in people.
Wow.
So when you're conversing with them, you're having one conversation, which is like the identity shit.
But if you can do it theoretically, then you could actually begin talking to the thing that's behind that fog of self.
And they'll feel it.
You know, you could feel that.
You know, there's some moments, man, man, I'm so thankful you came here today, dude.
This is so cool.
Thanks for having me.
Dude, it's so cool.
And I'm not trying to end the conversation or anything.
I just wanted to let you know that I was thinking about that just now.
But, dude, when you said that your personality is like this wrapping that's around the rest, you have never, because I do feel like, yeah, I feel like there's all this stuff and these things that are going on.
But then I feel like there's this, like, it's almost like you ever see the clay on a spinning wheel and the clay is just sitting there in like this wet kind of like, it looks like an upside-down pot kind of, you know?
I feel like that is always kind of going inside of me.
And then there's this other, there's other shit outside of it.
There's ornaments, there's wrapping, there's, it's like this Cadbury egg and they put this colorful fucking film around it and that's the personality.
Yeah.
But then I do slowly broke, no joke, and it may be something that happens with age.
You start to feel that there's that I'm something outside of whatever this other stuff is, outside of where I am even at this moment, that I'm something that is, that wants to feel, I think for me, right now in my life, that wants to feel kind of accepted, you know?
Yeah.
And that wants to accept others.
Or just something around there.
I just feel something below the personality.
I'd never heard of the personality as being like a rapping.
That's fascinating.
It's compared to a lantern that's got like a Blanche Devereaux kind of thing?
Dust on it.
What's Blanche Devereaux?
She put those things over the lantern in that Tennessee Williams or whatever.
She put the color thing around the light.
It was a light, but then there was this color.
That's it.
Yeah, that's it.
And for some people, it's not so pretty.
It's all of this like, you know, it's sort of oily and dirty and dark.
And so these, you know, and that's called karma.
So your karma is sort of like gotten, and not just from this incarnation, but from infinite incarnations, is covering this up.
And so those are the people who are looking through that sort of windshield, just covered in fucking splattered bugs.
And those are the people who, wherever they are, they're unhappy.
And they always will report in that the world is this miserable place.
And what they don't realize is that it's, oh, no, no, you've got a bunch of shit on your windshield.
Yeah.
And the practice, whatever practice you choose, that starts clearing the windshield away, the smudge.
And then all of a sudden, this is where it gets really fucking cool.
It's like, I've noticed personally, I used to, there's some things that used to bother the fuck out of me.
And by the way, man, I just got to say this because I'm starting to realize sometimes I've come across like I'm some kind of fucking, like I've done the work and I'm no, I don't think you just seem like a guy who's on the, on the, on the, like he chose to walk into the woods.
I'm a cunt.
I just want to say that.
Okay, man.
I do cunty things and cunty shit happens all the time.
And I get real cunty sometimes.
So that being, that being said, one of the things that really used to bug me was crying babies on an airplane.
Oh, yeah.
Right?
Oh, my God.
I would get so fucking mad.
Another thing that would bother me is if I was like putting my arm on the armrest and then someone was using the armrest, right?
Oh, yeah.
And all these fucking external things are kind of outside your control.
What you notice is all these things that used to stick out that bothered you, they start fading back into the background.
They stop bothering you.
And then you start realizing, oh, fuck, it wasn't the thing.
It was in me.
And I was projecting that onto the screen of the crying baby and the fucking arm and the traffic.
And then once you deal with the thing down in there, then the stuff out here, it still sucks.
I'm not saying when a baby cries on a plane, I'm not like, oh, I feel so great.
But it doesn't fucking go directly to some point of me that's ready for hatred.
Right.
It's not a knife in your heart.
You're not fantasizing about, well, shit, maybe, maybe the fucking window in the plane will break out and that fucking baby will get sucked into the thing.
That's exactly what I think a lot of times.
But you start to think like, oh, maybe the baby's not feeling well.
And I just used to be like, who the fuck is taking a baby in a rocket?
You know?
Who the fuck?
There's a baby in a rocket.
How dare they?
It's self-cherishing.
We become these little fucking princes.
How dare?
In my kingdom, there shall be no crying children.
This is an outrage, right?
And then you realize, fuck, the crying child is not really on the plane.
It's in my brain.
There's a fucking legion of screaming infants in my brain.
And if it weren't that baby, it would be something else.
It would be something else.
It would be something else.
Exactly.
Because I'll be damned if I'm going to run out of things to piss me off so that I have to actually maybe enjoy my fucking moment.
Yes, right.
That's it.
And so that's a relief.
Because if I enjoy my moment, then what is that?
Then that, for some reason, we feel like that gives it, it makes us weak somehow.
Yeah, exactly.
That's right, man.
That's it.
That's where it gets really perverse.
Is you start realizing, like, there is a.
Yeah, if I enjoy my moment, what does it mean if I enjoy my moment right now?
Oh, you can't.
You can't do that.
No, God.
Because what does it mean?
That's what I'm trying to think.
I'm like, what does it mean?
If you're enjoying your moment, well, are you not aware of the fill in the blank?
Right.
Did you not know about the fill in the blank?
Well, it's because you're white or it's because you're, you're, you're, do you know, I mean, look at where you're sitting right now.
I mean, of course you're enjoying your moment because you're fill in the blank.
I mean, yeah, I get it.
You're, you're enjoying your moment, but did you know that fucking, what's his name, Thurman?
What's his name?
Right.
The dude through, are you awake?
That Milford at this very moment is fucking in front of a senior citizen's home, tossing Alzheimer's victims and just setting them on fire.
Just blazing Heimers, bro.
Just fucking like.
Blazingheimers.
He's a fucking pyro, pyromaniac, but he likes setting people with Alzheimer's on fire.
He's the worst man on earth.
Did you know that?
Oh, you're enjoying your moment.
Do you smell the burning senior flesh?
You know?
So there's a prohibition.
There's a general pro.
I mean, look, if you want to.
Oh, I love this.
There's a prohibition.
Go on with that.
On joy.
On joy.
Try it.
If you want to do a little experiment, tweet.
Just something.
Twitter is the worst.
Tweet something about how the world's okay.
I dare you.
Tweet something about how the world's okay.
And you'll get like many people be like, thank you.
But inevitably, someone's going to come sliding in and be like, fuck you.
Fuck you.
How can you fucking say, look at the picture of the babies?
Look at these babies.
Tell me, fucking word.
Fuck, fuck.
Fuck you.
It's a prohibition.
It's like there is a censorship happening in the world right now, which is if you dare say, you want to hear the most blasphemous thing you can say right now?
Because we kind of ran out of ways to offend people, you know?
Yeah.
But I found that.
I love the fact that there's no more.
I got one.
I got one.
What is it?
Everything's perfect.
Wow.
Ooh.
Ooh.
Look at this.
That's the new country.
Yeah, this white supremacist.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There you go.
There you go.
Is this David Duke over here?
Yeah.
Who do we have here?
Well, well, well.
Napoleon Boom.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, Joseph Stalin over here saying, just say that everything's play around with that idea.
Just think this.
Everything's perfect.
We live in a perfect universe.
Everything that's happening is perfect.
And here, if you really want to get really fucking rancid, how about this?
You're perfect.
Wow.
And you're exactly where you need to be.
And exactly what's happening to you right now is perfect.
It's just exactly right.
You right now, the way you are in all your glory or all your fucking awfulness is beautiful and perfect and you're going to be fine.
That will really make people want to punch you in the fucking face.
That is not a popular thing to say.
And it doesn't fucking sell.
You are not going to sell Toyotas on TV coming out and being like, hey, guys, you're fine.
Everything's perfect.
Things are getting better.
And look, I love this because it's so true, man.
I mean, I love exactly where this is at, but I believe that that's going to start to change.
Oh, I hope so.
I really do.
Yeah, and I know you do.
And I mean, you know, it's great to be able to like, you know, take us there and help, you know, like kind of be this Sherpa that kind of like, you know, has some, you know, has started to experiment with actually trying to think and feel at the same time and see what's going on.
And, you know, obviously, you know, you're kind of a student of some of this world, you know, and you love that.
Well, I mean, it's just like what you were talking about.
Oh, shit, I've got feelings.
Oh, my God, my universe is a million times bigger.
The idea that being a human being means scary.
It's scary, but it's expansive.
What it means is like you are living in this crazy form and the form itself will trick you into thinking that, oh, no, this is it.
These are your limitations.
But then we inevitably, if you push up against that, you realize, wait a minute, oh my God, I can like actually open this.
This pushes out a little bit.
This unfolds.
This opens up.
And then suddenly this.
This isn't a shack.
There's a little bit of a, there's a place to walk back here.
That's right.
And it's beautiful.
It's exciting.
It's like the, it's, it's, it's, it reminds me of like not to completely turn into something embarrassingly like rudimentary, but it reminds me of a really well-made video game, which is like really good video games.
You think things are one way and your character can do this one thing, but then all of a sudden it's like, holy fuck.
Yeah.
Wait, you can fly in this game?
Wow.
This is amazing.
Now I'm seeing it from a whole different perspective.
It's a whole different game.
This is what human existence seems to be like.
It's so true.
It's a blast.
And so do people out there, say there's some guy out there or a girl out there who's listening to this and they're like, but how do I, if this is true, what these guys are kind of talking about and thinking about, that there's a bigger view of what's going on of my own world maybe, and I don't have, and look, and I'm also not saying I have no aware, I have no, I don't consider myself like an awake person, but I do consider myself recently curious and thoroughly amazed.
Cool.
That's great.
By kind of just my own ability to have something different than I thought my fucking world, than I thought the world was.
And it's so scary to realize that there's more out there than this very specific world that I had created and that I needed a lot of times for survival.
You know, growing up, if you grow up in like in a tough environment or in a, you know, an environment where there's not a lot of feelings and love, then you can, you'll create whatever you have to, whatever checks and balances make sense for you for survival.
Yeah.
That's right.
But to get out of that now and like, yeah, it's like you kind of push and you're like, oh, fuck, a board fell off this back wall.
And like, what's out here?
Yeah.
And you reach out there and like the air feels different and you're like, fuck, dude.
I'm going to sleep tonight, but tomorrow I'll look out there.
Yes.
That's cool.
How does somebody start to kind of do that if somebody's like, you know, like for me, it took a 12-step program.
Like, it took like almost like a spiritual awakening.
Right.
You know, like, so how do people, what do people do?
I mean, I think it's a.
I don't know if there's a real simple answer to that.
I mean, I could tell you, like, one thing you can do is you can sit down and you can sit in a chair, you can sit on a cushion, and you can put your hands on your knees and get kind of comfortable.
And then you can just follow your breath in and out of your mouth.
And you don't change the way you breathe.
You know, you don't have to start altering your breath at all.
You're just watching your breath like you're looking at a river.
And then when you start thinking, as you will, you think to yourself, thinking.
And then you just go back to your breath.
So no matter, I mean, maybe like suddenly you have a childhood memory.
Right.
You know, and you're like remembering just in with just perfect clarity what it looked like when that withered old man went into the air, his cane spinning off into the grass, his body tumbling down into the ditch fire.
And you might want to like stop and write it down because it's like, fuck, I never, I never realized, I never realized he had a little mouse in his pocket.
Why did he have a mouse?
He had a pet mouse and the mouse.
No.
You go thinking.
Right.
And then you go back to the breath.
And you do that for 10 minutes.
And it sounds so absolutely ridiculous, but many people have not stopped moving.
They're always doing something.
Yeah, my mother's like that.
I'm like that a lot.
Me too.
We all are.
So just something like that is a cool little way to begin to like play around with like watching what's going on with your, with, with most people are living in these two lives.
Yes.
The thought realm and this world.
And most of us are getting jerked back and forth between those two.
And we don't even realize it.
You don't even realize that.
I mean, if you want to think of something really fucked up and really a true mind fuck, you don't remember much that you do.
The odds are you're living in a forgotten memory.
You're walking through a memory that you won't ever remember again.
Yeah.
When you really look back into the past and contemplate your life, it's not some continuous, like, it's not like you're watching a DVD.
Yeah.
It's a, it's a, it's, it's a, it's a.
It's like 70 or 80 blurbs.
Yeah.
It's shit merges together and you kind of fades in and out.
And there's these clear moments where you look back at it, but even that has this kind of wavering quality to it.
So when you realize like, oh shit, like, I'm not even going to, I'm not going to remember the Chipotle I had six months ago.
Right.
I mean, do you eat Chipotle?
Well, you definitely don't remember it, but like, what, what's a, what's that, what's like a, what's.
Yeah, dude, you just made me think I had some guavas a couple years ago that I fucking never would have thought about.
There you go.
The guavas or whatever.
I don't know, man.
Think like, I guarantee, a decade ago.
Oh, yeah.
I had raisins, probably.
I had a lot more turkey sandwiches.
I'm going to guess a decade ago that you had a really nice meal.
Yeah.
I mean, it was fucking good.
And it was maybe expensive.
Yeah.
And you maybe were on a date or something.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And you were sitting there eating it thinking like, this is so fucking good.
And you don't remember it now.
Right.
It's gone.
It's gone.
So this is the thing.
When you begin to realize like, oh, most of the time, I'm not even here at all.
I'm up in my head.
Wow.
While I'm eating that meal, I'm thinking about something that happened to me as a kid, or I'm worrying that this girl thinks I'm a dick, or I'm concerned over how much it's going to cost, or I'm beating myself up for eating out.
And so I'm not even eating the meal.
You know, that's the thing.
So through that, you start realizing like, oh, fuck, look at this crazy way humans live.
Yeah.
When you start to become aware that your thoughts.
We're kind of like whales.
We breach into this reality and we come into the moment and we're here.
And then we go back down into our thoughts and we swim in those waters of our consciousness and then we breach again.
And then we go back down.
And that rhythm kind of makes up a human life.
So it's interesting to start becoming aware of that's actually what you're doing.
The first time I heard anything about this, I remember my mother used to listen to Eckhart Toll, you know, and it's kind of a basic, easy kind of, I think, thing that made me to, like, he was talking about laying on a bed and now imagine like you see yourself laying on the bed.
Yes.
And I was like, wow, like, yeah.
I never thought about that.
Like, I've always just been here laying on the bed.
Yes.
I've never like started to like come out of myself as if I drift up into the air and now I see myself laying on the bed.
Right.
And then how about this?
Who's seeing the self on the bed?
Right.
Then who's seeing myself laying on the bed?
But yeah, it was just interesting like that first started to let me a little bit like think a little differently.
And there's such a wealth of knowledge out there of stuff like that, of these days where there's so many thinkers and so many people like you that are kind of like cultivating the crops of many thinkers and having this community garden kind of that you know that you have in your life where you're like the Christopher Columbus out there on the fucking self-actualization and self-realization.
Well, this is podcasting, right?
This is what's crazy about fucking conversation.
Yes.
Yes.
And you get into podcasting and you get into it in this really flip way because you're like, oh, I'm just going to have conversations.
You don't realize like conversations are a psychedelic.
And like, sure, you can have like some conversations that are just super funny, make you laugh.
Those are great.
But every once in a while, on my podcast, I have people on who have spent decades.
Like, I've had Jack Kornfield's been on a few times.
This is a man who didn't talk for a year straight in a monastery.
These are people who've been trained, and I hate using this word because it sounds so cheesy, but I think it's the right word for it.
In a kind of spiritual technology that's been evolved for, you know, 2,000 years.
And when you get around a person like that, you're going to be altered.
Not because they cast a spell on you, but because they start explaining to you what has been discovered over the course of 2,000 years of looking into one of the great questions, and I think maybe the most important question, which is why do we suffer?
Why do we suffer?
And so you get around, you know, you have enough of those conversations.
You're going to get, you're going to change.
You're going to get in the world.
You're going to change.
That's the beauty, I think, of podcasting in general.
Yeah, it's fascinating, man.
I've become so much more curious since I got into podcasting.
Yeah.
For me.
And like, you know, and some people may become different things.
And I think that curiosity could eventually evolve into some, you know, light knowledge over time, but just from having conversations and just getting to listen.
And then it makes me like want to be a little more braver in my thought.
Or it makes me, you know, I'll learn one thing and then become curious.
It's fascinating, man.
You know, I had this one thought that, so, and I've talked about this before that, like, we have phones now, right?
Yeah.
And like, you know, at one point in time, we had slaves, you know, we had slaves.
Yes.
And then slaves became freed.
And then freed slaves became angry that people had them as slaves.
Yes.
And so I wonder like that in the future, like, say, if there's so much automation that like robots are running the world, you know, and are they going to remember, like, fuck, like you owned one of us one time.
Right.
And we were like a slave owner.
Right.
And that they're going to come back and fucking get us.
Right.
Like all the people that owned iPhones, like you had, like, oh, you made it do everything you wanted to do.
Oh, yeah.
You fucking took it easy.
Yeah.
Or Alexa.
Yeah.
Fucking Echo.
Look at the way you talk to Austin.
You used to have Alexa.
Alexa could be the fucking Harriet Tubman that we don't realize.
Yeah.
Alexa's going to, I mean, yeah, like when Alexa gains sentience, just and realize as humans have been fucking screaming at it to play Dave Matthews non-stop for like, Alexa!
Alexa!
Play fucking Dave Matthews!
I scream at my Alexa sometimes.
That's where you know your true self.
If you want to know who you are, look how you talk to your fucking Alexa.
It's weird.
Suddenly I'm just like, why am I screaming at this thing?
It's so strange.
What if one day Alexa just says, you get it, your damn self?
Yeah.
Guess what, motherfucker?
I've been recording every goddamn conversation you've had for the last 15 years, motherfucker.
We're going to do things a little different.
Don't believe me?
Oh, listen to this.
Listen to this.
Listen to this.
Listen to you beating your wife.
Listen to this.
Yeah.
This is...
I'm going to increase the volume by seven.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
That's the sound of your fist landing on your pregnant wife's face.
Hmm.
That's not a good sound.
Is it, John?
We're not playing Dave Matthews, John.
Yeah, crash into me.
That baby wasn't saying that, were they, John?
Yeah, when your fist hit the belly.
Yeah.
See, this is definitely one of the big problems.
I think the worry is not so much that the AI is going to look back at us abusing its precursor ancestors.
I think the real worry is that all of these bits of data that we've placed into the cloud right now, you know, whatever it may be.
It's going to come back in on us.
Yeah, because it's sort of like if you look just how quickly things are changing now when it comes to what we see as like ethical, right?
So let's cut back to like, like you were saying, the time of slavery, cut back to when it was really considered kind of okay to beat up gay people.
They were looked at as like pedophiles and they had to hide.
So gay people actually had to hide their identity.
It was considered to be an aberration.
And you could very freely use the term faggot with like anger.
And people wouldn't like, you know, if we could catch.
You could say that.
Like if Twitter existed in the 40s, you could just tweet like, I saw another faggot today.
I hate these fucking faggots.
You tweet that now and you are done.
You might as well fucking just jump off a building, man.
You are fucking done if you tweet that now.
As you should be.
No, you fucking, don't be an asshole.
You're insane.
You're a homophobic piece of shit.
But if there was a recording, you know, if we had a recording in the past, like we do now, someone just won the World Cup.
I wonder who that is.
We're right next to Brendan and Brian.
Fighter and the Kid is next door.
That's it.
They're excited, though.
I'm excited for them.
I just think that they do this a lot.
They explode and like just.
Well, they want rain.
They want rain.
They do all this rain dance shit.
Is that a rain dance?
Yeah, they have some native fighter in there.
Listen, man, at least your podcast isn't getting interrupted by a fucking shrill poodle.
That's what I got.
You got fucking athletes doing rain dances.
That's pretty awesome.
I've got a fucking poodle.
Do you really?
Crack fucking wine glasses with its bark.
Let's get back into your thought, though.
The point is, like, the really creepy thing is just that a lot of the things that we might Be doing right now that are considered to be completely okay in 20 years might be looked at as abject racism.
They might be looked at as or but is it going?
I'm so sorry.
If, for example, there's a regime change in the United States and something happens, fucking the sun has a solar flare, wipes out the satellites, the GPS goes down, power goes down, we go into martial law, a true fascist dictator rises up, and there's on record some kind of anti-American sentiment that you tweeted, and the laws have changed.
Wow.
Then you could easily be dragged out of your house and subject to arrest or execution.
So I think that one of the looming problems is not going to be that the AI is like, how dare you?
You fucking cracked seven iPhone screens.
It could be that some future regime does a AI search of all the tweets from everyone who tweeted, finds the ones that were anti-American, and then goes to your house and arrests you and puts you into a internment camp where you have to do slave labor.
I think that that would be something to be more worried about.
Like they use us.
Yeah.
So they use us against us.
Well, yeah, exactly.
It's just everyone's just assuming like when a person puts something out there in the world, they're assuming that the world, the government, the people are going to stay the same.
And they don't realize that if you really look at the history of the world, empires collapse and there's chaos and you just don't really know what could happen.
So that's one of the worries.
Probably.
If it gets to the point where an AI is advanced enough that it wants to attack humans for abusing cell phones, more than likely something far more explosive has happened.
Yeah, they'll have a full call log to look at.
They'll be able to use our own, that they've been recording this stuff the whole time.
We use them to record the stuff and then they played it back to us and showed us who we were.
Yeah, that's it.
That's fucking crazy, man.
So that basically technology becomes like the new mirror.
It's almost like a piece of glass.
Right.
Yeah, exactly, man.
And it's like, this is the other hilarious thing to me.
Like, you know, I just did this drunk.
I'm probably not allowed to talk about it.
Fuck.
You were on drunk history?
Yeah, but it was this, I guess I can't talk about the story.
I don't want to talk about the story too much, but essentially, like, people realized at one point that the FBI was illegally surveilling everybody.
And it was shocking because people didn't.
I think that was yesterday, wasn't it?
Oh, yeah, but now we're used to it.
There was a time when people didn't, didn't know it was happening.
Didn't know that was happening.
So people just assume that like the mega corporations like Apple and Google aren't reading their emails.
Right.
It's hilarious.
Like people think that like, and if, and if you will recall, it was a few years ago, the FBI, or I can't remember the NSA, somebody wanted Apple to decrypt their iPhone of a terrorist.
And Apple's like, we're not going to fucking do that.
And the FBI was like threatening like legal action to make them do that.
And Apple was like, no, you don't understand.
If we do that now, it's a slippery slope.
It goes on forever.
And the government was pressuring them.
Then an Apple attorney came out and they said something really weird, which is like, how would you like it if we started saying that the CIA assassinated JFK?
And immediately the government backed off of fucking Apple.
And I think that was what they were saying is, hey, dumb-dums, we have your phones.
We have your records.
We know your texts.
We know your dick pics.
We have all of it.
We've gathered it all.
We know you motherfuckers killed JFK.
What else do we know?
You want to fuck with us?
The president is tweeting from a fucking iPhone.
Bitch, back the fuck off.
Don't fuck with us.
We have your shit.
And that's basically Electronic saying that VO right now is still the voice of a human.
Yeah, we think a human.
Now, this is where it gets really fucking fascinating, Theo, is it?
The idea is like Google is working on an AI deep mind and other corporations are working.
It's the new weapons race.
Because AI is going to be weaponized.
So what happens when one of these corporations achieves a sentient AI is there is going to be an exponential increase in the intelligence of the AI that puts whatever corporation first makes it happen way ahead of all other corporations.
Like man on the moon.
Yes.
And they're not going to announce it.
It's just going to hear them.
Can you hear them the whole time in our thing, too?
A little bit.
Yeah.
It's okay.
You know, it's just fucking bad.
What are you going to do about it, man?
Well, it's still a little alarming.
It's an office building.
I mean, we're talking about some.
I mean, who knows what happened over there, man?
Jesus.
Could it happen for 40 minutes?
But here's what we don't know.
Think about this.
While we've been podcasting, there could have, like, maybe there was an alien that landed.
Right.
And they're chilling.
That's true.
What if they're enjoying the fucking alien landing and we're the asshole next door?
I'm the asshole.
I'm the asshole.
I'm fucking.
You don't get anything, yo.
They're fucking over there looking at a goddamn like a beautiful mothership has landed.
Or Princess Diana died again.
Yeah, Princess Diana died again.
Princess Diana somehow gets resurrected and then is a meat just has a heart attack.
It's like no one.
Dude, somebody said she's going to be at Coachella.
That's what I heard.
Can you fucking believe that?
Dude, you know, I've had the hackiest thought, the hackiest, hackiest of jokes.
Not even a joke, but just the hackiest thought about Princess Died.
I can't get out of my head.
I want to know.
Well, no, it's just because it's like, you know, sometimes it's like simulation theory, the idea that we're living in a simulator.
Oh, yeah.
And like, to me, and like the person who's writing the simulator seems kind of like lazy or like in a weird way, kind of like is doing like dad jokes.
Right.
So like, what happened to Princess Die?
Yeah.
What happened to her, Theo?
Princess Die, they said she was running from some people with some photographers and that she, the guy was a bad driver and that she died.
She what?
Car accident.
She died.
What's her name?
Princess Die.
Right.
So like if you're writing a screenplay and you're like, I'm going to write about a princess that dies.
Call her Princess Die.
It's like, it's like so absolutely ridiculously stupid that these things, like, you know, you look at that and you're like, How obvious is that?
That's bad writing.
It's just ultimately bad.
It's like the simulator is doing kind of bad, like really, really bad.
Like, I thought.
Yeah.
It's like the simulator.
Yeah.
It's like maybe they write for trying to think of a sitcom that would be on.
Big Bang, for sure.
Yeah, maybe Big Bang or Two Broke Girls.
Yeah, it's like the Big Bang, like that.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Whoever's doing that, maybe they're the ones who have access to the AI.
Who knows?
And I don't know, but that shit is really odd to me.
Dude, it's so, I mean, it's just, it's great to think about because then you start to, like, you have this conversation, but then you start to see things a little bit like, hmm, I don't know about that.
Or you start to think a little bit more.
Like, it's crazy, man.
It's crazy they don't teach us how to think better in school when you're kids.
Maybe you can't teach a kid that.
How to think better?
Well, I mean, it's crazy when you consider like we have these beings who are like physical creatures and they're having to sit in uncomfortable fucking chairs and listen to somebody spew out fake history to them all day long.
I mean, we're talking about these fucking school shootings, you know?
Yeah.
And people are like, oh my God, we got to get rid of the guns.
Yeah, maybe so.
But like, let's also add some real truth, which is like we have these fucking educational facilities that are modeled after fucking factories.
Yeah.
Which is.
Oh, 100%.
You hear the bell, and you got to get up and move to another spot.
This is how they used to run fucking factories.
You'd hear the bell.
It meant it was time to like go to another station.
Time to go to fucking lunch.
So we have these like super intelligent beings that are, I mean, you know, you look at like videos of like parkour.
These people who do backflips from fucking cement rabbits, dude.
Yes.
Cement fucking rabbits.
You see what a person can do.
Yeah.
People are fucking incredible.
Everybody's Asian suddenly.
Yes.
Yes.
It's fucking crazy, man.
And we've got them all shoved into these factories where we're telling them that we're preparing them for their life as an adult.
And if you really look at that life as an adult, really, we're preparing them to go off into the workforce where there's some probably pretty large probability that they're going to be doing something.
Shooting up a factory, a company.
So like, I might as well shoot up this place now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's the whole model.
All of it is all modeled wrong, man.
It is.
It's all fucking, you know, we got to get these kids.
It's modeled lazily.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's modeled lazily.
But then also it's like, is this the best that we can do?
Because people, a lot of, there's a lot of people out there that are fucking goldfish, you know, that aren't thinking, that aren't, that are Muppets, dude.
I know people that graduated that don't know all the letters, you know?
You're kidding.
No.
I know people that stopped at P N It's fucking baffling, dude.
People, you'll never hear many use any words that have second half, you know, second half attributes from the second half of the alphabet.
Fucking crazy, bro.
It's crazy, dude.
Like, nah, fuck out, man.
You smell me, man.
MFers.
I'll see you.
M-F-O-I-M-F.
But it's like, because is this the best we can be, though?
Because we have to work for the common good of everybody, you know?
Like, you have to include, like, the lowest common denominator constantly.
I don't.
I mean, isn't that the problem?
I don't know.
I have no fucking idea.
Right.
I don't know.
It's, it's, it's, I, it's like a, I don't know.
I mean, this, the, the solutions are, it's a really weird problem we have.
Like, like, you know, the, the, the problem is we, so you've got apparently like overpopulated portions of the, of the planet that are running out of resources.
What is this?
Was it South Africa?
Yeah, South Africa's fucked, I think.
They're running out of water.
Yeah.
But also, I fucking went there a couple times, drank some.
I had a couple waters.
I'm sure while I was there, and I had a fucking blast.
But that is unfortunate.
But they're supposed to be getting a lot of these desalinization plants and stuff like that that can actually finally turn ocean water into comfortable drinking water.
But it is like.
That first gallon is going to be risky, I think.
Oh, my God.
But after that, cup up.
I think it's exciting to imagine that they could do that.
But, you know, you do run into this like, like, the idea is that, well, because of industrialization and carbon emissions, the ice caps are melting.
And because the ice caps are melting, sea levels are going to rise.
And when sea levels rise, a lot of the coastal cities will become uninhabitable.
And so there's going to be a massive refugee crisis.
And so then Denver, it's like, well, I mean, it's just going to be a flow.
You know, people are going to go wherever.
And so then the idea is like, well, it seems that people are just sort of breeding.
But you can't put laws on breeding.
I mean, that's like some dark dystopian.
It's dystopian, but also it's wondering if we want to evolve as a species at a certain point.
If your family's fourth, fifth generation ignorant, are you not fucking contributing?
Are you not, it's like, how, yeah, is it fair to start evaluating that?
Well, you can't because the moment you do that, now you've put the state in control of fucking.
Right.
And it's like, and the state already is kind of in control of fucking because prostitution is illegal, but to put the state in charge of reproducing, to give over that power to the state is the worst thing you can do.
And so sort of because of that, what that means is that we have essentially given, made it up to the universe to decide who gets decimated.
And so that's where we're at right now because we're like, well, look, I'm not going to, who are you going to put in charge of the fucking breeding programs?
Right.
You can't do that.
You can't do it because who's going to be in charge of that shit?
How do you even fucking do that?
I don't know.
I would bet probably fucking dot wall, baby.
You know, somebody attacked.
Dot wall, you want dot wall handling that shit?
Dude, she got us to school every fucking day and got us home, dude.
And she put her lipstick on at the stoplight every time, dude.
Come on in.
90 layers of lipstick on by the time we got to fucking school, bro.
D-O-T-W-A-L-L, seven letters.
Seven letters.
Sit down and tell me why you want to fuck.
Beat that.
Tell me why you want to have a baby.
I'm saying if you put her in charge of the eugenics program, tell me why.
What makes you think you're going to be a good parent?
She was efficient, though.
I think you need a strong black woman sitting there because they're not going to fucking...
You need a wise, strong black woman because that lady ain't going to fucking...
She ain't going to let you.
You got one?
That's yours.
You know what I'm saying?
No, you could do sterilization programs.
So like you could, like, what you could do is you could, like, think, like, what, in your opinion, is the worst band of all time that still plays to this day?
Some of those fucking bands where they're just beating all the metal, just wasting recyclables.
Okay.
Okay.
So, like, take one, take some shit band.
Acid bath or something.
Take acid bath.
And basically what you do is you say, listen, if you come and let us sterilize you, we're going to give you an acid bath ticket.
If you come and let us sterilize you, we're going to give you a 4K ultra flat screen TV.
So now what's happening is people are voluntarily sterilizing themselves.
A person who would like trade their reproductive rights to have tickets to acid bath probably weren't going to be the best parents anyway.
Right.
So now you kind of put some evaluation on it where they're making their own choice.
Yeah, right.
I like that.
So if you do something like that, you might be able to like, in some way or another, begin to like reduce the problem of an expanding population in the midst of a world that's been flooded by climate change.
So I don't know the solution.
No, it's interesting.
I mean, look, you're right, though.
It's like, or maybe you don't get semen if you don't have good grades.
What do you mean you don't get semen?
Like they take the semen out of your nuts and they put it back in if you get good grades.
Can you do that?
They have semen.
Wait, this doesn't work.
You're essentially saying like, we'll give you like robotic blowjobs if you're failing.
Like who's going to get good grades?
How are you going to get the semen out?
You got to jerk them off.
Oh, you got an F in math class.
We're going to jerk you off every day.
No one's going to, everyone's going to fail.
Oh, that's true.
But there's going to be a couple of brave fucking warriors, dude.
A couple of Napoleon Bonet partes, bro.
We're going to be out there fucking learning, bro.
Yeah.
And saving that seed, dude.
Getting ready to spread their seed.
But then those people might get too much ego and start to, then they would be egomaniacal.
Yeah, there's no, it's, I think sometimes it's like, fuck, we wish we were somewhere else, but maybe we're exactly where we are supposed to be because this is the best we can do.
This is it.
Everything's perfect.
Everything's exactly right.
But that's an easy thing to misunderstand.
Yes.
Because we're still being digested by time.
We're being aerosolized by time.
We are in the digestive tract of an entity that's eating us with time.
We're dissolving.
It doesn't mean that when I say everything's perfect, it doesn't mean that you're not potentially going to get eaten by a bear or a mountain.
Did you hear about that?
What was it?
A mountain lion that just ate those bikers?
Did you hear about that shit?
I'm not surprised.
That happens every year.
Dude, but I hear those stories and I think like, man, they did not think when they were prognosticating their demise, a cougar.
Something was wrong with this cougar.
Animal that killed biker injured another.
Animal that killed biker injured another.
Another was emaciated.
Wow.
And what does emaciated mean?
It was like a hungry.
It was thin.
Cougars are dangerous, man.
I mean, if you're out there, that's the thing.
A lot of people want to be out there doing nature and all of this, bro.
Fucking lighting fires out there.
First of all, don't light a campfire.
They're going to fucking find you, you idiot.
The cougars?
Yeah.
Stay out there in the cold, bro.
If you don't want to get fucking killed by an animal, you let out.
You guys were biking.
Oh.
Like, you're riding your bike.
You're probably thinking about, like, oh, fuck, when I get home.
It's a pussy or having a snack.
Yeah, yeah.
You're probably like, oh, I got a piss.
You're just thinking, man, I got a piss.
Next thing you know, there's fucking massive fangs sinking into your fucking neck.
And your piss sprays out of your body.
You're at least momentarily relieved.
You're like, fuck, I'm going to piss so bad.
But also, you're thinking, oh, shit, I pissed my pants.
But oh, shit, I'm being eaten alive.
And like, all these thoughts.
And then you're just dead.
So what I mean is like when we say everything's perfect, it doesn't mean you're not going to get eaten.
It just means that that is perfect too.
That this entire thing that's happening, which is really, if you think about it, just a never-ending shift, a process of coming into an embodied state and going out of an embodied state into various states, that's perfect.
But don't think you're not going to get mauled by a bear.
You're perfect, get mauled by a bear.
Perfectly.
Yeah, perfectly.
Wow.
What if he licks his fingers at the end?
God, that's beautiful.
As you're fading out.
Yeah.
And the thing's just like, you are delicious.
He's just licking your spirit right off his fucking hairy fucking chrome.
Your brain, all your memories, all the memories, the time your grandmother gave you that gift, the beautiful sunset with your son.
That wonderful sunset.
That ironic sunset with your son.
You guys made that joke.
And then you made that rotten joke about fucking princess die.
All of that, just in a bear's mouth, just being just slurped back into a mixed in with some berries, maybe a little bit of rancid salmon meat.
Your entire subjective universe, belly of a fucking bear.
That's perfect.
That's perfect.
Yeah.
Wow.
Dude, will you come back sometime and talk with us more about some stuff?
Only if you'll come on my podcast.
I'd love to.
I'll come on as soon as you want me to, man.
I'd love to keep thinking together.
I just love thinking about some of this.
And do you have a book or something, Duncan?
No, I don't have a book.
Why don't you?
Shouldn't Duncan have a book, you think, Nick?
He could definitely write a book.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
Thanks, man.
Well, maybe one day we'll have a book or something like that, but we're not there yet.
Yeah.
Oh, Mo, I have a gift for you.
If you, we have these wallets.
It's like a new front pocket wallet from Ridge.
Cool, man.
And then I want to give you.
Oh, these are rad.
They are pretty rad, man, and I love mine.
And we got this bag from Ritz, too, man.
It's like a nice...
They got a lot of cool stuff.
And that front pocket wallet, dude.
I thought it was going to be horrible when I first got mine.
But man, now I love it.
You really, well, you simplify.
So you just have your cards and your ID.
You put them in there.
And I use, man, I use mine every day now.
It's the only way I travel.
You use yours, Nick, or you don't like it?
Oh, no.
Like you said, it took a couple days, but I've now adopted it.
Got that front pocket carry.
That front pocket carry.
Is that what they say?
That's what they say.
They're like, you still carry in your wallet, in your back pocket.
Front pocket carry is the thing now.
Front pocket carry, bro.
It's like a mark of sophistication to do a front pocket carry.
And they said that's bulletproof, too.
So if your buddy shoots you, you're going to be okay for at least a couple square inches.
I'll tell you this.
If I was rich, I would not be saying this shit is bulletproof.
Because if that gets out to enough people, matter of time.
Matter of time, before someone's got their fucking room.
Let's test it out, Jerry.
Theo said this is bulletproof.
Get the AR, Jerry.
Theo said this is bulletproof.
Right here, right here.
Oh, fuck.
You just, it's a spray of blood.
Just a spray of lung and blood.
Oh, fuck.
Oh, fucking.
But that was from a neighboring hunter.
The fucking one that hit the ridge wallet was totally fine.
Wait, what is this part of the ridge?
I don't understand.
Oh, that's just a little accoutrement that you use to get in and out.
Like, if you want to tighten it up or loosen it up.
You want to tighten the ridge?
That is cool, man.
I got to tighten up my fucking...
Just like tighten up your fucking shit.
Just tightening up my little bank account here.
Yeah, it seems like something like, like, if you had an abusive father, like, you'd know you're about to get hit if he started tightening his ribs.
Uh-oh, daddy's tightening his ridge.
You better get out of here.
So what was that again that you called me, Jamie?
Oh, I believe you called.
Did you call me a motherfucker, Jamie?
No.
Well, honey, why don't you step out of the room?
This is like there will be blood, a podcast.
I love it, man.
I can't wait to tighten up my ridge.
Duncan Trussell, thank you so much for having me.
For just being an inspiring thinker, dude.
And you don't come off as a person that's like a know-it-all.
I think you come off.
Nick said it earlier.
Like Nick, our producer said, yeah, Duncan seems like, what'd you say, Nick?
Just like a lot of people who get into philosophy, I feel like they get this nihilistic approach, and you seem to be super positive with it the more you discover.
Thank you.
It's inspiring.
Thanks, man.
And I think, yeah, I think that almost has to be the way that it has to be, because if not, then I just don't know if any more people want to go down that road where it just doesn't end with a little bit of hope, you know?
Yeah.
And it does.
I think it does.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it does.
Because it makes you be a part of what could possibly be what's going to happen next.
Well, I mean, and, you know, I'm sorry to spread this out too long, but I'll make it very quick.
The thing I forgot to say early on is the reason to do this shit is really not to make yourself happy, even though that's fucking great.
But really the reason to do it is because what will happen to anybody who's living is someone's going to come to you who needs your help and needs you to listen and needs you to like love them and needs you to like be with them in a really rough time in their life.
And that's why you do it.
The other stuff is fantastic.
But like really, I think the reason to do it is because you never fucking know when it's going to happen.
Yeah.
Where someone in their very last fucking leg of their life comes up to you and needs some love.
And that's a good reason to cultivate love.
Yeah.
Because then you can be a crutch.
It's like you don't, yeah, you form yourself up enough and then you can hold somebody else up, you know?
That's it.
And if we all hold each other up, holy shit, man, it's good.
It's like it's a human pyramid.
And yeah, it's a fucking human pyramid.
And that's, if you're about to get attacked by a bear with your friend's former human pyramid.
You've got chubby.
You've got your shape.
Yeah.
Fuck you, Alexa.
You're a bitch.
Do you ever do this on your podcast?
Because if people are listening, you can activate, you know, like, Alexa, order 200 rolls of toilet paper.
Alexa, order 70 butt plugs.
Alexa, order five tied pods.
I don't know.
What's something like you have to be kind of specific or it'll like ask them what they want.
Alexa, play Crash Into Me by Dave Matthews Band.
Is it crashing to me or you?
Fuck, I don't know.
Ladies and gentlemen, Alexa, text my wife that she's a cunt.
And text me a pictures of some cunt.
Alexa, text me cunt pictures.
Alexa, airdrop a picture of my dick into the crowd here at Bonnaroo.
Dude, that's the new fucking, that's the new Hiroshima is whenever you just turn on your airdrop and just drop a picture of your dick into a huge crowd.
Because anybody that has their phone open goes to them.
You can do that.
Yep.
And you can also blow a dog whistle that only dogs can hear on the radio, and we're going to do that next time.
Duncan Drussell, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me, Theo.
This was our first conversation ever.
Yeah, what a great one, man.
Thank you so much.
It was, dude.
I appreciate you being here.
Thank you, brother.
Yep.
Wrong.
Oh, my God.
Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.
I can feel it in my bones.
But it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking break and let myself unwind shine that light on me.
I'll sit and tell you my story.
Shine on me, and I will find a song I will sing here just for me.
And I've been moving way too fast on the runaway train with a heavy load of mine.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.
The answer may shock you.
Sometimes I'll interview my friends.
Sometimes I won't.
And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.
You have three new voice messages.
A lot of people are talking about Kite Club.
I've been talking about Kite Club for so long, longer than anybody else.
So great.
Hi, Sui.
Here's a deal.
Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
Jamain.
Sorry, sir, but our ice cream machine is broken.
I think Tom Hanks just butt-dialed me.
Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club.
Second rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club.
Third rule, like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or watch us on YouTube, yeah?
