Camp Gagnon - The Most Chilling Social Experiment Ever | Universe 25

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

UNIVERSE 25 WAS WILD! Today, we explore John B. Calhoun’s infamous experiment that created a utopian world for mice-abundant resources, no predators, and perfect conditions. But this so-called utopia quickly devolved into a dystopian nightmare marked by social collapse, crime, and a breakdown of community bonds. We’ll cover the experiment’s process and its unsettling outcome, revealing how this nightmare society of mice mirrors troubling parallels to urban human societies struggling with overcrowding, isolation, and rising antisocial behavior. Join us as we review the lasting impact of Universe 25 on science and what it warns us about the fragility of civilization…WELCOME TO CAMP 🏕️!Shoutout to our sponsors: Cymbiotika, Morgan & Morgan and BluechewGo to https://partners.cymbiotika.com/CAMP for 20% off your order + free shipping👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: https://campgoods.co/🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTimestamps:0:00 Intro1:22 The Slowest Invasion Ever3:06 The Reason For Creating Universe 257:38 The Layout of Universe 2511:07 The First Experiments of Universe 25 + Incest Mice18:03 Overcrowding In The Universe21:34 Male Mice Become Aggressive + The Beautiful Ones33:54 The Collapse of Universe 25 + Is NYC Just Like Universe 25?49:17 To Goon or Not to Goon52:57 Hikikomori + Modern Construction Using Universe 25’s Ideas55:57 Importance of Having a Community

Universe 25, one of the most disturbing, terrifying, and controversial experiments ever conducted, not on human beings, but on mice. What if you put a bunch of mice into an enclosure and give them all the food and water they want, but they're on top of each other in tiny little apartments, much like a city, like New York, L.A. or Chicago? What happens? Unfortunately, one researcher discovered that their societal collapse, men become aggressive and start to fight each other. Women start to attack their own young, neglect their children, and the birth rate decline. And many researchers over the decades have mapped this to human behavior.

Is this where American society is going? Are we entering into an eventual collapse? Well, all that and more will be explored today on this episode of camp. We will go through how the experiment was decided, how it was set up, what were the factors that went into it? What do the critics say? Why is this not like American or human society? And what can we learn and how can we change our lives in order to create a more just

and peaceful place for ourselves? to live. So, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to camp. We are not in our beautiful, wonderful tent. Instead, we are here outside of a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. This is take two of this amazing episode we're about to record on Universe 25. Our first take was interrupted. Yeah, it was invaded by injured Tanzanians in their 80s. And I'm sure the people at home are Like, what do you mean? How does a podcast get invaded by a menagerie of Tanzanese? By a geriatric Tanzania and just recovering from knee surgery. Well, here's the clip, and just to give you guys context of what happened.

Even if raised an Lestprotic condition is a little bit more towards you, Mark? So that's basically what happened. In the middle of our recording, the slowest invasion of all time happened. Yeah, and I didn't like how you treated that guy. What do you mean? What did I do? You came into you, oh, hey, you're fucking up my pie. I didn't do that. You said, hey, old, I did not do that.

Why don't you waddle into someone else's show? That's not true. This is Camp Gagnon. It's not. For anyone that doesn't know, this is my friend, Christoph. We started comedy in Orlando together. and he's on the road with me right now. We're doing shows at Healing in Atlanta.

It was a great time. It's been great. And you're going to be on the road with me for a couple more shows. Yeah, Indianapolis for show, Austin, and then the ones around New York, like Philly, Connecticut. Hell yeah. Yeah. So come on out to a show. But let's get in to Universe 25.

Let's do it. We got into it a little bit yesterday. Yeah, we did. Still start for the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. But now you know a little bit.

But now I know a little bit. universe 25 maybe one of the most disturbing and by disturbing I mean just kind of like morbidly strange experiments disturbing if you the obvious applications for real people yeah it's a pretty one to one like anyway like you can go oh those are mice it's not the same and then you start reading it you go it's pretty much the same yeah

unfortunately humans are animals yeah no I would I trust mice implicitly I do I think a mouse if a mouse is having a hard time I probably I probably have a hard time too yeah facts You ever see them push the lever for cocaine? Oh, yeah. Do you know that if they push the lever and they always get cocaine, it's not that interesting? Yeah, you need variable reward. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah. If you push it sometimes and you get blow, you're fucking mad. But if you do it like, oh, yeah, I know, yeah, I get blow over there. Humans are the same way. Yeah, exactly. Isn't that strange? That's why you see people at casino is just like... Yeah, that's why the, yeah, if you just won the slot machine every time, it wouldn't be that fun.

Yeah. But if you win sometimes, mostly never, then it's awesome. Yeah. And that's why Fandul is no. So this was an experiment for another that doesn't know. Created by this guy, John B. Calhoun. He do be Calhoun. Who we learned is not John C. Calhoun, the vice president under Thomas, no, Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson? That's exactly right. Yeah, I knew that. John C. Calhoun, he was a behavioral researcher who worked at the National Institute of Mental Health. During a time when there was a lot of concerns about population growth and urbanization. Yeah. Basically had these cities that were exploding after World War II, and people were just flocking to these urban centers living in these super densely populated metropolises.

And in the mid-20th century, with all this urban expansion, global populations rising, people were like, how many people are allowed to exist? Yeah. At what point is it too much? Right. Because if you ever look at a map, like, where you go, if the population was as dense as Paris for, it's like we could fit everybody in, like, Louisiana. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you're like, oh, so. So there's plenty of space. And then you're like, no, not really. It's not really how that works at all. Yeah. But people are like, at what point does it all just fall apart? Yeah. So this guy started doing some experiments in the 40s and 50s, okay, with these, this breed

of rat called the Norway rat. Mm-hmm. The whitest of rats. Norway rat. He's like, we're going to do the universe 25. I don't know. What are people from Norway sound like? My wife.

That's basically it. That's exactly it. I'm from a Norway. These experiments basically Were to illustrate social dysfunction When populations became too dense And it's not scarcity You know what I mean?

Because obviously if there's scarcity If you don't have food and water People are going to start freaking out In New York, there's plenty of shit You can get, there's food everywhere There's bodegas on the fucking corn There's a half-eating hot dog in the trash can Jump in all those rats everywhere

You can shoot them with a little pellet gun Grill them over and open flame Find the Puerto Rico can be like Can you tosses on They probably will Dude, I used to live near a lot of Like Bolivians and South Americans I've heard of those

Yeah And they used to make guinea pig on the street Really? They'd be roasting up a guinea pig Right in front of, you know, the M train And? Do you try it? No, I never tried it, but you know, I'm not against eating a guinea pig

I would eat a guinea pig Yeah, the problem is like They sound like that Yeah, I guess it depends who's guinea pig, right? But those are just one of those animals that we just happen to have his pets. Yeah, I mean, like, it's what's, the difference between that and a rabbit is none. Yeah, absolutely.

And I've eaten rabbit several times. Yeah. And I don't feel good. We also had a pet rabbit. Yeah, I had two pet rabbits. Really? Yeah. Kevin and Isabel.

That's not true. I don't remember their names. Really? You don't remember your own pet rabbits in? I was like eight. Dude, our pet rabbit? Cloudy? Yeah.

Got eaten by a bear. No way. Where to God? What kind of bear? Black bear? Black bear. Black bear. Yeah.

We're going to start a GoFundMe for Cloudy If you guys want to talk it Florida Black there Dude the GoFundMe Raids Wars are getting crazy Yeah, of course She raised like $300,000 because she Called someone the N-word

And you go I've been doing this for free now I'm leaving money on the table Yeah dude Guys like you just do it for the love of the game So this guy John C. Riley Yes.

No, John Calhoun. Be Cahoon. Starts doing these experiments, giving all these mice, all the food and water they need. They have nesting materials. They have a perfect environment, but they just start getting more and more dense. They basically lets them just, you know, read as much as they want. And they end up getting so dense that the experiments have to be called off

because the environments that they were in weren't able to accommodate. Yeah, they outgrew the labs. Yeah, basically. And these are the early experiments. and he discovered this thing called behavioral sync. And this is a phenomenon where overcrowding leads to a breakdown in the normal social behaviors of these mice. Yeah. So the mice are normally just doing mice shit.

But the second it gets overcrowded, things get off the rails. Yeah. So in the early studies, the rats exhibited extreme aggression, neglected their offspring, withdrew from social interactions. And they intrigued this guy, right? The scientist, he's over here being like, okay, could these patterns offer an insight to how humans would behave in a city environment as well. And so when he starts doing these early experiments, not only is the scientific community interested,

all of a sudden, policy makers and the U.S. government, as well as global governments, also start getting interested. They're like, dude, is this important? Should we take this into account? Yeah. Like if New York gets to 10 million people, will everything just fall apart?

Right. So this is where Universe 25 comes in. This is an experiment born out of the desire to basically take the behavioral collapse hypothesis to the logical end. And he basically creates utopia, an environment where there's unlimited food, water, nesting materials, and tries to isolate the effects of overcrowding itself. And it's about obviously studying mice, but also trying to broach the philosophical practice of how societies grow and how they function. Yeah.

So he creates this environment. It's like an enclosure. It's words getting a picture. We can throw one up on screen. It's massive. Yeah. It's a, you know, nine feet. Nine square feet.

Yeah. And it's divided into four interconnected pins or pens with 16 vertical mesh stairwells leading up to 256 nesting compartments. It can hold thousands of mice. Yeah. I think the max was, what, 3,000 or something like that? That's its capacity. Yeah, it's interesting. Keep going, but it's like where it starts to fall apart isn't even close to 3,000.

Way before that. Yeah. So each compartment can hold up to 15 mice and the population never even reached the theoretical mass. Like your apartments in Williamsburg. Exactly. Yeah. Unlimited food. Probably not Williamsburg. Probably more like, you know, maybe Bushwick or maybe in Astoria.

Yes. And there's landlords that come in. There's some scrutiny, mice. Yeah, we'll get into the scrutiny. Don't worry. There's unlimited food and water. All the nesting materials they want. Temperatures maintained at like 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yeah, it's perfect mice weather. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. They got tanning beds. They got a gym. Yeah. Yeah, everything you need, all the amenities you want. They're doing little mouse push-ups.

Disease-free. They're coming through, cleaning up poop all day. They clean up the poop, and they filtered all of them. Anyone who's, no sick mice allowed. Nope. If you got a cough, you're gone. Yeah, it's like, what's a mouse cough? And so, if you got a little mouse cough, you better hit the brakes.

It goes like this was a little paw. Get a little handkerchief. Pardon me, I've just got an awful cold. So it begins in 1968. This is when America is gripped by, you know, Vietnam, drugs are going crazy. And this guy's staring at mice in a big cage. Yeah, exactly. He goes, this is our world.

He locks the door. Yeah, he goes, this is just like New York City. Yes. Universe 26. Universe 26 is where I'm with the mice. I become one with the mice. I blend my genetics with the mouse. I become the mouse.

I become the Uber mouse. So 1968, he takes four pairs. of healthy, genetically robust mice. These are just some of the frumpiest most robust. They're robust. They're robust. They're extremely robust mice. And he takes them from the Institute of Health,

and they're introduced to the enclosure during the strive period. This is a 104-day phase where they adapt to their surroundings, establish territories, begin fucking. Yeah. So that's what they do. I was amazed at just the fuck rate was really high. Oh, yeah. You realize, like, yeah, after 100 days, they've 500xed.

Yeah, yeah. What the fuck? No, they'd be going buckwock. You know what I learned recently about mice in particular is that there's no, like, there is, like, if they do incest, it doesn't matter. Really? The genetic variability between a mouse that's related to it's, to, you know, another mouse and, like, a non-related mouse is so negligible that there's not, like, incest doesn't, like, bear any problems. Whoa. They're just too genetically similar across the board.

That's hot as hell, dude. Yeah. So your sister is very fuckable. So they don't have any. Porn is... Mice porn, they... There's no stepbrose. Yeah, if a mouse saw,

its step sister stuck in the dryer would just have sex with it and then it wouldn't even be that taboo. Yeah, not at all. It wouldn't even be a big deal at all. Like, there's no, like, what are you doing in the step? It's like, obviously... Yeah, the concept of stepbrow is probably foreign.

Probably. Also, for the record, this is the case with humans also. What? It's not as... It's not as close as you think. What? So, like, brother's sister. You can't do that.

No. Cousin? cousin is like 2% chance of something Yeah it's not bad But then if you Second cousin's like But then what happens is like

Okay my parents are cousins I have sex with my cousin You know it's like It's not good Once you get like multi-generational incest Then you're like really fucking with it It seems exponential Why is it not good?

I mean look I don't know I saw a documentary You got something against disabled kids Yeah So I uh I saw like a documentary about I forget where it was But it was somewhere in England

Where there was Um I figure where they were from, but they were from an Arab country, which is fine. And there was like such a high rate of incest in this particular community in England of Arab immigrants. And then they showed all their like freaky disabled kids. And it's like they're talking to the mother and father and they're like, well, we're cousins. My parents are cousins, which is really her uncle.

You know, it's like, it's really, you know, the Venn diagram becomes a circle at a certain point. Yeah. And family tree is just a racetrack. Yeah, dude. It's fucking dead straight out. There's one branch and it's crooked. And the kids all have, like, terrible diseases. One kid was, like, blind and mentally handicapped.

You're saying they should have thrown a mouse in there. Should have thrown a mouse in there. Should have thrown a mouse. Like, give a mouse a pussy. That's a fire kid, bro. Give a mouse a pussy. Yeah, yeah. If you give him mouse a pussy, it's Bernie Mac reading. It's going to try to move in.

And when he's moving in, give a little. Give a mouse some pussy. I said I don't give some mouse a pussy. Make that a kid's book selling out the show. Give a house and pussy. It's actually a pretty fire idea. What is a motherfucker mouse? Gotta do.

I ain't getting you motherfucking mice. So, he creates a utopia. This is his dream. And the only limiting factor is physical space. So what happens? Great question. Great question. All righty, don't skip forward, guys, because I am on the road.

World's Fastest Ad Read, coming at you. I'm going to be an Indianapolis, Buffalo, Raleigh, Poughkeepsie, Portland, Oregon, Fort Worth, Texas, Austin, Texas, Stanford, Philly, Levittown, Chandler, Arizona, San Diego. I'm also going to be adding Toronto, Montreal, as well as Washington, D.C., and a bunch of other dates. Dates are in the description also in probably the comments of this episode. Go see me on the road. Come hang out. I'll be hanging out with everyone after the show. Come shake my hand.

Call me an idiot. Whatever you want to do, I will be there. additionally I will be doing my one hour of stand-up comedy I'm very proud of this hour I'm really excited to share with you guys and it would mean the world if everyone could come on out and what do you wear to a show on the road that's a great question you can go to camp goods.co. That's right. We got merch. We got camp merch. We got hats, hoodies, t-shirts. A lot of stuff is out of stock. Things have been selling like hot cakes, but we're going to be restocking everything in all the sizes so you can go there right now. Get all the merch, get all the coolest clothing in the podcast game. We're going to be updating that site regularly. And if you come out to a show, I'd like that. I'd love to see you sporting some of the threads that we got up online. I'll see you guys. Let's get back to the show. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because we have a new sponsor with the show that I'm so excited about that I need to tell you.

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which is why I'm so excited to tell you guys about it. So check it out, and let's get back to the show. The population of Universe 25 starts to basically double every 55 days. Yeah, that's what I was blowing my mind. It just starts to go. Bang, bang, bang. The mouse are having crazy. Kids are having sex with each other.

Yes. Guys going down on guys, girls going down on girls. Orgy fest. This happened with a hamsters I had as a kid. I didn't know that we didn't know the gender of the horses or horses. Whoa. What an insane. We didn't know the gender of the horses

I go Am I sucking this horse's vagina or penis Look at the balls of that female horse We had horses in this hamster cage It was really cruel actually what we did But um no Hamsters not horses Were you fucking a girl horse? A girl horse or a boy horse

I don't know either way I got kicked but I think they were hamsters so they had sex with each other as an age and horses

well hamsters and horses they bone and then we have a bunch of baby hamsters and then those babies we kept one and like gave the rest away and then we didn't

we thought foolheartedly that they wouldn't have sex with their own children but they totally do and then we had even more hamsters I love that you had like a moral code.

They're like, our hamsters will uphold this. No, I just thought like, it just, you know, I don't know. I thought like, oh, there's a pheromone. Yeah. I mean, when I was a kid, I was like, yeah, it's his son. Why would she have sex with her son? This fucking freaky-a-ha hamster. Freaky-a hamster.

She had a fan, she a fan. The hamster's like, what are we doing? This is so wrong. This is so wrong. This is crazy. Look, I'll just get rid of your hamster boner. Okay, anyway. My hamster hands are broken.

I've broken hamster paws. I can't jerk my little hamster meat. Jerking his little hamster meat. By day through 15... Is hamster come on the wheel? He just flies off of a sprint. There's hamster coming all over the wall. It's like a Jackson Pollock here.

By day 315, the colonies had 620 mice. Remember, one from four pairs. years. Eight. Yeah, eight mice is 620 in 315 days. Yeah, in less than a year. Crazy. They're fucking like rabbits, these hamsters.

Yeah. And what's interesting is that the capacity is 3,000. They're at 620 and they're already creating disproportionate clusters. That's what I mean. It's like a fifth of the space is occupied. So around these communal, like food areas and nesting apartments, they're all on top of each other, just like stressing each other out, creating these hotspots. And as they're doing this, the eating.

and grooming rituals that are these social rituals, draw the mice into the shared spaces, and then the competition intensifies in those spots. And then that starts leading to aggression. Yeah, I'm curious, what are they competing for, if not resources? Just dominant hierarchies? I'm assuming, yeah. I'm assuming they're like, hey, who's the hottest? Who's the biggest, baddest motherfucker? And who's, like, the little girl rat that everyone wants to plow, the sexy girl rat with big boobs? Yes. Hold my little mouse pocket. You know what I mean? That's what they're trying to figure out. So this is an appeal. Paradox, right? They have this abundant resource system, but yet there is an amplifying social conflict.

Yeah. First signs of dysfunction in the utopia. Mm-hmm. Sound familiar? Population peaks at 2,200. Crazy. At that point, the social hierarchy start to fracture under the density. Dominant males, tasked with defending territory, become hyper-aggressive, attacking rivals indiscriminately, and even resorting to cannibalism. Dundit men's... draw from social interaction and the lowest ranking omega males, which is still so funny. Omega males. We need a new word for these puss ass mice.

For these bitch-ass, puss-ass, basement-dwelling mice. For real. The omega cuck mice are retreating to isolated areas, living in fear. Yeah. And just completely, you know, pulling themselves out. Did any of them become polyamorous? I mean, I'm assuming they all are. That's a good point.

I don't think they have strict monogamy in the mice. They're fucking their kids. This is my mousewife. Yeah, yeah. They're like, what are you doing to my mouse wife? You fucking son of a bitch? I'm going to have to eat you. I mean, yeah, I guess there's harems, though, probably, right?

There's, like, one big badass mouse who fucks all their lady mice. I don't think, I can't imagine it's equitable pussy. Yeah, no. It's going to be the, you know. It's going to be like one to every eight, you know, whatever. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm assuming happens. That's what I think happens to.

So the females. are also stressed because they have to defend their nests and their young from the aggressive males and now that leads to maternal neglect the aggressive males eat the young and then fuck the ladies. That's what lions do. That's what Vikings do. That's what I did. What? Last week.

What? I was hammered. Dude, five high lives? Yeah. I killed seven kids and bang their wives. No, I was eating hamsters. Oh, wait, hold on. I was slurping hamsters down. I'm trying to dominate a different species hierarchy. Some of the compartments,

for the record, 90% mortality of the infant. Jesus. Of the young little pups, 90%. And the surviving ones lacked socialization and perpetuated the maladaptive behaviors across generations. Yeah. That's an important detail we'll get to. So by Day 600, but now about like two years

into the same. I still think it's so funny, this sounds like a log from one of the Day 600. I ate my own young in order to compete in the dominance hierarchy. I've been having sex with one of the beautiful ones. We'll get to the beautiful ones I dream of a cat taking me out

Sometimes I wish I could hang my own little Mice neck, but I'd just slip through the noose like a little noodle There's nothing to catch on I don't have a head Anyway So this is this is a stagnation phase Day 600 we're in stagnation phase Yeah reproduction is basically stopped

Slows dramatically Birth rates drop to a third of their peak as female ceased mating and abandoned their young. That makes sense. Aggression amongst the males escalate. What is the birth rate right now in New York City? Oh, dude. I actually would be so curious.

Are you able to go to? New York locals who are having babies has to be way lower than like a rural area. It's like 0.5. It must be 0.5. Yeah, because you think about a rural area and you're like, yeah, there's like nine farms here. They're all families and they all have several children.

You know? You have to have two kids per couple to be at one? Right. There's no way. Yeah. I mean, how many? dwebous, you know, fucking guys with red glasses are like, I've never wanted children. I actually really don't.

I don't know. I have a hard time sympathizing with those folks. Anyway, so I have no idea what the birth rate in New York City is, but I can tell you anecdotally, it ain't much. In my apartment, it's huge. Just only in my little where I live. Why? Because there's one baby born recently. Yeah.

So we're going up. Yeah, well, the data within my one unit. But isn't it, there's so many couples in New York that don't have kids or they don't have many kids. and like it's professional women and they don't have as many kids. Yeah, of course. No, it's anecdotally. Yeah. There's no kids.

Truly. And I don't know. I actually joined. People in Manhattan? I joined a group of fathers. Yeah. That like dudes that hang out with their kids. And they're all 40.

Yeah, they're all old and they had their first kids. They're all looking to be like, are you like, are you like, are you like, are you like? They assume that I'm like. You're 30 and you have a child. They think, you have a newborn at 30 and they're like, what? I tell them. They're like, how? I'm like, I'm 20.

You're in your 20s? Yeah. They truly are like, why? Is everything okay? When did your father have you? My father? No, but everybody's father. Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean? It's like increased like five or ten years in one generation. Yeah, it's a lot. Pretty staunchly, you know? My dad was very old, but, you know, my sister, my mother had her when she was 27, 28, your age. And no one was like, and she was like, oh, fuck. Which for the record, in the rest of the country, I think that's my way. normal. That is normal. Like, I don't think anyone back to

that. That's true. That's true. Like, that's very much a coastal city thing. A coastal city for sure. So, what happens is that as the aggression amongst these males escalate, the women increasingly withdraw from communal activities. Because the dudes are just fighting and they're like, guys, stop! Yeah, they're scaring the hose, right? Yeah, they scare the hose by biting

each other's necks. Literally, the hose are getting extremely scared. And the behavior spreads contagiously to stabilize the entire population. So as there's a skirmish amongst male mice over here. The other one start to fight also. It's just because that's in the air you go, I guess we've got to fight right now.

It's like, it's like a bar fight. Your hackles are up. You're like, dude, am I going to die? Yeah. It's like two guys are fighting at a bar for some reason. It's like now the whole, like now eight people are fighting at the bar. You have to, wait, why? Apparently, have you ever heard this that after UFC fights, fights in bars go up a ton? And a lot of you have, like, a lot

of bars won't play UFC fights. For that reason? Because they're like, it's just not worth the fight ends and then dudes. We're like a fight precipice bar. Like sometimes fight. break out here just organically so we can't fucking we can't do this. Yeah, exactly.

We can't just play ultra-violence on the television. But you see some guys fighting like, dude, you got to strike first. Yeah. You know what I mean? Ask questions later. So that takes us to the beautiful ones.

Yes, the beautiful ones. I think I'd be a beautiful one. I highly doubt it. But it's an interesting thing in this entire experiment that the beautiful ones were the mice that withdrew entirely from the social interactions.

Both male and female. middle. Yeah. They showed obsessive grooming behavior. Yeah. So they just groomed themselves over, just like impulsed, like they couldn't help it. This is like the agoraphobic OCD rat. Yeah. It's like the Howie Mendel's in the world. Germaphobe. I think I kind of imagine someone who's like from New York City and they just never leave their apartment. Yes. And you're like, why are you in the greatest city in the world again? And you're like, fully detached. Fully detached like a spotless apartment by themselves. Yes. They avoid mating. They show no. No interest in territorial disputes.

It's like a weird anxiety disorder thing. But no interest in territorial disputes is interesting also. Yeah. Because they're just like, I'm above this. Like, I'm just detached. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, who cares? They're apathetic towards like whatever, like, gain they could have from winning the dispute.

There is no gain. What is there? There's no gain. There's unlimited food and water. So it's almost like they understand something sort of implicitly that like, okay, that violence is somewhat meaningless. Not only is the violence meaningless. Yeah.

Our existence is meaningless. Is meaningless. So what is the point of doing anything? Right. Why would I rise to a hierarchy that when I get at the top, it's the same as the bottom? Everything's the same. Yeah. So they... That feels pretty... That's kind of spot on.

You know? Because people are like, that's why the, you know, that's kind of like... I've noticed, and I don't know... I think this is more of a trend now with, like, the internet and things, is that... And gaming specifically, young men is like maybe not leaving the house till later. Not like wanting a driver's license is like a weird one.

I mean, you meet like a guy who's like 22, 23. He still is at home. He games a lot. He doesn't have a driver's license. And I'm like, what do you do exactly? He's like, well, there's groceries right there. I game right here. I goon right here.

Yeah. Like what am I, you know, what am I like? What am I after? Yeah. It's like, what is the goal? Have you seen like sex rates amongst like Gen Z or down? Alcohol is down. nicotine, cigarette use is down.

Yeah, everything's down. Which seems good. Like, of course, like, excessive alcohol use is not good. And, you know, but it seems indicative. Permiscuity or whatever, like, if it's at a super high is bad. But it seems like it's indicative of greater, like, isolationist social behavior.

For sure, dude. I think this is, like, Stanhope has a great bit about it, like, back in the day. He, like, called it in, like, 2010 or something. He had a bit about it. About, like, this is the first generation that will be lamer than the last.

Every generation when I grew up was more rebellious. More rebellious. They did more drugs. They had more, you know, casual sex. They drank more. They did crazier shit. And now it's like, you know, the main source of pleasure is like Adderall and gaming. And you know what I mean?

It's like very isolationist stuff. Yes. Huberman talks about this all the time. Yeah. Like fast acting dopamine. Right. Like short-term dopamine is generally not good for you. That's generally not good.

good for you, but I also think like... As I drink caffeine. Yeah. Well, you need caffeine. Some people need caffeine. Oh, that's good. ASMR. Yeah, no, like, but also it's like what the world has to offer isn't that appealing.

Yeah, there's just no point. Yeah, which sucks. In the utopia, not in our life. No, not in our life. You're talking about the utopia, right? Yeah, well, in general, too. No, no, no, no. Our life is awesome.

Our society's built super, super sick. No, I mean, it's like, dude, there's no good jobs. college degrees are meaningless and a scam and based on predatory loan practices. The economy's collapsing. The banks and corporations are just going to kind of stomp on us until we all die. Until we all die. It's like, you know, big tech's going to just rape our attention until we're just like Wally people with, but we're going to be like Wally people with no money.

Yeah, but you won't need money. Exactly. Because you won't own anything. You're going to like it. Yeah. Right. Let's go, dude. So these beautiful ones, these beautiful ones,

are physically pristine. They look beautiful. But their detachment symbolizes the societal collapse, right? They're just completely checked out, apathetic to everything. What's interesting is even when the beautiful ones after the experiment ends are relocated to new environments, they remained asocial and failed to reproduce. You get in a rut. And they demonstrated the psychological damage of their upbringing within this environment. Yeah, dude, it's really tough. I feel bad for it. I think it's in our society more of a male thing, for whatever reason. I don't know why. But I do see that, like, the parallel between just, like, obsessive grooming and, like, you know, kind of agoraphobia almost in, like, young men, which kind of bums me out.

Yeah, I mean, like, looks maxing type vibes. Looks maxing, they're jelking. They're fucking... They're jelking and they're gooning and they're, um, they're mewing. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it's kind of, but they're not even in cells, really. These are kind of voluntary cell bits.

Yeah. You know, these aren't even like, you know, the in-cell is like the Omega male. Yeah. The Omega male is kind of an in-cell, whereas, like, the beautiful one is almost like something else. Where I've met people like that, they're not even interested in sex, really. Yeah. I wouldn't even class. They're not, like, you know, smoking cigarettes in their fucking mom's basement and, you know, calling for the death of women.

you know yeah they're just like whatever i just like play fortnight like with my friends i just play overwatch and they kind of have a social thing with their friends they do they have like a very active discord you know yeah it's interesting that even after they get taken out of the environment that they're still they're still like that like that and then on top of that when they have kids those kids are like that they pass it on yeah like according to the research the mice born in later phases inherited the maladaptive behaviors such as aggression withdrawal even if they're raised in less crowded conditions later in life. They're just emulating what their folks are doing.

I mean, you know, see monkey do. So by 1973, yeah. Five years later, Universe 25's population had collapsed entirely. Whoa. The last conception occurred on day 920, and the colony

dwindled to extinction despite abundant resources. Extinction? Yeah. They all literally just died. Wow. Calhoun concluded that the overpopulation alone, even with out resource scarcity, destabilized a society led to a behavioral sync and irreversible dysfunction. And the grim outcome underscored the importance of addressing social and psychological needs alongside material abundance in designing sustainable communities. Wow. Crazy. Yeah,

that's nuts. So the parts that kind of stick out is like the voluntary clustering. The mice congregate around communal food hoppers and nesting areas, ignoring the underutilized compartments. Yeah. There's basically just cities, right? Like, we're human beings on this giant earth. And for some reason... 90% of the population lives in like 1% of the land. For some reason.

Yeah. Just all jammed up. Yeah, because, I mean, if you look at, you know, they're all coastal. They're all relatively fertile. Like, for the most part, you know, resource heavy. Yeah. They're resource centers. Right.

Which makes sense. Obviously, you don't want to be around the resources. But now you don't need that. You could live away from a resource center and still have all the stuff you need. Definitely. Assuming that everything stays stable. Yeah. Which in the utopia,

there were stable environments, but in our world, there's not necessarily. No, not necessarily. You know, war could break out. And if you're living in a, you know, resource desert, then... Yeah, you're probably fucked up. You might die. If you're relying on imports that way. Exactly.

He notes that the areas, the hotspots of social interactions become the competition zones. And that leads to random violence. And the other thing that's interesting, the vertical stairwells that connect to the compartments forced mice to have frequent unavoidable interactions. while the centralized food and water stations created choke points for conflict. Yeah, freaking unavoidable interactions. Yeah. I mean, it would be nice, right?

Like, if you could just choose whenever you see someone else within the community. You know, if you have, like, a stable, like, nice amount of space, nice amount of real estate. I think that's why folks, like, are drawn to more rural lifestyles and, like, you know, like that fantasy of, like, I just want land somewhere. You know, I think that's what it is. Yeah. It's like, let me engage in social hierarchy when I want to. Yeah. At my leisure or when I need to.

Not when, it's forced upon me. That's why, like, you know, you have someone from Omaha and they get on the subway and they're absolutely terrified. Yeah. Not Omaha. It's a city. But, you know, like from Nebraska, I meant. Like from nowhere Nebraska. And then they get onto the trainer like, what the fuck?

This is insane. And you're like, nothing's going to happen. But they're like, but I'm in this space where there's so much potential for. something to happen. Yeah. Now, critics argue that the setup of the experiment is unlike, like you can't map it to the human experience because in this utopia, quote unquote, yeah, people are required to bump into each other. Like there's choke points and like forced contact. There's of course force contact in cities. But in cities, sure. But the critics argue that the artificial setup overstates the inevitability of collapse because in a natural environment,

animals dispersed to avoid tension. Yeah. And that the closed system traps them together in a feedback loop of aggression and withdrawal. Yeah. So in an actual utopia for mice, they would disperse. Of course. They would avoid conflict. They'd get away.

Yeah, no, it's not a utopia. It's a utopia minus space. Yeah. What happens when you have a utopia minus space? And you could argue that's what like a major city is. Yeah. Is a utopia minus space. It's like public transit's unbelievable in New York.

Like all the food is like so readily available. There you know what I mean? All these things food housing Uh and travel is all like super really available the caveat is there is forced interaction and limited space Mm-hmm so that's kind of what the universe 25 is yeah you know so you could stay in your apartment and over Uber eats all that I mean there's a ways around this idea but still like Um I think you know I think it's uh poignant still but I you know obviously you can't map it one-to-one, but it's an interesting idea to look at. Yeah. Other critics like this guy, Jonathan Friedman, argued that human societies with their complex cultural norms and institutions might

mitigate density-related stress more effectively than mice. For sure. That makes sense, right? Other people note that the elimination of all challenges, predators, disease, resource scarcity, creates an unnatural scenario where boredom and social monotony likely compound the dysfunction. But I think that's... That's still cities. That's cities. That's cities. Because- That's still just humanity. Yeah.

Bortem and social monotony is... Sounds like the human experience. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. And it is compounding dysfunction. Sounds like a Western experience, I'll say. Yeah.

And I think it does add to social dysfunction. For sure. Doing a 9 to 5, we do the same shit every single day. Yeah. Like a dead end job that's meaningless. Well, that's the meaning. That's the meaning angle.

I think the point is like, maybe space is like one factor here, but also meaning is a huge angle. And I think that if you're not, actively striving for resources, which is all a mice is meant to do. All of my a mouse is meant to do is strive for resources enough to procreate, you know, which is a clear parallel between us and them. And we've abstracted it into like, you know, jobs and money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's still like at the end of the day, it's like I'm striving for resources in order to be

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I think human things need it. That's why you make struggles that aren't there. Yeah, which, I mean, like, do you have an example? Like, just being like, oh. The stand-up comedy business is absolutely no reason. There's no reason. And it, like, keeps me up at night and I hate, you know, the stress and all these things.

But, like, you know, I'm extremely drawn to it because of its implicit meaning for me. Have you ever heard of this dude Christopher Ryan? No. He wrote a book called Sex at Dawn. No. It was a very popular, like, anthropological, like, evolution book about, like, human relationships. But he wrote another one called Civilized to Death.

I've heard of Civilized to Death. Which I loved. Yeah. Like, of course, like, there's a, you know, potential blind spots as of his research. He's not really necessarily a scientist. He's more like a researcher. Yeah, of course. But I found the book to be, like, very apt.

Yeah, it's sort of like pop anthropology. Exactly. Yeah. And I thought was great. But basically, it explores that idea. like, hey, we are civilizing ourselves to be miserable. Yeah. Like, even there's a little thing, like, sleeping on the ground versus sleeping in a bed

can take days, years off your life. Yeah, for sure. That, like, one of the indicators of health is being able to get up off the ground. And so, like, you see these old women that live, you know, in small communities, not in the West where they sleep on the ground. They're able to get up off the ground until the day they die. It's also, like, you know, there's grannies in New York, you know, in third story walk-ups, and they can still, they crush.

They crush it at 89. And you're like, well, it's because they always had to. Yeah. You don't have an option not to. You got to do that. But your hits got to work. There's a feeling that's like you see an old lady struggling up the stairs. And you're like, oh, just, oh, let's get you a thing.

Let's get you a hover around. Let's get you a little lift, you know. Yeah, we get you a lift, we get you a bed that you're going to sink into and get sores. Yes. And it's just because you want to help. Yeah, for sure. But the reality is that letting people suffer is actually the best thing for them. Because human beings are anti-fragile, is what they call it.

Right. It's exercise. Fundamentally, it's just exercise. Yeah. I mean, my family has always, like, all the people, like, my grandparents, if they've passed away, it was at a pretty, it's quite an old age. That's sick. And all of them had physical either enterprises or jobs that required them to be that way.

Yeah. None of them were ever immobile. Like, none of them were ever, like, lame in any serious way. Yeah. And it's like, I, you can easily chalk that up to my. grandpa lived until 90 and he was a distance runner. It was great. And then my granny was like an avid runner too.

And then my grandpa lived to his 90s and he was a worked blue collar. So like all these guys like bust their ass like basically had to bust their ass. And now you're like looking at these sedentary jobs and you're like man like. Yeah, this is killing. It's crazy. It's also like I've heard it correlated to Alzheimer's. I've heard it correlated to colon cancer. cancer. Like, it's crazy. It's like if you sit for 40 hours a week and don't exercise,

yeah, you're dying. It's like you're smoking. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah. And it's like, just the guy with the factory job is infinitely healthier than you because he has to walk around and move some boxes eight hours a day. Yeah, of course. I mean, discounting the obvious injuries and right, except for the fucking knife that falls from the sky, you know, except for the for the forklift that crushes his femur, other than that. But generally speaking, like having just like a labor job or exercising is so good for you. Yeah. Like, my pops is in his, he's pushing 70, and he's, like, extremely fit. Yeah.

Like, for his age, he's, like, unbelievably fit. That's the thing that I feel like so much of, like, the bro productivity culture misses is, like, hey, work out so you can be, like, a god. So you can be sexy. And so you can be sexy and chicks will like you. Like, dude, just work out so you don't die. I think it's just workout, like, I mean, I've heard the best longevity things are heart and balance. Yeah. So it's, like, cardiovascular health and balance, because people.

people like, um, they just eat shit when you're fucking 73 and you can't get up. Yeah. And it's like, that's really bad. Yeah. Like, if you can't. Life alert vibes. That's what life alerts for. Dude, literally, if you're like a mobile person, though, like, and hopefully you still

have like dexterity in your joints and things like this just because you've been exercising your whole fucking life. Yeah. Is that you can pop back up and be okay. Do you ever intentionally make things less convenient? Um, trying to think. Sometimes, but maybe not. so much physical stuff.

I'll go out of my way to go, all right, no podcast, no music on this car ride. That's fine. Only thoughts. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Because, again, I think that's another one of those things where it's just like constant input, constant consumption.

Yeah. Every single day, every moment of the day I'm constantly consuming something. Right. Where it's like, well, just spend time with yourself. Think about what your own thoughts are for a minute. Or like, how can I handle this okay? And then like, you're mitigating a certain anxiety by doing those things. And I'm like, why is this, I'm driving to work?

Why do I, why would this make me anxious? And then you can be like, well, this thing's bothering me about this thing. And then you can go, oh, actually, well, that's an easy thing to fix. And you can work through it. And then you go, okay, I'll just fix that, you know, whatever it is. Or it's meaningless drivel that's making you anxious. And then you can go, why is meaningless dribble making me anxious right now? I should just ignore this.

This is not worthy of whatever. But you can confront the anxiety rather than kind of run from it. Yeah, it's like the Buddhist, like, monkey mind thing, if you've ever heard the monkey mind thing. It's like there's just always monkey chatter in your brain that, like, it's basically like passive thought. I learned this thing about anxiety that most of the time when you're having just kind of long-term, low-lying anxiety, that it's a kind of passive thought. You're not actively engaged with it. It's like somewhere in the back of your mind, you're like, I'm going to die from a fucking colon cancer that I pretending I have, you know, whatever. It's like you're not focused on it.

You're not fixated. Yeah. No, I think that's true. I don't know. I try to actively do things that are less convenient. Like, especially in New York, it's like, okay, this is going to be like a three minute Uber. But if I have time, like, I'll just walk. Right, yeah.

It'll be a 30 minute walk or a three minute Uber. I'll take the 30 minute walk. Or whatever the thing is. I'll just be like, okay. Or like, oh, I feel kind of bad right now or like I feel anxious or I feel low. Yeah. And I really want like sugar. Yeah.

That'll make me feel good. And I'll intentionally try to be like, just deal with the bad feeling. Yeah, for sure. And remove the convenience. Yeah. When I am good and don't just indulge in the craving, I go, give it 15 minutes. but you still want sugar in 15 minutes. Gooning is part of that.

Gooning. Yeah, just like late night. Edge. Yeah, exactly. That's what, yeah, I agree. What's the longest you were ever edge for? Four or five hours, maybe. Dude, what you do, this is a little edge guide for you guys.

Especially, it's good in college. What I used to do was I would take Vivance, which is similar to Adderall. And what you do is, I was in college, so I would have, like, stuff to do. I would have, like, important assignments. And Vivance lasts like, like, eight hours, ten hours. It lasts fucking forever. So I could knock out my shit in three, four hours, this assignment, this big assignment I had to do, lock in on Vivance. And then you still got, now you got five, five more hours of Goon time. Oh. So, okay, I'm done with my essay. Awesome.

Let me get four screens up in Gune. And then you would just fucking edge and Gune for another four or five hours. Or you could game and chain smoke cigarettes. That's another great thing. Yeah. What you want to do is you want to crack open your sliding door, set up a chair near the sliding door, big TV, chain smoke in between cod lobbies. Wow. And be fucking gacked out of your mind. But having a sick time. Oh, yeah, and just smoke a pack of cigarettes in four hours. Yeah, that's awesome.

So you could do that, too. That feels really good. You ever use Edge AI? What the fuck is Edge AI? This is a digital service that basically. basically it can tell right when you're about to bust. It cannot tell when you're going to bust. Based on what?

It's hooked up to a... A cock ring? It's looking to a monitor on your cock. And so basically it'll feel when you're about to bust, and then it'll stop. And it goes, doot, doot, do. And then it takes away the visual stimulus and starts playing like cocoa melon or something.

And then you bust a cocoa melon? No, no, no, and then you can't bust. And so then you stop. They also have a physical attachment. The basically, it is, like, strokes you. And then the secondly, you're about to bust it stops. Yeah, this is really bad for the fabric of society. I know. I use the AI, so it's good.

Dude, yeah, I mean, I've known people that go, yeah, I got a fleshlight, I go, don't, just don't do that. Just don't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just don't get one. You know? This is all I feel in general about, like, AI, I think is the fleshlight

of art. It's a shark jump? It's not a shark jump, it's just, like, cheating. It's totally cheating. But you don't think a flashlight's cheating. No, it's cheating, like, it's cheating life. Ah, I see.

The sanctity of piss. Yeah, no, I think AI is one of those things that I think people are going to have to intentionally, like, take a reprieve from in order to create, you know, sort of artificial struggle, meaningful struggle. Yeah, here's the problem, though, right? No one will do that. But no one does that with sugar, you know what I mean?

No one does that with sugar. No one does that with social media. No one does that with pornography. No one does that with sports gambling. No one does that with eating anything. You know, it's like across the board we live in a brave new world. Yeah. It's just Brave New World.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We live in Brave New World. Yes. I completely, I agree. Okay. But on an individual basis, if you're tending to your own garden. Yeah, see, that's the thing. You can choose to kind of opt out.

You can choose to opt out, but I think these companies who do all these things should be heavily. Drawed and quartered. They should be drawn and quarter heavily regulated, trust busted. Busted. Trust busted. And probably tried for crimes against humanity. Okay. Well, that seems.

It seems a little strict. But have you heard of, I think this is how you pronounce it. Haikikomori. Let me see. Haikikikomori. No, it's Hiki Komori. Hikikikikikik. These are Japanese social reclusives.

These are the Japanese beautiful ones. Oh. So in Japan, they face, these are people that basically have like a burnout-induced withdrawal from high-pressure work. places. And they kind of just like check out. But hey, we're not a part of society anymore. Yes, I've heard of these people. And they just kind of leave. And it's sort of a human manifestation of the beautiful ones. Yeah.

Kind of wild. Like it exists already in our society and there's like a name for it within Japan. Yeah. No, Japan's an especially one like this, you know. They have some serious social things going on. Yeah. You're about to go. I'm about to go. I'm excited. Do a little experiment? Mm-hmm. go a couple of maid cafes, go to the soap store,

what's it called? The soap tugs. Oh, the Sopland. Soap land. I'm going to go. Yeah, my girlfriend's coming with me, but, uh... I mean, they probably got some for her.

I go, I think we should do our own, like, solo day. Yeah. I think we should have, like, a day to just, like, by ourselves, like, find ourselves. Send her a TikTok and be like, we both do pictures all day, and then we get together at dinner and we talk about it. Oh, my God.

Duh. She'd think it's so cute. And she would have no idea. And meanwhile, I'm getting my shit absolutely cranked at the soap store. You're getting it six ways. D.P. Yeah, dude. She's dressed up like a cow and there's a good, you know.

Just getting milked. I'm getting fully milked. You're on a milking table. I'm fully getting milking tabled. Dude. Do you think they have a milking table over there? Yeah, for sure. That would be sick as hell.

Yeah. They actually eat quite a lot of dairy. That's interesting. You think it was, there's not, it's not traditional, though. It's like not in traditional Japanese food. There's no way cows are like indigenous to Japan. I don't think so. No, they're an introduced thing.

Right. But, like, cheese and dairy. stuff is like blown up in popularity. Whoa. Since like becoming more westernized. I mean, they've, good. Everything they take that's ours, they make it so sick. Dude, they make it crazy.

A5 Wagyu? Wild. I don't even think, yeah, we didn't even know beef could do that. No. We're like, let's pet it and give it beer and chestnuts. Our dumb asses. Yeah. The Germans were like, look at the bittah, but do it.

And the udders. Put a bell on his neck. And these fucking idiots. Yeah, we've been stapling the tag to its ear. Yeah. I mean, we could never do it. Yeah, the Hiki Komodi, um, go to eat,

are, uh, , dude, I remember seeing this, like, little weird TikTok about a lady who was just drinking all the time like this, like a skinny, pretty young Japanese woman who had a kind of meaningless life, no dating,

no anything, and she would just drink. Mm. Just be drunk all the time. Yeah, just check out. I'm like, that's crazy.

You're like a 110 pound, like, Japanese wifu, and you're just getting hammered. The desire to, uh, just, get away. Yeah.

And what's interesting is, that from these experiments, people, like, literal urban planners have actually taken this concept in mind when designing, you know, cities. Yeah, but if the opposite of this is urban sprawl, it can go fuck itself. No, of course. It's not necessarily urban sprawls. It's just how spaces are organized. And then they apply this to prisons

and offices and neighborhoods. Like, okay, how do we reduce, like, contact? Is it possible to create more disparate resource centers so that people have less frequent contact? Like, there's not like three places to eat in this massive place, there's like a hundred. Right. Smaller places to eat. The question is not like, oh, they have enough food, they're fine.

It's like, how often are they bumping into each other? I've noticed that, I don't know if this is the same idea, but it might have just been a physical convenience. But I swear there were at Universal Studios when I worked there, several small cafeterias spread throughout. Yeah. There'd be like a 20-seater cafeteria. Yeah.

And you're like, why isn't there just like a couple big ones? I think, I wonder if this is something that's known within like the urban. And I mean, that seems like a move like a theme park would do for its employees. You know, they're very logistical in that sense. So even if you can get your food as quickly and it's the same food at the same rate, having them in smaller, more stochastic sort of way out. Isn't that logically more human? Like how many people were our fucking cave men brothers eating around like 80?

Topps. Yeah. I mean, Dunbar's numbers are what, like 160? Is that like the limit on like nomadic groups? Yeah, basically like once you get past 160, like you're going to start having fracture. Yeah. And so like amongst like bands of hunter gatherers, there'll be like another, you know, like alpha dude that'll be like, yo, fuck you and the click you claim. Competition, yeah. And we're going to bounce. Yeah. And then they split off in multiple groups. And it's great too. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I wonder how much. Yeah. I think it's one. I wonder how long that takes and like how incest is mitigated in that. Because if you have a group of one and 60. I mean, how many times are you going to bring up incest? I just like to think about it.

and um but you know what i mean like there's 160 people every it's like it's like apalachia but they're isolated that was their problem yeah i think this i mean the hollers divided them this is the assumption that they're not like you know intermingle with any other groups swap a little and do a little like yo our tribes are cool and we're sister tribes yeah but are they knowledgeable do they understand this i guess maybe through common wisdom they're like okay like we're getting a little too we got to switch things up i mean because we got here we got here there's something that must be intrinsic about it. Yeah.

Whether it's pheromonal or something. Something else, right? Well, because there's harems, too. Like, wasn't it, like, one dude that would have many women? Like, isn't that pretty normal? Yeah, it seems like it. I don't know. Like, that would happen at, like, the top of the hierarchy,

and then, like, most people would be semi, what, serially monogamous, monogamous, or whatever the word is. I don't know. I don't know enough about human reproduction, unfortunately. Another element from this that people kind of parsed out is that the later born mice never experienced a functional society. It never really integrated back in. This is kind of Gen Z world, dude.

Yeah, this guy, Robert Putnam has this concept called Social Capital Decay. And this is basically communities that lose shared norms over generations. Yeah. So Universe 25, each cohort inherited a degraded culture. Yeah. And so their input was already degraded, so then their output was even further degraded. And the human parallels include communities trapped in like cycles of violence and poverty,

where dysfunction becomes, intergenerational and that you never know what functional society is. Yeah, it's interesting, though, because, like, they are functioning, but just within that, like, modality or whatever. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's functional in, like, a objective sense. Like, they're doing a function, but it's not. Well, no, I mean, it's functional, like, for their interpersonal thing, you know. Yeah, to survive their life, for that specific paradigm. Yeah. Which is why not, you know, whatever, call me a libcuck, whatever. It's like, dude, obviously institutional racism has, you know, just been devastating in this sense.

Yeah, of course, because, like, you create communities where violence is a norm, and then that perpetuates more violence. Or just poverty, anything. Like, you know, we're redlining, we're doing all this horrific shit. Yeah, and then there's never an experience of what a functioning society is

or perhaps a more equitable system. Right, and then, like, you know, then that's the concept of, like, getting out, you know, is like that idea, getting out or not returning, you know, is like, you know, seen as, you know, the immoral thing to do. That's what I always say, like, people just do the hustles they know.

Like, I forget what it was. This might be even apocryphal, but, like, it was one woman that came from Vietnam to the United States in, like, the 30s. Yeah. That opened up, like, a nail salon. Right. Where she was doing people's nails. And now, exactly. And now, stereotypically, like, nails are overrepresented.

There's weird ones. There are Chinese donut shops. Yeah. And you're like, why is a Chinese donut shop a thing? Something like 70% of hotels in the United States are owned by someone with a last name. Patel. Right. So people just do the hustles they know. Right. And it's a 7-11 stereotype. It's whatever. Like Somali dudes selling bags on Canal Street. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so like, unless you ever learn a different hustle, you don't ever get out. Well, there's a clear example.

You go, my Somali father did this, his uncle did this. You know, it makes perfect sense. And you just have a path into it. And so without ever, someone else ever showing you how to get out of that line, like you just never learn. Which is why, yeah, it's interesting too, because I don't know I've never felt that way, really. About what? Like there was a specific thing drawn out for me. I think that's more of an immigrant experience. Yeah, yeah, I think it's like how isolated your community is.

It's like Greek diners or whatever, you know. Like my community growing up was not isolated at all. Right. Like I grew up and I saw people that were lawyers. I saw people that worked at, you know, a trucking company. Various jobs. And there was an entire, you know, spectrum of career options. Right.

So I was like, oh, I could do anything. Yeah. And it never occurred to me that I could be a drug dealer. because I never knew a drug dealer. Like it was never even on the team. You never knew a drug dealer? Not until I was like 19. Really?

Yeah. Not in high school? No, I never knew. I mean, I was aware of like the kid, but no one at my school. Sold pot? I mean, maybe like on the low, but like they weren't like. Oh, really? They weren't like, I went to a private school.

That's interesting. Well, I thought the private schools would be more like, you know. I knew a couple kids, but all the kids that went to my school, they were like drugs. Yeah. They were expelled from a different school. Interesting. And they were there to be, to clean up. Oh.

Oh, interesting. No, I knew so many kids who sold drugs. Yeah. But they sold pot, you know. Yeah. Nothing crazy. But, like, I don't know, I never knew that house, so it was never really going to be, like, a thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I could never sell pot, though. You could. No, you could. I feel like all the kids who sold pot were very social. I wasn't social enough. You got to have a lot of phone numbers.

Do my social anxiety is really holding up my drug. It would be. I'd be like, where do you want to meet? Oh, that sounds stupid. Yeah. So what's interesting about Universe 25? like we said before, not his first universes. Yeah.

Is it the 25th? It's the 25th? So literally there's Universe 3 where he finds out about like the social collapse kind of thing. In Universe 3, infant mortality reached 96%. What do you do in Universe 3? It's basically the same thing. Same experiment.

Same experiment just like smaller. He's repeated it many times. And it was just like smaller and for shorter durations. Universe 13 is where he found out about like the Omega males. and he just kind of like kept on recreating these experiments. And just changing little details and seeing how it changed the universes.

Yeah. Yeah. Universes. I don't know if he did another one after 25, but that was like the seemed like his opus. Yeah. That everyone kind of kind of clinging on to.

Yeah, grabbed on to. I don't know. I don't know what to make, but it's very disturbing. Yeah. I do think it's important for people to jump into their immediate communities. Absolutely.

Dude, this is something that's Sebastian Younger, the guy that made Restrepo, did you ever see that documentary? Yeah. He has, I talk about this all the time, but I think it's so true. He's like, dudes get PTSD when they leave the military, not only from the things that they see, but once they return to regular society, because they lose community, they lose a mission, like a purpose. Oh, God.

And then they lose competency. Yeah. So, like, when you're in the military, you have, like, your boys that are always with you, people checking it on you, seeing it if you're okay. Yeah. You have, like, a real goal, whether it's like, I'm going to make money for my family, I'm going to serve my country. I'm going to stop, you know.

Right. Or even it's just the immediate goal of going, we're going to this war zone and we have to do this thing. And someone tells me what to do and I know what to do. Yeah. And then I'm the most competent person within my platoon to do this specific task. Do this thing. Like, I'm the sniper guy. I'm the fucking machine.

And everyone else is like, yo, Christoph is the guy that does this. Right. We all depend on him for that. And then you come back to America where you have no real community. No, what are you going to do? Sell insurance too? And, yeah, you have a job you don't give a shit about it. You're not even that good at it.

No. You're not excelling. Yeah. And your competence doesn't, isn't like this one-to-one thing. I think that one of the worst things about, you know, modern society is detachment from results within workplaces. And that's why I think, like, the trades have had this sort of, like, at least in image renaissance, you know, people going, like, it's in, like, if you can weld, that's great. Like that's a good, you know, before it was like, go to college, get an office job. That's better.

Yeah. Because it makes more money and it's easier. But now people are like, no, they're seeing real virtue and meaning in, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, having it craft and then seeing masonry. The outcome of their work at the end of the day. Dude, literally building a brick wall and then going, look at that wall I made is like key for life. Yeah. And you know who said something about that?

Carl Marx. Got your ass. Damn, dude. Damn, I'm a comic You talked about the sort of alienation from specializing, like,

because specialized, being coming specialized makes you alienated. So like, you know, in Marx's time, he saw the industrial revolution. So you see the difference

between like cottage industry where it's like, I'm the guy who makes clothes and I, A to B clothes, like, you know, A to Z clothes rather, like, you know,

I get the wool, I put it together, I have my own loom, I do all my own shit, and now there's a shirt. And at the end there's a fucking shirt. But then you go to the shirt factory,

and you're like, I'm the guy who puts a button, puts one button on. And if I die, they'll get another button on. And then, yeah, if I die, I'm completely replaceable and meaningless. Yeah. So that idea, I think is very important about work. Yeah, I think that's true. So I guess, like, those three things, find a thing that makes you confidence. So you're kind of like a Marxist podcaster, you'd say?

I'm not far off. I'm not far off. You're real little Das Kapital and you're like, dude, maybe I'm fucking, like comedy. Yeah, maybe this guy's going. But no, I think, like, a media community find people. that you actually like and pour into them, whether it's family or friends or whatever. Yeah. And then find a thing you're competent at that you really love.

And then have like a greater mission in life, whether it's like being a great dad, being a good friend. Yeah, whatever it is. Serving God, amen. And then work out for health and not for impressing, you know, the hells. And then, I don't know, try to you get food and shit. Yep. You got some sunlight. Eat a banana.

Yeah. Put it up your butt. It's all you need. Make you come hard. Yeah. I mean, are you going to apply these things to your life? Yeah, I'll probably freeze a banana and shove one up there. Dump your face in Saratoga water

Yeah, dump my face in Saratoga water And wake up at 4 am with a band-aid on my nose For some fucking reason And then do a fucking sick dive Yeah, yeah And then say we need at least 10,000 For some reason Yeah, yeah

And then have like a woman with long acrylic nails White woman, snow bunny Was it a white woman? Oh, hell yeah My dream Snow bunny Trader And then, you know,

Eat like a big plate of avocado toast With like weirdly maple syrup or something on it. Yes. Yeah. You do that every day. I do that every morning. Respect.

Well, let's wrap things up, huh? Ladies and gentlemen, that's been another episode of camp. Universe 25 is shaking into my core, and I think of fundamentally a different human being today than I was yesterday. But thank you guys so much for watching. Appreciate it. Christoph. Thanks a million.

Thanks for joining us. What's up? I'm Christoph. Please listen to my podcast. It's called Rough Week. What's up? I'm Christoph. Please listen to my podcast.

It's called Rough Week. Thanks a million. We'll see you guys next time. Peace. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone. who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered. You're the type of person who knows that real history is more fascinating than any fiction, and we deeply appreciate that about you. I'll be honest. That's exactly why I personally invite

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