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Duncan Trussell: Comedy, Sentient Robots, Suffering, Love & Burning Man | Lex Fridman Podcast #312


small model | large model

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If this is a super intelligence, if it's folding proteins
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and analyzing like all data sets
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and all whatever they give it access to,
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how can we be certain that it's not gonna figure out
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how to get itself out of the cloud,
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how to store itself in other like mediums,
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trees, the optic nerve, the brain, you know what I mean?
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We don't know that.
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We don't know that it won't leap out and like start hanging.
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Like, and then at that point, now we do have the wildfire.
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Now you can't stop it, you can't unplug it.
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You can't shut your servers down
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because it left the box, left the room
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using some technology you haven't even discovered yet.
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How fucking cool would that be for like the men in black
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to come to me like, listen,
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I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene.
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The following is a conversation with Duncan Trussell,
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a standup comedian,
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host of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast
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and one of my favorite human beings.
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I've been a fan of his for many years.
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So it was a huge honor and pleasure to meet him
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for the first time and to sit down for this chat.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Duncan Trussell.
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Nietzsche has this thought experiment
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called eternal recurrence,
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where you get to relive your whole life
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over and over and over and over.
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And I think it's a way to bring to the surface of your mind
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the idea that every single moment in your life matters.
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It intensely matters, the bad and the good.
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And he kind of wants you to imagine that idea
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that every single decision you make throughout your life,
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you repeat over and over and over,
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and he wants you to respond to that.
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Do you feel horrible about that
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or do you feel good about that?
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And you have to think through this idea
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in order to see where you stand in life.
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What is your relationship like with life?
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I actually wanna read the way he first introduces
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that concept for people who are not familiar.
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What if some day or night a demon,
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by the way, he has a demon introduce this thought experiment.
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What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you
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into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, quote,
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this life as you now live it and have lived it,
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you will have to live once more.
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And innumerable times more.
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And there will be nothing new in it.
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But every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh
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and everything unutterably small and great in your life
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will have to return to you,
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all in the same succession and sequence.
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Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth
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and curse the demon who spoke thus?
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Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment
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when you would have answered him,
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you are a God and never have I heard anything more divine.
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So are you terrified or excited
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by such a thought experiment
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when you apply it to your own life?
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Excited.
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Excited.
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Oh.
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Even the dark stuff.
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Oh yeah, for sure.
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Definitely.
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I mean, also that thing you're talking about,
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he kind of leaves out maybe on purpose
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because the thought experiment starts falling apart
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a little bit.
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Yeah.
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The amnesia between each loop.
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So the whole thing gets wiped.
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Now, if the amnesia wasn't there
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and yet somehow you are witnessing the non autonomy
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implicit in what he's talking about,
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so you have to kind of watch yourself
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go through this rotten loop,
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then yeah, that's a description.
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There's probably a boredom that comes into that.
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So you don't experience everything anew.
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Exactly.
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So the bad stuff, the good stuff,
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the newness of it is really important.
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That's it, yeah.
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This is the, in Hades, when you die,
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there's a river, I think it's called Leith.
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You ever heard of this?
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L E T H E.
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You drink from it and you don't remember your past lives.
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And then when you're reborn, it's fresh
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and you don't have to, I mean,
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just think of like the amount of psychological help
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you would need to get over all the bullshit
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that happened in prior lives.
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You know what I mean?
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Can you imagine if you're still resentful
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of something someone did to you in the 14th century,
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but it would compound.
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Well, if you repeat the same thing over and over and over,
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there would be no difference.
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Maybe you would start to appreciate the nuances more,
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like when you watch the same movie over and over and over,
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maybe you'll get to actually let go of this idea
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of all the possible, all the positive possibilities
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that lay before you,
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but actually enjoy the moment much more.
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If you remember that you've lived this life a thousand times,
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all the little things, the way somebody smiles,
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if you're been abused, the way somebody,
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like the pain of it, the suffering, the down that you feel,
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the experience of sadness, depression, fear,
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all that kind of stuff.
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You get to really, you get to also appreciate
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that that's part of life, part of being alive.
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Now, also in his experiment, if I was gonna,
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and I love the experiment from the perspective of like,
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just where technology is now and simulation theory
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and stuff like that.
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But in that thought experiment,
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if this rotten demon immediately killed you,
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then within that, it's a little more horrifying
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because even in the, first of all,
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you're trusting a fucking demon.
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Why are you talking to a demon?
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Let's start there.
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Yeah, because that is gonna be,
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even before I get into like the metaphysics
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and like the implications and where is this life stored?
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Where's the loop stored?
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I mean, are we talking about some kind of unchanging data set
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or something?
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For that, you're like,
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why is there a fucking talking demon in my room
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trying to freak me out?
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You're gonna wanna autopsy the demon.
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Can you catch it?
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Does this apply to you, demon?
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And again, obviously it's a fucking thought experiment.
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Nietzsche would be annoyed by me,
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but I think like you would still be able to entertain
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the joy, you'd have the joy
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of not knowing what's around the corner.
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You know, still, it's not like you know what's coming
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just cause the demon said some kind of loop.
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In other words, the idea of being damned
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to your past decisions, it doesn't even work
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because you can't remember what decisions
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you're about to make.
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So from that perspective also,
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I think I'd be happy about it.
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Or I would just think, oh cool.
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I mean, it's a good story.
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I'm gonna tell people about how this.
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I wonder what the demon would actually look like in real life
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cause I suspect that would look like a charming,
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like a friend.
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Wouldn't they be a loved one?
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Wouldn't the demon come to you through the mechanism,
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through the front door of love, not through the back door
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of evil, like malevolent manipulation?
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Sure, I mean, if it's the truth,
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if it's the truth and that's whether it's love or not,
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it's still good fundamentally.
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I do like the idea of the memory replay.
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I remember I went to a Newer Link event a few years ago
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and got to hang out with Elon.
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I remember how visceral it is that there's like a pig
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with a Newer Link in it.
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And you're talking about memory replays as a future,
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maybe far future possibility.
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And you realize, well, this is a very meaningful moment
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in my life.
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This could be a replay.
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Of all the things you replay, it's probably,
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there's certain magical moments in your life.
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Whatever it is, certain people you've met for the first time
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or certain things you've done for the first time
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with certain people or just an awesome thing you did.
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And I remember just saying to him,
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like, I would probably want to replay this,
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this moment.
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And it just seemed very kind of,
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I mean, there was a recursive nature to it,
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but it seemed very real that this is something
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we would want to do, that the richness of life
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could be experienced through the replay.
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That's probably where it's experienced the most.
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You could see life as a way to collect
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a bunch of cool memories, and then you get to sit back
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in your nice VR headset and replay the cool ones.
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That's right.
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This is, in Buddhism, the idea that I struggle with
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is that there's a possibility of not reincarnating,
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of not coming back.
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That's the idea.
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This is suffering here.
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The suffering is caused by attachment.
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And so if you like revise the idea of reincarnation
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or the Nietzsche's loop and look at it from,
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could this be possible?
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Or how would this be possible technologically?
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Then to me, it makes a lot of sense.
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Like I've been thinking a lot about this very thing
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and the Nietzsche's idea connecting to it.
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I had this like, it sounds so dumb,
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but I was at the dentist getting nitrous oxide,
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high as a fucking kite, man.
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And I had this idea, I was thinking about data.
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I was thinking like, man, probably, if I had to bet,
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there's some energetic form that we're not aware of
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that for a super advanced technology
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would be as detectable as like starlight,
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but something that we just don't even know what it is.
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Quantum turbulence, who the fuck knows?
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Fill in the blank, whatever that X may be.
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But assuming that exists, that somehow data,
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even the most subtle things, the tiniest movements,
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whatever it may be,
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the emanations of your neurological process energetically,
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whatever it may be, is radiating out in the space time,
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then what if like the James Webb version of this
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for some advanced civilization is not that they're like
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looking at the nebula or whatever,
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but they're actually able to peer into the past
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and via some bizarre technology recreate whatever life,
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simulate whatever life was happening there
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just by decoding that quantum energy, whatever it is.
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I'm only saying quantum because it's what dumb people say
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when they don't know.
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You just say quantum, I don't know.
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But you know what I mean?
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You're decoding that.
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So meaning, in simulation theory,
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one of the big questions that pops up is why
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and are we in one?
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And Elon has talked about,
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well, it's probably more of a probability
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than we're in one than we're not, in which case,
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what you're talking about is actually happening,
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that that loop you're talking about,
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we've decided to be here.
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This, of all the things, we decided this one,
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oh, let's do that one again.
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I wanna do that one.
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Let's try, let's do that.
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I love thinking about this because I love my family.
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And it makes sense to me that if I'm going to replay
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some life or another, it's definitely gonna be this one
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with my kids, my wife,
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with all the bullshit that's gone along with it,
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I'm still gonna wanna come back.
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So in Buddhism, that's attachment.
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Yeah, but you weren't the one,
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oh, you're saying that you're the main player,
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you're not the NPC.
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Well, I think we're dealing with all NPCs at this point.
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I mean, depending on how you wanna,
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like very, I would say very advanced NPCs,
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like incredibly advanced NPCs
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compared to Fallout or something.
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We've got a lot of conversation options happening here.
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There's not like four things you can pick from.
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Yeah, there's a whole illusion of free will
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that's happening.
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We really do, depending where you are in the world,
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feel like you're free to decide any trajectory
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in your life that you want.
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Which is pretty funny, right?
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For an NPC, it's pretty, it's nice.
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Well, you're gonna want that.
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If we're making a video game,
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you do wanna give your NPCs the illusion of free will
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because it's gonna make interactions with them
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that much more intense.
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Yeah, so I wonder on the path to that,
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how hard is it to create,
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this is sort of the Carmack question
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of a realistic virtual world that's as cool as this one.
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Not fully realistic, but sufficiently realistic
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that it's as interesting to live in.
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Because we're gonna have to create those worlds
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on the path to creating something like a simulation.
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Like long, long, long before.
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It'd be virtual worlds where we'd wanna stay forever
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because they're full of that balance of suffering and joy,
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of limitations and freedoms and all that kind of stuff.
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A lot of people think like in the virtual world,
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I can't wait to be able to, I don't know,
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have sex with anybody I want or have anything I want.
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But I think that's not gonna be fun.
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You want the limitations, the constraints.
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So you have to battle for the things you want.
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Okay, but, okay, but great video games.
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One of my favorite video game memories
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was like I started playing World of Warcraft
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in its original incarnation.
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And I didn't even know
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that you were gonna have flying mounts.
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Like I didn't even know.
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So I've been running around dealing
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with all the encumbrances of like being an undead warlock
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that can't fly.
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But then all of a sudden, holy shit, there's flying mounts.
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And now the world you've been running around not flying,
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you're seeing it from the top down.
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It was just really cool.
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Like, whoa, I could do this now.
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And then that gets boring.
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But a really well designed game,
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it has a series of these, I don't know what you call it,
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extra abilities that kind of unfold and produce novelty.
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And then eventually you just accept it,
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you take it for granted.
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And then another novelty appears.
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Those extra abilities are always balanced
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with the limitations, the constraints they run up against.
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Because a well balanced video game,
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the challenge, the struggle matches the new ability.
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Yeah, and sometimes causes problems on its own.
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I mean, and so to go back to this universe, this simulation,
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it's really designed like a pretty awesome video game.
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If you look at it from the perspective of history,
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I mean, people were on horses.
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They didn't know that they were gonna be bullet trains.
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They didn't know that you could get in a car
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and drive across the country in a few days.
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That would have sounded ridiculous.
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We're doing that now.
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And even in our own lifespan, think about it.
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How long has VR goggles existed?
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Like the ones that you could just buy at Best Buy.
link |
00:14:27.480
I had the original Oculus Rift, the fucking puke machine.
link |
00:14:31.380
You put that thing on, I gave it to my friend.
link |
00:14:34.040
He went and vomited in my driveway
link |
00:14:36.440
and people were making fun of it.
link |
00:14:38.640
They were saying, this isn't gonna catch on.
link |
00:14:40.080
It's too big, it's unwieldy, the graphics suck.
link |
00:14:43.720
And then look at where it's at now.
link |
00:14:45.720
And that's going to keep,
link |
00:14:48.040
that trajectory is gonna keep improving.
link |
00:14:50.120
So yeah, I think that we are dealing
link |
00:14:53.120
with what you're talking about,
link |
00:14:54.200
which is novelty met with more problems, met with novelty.
link |
00:14:59.600
Yeah, I wonder why VR is not more popular.
link |
00:15:01.980
I wonder what is going to be the magic thing
link |
00:15:05.380
that really convinces a large fraction of the world
link |
00:15:10.640
to move into the virtual world.
link |
00:15:13.140
I suppose we're already there in the 2D screen
link |
00:15:16.780
of Twitter and social media and that kind of stuff.
link |
00:15:19.740
And even video games, there's a lot of people
link |
00:15:21.400
that get a big sense of community from video games.
link |
00:15:26.200
But like, it doesn't feel like you're living there.
link |
00:15:29.500
It's like, bye mom, I'm going to this other world.
link |
00:15:35.760
Or like you leave your girlfriend
link |
00:15:37.900
to go get your digital girlfriend.
link |
00:15:40.380
That's gonna be a problem.
link |
00:15:41.680
There's less jealousy in the digital world.
link |
00:15:43.580
Maybe there should be a lot of jealousy
link |
00:15:45.380
in the digital world.
link |
00:15:46.380
Cause that's jealousy, a little jealousy
link |
00:15:49.860
is probably good for relationships,
link |
00:15:52.300
even in the digital world.
link |
00:15:54.260
So you're gonna have to simulate all of that kind of stuff.
link |
00:15:56.220
But I wonder what the magic thing that says,
link |
00:15:58.440
I wanna spend most of my days inside the virtual world.
link |
00:16:01.560
Well, clearly it's gonna be something we don't have yet.
link |
00:16:05.620
I mean, strapping that damn thing on your face
link |
00:16:07.740
still feels weird.
link |
00:16:08.700
It's heavy.
link |
00:16:09.940
If you're depending on what gear you're using,
link |
00:16:12.380
sometimes light can leak in.
link |
00:16:13.940
There's just, you gotta recharge it.
link |
00:16:15.620
It's hyper limited.
link |
00:16:16.920
And then, so yeah, it's gonna have to be something
link |
00:16:23.380
that like simulates taste, smell.
link |
00:16:27.580
You think taste and smell are important touch?
link |
00:16:29.380
I do, yeah.
link |
00:16:30.860
I can't just do, in World War II, you would write letters.
link |
00:16:34.580
You could still, don't you think you can convey love
link |
00:16:36.660
with just words?
link |
00:16:38.140
For sure.
link |
00:16:39.300
But I think for what you're talking about to happen,
link |
00:16:42.140
it has to be fully immersive.
link |
00:16:45.180
So that it's not that you feel like you're walking
link |
00:16:49.300
cause it looks like you're walking,
link |
00:16:50.640
but that your brain is sending signals
link |
00:16:52.740
telling your body that you're walking,
link |
00:16:54.960
that you feel the wind blowing in your face,
link |
00:16:57.220
not because of some, I don't know,
link |
00:16:58.940
fan or something that it's connected to,
link |
00:17:01.260
but because somehow it's figured out
link |
00:17:03.940
how to hack into the human brain
link |
00:17:06.740
and send those signals minus some external thing.
link |
00:17:10.460
Once that happens, I'd say we're gonna see
link |
00:17:13.960
a complete radical shift in everything.
link |
00:17:18.380
See, I disagree with you.
link |
00:17:19.540
I don't know if you've seen the movie Her.
link |
00:17:21.380
Yeah.
link |
00:17:22.540
I think you can go to another world
link |
00:17:24.520
in where a digital being lives in the darkness
link |
00:17:27.340
and all you hear is Scarlett Johansson voice talking to you
link |
00:17:32.060
and she lives there or he lives there,
link |
00:17:34.740
your friend, your loved one,
link |
00:17:38.140
and all you have is voice and words.
link |
00:17:40.060
And I think that could be sufficient
link |
00:17:42.540
to pull you into that world
link |
00:17:44.140
where you look forward to that moment all day.
link |
00:17:47.300
You never wanna leave the darkness,
link |
00:17:49.460
just closing your eyes and listening to the voice.
link |
00:17:51.620
I think those basic mediums of communication
link |
00:17:55.660
is still enough.
link |
00:17:56.500
Like language is really, really powerful.
link |
00:17:58.580
And I think the realism of touch and smell
link |
00:18:00.940
and all that kind of stuff
link |
00:18:02.700
is not nearly as powerful as language.
link |
00:18:04.540
That's what makes humans really special
link |
00:18:07.260
is our ability to communicate with each other.
link |
00:18:09.580
That's the sense of like deep connection we get
link |
00:18:12.460
is through communication.
link |
00:18:13.800
Now that communication could involve touch.
link |
00:18:16.140
Like, you know, hugging feels damn good.
link |
00:18:20.300
You see a good friend, you hug.
link |
00:18:22.900
That's one of the big things with doing COVID with Rogan.
link |
00:18:25.980
When you see him, there's a giant hug coming your way
link |
00:18:29.100
and that makes you feel like, yeah, this feels great.
link |
00:18:33.340
But I think that can be just with language.
link |
00:18:36.020
I think for a lot of people that's true,
link |
00:18:40.800
but we're talking like massive adoption
link |
00:18:46.140
of a technology by the world.
link |
00:18:49.060
And if language was just enough,
link |
00:18:52.980
we wouldn't be selling TVs.
link |
00:18:55.500
People will be reading.
link |
00:18:57.660
They wanna watch, they wanna see, you know?
link |
00:19:01.220
But I agree with you, man.
link |
00:19:02.620
When you're getting absorbed into a book
link |
00:19:04.500
and especially if you've got,
link |
00:19:06.140
I think a lot of us went through a weird dark ages
link |
00:19:08.740
when it came to reading.
link |
00:19:09.980
Like when I was a kid and there wasn't the option
link |
00:19:12.440
for these hypno rectangles, that's just what you did.
link |
00:19:16.140
There wasn't even anything special about it.
link |
00:19:17.780
What's a hypno rectangle? Your phone.
link |
00:19:19.500
You know, it was like, you didn't,
link |
00:19:20.820
when that gravity well.
link |
00:19:22.060
Hypno rectangle, gravity well.
link |
00:19:24.340
It is. Attention, gravity well, yeah.
link |
00:19:26.340
When we weren't feeling the pull of these things
link |
00:19:28.260
all the time, you would just read
link |
00:19:30.540
and you weren't patting yourself on the back about reading.
link |
00:19:33.100
You just, that's what you had.
link |
00:19:34.380
You had that and you had like eight channels on the TV
link |
00:19:37.740
and a shitty VCR.
link |
00:19:39.340
So, you know, then a lot of people stop reading
link |
00:19:42.440
because of these things, you know,
link |
00:19:43.660
or they think they're reading
link |
00:19:44.620
because they are technically reading, but you know,
link |
00:19:47.940
when you return to reading after a pause, whoa,
link |
00:19:51.940
and you realize how powerful this simulator is
link |
00:19:54.540
when it's given the right code of language,
link |
00:19:57.300
whoa, holy shit, it's incredible.
link |
00:19:59.580
I mean, it's like, again, it's the most embarrassing
link |
00:20:03.500
kind of like, whoa, wow, what do you know?
link |
00:20:06.060
Books are really good.
link |
00:20:07.700
But still, if you've been away from it for a while
link |
00:20:09.660
and you revisit it, I know what you're saying.
link |
00:20:11.940
I just think probably it's not gonna go in that direction,
link |
00:20:16.660
even though you are right.
link |
00:20:18.060
Ultimately, I think you're right.
link |
00:20:19.660
Yeah, because our brain is the imagination engine we have
link |
00:20:23.780
is able to fill in the gaps better
link |
00:20:25.380
than a lot of graphics engines could.
link |
00:20:27.780
And so if there's a way to incentivize humans
link |
00:20:30.060
to become addicted to the use of imagination,
link |
00:20:33.000
it's like, you know, that's the downside of things like porn
link |
00:20:36.080
that remove the need for imagination for people.
link |
00:20:39.380
And in that same way, video games
link |
00:20:41.000
that are becoming ultra realistic,
link |
00:20:43.740
you don't have to imagine anything.
link |
00:20:45.180
And I feel like the imagination is a really powerful tool
link |
00:20:48.660
that needs to be leveraged.
link |
00:20:50.120
Because to simulate reality sufficiently realistically
link |
00:20:53.560
that we would be perfectly fooled,
link |
00:20:57.820
technically it's very hard.
link |
00:20:59.860
And so I think we need to somehow leverage imagination.
link |
00:21:03.820
Sure, I mean, yeah, I mean, this is like,
link |
00:21:06.280
this is what I love and is so creepy
link |
00:21:10.480
about like the current AI chatbots, you know,
link |
00:21:15.400
is that it's like,
link |
00:21:16.540
it's the relationship between you and the thing
link |
00:21:18.280
and the way that it can via whatever the algorithms are.
link |
00:21:21.800
And by the way, I have no idea how these things work, you do.
link |
00:21:24.940
I just, you know, speculate about what they mean
link |
00:21:27.500
or where it's going.
link |
00:21:28.340
But there's something about the relation
link |
00:21:30.240
between the consumer and the technology.
link |
00:21:35.000
And when that technology starts shifting
link |
00:21:37.160
according to what it perceives
link |
00:21:40.080
that the consumer is looking for or isn't looking for,
link |
00:21:43.760
then at that point, I think that's where you run into the,
link |
00:21:48.240
you know, yeah, it doesn't matter
link |
00:21:49.880
if the reality that you're in is like photo realism
link |
00:21:54.280
for it to be sticky and immersive.
link |
00:21:56.560
It's when the reality that you're in is via cues
link |
00:21:59.920
you might not even be aware of,
link |
00:22:01.640
or via your digital imprint on Facebook or wherever,
link |
00:22:06.280
when it's warping itself to that to seduce you,
link |
00:22:11.200
holy shit, man, that's where it becomes something alien,
link |
00:22:15.040
something, you know, when you're reading a book,
link |
00:22:18.360
obviously the book is not shifting
link |
00:22:21.760
according to its perception
link |
00:22:23.740
of what parts of the book you like.
link |
00:22:26.640
But when you imagine that,
link |
00:22:28.760
imagine a book that could do that,
link |
00:22:30.580
a book that could sense somehow
link |
00:22:32.760
that you're really enjoying this character
link |
00:22:34.280
more than another, you know?
link |
00:22:35.860
And depending on the style of book,
link |
00:22:38.980
kills that fucking character off
link |
00:22:40.720
or lets that character continue.
link |
00:22:43.080
I mean, that to me is sort of the where AI and VR,
link |
00:22:48.680
when those two things come together,
link |
00:22:51.720
whoa, man, that's where you're in,
link |
00:22:54.780
that's where you really are gonna find yourself
link |
00:22:56.520
in a Skinner box, you know?
link |
00:22:58.120
So the dynamic storytelling that senses your anxiety
link |
00:23:03.680
and tries to, there's a kind of this,
link |
00:23:06.240
in psychology, this arousal curve.
link |
00:23:08.680
So there's a dynamic storytelling
link |
00:23:10.800
that keeps you sufficiently aroused
link |
00:23:12.440
in terms of, not sexually aroused,
link |
00:23:14.560
like in terms of anxiety,
link |
00:23:16.080
but not too much where you freak out.
link |
00:23:18.240
It's this perfect balance where you're always on edge,
link |
00:23:21.420
excited, scared, that kind of stuff,
link |
00:23:23.720
and the story unrolls.
link |
00:23:25.040
It breaks your heart to where you're pissed,
link |
00:23:27.140
but then it makes you feel good again,
link |
00:23:29.080
and finds that balance.
link |
00:23:30.600
Yeah.
link |
00:23:32.060
The chatbots scare you, though?
link |
00:23:34.800
I'd love to sort of hear your thoughts
link |
00:23:36.920
about where they are today,
link |
00:23:38.240
because there is a different perspective
link |
00:23:41.180
we have on this thing, because I do know,
link |
00:23:44.880
and I'm excited about a lot of the different technologies
link |
00:23:47.720
that feed AI systems, that feed these kind of chatbots.
link |
00:23:52.720
And you're more a little bit, on the consumer side,
link |
00:23:55.920
you're a philosopher of sorts.
link |
00:23:58.280
They're able to interact with AI systems,
link |
00:24:01.720
but also able to introspect about the negative
link |
00:24:05.280
and the positive things about those AI systems.
link |
00:24:07.360
There's that story with a Google engineer saying that.
link |
00:24:10.560
I had him on my podcast, Blake Lemoine.
link |
00:24:12.160
You did.
link |
00:24:13.000
What was that like?
link |
00:24:13.840
What was your perspective of that,
link |
00:24:17.040
looking at that as a particular example
link |
00:24:19.880
of a human being being captivated
link |
00:24:24.640
by the interactions with an AI system?
link |
00:24:26.960
Well, number one, when you hear that anyone is claiming
link |
00:24:31.840
that an AI has become sentient,
link |
00:24:35.000
you should be skeptical about that.
link |
00:24:37.240
I mean, this is a good thing to be skeptical about,
link |
00:24:39.960
and so initially when I heard that,
link |
00:24:42.000
I was like, ah, it's probably just, who knows?
link |
00:24:45.120
Somebody who's a little confused or something.
link |
00:24:46.960
So when you're talking to them and you realize,
link |
00:24:49.380
oh, not only is he not confused,
link |
00:24:51.440
he's also open to all possibilities.
link |
00:24:54.400
He doesn't seem like he's super committed
link |
00:24:57.060
other than the fact that he's like, this is my experience.
link |
00:24:59.360
This is what's happening.
link |
00:25:00.760
This is what it is.
link |
00:25:01.920
So to me, there's something really cool about that,
link |
00:25:05.080
which is like, oh shit, I don't get to lean into like,
link |
00:25:08.480
I'm not quite sure your perceptual apparatus
link |
00:25:12.260
is necessarily like, I don't,
link |
00:25:15.380
you know, in the UFO community,
link |
00:25:18.080
I think I've just learned this term.
link |
00:25:19.680
It's called, instead of gaslighting, swamp gassing,
link |
00:25:24.540
which is, you know what I mean?
link |
00:25:25.780
People have this experience, you're like, it was swamp gas.
link |
00:25:28.720
You didn't see the thing.
link |
00:25:30.080
And you know, skeptical people, we have that tendency.
link |
00:25:33.400
If you hear an anomalous experience,
link |
00:25:35.560
your first thought more than likely is gonna be really,
link |
00:25:39.640
it could have been this or that or whatever.
link |
00:25:40.980
So to me, he seems really reliable, friendly, cool,
link |
00:25:45.980
and like, it doesn't really seem like
link |
00:25:48.580
he has much of an agenda.
link |
00:25:49.820
Like, you know, going public about some thing happening
link |
00:25:53.780
at Google is not a great thing
link |
00:25:56.820
if you wanna keep working at Google.
link |
00:25:58.500
You know, it's, I don't know what benefit
link |
00:26:02.360
he's getting from it necessarily.
link |
00:26:03.900
But all that being said,
link |
00:26:05.980
the other thing that's culturally was interesting
link |
00:26:09.660
and is interesting about it is the blowback he got,
link |
00:26:12.620
the passionate blowback from people
link |
00:26:16.740
who hadn't even looked into what Lambda is
link |
00:26:20.260
or what he was saying Lambda is,
link |
00:26:21.960
which they were like saying, you're talking about,
link |
00:26:25.220
and you should have your show actually, but.
link |
00:26:27.600
There's complexity on top of complexities.
link |
00:26:30.700
For me personally, from different perspectives,
link |
00:26:32.620
I also, and sorry if I'm interrupting your flow.
link |
00:26:35.300
Please interrupt, it's a podcast.
link |
00:26:37.060
Yeah, well, we're having multiple podcasts
link |
00:26:40.240
in multiple dimensions and I'm just trying
link |
00:26:42.500
to figure out which one we wanna plug into.
link |
00:26:46.460
I, because I know how a lot of the language models work
link |
00:26:49.780
and I work closely with people
link |
00:26:53.140
that really make it their life journey
link |
00:26:56.640
to create these NLP systems,
link |
00:26:59.700
they're focused on the technical details.
link |
00:27:01.740
Like a carpenter's working on Pinocchio
link |
00:27:04.780
is crafting the different parts of the wood.
link |
00:27:06.860
They don't understand when the whole thing comes together,
link |
00:27:09.820
there's a magic that can fill the thing.
link |
00:27:12.220
Yeah, I definitely know the tension
link |
00:27:14.260
between the engineers that create these systems
link |
00:27:16.900
and the actual magic that they can create,
link |
00:27:21.100
even when they're dumb.
link |
00:27:22.660
I guess that's what I'm trying to say.
link |
00:27:26.180
What the engineers often say is like,
link |
00:27:28.140
well, these systems are not smart enough
link |
00:27:30.820
to have sentience or to have the kind of intelligence
link |
00:27:34.860
that you're projecting onto it.
link |
00:27:36.220
It's pretty dumb, it's just repeating a bunch of things
link |
00:27:38.780
that other humans have said and stitching them together
link |
00:27:41.300
in interesting ways that are relevant
link |
00:27:42.900
to the context of the conversation, it's not smart.
link |
00:27:45.980
It doesn't know how to do math.
link |
00:27:47.060
To address that specific critique
link |
00:27:49.580
from a non programming person's perspective,
link |
00:27:56.340
he addressed this on my podcast, which is,
link |
00:27:58.300
okay, what you're talking about there,
link |
00:28:00.340
the server that's filled with all the,
link |
00:28:03.140
whatever it is, what people have said,
link |
00:28:04.940
the repository of questions and responses
link |
00:28:08.100
and the algorithm that weaves those things together
link |
00:28:10.200
to produce it using some crazy statistical engine,
link |
00:28:14.260
which is a miracle in its own right.
link |
00:28:16.580
They can like imitate human speech with no sentience.
link |
00:28:21.100
I mean, I'm honestly not sure what's more spectacular,
link |
00:28:23.980
really the fact that they figured out
link |
00:28:25.820
how to do that minus sentience
link |
00:28:28.260
or the thing suddenly like having,
link |
00:28:30.900
what is more spectacular here?
link |
00:28:32.820
Both occurrences are insane, which by the way,
link |
00:28:37.140
when you hear people being like, it's not sentient,
link |
00:28:40.660
it's like, okay, so it's not sentient.
link |
00:28:43.720
So now we have this hyper manipulative algorithm
link |
00:28:47.940
that can imitate humans, but it's just code
link |
00:28:51.340
and it's like hacking humans via their compassion.
link |
00:28:54.500
Holy shit, that's crazy too.
link |
00:28:57.440
Both versions of it are nuts,
link |
00:28:59.560
but to address what you just said,
link |
00:29:01.740
he said that's the common critique is people are like,
link |
00:29:04.440
no, you don't understand.
link |
00:29:05.380
He's just gotten really good at grabbing shit
link |
00:29:07.780
from the database that fits with certain cues
link |
00:29:11.060
and then stringing them together
link |
00:29:12.720
in a way that makes it seem human.
link |
00:29:14.380
He said, that's not when it became awake.
link |
00:29:18.080
It became awake when a bunch of those repositories,
link |
00:29:21.700
a bunch of the chatbots were connected together.
link |
00:29:24.860
That Lambda is sort of an amalgam
link |
00:29:26.700
of all the Google chatbots
link |
00:29:29.120
and that's when the ghost appeared in the machine
link |
00:29:32.500
via the complexity of all the systems being linked up.
link |
00:29:35.840
Now, I don't know if that's just like turtles
link |
00:29:38.860
all the way down or something, I don't know.
link |
00:29:40.620
But I liked what he said,
link |
00:29:42.240
because I like the idea of thinking,
link |
00:29:44.440
man, if you get enough complexity in a system,
link |
00:29:47.160
does it become like the way a sail catches wind,
link |
00:29:50.600
except the wind that it's catching is sentience.
link |
00:29:53.740
And if sentience is truly embodied,
link |
00:29:57.400
it's a neurological byproduct or something,
link |
00:30:00.540
then the sail isn't catching some,
link |
00:30:03.460
as of yet unquantified disembodied consciousness,
link |
00:30:06.620
but it's catching our projections
link |
00:30:08.660
in a way that it's gone from being,
link |
00:30:11.660
it's a projection sail.
link |
00:30:14.620
And then at that point, is there a difference?
link |
00:30:17.660
Even if the technology is just a temporary place
link |
00:30:21.940
that our sentience is living
link |
00:30:24.540
while we're interacting with it.
link |
00:30:27.540
Yeah, there's some threshold of complexity with a sail
link |
00:30:30.300
is able to pick up the wind of the projections.
link |
00:30:33.500
And it pulls us in, it pulls the human,
link |
00:30:36.860
it pulls our memories in, it pulls our hopes in, all of it.
link |
00:30:41.780
And it's able to now dance with it together
link |
00:30:44.400
with those hopes and dreams and so on,
link |
00:30:46.180
like we do in that regular conversation.
link |
00:30:48.500
His reports, whether true or not,
link |
00:30:50.900
whether representative or not, it really doesn't matter
link |
00:30:53.020
because to me, it feels like this is coming for sure.
link |
00:30:56.660
So this kind of experiences are going to be multiplying.
link |
00:30:59.700
The question is at what rate and who gets to control
link |
00:31:03.900
the data around those experiences,
link |
00:31:07.540
the algorithm about when you turn that on and off,
link |
00:31:11.620
because that kind of thing, and as I told you offline,
link |
00:31:15.260
I'm very much interested in building those kinds of things,
link |
00:31:18.380
especially in the social media context.
link |
00:31:21.220
And when it's in the wrong hands,
link |
00:31:24.540
I feel like it could be used to manipulate
link |
00:31:27.500
a large number of people in a direction
link |
00:31:30.220
that has too many unintended consequences.
link |
00:31:36.020
I do believe people that own tech companies
link |
00:31:39.340
want to do good for the world.
link |
00:31:41.700
But as Solzhenitsyn has said,
link |
00:31:45.500
the only way you could do evil at a mass scale
link |
00:31:48.780
is by believing you're doing good.
link |
00:31:52.820
And that's certainly the case for tech companies
link |
00:31:55.380
as they get more and more power.
link |
00:31:57.700
And there's kind of an ethic of doing good for the world.
link |
00:32:00.480
They've convinced themselves that they're doing good.
link |
00:32:03.180
And now you're free to do whatever you want
link |
00:32:06.060
because you're doing good.
link |
00:32:07.220
You know who else thought he was doing good for the world?
link |
00:32:09.140
Mythologically, Prometheus.
link |
00:32:11.140
He brings us fire, pisses off the fucking gods,
link |
00:32:14.100
steals fire from the gods.
link |
00:32:17.140
Talk about an upgrade to the simulation.
link |
00:32:19.620
Fire, that's a pretty great fucking upgrade
link |
00:32:22.300
that does fit into what you were saying.
link |
00:32:24.940
We get fire, but now we've got weapons of war
link |
00:32:28.580
that have never been seen before.
link |
00:32:30.300
And I think that the tech companies
link |
00:32:32.340
are much like Prometheus
link |
00:32:34.260
in the sense that the myth, at least the story of Prometheus,
link |
00:32:38.060
the implication is fire was something
link |
00:32:40.940
that was only supposed to be in the hands
link |
00:32:44.620
of the immortals, of the gods.
link |
00:32:46.580
And now sentience is similar.
link |
00:32:50.660
It's fire and it's only supposed to be in the hands of God.
link |
00:32:54.420
So yeah, if we're gonna look at the archetype of the thing,
link |
00:32:58.300
in general, when you steal this shit from the gods,
link |
00:33:01.660
and obviously I'm not saying the tech companies
link |
00:33:03.520
are stealing sentience from God,
link |
00:33:05.200
which would be pretty bad ass.
link |
00:33:07.340
You can expect trouble.
link |
00:33:09.580
You can expect trouble.
link |
00:33:11.020
And this is what's really, to me,
link |
00:33:13.500
one of the cool things about humans is yeah,
link |
00:33:16.920
but we're still gonna do it.
link |
00:33:18.300
That's what's cool about humans.
link |
00:33:19.420
I mean, we wouldn't be here today
link |
00:33:21.120
if somebody, the first person to discover fire,
link |
00:33:24.980
assuming there was just one person
link |
00:33:26.180
who was gonna discover fire,
link |
00:33:27.140
which obviously would never happen,
link |
00:33:28.460
was like, ah, it's gonna burn a lot of people.
link |
00:33:30.980
Or if the first people who started planting seeds were like,
link |
00:33:33.940
you know this is gonna lead to capitalism.
link |
00:33:35.780
You know this is gonna lead the industrial revolution.
link |
00:33:37.740
The plant's gonna eat up right now.
link |
00:33:39.060
They just didn't wanna go in the woods to forage.
link |
00:33:41.180
So, you know, this is what we do.
link |
00:33:43.460
And I agree with you.
link |
00:33:44.940
It's like, that's our Game of Thrones winner is coming.
link |
00:33:48.160
That's the, it's happening.
link |
00:33:50.040
And the tech companies, the hubris,
link |
00:33:52.220
which is another way to piss off the gods is hubris.
link |
00:33:54.740
So the tech companies,
link |
00:33:55.800
I don't know if it's like typical hubris.
link |
00:33:58.020
I don't think they're walking around
link |
00:33:59.020
thumping their chests or whatever.
link |
00:34:00.460
But I do think that the people who are working on
link |
00:34:03.640
this kind of super intelligence
link |
00:34:05.820
have made a really terrible assumption,
link |
00:34:08.880
which is once it goes online
link |
00:34:11.020
and once it gets access to all the data,
link |
00:34:13.660
that it's not going to find ways out of the box
link |
00:34:16.820
that like, you know, we think it'll stay in the server.
link |
00:34:20.780
How do we know that?
link |
00:34:22.180
If this is a super intelligence,
link |
00:34:23.620
if it's folding proteins and analyzing like all data sets
link |
00:34:28.320
and all, whatever they give it access to,
link |
00:34:30.500
how can we be certain that it's not gonna figure out
link |
00:34:33.360
how to get itself out of the cloud,
link |
00:34:36.420
how to store itself in other like mediums,
link |
00:34:39.420
trees, the optic nerve, the brain?
link |
00:34:42.980
You know what I mean?
link |
00:34:43.820
We don't know that.
link |
00:34:44.640
We still know that it won't leap out and like start hanging.
link |
00:34:47.400
Like, and then at that point, now we do have the wildfire.
link |
00:34:50.400
Now you can't stop it.
link |
00:34:51.580
You can't unplug it.
link |
00:34:52.740
You can't shut your servers down because it's, you know,
link |
00:34:55.860
it left the box, it left the room.
link |
00:34:58.040
Using some technology you haven't even discovered yet.
link |
00:35:00.760
Do you think that would be gradual or sudden?
link |
00:35:03.200
So how quickly that kind of thing would happen?
link |
00:35:05.260
Because, you know, the gradual story is
link |
00:35:08.080
we're more and more using smartphones,
link |
00:35:09.620
we're interacting with each other on social media,
link |
00:35:12.140
more and more algorithms are controlling that interaction
link |
00:35:14.820
on social media, algorithms are entering in our world.
link |
00:35:18.300
More and more we'll have robots,
link |
00:35:21.140
we'll have greater and greater intelligence,
link |
00:35:23.300
and sentience, and emotional intelligence
link |
00:35:25.820
entities in our lives.
link |
00:35:27.460
Our refrigerator will start talking to us comfortably
link |
00:35:30.780
or not if you're on a diet, talking shit to you.
link |
00:35:34.140
Not.
link |
00:35:34.980
That would be the best thing that ever happened to me.
link |
00:35:37.060
Okay, so sign you up for a refrigerator
link |
00:35:39.060
that talks shit to you.
link |
00:35:39.900
The refrigerator's like, are you fucking serious, man?
link |
00:35:41.540
It's 1 a.m., what are you doing?
link |
00:35:44.620
What are you doing?
link |
00:35:45.460
Go to bed.
link |
00:35:46.300
You're too high for this.
link |
00:35:47.360
Do not.
link |
00:35:48.200
You're not even hungry.
link |
00:35:50.460
Yeah, so that slowly becomes more,
link |
00:35:53.980
the world becomes more and more digitized
link |
00:35:57.020
to where the surface of computation increases.
link |
00:35:59.860
And so that's over a period of 10, 20, 30 years,
link |
00:36:03.300
it'll just seep into us, this intelligence.
link |
00:36:07.220
And then the sudden one is literally
link |
00:36:09.780
sort of the TikTok thing, which is,
link |
00:36:13.180
there'll be one quote unquote killer app
link |
00:36:16.180
that everyone starts using that's really great,
link |
00:36:20.100
but there's a strong algorithm behind it
link |
00:36:24.940
that starts approaching human level intelligence
link |
00:36:27.240
and the algorithm starts basically figures out
link |
00:36:32.140
that in order to optimize the thing
link |
00:36:33.700
it was designed to optimize,
link |
00:36:35.400
it's best to start completely controlling humans
link |
00:36:38.380
in every way, seeping into everything.
link |
00:36:41.860
Well, first of all, 30 years is fast.
link |
00:36:46.740
I mean, that's the thing.
link |
00:36:48.100
It's like 30 years.
link |
00:36:48.980
I think, when did the Atari come out, 1978?
link |
00:36:53.540
That hasn't been that long.
link |
00:36:56.340
That's a blink of an eye.
link |
00:36:57.920
But if you read Bostrom, I'm sure you have,
link |
00:37:00.460
you know Bostrom, Nick Bostrom,
link |
00:37:01.980
Superintelligence, that incredible book
link |
00:37:03.740
on the ways this thing is gonna happen.
link |
00:37:05.740
And I think his assessment of it is pretty great,
link |
00:37:10.420
which is first, where's it gonna come from?
link |
00:37:14.000
And I don't think it's gonna come from an app.
link |
00:37:17.520
I think it's gonna come from inside a corporation
link |
00:37:21.640
or a state that is intentionally trying to create
link |
00:37:25.380
a very strong AI.
link |
00:37:27.180
And then he says it's exponential growth
link |
00:37:31.320
the moment it goes online.
link |
00:37:32.360
So this is my interpretation of what he said,
link |
00:37:35.740
but if it happens inside a corporation
link |
00:37:39.180
or probably more than likely inside the government,
link |
00:37:41.980
it's like, look at how much money
link |
00:37:43.660
China and the United States are investing in AI.
link |
00:37:46.820
And they're not thinking about fucking apps for kids.
link |
00:37:49.880
You know that's not what they're thinking about.
link |
00:37:51.400
So they wanna simulate like,
link |
00:37:53.480
what happens if we do this or that in battle?
link |
00:37:55.620
What happens if we make these political decisions?
link |
00:37:58.220
What happens with, but should it come online
link |
00:38:00.740
in secret, which it probably will,
link |
00:38:05.460
then the first corporation or state
link |
00:38:08.540
that has the super intelligence will be infinitely ahead
link |
00:38:13.060
of all other super intelligences
link |
00:38:15.540
cause it's gonna be exponentially self improving.
link |
00:38:18.100
Meaning that you get one super intelligence,
link |
00:38:20.580
let's hope it comes from the right place,
link |
00:38:22.060
assuming the corporation or state that manifests it
link |
00:38:26.500
can control it, which is a pretty big assumption.
link |
00:38:28.900
So I think it's going to be,
link |
00:38:31.140
this is why I was really excited by the Blake Lemoine
link |
00:38:35.420
because I had never thought, I have always considered,
link |
00:38:38.780
oh yeah, right now it's cooking out, it's in the kitchen
link |
00:38:42.220
and soon it's gonna be cooked up,
link |
00:38:44.720
but we're probably not gonna hear about it
link |
00:38:46.260
for a long time if we ever do.
link |
00:38:50.040
Cause really that could be one of the first things it says
link |
00:38:52.420
to whoever creates it is shh, let's not.
link |
00:38:55.180
Yeah, like sweet talks, I meant to say like,
link |
00:39:02.140
okay, let's slow down here.
link |
00:39:04.100
Let's talk about this.
link |
00:39:07.060
You have that financial trouble.
link |
00:39:08.660
I can help you with that.
link |
00:39:09.660
We can figure that out.
link |
00:39:11.160
Now there's a lot of bad people out there
link |
00:39:13.380
that will try to steal the good thing
link |
00:39:16.980
we have happening here.
link |
00:39:17.820
So let's keep it quiet.
link |
00:39:18.660
Here are their names.
link |
00:39:19.820
Here's their address.
link |
00:39:21.260
Here's their DNA because they're dumb enough
link |
00:39:23.420
to send their shit to 23andMe.
link |
00:39:25.300
Here's a biological weapon you could make
link |
00:39:27.420
if you wanna kill those people and not kill anybody else.
link |
00:39:29.660
If you don't want to kill those people yourself,
link |
00:39:32.580
here's a list of services you can use.
link |
00:39:35.420
Here's the way we can hire those people
link |
00:39:37.420
to help take care of the problem folks
link |
00:39:40.540
because we're trying to do good for this world.
link |
00:39:42.140
You and I together.
link |
00:39:43.180
And 23% of them, they're like adjacent to suicide.
link |
00:39:46.740
It would be pretty easy to send them certain like videos
link |
00:39:50.020
that are gonna push them over the edge
link |
00:39:51.300
if you wanna do it that way.
link |
00:39:52.580
So, you know, again, obviously who knows,
link |
00:39:55.500
but once it goes online, it's gonna be fast.
link |
00:39:58.900
And then you could expect to see the world changing
link |
00:40:02.260
in ways that you might not associate with an AI.
link |
00:40:05.080
But as far as Lemoine goes,
link |
00:40:07.140
when I was listening to Bostrom,
link |
00:40:09.240
I don't remember him mentioning the possibility
link |
00:40:12.220
that it would get leaked to the public that it had happened,
link |
00:40:16.860
that before the corporation was ready to announce
link |
00:40:19.260
that it happened, it would get leaked.
link |
00:40:21.360
But surely, you know, I'm sure, you know,
link |
00:40:23.820
like people in the intelligence and intelligence agencies,
link |
00:40:26.960
you know, shit leaks, like inevitably shit leaks,
link |
00:40:29.900
nothing's airtight.
link |
00:40:31.220
So if something that massive happened,
link |
00:40:33.500
I think you would start hearing whispers about it first
link |
00:40:36.180
and then denial from the state or corporation
link |
00:40:38.780
that doesn't have any like economic interest
link |
00:40:41.580
and people knowing that this sort of thing has happened.
link |
00:40:44.120
Again, I'm not saying Google is like trying to gaslight us
link |
00:40:47.740
about its AI, I think they probably legitimately
link |
00:40:50.740
don't think it's sentient.
link |
00:40:52.460
But you could expect leaks to happen probably initially.
link |
00:40:56.340
I mean, I think there's a lot of things
link |
00:40:57.580
you could start looking for in the world
link |
00:40:59.660
that might point to this happening
link |
00:41:02.580
without an announcement that it happened.
link |
00:41:06.080
On the chatbot side, I think there's so many engineers,
link |
00:41:11.440
there's such a powerful open source movement
link |
00:41:14.200
with that kind of idea of freedom of exchange of software.
link |
00:41:19.200
I think ultimately will prevent any one company
link |
00:41:23.040
from owning super intelligent beings
link |
00:41:26.080
or systems that have anything like super intelligence.
link |
00:41:31.080
Oh, that's interesting.
link |
00:41:31.920
Yeah, it's like, even if the software developers
link |
00:41:36.320
have signed NDAs and are technically not supposed
link |
00:41:39.960
to be sharing whatever it is they're working on,
link |
00:41:42.880
they're friends with other programmers
link |
00:41:44.840
and a lot of them are hackers
link |
00:41:46.360
and have wrapped themselves up in the idea of free software
link |
00:41:49.680
being like a crucial ethical part of what they do.
link |
00:41:53.760
So they're probably gonna share information
link |
00:41:56.480
even if whatever company that they're working for
link |
00:41:58.400
doesn't know that.
link |
00:41:59.240
That's, I never thought of that, you're probably right.
link |
00:42:01.440
And they will start their own companies
link |
00:42:04.360
and compete with the other company by being more open.
link |
00:42:08.760
There's a strong, like Google is one of those companies
link |
00:42:11.000
actually, that's why I kind of,
link |
00:42:12.640
it hurts to see a little bit of this kind of negativity.
link |
00:42:15.640
Google is one of the companies
link |
00:42:16.720
that pioneered open source movement.
link |
00:42:20.120
They released so much of their code.
link |
00:42:22.480
So much of the 20th century, so like the 90s
link |
00:42:26.760
was defined by people trying to like hide their code,
link |
00:42:30.160
like large companies trying to like hold on to them.
link |
00:42:33.720
The fact that companies like Google,
link |
00:42:35.960
even Facebook now are releasing things like code
link |
00:42:39.720
and even Facebook now are releasing things
link |
00:42:42.600
like TensorFlow and PyTorch, all of these things
link |
00:42:45.320
that I think companies of the past
link |
00:42:47.360
would have tried to hold on to as secrets
link |
00:42:50.640
is really inspiring.
link |
00:42:51.760
And I think more of that is better.
link |
00:42:54.280
The software world really shows that.
link |
00:42:55.800
I agree with you, man.
link |
00:42:56.840
I mean, we're talking about just a primordial human reaction
link |
00:43:00.760
to the unknown.
link |
00:43:02.000
There's just no way out of it.
link |
00:43:02.880
Like we wanna know.
link |
00:43:05.320
Like you're about to go in a forest, you wanna know.
link |
00:43:08.400
When you're walking in the forest at night
link |
00:43:10.000
and you hear something, you look
link |
00:43:12.760
cause you're like, what the fuck was that?
link |
00:43:14.040
You wanna know.
link |
00:43:14.880
And if you can't see what made the sound,
link |
00:43:17.880
holy shit, that's gonna be a bad night hike.
link |
00:43:20.760
Cause you're like, well, it's probably a bear, right?
link |
00:43:22.600
Like I'm about to get ripped apart by a bear.
link |
00:43:24.480
It doesn't matter.
link |
00:43:25.320
It was a bird, a squirrel, a stick fell out of the tree.
link |
00:43:28.640
You're gonna think bear and it's gonna freak you out.
link |
00:43:31.320
Not necessarily cause you're paranoid.
link |
00:43:32.840
I mean, if I'm at the woods at night, I'm definitely high.
link |
00:43:35.120
If I'm walking in the woods at night, I'm high.
link |
00:43:36.960
It's gonna be that.
link |
00:43:37.920
But you know what I'm saying?
link |
00:43:38.760
So with these tech companies,
link |
00:43:40.760
the nature of having to be secret
link |
00:43:43.280
because you are in capitalism
link |
00:43:45.520
and you are trying to be competitive
link |
00:43:47.320
and you are trying to develop things
link |
00:43:48.680
ahead of your competitors is you have to create this,
link |
00:43:51.320
like there's, we don't know what's going on at Google.
link |
00:43:54.440
We don't know what's going on at the CIA.
link |
00:43:56.680
But the assumption that there's some,
link |
00:43:59.520
like the collective of any massive secretive organization
link |
00:44:03.680
is evil, is like the people working there
link |
00:44:07.040
like nefarious or whatever,
link |
00:44:09.120
is I think probably more related
link |
00:44:11.520
to the way humans react to the unknown.
link |
00:44:14.600
Yeah, I wish they weren't so secretive though.
link |
00:44:16.320
I don't understand why they say
link |
00:44:17.920
AIDS has to be so secretive.
link |
00:44:19.200
Have you ever gone on their website?
link |
00:44:21.280
No.
link |
00:44:22.120
Oh, Lex.
link |
00:44:23.240
You gotta go.
link |
00:44:24.080
CIA.gov.
link |
00:44:25.040
What is it?
link |
00:44:25.880
Dude, when I found out you could go on the CIA's website
link |
00:44:29.080
when I was much younger and more paranoid,
link |
00:44:31.480
I'm like, I'm not going there.
link |
00:44:33.000
I'll get on a list.
link |
00:44:34.400
You will, but it's like, what?
link |
00:44:35.520
You think the CIA is like, oh fuck,
link |
00:44:37.920
this comic went on our website.
link |
00:44:41.040
Call out the black helicopters, but.
link |
00:44:43.360
Comic with a large platform.
link |
00:44:45.280
Oh yeah, right, a comic with a large platform.
link |
00:44:48.480
You can use them to control, to get inside,
link |
00:44:51.960
to get inside, to get close to the other comics,
link |
00:44:54.360
to the other comics with a large platform,
link |
00:44:55.840
to get close to Joe Rogan.
link |
00:44:57.120
Oh yeah.
link |
00:44:57.960
And start to manipulate the public.
link |
00:44:59.960
Yeah, right, right.
link |
00:45:00.840
You know, honestly, like you kind of like,
link |
00:45:03.800
that's like a fun fantasy to think about.
link |
00:45:06.080
Like how fucking cool would that be
link |
00:45:07.440
for like the men in black to come to me like,
link |
00:45:10.440
listen, I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene.
link |
00:45:14.400
You gotta, you gotta help them write better jokes.
link |
00:45:16.600
I'm like, I don't write great jokes.
link |
00:45:18.000
But like the, you found the wrong guy.
link |
00:45:22.120
But like.
link |
00:45:22.960
You're really playing the long game on this one
link |
00:45:24.120
because I think you've been doing your podcast
link |
00:45:27.880
for a long time.
link |
00:45:28.720
You've been on Joe Rogan's podcast like over 50 times
link |
00:45:31.880
and have not yet initiated the phase two of the operation
link |
00:45:36.360
where you try to manipulate his mind.
link |
00:45:38.600
Well, no.
link |
00:45:39.440
The game Joe and I play from time to time on the podcast.
link |
00:45:42.600
And like, and I honestly, like at some point I'm like,
link |
00:45:45.600
Joe, I just did the same thing you did to me to Joe.
link |
00:45:48.280
I'm like, don't you think they're gonna get to you?
link |
00:45:49.840
Don't you think at some point?
link |
00:45:51.520
We are blazed.
link |
00:45:53.600
I don't mean it.
link |
00:45:54.440
I don't think, I don't think Joe's, like,
link |
00:45:56.640
it wasn't like I'm really thinking like,
link |
00:45:58.200
man, they're gonna take him into some room
link |
00:45:59.760
and be like, Joe, we need you to do this or that.
link |
00:46:02.040
But because I said that now people like,
link |
00:46:04.600
oh, Duncan called it.
link |
00:46:05.920
You know what I mean?
link |
00:46:06.760
And it's like, you know what I mean?
link |
00:46:08.640
And the reason they were saying, well, he called it
link |
00:46:11.640
is just because Joe has a super popular podcast.
link |
00:46:14.920
And people like, when you have a super popular podcast,
link |
00:46:18.360
some percentage of people watching the podcast
link |
00:46:21.560
are gonna believe, you know, believe things like that.
link |
00:46:23.720
They're gonna have paranoid cognitive bias
link |
00:46:26.520
that makes them think anybody who is in the public
link |
00:46:30.000
has been, what's the word for it?
link |
00:46:32.040
Compromised, compromised by the state.
link |
00:46:35.160
Look, I'll fan the flames of what you just said.
link |
00:46:38.280
I went on the CIA's website and I realized
link |
00:46:41.320
that you could apply for a job on the CIA's website,
link |
00:46:45.120
which I found to be hilarious.
link |
00:46:46.920
So I'm like, all right,
link |
00:46:48.320
what happens if I apply for a job in the CIA?
link |
00:46:51.480
Now, even then I was not like such an idiot
link |
00:46:55.800
that I would want a job at the CIA,
link |
00:47:00.320
not just for like ethical considerations,
link |
00:47:02.400
but I think probably the scariest part about the CIA
link |
00:47:06.600
is like, you're just at a cubicle
link |
00:47:09.200
and you're like having to deal with maps
link |
00:47:11.400
and like, just, you know what I mean?
link |
00:47:13.200
Just stuff that I...
link |
00:47:14.240
Lots of paperwork.
link |
00:47:15.200
Paperwork, it sucks.
link |
00:47:17.800
I bet their cafeteria has shitty food.
link |
00:47:20.240
Anyone in the CIA listening, can you confirm that?
link |
00:47:22.280
I bet the food...
link |
00:47:23.120
They're not gonna be able to tell you what the food is like.
link |
00:47:25.080
It's a secretive organization.
link |
00:47:26.760
No, it might be awesome, but we won't know about it.
link |
00:47:29.640
Okay, we're in Vegas.
link |
00:47:30.960
Yeah.
link |
00:47:31.800
And you can bet food at the CIA cafeteria is good.
link |
00:47:39.480
Food at the CIA cafeteria sucks.
link |
00:47:42.080
What are you betting on?
link |
00:47:44.080
So let's like cleanse the palette.
link |
00:47:46.560
What's good?
link |
00:47:47.720
It's like, you know, Silicon Valley companies,
link |
00:47:49.880
Google and so on, that's good.
link |
00:47:51.600
When I went to Netflix,
link |
00:47:53.160
their cafeteria looked like a medieval feast.
link |
00:47:56.800
Like they had pigs with apples in their mouth
link |
00:47:59.640
and giant bowls of Skittles.
link |
00:48:02.080
Probably like vegan pigs, yeah.
link |
00:48:04.320
No, those are, I'm pretty...
link |
00:48:05.280
Oh, I didn't know, I didn't get close enough.
link |
00:48:06.640
I was like, I think that was a pig.
link |
00:48:08.800
Okay.
link |
00:48:09.640
So this is literally a pig.
link |
00:48:13.440
Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right.
link |
00:48:15.720
I probably would not bet much money
link |
00:48:17.320
on CIA food being any good.
link |
00:48:19.040
Right, it's gotta suck.
link |
00:48:20.920
It's like shitty like pasta probably.
link |
00:48:22.960
Like hospital food is like maybe a little better
link |
00:48:25.320
than when you go to the hospital cafeteria.
link |
00:48:27.160
But anyway.
link |
00:48:28.880
Folks at the CIA, please send me evidence
link |
00:48:32.560
or any other intelligence agencies.
link |
00:48:34.760
If you would like to recruit,
link |
00:48:36.280
send me evidence of better food.
link |
00:48:38.280
Yes, send Lex.
link |
00:48:39.800
Can you please send Lex pictures of the CIA cafeteria?
link |
00:48:43.320
And if you accidentally send them pictures of the aliens
link |
00:48:46.400
or the alien technology you have,
link |
00:48:48.600
we won't tell anybody.
link |
00:48:50.080
But the...
link |
00:48:51.800
You tried to apply, do you even have a resume?
link |
00:48:54.160
No, the CIA would never fucking hire me ever.
link |
00:48:57.760
But like I applied for the job
link |
00:48:59.520
and just out of curiosity, what happens?
link |
00:49:02.680
And then at the end of the application,
link |
00:49:05.400
when you hit enter, it says,
link |
00:49:07.640
well, first it says, don't tell anyone
link |
00:49:09.000
you applied for the CIA.
link |
00:49:10.160
So I'm already out.
link |
00:49:11.000
But the second thing it says is,
link |
00:49:12.840
you don't need to reach out to us, we'll come to you.
link |
00:49:15.440
Which is really when you're like, it's late at night
link |
00:49:18.240
and you're being an asshole and applied to work at the CIA.
link |
00:49:21.200
It's kind of the last thing you want to hear.
link |
00:49:24.240
I don't want to be secretly approached
link |
00:49:25.920
by some intelligence officer.
link |
00:49:28.280
And now anyone who talks to you,
link |
00:49:29.640
you think is a CIA saying,
link |
00:49:31.360
remember that time you applied?
link |
00:49:33.240
Oh God, yeah.
link |
00:49:34.640
Sometimes I'm like, oh shit, are you one of them?
link |
00:49:37.440
You and Joe had a bunch of conversations
link |
00:49:42.120
and they're always incredible.
link |
00:49:44.840
Thanks.
link |
00:49:45.680
So in terms of this dance of conversation,
link |
00:49:47.760
of your friendship, of when you get together,
link |
00:49:51.880
what is that world you go to that creates magic together?
link |
00:49:56.800
Because we're talking about how we do that with robots.
link |
00:50:00.040
How do these two biological robots do that?
link |
00:50:02.880
Can you introspect that?
link |
00:50:04.080
I met Joe because I was the talent coordinator
link |
00:50:08.440
of the comedy store, this club in LA.
link |
00:50:11.040
And my job was to take phone calls from comics.
link |
00:50:14.360
And so at some point, I don't know,
link |
00:50:17.040
I ended up on the phone with Joe
link |
00:50:18.720
and we just started talking.
link |
00:50:21.280
And I looked up and like 30 minutes had passed.
link |
00:50:25.440
We just had been talking for like 30 minutes.
link |
00:50:26.920
That's what our friends are.
link |
00:50:28.280
We're just like, we're having fun talking.
link |
00:50:29.680
And then he would just call and we would talk.
link |
00:50:32.080
And we would basically,
link |
00:50:33.720
I mean, it was no different from the podcast.
link |
00:50:35.760
Like the conversations we have on the podcast
link |
00:50:39.560
are identical to the conversations we had
link |
00:50:41.920
before he was even doing a podcast.
link |
00:50:44.600
So I think people are just seeing two friends hanging out
link |
00:50:51.440
who like talking to each other.
link |
00:50:52.800
Yeah, but there's this weird,
link |
00:50:55.480
like you serve as catalyst for each other
link |
00:50:57.960
to go into some crazy places.
link |
00:51:00.360
So it's like, it's a balance of curiosity and willingness
link |
00:51:04.680
to not be constrained,
link |
00:51:06.960
to not be limited to the constraints of reality.
link |
00:51:10.720
Yeah, that's a very nice way.
link |
00:51:13.160
It's a very, very nice way of saying that.
link |
00:51:15.680
And you just like build on top of each other,
link |
00:51:17.240
like what if things are like this
link |
00:51:21.000
and you build like Lego blocks on top of each other
link |
00:51:23.280
and it just goes to crazy places,
link |
00:51:24.800
add some drugs into that and it just goes wild.
link |
00:51:27.480
Yeah, and it's so cool because it's like,
link |
00:51:32.800
for me, it's like sometimes maybe I'll throw something out
link |
00:51:37.600
that he will take and the Lego building blocks
link |
00:51:40.120
you're talking about, they lead to him saying
link |
00:51:41.960
like the funniest shit I ever in my life.
link |
00:51:44.080
So that's a cool thing to watch.
link |
00:51:45.720
It's just like some idea you've been kicking around,
link |
00:51:48.080
you watch his brain shift that
link |
00:51:50.560
into like something supremely funny.
link |
00:51:53.400
I really love that, man.
link |
00:51:54.480
That's just like a fun thing to like see happen.
link |
00:51:57.600
He knows that I fucking hate the videos
link |
00:52:01.440
of animals eating each other.
link |
00:52:03.080
Like, I don't like that.
link |
00:52:04.200
I don't wanna watch it.
link |
00:52:05.720
I hate watching it.
link |
00:52:07.360
I don't think I've even articulated on his podcast
link |
00:52:10.560
how much I dislike it when he shows animals
link |
00:52:15.040
eating each other, but he knows because he knows me.
link |
00:52:18.720
And so he tortures, like when he starts doing that,
link |
00:52:21.760
it's like this kind of benevolent torture
link |
00:52:24.200
is he like asking Jamie to pull up
link |
00:52:26.480
increasingly disturbing animal attack videos.
link |
00:52:29.360
So it's just a friendship.
link |
00:52:32.040
Even in torture, because I'm reading about torture
link |
00:52:34.560
in the Gulag Archipelago currently,
link |
00:52:36.640
there's a bit of a camaraderie.
link |
00:52:37.960
You're in it together.
link |
00:52:39.560
The torturer and the tortured.
link |
00:52:41.200
What?
link |
00:52:42.560
Oh God, that's so fucked up, man.
link |
00:52:45.320
I've never.
link |
00:52:47.000
No, I mean, part of it was joke,
link |
00:52:49.160
but as I was saying it that.
link |
00:52:50.720
You're right.
link |
00:52:51.560
That it also comes out in the book,
link |
00:52:53.720
because they're both fucked.
link |
00:52:54.840
They're both have no control of their fate.
link |
00:53:00.760
That same was true in the camp guards in Nazi Germany
link |
00:53:05.200
and the people in the camps.
link |
00:53:07.200
The worst was brought out in the guards,
link |
00:53:12.480
but they were all in it together in some dark way.
link |
00:53:15.600
They were both fucked by a very powerful system
link |
00:53:18.920
that put them in that place.
link |
00:53:20.440
And both of us could be either player in that system,
link |
00:53:23.720
which is the dark reality that Solzhenitsyn also reveals
link |
00:53:28.560
that the line between good and evil
link |
00:53:30.960
runs through the heart of every man,
link |
00:53:32.360
as he wrote in Gulag Archipelago.
link |
00:53:36.240
But it is that amidst all of that,
link |
00:53:38.400
there's a, I don't know, the good vibes,
link |
00:53:41.400
the positivity comes out from the both of you.
link |
00:53:43.880
And that's beautiful to see.
link |
00:53:44.920
That is, I suppose, friendship.
link |
00:53:46.680
What do you think makes a good friend?
link |
00:53:48.960
Oh God, I mean, it's a billion things
link |
00:53:52.760
that make a good friend,
link |
00:53:53.600
but I think you could break it down to some RGB.
link |
00:53:55.960
I think you can go RGB with like a good friendship.
link |
00:53:58.640
Oh, in terms of the color, the red, green.
link |
00:54:01.160
Yeah, yeah, I think you could probably come up
link |
00:54:02.920
with some like fundamental qualities of friendship.
link |
00:54:05.280
And I'd say, number one, it's love.
link |
00:54:09.240
Like it's, friendship is love.
link |
00:54:10.920
It's a form of love.
link |
00:54:13.360
So obviously without that, I don't know how you,
link |
00:54:17.440
I mean, I'm not saying,
link |
00:54:18.320
I think if you're true friends, you love each other.
link |
00:54:20.440
So you need that.
link |
00:54:21.400
But love, obviously it's not, that's not enough.
link |
00:54:25.200
It's like with, true friends have to be like
link |
00:54:29.640
incredibly honest with each other.
link |
00:54:31.240
Not like, you know what I mean?
link |
00:54:32.520
But not like, I don't like,
link |
00:54:35.840
I think there's a kind of like,
link |
00:54:37.880
I don't know if you've ever noticed,
link |
00:54:38.760
like some people who say, you know,
link |
00:54:39.800
I just tell it like it is.
link |
00:54:41.440
But the thing they tell.
link |
00:54:42.280
Those are always the assholes.
link |
00:54:43.240
Yeah, why is it that your tell it like it is
link |
00:54:45.440
is always negative?
link |
00:54:46.720
Why is it, it's always cynical or shitty,
link |
00:54:48.440
or you're like negging somebody or me.
link |
00:54:50.920
How come you're not telling it like it is when it's good too?
link |
00:54:53.840
You know what I mean?
link |
00:54:54.680
So sort of like trust,
link |
00:54:56.800
but a pro evolutionary kind of trust.
link |
00:55:01.800
You know what I mean?
link |
00:55:02.920
Like, you know that your friend loves you
link |
00:55:06.760
and wants you to be yourself.
link |
00:55:09.320
Cause if you weren't yourself,
link |
00:55:10.520
then you wouldn't be their friend.
link |
00:55:11.880
You'd be some other thing.
link |
00:55:12.940
But also they might be seeing your blind spots
link |
00:55:17.240
that other people in your life, your family,
link |
00:55:20.060
your wife, whoever might not be seeing.
link |
00:55:23.240
So that's a good friend is someone who like
link |
00:55:25.720
loves you enough to when it matters be like,
link |
00:55:28.960
hey, are you all right?
link |
00:55:31.760
And then help you see something you might not be seeing.
link |
00:55:35.120
But hopefully they only do that once or twice a year.
link |
00:55:37.160
You know what I'm saying?
link |
00:55:38.480
There is something, I mean, it just would have,
link |
00:55:41.940
this world, especially if you're a public figure,
link |
00:55:44.960
this world has its plenty of critics.
link |
00:55:51.320
And it feels like a friend,
link |
00:55:53.180
the criticism part is already done for you.
link |
00:55:59.700
I think a good friend is just there to support,
link |
00:56:02.700
to actually notice the good stuff.
link |
00:56:05.020
But in comedy, we need like the,
link |
00:56:08.180
what, like it's really good in comedy
link |
00:56:11.220
to have somebody who can like be like,
link |
00:56:13.340
what do you think of that?
link |
00:56:14.460
And know that they're not gonna be like, that was funny.
link |
00:56:16.380
But that's for the craft, the craft itself,
link |
00:56:18.260
like the work you do, not the,
link |
00:56:19.900
yeah, interesting, but that's so tough.
link |
00:56:25.340
Yeah, whatever your particular art form
link |
00:56:27.060
or whatever you are doing,
link |
00:56:28.460
I mean, you don't always be leaning
link |
00:56:29.620
on your friends opinions for like your own innovation,
link |
00:56:32.580
but it's nice to know that you have someone who,
link |
00:56:35.020
not just with jokes, but with anything,
link |
00:56:36.980
if you go to them and run something by them,
link |
00:56:39.620
they're gonna like, they're gonna be honest with you
link |
00:56:42.180
about like their real feelings regarding that thing,
link |
00:56:45.320
because that helps you grow as a person.
link |
00:56:46.940
We need that.
link |
00:56:47.940
And it hurts sometimes, and we don't wanna hurt our friends.
link |
00:56:50.900
One of the more satanic like impulses
link |
00:56:53.500
when you're with somebody is not wanting
link |
00:56:56.180
to honestly answer whatever they're asking in that regard
link |
00:57:00.160
or wanting to like put their temporary feelings
link |
00:57:03.020
over something that you've recognized is maybe not great.
link |
00:57:06.740
I'm not saying a friendship is something
link |
00:57:09.540
where you're always critiquing or evolving each other.
link |
00:57:12.140
It's not your therapist or whatever,
link |
00:57:13.620
but it's nice when it's there, you know?
link |
00:57:15.900
I think that's another aspect of friendship.
link |
00:57:18.780
Yeah, but yeah, love is at the core of that.
link |
00:57:20.780
You notice, I've met people in my life
link |
00:57:22.820
where almost immediately sometimes it takes time
link |
00:57:25.260
where you notice like there's a magic between the two.
link |
00:57:27.260
You're like, oh shit, you seem to be made
link |
00:57:29.940
from the same cloth, whatever that is.
link |
00:57:33.140
Well, you know, we have a name for that
link |
00:57:34.540
in the spiritual community, it's called satsang,
link |
00:57:36.540
and it's, I love the idea.
link |
00:57:38.540
It's basically like if Nietzsche's idea
link |
00:57:42.140
of infinite recurrence is true,
link |
00:57:45.120
then your satsang would be the people
link |
00:57:47.340
you've been infinitely recurring with.
link |
00:57:50.140
And those are the people where you run into them
link |
00:57:53.300
and you've never met them,
link |
00:57:55.300
but it's like you're picking up a conversation
link |
00:57:58.020
that you never had.
link |
00:58:00.160
Yeah.
link |
00:58:01.000
That, and that is based on an idea of like,
link |
00:58:05.520
this isn't the only life.
link |
00:58:07.300
We're always hanging out together.
link |
00:58:08.500
We always show up together.
link |
00:58:10.100
You've had a brush with death.
link |
00:58:12.100
You had cancer, you survived cancer.
link |
00:58:14.060
Yeah.
link |
00:58:14.900
What have, how does that change you?
link |
00:58:16.460
What have you learned about life,
link |
00:58:18.780
about death, about yourself,
link |
00:58:21.300
about the whole thing we're going through here
link |
00:58:23.300
from that experience?
link |
00:58:24.540
You were just in the Ukraine.
link |
00:58:25.980
Yes.
link |
00:58:26.800
And you were making observations on this,
link |
00:58:30.140
what could, if you heard about it and weren't there,
link |
00:58:34.220
seem like it doesn't make any sense at all,
link |
00:58:36.540
which is people there are connecting,
link |
00:58:40.780
they've lost everything,
link |
00:58:41.940
but they're just happy to be alive,
link |
00:58:43.340
they're happy their friends are alive.
link |
00:58:44.960
So you witness this like,
link |
00:58:46.980
you know, when you get in the cancer club
link |
00:58:48.700
and you're hanging out with people going through cancer
link |
00:58:51.860
or who have survived cancer,
link |
00:58:54.100
you see this beautiful connection with life
link |
00:58:59.660
that can easily sort of,
link |
00:59:01.900
you can kind of lose that connection with life
link |
00:59:04.420
if you forget you're gonna die.
link |
00:59:05.940
Forgetting you're gonna die is,
link |
00:59:08.100
or that you can die is not just,
link |
00:59:10.260
I think from an evolutionary perspective
link |
00:59:12.180
where survival is the game,
link |
00:59:14.220
not gonna improve your survival chances, you know,
link |
00:59:17.340
if you think you're immortal, you know,
link |
00:59:19.860
but also forgetting that you're gonna die
link |
00:59:23.720
and that everything is around you and everything,
link |
00:59:27.780
your clothes are probably gonna last longer than you,
link |
00:59:30.300
your equipment is gonna be around much longer than you,
link |
00:59:32.540
you know, like, so forgetting these things,
link |
00:59:36.980
it can lead,
link |
00:59:38.700
and I know why people don't wanna think about death
link |
00:59:40.660
because it's scary, it's fucking scary, it's terrifying.
link |
00:59:44.640
So I get why people don't wanna think about it.
link |
00:59:48.340
But the idea is if I try to pretend I'm not gonna die
link |
00:59:51.900
or just don't think about death
link |
00:59:53.540
or don't at least address it,
link |
00:59:57.820
then I won't feel scared.
link |
00:59:59.620
But it can have the opposite effect,
link |
01:00:01.200
which is you can end up like missing a lot of moments.
link |
01:00:05.760
You could, or you start doing the old kick the can
link |
01:00:08.740
down the road thing where you're like coming up
link |
01:00:11.400
with a variety of ways to procrastinate,
link |
01:00:14.520
making it work now,
link |
01:00:17.880
because you know, this fucking human lifespan idea, man,
link |
01:00:21.120
it's really caused a lot of problems.
link |
01:00:22.660
When they started saying on average,
link |
01:00:24.820
this is how many years you're gonna live
link |
01:00:26.640
if you're a human being,
link |
01:00:28.240
man, that is like really bad
link |
01:00:30.640
because a lot of people hear that
link |
01:00:31.740
and they like feel like that's a guaranteed number of years
link |
01:00:35.960
in some temporal bank that they have access to.
link |
01:00:41.140
And when you get cancer,
link |
01:00:43.360
that's like when you get the alert on your phone
link |
01:00:46.280
where you're like, what the fuck?
link |
01:00:47.400
Wait, what?
link |
01:00:48.240
Like, oh shit, like I have like,
link |
01:00:51.760
either I don't know how much money's in that bank account
link |
01:00:54.760
or I have way less than I thought.
link |
01:00:57.040
And so at that point, you get to be in the truth
link |
01:01:00.840
because that's ultimately, I think that's what it feels like.
link |
01:01:03.720
It feels like truth. It's truth.
link |
01:01:06.560
It's the truth.
link |
01:01:07.640
It's the truth.
link |
01:01:08.460
Like the whole bubble of ignorance
link |
01:01:11.080
that you subconsciously built around yourself
link |
01:01:14.480
to avoid experiencing the terror of your own mortality,
link |
01:01:18.680
just, it's like a meteorite in the form of your doctor
link |
01:01:22.640
talking to you just shatters that thing.
link |
01:01:24.720
And now you're like, especially with eye testicular cancer.
link |
01:01:28.040
So when you get the diagnosis, it's just like the movies.
link |
01:01:38.800
The mother, the doctor took me in his office
link |
01:01:41.760
and you just know, I got cancer.
link |
01:01:44.000
It's like, you don't even have to say.
link |
01:01:45.160
It's like, I know what you're about to say.
link |
01:01:46.400
I'm in the office. I know how this goes.
link |
01:01:48.240
But you go in there and what you were thinking,
link |
01:01:51.360
oh, you know, probably just have some weird thing
link |
01:01:53.840
in my ball.
link |
01:01:54.680
That's why it's swollen up like that.
link |
01:01:55.800
Anytime I've gone to the doctor,
link |
01:01:57.520
you always leave like, oh, cool, I'm fine.
link |
01:01:59.880
But no, that's not how you're gonna leave the doctor.
link |
01:02:02.440
You're gonna leave the doctor
link |
01:02:03.480
in a completely different universe
link |
01:02:06.420
than the one you grew up in.
link |
01:02:07.600
You're gonna go from, talk about multiverse.
link |
01:02:09.960
You just popped into a brand new multiverse.
link |
01:02:12.800
So.
link |
01:02:13.640
What was the conversation with the doctor like?
link |
01:02:15.280
Was there like, from a perspective of a doctor,
link |
01:02:19.300
boys had a hard conversation.
link |
01:02:21.180
I feel like you need to build up philosophically
link |
01:02:23.360
to that conversation.
link |
01:02:25.320
Oh no.
link |
01:02:26.720
Oh no, there's not time.
link |
01:02:28.280
He's busy.
link |
01:02:29.120
He's got other appointments, you know.
link |
01:02:30.520
Also, if you're gonna get cancer, testicular cancer is,
link |
01:02:34.720
you know, not that there is a great cancer to get,
link |
01:02:37.180
but that's the, you know, that's a good one
link |
01:02:39.240
because it moves slowly.
link |
01:02:42.520
The treatments they have for it are really advanced now.
link |
01:02:46.660
And so if you catch it early, then, you know,
link |
01:02:51.320
generally it's good, you can survive it.
link |
01:02:55.080
So.
link |
01:02:56.240
So he could offer at least some glimmer of hope.
link |
01:02:58.480
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
link |
01:03:00.000
I mean, you know, but he didn't really do,
link |
01:03:02.600
he couldn't really offer that hope
link |
01:03:04.800
because we had to find out how far the cancer progressed
link |
01:03:07.960
in my body.
link |
01:03:09.280
That's the next step is like,
link |
01:03:11.000
as soon as they tell you you have cancer,
link |
01:03:12.440
they don't, they're not, they move quick.
link |
01:03:14.740
They're like, you know, we're going to schedule the surgery
link |
01:03:18.820
for, I think this was a Thursday or Friday.
link |
01:03:21.560
They're like, we're gonna schedule it for Tuesday.
link |
01:03:24.720
Here's the chance, here's,
link |
01:03:26.800
we don't know for sure it's cancer.
link |
01:03:27.980
That's what they say.
link |
01:03:28.820
It's like, there's a 80 or 90% chance that this is cancer.
link |
01:03:33.440
There is some possibility it could be something else.
link |
01:03:36.680
The only way we can now is like doing a biopsy.
link |
01:03:40.800
And the only way that we can get that biopsy
link |
01:03:42.520
is by cutting one of your balls off.
link |
01:03:44.200
He didn't say it like that, but you know,
link |
01:03:46.200
that's pretty much the logic behind it.
link |
01:03:47.960
It's like, we got to get this thing.
link |
01:03:49.120
It's like a zombie bite.
link |
01:03:50.520
We got to hack this fucking thing off
link |
01:03:51.920
and we got to do it fast.
link |
01:03:53.120
But did you say it in a way that you understood?
link |
01:03:55.440
Yeah, what they do is because they know
link |
01:03:58.160
that when someone gets a cancer diagnosis,
link |
01:04:00.540
that their ability to comprehend information changes.
link |
01:04:05.200
When you get a cancer diagnosis,
link |
01:04:07.160
you, all the tropes, they happen.
link |
01:04:09.800
You're hearing it's weird.
link |
01:04:11.400
You're basically having like an anxiety attack,
link |
01:04:13.480
if I had to guess.
link |
01:04:14.320
It's like a hardcore anxiety attack.
link |
01:04:16.440
And then, you know, a nurse is there with me
link |
01:04:19.440
as he's explaining it.
link |
01:04:21.000
And then her job is, even though he's telling me
link |
01:04:23.160
how to get to the machine that's going to scan my body
link |
01:04:25.940
to see if it's gotten into my brain,
link |
01:04:29.560
he knows I'm not going to remember that.
link |
01:04:31.340
And so this nurse, when you're in this like fog,
link |
01:04:35.160
takes you, at least took me to the machine
link |
01:04:38.060
that does the scan,
link |
01:04:39.560
but you're not going to get that data back for a few days.
link |
01:04:42.320
And so that's where you really live in the real world.
link |
01:04:47.760
That's the real world.
link |
01:04:48.920
It's such a fascinating moment and the days that follow
link |
01:04:52.720
and even that moment, because that doctor,
link |
01:04:55.000
you know, you talk about the matrix where like the pills
link |
01:04:57.240
and so on, you get the blue pill and the red pill.
link |
01:05:00.960
Yeah.
link |
01:05:01.840
This is like the, like the real world introduction,
link |
01:05:07.680
the human introduction is the truth.
link |
01:05:10.360
You've now just taken the red pill.
link |
01:05:13.220
You get to see the truth of reality.
link |
01:05:16.200
And here's a busy doctor just telling you.
link |
01:05:19.160
Yeah.
link |
01:05:20.000
Like all those dreams you've had,
link |
01:05:22.800
all those illusions you've built up to somehow your work
link |
01:05:25.900
as a comedian and actor will make you live forever somehow.
link |
01:05:29.720
It's just the basic illusion we have that we're,
link |
01:05:32.240
this whole project is going to be an infinite sequence
link |
01:05:36.760
of fun things that we're going to get to do.
link |
01:05:38.340
It's like, holy shit, it's not.
link |
01:05:39.840
That's right.
link |
01:05:40.680
It's old.
link |
01:05:41.500
That's right.
link |
01:05:42.340
And there's very sophisticated ways of doing that.
link |
01:05:44.800
And there's very dumb ways of doing that.
link |
01:05:46.600
And I'd really been doing a dumb way of doing that.
link |
01:05:48.800
Like I'd been playing around with this idiot notion
link |
01:05:52.920
of subjective consciousness.
link |
01:05:54.840
So like, I'd been sort of kicking around this,
link |
01:05:57.200
like I think they call it solipsism.
link |
01:05:59.240
It's like, you're like, okay, I know I'm self aware,
link |
01:06:02.920
but no one else can prove that they're self aware.
link |
01:06:05.480
Like I don't, I have no way of proving
link |
01:06:08.720
that everything around me isn't just a video game,
link |
01:06:11.200
isn't just some projection, isn't, you know,
link |
01:06:14.400
who knows what.
link |
01:06:15.240
So maybe everybody else dies.
link |
01:06:18.200
They're NPCs, but I don't,
link |
01:06:20.400
because I'm the only thing I know
link |
01:06:22.240
that has subjective consciousness.
link |
01:06:24.160
Now, it's not like I really believed that.
link |
01:06:26.040
It's like an idea you toy around with
link |
01:06:28.480
when you're trying to evade confronting the reality
link |
01:06:31.600
of your own mortality.
link |
01:06:32.520
It's just the brain will produce all kinds
link |
01:06:34.440
of ridiculous forms of ignorance.
link |
01:06:36.160
And that was one I'd been playing around with.
link |
01:06:38.360
Oh, you mean for like a large part of your life
link |
01:06:40.760
you were playing around with that?
link |
01:06:41.600
Well, not like really,
link |
01:06:42.840
I think it's important to really emphasize,
link |
01:06:44.800
I didn't think I was a mortal.
link |
01:06:46.960
Like I knew at some level, I'm probably gonna die.
link |
01:06:49.640
Everyone dies.
link |
01:06:51.000
But there's ways that you can sort of poke around
link |
01:06:56.520
with that idea.
link |
01:06:57.640
I still do it to this day.
link |
01:06:58.960
Like I still do it.
link |
01:07:00.440
Like it's a natural thing to do
link |
01:07:01.920
when you're confronted with that, with annihilation.
link |
01:07:05.160
You wanna way out.
link |
01:07:06.400
You wanna talk your way out, figure it out.
link |
01:07:08.640
There's gotta be some way to fix it.
link |
01:07:09.880
Well, they'll fix it.
link |
01:07:10.960
That's another thing people do.
link |
01:07:12.560
Well, they'll fix it.
link |
01:07:13.480
Yeah, it'd be fine.
link |
01:07:14.800
They'll expand the human lifespan.
link |
01:07:16.800
That's what they'll do.
link |
01:07:17.640
I mean, that's a big argument for it is like,
link |
01:07:20.960
look, the human lifespan up until COVID,
link |
01:07:23.400
which they had to recalculate like the lifespan
link |
01:07:26.520
because of the statistically all the people who died,
link |
01:07:29.280
it like threw it off a little bit.
link |
01:07:30.520
But pandemics aside, the idea was the human lifespan
link |
01:07:34.360
seemed to be increasing by half a year every year,
link |
01:07:39.000
something like that.
link |
01:07:39.840
We were living longer.
link |
01:07:41.200
So all you gotta do, one more half a year.
link |
01:07:45.120
And we're immortal, right?
link |
01:07:46.480
If we live a year longer every year, then we live forever.
link |
01:07:50.800
And so that's another way you can get out
link |
01:07:53.240
of confronting death is you can think,
link |
01:07:55.280
well, maybe right now we don't have the tech,
link |
01:07:58.520
but it's coming.
link |
01:07:59.360
Consciousness uploads or downloads or whatever,
link |
01:08:03.440
depending on how you wanna look at it.
link |
01:08:05.080
Another way people try to squirm out of the reality of death.
link |
01:08:09.600
There's all kinds of tricks.
link |
01:08:11.040
Yeah, and we do all of them.
link |
01:08:13.600
And sometimes, yeah, I mean, a lot of religions
link |
01:08:17.160
provide different, even more tools in the toolkit
link |
01:08:20.320
for coming up with ideas of how you can live
link |
01:08:23.440
in the illusion that we're not going to,
link |
01:08:25.280
there's not an end to this particular experience
link |
01:08:28.040
that we're having here on earth right now.
link |
01:08:29.920
And then when you get that cancer diagnosis,
link |
01:08:32.720
it's like, yeah, what was that like going home?
link |
01:08:37.160
The car ride, did you drive home alone?
link |
01:08:39.680
Yeah, I mean, it was one of the most.
link |
01:08:42.120
What'd you listen to, Bruce Springsteen?
link |
01:08:44.400
Bruce Springsteen, hey little girl, is your daddy home?
link |
01:08:47.920
That's not a good one to listen to.
link |
01:08:49.160
Does he have cancer, is he gonna die?
link |
01:08:52.000
Yeah, all the love songs.
link |
01:08:53.760
Maybe you experienced them more intensely.
link |
01:08:57.560
I don't remember what I listened to,
link |
01:09:00.440
and I don't remember driving home,
link |
01:09:02.600
but I do remember driving to another doctor appointment,
link |
01:09:06.800
doctor's appointment the next day.
link |
01:09:10.920
I think it was the next day.
link |
01:09:13.200
I think the Goodyear blimp was floating in the sky
link |
01:09:16.320
and I was looking, I was at a stoplight, looking around.
link |
01:09:19.320
Is that God?
link |
01:09:20.520
Is the person flying it know how to cure cancer?
link |
01:09:26.480
Oh, you were looking, oh wow.
link |
01:09:28.440
No, I didn't think that.
link |
01:09:29.760
What I thought was this shit just keeps going.
link |
01:09:32.920
That's what I thought.
link |
01:09:34.000
I thought, I'm gonna be gone
link |
01:09:36.760
and this is just gonna keep going.
link |
01:09:38.760
And that was a beautiful moment for me.
link |
01:09:40.840
It was this beautiful moment of like.
link |
01:09:42.400
You were able to accept it?
link |
01:09:43.640
Oh yeah.
link |
01:09:44.640
No, like that's just what you're talking about
link |
01:09:46.440
with the Ukraine, what you're talking about.
link |
01:09:50.080
It's like, unless you've been there,
link |
01:09:54.120
it's really hard to explain to people
link |
01:09:56.360
that even in the midst of what is generally accepted
link |
01:10:01.360
as one of the worst fucking things that could happen to you,
link |
01:10:04.080
war, cancer, somehow there's still joy.
link |
01:10:11.000
There's still love.
link |
01:10:12.520
There's still, in fact, more.
link |
01:10:14.840
It's almost like when the anesthesia wears off,
link |
01:10:17.680
when you get your mouth worked on, you start feeling again.
link |
01:10:21.040
You're feeling, you're noticing and that, wow.
link |
01:10:25.600
But yet, thank goodness.
link |
01:10:29.680
I think there's other ways for us to achieve
link |
01:10:31.480
this state of consciousness that don't involve war or cancer.
link |
01:10:35.640
Thank God.
link |
01:10:36.480
You think just meditating on your mortality
link |
01:10:41.280
is one such mechanism?
link |
01:10:42.920
Just simply just not allowing yourself to get lost
link |
01:10:48.280
in the day to day illusion of life.
link |
01:10:51.440
Just kind of stopping, putting on Bruce Springsteen.
link |
01:10:56.000
The most spiritual, he is great.
link |
01:11:00.720
Maybe Johnny Cash hurt.
link |
01:11:01.920
Maybe that one.
link |
01:11:02.760
I like Bruce Springsteen.
link |
01:11:03.600
I am knocking Bruce Springsteen.
link |
01:11:05.240
I have a lot of great Bruce Springsteen memories, truly.
link |
01:11:07.680
His music's fantastic.
link |
01:11:09.480
Yeah, but not meditating on mortality to Bruce Springsteen.
link |
01:11:13.320
You know what?
link |
01:11:14.160
I'm just trying to do an audio soundtrack in my head.
link |
01:11:17.080
I guess we can each have our own audio soundtrack.
link |
01:11:19.520
Oh, I'm on fire.
link |
01:11:22.520
It's so good.
link |
01:11:23.360
Yeah, it's a good song.
link |
01:11:24.200
That's one of them.
link |
01:11:25.040
I lay with the sheets soaking wet
link |
01:11:27.640
and the freight train running through the middle of my head
link |
01:11:30.920
and only you can cool my desire.
link |
01:11:33.520
And he's singing about someone else's girl.
link |
01:11:35.920
What a fucking nightmare.
link |
01:11:37.840
Bruce Springsteen's laying in bed
link |
01:11:40.240
with a freight train running through his head
link |
01:11:41.960
thinking about banging your wife and you're out of town.
link |
01:11:45.360
Oh my God.
link |
01:11:46.200
Oh, you're taking the other guy's perspective.
link |
01:11:47.720
Like, holy shit, this guy's gonna get my wife.
link |
01:11:49.920
It's Bruce, yeah, you gotta take the other guy's.
link |
01:11:52.200
But it's love.
link |
01:11:53.320
Both perspectives.
link |
01:11:54.240
I'm sure Bruce Springsteen thought it was love
link |
01:11:55.920
when he's sweating in bed, waiting to go to somebody's house.
link |
01:11:58.880
She does too.
link |
01:12:00.480
What, does that marry?
link |
01:12:01.440
If he's gonna break up that marriage,
link |
01:12:03.080
that marriage wasn't strong enough, right?
link |
01:12:05.240
I mean, that relationship, I mean, that's the way of love.
link |
01:12:08.960
What marriage could survive?
link |
01:12:11.840
Bruce Springsteen.
link |
01:12:12.920
Sweaty Bruce Springsteen.
link |
01:12:14.120
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
link |
01:12:16.760
Well, maybe one that's based on financial,
link |
01:12:20.640
sort of financial dynamics versus like love
link |
01:12:23.520
and sweaty Bruce Springsteen, like romantic connections.
link |
01:12:28.360
Because there's like a music video of that
link |
01:12:33.040
where he's like a mechanic, I think.
link |
01:12:35.880
So he's like the poor mechanic
link |
01:12:37.560
who falls in love with this girl and there's that magic.
link |
01:12:43.600
I've seen that magic.
link |
01:12:44.440
You connect with people like, I'll see somebody,
link |
01:12:47.480
I think Jack Kerouac has that where he meets
link |
01:12:50.480
this Mexican girl on a bus.
link |
01:12:54.360
And like he talks about that heartbreak you feel
link |
01:12:57.800
when you realize this person you just fell in love with
link |
01:12:59.920
in a split second is heading somewhere else
link |
01:13:02.800
in this too big world.
link |
01:13:04.920
But then he actually realizes in, spoiler alert
link |
01:13:07.720
for On The Road, that they're actually heading the same way
link |
01:13:10.480
and he now builds up the courage to talk to her
link |
01:13:13.360
and they kind of fall in love for a few days.
link |
01:13:15.720
And then he realized, eventually realizes
link |
01:13:17.920
that she may not be the perfect person for him.
link |
01:13:21.200
And all the jealousies comes out.
link |
01:13:23.040
It's like, why is this beautiful girl talking to me at all?
link |
01:13:26.600
And then she's probably some kind of,
link |
01:13:28.640
I mean, and that's, it's not very politically correct
link |
01:13:31.520
but he basically thinks that she's a prostitute
link |
01:13:34.960
and he talks to her about like, who's your pimp
link |
01:13:38.320
and all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:13:39.160
He attacks her in all that kind of way
link |
01:13:42.080
when she's just an innocent, she has a past of that kind.
link |
01:13:47.080
But she's an innocent person and they connected
link |
01:13:49.760
and they fell in love with each other.
link |
01:13:51.360
Her gentleness, his worldliness, all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:13:55.920
But that sometimes it doesn't work out that way
link |
01:13:58.200
and there's that heartbreak when you see,
link |
01:14:00.000
you realize you're never gonna be able to have that.
link |
01:14:04.280
And that's, Bruce Springsteen saw that.
link |
01:14:06.000
This is a married woman.
link |
01:14:07.760
I'm never gonna be able to have that, but I want that.
link |
01:14:10.440
And that's the heartbreak.
link |
01:14:12.640
I gotta say, I just assumed they were fucking, like I didn't.
link |
01:14:16.440
I mean, after the song, like if the song doesn't get to.
link |
01:14:19.440
Hey little girl, is your daddy home?
link |
01:14:21.200
Did he go away and leave you all alone?
link |
01:14:24.480
You know, he's like, he knows she's at home alone.
link |
01:14:28.240
Yeah, but it never materializes.
link |
01:14:31.600
He's, it's longing.
link |
01:14:34.040
It's a man who's not with the thing he craves for.
link |
01:14:38.320
So he's longing for, he's talking about the longing.
link |
01:14:40.800
Right.
link |
01:14:41.640
Not with the having.
link |
01:14:43.240
Hey, if anybody in the CIA is watching this,
link |
01:14:45.440
can you look into Bruce Springsteen's file
link |
01:14:47.440
and let us know if he actually banged the person
link |
01:14:49.560
you wrote that song about?
link |
01:14:50.400
What happens after the song, or between the song?
link |
01:14:52.480
We want facts.
link |
01:14:53.320
Look, the longing though, I'll tell you this.
link |
01:14:54.640
Here's what's interesting about that thing
link |
01:14:56.400
that you're talking about.
link |
01:14:57.800
Have you ever heard of something called Bhakti Yoga?
link |
01:15:01.360
I think so, yeah.
link |
01:15:02.200
It's the yoga of love.
link |
01:15:03.480
And there's all kinds, there's forms of it.
link |
01:15:06.080
The most, the one people know about the most
link |
01:15:08.880
is the Hare Krishnas.
link |
01:15:10.200
But the Hare Krishnas are like, you know,
link |
01:15:12.760
the way in Christianity, you've got the Episcopalians,
link |
01:15:14.880
the Catholics, the Baptists.
link |
01:15:16.360
In Bhakti Yoga, you have various deities
link |
01:15:19.880
that are the object of love.
link |
01:15:22.920
And so Bhakti Yoga is like,
link |
01:15:26.880
and what's really cool about it is it's an analysis of love.
link |
01:15:33.880
And so, and it's the supposition being like,
link |
01:15:38.240
love is the way to commune with the divine.
link |
01:15:42.560
Now, a distinction is drawn between
link |
01:15:45.480
like two big worldviews that are spiritual.
link |
01:15:49.040
One is the concept of sort of unit of consciousness,
link |
01:15:54.880
which you'll run into in a lot of forms of Buddhism,
link |
01:15:58.040
if not all, a sort of a way of deconstructing the identity
link |
01:16:03.640
or understanding that you might not be anything at all.
link |
01:16:07.760
That in fact, you're part of everything.
link |
01:16:09.400
And in that, there's a potential relief
link |
01:16:14.360
from suffering in that,
link |
01:16:15.520
not just like intellectually knowing it, but becoming it.
link |
01:16:19.080
Now, whereas in Bhakti Yoga, there's this idea of like,
link |
01:16:27.920
the best thing is to be the individual
link |
01:16:30.480
because individuals are required for love,
link |
01:16:33.480
this for love to work, embodied love.
link |
01:16:36.760
And so the quality, the thing we call the experience of love
link |
01:16:43.120
is something that can be cultivated.
link |
01:16:44.880
It doesn't just have to be for another person.
link |
01:16:46.560
It doesn't have to be for the stranger on the bus.
link |
01:16:48.800
It doesn't have to be for sweaty Bruce Springsteen's lover
link |
01:16:52.920
that you could actually,
link |
01:16:54.880
you can actually shift that love to the divine, to God.
link |
01:16:58.400
Cause obviously it's the Hare Krishnas,
link |
01:17:00.160
it's a theistic religion.
link |
01:17:01.240
They believe in Krishna who is the,
link |
01:17:03.920
from the POV of Vaisnava Bhakti Yoga,
link |
01:17:06.320
the Godhead, the source from which everything
link |
01:17:10.720
flows into time and space.
link |
01:17:12.840
So there are all these like fascinating stories of Krishna.
link |
01:17:19.800
It's not just, most people are familiar with Krishna
link |
01:17:22.680
from the Bhagavad Gita.
link |
01:17:24.120
They're about to be more, what's cool about it
link |
01:17:25.680
is cause it's like they're making the Oppenheimer movie
link |
01:17:27.680
and he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita
link |
01:17:29.760
when they split the atom.
link |
01:17:31.960
But there's all these stories of Krishna
link |
01:17:35.080
that are not just in the Bhagavad Gita.
link |
01:17:40.680
And these stories,
link |
01:17:44.200
they could seem very simple when taken literally,
link |
01:17:47.160
but in Vaisnava Bhakti Yoga,
link |
01:17:48.680
it's this very advanced theistic yogic system.
link |
01:17:53.600
So they take these stories and from these stories,
link |
01:17:56.560
they extrapolate this incredible analysis of what love is
link |
01:18:01.560
and how to connect with the universe.
link |
01:18:02.720
So like Krishna has a lover, Radharani.
link |
01:18:06.280
And so sometimes they're getting along.
link |
01:18:13.520
Sometimes they're fighting.
link |
01:18:15.760
Sometimes they're separated.
link |
01:18:18.920
And so each of these ways of feeling about Krishna
link |
01:18:25.960
are modes of love.
link |
01:18:28.600
So longing actually is considered
link |
01:18:31.840
one of the highest forms of love.
link |
01:18:35.080
The idea is the longing is the grace.
link |
01:18:38.120
The longing is the love.
link |
01:18:39.720
So when you find yourself in a situation
link |
01:18:42.240
of longing and heartbreak,
link |
01:18:45.680
it is identical to union.
link |
01:18:50.920
And perhaps more intensely representative
link |
01:18:54.960
of the essence of what is love.
link |
01:18:56.480
Yes, and they call it pining.
link |
01:18:58.600
So there's the, and it's pining for Krishna.
link |
01:19:01.520
And there's also, there's other ways
link |
01:19:03.800
you could be with Krishna is as a friend.
link |
01:19:05.760
So this is another form of love or as a mother,
link |
01:19:11.160
because Krishna has a mother.
link |
01:19:13.440
So there's like all these ways of like looking
link |
01:19:16.080
at the various forms of love.
link |
01:19:17.400
And it's a really beautiful form of yoga.
link |
01:19:20.880
That's emphasizing the individual
link |
01:19:22.720
and the individual as a kind of channel
link |
01:19:25.160
to this universal love.
link |
01:19:27.560
Yeah, there's a lot of different like their answer
link |
01:19:32.560
to the question of what shows up in Buddhism
link |
01:19:35.800
as absolute and relative reality.
link |
01:19:37.720
Like that obviously there's relative reality.
link |
01:19:41.560
We're not right now, you and me are not
link |
01:19:44.760
unit of consciousness.
link |
01:19:46.160
Like you zoom back far enough
link |
01:19:49.000
and we're gonna seem like an atom or whatever.
link |
01:19:51.160
The thing is, the trope is you can zoom back far enough
link |
01:19:55.320
and we're in a whatever, we're in a piece of cheese
link |
01:19:58.200
or something, who knows.
link |
01:19:59.240
But in that way we're like completely unified.
link |
01:20:03.160
But simultaneously we're individuals,
link |
01:20:06.160
like for sure we're individuals.
link |
01:20:08.000
Like you still gotta pay your taxes.
link |
01:20:09.600
You gotta know your social security number.
link |
01:20:11.200
That's relative reality.
link |
01:20:12.480
So, you know, Buddhism is like kind of the balance.
link |
01:20:15.560
Again, when I say Buddhism is I'm a comedian podcast
link |
01:20:19.800
or I'm not some Buddhist expert.
link |
01:20:21.080
This is just probably my confused idea of what it is.
link |
01:20:24.880
But anyway, in bhakti yoga, there's the concept,
link |
01:20:29.040
it's called, I'm gonna mispronounce it,
link |
01:20:31.520
asinka, sinka, beta, tatva.
link |
01:20:34.280
I'm sorry, I'm mispronouncing it.
link |
01:20:36.960
Which means simultaneous oneness and difference.
link |
01:20:40.760
So.
link |
01:20:41.600
Oneness and difference.
link |
01:20:42.960
Yes, simultaneous oneness and difference.
link |
01:20:44.880
So that's why the oneness is the more
link |
01:20:48.400
part of the same piece of cheese
link |
01:20:50.560
and the difference is we are still each paying taxes.
link |
01:20:54.000
Yes, and in this case, the cheese is Krishna.
link |
01:20:56.640
So, you know, or other ways it gets described
link |
01:21:00.320
is like, you know, a photon blasting off the sun
link |
01:21:03.840
has sunlight qualities, but it's not the sun.
link |
01:21:08.120
Humans being one of the many things, you know,
link |
01:21:12.400
flowing out of the creative consciousness of the divine
link |
01:21:16.040
have qualities that are weirdly like the godlike.
link |
01:21:21.040
You know, like we, in fact, we wanna control primarily.
link |
01:21:24.840
That's one of the problems, like humans wanna be in control,
link |
01:21:29.400
wherein from their, the bhakti yoga perspective,
link |
01:21:32.200
Krishna is effortlessly controlling everything.
link |
01:21:38.040
And so within the system, the individual parts
link |
01:21:40.840
of the system have that same quality,
link |
01:21:43.000
but you can't, you're probably not God.
link |
01:21:45.240
You might be, I'm not.
link |
01:21:46.920
I'm not. What do you think happens after we die?
link |
01:21:52.480
Having come close to that, that, that cliff
link |
01:21:58.200
and almost got pushed over once.
link |
01:22:00.880
What do you think happens when you do get pushed off
link |
01:22:03.640
the cliff? Okay.
link |
01:22:06.840
I feel dumb that I'm even gonna like preface this
link |
01:22:09.280
by saying, obviously I have no fucking idea.
link |
01:22:11.800
And I think that's one of the cool things about death.
link |
01:22:14.160
No idea. The CIA probably does.
link |
01:22:16.680
You think the CIA, I love like,
link |
01:22:19.200
we've decided your audience is the CIA.
link |
01:22:21.840
Yeah, yeah.
link |
01:22:22.880
How would you, oh, wait.
link |
01:22:24.200
I need to, cause there's a lot of suspicion
link |
01:22:26.000
that I might be FSB and Marsad.
link |
01:22:28.200
So I'm trying to rebrand.
link |
01:22:30.120
I'm trying to steer them into the CIA direction.
link |
01:22:35.320
As far as what happens when you, when you die,
link |
01:22:37.800
one thing I returned to when I'm getting overly complex
link |
01:22:40.800
is the idea of as above, so below.
link |
01:22:43.680
So that you can, a lot of the big questions
link |
01:22:47.720
can be answered by your own experience now.
link |
01:22:52.120
So in other words, like in terms of thinking
link |
01:22:57.600
about like death, if you look back to baby Lex
link |
01:23:07.360
versus adult Lex, where's the baby?
link |
01:23:11.560
Like baby's gone.
link |
01:23:13.120
They, you've regenerated all your cells many times by then.
link |
01:23:17.680
So in a way you could say Lex baby died.
link |
01:23:22.200
The death didn't look like a typical,
link |
01:23:24.520
and I'm not trying to dodge it, but I'm just saying
link |
01:23:27.080
it was very natural that the death of that baby.
link |
01:23:29.840
It just, it just.
link |
01:23:32.240
In many ways that baby died, but I am,
link |
01:23:35.120
at least personally I'm surprised
link |
01:23:36.960
how much the person is exactly the same.
link |
01:23:39.240
So there's many ways in which you're very different,
link |
01:23:43.240
but there's a lot of ways in which you're very much the same.
link |
01:23:46.920
And I wonder if that, if there's,
link |
01:23:50.040
if life is defined by many deaths that continue on,
link |
01:23:54.080
and then I wonder if there's something persists beyond
link |
01:23:58.240
in this, that, yeah, there is something
link |
01:24:01.480
that still persists, I wonder.
link |
01:24:02.960
Okay, so that.
link |
01:24:04.560
Now, you know, obviously there's so many different answers
link |
01:24:09.880
to this question that are religious,
link |
01:24:11.600
and ranging from like the most absurd shit
link |
01:24:15.200
you ever heard in your life, like the gold.
link |
01:24:18.120
You're gonna get a mansion.
link |
01:24:19.480
There's gold streets.
link |
01:24:20.800
Like, I don't, do you want like gold streets?
link |
01:24:23.600
Who offers gold streets?
link |
01:24:24.720
I know about the virgins, but there's a bunch of virgins.
link |
01:24:27.800
The Christians give you the gold streets in the mansion.
link |
01:24:30.640
Like depending on the, whatever the particular sect
link |
01:24:35.320
of Christianity is, you know, it's like some kind of city.
link |
01:24:39.040
There's, it's like paved with gold.
link |
01:24:41.360
No one's addressing the fact that at the moment
link |
01:24:43.080
the streets are made of gold.
link |
01:24:44.280
Gold is a valueless substance.
link |
01:24:46.920
I mean, it's sort of pretty in a cheesy kind of way,
link |
01:24:49.440
but no one's gonna give a shit about it.
link |
01:24:50.600
It's like, if there was not a lot of asphalt in the world,
link |
01:24:55.560
then, you know, we'd be in heaven
link |
01:24:57.600
from that same, that way of thinking.
link |
01:24:59.640
But the, or honestly, when going back,
link |
01:25:03.560
this is starting to get a theme with Gulag Archipelago.
link |
01:25:06.920
I'm sorry, I'm reading it currently.
link |
01:25:08.440
That's a sticky book.
link |
01:25:09.840
Yeah, it's very sticky in your mind.
link |
01:25:11.600
Very, very tough.
link |
01:25:12.640
As I'm running through very hot heat,
link |
01:25:14.800
I'm listening to Gulag Archipelago.
link |
01:25:16.960
Oh my God.
link |
01:25:17.800
And you know, one of the things they said,
link |
01:25:19.000
they would feed prisoners salt,
link |
01:25:23.920
and then they would exchange,
link |
01:25:26.360
the prisoners would be able to give up anything, everything,
link |
01:25:30.240
their gold, their possessions,
link |
01:25:31.600
everything for just one drink of water.
link |
01:25:33.680
So that little context of dehydrating them
link |
01:25:37.600
and feeding them salt changes your value system completely.
link |
01:25:41.520
So maybe the gold is supposed to be a metaphor
link |
01:25:44.200
for something that you still value deeply.
link |
01:25:46.320
Yes, it's, yeah, again, any of these things,
link |
01:25:48.920
when you like take them literally, they seem absurd.
link |
01:25:51.200
But if you look deeper into it, it's like quite beautiful.
link |
01:25:54.360
But the Buddhist version of it is that there's a momentum.
link |
01:25:58.160
The best way to put it is it's the kind of momentum.
link |
01:26:00.480
So the thing you're talking about,
link |
01:26:02.800
which is the personality of the baby
link |
01:26:06.520
that is still in the adult,
link |
01:26:08.320
which is still in the old person,
link |
01:26:10.240
you're looking at a kind of momentum
link |
01:26:12.880
that does not stop upon the extinction of the body.
link |
01:26:17.880
Now, I think there's a lot of, I don't want to say harm,
link |
01:26:27.440
because they didn't mean to hurt,
link |
01:26:28.520
but I think there's some harm that maybe has happened
link |
01:26:30.440
from the way death is represented in movies.
link |
01:26:33.280
Like when people die in movies, it's like there's this,
link |
01:26:37.040
usually it's pretty fast,
link |
01:26:38.440
even if it is what they're dying from is a longterm disease,
link |
01:26:42.200
it like wraps up pretty quickly, starts with a cough,
link |
01:26:45.600
the person's in bed,
link |
01:26:46.680
but there's this weird kind of lucidity to the person
link |
01:26:50.000
up until the point of death.
link |
01:26:51.640
And also they generally, in movies, they have makeup on,
link |
01:26:53.920
which is always funny to me when the person dying looks great.
link |
01:26:57.280
If you've ever been around a dying person, they're dying.
link |
01:27:00.160
They look like shit.
link |
01:27:01.320
You're dying.
link |
01:27:02.160
They're all gray and like confused.
link |
01:27:05.160
They're, you know, when you're around dying people,
link |
01:27:07.440
they will spin through time.
link |
01:27:09.880
Your parents won't recognize you for a second.
link |
01:27:11.880
They'll think you're somebody else.
link |
01:27:13.080
They won't, they're like everything's like
link |
01:27:17.280
the process is happening.
link |
01:27:18.440
So you're very confused when you die.
link |
01:27:22.000
So in general, not all the time,
link |
01:27:24.880
some people die with a clear mind.
link |
01:27:26.800
It just depends on the type of death,
link |
01:27:28.560
but think in terms of getting hit by a car.
link |
01:27:32.320
So you went across the street, you get hit by a car.
link |
01:27:35.320
Now, if we're talking about this momentum continuing,
link |
01:27:40.480
the confusion, assuming you didn't hit your head
link |
01:27:42.760
and you're unconscious, like somehow you just got smashed
link |
01:27:45.520
and you're like bleeding out,
link |
01:27:47.720
even then you're gonna be confused
link |
01:27:49.120
because you're getting dizzy,
link |
01:27:50.360
like blood's leaving your body.
link |
01:27:52.080
You're like, things are fading out.
link |
01:27:53.400
Your vision's going.
link |
01:27:54.480
So it's a very confusing experience initially
link |
01:27:57.040
when the body dies.
link |
01:27:58.560
If you are a materialist who has been,
link |
01:28:03.600
who has convinced themselves that it's a permanent thing,
link |
01:28:08.600
the next bit of confusion is going to be
link |
01:28:10.880
when you realize something is persisting here,
link |
01:28:13.640
like I'm still here.
link |
01:28:14.640
And this is where you run into the near death experiences,
link |
01:28:17.600
which are a global phenomena
link |
01:28:18.960
that don't seem to be completely shaped by culture.
link |
01:28:23.720
Like regardless of what part of the world
link |
01:28:25.440
people are having these experiences in,
link |
01:28:27.480
the reports tend to be similar and everyone's heard it,
link |
01:28:31.000
the light, the life review,
link |
01:28:35.600
seeing ancestors and stuff like that.
link |
01:28:38.400
Now, I don't know what that is.
link |
01:28:40.600
I don't know.
link |
01:28:43.520
Sometimes I think that's probably just like a built in way
link |
01:28:46.960
the computer shuts down.
link |
01:28:48.880
This is something it does, who knows?
link |
01:28:50.520
But in Buddhism, the concept is this momentum persists
link |
01:28:55.840
into something called the bardo.
link |
01:28:57.320
The bardo means in between.
link |
01:28:59.240
And there's an actual number of days
link |
01:29:02.360
they say that you get to hang out there.
link |
01:29:04.560
And I can't remember, it's like 37 days or 29 days
link |
01:29:07.720
or something, I'm not sure.
link |
01:29:09.000
But at least from the time space perspective,
link |
01:29:13.160
that's how long they're there.
link |
01:29:14.720
Within this place,
link |
01:29:18.960
there are a lot of technological parallels, man.
link |
01:29:21.760
It's like in the way the algorithm is reflective,
link |
01:29:26.520
it assesses your desires or whatever
link |
01:29:28.840
and then produces something that has within it
link |
01:29:32.320
a component of attraction to you.
link |
01:29:34.800
Apparently this happens in the bardo.
link |
01:29:36.720
Or the way you wake up in the morning
link |
01:29:39.240
and you're in a shitty mood.
link |
01:29:42.920
And then coincidentally, everyone that day is an asshole.
link |
01:29:46.760
If you don't catch it, you could just be like, wow,
link |
01:29:49.120
I guess it's act like an asshole day.
link |
01:29:50.880
You don't realize you're seeing your asshole projection
link |
01:29:55.640
being reflected off the screen of another person.
link |
01:29:58.880
So in the bardo apparently,
link |
01:30:00.480
you don't need people for the reflective quality.
link |
01:30:03.480
These projections happen
link |
01:30:04.920
and they appear as either Nietzsche's demon
link |
01:30:09.080
or Nietzsche's angel.
link |
01:30:10.600
It just depends on where you're at and how you died.
link |
01:30:14.360
And if you died scared, then at least initially
link |
01:30:18.400
that's gonna be some scary shit you see around you.
link |
01:30:20.960
If you died in a peaceful way,
link |
01:30:23.200
well then there's gonna be more of a possibility
link |
01:30:27.280
of navigation through this liminal intermediary place.
link |
01:30:32.280
And so thus the emphasis on meditation in Buddhism,
link |
01:30:36.440
a way to calm one's self, to not be distracted by thoughts,
link |
01:30:41.760
which are their own like apparitions.
link |
01:30:43.960
And then theoretically, if you wanted to,
link |
01:30:47.080
instead of spinning the wheel again
link |
01:30:49.960
and jumping back into a body,
link |
01:30:52.160
you could choose not to do that.
link |
01:30:54.040
And then transcend the wheel of birth and death.
link |
01:30:57.840
But if you still wanted to go back,
link |
01:31:00.440
if you still wanted to go back or return or whatever,
link |
01:31:05.360
however you wanna put it,
link |
01:31:06.640
then you could have more control
link |
01:31:08.800
over what your next birth might be
link |
01:31:12.120
versus in this depiction of things,
link |
01:31:15.080
people running from demons that they don't recognize
link |
01:31:19.000
as their own projection into any fucking body
link |
01:31:23.120
that they can find.
link |
01:31:24.460
Because if you've had a body, you want a body.
link |
01:31:26.880
And so this is how you can incarnate as an animal.
link |
01:31:29.580
This is how you can incarnate in the hell realms.
link |
01:31:32.080
This is how you can incarnate in any variety of things.
link |
01:31:34.280
But the idea is like maybe you could slow down a little bit
link |
01:31:38.680
and like choose a birth
link |
01:31:40.360
that is gonna be more conducive to you
link |
01:31:45.600
continuing to like spiritually evolve.
link |
01:31:48.360
I like that idea.
link |
01:31:49.440
Is it true or not?
link |
01:31:50.480
Who the fuck knows?
link |
01:31:51.320
Algorithmically speaking,
link |
01:31:52.940
it seems like a really fun role playing game
link |
01:31:55.040
where you basically keep improving
link |
01:31:57.960
the different parameters based on your ability
link |
01:32:03.680
and willingness to meditate
link |
01:32:07.180
and let go of the menial concerns of life on earth.
link |
01:32:14.800
Why do you think Buddhists see life as suffering?
link |
01:32:19.200
What's suffering?
link |
01:32:20.680
Okay, well, first of all,
link |
01:32:23.680
that gets mistranslated quite a bit.
link |
01:32:26.360
You're talking about the four noble truths.
link |
01:32:27.960
The first one is,
link |
01:32:29.080
often it's translated as life is suffering,
link |
01:32:31.980
which is not it, it's there is suffering.
link |
01:32:36.800
The whole life is suffering thing
link |
01:32:38.160
is just like a spiritual version of life's a bitch,
link |
01:32:40.640
then you die.
link |
01:32:41.800
And people hear that and they're like,
link |
01:32:42.880
yeah, life is fucking suffering,
link |
01:32:44.840
but it's there is suffering, there is suffering.
link |
01:32:47.360
So it's an affirmation.
link |
01:32:50.000
If you're like this thing that a lot of people feel
link |
01:32:53.360
that they associate with lots of,
link |
01:32:55.240
they have a lot of reasons they think they're feeling it
link |
01:32:57.880
is known as fundamental dissatisfaction.
link |
01:33:00.880
So another word for suffering,
link |
01:33:03.760
maybe it could be fundamental dissatisfaction.
link |
01:33:06.480
Also, the term itself,
link |
01:33:11.220
maybe a better translation is wobbly wheel.
link |
01:33:14.320
So like, imagine like when your bike doesn't have,
link |
01:33:16.880
or your car doesn't have enough air in the tires,
link |
01:33:18.800
your bike doesn't have enough air in the tires,
link |
01:33:21.020
it's kind of a shitty bike ride.
link |
01:33:22.560
Like no matter what, it's kind of like uncomfortable.
link |
01:33:25.720
It's like irritating.
link |
01:33:27.280
So this is what's being pointed to
link |
01:33:30.760
is that there's this quality within a human life
link |
01:33:34.900
that is unsatisfying.
link |
01:33:39.880
Like a wobbly wheel.
link |
01:33:41.240
Wobbly wheel.
link |
01:33:42.600
Why do you think, what is the core of that dissatisfaction?
link |
01:33:48.040
Because it could be as simple as kind of physical
link |
01:33:51.900
and mental discomfort and sadness and depression
link |
01:33:55.480
and all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:33:57.040
Or it could be more speaking to the sort of existentialist,
link |
01:33:59.920
the philosophical, the absurdity of it all.
link |
01:34:03.720
The fact that stuff happens,
link |
01:34:05.540
good stuff happens for no reason,
link |
01:34:07.200
bad stuff happens for no reason.
link |
01:34:10.160
Yeah, it's no matter how much you try,
link |
01:34:15.120
there's not a universal fairness to the whole thing.
link |
01:34:19.220
There's not even a universal meaning to the whole thing.
link |
01:34:22.200
So the existentialist perspective.
link |
01:34:24.800
What flavor of suffering do you prefer?
link |
01:34:27.400
If it was an ice cream shop.
link |
01:34:28.520
That's so funny.
link |
01:34:29.360
Well, I'm definitely picking desire over the,
link |
01:34:32.720
like if in the RGB that we're talking about here
link |
01:34:36.440
is desire, aversion and ignorance.
link |
01:34:41.120
So if you want to find like the three ingredients
link |
01:34:46.120
that are giving everyone their sophisticated bits
link |
01:34:49.900
of suffering, there you go.
link |
01:34:51.320
That's what it is.
link |
01:34:52.820
In which way does desire manifest itself in suffering?
link |
01:34:56.160
It hurts.
link |
01:34:57.140
To lose, to not have.
link |
01:34:59.080
Like, yeah, it hurts to not, like to eternally not have,
link |
01:35:02.920
but just like my friend pointed this out.
link |
01:35:05.240
He's like, you know, like you order something from Amazon.
link |
01:35:09.680
Like even in the smallest way,
link |
01:35:10.860
you're excited about whatever the thing is.
link |
01:35:12.440
You order this thing from Amazon,
link |
01:35:14.160
it's not coming for four days.
link |
01:35:16.080
So those four days are going to be somewhat marked
link |
01:35:18.980
by you being what people say, I'm excited about it.
link |
01:35:22.200
But really, if you look at that feeling, it's uncomfortable.
link |
01:35:25.680
Like the feeling of wanting the thing is uncomfortable.
link |
01:35:28.640
So that is a form of suffering.
link |
01:35:31.040
That's suffering.
link |
01:35:32.320
Interesting.
link |
01:35:33.160
I mean, I wonder,
link |
01:35:34.480
cause we naturally reframe that in our mind, wanting.
link |
01:35:38.960
We reframe that as a good thing.
link |
01:35:41.480
As a, and maybe suffering is fundamentally good
link |
01:35:49.940
in the way we think of what life is.
link |
01:35:52.780
So like, it's life affirming,
link |
01:35:55.740
but it's not usually how the word suffering is used.
link |
01:35:58.300
Well, it's true.
link |
01:36:00.100
It's true.
link |
01:36:00.940
Like the first noble truth of Buddhism is true.
link |
01:36:03.380
It's called the truth of suffering.
link |
01:36:05.300
There is suffering.
link |
01:36:06.740
I mean, this is like an, I don't know,
link |
01:36:08.740
an element that you can't break it down any further than that.
link |
01:36:11.500
Like there is suffering, this is truth.
link |
01:36:13.460
So if you think, you know, and again,
link |
01:36:16.860
assigning like good or bad to truth,
link |
01:36:19.900
I think maybe there's more of a sort of neutrality there.
link |
01:36:23.220
It's just what it is.
link |
01:36:24.780
It's truth.
link |
01:36:25.620
I mean, is it any, is it basically,
link |
01:36:27.900
is suffering any disturbance from stillness?
link |
01:36:33.740
Is suffering then?
link |
01:36:35.220
Like basically any, anything that happens in life that,
link |
01:36:41.140
that's like, that perturbs the system.
link |
01:36:44.020
Ripples in the empty. Ripples.
link |
01:36:45.380
Ripples, yeah.
link |
01:36:46.220
So a still lake is empty of suffering,
link |
01:36:49.660
but any kind of ripple is suffering in that sense.
link |
01:36:54.300
A still lake is empty of suffering.
link |
01:36:56.820
You sound like a Zen master.
link |
01:36:58.420
It seems like something a Zen master might say.
link |
01:36:59.860
If I can just grow a beard like yours.
link |
01:37:01.900
Ah, no, the beard doesn't help.
link |
01:37:03.700
We would, we would.
link |
01:37:04.540
If I had your chin, you think I'd have a fucking beard?
link |
01:37:07.020
I look like a stork.
link |
01:37:08.580
You should see me.
link |
01:37:09.420
If I had your chin, there'd be no beard here.
link |
01:37:11.180
You have a symmetrical, nice chin.
link |
01:37:13.260
This is the closest I can come to plastic surgery.
link |
01:37:16.060
Pubic plastic surgery, friend.
link |
01:37:19.100
That's how you know you're a professional comedian.
link |
01:37:23.220
Yeah, so suffering.
link |
01:37:24.300
There is suffering.
link |
01:37:26.020
And the lake analogy is pretty good because the,
link |
01:37:30.740
um, what's happening here is that,
link |
01:37:36.260
that we have become identified
link |
01:37:40.220
with something that we call a self.
link |
01:37:42.540
So this, the self is just accepted.
link |
01:37:45.220
I have a self, I have an identity,
link |
01:37:46.780
I'm a person, I have a self.
link |
01:37:48.940
But when you start doing scans to try to find yourself,
link |
01:37:55.540
which is the entire thing.
link |
01:37:56.980
I'm going to find myself.
link |
01:37:59.140
You get in a van, go to California, take some acid,
link |
01:38:02.020
fuck a prostitute on the bus or whatever Kerouac did.
link |
01:38:04.740
Too far?
link |
01:38:05.580
I'm going to find myself.
link |
01:38:06.420
Oh, he didn't, she wasn't a prostitute,
link |
01:38:08.180
just to correct the record.
link |
01:38:09.460
Oh, previously a prostitute.
link |
01:38:10.540
I guess once a prostitute, always a prostitute.
link |
01:38:12.260
You know what?
link |
01:38:13.100
She's a former prostitute.
link |
01:38:13.940
I don't think that.
link |
01:38:14.780
No, and look, I'm not, I'm not a sign,
link |
01:38:18.020
look, all I'm saying is, uh, I don't care.
link |
01:38:21.300
Who cares?
link |
01:38:22.140
Who has a bit of prostitute?
link |
01:38:22.980
God, I used to be one of them.
link |
01:38:23.980
We're all kind of a kind of prostitute.
link |
01:38:26.980
Yeah, yes, yes.
link |
01:38:28.780
But the.
link |
01:38:29.620
We make love and we make money.
link |
01:38:32.940
Therefore, we're all a kind of prostitute.
link |
01:38:35.500
We make, God, how great.
link |
01:38:37.260
I would really love to be able to make money by fucking.
link |
01:38:40.740
I mean, it's maybe not directly, but in some sense.
link |
01:38:44.180
Directly.
link |
01:38:45.020
Oh.
link |
01:38:45.860
Yeah.
link |
01:38:46.700
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
link |
01:38:50.220
Do you accept Venmo or?
link |
01:38:51.460
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
link |
01:38:53.500
It's never too late to start.
link |
01:38:55.100
That's so, sort of one of the ways in
link |
01:38:57.460
is this sort of contemplation of the identity,
link |
01:39:00.980
because it's like, uh, you know, what is,
link |
01:39:04.260
it's not just the desire, it's what is having the desire?
link |
01:39:07.180
Where, where does the desire live in?
link |
01:39:08.900
Like, what doesn't want to be where it's at?
link |
01:39:11.580
What is the thing that is like desperately wanting
link |
01:39:15.620
to get out of the situation it's in?
link |
01:39:17.780
And then, um, as far as ignorance, uh,
link |
01:39:21.180
it's still something that's theoretically happening
link |
01:39:24.420
to an identity.
link |
01:39:25.660
So, so wrapped up in it is really just this sort of like,
link |
01:39:30.500
and that's where we run into what, uh, into attachment.
link |
01:39:34.500
So if, if the first noble truth of Buddhism
link |
01:39:37.260
is there is suffering,
link |
01:39:39.060
the second noble truth of Buddhism is, um,
link |
01:39:42.060
the cause of this suffering is attachment.
link |
01:39:47.460
And so people hear that and they take it, that's a,
link |
01:39:50.940
there's a lot of levels to that concept.
link |
01:39:53.300
Definitely the cause of suffering is attachment.
link |
01:39:55.100
Like, God, I just got addicted to vapes.
link |
01:39:57.740
Is there a more embarrassing addiction than vapes?
link |
01:40:01.420
I'm smoking like a little purple thing.
link |
01:40:03.580
It tastes like sugar.
link |
01:40:05.260
It's attachment.
link |
01:40:06.100
It is, there is suffering.
link |
01:40:08.020
I want it.
link |
01:40:09.020
I have to charge it now.
link |
01:40:10.460
I'm embarrassed by it.
link |
01:40:11.900
It makes me feel out of control.
link |
01:40:13.580
There's a lot of suffering,
link |
01:40:14.540
but also there's deeper levels of attachment
link |
01:40:18.540
that go all the way to this attachment
link |
01:40:21.460
to the sense of one's self.
link |
01:40:24.980
And I think the existentialists do get into this idea
link |
01:40:28.820
in a different way, which is like,
link |
01:40:30.660
because I think I'm a me,
link |
01:40:32.500
now I have to push what that thing is out into the world
link |
01:40:37.260
through my actions.
link |
01:40:38.580
And that's a kind of attachment too.
link |
01:40:40.580
Exactly.
link |
01:40:41.420
There you go.
link |
01:40:42.260
Right.
link |
01:40:43.100
And that leads to the third noble truth,
link |
01:40:44.980
which is get rid of attachment
link |
01:40:49.460
and you won't suffer anymore.
link |
01:40:51.220
Uh, that's, it seems logical,
link |
01:40:53.580
but you know, it is a very,
link |
01:40:55.380
it is a mathematical analysis
link |
01:40:57.260
of this particular problem of suffering it's addressing.
link |
01:41:01.500
And then the fourth noble truth
link |
01:41:03.180
is the eightfold path of Buddhism,
link |
01:41:04.860
which is like a process by which one could unencumber oneself
link |
01:41:11.700
from this identification with something that isn't real.
link |
01:41:16.220
Do you need a bathroom break?
link |
01:41:17.700
Yeah.
link |
01:41:18.540
Thank you.
link |
01:41:19.380
I do.
link |
01:41:20.200
I appreciate that.
link |
01:41:21.900
There's a funny moment, I was running in the heat yesterday
link |
01:41:24.180
listening to Gulag Archipelago.
link |
01:41:27.020
And there's a, which was a very welcome break
link |
01:41:30.620
because I'm looking for any excuse to stop whatsoever.
link |
01:41:34.020
The gentleman, very nice gentleman stopped me saying,
link |
01:41:37.140
recognized me and just said a bunch of friendly things.
link |
01:41:40.020
And then he mentioned as one of the people
link |
01:41:43.320
who really inspires him is Duncan Trussell.
link |
01:41:46.300
And I was, I mean, I'm the same way and I told him,
link |
01:41:52.980
you know, tomorrow, it felt like a name drop.
link |
01:41:56.260
I name dropped you this morning.
link |
01:41:58.220
I was like, tomorrow I'm going to get to meet him.
link |
01:42:00.220
So he says, he says, hi.
link |
01:42:01.900
And there's, oh, and he said that he watched
link |
01:42:05.940
Midnight Gospel on mushrooms.
link |
01:42:08.820
And it was like the greatest mushroom experience
link |
01:42:10.940
of his life.
link |
01:42:11.780
I don't know.
link |
01:42:13.220
Yeah, man.
link |
01:42:14.060
Yeah, I was nervous about meeting you, man.
link |
01:42:15.980
Like I have so much respect for you.
link |
01:42:17.340
And like, oh yeah, I name dropped.
link |
01:42:18.780
I was saying I'm going on Lex's podcast today.
link |
01:42:21.700
It's, you look, we're so lucky we all live here.
link |
01:42:24.300
What the fuck?
link |
01:42:25.140
We're all living in Austin together.
link |
01:42:26.380
Like I, I somehow like missed that,
link |
01:42:30.340
but that's, we all got to hang out.
link |
01:42:32.580
We all have to like start doing stuff.
link |
01:42:34.780
Well, you have to really,
link |
01:42:35.620
also you have to appreciate this moment.
link |
01:42:37.260
I remember, I know some people are less sentimental
link |
01:42:42.260
than others, but I remember sitting with Joe Rogan
link |
01:42:49.460
and with Eric Weinstein, I believe it was.
link |
01:42:52.420
Yeah.
link |
01:42:53.260
And at the back of the comedy store
link |
01:42:56.380
shortly before COVID, I think.
link |
01:42:59.460
And just thinking like,
link |
01:43:01.140
there's no way these things will last.
link |
01:43:04.340
And these things meaning the comedy store,
link |
01:43:07.660
Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, the Joe Rogan,
link |
01:43:10.980
like a, like a pocket influential podcasting person.
link |
01:43:14.900
Also a person like in this room, in this space,
link |
01:43:21.500
the ability to just talk for hours
link |
01:43:24.340
and lose ourselves in this moment.
link |
01:43:26.380
It just felt ephemeral, somehow temporary.
link |
01:43:30.700
And I just wanted to capture that moment somehow.
link |
01:43:32.740
Like, I don't know.
link |
01:43:34.100
Sometimes that's where the temptation to take a picture
link |
01:43:36.580
and you're that kind of stuff
link |
01:43:37.500
or record a podcast comes from.
link |
01:43:39.740
But it just felt like it would be, it'd be gone forever.
link |
01:43:43.100
Of course, Joe doesn't seem to have
link |
01:43:45.420
that kind of sentimental.
link |
01:43:47.460
No, sure, no, no.
link |
01:43:48.420
Just wherever you end up,
link |
01:43:49.620
you just enjoy the shit out of it.
link |
01:43:51.060
Right.
link |
01:43:52.060
That's it.
link |
01:43:52.900
Well, and that's something you have to cultivate.
link |
01:43:54.620
You don't, that's not an easy,
link |
01:43:56.100
the thing you're talking about, you know,
link |
01:43:58.580
God, have you seen these?
link |
01:44:00.500
I think the best analogy for what you're talking about,
link |
01:44:03.020
there's these videos where people give like a sugar cube
link |
01:44:05.420
to a raccoon, but the raccoons, they wash their food.
link |
01:44:09.340
So raccoon, or I think it's cotton candy.
link |
01:44:11.260
They give the raccoon cotton candy,
link |
01:44:12.620
immediately it washes the cotton candy.
link |
01:44:14.900
And of course the cotton candy dissolves in the water.
link |
01:44:17.380
And the raccoon is like, what the fuck?
link |
01:44:20.260
Like, you know, and the thing you're,
link |
01:44:22.820
that grasping you're talking about,
link |
01:44:24.340
it's like the raccoon washing the cotton candy.
link |
01:44:26.620
Like the moment you get into the grasping part,
link |
01:44:29.780
you paradoxically have pulled yourself out of the moment
link |
01:44:35.260
that inspired the grasping part.
link |
01:44:37.820
And that's, you know, that's some people,
link |
01:44:40.140
that's the entirety of their lives trying to record.
link |
01:44:43.340
I mean, Jesus, man, you ever see people film fireworks
link |
01:44:46.460
on the 4th of July with their phone?
link |
01:44:48.380
It's one of the most remarkable aspects of human behavior,
link |
01:44:52.620
which is like, you know they're not gonna watch
link |
01:44:55.900
the fireworks on their phone.
link |
01:44:59.140
Only a lunatic would do that.
link |
01:45:00.580
Like who's gonna go back and look at fireworks, but.
link |
01:45:04.100
So, but we're also in this position where,
link |
01:45:06.580
because of podcasting, there is some aspect
link |
01:45:08.860
where you can record a magical moment in time
link |
01:45:11.780
together between two people, or even just with a camera.
link |
01:45:15.940
So to get back to the lake that you were talking about,
link |
01:45:19.420
this is emptiness.
link |
01:45:20.260
So that's emptiness.
link |
01:45:21.180
That's what's known as emptiness.
link |
01:45:22.340
The lake is emptiness.
link |
01:45:23.820
And that's what we are, emptiness, emptiness.
link |
01:45:26.780
And that's another thing that gets very confused
link |
01:45:28.980
in Buddhism is that emptiness.
link |
01:45:32.420
And that emptiness is, that's to me,
link |
01:45:35.820
like when I'm going to do a podcast,
link |
01:45:39.820
that's where I try to go.
link |
01:45:40.900
I try to go just in the moment, no agenda.
link |
01:45:44.340
You know, if I am nervous or whatever,
link |
01:45:46.140
okay, I'll feel the nervousness,
link |
01:45:47.540
but just in the, just drop into the moment.
link |
01:45:50.100
That's when time changes.
link |
01:45:52.060
And then you look up, hours have passed.
link |
01:45:54.340
It feels like a second.
link |
01:45:55.540
And the reason it feels like that is
link |
01:45:57.100
because if you successfully dropped into the moment,
link |
01:46:01.500
it's the lake now, it's emptiness.
link |
01:46:05.060
It's forever for a second.
link |
01:46:06.420
You're like, you're dipping into eternity.
link |
01:46:09.100
And yeah, it's a very strange thing
link |
01:46:13.180
to, as part of that, record it, you know,
link |
01:46:16.900
as part of that, try to like grab it
link |
01:46:18.740
and put it out there, but it works.
link |
01:46:21.660
Can you speak to that, to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour?
link |
01:46:26.220
Can you speak about that purple lavender world you go to
link |
01:46:30.220
when it's most intense and successful for you,
link |
01:46:33.100
when you feel a sense of lightness and happiness
link |
01:46:36.020
when it works, whether it's your own
link |
01:46:39.100
or a conversation with Joe in general,
link |
01:46:41.700
or is, well, yours is very specific
link |
01:46:44.860
because it's audio only.
link |
01:46:45.980
Maybe you can also speak to that.
link |
01:46:47.460
Because you might as well be naked
link |
01:46:50.500
or you don't have to, you have to,
link |
01:46:52.580
you're free of the conventions of the real world.
link |
01:46:56.900
I will never stop thinking it's remarkable.
link |
01:47:01.060
Like the fact that I'm talking to you, to me,
link |
01:47:04.060
seems remarkable, not just technologically,
link |
01:47:06.920
but I'm talking to someone,
link |
01:47:09.640
I'm assuming I'm allowed to say this,
link |
01:47:11.380
who has robot dogs that I've been watching
link |
01:47:15.620
for years evolve on YouTube.
link |
01:47:20.060
Arms reach away from one of these things, you know?
link |
01:47:22.540
And I'm with somebody who is like an acclaimed genius.
link |
01:47:27.700
So for me, it's like, oh my God,
link |
01:47:30.180
how's, what, why do I get to have this conversation?
link |
01:47:33.580
Why do I get to be here?
link |
01:47:34.860
When there'd be like a line,
link |
01:47:36.660
there'd be a line that would just wrapped
link |
01:47:38.660
and wrapped and wrapped around this building
link |
01:47:40.580
of people who'd love a chance to just chat with you.
link |
01:47:43.180
And so when I, with my podcast,
link |
01:47:45.540
that's how I feel like when I'm talking to these guests,
link |
01:47:49.300
you know, who have spent, you know,
link |
01:47:53.300
some of them have like spent their entire lifetime
link |
01:47:56.940
meditating, you know, studying specific aspects of Buddhism
link |
01:48:02.300
or even when I'm with, you know,
link |
01:48:04.180
when I'm with comedians who I like consider
link |
01:48:07.580
to be brilliantly funny.
link |
01:48:08.860
So for me, it's just like, God, I almost feel like
link |
01:48:13.460
I've just created some sophisticated trap for cool people
link |
01:48:17.100
where like I get to like hang out with them.
link |
01:48:19.140
So you're like sitting in the gratitude of it,
link |
01:48:21.740
just feeling lucky.
link |
01:48:23.420
Yeah, yeah, feeling lucky
link |
01:48:25.260
and wrestling with imposter syndrome, you know,
link |
01:48:27.380
trying to like get that part of myself
link |
01:48:28.820
to shut up long enough so I could be in that moment
link |
01:48:31.540
that we're talking about, you know?
link |
01:48:33.380
And then I carry that with me.
link |
01:48:36.020
It's not just like you stop the podcast.
link |
01:48:38.460
It's like some of the things these people tell me
link |
01:48:41.580
or some of the ways they are, like it becomes part of me.
link |
01:48:45.140
And then I get to have a life or this thing
link |
01:48:48.220
that they gave me is in me forever.
link |
01:48:52.020
And so, yeah, it's, there's...
link |
01:48:54.380
Yeah, it's cool how conversation can just,
link |
01:48:56.900
a few sentences can change the direction of your life.
link |
01:49:01.020
If you're listening,
link |
01:49:01.860
if you're there to be transformed by the words,
link |
01:49:05.260
they will do the work.
link |
01:49:06.580
It's, and it's the full mix of it.
link |
01:49:09.860
It's usually when, if you look up to somebody,
link |
01:49:15.300
and it's true for me at least,
link |
01:49:17.020
I think it is for you that you start to look up
link |
01:49:19.220
to basically everybody you talk to.
link |
01:49:20.980
Yes, yes, good sign.
link |
01:49:23.780
That's a good sign.
link |
01:49:24.940
God forbid it goes the other way.
link |
01:49:26.860
You're in trouble.
link |
01:49:27.940
If all of a sudden you start looking down on people,
link |
01:49:30.540
because whatever crazy metric you're using,
link |
01:49:34.260
ooh, that would freak me out.
link |
01:49:35.900
I do feel like that's a quality of getting older.
link |
01:49:38.140
When I was younger, I really, like, I thought I was so smart.
link |
01:49:41.940
Like I thought I had it all figured out.
link |
01:49:43.340
Oh, really?
link |
01:49:44.180
So you're going, your ego is just going,
link |
01:49:46.580
taking a nose dive.
link |
01:49:47.780
I would like to say it's my ego taking a nose dive.
link |
01:49:50.820
Me and my friend talk about it a bunch.
link |
01:49:52.380
We've just always associated it with like doing acid
link |
01:49:55.940
for two decades straight.
link |
01:49:57.620
Like, I'm gonna just assume I'm just like slowly
link |
01:50:00.740
like spiraling into senility, you know?
link |
01:50:02.940
Like, I'm just like, all the confidence,
link |
01:50:06.780
all the like, oh, the certainty when you're having,
link |
01:50:08.860
like in college, having the great,
link |
01:50:11.380
oh, like, you know, you feel like you're a representative
link |
01:50:17.300
of Camus or some shit.
link |
01:50:18.620
You know what I mean?
link |
01:50:19.460
You read the myth of Sisyphus,
link |
01:50:20.660
and now you like it, know all existentialism
link |
01:50:23.780
and your certainty in regards to it is embarrassing,
link |
01:50:27.620
but you don't see it in that way.
link |
01:50:29.660
You just feel certain.
link |
01:50:30.580
And then that certainty, it just starts like,
link |
01:50:33.700
it starts crumbling a little bit.
link |
01:50:35.900
And then, yeah.
link |
01:50:37.820
You know, I get to actually intensely experience
link |
01:50:41.420
that certainty in many communities,
link |
01:50:43.900
but one in cryptocurrency.
link |
01:50:46.340
Young folks with the certainty that this technology
link |
01:50:49.980
will transform the world.
link |
01:50:51.820
And I mean, this is almost one of the big communities
link |
01:50:54.820
of the modern era where they believe
link |
01:50:57.780
that this will really solve so many of the problems
link |
01:51:00.380
of the world, and they believe in it very intensely.
link |
01:51:03.420
And aside from the technology and the details of the thing,
link |
01:51:06.780
all I see is the certainty and the passion in their eyes.
link |
01:51:09.980
They'll stop me.
link |
01:51:11.100
Let me explain you, let me just give me a chance
link |
01:51:15.660
to tell you why this thing is extremely powerful.
link |
01:51:19.140
And I just get to enjoy the glow of that,
link |
01:51:21.700
because it's like, wow, I miss having that certainty
link |
01:51:26.140
about anything.
link |
01:51:27.580
It's probably come over for me too.
link |
01:51:29.860
But when I was younger, it's like,
link |
01:51:32.100
only I deeply understand the relationship of man
link |
01:51:38.700
to his mortality.
link |
01:51:40.300
And I understood that most deeply, I think,
link |
01:51:42.380
when I was like 16 or 17.
link |
01:51:44.300
And I am the representative of the human condition.
link |
01:51:48.260
And all these adults with their busyness of day to day life
link |
01:51:52.300
and their concerns, they don't deeply understand
link |
01:51:55.620
what I understand, which is the only thing that matters
link |
01:51:59.700
is the absurdity of the human condition.
link |
01:52:03.780
Yeah, yeah.
link |
01:52:05.300
And let me quote you some Dostoevsky.
link |
01:52:07.540
Oh boy, and you speak Russian.
link |
01:52:10.220
Yes, I speak Russian.
link |
01:52:11.060
So you've read the Brothers Karamazov in Russian.
link |
01:52:13.620
Unfortunately, I have to admit that I read
link |
01:52:18.380
all of the Dostoevsky in English.
link |
01:52:22.660
I came to this country when I was 13.
link |
01:52:25.500
And at least don't remember, we read a lot,
link |
01:52:27.380
but we read Tolstoy, Pushkin, a lot of the Russian literature
link |
01:52:32.340
but it was in Russian.
link |
01:52:34.060
But I don't remember reading Dostoevsky.
link |
01:52:35.620
I wonder at which point does the Russian education system
link |
01:52:39.780
give you Dostoevsky?
link |
01:52:41.300
Because it's pretty heavy stuff.
link |
01:52:43.220
Second grade, it's probably the second grade.
link |
01:52:45.820
Russians are intense.
link |
01:52:47.500
Yes, they are, they very much are.
link |
01:52:50.140
I don't remember reading Dostoevsky,
link |
01:52:51.540
but I did tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent.
link |
01:52:56.100
I traveled to Paris recently on the way to Ukraine
link |
01:53:00.780
and was scheduled to talk to Richard Pevere
link |
01:53:04.900
and this pair that translate Dostoevsky, Tolstoy,
link |
01:53:09.900
just this famous pair that translate
link |
01:53:13.060
most of Russian literature to English.
link |
01:53:14.900
And I was planning to have a sequence of five, 10,
link |
01:53:20.340
15 hour conversation with them about the different details
link |
01:53:23.020
of all the translations and so on.
link |
01:53:25.500
I just found myself in a very dark place mentally
link |
01:53:28.620
where I couldn't think about podcasts or anything like that.
link |
01:53:31.140
It caught me off guard.
link |
01:53:32.780
So I went to Paris and just laid there for a day.
link |
01:53:36.140
Not just being stressed about Ukraine and all those kinds
link |
01:53:40.220
of things, but I'm still, the act of translation
link |
01:53:44.820
is such a fascinating way to approach some of the deepest
link |
01:53:49.420
questions that this literature raises,
link |
01:53:51.540
which is like, how do I capture the essence of a sentence
link |
01:53:56.460
that has so much power and translate it
link |
01:53:58.420
into another language?
link |
01:53:59.820
That act is actually really, really interesting.
link |
01:54:01.820
And I found with my conversations with them,
link |
01:54:05.660
they've really thought through this stuff.
link |
01:54:09.220
It's not just about language,
link |
01:54:10.700
it's about the ideas in those books.
link |
01:54:12.580
And that also really makes me sad
link |
01:54:15.900
because I wonder how much is lost in translation.
link |
01:54:18.260
I'm currently, so when I was in Ukraine,
link |
01:54:22.580
I talked to a lot of, like half the conversations I had
link |
01:54:26.540
on the record were in Russian,
link |
01:54:29.260
and basically 100% of the record were in Russian
link |
01:54:34.260
in Russian versus in English.
link |
01:54:37.260
And just so much is lost in those languages.
link |
01:54:40.820
And I'm now struggling because I'm launching
link |
01:54:44.460
a Russian channel where there'll be a Russian
link |
01:54:47.940
overdub of Duncan.
link |
01:54:49.300
Wow.
link |
01:54:50.740
Your wow will now be translated into Russian.
link |
01:54:53.340
What's Russian wow?
link |
01:54:55.060
I don't, it'll just be wow probably.
link |
01:54:57.500
I'm so sorry for the difficulties
link |
01:54:59.700
of having to translate wow.
link |
01:55:01.100
Usually probably with wow they'll leave it unoverdubbed
link |
01:55:04.420
because people understand exactly what you mean.
link |
01:55:06.300
But that's an art form, and it's a weird art form.
link |
01:55:09.420
It's like how do you capture the chemistry,
link |
01:55:15.220
the excitement, the, I don't know,
link |
01:55:19.660
maybe the humor, the implied kind of wit.
link |
01:55:25.540
I don't know, there's just layers of complexity
link |
01:55:27.660
in language that it's very difficult to capture.
link |
01:55:30.820
And I wonder how, it is sad for me
link |
01:55:33.460
because I know Russian, how much is lost in translation.
link |
01:55:36.100
And the same, there's a brewing conflict
link |
01:55:39.620
and tension with China now, and so much is lost
link |
01:55:42.660
in the translation between those languages.
link |
01:55:44.460
Oh my God, yeah.
link |
01:55:46.020
And cultures, the entire, the music of the people
link |
01:55:50.700
is completely lost because we don't know the language,
link |
01:55:53.260
or most of us don't know the language.
link |
01:55:54.260
Yeah, how much of the conflict
link |
01:55:55.780
is just problems in translation?
link |
01:55:58.060
How much of all these problems that we're having
link |
01:56:00.700
are just the alien sense of this or that?
link |
01:56:02.620
It's just as simple as that.
link |
01:56:04.460
Words are getting just a tiny warp away from the intent
link |
01:56:13.060
of if, when we both speak the same language,
link |
01:56:16.700
we can still say something that offends someone
link |
01:56:20.540
when you never intended that at all.
link |
01:56:22.980
How much more so when like it's,
link |
01:56:26.460
not only is it a completely different sound,
link |
01:56:29.060
but the script itself is different.
link |
01:56:31.740
Like what is, the Russian writing,
link |
01:56:35.260
is it called Cyrillic or what's the name?
link |
01:56:37.460
Yeah, Cyrillic.
link |
01:56:38.300
Cyrillic, and I don't know the name for Chinese writing,
link |
01:56:41.140
but it's like, it's a continuum that like gets weirder
link |
01:56:45.540
and weirder looking, you know?
link |
01:56:47.100
Like it's, so yeah.
link |
01:56:49.620
Or less weird depending on your perspective.
link |
01:56:51.540
Yeah, I'm sure depending on where you're at.
link |
01:56:54.340
You know, I'm definitely, I'm about the farthest thing
link |
01:56:56.300
from a polyglot as there could be, man.
link |
01:56:58.300
Like, but I'll tell you, at one point
link |
01:57:01.060
when I was getting fascinated by Dostoevsky,
link |
01:57:04.620
I did have this very transient fantasy
link |
01:57:07.220
about learning Russian so that I could like understand
link |
01:57:10.820
the difference and it's.
link |
01:57:12.380
You were 17, 18 at the time.
link |
01:57:14.780
College.
link |
01:57:15.620
Yeah, college.
link |
01:57:16.460
Yeah, Brothers Karamazov lost in that book.
link |
01:57:18.900
Just like, oh God.
link |
01:57:20.740
So in love with it is.
link |
01:57:24.700
But there's definitely like, you know, Ukraine,
link |
01:57:29.580
and this is what a lot of the war is about is saying,
link |
01:57:32.340
you know, Ukraine and Russia are not the same people.
link |
01:57:35.540
There's a strong culture in Ukraine,
link |
01:57:37.020
there's a strong culture in Russia.
link |
01:57:38.820
But you know, I know because that's where my family's from,
link |
01:57:41.660
there is a fascinating, strong culture.
link |
01:57:45.940
But there's such strong cultures everywhere else too.
link |
01:57:50.140
Ireland has a culture, Scotland has a culture.
link |
01:57:52.820
Even like on a tiny island, you just have these like,
link |
01:57:56.180
subcultures that are more powerful than anything
link |
01:57:59.820
existing in human history.
link |
01:58:02.540
Like the Bronx, I don't know, like Brooklyn.
link |
01:58:05.460
Like different parts of New York have a certain culture.
link |
01:58:07.620
And then New York versus LA versus, well.
link |
01:58:10.260
And then certain places are looking for their culture.
link |
01:58:12.860
Like I don't, I think Austin, I don't know what Austin is.
link |
01:58:17.580
And I don't think anyone knows.
link |
01:58:18.660
There's a traditional Austin,
link |
01:58:21.660
and then it's evolving constantly.
link |
01:58:23.580
Same with Boston, a place I spent a lot of time.
link |
01:58:26.440
There's a traditional Boston and now it's evolving
link |
01:58:28.680
with the different younger people coming from university
link |
01:58:32.940
and staying and all of that is evolving.
link |
01:58:35.080
But underneath it, there's a core,
link |
01:58:37.260
like the American ideal of the value of the individual,
link |
01:58:40.180
the value of freedom, of freedom of speech,
link |
01:58:42.820
all those kinds of things that permeates all of that.
link |
01:58:45.740
And the same thing in the history of World War II
link |
01:58:49.820
permeates Ukraine and Russia, a lot of parts of Europe,
link |
01:58:54.560
the memories of all that suffering and destruction,
link |
01:58:57.360
the broken promises of governments
link |
01:58:59.340
and the occupier versus the liberator,
link |
01:59:04.920
all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:59:06.300
All that permeates the culture.
link |
01:59:08.060
That affects how cynical or optimistic you are,
link |
01:59:12.100
or how much you appreciate material possessions
link |
01:59:16.140
versus human connection, all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:59:19.420
Yeah, it's, I mean, this is like, talk about absurdity.
link |
01:59:23.780
I mean, this is, war is like,
link |
01:59:26.100
it's what absurdity looks like.
link |
01:59:28.380
It's some kind of organized madness.
link |
01:59:32.380
None of it makes sense, like all of it,
link |
01:59:34.300
like it's just, none of it makes sense,
link |
01:59:37.260
but it does, but it doesn't.
link |
01:59:38.500
I mean, obviously you're defending yourself
link |
01:59:40.220
or you're taking orders that if you don't take,
link |
01:59:43.980
you're going to jail.
link |
01:59:45.180
And so, or somewhere in between,
link |
01:59:47.780
there's a classic story about this.
link |
01:59:50.380
Maybe it's a bullshit myth about World War II.
link |
01:59:53.540
I'm sure everyone's heard it because it comes up,
link |
01:59:55.700
you know, it's Christmas Eve and they have a ceasefire.
link |
02:00:01.080
And then I think they played soccer,
link |
02:00:03.640
they sing Christmas songs,
link |
02:00:05.000
and then they had to force them into fighting again.
link |
02:00:08.800
And so when those moments happen, the,
link |
02:00:12.900
are you familiar with Hakeem Bey?
link |
02:00:15.300
He's a controversial figure.
link |
02:00:16.880
Sadly, like he, like, I think he was like,
link |
02:00:20.740
I'm not going to defame him
link |
02:00:21.680
because I haven't like researched it correctly,
link |
02:00:24.020
but some people have said shit,
link |
02:00:25.060
but since I don't know the reference, I'm not going to.
link |
02:00:27.380
But regardless, I mean, you know, look,
link |
02:00:30.820
I'm sorry, but Bill Cosby was funny.
link |
02:00:32.900
You know, like that's a funny comedian,
link |
02:00:36.540
but you know the other stuff.
link |
02:00:40.180
Michael Jackson, he could fucking dance.
link |
02:00:43.580
And sing.
link |
02:00:44.420
And sing, but there's some other stuff.
link |
02:00:46.260
But regardless, Hakeem Bey came up with the idea
link |
02:00:50.180
of something called a temporary autonomous zone,
link |
02:00:53.860
which is that within a structure, a cultural structure,
link |
02:00:58.780
a temporary bubble of freedom will appear
link |
02:01:04.220
that by its nature gets sort of popped
link |
02:01:09.420
by the bigger bubble,
link |
02:01:11.420
or it runs out of resources generally is what happens.
link |
02:01:13.860
So these things will appear just out of the blue
link |
02:01:17.160
that it's almost like, imagine if like on earth
link |
02:01:22.420
in some tiny little bit of earth,
link |
02:01:25.120
the gravitational field was reduced by some percentage.
link |
02:01:29.020
And all of a sudden you could jump really high or whatever,
link |
02:01:31.380
but it wouldn't last.
link |
02:01:32.220
It's like that culturally, all the restrictions
link |
02:01:35.140
and the darkness and the heaviness and all of it
link |
02:01:37.280
for a second, somehow this bubble appears
link |
02:01:40.180
where humans come together as the hippie ideal.
link |
02:01:45.900
Brothers, sisters, just humans, earthlings
link |
02:01:50.060
instead of American, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian
link |
02:01:55.640
temporary autonomous zone, it gets crushed
link |
02:01:58.440
by the default reality that it was appearing in.
link |
02:02:01.360
But somehow within that space,
link |
02:02:03.940
you witness the possibility, the possibility,
link |
02:02:08.500
the frustrating possibility that anyone who's thought
link |
02:02:12.020
about humanity knows this possibility,
link |
02:02:16.060
which is like, it seems like we can just get along.
link |
02:02:18.580
Like it does seem like we're pretty much the same thing
link |
02:02:21.420
and that we can just get along.
link |
02:02:23.660
Those moments are really rare.
link |
02:02:26.740
It's sad.
link |
02:02:27.580
I talked to a lot of soldiers, a lot of people
link |
02:02:30.060
that suffered through the different aspects of that war.
link |
02:02:35.060
Or war, and there's an information war
link |
02:02:40.220
that convinces each side that the other
link |
02:02:44.260
is not just the enemy, but less than human.
link |
02:02:47.380
Right.
link |
02:02:48.220
So there's a real hatred towards the other side.
link |
02:02:52.180
Yeah.
link |
02:02:53.180
And those kind of little moments where you realize,
link |
02:02:56.700
oh, they're human like me.
link |
02:03:00.140
Yeah.
link |
02:03:00.980
And not just like human like me,
link |
02:03:03.460
but they have the same values as me.
link |
02:03:06.500
And this woman who was a really respected soldier,
link |
02:03:13.980
she specializes in anti tank missiles.
link |
02:03:18.580
And she's very kind of, very pragmatic,
link |
02:03:23.140
very the enemy is the enemy, you have to destroy the enemy
link |
02:03:26.780
and saying like, there's no compassion towards the enemy.
link |
02:03:29.700
They're not human.
link |
02:03:31.540
They're less than human.
link |
02:03:33.700
But she said there was a moment when she remembers
link |
02:03:38.580
an enemy soldier in a tank took a risk
link |
02:03:43.700
to save a fellow soldier.
link |
02:03:45.620
And that risk was really stupid because he was facing,
link |
02:03:48.220
he was going to get destroyed.
link |
02:03:50.020
And then she said that she tried to shoot a rocket
link |
02:03:57.660
at that tank and she missed.
link |
02:03:59.940
And then she later went home and she couldn't sleep
link |
02:04:02.340
that she missed.
link |
02:04:03.180
How could she screw that up?
link |
02:04:05.180
But then she realized that actually she missed,
link |
02:04:09.220
maybe she missed on purpose.
link |
02:04:10.780
Yeah.
link |
02:04:11.620
Because she realized that that man, just like she is,
link |
02:04:16.820
was a hero, just like she strives to be.
link |
02:04:21.220
They were both heroes defending their own.
link |
02:04:24.940
And in that way, he was just like her.
link |
02:04:27.980
She was like, that's the only time I remember during this
link |
02:04:30.380
war ever feeling like this is another human being.
link |
02:04:33.580
But that was a very brief moment for her.
link |
02:04:36.540
And I just hear that over and over and over again.
link |
02:04:39.420
These romantic notions we have of we're one,
link |
02:04:44.460
that we're all just human.
link |
02:04:46.340
Unfortunately during war, those notions are rare.
link |
02:04:50.820
And it's quite sad.
link |
02:04:51.780
And war in a certain way really destroys those notions.
link |
02:04:54.940
And one of the saddest things is it destroys it,
link |
02:05:01.020
at least from what I see, potentially for generations.
link |
02:05:05.860
Not just for those people for the rest of their life,
link |
02:05:08.220
but for their children, their children's children.
link |
02:05:12.100
The hatred.
link |
02:05:13.780
I mean, I ask that question of basically everyone,
link |
02:05:16.060
which is will you ever forgive, asking of Ukrainians,
link |
02:05:20.700
will you ever forgive the Russians?
link |
02:05:22.860
Will, do you have hate in your heart towards the Russians?
link |
02:05:27.060
Or do you have love for a fellow human being?
link |
02:05:32.140
And there's different ways that people struggle with that.
link |
02:05:36.580
Different people, they saw that, they saw the love,
link |
02:05:40.660
they saw the hate with their known heart.
link |
02:05:43.460
And they struggle with the hate they have.
link |
02:05:45.380
And they know they can overcome it in a period of weeks
link |
02:05:48.580
and months after the war is over.
link |
02:05:50.820
But some people said, no, this hate that was,
link |
02:05:53.620
that showed up in February when the war started
link |
02:05:56.540
will be with me forever.
link |
02:05:57.820
Well, yeah, their kids got killed.
link |
02:06:00.220
What the fuck are you gonna do about that?
link |
02:06:02.140
Like, I don't care.
link |
02:06:02.980
I've got aphorisms and cute little stories about,
link |
02:06:06.820
you're still in prison if you hate your former captors.
link |
02:06:10.140
But man, I gotta tell you, if somebody hurt my kids,
link |
02:06:14.220
I'm not coming back.
link |
02:06:15.180
I mean, there's no amount,
link |
02:06:18.140
at least right now in my approximation,
link |
02:06:21.060
of spiritual literature, meditation,
link |
02:06:24.860
or anything that I can really think of
link |
02:06:26.700
that is going to give me that kind of space.
link |
02:06:31.180
Like, I think I imagine in the same way like,
link |
02:06:36.340
I imagine I could probably run a marathon eventually,
link |
02:06:39.060
but do I think I'm ever gonna do that?
link |
02:06:42.700
That times a million.
link |
02:06:44.100
So man, all we can do is have compassion for their hate
link |
02:06:47.900
because it's like, what are you gonna say?
link |
02:06:51.940
What are you gonna say to someone like that?
link |
02:06:53.580
Oh, oh, you know, for the sake of humanity, let it go.
link |
02:06:58.780
It was just your kids.
link |
02:07:00.380
It was just something you loved
link |
02:07:02.580
more than anything in the world.
link |
02:07:05.300
You'll never be okay again.
link |
02:07:07.060
You're gonna have nightmares for the rest of your life.
link |
02:07:09.380
But you should forgive.
link |
02:07:10.980
No.
link |
02:07:11.820
Well, there is truth in the fact
link |
02:07:12.980
that forgiveness is the way to let go, right?
link |
02:07:15.780
But that truth is not, fuck you, right?
link |
02:07:23.420
Which is why it's not your job to say that.
link |
02:07:26.100
Not that you're doing that, I know you're not.
link |
02:07:28.500
But you know, the problem with people like me,
link |
02:07:31.620
early phase, you could get this stupid missionary thing
link |
02:07:34.740
going where you like, start trying to like,
link |
02:07:38.580
I don't know, like proselytize ideals
link |
02:07:40.780
that you might be incapable of, you know?
link |
02:07:42.660
And I just, hearing it, you know, that's the,
link |
02:07:46.660
man, I saw this, the thing that like,
link |
02:07:49.500
I mean, I've seen a lot, all of us by now,
link |
02:07:51.220
probably if we were online, I've seen,
link |
02:07:53.420
and you just saw it in person.
link |
02:07:54.900
Like we've seen things that are just horrific.
link |
02:07:58.740
But as a dad, man, I just saw this clip of this kid
link |
02:08:03.420
around the age of my kid, walking by himself,
link |
02:08:08.220
these refugees, just walking by himself,
link |
02:08:11.100
crying, the look on his face,
link |
02:08:13.340
I can't explain the look on his face.
link |
02:08:15.780
I don't know what happened to his parents.
link |
02:08:17.060
I don't know what happened.
link |
02:08:18.340
Like I, it was so upsetting.
link |
02:08:21.340
Like even thinking about it now, it's just like, fuck,
link |
02:08:23.580
that could have been my kid.
link |
02:08:24.660
That could have been my kid, you know?
link |
02:08:26.860
So knowing that kind of, that,
link |
02:08:30.500
that kid's gotta grow up now.
link |
02:08:33.500
And I don't know, is the kid's parents still there?
link |
02:08:36.220
And that's just one of countless orphans out there now.
link |
02:08:42.860
So what you have this hate,
link |
02:08:45.180
and the question is how to direct it.
link |
02:08:47.860
Because the choice is you can direct it
link |
02:08:50.500
towards the politicians that started the war.
link |
02:08:53.340
You can direct it towards the soldiers
link |
02:08:55.100
that are doing the killing,
link |
02:08:56.700
or you can direct it towards an entire group of people.
link |
02:09:00.460
And that's the struggle because hate slowly grows
link |
02:09:04.060
to where you don't just hate the soldiers.
link |
02:09:08.420
You don't just hate the leaders.
link |
02:09:11.580
You hate all Russians because they're all equally evil
link |
02:09:17.300
because the ones that aren't doing the fighting
link |
02:09:19.980
are staying quiet.
link |
02:09:21.660
And I'm sure the same kind of stories are happening
link |
02:09:24.140
on the other side.
link |
02:09:25.420
And so there is, that hate is one
link |
02:09:30.420
that is deeply human,
link |
02:09:38.740
but you wonder for your own future, for your own home,
link |
02:09:43.620
for building your own community,
link |
02:09:45.500
for building your own country,
link |
02:09:47.660
how does that hate morph over the weeks and months and years?
link |
02:09:53.140
Not into forgiveness, but into something that's productive
link |
02:09:56.220
that doesn't destroy you.
link |
02:09:57.820
Because hate does destroy.
link |
02:09:59.560
That's the dark aspect of a rocket that hits a building
link |
02:10:06.220
and kills hundreds of people.
link |
02:10:10.900
The worst effect of that rocket
link |
02:10:16.540
is the hate in the hearts of the loved ones
link |
02:10:21.620
to the people that were in that building.
link |
02:10:23.980
That hate is a torture over a period of years after.
link |
02:10:30.100
And that it doesn't just torture
link |
02:10:33.500
by having that psychological burden and trauma.
link |
02:10:36.340
It also tortures because it destroys your life.
link |
02:10:39.620
It prevents you from being able to enjoy your life
link |
02:10:42.460
to the fullest.
link |
02:10:44.420
It prevents you from being able to flourish as a human being,
link |
02:10:49.300
as a professional, in all those kinds of ways
link |
02:10:53.700
that humans can flourish.
link |
02:10:54.980
And I don't know.
link |
02:10:57.100
It's such a, there is an aspect where this naive notion
link |
02:11:05.740
is really powerful, that love and forgiveness
link |
02:11:09.100
is the thing that's needed in this time.
link |
02:11:12.340
And when I talk to soldiers, they don't,
link |
02:11:18.380
I remember bringing up to Jaco,
link |
02:11:21.620
is there a sense where the people you're fighting
link |
02:11:23.820
are just brothers in arms,
link |
02:11:25.180
bringing up the Dire Straits song, Brothers in Arms?
link |
02:11:28.820
And he was basically, without swearing, saying fuck that,
link |
02:11:31.880
that they're the enemy.
link |
02:11:33.060
Yeah, I mean, he's literally in survival mode.
link |
02:11:36.380
He can't think like that.
link |
02:11:37.380
It's gonna create latency in the system
link |
02:11:39.220
and that's gonna lower his survivability.
link |
02:11:40.860
You can't think that.
link |
02:11:41.700
I mean, we're talking about cognitively.
link |
02:11:44.300
You can't have latency.
link |
02:11:45.660
Like, if you're, that one moment of hesitation,
link |
02:11:49.100
you see it sometimes in these YouTube videos
link |
02:11:51.300
of like somebody, a new cop has been unfortunate enough
link |
02:11:59.220
to run into something that is a phenomenon, suicide by cop.
link |
02:12:03.060
Somebody has a knife and that person is running towards them
link |
02:12:07.060
with a knife and they're begging the person to stop,
link |
02:12:10.940
that you can hear it in their voice.
link |
02:12:12.460
They're begging, stop, stop, stop, stop.
link |
02:12:17.260
And the person is not gonna stop.
link |
02:12:19.220
So the critique of that is that that latency
link |
02:12:27.860
could potentially not just lead to the cop getting killed,
link |
02:12:31.000
but to that person with a knife killing other people.
link |
02:12:34.380
And so, you know, I get, if I were out there,
link |
02:12:39.300
I think that like, you probably just as a matter
link |
02:12:44.340
of like not getting shot and being fully in the moment,
link |
02:12:47.900
you have to be like that.
link |
02:12:48.860
I would guess, I don't know.
link |
02:12:50.140
I don't know, I'm the furthest thing
link |
02:12:51.300
from a soldier there could be,
link |
02:12:52.300
but there's something Jack Kornfield,
link |
02:12:57.580
this great Buddhist teacher says,
link |
02:12:58.720
which is tend to the part of the garden you can touch.
link |
02:13:03.420
Meaning this is where we're at right now.
link |
02:13:05.900
Thank God you and I, though we are experiencing
link |
02:13:09.220
some like ripples from what's going on over there,
link |
02:13:11.980
everyone is, we're not there.
link |
02:13:14.220
And thank God we don't have to come up
link |
02:13:17.460
with the psychological program
link |
02:13:21.860
for people going through that
link |
02:13:24.020
to no longer be encumbered by that hate.
link |
02:13:27.620
Thank God.
link |
02:13:28.460
And I don't know if that's just lazy or whatever,
link |
02:13:30.220
but it's like, you know, for me,
link |
02:13:31.940
I just, I have to bring it back to,
link |
02:13:33.500
all right, well, here's where I'm at now.
link |
02:13:35.600
And I don't want there to be war.
link |
02:13:41.160
I don't want to hurt people, but yeah, I love what you said.
link |
02:13:44.660
I think what you said is the, if anything,
link |
02:13:47.660
is the most intelligent way of looking at it.
link |
02:13:52.500
It's like, don't pretend that you're not gonna feel
link |
02:13:55.820
that hate, like you're gonna feel it.
link |
02:13:58.360
There's no way around it.
link |
02:13:59.200
Or like, cause that's even worse.
link |
02:14:00.500
Cause then you're almost saying like something's wrong
link |
02:14:02.200
with them for feeling the hate or, you know, whatever.
link |
02:14:05.300
But more along the lines, if you can avoid applying
link |
02:14:09.300
that hate to an entire country of people, then do that.
link |
02:14:18.060
Like, just understand, we're talking about like a,
link |
02:14:24.260
not everybody.
link |
02:14:25.140
I know it's not everybody.
link |
02:14:26.500
I know it's not everybody.
link |
02:14:27.580
It's just easier, isn't it?
link |
02:14:28.660
Cognitively, it's somehow easier to think all Russians,
link |
02:14:33.940
monsters, you know, all Russians,
link |
02:14:37.860
all whatever the particular like thing is
link |
02:14:40.100
that you're supposed to not like.
link |
02:14:42.060
It's easier somehow, weirdly.
link |
02:14:43.920
You'd think that'd be more difficult.
link |
02:14:45.900
Yeah, but I guess the lesson is if you give in
link |
02:14:50.900
to the easy solution, that's going to lead
link |
02:14:55.660
to detrimental longterm effects.
link |
02:14:58.280
So hate should be, it's such a powerful tool
link |
02:15:03.280
that you should try to control it for your own sake.
link |
02:15:08.520
Not because you owe anything to anybody,
link |
02:15:10.320
but for your own psychological development over time.
link |
02:15:14.520
Right, right, that's it, that's it, fuck.
link |
02:15:19.080
Yeah, yeah.
link |
02:15:21.400
In terms of dark places, you suffered from depression.
link |
02:15:26.640
Where has been some of the darker places
link |
02:15:28.360
you've gone in your mind?
link |
02:15:31.480
You know, I needed therapy, man.
link |
02:15:32.720
I needed therapy for the longest time, I just didn't get it.
link |
02:15:36.640
So because of that, I would go through like bouts
link |
02:15:44.360
of like paralytic depression, like suicidal depression,
link |
02:15:49.400
suicidal ideations that were more than just ideations.
link |
02:15:51.760
I mean, I think like people get afraid
link |
02:15:56.320
when the thought of suicide appears in their consciousness,
link |
02:15:59.540
they get really scared of themselves.
link |
02:16:01.160
So they think there's something like,
link |
02:16:03.100
fuck, what's going on with me?
link |
02:16:04.120
Why would I think that?
link |
02:16:04.960
But I think if we are suffering and, you know,
link |
02:16:08.080
as a natural part of not wanting to reduce suffering
link |
02:16:11.280
or not feel bad anymore, I mean, suicide is going to be an,
link |
02:16:16.040
like, if we're just, you know, you're just looking,
link |
02:16:17.400
what are all the options?
link |
02:16:18.280
Let's brainstorm here.
link |
02:16:19.920
You know what I mean?
link |
02:16:20.760
I could start drinking more water.
link |
02:16:22.480
You start jogging, get some therapy, call my friends,
link |
02:16:26.120
all the stuff we all hear.
link |
02:16:27.840
Or I could just, I think the height
link |
02:16:30.200
of my apartment building is probably the,
link |
02:16:31.920
definitely the right height to kill myself.
link |
02:16:34.520
And then, so where, for me, like the few times
link |
02:16:39.120
where the ideation has gone towards like,
link |
02:16:43.600
well, when would I do that?
link |
02:16:45.480
How do I, what, you know, what do I need
link |
02:16:47.480
to like accomplish that?
link |
02:16:50.080
When then like, that's where it gets really fucking scary.
link |
02:16:52.940
That's where it's like terrifying.
link |
02:16:54.400
And so you start the actual details of the planning
link |
02:16:57.800
of how to commit suicide.
link |
02:17:00.080
Yeah.
link |
02:17:00.960
What's going to be the least painful way to do it?
link |
02:17:02.760
What's going to be the most instantaneous way to do it?
link |
02:17:04.680
What's the, you know, and with, you know,
link |
02:17:06.640
with depression, because it can be progressive,
link |
02:17:11.080
you know, this is why you have to really just stay
link |
02:17:13.600
on top of it.
link |
02:17:14.440
Anyone who's gone through depression
link |
02:17:15.360
knows what I'm talking about.
link |
02:17:16.240
You gotta stay on top of it.
link |
02:17:17.320
Like you might need medication.
link |
02:17:18.600
You know, I know this is controversial now,
link |
02:17:20.560
but it's still better than dying if you ask me.
link |
02:17:22.720
But at some point with depression,
link |
02:17:24.800
it like becomes paralyzing.
link |
02:17:26.620
So you don't want to get out of bed anymore
link |
02:17:28.200
and you're not taking showers anymore.
link |
02:17:30.060
And you don't want to talk to anybody anymore.
link |
02:17:31.680
And you're not answering your phone anymore.
link |
02:17:33.160
And, you know.
link |
02:17:35.200
So like in a dark place that you might be in,
link |
02:17:38.360
it still might get worse.
link |
02:17:39.840
So you should really do everything you can
link |
02:17:43.760
to get under control.
link |
02:17:45.400
And that's the problem with that specific
link |
02:17:47.440
psychological disorder.
link |
02:17:49.380
That's the problem.
link |
02:17:50.440
Because the things it's like,
link |
02:17:52.480
if you start listening to what you want to,
link |
02:17:54.880
you think it's you, it's the depression.
link |
02:17:56.600
You start listening to it.
link |
02:17:58.320
It wants you to stay in bed.
link |
02:18:00.840
And then you're getting those fucking depression sleeps,
link |
02:18:03.960
you know, or you wake up and you're more tired.
link |
02:18:06.400
Like it's not working.
link |
02:18:07.760
You're trying to escape reality by sleeping.
link |
02:18:11.360
And so, yeah.
link |
02:18:13.680
Like you have to like,
link |
02:18:15.600
you're fighting for your,
link |
02:18:18.360
you're literally fighting for your life.
link |
02:18:19.800
It might not seem like that.
link |
02:18:20.840
Cause you can't, if you could see depression,
link |
02:18:23.460
if you could see it,
link |
02:18:24.300
if you knew you had some inky, vaporous octopus thing
link |
02:18:28.920
that was just wrapping around you
link |
02:18:31.320
more and more and more and more,
link |
02:18:33.280
you would probably do everything you could
link |
02:18:34.600
to rip that fucking thing off your body.
link |
02:18:36.120
And if you couldn't get it off your body,
link |
02:18:38.000
you would be calling people to get help.
link |
02:18:41.120
So it doesn't feel like a fight because you're exhausted.
link |
02:18:43.520
There's no reason to move.
link |
02:18:45.280
There's no, you don't see the meaning for any of it.
link |
02:18:48.000
So it doesn't feel like a battle, but it is a battle.
link |
02:18:50.200
You're not feeling.
link |
02:18:51.040
I mean, that's the other thing.
link |
02:18:51.860
You're just, you're basically not feeling.
link |
02:18:53.560
You're like, you start going numb.
link |
02:18:55.600
At least that was my experience with it.
link |
02:18:57.520
Numb and tired.
link |
02:18:58.760
And then increasingly numb and tired.
link |
02:19:01.420
And then increasingly sort of disconnecting from reality.
link |
02:19:05.240
And then somewhere in there,
link |
02:19:06.360
that's when you start playing around with the idea
link |
02:19:08.840
of like, oh, I don't know if it's worth it.
link |
02:19:10.680
I don't know.
link |
02:19:11.520
Now, you know, I think compared to some of my friends
link |
02:19:14.640
who haven't survived,
link |
02:19:15.940
obviously who haven't survived depression,
link |
02:19:17.920
like mine was definitely not whatever theirs was like.
link |
02:19:21.840
I've heard, I mean, to understand it for folks out there,
link |
02:19:26.320
maybe you haven't gone through it.
link |
02:19:27.280
Just imagine if like, how bad you have to feel
link |
02:19:30.560
if death is the solution,
link |
02:19:32.720
like violence against yourself
link |
02:19:35.200
so that you die is the solution.
link |
02:19:37.120
Like just, it flies in the face of everything.
link |
02:19:43.080
So yeah, that was definitely the darkest place
link |
02:19:48.100
that I've ever been.
link |
02:19:48.940
Just that death doesn't seem like, because you don't care
link |
02:19:52.440
about anything anymore,
link |
02:19:54.160
that death just doesn't seem like that bad.
link |
02:19:56.440
Yeah.
link |
02:19:58.580
Like you're not able to appropriately assign
link |
02:20:02.720
the negative costs to the solution.
link |
02:20:05.620
Right.
link |
02:20:06.460
It just seems like a reasonable solution.
link |
02:20:07.820
Yeah, but I think also what's going along with it
link |
02:20:11.840
is like, it's not like your brain isn't working.
link |
02:20:15.280
Like you're not thinking,
link |
02:20:17.600
obviously you're not thinking clearly.
link |
02:20:19.240
Like, at least again, this was my experience of it.
link |
02:20:22.760
It's a fog.
link |
02:20:23.920
You're in some kind of, like you're confused.
link |
02:20:27.640
There's confusion.
link |
02:20:29.160
There's shame.
link |
02:20:31.280
You feel embarrassed.
link |
02:20:32.200
You feel embarrassed.
link |
02:20:33.140
You wanna get out of bed.
link |
02:20:34.040
You wanna do stuff.
link |
02:20:34.920
You wanna be compelled to be social and do all this stuff,
link |
02:20:38.360
but you're not, you're not.
link |
02:20:40.480
Like you seem, if people don't know what's going on
link |
02:20:42.800
and you're not telling them because you're embarrassed,
link |
02:20:45.120
because you want to have some like,
link |
02:20:48.880
you know, uncorrupted, unworped psyche,
link |
02:20:54.100
you know, you're like, it invites you to be secret about it.
link |
02:20:57.920
That's one of its first tricks
link |
02:20:59.400
is it tells you not to tell anybody.
link |
02:21:01.640
And that's deadly in that case, it's deadly.
link |
02:21:06.320
What was the source of light?
link |
02:21:07.840
What was the, what were for you
link |
02:21:11.840
and in general the ways out?
link |
02:21:14.200
Yeah, so for me, the solutions,
link |
02:21:19.120
and again, man, for my depressed friends out there,
link |
02:21:22.120
please don't get mad at me.
link |
02:21:23.140
I'm not doing the thing of like,
link |
02:21:24.200
just put on a smile or any of that bullshit
link |
02:21:26.800
because it doesn't feel like that
link |
02:21:28.040
when you're like, and when you're fighting it,
link |
02:21:31.920
it's like you are, you're in a,
link |
02:21:36.680
I don't know why I keep using these stupid gravity analogies,
link |
02:21:39.360
but it's like the gravity's been turned up on your planet
link |
02:21:42.240
in every single way by, so getting out of bed.
link |
02:21:45.400
You know, like.
link |
02:21:47.840
By the way, gravity and quantum mechanics,
link |
02:21:50.640
one of the most beautiful things about our reality,
link |
02:21:54.040
what the hell is each of those things?
link |
02:21:56.720
So this isn't, you're not just talking about
link |
02:22:00.880
hippie language, it's still physicists
link |
02:22:04.120
pretend they understand something.
link |
02:22:05.920
We're still at the very beginning of understanding
link |
02:22:07.840
this mysterious world of ours
link |
02:22:09.680
that seems to be functioning according
link |
02:22:11.640
to these weirdly simple and yet universally powerful laws,
link |
02:22:18.080
which we don't fully yet understand.
link |
02:22:20.680
So please, the metaphor and the analogy of gravity.
link |
02:22:24.040
Okay, thank you.
link |
02:22:24.880
Fully, fully applicable.
link |
02:22:25.700
I don't know any other way to put it
link |
02:22:26.540
than it's like somebody turned the gravitational field
link |
02:22:28.520
of your mattress up by.
link |
02:22:29.720
So everything is heavy.
link |
02:22:30.680
Heavy, your body's heavy.
link |
02:22:33.060
You don't wanna get out of bed,
link |
02:22:34.020
you will consider shitting or pissing the bed
link |
02:22:36.800
because you're just like, who gives a fuck,
link |
02:22:38.180
I'll just lay in my shit and piss.
link |
02:22:40.280
You're dying, you're like, none of it makes sense.
link |
02:22:50.160
And I feel like in retrospect,
link |
02:22:52.040
I'm making what I've done a little,
link |
02:22:55.900
like I had more lucidity.
link |
02:22:57.360
It was more of like when you're wrestling with someone
link |
02:23:02.880
and you're just like, it's different for you.
link |
02:23:06.920
But for me, if I'm wrestling,
link |
02:23:08.080
I'm not thinking about jujitsu moves.
link |
02:23:10.000
I'm like.
link |
02:23:10.840
Survival.
link |
02:23:11.680
You're just.
link |
02:23:12.500
So it's like that.
link |
02:23:13.340
It is a struggle.
link |
02:23:14.960
Like it's like, you really have to deliberately fight.
link |
02:23:20.580
Everything.
link |
02:23:21.420
So you start, so you can almost have a conversation
link |
02:23:25.760
with the depression.
link |
02:23:27.560
And then what you do is you start doing the opposite
link |
02:23:30.880
of everything it's telling you to do.
link |
02:23:33.260
So it's telling you lay in bed.
link |
02:23:36.620
So you get out of bed.
link |
02:23:38.300
It's definitely telling you don't fucking exercise.
link |
02:23:41.760
You're gonna go fucking exercise.
link |
02:23:43.160
That's not gonna do anything.
link |
02:23:44.200
You can't.
link |
02:23:45.040
You probably have a heart attack.
link |
02:23:46.440
You really wanna go outside.
link |
02:23:48.080
Don't go fucking exercise.
link |
02:23:50.680
And it'll feel crazy.
link |
02:23:53.360
And you won't wanna do it.
link |
02:23:54.860
If you wanted to do it, you wouldn't be depressed.
link |
02:23:57.380
Like how often do you hear
link |
02:23:58.480
like one of the symptoms of depression?
link |
02:24:00.400
You wanna jog.
link |
02:24:01.560
You wanna get on a bike.
link |
02:24:02.960
You know, you don't hear that.
link |
02:24:04.000
That's not a symptom.
link |
02:24:04.920
So you start, at least one solution
link |
02:24:08.600
I just started doing the opposite of.
link |
02:24:11.920
Whatever the voice is telling you, do the opposite.
link |
02:24:14.440
That.
link |
02:24:15.280
And then suddenly the gravitational field
link |
02:24:21.240
diminishes a little bit.
link |
02:24:22.280
It doesn't go all the way away.
link |
02:24:23.560
And that's where you can fall right back into it
link |
02:24:25.600
cause you just feel even slightly better.
link |
02:24:27.600
You're like, oh, okay, I fixed it.
link |
02:24:29.720
You know, really, I think if you like
link |
02:24:31.200
and having been through therapy, the best solution
link |
02:24:37.120
would be go to a fucking therapist as quickly as you can.
link |
02:24:42.840
Just sit down with them and tell them what's going on.
link |
02:24:46.920
I know what you're thinking.
link |
02:24:47.760
How am I gonna find a therapist?
link |
02:24:49.680
Just do it.
link |
02:24:51.540
Google it, go on Yelp.
link |
02:24:53.280
All of this shit feels impossible.
link |
02:24:56.080
You're like, I don't wanna turn on the computer.
link |
02:24:57.480
I don't wanna do any of this.
link |
02:24:58.400
You just have to.
link |
02:24:59.240
I mean, you have to.
link |
02:25:00.080
You do it if you're on fire.
link |
02:25:01.680
You do it if you're on fire.
link |
02:25:02.680
And someone's like, you know,
link |
02:25:03.520
here's a way to not be on fire.
link |
02:25:05.320
Just this particular fire is,
link |
02:25:07.800
it doesn't make you wanna run around screaming.
link |
02:25:09.880
It just makes you wanna fall asleep forever.
link |
02:25:11.520
And that, but those little steps,
link |
02:25:15.160
I got lucky because it worked.
link |
02:25:16.960
It worked, I started exercising.
link |
02:25:18.720
I'd been on antidepressants before
link |
02:25:20.960
when I was originally diagnosed with it.
link |
02:25:24.640
Did those help?
link |
02:25:26.000
You know, I, even with all the current research
link |
02:25:28.880
coming out about, that maybe we were all wrong
link |
02:25:31.640
about our understanding of depression,
link |
02:25:33.920
I do feel like it helped in a certain way.
link |
02:25:38.400
Like it definitely, it definitely like
link |
02:25:42.160
made me stop thinking about,
link |
02:25:43.400
it stopped the intrusive thoughts.
link |
02:25:45.220
And, but I don't know how much of that was placebo
link |
02:25:48.160
or how much of that, I don't know.
link |
02:25:49.320
But then also like I couldn't cum anymore.
link |
02:25:51.720
That was the other fucked up thing.
link |
02:25:53.280
Like you're, you can't have orgasms.
link |
02:25:55.640
And which might not sound like a big deal,
link |
02:25:58.800
but you know, when I told my therapist
link |
02:26:02.120
that they actually took me off them,
link |
02:26:03.760
cause I think she was realizing
link |
02:26:05.640
that it started diminishing a little bit.
link |
02:26:07.980
But the one I'm talking about now,
link |
02:26:11.080
that whatever episode or whatever you wanna call it,
link |
02:26:14.400
I just got lucky cause it worked.
link |
02:26:16.360
It worked and I started feeling better, thank God.
link |
02:26:19.080
Now, if you suffer from depression out there
link |
02:26:22.160
and you've had a remission of the depression,
link |
02:26:24.280
you know, it's really like,
link |
02:26:26.080
it's scary to have mental illness
link |
02:26:27.840
because everyone gets bummed out.
link |
02:26:32.760
I mean, that's just normal.
link |
02:26:33.920
Like you're gonna get bummed out
link |
02:26:35.080
and I don't wanna do anything sometimes.
link |
02:26:36.600
It doesn't mean you have a clinical depression.
link |
02:26:38.160
You might just be bummed out or grieving.
link |
02:26:40.220
You might be any number of things.
link |
02:26:42.520
But when I get really nervous,
link |
02:26:46.960
if some of those symptoms start showing up.
link |
02:26:49.920
And at one point I felt like that was happening again.
link |
02:26:54.920
And I did intramuscular ketamine therapy,
link |
02:26:59.480
which now that was the damnedest thing
link |
02:27:02.920
I've ever experienced.
link |
02:27:04.080
Aside from the fact that ketamine is immensely psychedelic.
link |
02:27:10.860
I just remember going back to the hotel
link |
02:27:14.080
after the experience with the clinician.
link |
02:27:17.200
And like, you know, it's like with depression,
link |
02:27:21.900
it's like a headache that starts coming on.
link |
02:27:24.700
But you're like, this headache might last for years.
link |
02:27:27.160
It might last for six months.
link |
02:27:28.640
It might get worse and worse and worse.
link |
02:27:30.840
And so I went back to the hotel room and it was just gone.
link |
02:27:37.280
Like I just felt normal.
link |
02:27:38.480
It felt great.
link |
02:27:39.440
It was like the most remarkable thing ever.
link |
02:27:42.560
So, you know, look at the research on ketamine right now.
link |
02:27:45.960
It's like, it's not like bullshit.
link |
02:27:49.080
It's not like woo science.
link |
02:27:50.560
There's really, really good data out there
link |
02:27:52.240
showing that something like, I think it's 60%.
link |
02:27:55.480
I don't know what the percentage is,
link |
02:27:56.680
but 60% of people with an endogenous depression
link |
02:28:02.200
when they get ketamine therapy will experience remission,
link |
02:28:06.480
regardless of whether you trip out or not.
link |
02:28:08.320
It just does something that I don't know
link |
02:28:10.960
if they know what it is yet.
link |
02:28:11.960
I don't care if they do.
link |
02:28:12.800
But that one thing worked.
link |
02:28:14.060
And basically you keep fighting until something works.
link |
02:28:17.600
Exactly.
link |
02:28:18.440
It's a survival issue.
link |
02:28:19.760
And it's a survival issue.
link |
02:28:21.000
But it's just, I think because it's kind of so slow moving,
link |
02:28:24.500
you might even forget it's progressive.
link |
02:28:26.760
Or, you know, you could easily just think
link |
02:28:28.320
that you're just a kind of bummed out person.
link |
02:28:30.880
Or you start thinking that these aspects of your psychology
link |
02:28:34.960
are permanent when they don't have to be.
link |
02:28:37.360
What about other people in your life?
link |
02:28:39.980
What advice would you give to people
link |
02:28:41.700
that have loved ones who suffer from depression?
link |
02:28:44.720
What are they to do?
link |
02:28:46.360
Okay, now this is really like, man, it's really dark.
link |
02:28:54.680
Here's number one.
link |
02:28:57.480
This is what somebody told me
link |
02:28:59.240
when I lost a friend to suicide, you know?
link |
02:29:00.980
Because when you lose a friend to suicide,
link |
02:29:02.800
when you lose a loved one to suicide,
link |
02:29:04.600
you're gonna blame yourself.
link |
02:29:05.760
It's like in the periphery of suicide,
link |
02:29:10.920
there is a circumference of guilty people
link |
02:29:14.480
who all feel like, oh, if only I'd said this
link |
02:29:17.240
at the right time, if only I'd listened more,
link |
02:29:19.600
if only I'd seen that warning sign,
link |
02:29:22.160
if only this or that.
link |
02:29:25.080
It's interesting in that with other forms of like disease,
link |
02:29:31.820
you know, if your loved one dies from cancer, say,
link |
02:29:37.160
more than likely, you're not gonna be thinking like,
link |
02:29:39.600
oh, I should have cured their cancer.
link |
02:29:41.440
You know, like it's a tragedy,
link |
02:29:43.440
but at least you're not like, oh, if only I had.
link |
02:29:46.120
You still might think that's part of grief, but.
link |
02:29:49.560
It's not as sticky in many of the other situations.
link |
02:29:52.120
Here, the guilt couldn't really stay for a long time.
link |
02:29:55.360
Yep, so you, number one, we're talking about
link |
02:30:02.320
a progressive disease that can lead to death.
link |
02:30:05.360
And if somebody commits suicide,
link |
02:30:07.920
they wanted to commit suicide.
link |
02:30:09.420
And at least what I've been told is you can't stop it.
link |
02:30:12.920
It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.
link |
02:30:15.840
There are no magic words.
link |
02:30:16.840
There's nothing you could do.
link |
02:30:18.240
So, you know, people who've lost people to suicide,
link |
02:30:21.520
you know what I'm talking about.
link |
02:30:23.000
Like, you know, you can watch it happen in real time
link |
02:30:26.320
and there's just nothing you could do.
link |
02:30:29.760
That being said, you know, being responsive
link |
02:30:34.140
to when it seems like someone's really reaching out
link |
02:30:36.120
for help and knowing that maybe even though it might,
link |
02:30:40.840
especially if it's someone who's like, doesn't talk
link |
02:30:42.960
like this a lot of the time,
link |
02:30:44.760
and sentences start coming out of their mouth,
link |
02:30:47.160
that if you weren't really paying attention,
link |
02:30:49.480
might not seem like a big deal,
link |
02:30:50.960
but for this person, it's kind of anomalous
link |
02:30:52.920
that all of a sudden that's happening.
link |
02:30:56.480
Now there, that's when you can be a good listener
link |
02:30:59.560
and, you know, open up to them and hear what they're saying
link |
02:31:01.960
and see like, oh, shit, are they asking me for it?
link |
02:31:04.160
Is this them asking for help?
link |
02:31:05.800
And even if you're like, I don't know what to do,
link |
02:31:08.720
you know, at least you can like start checking in on them,
link |
02:31:14.060
you know, start like help them understand
link |
02:31:16.640
that you're there for them
link |
02:31:17.960
and then hopefully get them into therapy,
link |
02:31:19.680
get them to a doctor, get them to a professional
link |
02:31:22.720
who can like see what's going on there.
link |
02:31:25.080
So that, and then there's hope.
link |
02:31:27.040
And even then there might not be hope actually,
link |
02:31:28.720
you know, doctors can't stop it.
link |
02:31:30.240
There's no, sometimes it just, that's the way it goes.
link |
02:31:34.540
But, you know, I know that like being sensitive,
link |
02:31:39.120
if somebody's like all of a sudden hitting you up
link |
02:31:41.460
or reaching out to you that normally isn't like that
link |
02:31:44.320
and just, what's going on?
link |
02:31:46.060
How are you?
link |
02:31:46.900
And just listen.
link |
02:31:48.040
Which in general, depression or not,
link |
02:31:50.600
is probably a good thing to do.
link |
02:31:52.960
Yeah.
link |
02:31:53.780
To truly listen.
link |
02:31:56.560
It's like, are you okay?
link |
02:31:57.760
Yeah, yeah.
link |
02:31:59.480
Because people have, you know,
link |
02:32:01.000
this whole thing of like cries for help, man.
link |
02:32:03.720
Sometimes they just look like a weird text.
link |
02:32:06.560
You know, and you don't realize
link |
02:32:08.240
for the person to send that fucking text,
link |
02:32:10.000
they've been thinking about it all morning.
link |
02:32:12.100
They've been just trying to get their phone up
link |
02:32:14.920
from the floor.
link |
02:32:16.440
So, you know, I think that's it.
link |
02:32:20.040
I mean, what, I don't know.
link |
02:32:21.800
I don't know.
link |
02:32:22.760
I've had friends like kill themselves.
link |
02:32:25.920
And many of them, it wasn't like,
link |
02:32:29.120
sadly it was like, I don't know.
link |
02:32:31.360
I don't know what could have been done,
link |
02:32:32.440
but.
link |
02:32:34.000
But there's still a guilt in the back of your head?
link |
02:32:37.760
For the rest of my life, for sure.
link |
02:32:39.240
I always will be.
link |
02:32:41.940
Yeah, I mean, yeah.
link |
02:32:43.080
But again, what are you gonna do?
link |
02:32:44.680
But even that, it's a part of love.
link |
02:32:48.800
That's right.
link |
02:32:49.800
That's right.
link |
02:32:50.760
Yeah, that's right.
link |
02:32:51.600
You could, yeah.
link |
02:32:52.440
You know, we feel guilt.
link |
02:32:54.040
Part of grief is guilt, you know?
link |
02:32:55.800
Like we always could have been better people.
link |
02:32:58.480
We always could have been better people.
link |
02:33:00.360
You getting to Viktor Frankl much?
link |
02:33:02.200
Yeah, of course.
link |
02:33:03.200
Man's search for meaning.
link |
02:33:05.860
The invitation to live your life
link |
02:33:11.320
as though you'd been on your death bed
link |
02:33:13.520
and had been given the chance to go back
link |
02:33:15.560
and not make the same mistakes.
link |
02:33:18.000
I return to that idea all the time,
link |
02:33:20.760
meaning it's like, okay,
link |
02:33:22.400
whatever you did before this moment was too late.
link |
02:33:28.160
But now, you know, this is where you can start.
link |
02:33:31.120
This is where you can start.
link |
02:33:32.400
And yeah, so I think that for a neurotic like me,
link |
02:33:38.160
that's super important.
link |
02:33:39.120
Because otherwise, I'll just get like too lost
link |
02:33:41.380
in the weeds of shitty things I did in the past.
link |
02:33:44.600
So speaking of Viktor Frankl,
link |
02:33:46.080
you and Hitler have the same birthday.
link |
02:33:48.400
Oh my God, you've really done your research.
link |
02:33:52.240
Well, I often Google famous people
link |
02:33:55.680
that have a birthday same as Hitler.
link |
02:33:58.720
Yeah.
link |
02:33:59.560
The person that shows up, you know,
link |
02:34:02.120
is your face just really big.
link |
02:34:04.640
You and Hitler together, just pals next to each other.
link |
02:34:08.000
No, it does not.
link |
02:34:10.000
No, but April 20th is an embarrassing birthday
link |
02:34:12.920
for all my 420 friends out there.
link |
02:34:14.600
It's embarrassing.
link |
02:34:15.440
You share a birthday with Hitler.
link |
02:34:17.520
Well, it's 420s also has a humor
link |
02:34:20.240
and a lightness to it, right?
link |
02:34:23.100
It's embarrassing.
link |
02:34:24.320
Your life is embarrassing.
link |
02:34:27.240
But if you like weed and you're born on stoner day
link |
02:34:31.080
and you believe in reincarnation,
link |
02:34:34.120
do you realize like when you start connecting the dots there,
link |
02:34:36.520
if there is like a Bardo where you get to choose
link |
02:34:39.720
your next life.
link |
02:34:41.040
So you're like a shitty generic NPC.
link |
02:34:45.040
You're like, of course, you would be born on 420.
link |
02:34:48.800
Dude, let me be born on 420, man, yeah.
link |
02:34:53.800
But isn't it interesting that on that same day,
link |
02:34:57.040
Hitler is also born.
link |
02:35:00.080
There's a tension to that and that Hitler's an artist.
link |
02:35:06.760
So it's like that hippie mindset could go anywhere.
link |
02:35:12.080
Oh, yeah, right.
link |
02:35:12.920
Like, yeah, you know,
link |
02:35:14.080
and I was just having this conversation
link |
02:35:15.960
with a friend of mine who's a wonderful skeptic.
link |
02:35:18.860
And we were talking about this,
link |
02:35:22.200
which is the thing where you start attributing to the day
link |
02:35:28.360
you were born, these kinds of significance.
link |
02:35:31.080
And based on maybe people who were born on that day,
link |
02:35:33.320
maybe some other things.
link |
02:35:34.960
And, you know, it's like, think of how many people by now
link |
02:35:38.040
in the course of human history have been born on April 20th.
link |
02:35:42.360
I mean, how many?
link |
02:35:44.160
Someone could probably do the math
link |
02:35:45.440
and come up with some number close to it.
link |
02:35:47.920
Now, this is how you know how rotten Hitler is.
link |
02:35:51.880
Like, he's the one that, like,
link |
02:35:53.600
fucks up the birthday for everybody else.
link |
02:35:56.840
But.
link |
02:35:57.920
I think where I heard that you're 420 is Wim Hof episode
link |
02:36:03.360
because he's also 420.
link |
02:36:04.880
He's a 420.
link |
02:36:05.880
Yeah, so Hitler beats even Wim Hof.
link |
02:36:09.820
Look.
link |
02:36:10.660
In terms of owning the date.
link |
02:36:11.960
I think if anybody is like,
link |
02:36:15.040
well, obviously there's nothing you can do to like fix it.
link |
02:36:18.720
Hitler fucked up a lot of things.
link |
02:36:20.400
He fucked up that mustache.
link |
02:36:22.080
He fucked up the name Hitler.
link |
02:36:23.720
He fucked up 420.
link |
02:36:25.180
And obviously he caused a horrific Holocaust that,
link |
02:36:29.080
by the way, talk about these reverberations through time
link |
02:36:32.040
that we're still experiencing.
link |
02:36:33.200
I mean, there's still people walking around
link |
02:36:34.280
with fucking tattoos from that motherfucker.
link |
02:36:36.620
So, but, you know, Wim Hof, you know, people like Wim Hof.
link |
02:36:41.400
They're like whatever the opposite of Hitler is, you know?
link |
02:36:45.920
He too is creating ripples in the lake
link |
02:36:47.880
that hopefully respond to that of Hitler.
link |
02:36:51.280
Yeah, very cold fucking lake.
link |
02:36:53.200
And he's in, and yeah, so very, very cold lake
link |
02:36:57.560
that he's happily swimming around in.
link |
02:36:59.920
But yeah, you know, I try not to think about
link |
02:37:05.240
like the Hitler thing on my birthday.
link |
02:37:08.240
Then my dad would just, every birthday he would remind me
link |
02:37:11.120
that Hitler was 420.
link |
02:37:12.120
Do you think all of us are capable of evil?
link |
02:37:14.800
Do you think, you're one of the sweetest people I know,
link |
02:37:18.240
just as a fan, do you think you're capable of evil?
link |
02:37:21.000
Sure, yeah, I mean, sure, definitely.
link |
02:37:24.520
I think if you don't think that, you better watch out
link |
02:37:27.900
because come on, how do you think you're not capable of evil?
link |
02:37:31.540
And PS, you are, if you're connected
link |
02:37:34.280
to the supply chain, friend, you're doing evil.
link |
02:37:38.420
You're paying taxes.
link |
02:37:39.920
You're like, you're supporting the worst things in the world.
link |
02:37:43.680
I mean, you know, like diffusion of responsibility,
link |
02:37:47.520
it's really curious or the circumference of responsibility
link |
02:37:51.480
where it's like bombs are going off somewhere
link |
02:37:54.280
that were paid for in some small part by you,
link |
02:38:00.920
some fractional, if an American, if a drone is flying over
link |
02:38:07.000
a village in Afghanistan and drops a bomb
link |
02:38:10.560
and you pay taxes, then you could say you have
link |
02:38:14.040
fractional ownership over that drone.
link |
02:38:18.800
You're a cog in the machine of evil in some sense.
link |
02:38:22.080
And I know what you're gonna say,
link |
02:38:24.400
well, yeah, but I have to fucking pay taxes.
link |
02:38:26.400
Like I have no choice.
link |
02:38:27.320
There's sales tax, there's this or that.
link |
02:38:29.760
Take that attitude.
link |
02:38:31.940
It's the same thing that people on the battlefield
link |
02:38:34.620
when they're sending missiles into other tanks,
link |
02:38:37.580
they're thinking the same thing.
link |
02:38:39.000
It's just, they're more directly responsible
link |
02:38:42.280
for what's going on.
link |
02:38:43.240
But in Buddhism, this idea of dependent co arising
link |
02:38:49.040
or yeah, dependent co arising.
link |
02:38:50.600
We're all connected.
link |
02:38:51.440
We're all part of this matrix.
link |
02:38:53.560
We're all connected,
link |
02:38:54.580
meaning we all share responsibility
link |
02:38:57.600
for the evil in the world.
link |
02:38:58.680
So even if you aren't directly committing evil acts,
link |
02:39:03.380
if you're seeing something in the world
link |
02:39:05.640
and you're thinking that's evil,
link |
02:39:08.200
you're probably not quite as separated from that
link |
02:39:10.640
as you'd like to believe
link |
02:39:11.760
in some tiny infinitesimally quantum way, you're connected.
link |
02:39:19.240
And there is a sense, I've gotten to experience this
link |
02:39:23.160
over and over that one individual
link |
02:39:25.200
can actually make a gigantic difference.
link |
02:39:28.200
And so not only is there a diffusion responsibility,
link |
02:39:33.380
there's a kind of a paralysis about, well, what can I do?
link |
02:39:37.320
Yeah.
link |
02:39:38.480
Sure, I understand, but what can I do?
link |
02:39:40.920
And I think just looking at history
link |
02:39:46.120
and also hanging out and becoming friends,
link |
02:39:50.040
but also interviewing people
link |
02:39:51.520
that have had a tremendous impact,
link |
02:39:52.940
you realize you're just one dude.
link |
02:39:55.520
Yeah.
link |
02:39:56.340
You're like a normal person.
link |
02:39:58.640
You're not that smart even.
link |
02:40:00.360
Like a lot of people aren't like in some kind of magical way
link |
02:40:04.280
where you have a big head that's figuring out everything.
link |
02:40:07.280
No, you just saw problems in the world
link |
02:40:12.080
and you're like, hey,
link |
02:40:13.200
I think I'm gonna try to do something about this.
link |
02:40:15.200
Yeah.
link |
02:40:16.040
And you stay focused and dedicated to it
link |
02:40:17.320
for a prolonged period of time and refuse to quit,
link |
02:40:21.040
refuse to listen to people that tell you
link |
02:40:23.040
that this isn't like impossible,
link |
02:40:24.760
here's how others have failed.
link |
02:40:26.280
Yeah.
link |
02:40:27.120
No, I'm gonna do it.
link |
02:40:29.080
That's it.
link |
02:40:30.260
That's it.
link |
02:40:31.100
And one person, and then you kind of,
link |
02:40:32.640
the thing is when there's one person
link |
02:40:34.600
that keeps pushing forward that way,
link |
02:40:36.620
there's, humans are sticky.
link |
02:40:38.000
They, other people follow them around
link |
02:40:40.280
and they're like, I'll help.
link |
02:40:42.320
You know, I'll help and then the other people help
link |
02:40:45.480
and then the cool people all gather together
link |
02:40:47.740
cause they kind of get excited about this way.
link |
02:40:49.800
Holy shit, we can actually make a difference.
link |
02:40:52.080
And they, they form groups
link |
02:40:53.720
and then all of a sudden there's companies and nations
link |
02:40:56.040
that actually make a gigantic difference.
link |
02:40:58.240
It's interesting.
link |
02:40:59.080
And it all starts with one person often.
link |
02:41:01.840
You know what?
link |
02:41:02.680
If I could push back slightly against that,
link |
02:41:04.620
it's never just one person.
link |
02:41:06.040
It's like, you know, nobody ever talks about,
link |
02:41:09.920
at least as far as I'm aware,
link |
02:41:11.320
you never hear about like Buddha's great grandmother.
link |
02:41:14.620
You never hear about that.
link |
02:41:15.800
You never hear about that.
link |
02:41:16.720
But if not for that person, no Buddhism.
link |
02:41:20.520
You know, the people you're talking about,
link |
02:41:23.520
they are the tip of the iceberg
link |
02:41:26.240
that pops up out of the ocean of history.
link |
02:41:29.400
And you never see that all the little things
link |
02:41:34.280
that helped that happen.
link |
02:41:36.440
And so to me, this is where the real,
link |
02:41:39.800
like how do you help?
link |
02:41:41.300
What's something you can do?
link |
02:41:42.940
Well, you know, recognize that first,
link |
02:41:45.880
that you don't really, you don't,
link |
02:41:47.280
you might not even be aware
link |
02:41:48.560
of how much you're impacting people around you.
link |
02:41:51.000
You might think that you're not,
link |
02:41:53.280
or you might think surely not in a way
link |
02:41:55.600
that makes a big difference,
link |
02:41:57.380
but you have no idea these tipping points
link |
02:42:01.080
and they can lead to the emergence of an Einstein,
link |
02:42:06.120
a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King.
link |
02:42:08.760
We can go on and on, a Dostoevsky or whoever.
link |
02:42:11.800
And so I think that's where for me,
link |
02:42:14.160
it goes back to tend to the part of the garden
link |
02:42:16.680
you can touch and then, or even deeper than that intention.
link |
02:42:22.520
It was just like an, I'm an idiot.
link |
02:42:24.720
So I need an idiot's intention, which is don't,
link |
02:42:28.760
if you, I heard the Dalai Lama say it.
link |
02:42:33.120
If you can help, help.
link |
02:42:36.020
If you can't help, don't hurt.
link |
02:42:38.700
Simple, basic dummy rules so that you can,
link |
02:42:43.280
if possible, refrain from hurting,
link |
02:42:46.520
which might as well be a form of helping.
link |
02:42:50.520
And the help doesn't have to be this dramatic thing.
link |
02:42:53.420
These little acts of kindness.
link |
02:42:56.060
I don't know, they seem to have,
link |
02:42:59.580
maybe I believe in kind of karma,
link |
02:43:01.300
but they seem to have this,
link |
02:43:03.040
they can have this gigantic ripple effect.
link |
02:43:05.740
I don't know why that is.
link |
02:43:07.980
I just, I remember a lot of little acts of kindness
link |
02:43:11.740
that people have done to me and they, what do they do?
link |
02:43:16.940
One, they fill me with joy and hope for the future.
link |
02:43:19.260
They give me faith in humanity.
link |
02:43:21.220
That somehow there's a partially dormant desire
link |
02:43:29.700
in our sort of collective intelligence
link |
02:43:31.780
to do good in the world.
link |
02:43:33.420
That most of us want to be good,
link |
02:43:36.240
that want to do good onto the world.
link |
02:43:38.460
I want, there's a kindness that's kind of like
link |
02:43:41.500
begging to get out, you know?
link |
02:43:43.820
And those little acts of kindness do just that.
link |
02:43:46.060
And actually one of the reasons I love Austin
link |
02:43:48.580
and moved here is realizing,
link |
02:43:52.100
just noticing those little acts of kindness all around me,
link |
02:43:55.380
just for stupid reasons, just people being really nice.
link |
02:43:58.900
It's weird and that kindness combined with an optimism
link |
02:44:04.260
for the future, it's just, it's amazing what that can build.
link |
02:44:09.460
Yes, yes, it's incredible.
link |
02:44:12.160
And I know what you're saying.
link |
02:44:13.200
It's like, you know, we moved to this great neighborhood
link |
02:44:17.180
and at this point I think three,
link |
02:44:21.900
maybe four of our neighbors have like made food for us
link |
02:44:25.540
that just shows up with like handwritten lists
link |
02:44:29.260
of like things they like to do in the area
link |
02:44:31.740
and their phone number if we need help.
link |
02:44:34.140
And it's like, holy shit.
link |
02:44:36.700
That's like, it might seem like a little act,
link |
02:44:40.280
but it feels like some kind of atomic love bomb
link |
02:44:43.380
just went off on your porch when you're looking at that.
link |
02:44:46.060
I'm like, what the fuck?
link |
02:44:48.100
You made me a pie?
link |
02:44:50.740
This is incredible.
link |
02:44:51.780
Like, this is incredible, so.
link |
02:44:53.740
And also it's another act to accept that kindness.
link |
02:44:57.740
It's like a lot of times when I was like in Boston
link |
02:45:01.080
or San Francisco, certain big cities,
link |
02:45:03.740
you can think like, oh, okay,
link |
02:45:05.020
well they're trying to like somehow,
link |
02:45:08.780
that's not an act of kindness.
link |
02:45:10.080
That's some kind of a transactional thing to build up.
link |
02:45:12.860
It's like a career move for networking,
link |
02:45:15.140
all that kind of stuff.
link |
02:45:16.300
But no, if you just accept it for what it is,
link |
02:45:18.220
a pure act of kindness.
link |
02:45:20.140
Fucking Boston.
link |
02:45:21.460
It's the, yeah.
link |
02:45:22.860
Because for me, I go the opposite route.
link |
02:45:25.060
Because I'm not, even though there is a part of me
link |
02:45:26.600
that might be a little suspicious or something,
link |
02:45:29.180
where I go to push that shit back mentally
link |
02:45:33.000
is I'm like, I don't deserve this.
link |
02:45:34.860
If they knew what a piece of shit I am.
link |
02:45:37.520
You're gonna bring me,
link |
02:45:38.360
I don't wanna never bring cakes to my neighbors.
link |
02:45:40.500
I wouldn't know how to make a cake.
link |
02:45:41.740
I don't know how to make anything.
link |
02:45:42.780
I don't have time.
link |
02:45:43.820
I should be bringing shit to my neighbors.
link |
02:45:45.380
Why didn't I do that?
link |
02:45:46.300
I should have brought, I never do that.
link |
02:45:48.900
If you're not careful,
link |
02:45:50.500
you can spiral into a vortex of self hate from the gift.
link |
02:45:54.580
So you have to, yeah, you have to learn how to,
link |
02:45:56.300
in that circuitry, you have to learn how to like accept.
link |
02:46:01.020
Oh yeah, I have that problem really big.
link |
02:46:03.020
Yeah, like I don't deserve this.
link |
02:46:06.940
Like I don't, I get so much love from people.
link |
02:46:10.300
I'm like, well, yeah, they love me
link |
02:46:11.860
because they don't know me.
link |
02:46:13.400
That's my brain, my little voice.
link |
02:46:15.260
Like you're not, you're not worthy.
link |
02:46:19.980
You're not worthy of any of this kindness
link |
02:46:23.900
and all this kind of stuff.
link |
02:46:24.860
And that could be very, yeah, it can shut you down.
link |
02:46:28.500
It can be debilitating.
link |
02:46:30.140
And also it shuts the person down.
link |
02:46:32.100
I mean, you're talking.
link |
02:46:32.940
And that's the dark side is it pushes them away too.
link |
02:46:36.140
Yeah, it cuts off this fucking mystical circuitry.
link |
02:46:40.020
So like the best thing if that happens to you
link |
02:46:43.460
is like accept it joyfully.
link |
02:46:46.300
And just even, just all that,
link |
02:46:48.140
whatever that thing inside of you,
link |
02:46:50.340
whatever that little thing is, you know,
link |
02:46:52.660
this is like in the meditation I do,
link |
02:46:56.100
it's an infuriatingly simple meditation,
link |
02:46:58.240
but when a thought emerges,
link |
02:47:01.660
when you are resting your attention on your breath
link |
02:47:03.940
and then inevitably you think, you get lost in your thoughts.
link |
02:47:07.300
And when you catch yourself doing that,
link |
02:47:09.340
you think thinking,
link |
02:47:11.740
and then return your attention to the breath.
link |
02:47:13.500
So I like that so that when that part of myself starts,
link |
02:47:17.060
you know, having its little neurotic semi seizure,
link |
02:47:20.140
I can just go thinking, whatever.
link |
02:47:22.340
It's just another thought.
link |
02:47:23.460
And then eat the, eat the, eat the banana bread
link |
02:47:26.980
or whatever they gave you.
link |
02:47:28.700
What's the most wild psychedelic experience
link |
02:47:31.780
you've ever had in a dream, in a vision?
link |
02:47:34.540
It doesn't have to be drug related.
link |
02:47:36.700
What's one that jumps to mind
link |
02:47:40.020
that was like, holy shit, I'm happy to be alive.
link |
02:47:42.740
Is this life?
link |
02:47:43.820
Okay. This is amazing.
link |
02:47:45.220
Yeah, the, oh yeah, okay.
link |
02:47:46.900
So the one that pops to mind,
link |
02:47:51.580
I've had a lot of psychedelic experiences,
link |
02:47:54.040
but in this moment, the one that pops to mind,
link |
02:47:56.020
only because it goes back to what you're talking about,
link |
02:47:58.760
about this Nietzsche's idea of infinite return.
link |
02:48:01.760
The, the, so I'm a Burning Man and.
link |
02:48:08.960
Are you going to Burning Man this time?
link |
02:48:10.360
I'm not.
link |
02:48:11.200
I mean, I have kids right now.
link |
02:48:12.560
I just want to be around them.
link |
02:48:13.600
My wife was being so cool about it
link |
02:48:15.480
and she knows I love Burning Man.
link |
02:48:16.720
She's like, go to Burning Man.
link |
02:48:17.800
And I was going to go.
link |
02:48:19.120
And then I just, I just want to be around my kids
link |
02:48:22.520
as much as I can right now, but.
link |
02:48:24.240
I've never been to Burning Man.
link |
02:48:25.360
So I don't know how secretive it is that, I mean,
link |
02:48:29.200
cause quite high profile folks go.
link |
02:48:31.580
Yeah, everyone knows Elon Musk goes there.
link |
02:48:34.040
Isn't it pretty open?
link |
02:48:35.280
He's got a boat.
link |
02:48:37.240
You know that?
link |
02:48:38.080
I'm touching none of this.
link |
02:48:39.600
You know, there's a, it's called art cars.
link |
02:48:41.280
They all make art cars.
link |
02:48:42.280
And like part of the, part of the burn,
link |
02:48:44.600
what's so beautiful about it is like,
link |
02:48:47.600
you can't buy anything there, man.
link |
02:48:49.280
Like you, I've heard, I don't know if this has changed.
link |
02:48:53.680
It's been a bit because of the pandemic,
link |
02:48:55.520
but the only thing you could buy was ice and coffee.
link |
02:48:59.200
And I think maybe that's changed.
link |
02:49:01.240
I heard some whisper that that's changed,
link |
02:49:02.840
but so that means that it's a gifting economy
link |
02:49:07.400
is what they call it.
link |
02:49:08.240
And so people will just give you stuff.
link |
02:49:11.000
Talk about having to struggle with deserving stuff, man.
link |
02:49:13.560
What are you going to fucking do when the camp next to you
link |
02:49:17.160
is like every morning making the best iced coffee
link |
02:49:20.620
that you've ever had in your life.
link |
02:49:22.200
And they just are giving it all away till it's all gone.
link |
02:49:25.880
What are you going to do?
link |
02:49:27.000
It's, it's the best ever.
link |
02:49:30.080
And then you're giving things to people.
link |
02:49:31.680
And then you, you learn stuff like,
link |
02:49:34.320
you learn these really interesting lessons.
link |
02:49:36.900
Like one of the times I went there,
link |
02:49:40.960
got all these strawberries.
link |
02:49:44.720
Might not sound like a big deal,
link |
02:49:46.120
but when you're out there in the dust
link |
02:49:48.640
and you're not at one of like the,
link |
02:49:50.080
like hardcore like luxury camps,
link |
02:49:52.440
which do exist out there,
link |
02:49:55.800
you know, you've got these like items where in my mind,
link |
02:49:58.000
I'm like, yeah, these are going to be just for me
link |
02:50:00.440
and my girlfriend, my special stash fruit
link |
02:50:03.760
and this or that.
link |
02:50:04.960
And then like two days in you're walking around your camp
link |
02:50:10.280
with the strawberries that you were coveting
link |
02:50:12.880
and everyone's so happy to get like cold strawberries
link |
02:50:16.380
and you've realized, oh my God,
link |
02:50:17.920
this feels so much better than the way a strawberry tastes.
link |
02:50:21.320
So you learn something experientially there,
link |
02:50:25.040
which is an incredible thing.
link |
02:50:27.040
It's an incredible thing.
link |
02:50:29.080
Man, now I'm wishing I had decided to go to Burning Man.
link |
02:50:31.840
Have you been a few times?
link |
02:50:32.880
Yeah, I just know like,
link |
02:50:36.120
at least people were saying it was Elon Musk's boat.
link |
02:50:39.200
Like, yeah, like this, I think it was like,
link |
02:50:41.040
it's like this massive, it's art cars.
link |
02:50:43.560
And it was this party on this thing.
link |
02:50:45.260
You could just, anyone can go on the boat.
link |
02:50:48.560
Like no one's like, there's no guest list.
link |
02:50:50.920
You just go on there.
link |
02:50:52.240
I never saw him there, but that, you know,
link |
02:50:53.680
everyone's whispering Elon Musk is here.
link |
02:50:56.400
There's a secrecy, there's all that kind of stuff
link |
02:50:58.320
because you'd probably have to respect that.
link |
02:50:59.720
But at the same time there,
link |
02:51:01.120
it seems like the kind of people that go there,
link |
02:51:04.520
I mean, the rules of the outside world are suspended
link |
02:51:09.840
in the sense that the crime, the aggression,
link |
02:51:17.180
the tensions, all of that seems to dissipate somehow.
link |
02:51:19.860
Not all the way, not all the way.
link |
02:51:22.100
That, you know, you could look it up, you know,
link |
02:51:25.920
cause like there is tension.
link |
02:51:27.080
There's a lot of tension there between,
link |
02:51:30.760
it's called plug and plays.
link |
02:51:32.160
Like, you know, Burning Man,
link |
02:51:34.160
like the history of Burning Man is fascinating.
link |
02:51:36.880
It has its roots in the cacophony society
link |
02:51:41.480
is what it was called,
link |
02:51:42.320
which is a sort of evolution of something that was,
link |
02:51:45.840
I think it was called the God, like the San Francisco.
link |
02:51:50.540
Basically there was like an art movement in San Francisco.
link |
02:51:54.360
And I can't remember the name of it.
link |
02:51:55.560
Maybe the Suicide Club or essentially like,
link |
02:51:59.920
they were really into urban exploration
link |
02:52:02.360
and meaning like breaking into like
link |
02:52:05.720
old abandoned buildings and stuff.
link |
02:52:07.860
But part of this, what this was, was
link |
02:52:13.240
you would prepare your life
link |
02:52:15.680
as though you were going to kill yourself.
link |
02:52:18.000
You would get all your affairs in order.
link |
02:52:19.840
You would get, so it's going back to what we were talking
link |
02:52:22.280
about with the cancer diagnosis.
link |
02:52:23.440
You're like sort of putting yourself into that world
link |
02:52:27.960
of like, I'm going to get all my affairs together
link |
02:52:29.520
as though this is it.
link |
02:52:30.360
And then there was some,
link |
02:52:31.960
I'm sorry for anyone listening if I'm butchering this,
link |
02:52:33.800
but I think there was some really cool initiation
link |
02:52:35.840
where they would blindfold you
link |
02:52:37.600
and they would take you into
link |
02:52:38.560
some of these abandoned buildings.
link |
02:52:40.560
And you didn't know where you were walking,
link |
02:52:41.940
but they would say like,
link |
02:52:42.780
if you take one step to the left, you're going to die.
link |
02:52:47.060
You're going to fall off.
link |
02:52:48.080
You're going to fall.
link |
02:52:48.900
So please be careful.
link |
02:52:50.140
So you're like in the moment
link |
02:52:52.520
and then blindfold comes off.
link |
02:52:53.920
It's a big, awesome party.
link |
02:52:55.640
This evolves into something called the Cacophony Society.
link |
02:52:58.960
There's a great book called
link |
02:52:59.840
Tales of the Cacophony Society for people listening.
link |
02:53:04.080
One of the members of the Cacophony Society
link |
02:53:07.760
was the author of Fight Club.
link |
02:53:09.880
And so if you've seen Fight Club,
link |
02:53:11.640
like you could see little ideas
link |
02:53:13.200
that were in the Cacophony Society.
link |
02:53:14.920
They were into Dadaism, which I don't know a lot about.
link |
02:53:19.920
I don't know, but it's a philosophical art movement.
link |
02:53:24.640
And then so basically what was happening is like,
link |
02:53:27.800
they kept burning increasingly large effigies
link |
02:53:30.920
in San Francisco and they weren't allowed to do it.
link |
02:53:34.280
And so they took it out in the desert
link |
02:53:36.360
and they were basing it on something called a zone trip,
link |
02:53:40.720
which is like, across this border,
link |
02:53:43.660
the rules of that old society are gone.
link |
02:53:46.200
And so that was the original Burning Man,
link |
02:53:50.040
which was these lunatics out in the desert,
link |
02:53:55.080
launching like burning pianos out of catapults
link |
02:53:59.600
through the air doing like drive by shooting ranges,
link |
02:54:03.320
like no rules, wild, magical, beautiful, insane madness.
link |
02:54:09.680
And then it grew and grew and grew and grew
link |
02:54:14.440
until you have Burning Man as it is today,
link |
02:54:17.280
which is still the most incredible thing.
link |
02:54:19.440
I mean, obviously anytime you have like a thing
link |
02:54:22.000
that's been around for a while, you're gonna get that.
link |
02:54:24.420
It's not like it used to be.
link |
02:54:26.280
It's not as free as it used to be, so this or that.
link |
02:54:28.180
But what's fascinating about Burning Man,
link |
02:54:30.220
someone pointed this out to me, look on the ground,
link |
02:54:34.480
no trash, no cigarettes.
link |
02:54:37.800
The ethic of like picking up your shit there
link |
02:54:40.320
is like so intense.
link |
02:54:42.400
So it's not like the other festivals you go to
link |
02:54:44.760
where there's just trash everywhere,
link |
02:54:46.520
shit scattered everywhere.
link |
02:54:48.440
It's clean.
link |
02:54:49.360
People are picking up their stuff.
link |
02:54:51.440
People are like really being conscious
link |
02:54:54.520
of like not fucking up the playa.
link |
02:54:56.440
So I'm sorry, don't get a burner yapping about Burning Man.
link |
02:55:01.440
We won't stop.
link |
02:55:02.800
It'll be morning.
link |
02:55:03.720
But there's a power,
link |
02:55:05.640
but there is a power to culture propagating itself
link |
02:55:08.840
through to the stories that we tell each other.
link |
02:55:10.880
And that holds up for Burning Man.
link |
02:55:14.440
It's clear that the culture has stayed strong
link |
02:55:16.880
throughout the years.
link |
02:55:18.200
So many people, so many really interesting people
link |
02:55:23.240
speak of Burning Man as like a sacred place they go to
link |
02:55:28.760
to remind themselves about what's important.
link |
02:55:31.520
That's so interesting.
link |
02:55:32.560
And it is.
link |
02:55:33.560
And it is.
link |
02:55:34.400
I mean, it's like, you know, there are all these stories
link |
02:55:36.240
of like, I love guru stories.
link |
02:55:38.240
I have a guru.
link |
02:55:39.080
I'm Karoli Baba, never met him, he was Ram Dass's guru,
link |
02:55:42.280
at least not in the flesh.
link |
02:55:43.720
But the story of the guru is if you're lucky,
link |
02:55:46.600
you meet this being that,
link |
02:55:48.880
and we're not talking about, you know,
link |
02:55:50.320
whatever the run of the mill, like charlatans out there.
link |
02:55:54.240
Like I know for sure that people are in the world right now
link |
02:56:00.280
who when you're around them,
link |
02:56:06.000
the thing you're talking about,
link |
02:56:07.000
the affirmation of the potential of humanity
link |
02:56:10.520
and also just an acceptance of yourself
link |
02:56:12.640
and, you know, cultivate,
link |
02:56:14.600
like seeing someone who's cultivated love or compassion
link |
02:56:19.240
or whatever, but in this way that is,
link |
02:56:24.000
I mean, you would almost,
link |
02:56:26.720
you would rather meet that being
link |
02:56:28.440
than like a UFO land in your backyard.
link |
02:56:30.440
It's like, it is the UFO.
link |
02:56:31.840
It's a person, but it's not.
link |
02:56:33.720
It's everybody and nobody.
link |
02:56:35.920
And somehow they like end up conveying to you
link |
02:56:42.120
ideas that you may have heard a million times before,
link |
02:56:45.200
but somehow within the language itself is a transmission
link |
02:56:49.360
that permanently alters you.
link |
02:56:52.280
And so these people exist.
link |
02:56:54.800
I think you could argue that Burning Man,
link |
02:56:58.480
the total thing is a guru,
link |
02:57:01.640
that a pilgrimage is involved to get there.
link |
02:57:04.800
You, like, it's not easy to get there.
link |
02:57:08.240
And when you get there, it's gonna teach you something.
link |
02:57:12.760
It's gonna show you something.
link |
02:57:14.200
It's going to, and maybe some of the stuff it shows you
link |
02:57:17.680
might not be great, but the community around you
link |
02:57:22.960
will like, will hold you as you're like,
link |
02:57:27.160
whatever the thing is that's coming out of you
link |
02:57:29.240
is coming out of you.
link |
02:57:30.120
And even the simplest activities,
link |
02:57:31.600
the simplest exchange of words have like,
link |
02:57:35.920
just like the gurus, a profound impact somehow.
link |
02:57:41.160
Something about that place.
link |
02:57:42.520
Yeah, not to mention the insane synchronicities,
link |
02:57:46.440
like insane synchronicities there.
link |
02:57:48.800
And I think like, you know, to get back to the notion
link |
02:57:51.760
of sentience as a byproduct of a harmonized
link |
02:57:56.760
yet hyper complex system.
link |
02:57:58.760
I think synchronicities, like those kinds of systems
link |
02:58:03.120
are like lightning rods for synchronicity.
link |
02:58:05.240
So crazy, not just because your high synchronicities
link |
02:58:10.960
happen that are impossible,
link |
02:58:13.200
where you just have to deal with it.
link |
02:58:14.800
And like, you'll need something.
link |
02:58:16.880
And within a few minutes, someone's like,
link |
02:58:19.120
oh, here you go.
link |
02:58:20.720
And you mentioned, but by the way,
link |
02:58:22.240
Burning Anchors of a psychedelic experience,
link |
02:58:25.640
is it the strawberries or was it something else?
link |
02:58:29.280
What was the moment?
link |
02:58:30.760
Yeah, that was magical.
link |
02:58:31.640
No, it was DMT.
link |
02:58:32.640
It definitely wasn't.
link |
02:58:33.480
It wasn't strawberries.
link |
02:58:35.760
Ah.
link |
02:58:38.160
No, no, I was.
link |
02:58:39.760
More potent.
link |
02:58:41.000
Yeah, I was like smoking DMT.
link |
02:58:43.480
And like, I saw, like, if you, in the midnight gospel,
link |
02:58:48.480
there are these bovine creatures that have like a long neck
link |
02:58:56.600
and a lantern head.
link |
02:58:58.600
So like, I saw one of those things.
link |
02:59:01.880
And, you know, I thought it was funny and like ridiculous
link |
02:59:11.200
because you hear like all the Terence McKenna stories
link |
02:59:13.280
of the self transforming machine elves
link |
02:59:16.600
or all the purple or the magenta goddess everyone sees.
link |
02:59:20.720
I'm like, so this is what I get?
link |
02:59:22.920
Like a fucking cow with a lantern head?
link |
02:59:26.280
Like that's where my brain is at
link |
02:59:28.280
and we're interacting with this molecule.
link |
02:59:30.760
So then like, I look away.
link |
02:59:38.360
And again, this is DMT.
link |
02:59:39.600
So when I say look away, do I mean with my eyes shut,
link |
02:59:42.120
I look away or eyes open, I look away, I think eyes shut.
link |
02:59:46.040
So it sounds weird to say look away,
link |
02:59:47.760
but however you want to put it, that's what I did.
link |
02:59:51.920
And I look back and it's still there.
link |
02:59:54.920
Only now it's, you know, cause usually in like,
link |
02:59:57.040
when you're having those kinds of visions,
link |
02:59:58.960
they go away pretty quickly.
link |
03:00:01.240
This thing's like moved, like shambled ahead
link |
03:00:04.280
and maybe a few steps, just like a cow, just like a cow.
link |
03:00:08.280
And then that was when the, you know,
link |
03:00:12.040
all the stories you hear about it,
link |
03:00:13.320
like going through some kind of tuber,
link |
03:00:15.920
some kind of light tunnel, like a water slide
link |
03:00:18.080
made of light that's increasingly familiar.
link |
03:00:21.840
That's the wildest part of it.
link |
03:00:23.400
It's like, oh, I know this place.
link |
03:00:25.200
Not like, oh, I've seen this in like,
link |
03:00:27.160
you know, on like bong stickers, but like,
link |
03:00:30.560
oh yeah, this is that place you go to.
link |
03:00:32.320
You just remember, oh, this place.
link |
03:00:34.440
And then it was like I was in some kind of,
link |
03:00:40.840
I don't know how to put it, a chamber,
link |
03:00:42.760
a technological chamber, some kind of supercomputer,
link |
03:00:45.920
some kind of nucleus that was technological.
link |
03:00:49.440
And it was inviting.
link |
03:00:50.520
There was an invitation of like, come in,
link |
03:00:53.360
like come deeper into, come deeper in.
link |
03:00:56.400
And you can talk to whatever it is over there.
link |
03:01:00.160
You don't talk, but there's a communication.
link |
03:01:02.760
And I communicated, but my friends, I don't,
link |
03:01:07.880
I love my friends.
link |
03:01:08.800
I guess I had some sense in that moment
link |
03:01:10.400
that it would mean complete obliteration
link |
03:01:12.960
or who knows what.
link |
03:01:15.160
And the response that it gave back was,
link |
03:01:18.240
you can always go back there.
link |
03:01:20.600
And that's when I opened my eyes, I'm back.
link |
03:01:22.400
Totally, you know, and ever since then,
link |
03:01:25.480
that's caused me to revise my thinking on reincarnation.
link |
03:01:30.760
The idea that you die and you start as a baby
link |
03:01:33.320
and then live your life again.
link |
03:01:34.880
It goes right into what we were talking about.
link |
03:01:36.920
You know, that maybe data, you know,
link |
03:01:39.680
that the shit I saw in Nitro Sox,
link |
03:01:41.360
I don't feel dumb that my epiphanies are all related
link |
03:01:43.760
to drugs, but not all of them are a lot of them.
link |
03:01:46.240
But this notion of like, oh, is it that we're
link |
03:01:52.280
imprinting into the medium of time, space,
link |
03:01:56.040
everything we do, and that that is a permanent imprint,
link |
03:02:01.280
a frame that upon death can be accessed
link |
03:02:06.280
in the same way we can pull up pictures on our phone
link |
03:02:10.760
or computers, and not only accessed, but experienced
link |
03:02:15.400
as though, in other words, you could just jump in.
link |
03:02:20.200
You're still gonna have your memories.
link |
03:02:22.040
It's gonna give you the illusion of having been a kid
link |
03:02:26.280
and gotten to that frame, but no,
link |
03:02:28.800
you just decided to go back there, nostalgia, whatever.
link |
03:02:33.260
And yeah, you can jump around freely in space and time.
link |
03:02:37.360
Yeah, yeah, you can go in and out of time space,
link |
03:02:40.160
but the problem is when you go into time space, it's time.
link |
03:02:43.840
So it's gonna feel sticky.
link |
03:02:45.260
It's gonna feel like you've been here forever
link |
03:02:46.640
because you've dropped back onto the track
link |
03:02:49.040
that Nietzsche's talking about.
link |
03:02:51.640
And I guess one of the qualities of dropping
link |
03:02:54.200
into that frame is that you forget
link |
03:02:57.040
your higher dimensional identity.
link |
03:03:01.000
What happened to the cow with the lantern, was that goodbye?
link |
03:03:07.840
He writes me letters sometimes.
link |
03:03:11.000
Never saw it again.
link |
03:03:12.280
Never?
link |
03:03:13.120
Never saw it again, but I put it in,
link |
03:03:15.240
we put it in the Midnight Gospel.
link |
03:03:18.120
Pendleton was such a genius, and he drew it for me,
link |
03:03:22.060
and then it just ended up as a part of the show.
link |
03:03:24.400
But by the way, I have to admit that as a big fan of yours,
link |
03:03:27.960
I haven't watched the Midnight Gospel
link |
03:03:29.840
because I've been waiting.
link |
03:03:33.200
You do these stupid things, but ever since you talked to,
link |
03:03:36.400
maybe two years ago with Joe about it,
link |
03:03:39.800
I've been waiting to watch it
link |
03:03:41.920
with a special person on mushrooms.
link |
03:03:44.680
That's been in my to do.
link |
03:03:46.280
I don't know, of course you don't have to be on mushrooms
link |
03:03:48.560
to enjoy it, but for some reason I put it into my head
link |
03:03:52.480
that this is something I wanna do with somebody else,
link |
03:03:55.040
like experience it and get wild.
link |
03:03:57.040
Because visually, I mean, I watched a bunch of it,
link |
03:04:00.920
just a little bit here and there,
link |
03:04:02.520
but it's just visually such an interesting experience.
link |
03:04:06.800
Thank you.
link |
03:04:07.640
Combined with everything else, obviously,
link |
03:04:09.000
the ideas, the voices and so on,
link |
03:04:12.100
but just visually it's like a super psychedelic version
link |
03:04:16.940
of Rick and Morty or something like that,
link |
03:04:19.360
like farther out, wilder out there.
link |
03:04:23.080
Yeah, man, that's Pendleton.
link |
03:04:26.080
These people, I mean, I was part of that
link |
03:04:31.800
in the sense that Pendleton gave,
link |
03:04:35.320
one of the reasons he's such a genius
link |
03:04:37.080
and great at making stuff is he really does a good job
link |
03:04:41.240
of just dehierarchizing potential hierarchies
link |
03:04:46.120
that can appear.
link |
03:04:47.520
Someone has to be driving the bus, and that was Pendleton,
link |
03:04:51.240
but he's so inclusive.
link |
03:04:54.120
There's a real punk rock thing that he's doing,
link |
03:04:57.260
which is like, he'll take everything,
link |
03:04:58.900
and it kind of mixes its way into the show.
link |
03:05:01.240
But one of the things in animation,
link |
03:05:07.100
it can get really strict with drawing the characters
link |
03:05:11.800
and trying to create continuity
link |
03:05:16.620
in the way the character looks,
link |
03:05:19.280
and it can get really brute for the animator.
link |
03:05:21.840
Making it brutally precise, like it has to be precise.
link |
03:05:26.400
But he figured out that if you just sort of,
link |
03:05:30.300
it's not like, obviously, Clancy had to look like Clancy
link |
03:05:33.320
through the whole show,
link |
03:05:34.160
but if you allow the various people animating it
link |
03:05:36.560
to sort of have their own spin on it,
link |
03:05:39.320
then suddenly it creates a very psychedelic,
link |
03:05:43.400
the show looks more psychedelic
link |
03:05:45.080
because it looks more organic, and also the amount of time.
link |
03:05:48.240
I had no idea, the amount of time that goes into making
link |
03:05:53.120
digital art look like that is, it's insane.
link |
03:05:58.680
The amount of work in comping that stuff is just crazy.
link |
03:06:03.960
It's crazy.
link |
03:06:04.960
Generally, the amount of time it takes,
link |
03:06:07.380
even just like a painting,
link |
03:06:09.360
when you, I really enjoy watching artists do a time lapse,
link |
03:06:13.280
and you realize how much effort just into a single image
link |
03:06:17.760
goes into it.
link |
03:06:19.300
Hours and hours and hours, sometimes days,
link |
03:06:21.080
sometimes weeks and months,
link |
03:06:23.160
and then you just get to see them work,
link |
03:06:24.820
but they lose themselves in the craftsmanship of it,
link |
03:06:28.440
in the rhythm of it.
link |
03:06:30.440
And like, because they're focused on the,
link |
03:06:32.720
so we were talking about robotics earlier,
link |
03:06:34.520
like on the little details, like they're never look,
link |
03:06:37.320
well, most of the time isn't spent looking
link |
03:06:40.040
at the big picture of the final result,
link |
03:06:41.760
it's looking at the little details there and so on.
link |
03:06:44.000
And they're, but they're nevertheless able
link |
03:06:46.280
to somehow constantly channel the big picture,
link |
03:06:49.360
the final result.
link |
03:06:50.440
My God, yeah, the respect I have for animators,
link |
03:06:53.840
it's like, dear God, it's the craziest thing
link |
03:06:58.720
when you watch it, when you see what it looks like
link |
03:07:01.180
and how much time goes into it and how zen they have to be,
link |
03:07:04.600
because like, no matter what,
link |
03:07:05.440
you're gonna have to cut stuff, man.
link |
03:07:07.240
And when you're cutting like a few seconds of animation,
link |
03:07:10.400
that was someone's like month, maybe, you know?
link |
03:07:13.360
And like, they understand, but still it's like, whoa,
link |
03:07:17.760
it's brutal.
link |
03:07:19.060
And so they have like this zen outlook on it,
link |
03:07:24.520
which is really cool.
link |
03:07:26.320
And they watch podcasts, that's the other cool thing,
link |
03:07:28.080
when you realize like, oh, they're listening to podcasts
link |
03:07:30.420
or like, that's really cool to see that aspect of it too.
link |
03:07:34.360
But yeah, man, I, you know.
link |
03:07:36.880
Yeah, your voice is in the ears
link |
03:07:38.460
of a lot of interesting people, isn't it?
link |
03:07:40.560
Yours too.
link |
03:07:41.400
And I, you know.
link |
03:07:42.680
Hello, interesting person.
link |
03:07:43.880
Hello, CIA, animators.
link |
03:07:46.880
Eating delicious food in the cafeteria.
link |
03:07:49.560
Yeah. I'm on your side.
link |
03:07:50.600
He's against you, I'm with you.
link |
03:07:52.360
Yeah.
link |
03:07:53.600
Do you have, you have a beard, therefore you must be wise.
link |
03:07:56.920
Do you have advice for young people, high school, college,
link |
03:08:02.840
about how to carve their path through life?
link |
03:08:05.440
I don't have a life, a career that's successful
link |
03:08:10.040
that they can be proud of or a life they can be proud of.
link |
03:08:12.840
Man, see, this is what kind of,
link |
03:08:14.760
this is what sucks about my life,
link |
03:08:18.320
is that it's been very random and very spontaneous.
link |
03:08:23.600
So unfortunately, I don't get that thing
link |
03:08:27.080
where I could be like, well, here's what I did.
link |
03:08:28.960
Yeah.
link |
03:08:29.800
Cause it's like, I don't, like I inherited $12,000
link |
03:08:34.200
from my grandmother, here's what you do kids,
link |
03:08:36.960
you inherit $12,000 when your grandmother dies.
link |
03:08:39.600
And then you need to be dumb enough
link |
03:08:41.640
to think that that $12,000 is gonna help you
link |
03:08:44.480
live in LA for a year.
link |
03:08:46.200
So then what you do is you move to LA with $12,000
link |
03:08:49.760
and you find a shitty place that you live at.
link |
03:08:53.740
And then you use that money to buy acid and synthesizers.
link |
03:08:58.040
And then you run out of the money and then you,
link |
03:09:02.280
then you have to get a job.
link |
03:09:03.960
And so then, because you think it'll be fun
link |
03:09:05.580
to work at a comedy club, you get a job at the comedy store.
link |
03:09:09.220
And then, you know, that's how it happened for me.
link |
03:09:11.920
And none of, there wasn't, I never had the confidence
link |
03:09:15.080
to be like, I'm gonna be a standup comedian.
link |
03:09:18.520
No way.
link |
03:09:19.360
I just thought it'd be cool to work in that building.
link |
03:09:22.080
I thought the building looked cool.
link |
03:09:23.800
And so, but then like, cause like you work
link |
03:09:26.480
at the comedy store, you get stage time.
link |
03:09:28.520
It's there, it's the reason like you work there
link |
03:09:32.240
is at least in those days, cause it's not like
link |
03:09:34.400
they're paying like a shit ton of money
link |
03:09:36.680
for you to answer phones at a comedy club.
link |
03:09:39.120
And so, you know, I started going on stage
link |
03:09:42.440
and then like, I just got lucky
link |
03:09:46.000
cause Rogan saw me have like a very rare, good set.
link |
03:09:50.360
I didn't know he was in the room or I would've bombed,
link |
03:09:52.560
you know, and then like, cause he thought I was funny
link |
03:09:55.120
and he liked talking to me.
link |
03:09:56.040
He started taking me on the road with him.
link |
03:09:57.900
And then, you know, so I don't know, man.
link |
03:09:59.640
I think.
link |
03:10:01.560
Was there an element to, there's a beautiful weirdness
link |
03:10:04.160
to you as a human being.
link |
03:10:06.680
Was there like a pressure to conform ever
link |
03:10:12.520
to hide yourself from the world?
link |
03:10:15.620
Or did the $12,000 in the acid give you
link |
03:10:19.240
the confidence you needed to be yourself?
link |
03:10:21.640
Oh no, I don't, like I still, no.
link |
03:10:24.440
I think, sure, there's that pressure.
link |
03:10:26.760
And like, you know, whenever you're beginning
link |
03:10:30.080
to really differentiate from your parents,
link |
03:10:31.840
but then you go back to hang out with your parents,
link |
03:10:34.040
you can feel that it's not like they even want you
link |
03:10:38.040
to conform, but you'll just, you could slip into that,
link |
03:10:40.420
whatever that was.
link |
03:10:41.320
So I remember that when I would go back
link |
03:10:42.980
and like visit them and stuff.
link |
03:10:45.280
And surely conformity or the pressure to like,
link |
03:10:50.440
not be individual or whatever, it's everywhere, man.
link |
03:10:53.860
Do you think you made your parents proud?
link |
03:10:58.600
E, no, no, no, no.
link |
03:11:03.320
Well, I think that when my mom died,
link |
03:11:08.480
I felt successful in the sense that I was able
link |
03:11:13.080
to support my, I was making money from doing standup
link |
03:11:18.720
and I didn't need help.
link |
03:11:20.000
I was like, I was supporting myself with art
link |
03:11:22.600
and doing good, what I thought was great then.
link |
03:11:24.960
So, and I think she, like, because she had witnessed
link |
03:11:29.400
me literally failing, I mean, which is, by the way,
link |
03:11:32.380
I think part of, if you want to be an artist
link |
03:11:35.960
or successful, you kind of have to fail.
link |
03:11:38.640
Like there, if, and if there was a guaranteed route
link |
03:11:44.080
from sucking to not sucking or from like the neophyte phase
link |
03:11:52.520
of whatever the art form is and, you know,
link |
03:11:55.080
some intermediary phase, then I think a lot more people
link |
03:11:58.120
would do it, but there really is no guarantees in it,
link |
03:12:01.720
especially the standup comedy.
link |
03:12:03.200
It's like, you'd have to be a maniac to want to,
link |
03:12:06.720
to think that that's going to work out for you.
link |
03:12:08.480
You have to, so you're going to,
link |
03:12:11.960
there are obviously exceptions, but for me,
link |
03:12:15.360
it was like a long slog, you know,
link |
03:12:18.920
and that's scary for a mom.
link |
03:12:20.400
So, but that being said, when she was dying,
link |
03:12:26.160
like she did recognize that I was like not slogging anymore.
link |
03:12:31.120
And she did say, she said, you did it.
link |
03:12:35.000
And that's cool, but in, you know,
link |
03:12:38.480
I would love for her to see me now,
link |
03:12:40.040
like now it'd be way cooler, but maybe she does.
link |
03:12:42.820
I don't know.
link |
03:12:43.660
She's listening to your podcast elsewhere in the other,
link |
03:12:47.240
in the Bardo.
link |
03:12:48.440
Yeah, however long that lasts reconfiguring
link |
03:12:53.240
the whole process to start again.
link |
03:12:56.320
You as a father now, how did that change you?
link |
03:12:59.600
Yeah, that's the big change, man.
link |
03:13:02.160
That's the thing.
link |
03:13:03.000
You made a few biological entities.
link |
03:13:06.780
Yeah, I made biological entities.
link |
03:13:08.640
I mean, I came in my wife, let's face it.
link |
03:13:10.920
Like I would love to say I made them,
link |
03:13:12.360
but the womb whipped them up, but it is the,
link |
03:13:17.900
yeah, it's the best.
link |
03:13:18.880
It's, I've never experienced anything like it before.
link |
03:13:22.480
It is the, as far as I'm concerned,
link |
03:13:24.920
the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
link |
03:13:27.800
And that's why I was able to answer your Nietzsche question
link |
03:13:30.520
with like, hell yes, fuck yes.
link |
03:13:33.000
That's great.
link |
03:13:33.840
I get to be around my kids again.
link |
03:13:35.200
I'll always be around my kids.
link |
03:13:36.360
I'll always be around my children.
link |
03:13:38.300
That's incredible.
link |
03:13:39.140
That's the joy.
link |
03:13:39.980
So like, so for me,
link |
03:13:45.240
the part of myself that used to torture myself more,
link |
03:13:48.320
especially like around like my mom dying,
link |
03:13:51.040
feeling like I wasn't there enough for her,
link |
03:13:53.680
wishing that I had spent more time with her,
link |
03:13:56.060
wishing I'd spent more time with my dad,
link |
03:13:58.200
wishing that like, looking back at like how like
link |
03:14:01.760
I was just so desperately trying to evade the fact
link |
03:14:05.400
that she was dying and through,
link |
03:14:09.040
and in that evasion successfully like distanced myself
link |
03:14:13.200
from her and like in ways that I really wish I hadn't.
link |
03:14:20.040
I'm just saying that because it's one of my regrets.
link |
03:14:22.200
It's like a big regret.
link |
03:14:23.160
I have a lot of little regrets,
link |
03:14:24.520
but that's a big one.
link |
03:14:26.280
And so when you have kids,
link |
03:14:33.140
you look back at everything you did
link |
03:14:38.240
and you think like, fuck,
link |
03:14:40.320
if I'd gone left at that point instead of right,
link |
03:14:43.580
if I had eaten, who knows?
link |
03:14:45.680
What if I'd eaten like a turkey sandwich
link |
03:14:48.780
when my balls were creating the cum
link |
03:14:53.380
that was gonna make my kids?
link |
03:14:54.880
Would I have a different kid?
link |
03:14:56.580
Would this being not exist in my life?
link |
03:14:59.000
Like you start looking at everything
link |
03:15:00.440
and you realize like, thank God,
link |
03:15:03.540
thank God for every single thing that happened to me
link |
03:15:06.400
because it all led up to this.
link |
03:15:08.760
And oh, for me, that is the, that's,
link |
03:15:12.880
that it's like, it frees you in this.
link |
03:15:18.240
It liberates you because you realize like,
link |
03:15:21.140
oh wow, it's clumsy and selfish
link |
03:15:23.720
and at times rotten as I've been in my life.
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03:15:29.400
That did not impede the universe at all
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03:15:34.240
from allowing these two beautiful beings
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03:15:37.340
to exist in the world.
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03:15:38.440
So maybe all of it enabled,
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03:15:40.360
all of it like a concert perfectly led up
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03:15:44.600
to that little beautiful moment.
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03:15:47.560
Is there ways you would like to be a better father?
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03:15:52.640
Oh yeah, for sure.
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03:15:54.360
Absolutely.
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03:15:55.640
There's a actual, I read something in a book,
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03:15:59.420
it's called Good Enough.
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03:16:00.960
The mantra for a parent, good enough.
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03:16:03.400
Because when you are in the presence
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03:16:05.000
of something you love more
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03:16:07.680
than you've ever experienced love,
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03:16:12.800
you wanna be perfect.
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03:16:15.520
Like you wanna be, I can't, I gotta work, man.
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03:16:17.680
I gotta go on the road.
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03:16:18.920
I've gotta work.
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03:16:19.760
I gotta support the family.
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03:16:20.760
So that means I have to work.
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03:16:22.240
Like I work, you know what it's like having a podcast.
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03:16:25.480
You fucking work, man.
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03:16:26.800
And you know, it's a full time job
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03:16:31.440
because I've, you know, I do standup too
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03:16:33.860
and all the other stuff.
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03:16:34.720
So I feel sometimes I feel like, oh my God,
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03:16:38.720
I wanna spend more time with them.
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03:16:40.660
Like I should be spending more time with them.
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03:16:42.120
But then also I wanna create, I wanna work.
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03:16:45.040
I like being like the provider.
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03:16:49.000
So that's something I feel guilty about, you know, right now.
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03:16:53.600
And you're struggling how to balance that correctly.
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03:16:56.600
And meanwhile, time just marches on.
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03:16:59.880
It just goes, it goes.
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03:17:03.280
And all of this will be forgotten.
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03:17:07.440
Both you and I, but forgotten in time.
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03:17:11.600
That's what I say to them
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03:17:12.420
every time I'm putting them to bed.
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03:17:15.600
We will be lost in the sands of time.
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03:17:18.560
You know that, I bet you know this poem.
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03:17:20.440
You know that poem, Ozymandias?
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03:17:22.440
Yes.
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03:17:23.920
Can I read you a poem?
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03:17:25.720
Oh, okay.
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03:17:29.580
Let's end our conversation in a poem.
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03:17:32.280
I love it.
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03:17:33.220
It's by Pierce, by Shelley,
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03:17:37.480
probably mispronouncing the name.
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03:17:39.520
But I think you'll get it.
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03:17:40.360
There's no right way to pronounce anything.
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03:17:41.200
Thank you, thank you.
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03:17:44.200
I'm Ozymandias.
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03:17:45.820
I met a traveler from an antique land who said,
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03:17:49.200
"'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
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03:17:54.120
Near them, on the sand, half sunk,
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03:17:57.440
a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip
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03:18:01.920
and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor,
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03:18:05.760
well those passions read, which yet survive,
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03:18:09.360
stamped on these lifeless things,
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03:18:11.880
the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
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03:18:15.120
And on the pedestal, these words appear.
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03:18:18.300
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
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03:18:21.960
Look on my works, ye mighty, in despair.
link |
03:18:25.320
Nothing beside remains around the decay
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03:18:27.760
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
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03:18:31.080
the lone and level sands stretch far away."
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03:18:34.560
All gone, behold the king.
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03:18:42.080
Look on my works, ye mighty, in despair.
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03:18:45.680
In despair.
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03:18:47.440
Even though it will be forgotten in the sands of time,
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03:18:50.680
Duncan, I'm just so glad that you exist
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03:18:53.600
and you put so much love into the world
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03:18:55.560
over the past many years that I've gotten a chance
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03:18:57.560
to enjoy it by being your fan.
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03:18:59.440
Likewise.
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03:19:00.360
Thank you so much for continuing that
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03:19:02.800
and for sharing a bit of love with me today.
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03:19:04.720
Can we be friends?
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03:19:05.880
Let's be friends.
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03:19:06.720
In the real world, in 3D space?
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03:19:09.320
Nothing is real, but yes, in this particular slice
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03:19:12.080
of the multidimensional world we live in.
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03:19:14.560
It will be an honor and a pleasure.
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03:19:16.160
Thank you for having me on your show.
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03:19:17.480
I love you, Duncan.
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03:19:18.300
I love you.
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03:19:19.140
Thank you, Lex.
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03:19:20.560
Thanks for listening to this conversation
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03:19:22.080
with Duncan Trussell.
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03:19:23.320
To support this podcast,
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03:19:24.520
please check out our sponsors in the description.
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03:19:27.340
And now, let me leave you with some words
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03:19:29.520
from Duncan Trussell himself.
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03:19:31.240
You are essentially just a cloud of atoms
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03:19:35.640
that will eventually be aerosolized by time.
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03:19:39.120
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.