Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 447: Rainn Wilson & Reza Aslan

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

Rainn Wilson & Reza Aslan, hosts of Metaphysical Milkshake, join the DTFH! Check out Metaphysical Milkshake on youtube and everywhere else you can listen to podcasts. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Upstart - Visit upstart.com/duncan and see how Upstart can help you with your debt. BetterHelp - Visit betterhealth.com/duncan to find a great counselor and get 10% off of your first month of counseling! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site.

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Won't you be my name? Hello, sweet babies. It's me, Duncan, and you're listening to the Duncan Tressel Family Hour podcast that was a track by Rex Reed from his premiere album, Lady of the Lake, and that's on Oregon Records. Definitely check it out. It's a pretty good album. I could have gone without the five tracks on there that are just the sound of his stomach rumbling. But what's really interesting about that album is if you order it on vinyl, the vinyl is actually made from his piss. They crystallized it, which is pretty cool that we're getting to the point where we can turn human urine into albums. Friends, we got an incredible podcast for you today.

Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan are here with us today. We're gonna jump right into it, but first this. Much thanks to Upstart for supporting this episode of the DTFH. My friends, if you ever found yourself lost in a dark, hellish, swampy, quagmire of debt, you got high interest rates resulting in minimum monthly payments and you find yourself completely stuck. This happened to me when I was in college. I thought it was funny that a credit card company sent me an application for a credit card because in my mind, I was never going to pay off credit card debt because I felt like I was some kind of combination of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau mixed in with a person who uses credit cards. Therefore, yeah, I'm gonna use this credit card

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minute online rate check, you can see your rate up front for loans between $1,000 to $50,000. You can receive funds as fast as one business day after accepting your loan. Find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today when you go to Upstart.com slash Duncan. That's Upstart.com slash Duncan. Don't forget to use our URL to let them know I sent you. Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit income and certain other information provided on your loan application. Go to Upstart.com slash Duncan. And we're back. This is the part of the podcast where I always entreat you to join the Patreon over at Patreon.com slash DTFH. You join the Patreon, you're going to get commercial free

episodes, lots of extra content and video content is there. We have a weekly family gathering. We're going to have one tomorrow Friday. And if you're listening to this on Thursday, and this last Friday, Robert Ryan, an amazing artist and a mystic joined us live. And it was super fun. His episode is going to come out this week too. Anyway, if you had subscribed, you would have been able to hang out with us and share your presence with us. Also, we have a weekly meditation every Monday. It's called Journey into Boredom. And it's just a basic mindfulness practice that we've been doing now for over a year. So join the Patreon. It's patreon.com forward slash DTFH. I don't even know how this podcast happened, to be honest. I've never

chatted with Reza Aslan or Rain Wilson. I love both of them. I love Reza Aslan's mind. And I really enjoyed this book he wrote called Zealot About Jesus, which you should definitely check out. And obviously, Rain Wilson, what else can you say? Rain Wilson, living, walking, throbbing, glowing, shining, legendary, epic, comedy, God. So you can imagine my severe excitement when I received an email asking if I would like to have them on as guests to talk about their awesome podcast metaphysical milkshake. I don't mean to be rude, because you're already doing me the greatest favor anybody could do a person, which is to listen to my podcast. But can I ask for one more little thing? Would you please subscribe to their podcast metaphysical milkshake? Go check it out.

It's on YouTube. It's on all the normal streaming services. Subscribe to it. These are two brilliant, hilarious people. And I think it's a rare thing that there's a collision like this between two super cool folks. So subscribe to, you know, they didn't have to do the DTFH. I'm sure there's sultans and kings and hyperdimensional beings by now. They would have loved to have them as guests on their podcast. So at the very least, give it a listen, metaphysical milkshake. All the links you need to find it will be at dunkintrustle.com. Now everybody, welcome to the DTFH, Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan. Welcome to the DTFH. What are you, three episodes deep into a new podcast you two are doing now?

Yeah. Technically, it's a relaunch of a podcast that we've been doing. But yeah, it is. It definitely is. It's got a new podcast smell to it. There's no question. Okay. Oh, that new podcast smell. So great. Like the underbelly, a sweaty underbelly of a forest pan. Well, let's just jump in because I was going through some of the episodes and you, Rainn, were saying that you wanted to sort of have the conversations you were having in college. Those are my favorite conversations to have the philosophical conversations that get sort of drowned out by the rigmarole of day to day life. So I just came up with a list of some questions just to throw out to you two. Just and we'll go from there. That sounds great. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, cool. Turning the tables on us here, Duncan.

I'm turning the tables on you. So this is something that's been on my mind a lot and I love to know what you all think about. Think about this because, you know, these days, most people are aware of like the impending catastrophes, climate change, civil war, war with China, war with Russia, some kind of like, I don't know, solar disaster or something like that. But to me, like the Game of Thrones winner is coming. No one's really paying attention to this at the level I would think that they should be is deep fake technology. And just based on the market pressures and the acceleration of the ability to replicate someone perfectly eventually, to the point where nothing will be able to distinguish between the two. And then to animate that with an AI,

that sort of completely destroying what we understand is like the supply and demand economy that you two depend on. What are we going to do when there's more than one rain or more than one resident? And what are we going to do when the deep fake rain is actually, you know, people like, you know, I like the old human rain, but the deep fake rain, I like the old. But yeah, nicer rain. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on that? If you could put any amount of time to think about it. I'm disappointed that there aren't more deep fake rains out there. Like, come on, people. What's the what's the whole thing? I would welcome I keep seeing deep fake Tom Cruise's. Where's the deep? I would welcome

more deep fake rains, because I think like, frankly, since the office, I've put on a few pounds. My beard is gray. People are kind of disappointed to look at me. So I kind of think the deep fake rain circa 2014 kind of want when the office was ending, people would be like, oh, yeah, that's when he was Dwight. And that's when we that's when we liked him. And now he's old and talking on podcasts all the time. And he and he's got really weird political views, because you ever made the deep fake fucking asshole. You know, that's the problem is people are like, wow, this younger rain is I think I think fake rain is definitely QAnon. You know, in all seriousness, and people probably know what I'm talking about,

and I'm talking about the deep fake Tom Cruise. I mean, that was creepy, right? Was anybody else just creeped like there's no way I would have been able to tell the difference, except that it looked like, you know, Tom Cruise from 25 years ago, which actually looks exactly like Tom Cruise today. Weird point is Tom Cruise himself a deep fake Tom Cruise that that could possibly be it could be. Man, I've blown I've blown my mind. You know, Duncan, in all seriousness, I don't have I don't have room in my mind to worry about deep fakes. There's so many things for me to worry about. That's like, and I'm glad it's higher on your list of priorities. But for me, personally, like, it's 110 degrees in the Arctic Circle right now, I can't be thinking about deep

politicians and, you know, fabricated sex tapes with with celebs, unlikely celebrities like Dr. Ruth and a German Shepherd or something like that is, that's in our future. We could only pray. Well, so, you know, this is, I know, I know, I mean, the clearly climate change is like the number one, number one, if we're going to do, it's like, I guess the opposite of winter is winter isn't coming anymore, at least in the places you'd want it to come. But not to like beat a deep fake horse here. But if you think about it, the problem is the amount of human harmony between countries that has to happen. If there's even the slightest chance of doing something about this impending catastrophe, it depends on having like completely

non jammed signals of communication. You're almost right with that, Duncan. Actually, and there is an enormous amount of statistics to back up what I'm about to say. But in the entire planet, there is really one sort of unified political entity on earth that refuses to even acknowledge global warming and climate change as a real problem. And that's the American Republican Party. There is no version of this, the right wing in Europe, the insane, crazy, xenophobic, let's kill all Muslims, right wing in Europe says, well, of course there's climate change. Of course there's global warming. Like what kind of an idiot wouldn't even see that? There is only one political party that is in the way of profound global change and it's the

American Republican Party. And that's it. So we don't have to get the rest of the world all on the same page. We have the rest of the world on the same page. The Paris Climate Accords is a great example. We brought China and Russia into the Paris Climate Accords. We had them make promises for profound caps on their climate activity. There's one party that put an end to that, and that's the Republican Party. So I'm going to widen the view. First of all, Reza's wrong because the right wing party in Australia is actually mirrors the American Republican Party. But that's another issue. They still burn coal like it's coming out the Yin Yang and they refuse to mark the Great Barrier Reef as a protected natural disaster area. But

Duncan, Reza, I think what you're getting at, and we didn't even let you finish your question. You see how badass we are? You're badass. That's what they do. That's what Rogan does. That's what Russell Brand does. Yeah. Go for it. It's great. We have a couple episodes on climate change that we've done and on a number of the largest kind of issues facing humanity right now. And I will say that when you start to, I've done a good amount of work on climate change. I'm on the board of a climate non-profit. And it's called Arctic Base Camp. And we speak science to power. It's called. And it's all about getting the science about what's happening in the Arctic out into the hands of everyone, of common people, of politicians,

of businesses, because they need to understand that what's happening in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. That what happens in the Arctic greatly affects what's going to be happening in the rest of the hemispheres. And we see this kind of interactivity. And it's much more extreme in the Arctic than it is in other places on the globe. But I will say that as you dig in to, let's just take climate change. Like you mentioned race relations and upcoming impending wars and whatnot. The kind of work that will need to be done in order to solve climate change is much greater than reducing CO2 and methane. It is a complete new way of being in harmony with the planet. And it involves cooperation and it involves consultation as opposed to competitiveness.

It involves, I wouldn't say eliminating capitalism, but maybe eliminating capitalism as we know it, certainly commercialism. And it has our relationship to buying stuff and owning stuff and the ease with which we order stuff at the press of a button with Amazon. This is, it goes so deep because our old way of doing things, which is competition, contest, aggression, one-upsmanship is simply, it's tapping out. It's not working anymore. And you can throw race into that. And it's actually part of that same process. Well, in fact, I'll even add one more thing to what Rain just said, based on an upcoming episode of Metaphysical Milkshake, where we interview the great environmental reporter, Elizabeth Colbert.

She wrote The Sixth Extinction and a number of other books. And she has a new book out now in which essentially the argument that she's making is it's conserving is not enough, that climate change has gotten so far along now that the only way to truly reverse the damage is by engineering climate, by actually doing what environmentalists have been telling us to stop doing for generations, which is stop trying to manipulate the climate to our advantage. And her argument is that the new environmentalism at this point has to have in its toolbox of ways of responding to the problem of climate change, the ability to use science and technology to actually reverse the damage that we have done and perhaps maybe even take some fairly

radical steps to do so. Radical steps, you mean like weather control, the idea of putting particulates in the air to cool the planet down, that kind of step. Yeah, that is a very controversial point. Many environmentalists seem to be radically opposed to fucking around with the planet in that way. But I have to ask both of you, maybe you are aware of some new messaging coming out, but it feels like from a lot of like the big mouthpieces that are trying to alert people of how fucked things are is such an almost nihilistic sort of depiction of things that I feel like it's making people, it's having the opposite effect. It's when you start hearing like, well, we've already gone past the point of no return, which I've seen in a lot of different stories

lately, it's done. Then I think what ends up happening is people just feel helpless, non-inspired. Can you think of some like better messaging on top of like praying for some incredible new technology that pulls carbon out of the air? Is it now, is it time for like some kind of hyper manipulative MK ultra level weird campaign that like somehow detaches people from what you were talking about, rain, the sort of bizarre fixation on all the power and aggression and buying and owning and all that? Well, I think, I think messaging is really important. And, you know, every scientist you talk to, well, not every scientist, the majority of scientists that you talk to on this issue are like, we can, we can do it, we can stop the very, very worst from

happening if we act right now. So I think at least around climate, the message needs to be like, Hey guys, let's put on a show. Your dad's got a barn, we can get some costumes. And, you know, I'm pretty good at, you know, playing a grandmother, let's, let's make a show. And instead of let's put on a show, it's like, Hey, let's save the planet. Let's vote for people that believe in climate change. Let's put in legislation that encourages, you know, you know, reduced emissions of CO2 and methane everywhere and, and get people on board in a positive way, because you're right, if the messaging is like, we're fucked, then it's like, Oh, right. Okay, so so be it. I mean, I just read, I just read recently this blew my mind. They're like,

I didn't even know they were doing this in fishing. They're doing this kind of trawling, deep sea trawling, we're like 1000s, 10,000 feet below sea level. They're trawling the bottom of the ocean to get seafood, you know, for our seafood consumption. And that trawling, which brings up gases and methane from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the ocean is responsible for more CO2 and heat trapping gases, emissions than all of airplane transportation. So people are like, Oh, you flew on the airplanes like, Well, these ships are so there's stuff we can do. We can control the bottom of the ocean. But because humanity is not united, because we're not working together, because we're not, we haven't found a way to use a tool like the United Nations, we

can't just, we should be able to as a species go, Hey, guys, let's stop the trawling. Hey, check it out. Look at the science around the trawling. Let's get seafood in other ways. Okay, cool, moratorium, no more trawling, boom. But we're just too, we're not, we're not there yet. So we need to work on all of these things. It's not an either or, but we need to work on kind of shifting people's perspectives, spiritually and philosophically, as well as like hard legislation. Is there something interfering with your happiness that might be preventing you from achieving your goals? For example, maybe you made it through a global pandemic and are kind of

freaking out because it seems like everybody's just ignoring the fact that the entire planet just went through a global pandemic and you're thinking to yourself, are you fucking serious? Like really, this is how you're going to react to us or just get back to work like that that happened. You're gonna imagine that nothing happened. Are you kidding? I moved across the country and had a freaking kid. I'm sorry. I don't necessarily feel like just jumping right back out there again, man. Better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed, professional therapist. You can start communicating under 48 hours. It's not a crisis line. It's not self-help. It's professional counseling done securely online. There's a broad range of

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that are posted there daily. They've got a zillion of them. All you got to do is go to betterhelp. That's H-E-L-P.com. That's better H-E-L-P and join the over one million people who have taken charge of their mental health. In fact, so many people have been using better help. They're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states. This podcast is sponsored by Better Help and the DTFH listeners get 10% of their first month at betterhelp.com forward slash Duncan. Thank you, Better Help. Okay. Now I got a really weird question for both of you. Forgive me for it in advance. This is a very weird question. The deep fake question?

The deep fake question wasn't even weird. It was kind of a, but I think that's kind of a nice starter question, but this is something I wonder about. Rain, you're a world-famous comedian, Reza, world-famous intellectual. The whole planet knows about you. They know you are. You are experiencing such a, like, you know, whenever you just contemplate how many people are on the planet and then just general, like the way that wealth is spread around the planet, you know, and then you, not just wealth, but power, not just power, but all the things that go along with it. Do you ever get a kind of vertigo or a sense of like, how did this happen to me? That out of all the people on the planet, I ended up being one of the mouthpieces.

And does it creep you out? Do you ever get, I always feel like I'm mispronouncing or saying it wrong. Please correct me, Reza. Solipsism, right? Like, do you ever get this sense that, holy shit, the whole thing's just some kind of simulation, a subjective dream I'm having, because how could it end up that I'm one of the people? Are you, are you asking whether this is all a simulation? And, and I'm, and I'm, and I'm, and I'm Truman. Yeah, I'm, yeah, do you ever get freaked out? All the time, Duncan. All the fucking time. This is, I mean, yes, am I solipsistic? Absolutely, I am solipsistic. I have to constantly remind myself that, that, you know, the universe isn't there as a, as a simulation in

order to keep me occupied. And I, and frankly, there's no way that I could prove that that's not the case. Right. Right. The only thing that I, that I will say is that I, my, my solips comes from the fact that I assume everybody else thinks exactly the same thing that I, and that that in and of itself, there's a sort of, so if you're, if you're a Descartes fan, if you're a Horene Descartes fan, you know this to be true. Rene Descartes very famously set out to prove, philosophically prove the existence of God. And what he did was he began with this kind of, yes, yes. And he began with this whole thought process where he was like, okay, so I need to, before I can get to God, like that's, that's, you know, down the line, let's start with what, what do I know? Right. So what do

what, what, what am I absolutely certain of? And what he said very famously was, well, the only thing that I'm certain of is that I'm real. But I, there's, I can't sort of, and the, and the reason that I know that I'm real, real is cogito ergo sum, right? I am thinking, therefore I am. And the fact that I am in the process of thinking proves my existence. And then of course, famously, he got, he got stuck right there. Because then he realized, oh wait, so I don't know that Rene is thinking. Rene tells me he's thinking, but how can I know that? I think he's thinking. So I don't know. I think he's thinking. But as far as I know, he could just be a reflection. This is 500 years ago, man. So he's like, as far as I know, he could just be a reflection. I could be dreaming. In fact,

that was his argument. He's like, sometimes I dream and it feels real. It feels like Rene is there, he's naked, except for a rubber ducky. And until I wake up, I don't know that it's not real. So this could be a dream. And he never even got to the God part. All he ended up proving was that nothing else exists but him. I read that my freshman year in college and I was like, shit. I couldn't get past it. So like philosophically, I just walked around for a while basically just telling people, yeah, I'm pretty sure that when I leave this room, all of you cease to exist. It didn't make me very popular. But what I'm trying to say is I know what you're saying. I get the question. I have struggled with it myself. And I've just learned to essentially ignore it because

they're logically, philosophically, theologically, rationally. I can't get past the fact that I am the only thing that exists in the universe. And he behaves accordingly. What about you, Rene? I will say, I don't understand your question, but I'm going to say Duncan because I love you, Duncan. And I want to say that one of the weirdest things in the entire universe is fame. It's so freaking weird because I was an actor for a long time before I became famous. I started graduating from acting school in 1989. And I didn't become quote unquote famous, recognizable to like 2005. So it was like 16 years of acting and busting my hump and trying to get auditions and get jobs and trying to pay off my student loans and then all of a sudden,

all of a sudden people are like coming up, hey, you're the guy. Oh, are you Dwight? Oh, you're the guy. I know. Oh, and now it's to the point, it's just, it's kind of crazy because people walk to you, jaws agape, eyes wide, like moths to the flame because they've seen me on their Netflix for a billion minutes a year. It's very, it's really, really disconcerting and weird. So it does create in me of this very strange sensation of what, what world am I in? What reality is this real? People are like, hi, can I have a picture? I love you. And the amount of people who say, I love you. And it's like, you don't love me. You don't know me. You've never smelled me. How can you love me? I've smelled you and I love you. Thank you. Thank you for that.

But it's so true. You, you love my work as an actor when I transform into a character named Dwight Schrute. Thank good. Good for you. I will say Duncan. That's you. People, I have noticed that people have a very difficult time. Really differentiating between Dwight Schrute. Even Duncan just now has said that's you. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't mean it's, wait a minute, you, wait, hold on, you're telling me you're not, you didn't work in an office? No, I got the wrong, no, I don't know. I mean, like, you know, when you, yeah, we see the painting of some of a great artist and the, you can't literally say that painting is Picasso, but the energy of that artist is wrapped up in the work. And so when someone's seeing you as a character, yeah,

obviously it's not you. But when they say, I love you, what they're talking about is like, I love that you were able to do that, that that is some, you manifested that, that came from you. And, you know, I would be, if like, I could see whenever I think of like, Daniel, like, the great actors, you know, I could see how it gets frustrating, because there's a sense of like, well, that isn't me. That's a character. I get it. But I don't know. I feel like you're being, I don't know. I think people do love you, but then I do understand how creepy it would get. It's like invasion of the body snatchers or something. It's, that's why I'm saying it's like, it's a dream. It's like, you know, they talk about, oh God, this is one of the creepiest possible

ways the world could end that I read, which is like part of AI fucks up. And it starts reconstructing things at the atomic level, like it was designed to make paperclips, but it doesn't stop making paperclips with the matter that it's was, you know, forging the paperclips from or whatever this theoretical nanobot swarm was making paperclips from, it keeps going into the desk and then it goes into the building and then it goes into the earth and then the whole everything just turns into fucking paperclips and we're done in the most bizarre apocalypse ever. But that's kind of like the experience of someone where you're at. It's, it's like you've, you like everything, your entire subjective experience for reality is so on one

level profoundly different for better or for worse than most people who like get, you know, most people go to work or they go to the grocery store that if someone came up, ran up to them like, I love you, they would be, you know, worried or they would hear, you know, to get psychological. So here I am, this nerdy kid, traumatized childhood, very poor mom took off when I was two years old. A number of other things I won't get into the gory details, but this insecure, gawky, pimply kid who wants only one thing in life and that is to be loved, to be adored and, nay, worshipped. And so I become an actor because I can make people laugh and I'm goofy and I've got a big weird head and a long skinny neck and a weird torso and and then I'm

making them laugh and I'm pursuing acting and all of a sudden girls kind of like me because I'm like the funny guy and and then flash forward to people saying, I love you. I love it. It is it's a really it's a big it's a deep talk about a deep fake. It's a deep fake mind fuck of colossal proportions where it's like, wait a minute, you mean this need that I've had since I was three to be like adored and paid attention to it's getting met but in this really false way. It has really it's been it's been many long it's been decades of therapy to help me around this. I bet. I bet. I get it. I get it. It is not a natural state and it's also it's like what are you going to do complain about it because then you become yeah and right now there's people listening

like oh really? You know, fame. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yes, this is it. In George Clooney fame. Famously said no one wants to hear an actor complain about anything and it's true but especially fame but I think with your audience that will understand that I'm not complaining. I you know, I get to act in movies. I get to be on the Duncan Trussell family comedy hour and I get to like travel the world and do just family hour. It's not comedy anymore for a long time. Familiar with Duncan. He did that. I don't care. He did the animated show, a great show with that the trippy with the guy from Adventure Time. Yeah. My fans love you, Rain. They love you and I love you. But I'm not complaining. It's great. And then you know, and then I and when

by the way, when you interview young people, they did an interview of young people and they were like, you know, what do you want more than anything else? And people kind of thought, oh, they're going to want money, they're going to want this or that, they want popularity, they want sex appeal, etc. They want fame. Young people more than anything else want fame. But when you think about it, what fame does on a sociologically speaking on some kind of ancient primal brainstem level is it gives you all of that. Because if you are famous, even if you're weird looking like me, you're like a sex symbol, and you have money, and you have popularity, and you're adored, and people want to be like it meets all of those primal needs, your food, you get your food and

shelter and whatnot from fame. So it checks all those boxes. Yeah, but fame is supposed to be like the byproduct of the thing that you do. It's not supposed to be a goal in and of itself. Those kids just want to be famous. What they mean by that is I want people to know who I am, and they don't really care how that happens. Oftentimes it's through some kind of social media debacle, but that's what they think about. God bless the mystical purveyors of website technology currently calling themselves Squarespace for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Have you ever landed on a weird website, like maybe you're looking for someone to do something for you? Perhaps, for example,

you wanted to find one of those new full body lotioning experts that are coming to people's homes dressed as clowns and rubbing them down with very expensive, medicated lotions, and you land on their website and you realize this is kind of like a low-grade garbage website. I don't know if I feel confident in giving these people my address and having them come over at a random time and surprising me with a lotion rubdown, and so you find a different service. I'm not trying to freak you out, but if you've got a wonky website, this could be what's happening to you. By the way, I'm kind of shocked because these clown rubdowns have become like so popular that the website, surpriselotionclownrubdown.com, is available. And if you wanted to, you could go

to Squarespace and secure that website right now, and more than likely, you would become like the uber of clown lotion rubdowns. It's an all-in-one platform. You can do e-commerce, buy domains. They've got plenty of marketing tools, awesome analytics. It's incredibly easy to use and world-class design, whether you're wanting to sell products or give gift cards or get sales at analytics, or if you want to use extensions, they've got a portfolio of third-party tools that can be connected to any Squarespace commerce website, and they've got really awesome marketing tools. So if you want to do email marketing or send emails out to your clients or social media integration, SEO tools, they have everything you need. So head over to Squarespace.com

slash Duncan. Give them a try. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan, and you'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Again, that's Squarespace.com slash Duncan. The offer code is Duncan, and you'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Whoa, what do you know? A surprise lotion clown just came to my door. Thanks, Squarespace. Reza, what do you have any, any, just because I'm no offense, Rain. I think you're the most scholarly of everyone here right now. Do you have any sense of the, like, the history of that? Has it's always been the case that this was a driving force for people like in the 1800s and the 1400s, where people like, I want to be famous? No, absolutely. Look, this is the desire to be

put on a pedestal, to have people look up to you, to admire the things that you do admire you for who you are. I mean, that's, that's part of the human condition that goes back forever. I just think what has changed now is that the pedestal is so low and so easily accessible, right? I mean, do you have a YouTube channel? Are you willing to shove something in your nose? Then all right, that's, there you go. That's it. Yeah, just shove shit in your nose once a week on YouTube. And you could achieve Socrates level notoriety, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, so I guess this brings me to, like, a question that ever since I read Zella, I wanted to ask you, Reza and Rain, I'd love to know too, like, where are you all at now with God, the conceptualization of God, the idea of, like,

the divine? And, you know, is the, is like the fame thing and the furious desire for that, just a replacement for a kind of increasingly diluted, I don't know, I don't want to say, like, we've lost our spirituality, but definitely, like, I mean, the people's perception or conceptualization of God now compared to, you know, you know, many different phases of human history is so different. What, you know, there's nothing feeding people in the way for better or for worse than it used to feed people. So where are y'all at with that? Do you pray? Yeah, I pray. I know Rain prays, I pray less formally than I think I used to. I think my views on God have both muddied and matured at the same time, you know, which I think is supposed to be the way it's

that's how it's supposed to be, right? You grow up, you get more mature, your mind expands, you realize you don't know what you thought you know, and you start to doubt things, that that's supposed to be what happens to you as you get older and smarter. I, a couple of years ago, wrote this book called God. And I had originally intended the book to just be kind of a straight up history of God, the origins, what did, what did the concept of God arise? How did it evolve? You know, where, where will it go in the future? That's how I pitched the book to the publisher anyway. But then I started working on the early stuff, like what did this concept of God arise? And the more I began to study it, the more this kind of shocking revelation occurred to me, which

is that human beings have this involuntary impulse. We all do it, whether you believe in God or not, in which we construct our conception of God as essentially a divine mirror of ourselves. We construct God to have our politics, our emotions, our attributes, our likes and our dislikes. In fact, we construct God to have our face. There was an amazing study done in 2012. This is something that psychologists and cognitive theorists of religion have known for a long time. It's this, it's just kind of how our brain works. And that's why you can go back hundreds of thousands of years and look at the earliest conceptualizations of God. And even in the very start of all of this, God is anthropomorphized. God has arms and legs and a head, you know, and God likes the things we

like and hates the things we hate. He has our attributes, you know, our virtues and our, and our vices. But a group of scientists at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, decided to actually put this theory to the test. And they got 500, in this case, there were 500 Protestant Christians. And they asked them a very simple question, which is, what does God look like? And they showed them a series of just kind of bland images of human beings. And they were supposed to kind of, you know, whatever, more plus, more, more minus, more plus, more minus. And then in doing so, they were able to create a composite for each person of what God looked like. And this is the study where God, for everybody, looked like great.

And everyone looked really, really great. God forbid. We didn't wait circa 2012. Like, you know, not, not 2021. Yeah, early office. Early. Well no, 2012 was when Steve had left the show. The office was in decline. So. Mid, mid rain. But of course, what they discovered is darker skin people created a darker skin God,

lighter skin people created a lighter skin God, women created a more feminine God, men created a more male God. But then they got really weird. Republicans, self-described Republicans, created a much more muscular masculine God, liberals and progressives created a far more feminine and a feet God. We create a divine being who is just us, but without kind of human limitations, right? So as I that ended up being what the book was about, it wasn't at all what I would thought the book was going to be about, but that's what it was about. And when it was finished, I just, I really had to kind of think to myself, how have I been thinking about God? How have I been approaching God? Have I even been praying to God? I've been praying to God

as though God is just some kind of divine version of me, you know, that even gives a fuck about the things that I, that I care about. And I went through this process where I really had to consciously strip my view of God of all human elements and kind of return to a more primal conception of the divine as just pure creative force. And I will be honest, it did make, the reason that we turn God into a person is that we can have a relationship with God, you know, this way we can, we can actually know God because he's a person, he's just like us. God, he's just like us. But what the, that process created, I think, a more, as I say, a more muddled relationship with God, but it also, I think, created a more mature

relationship for me with God. So I'm in a kind of a, you know, I'll just be honest, a little vulnerable here. I'm kind of in a transitional moment here with my relationship to the divine. It's, it's shifted over the last few years. I mean, I'm seeing on yourself there, it seems like you have a, was that Hanuman back there? I got the whole panoply, man. I got, I got Ganesha over here. I got Hanuman up there, somewhere around here. I can never, I can't remember the lion, the lion that, is that the lion that Krishna turned into or the Vishnu turned into? No, that's the, that's, that's from Thai Buddhism. No, that's Scar from Lion King. Okay.

It is. Well, that was based on the lion. The Lion King is just a big Buddhist metaphor. Yeah. What about you, Rain? Well, and obviously, don't answer this. It's not too weird. It's my favorite question that there is. It's, I'm writing a book right now. And God features quite prominently in it. I'm writing a book on spirituality, which is very weird for a former sitcom actor. But I really relate to so much of what Reza said, because more and more as I mature, I try and separate God in every way, shape and form as far away from the idea of an old white man on a cloud looking down and granting us a good parking space. You know, my, my mom, as I got back to know my mom, she'd be like, okay, pray for a good parking

space. And like everyone say, Oh God, give me a good parking space right by the theater. And, and, and, and I really don't think that that's how God works. So as I, first, let me back up a little bit and say, I tried being an atheist. I really did. I gave it my best shot. I grew up a member of the Baha'i faith. I left the Baha'i faith when I was about 19 or 20, moved to New York City to become an actor. And I did a hard turn against anything having to do with spirituality was soft and for weak people and people that needed to believe in God or people that needed a comfort blanket and they needed a sky daddy to give them hugs. And it was for grandmothers. It wasn't, you know, it had nothing to do with me. I was a cutting edge artist, you

know, I wanted to be Lou Reed. And, and I tried it really hard. And then I was miserable. Number one, it wasn't working. And also I just kept, you know, he kept, Reza was talking about Descartes earlier, like I kept trying to wrap my mind around this infinitely large and infinitely beautiful universe that we live in. And, and that it all came together randomly through molecules bumping into each other. And I couldn't, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't, I couldn't be in the world without there being some kind of like greater force meaning purpose above and, you know, within us, but and outside of us and above us and beyond us and in, and without, without any limitation of time or space. And so, but what I'm trying to do more and more is like Reza said, too, is think of God as

love, think of God as beauty, you know, think of God as truth, that God, I imagine this whatever this force is, this creative loving force that is providential toward all of its creation, human and otherwise, that this, this force wants something from us and it gives us purpose and not purpose lessness. So, but that God is much closer to, let's say, beauty than God is to an entity, you know, who has like a, a will and a brain and like, I'm going to make these people suffer from this hurricane and I'm going to make these people have a good crop harvest this year and, but anything remotely like that. What about you, Duncan? Right. Yeah. You go. Oh, yeah, I just, I love boxed yoga. I love like, and I, I think that what both of you are saying is like the most

brilliant way to, to, one of the most brilliant ways to connect with, with God, but I just, I just out of a kind of like, I don't know, I love thinking of God as a, as a person, though a lot of times I don't, and I pray for anything, but I try not to do the parking spot thing. You know, I, I like, I don't remember who was what Thomas Merton maybe said the group, the only prayer is that I will be done like the, and the math behind that's real good, real good. Because like, if the, if we're talking about some progenitive super intelligence, what are you going to tell it what to do? You know, you're going to tell us some super consciousness how to behave and the, and the way you're telling it to behave is like shit like parking spaces. You know, that being

said, I try to understand it. I like boxed yoga. I like the stories of Krishna. I'm a new dad being around my kids helped me understand. They're like the ideas of like God sometimes appears to you as your child, not literally, but you know, this idea of like, that's pure love. So I, I, I zing around all the time. And then every once in a while, I'll just be like, fuck all that and go into like deep Buddhist and personalism, you know, deep, just like, it doesn't like, I don't even know if I'm a thing much less there being anything else. So I don't know. I, but I do. Yeah, I, I tried it being an 80s when I was much, much, much younger and it didn't work. I love praying. It just feels good. Even if it is a comfort blanket, fuck it. We're being aerosolized by time. What are we supposed

to be doing? Like walk around flexing? Well, we had something, you know, we had a really interesting so for our podcast, metaphysical milkshake. Some of the things we do is we hear from listeners and viewers like you and people will call in and leave their questions or their comments on whatever topic. And we were talking with the great Pete Holmes who you must know and, and vibe with. Yeah, sure. You cut from the same cloth, similar cloth. And this guy, this guy was said, well, I'm an atheist and I think that people make up God, you know, to give themselves comfort. But then he said, this viewer said, but that's okay, because we all need to find meaning in this world. We're, you know, we're going around the sun 60, 70, 80, 90 times and then that's it.

And whatever gives us the most kind of meaning, connection, hope, then that's fine. So this was a very like as opposed to the angry atheist that it just seems to have been religiously traumatized as a youth and is like, you know, this was a very like loving atheists like I'm an atheist, I think it's a fabrication. But if people want to make that fabrication, it gives them hope. So be it. God bless you. Godlessness bless you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think yeah, that's it. It's like atheists have definitely been saddled with this stereotype that just comes from the most angry, loud social media people out there. Like a lot of most of the time when you run into many Buddhists, you would, for lack of a better word, you have to call them atheists. I mean,

there's, there's not, there's non-theistic at the very least. So okay, I'm sure you both have, I'm guessing you both have had your eyes on this new resurgence. I don't know if you'd call it a resurgence, but suddenly from like mainstream media, we're getting all these UFO stories, UAPs as they call them now. Any thoughts on it? Any insider data? Reza, why do I feel like you know something? We're obsessed with this. In fact, we have a podcast episode coming up later in this season with the Harvard actual physicist, Avi Loeb, who, you know, is one of the more sort of eloquent voices, arguing that not only are extraterrestrial beings real, but that they've actually visited. And, you know, we, again, I don't know, either rain or I have like a definitive

take on this. I mean, for me, my, my whole point is the one that you hear all the time, which is number one, why, what kind of bizarre, want to talk about solipsism? Like, what kind of bizarre fucking solipsism thinks that these eight billion beings are the only intelligent beings in a universe that it defies, you know, or every description of it? The question, though, is not, is there intelligent life out there? I think the only reasonable response is yes. The question is, have they been here? And rain brought up, we were just kind of shooting the shit about this a little while ago, and rain brought up something I don't even know if he remembers, but I remember it, where am I getting this right rain where you were like, there's,

you know, there's only two reasons to come here, right? And one, one of those is to, to, you know, conquer, and, and the other is to study, I guess, you know, in order to conquer, I'm not, it's a long, it's a long way to go, just to kind of, you know, probe a few anuses and then head back home. So I think maybe, how many times does that get said? I mean, I just feel like it's a long, it's a long, it wasn't worth it, wherever they are, there are, surely there are anuses there. So maybe there's not, maybe we're the only planet in the galaxy, in the universe where anuses developed, and that's why they're so fucking obsessed with the human anus. So I guess maybe like other planets, they just regurgitate their waist, you know,

or it seeps out of their pores, or, or they just only eat enough. Are you saying that's why they're here? Just to kind of see like, what is this thing? It's an exit? It's like the spice. It's like the spice in Dune, only instead of the spice, it's the human anus. Yeah, but they're either here. So yes, I think that they're out there. I just, I'm not sure if they've come here. But here's, here's the deal. Why do they want to be seen so much? Number one, why do they have different shaped ships? Because there's definitely cigar ships, and saucer ships, and some, some triangle ships too, some pyramid ships. Some triangle ones. Maybe it's like different cars. Maybe it's like a Lexus and a Honda and a Hummer, you know, I don't

know. But if they are observing us, why don't they just observe us from the dark side of the moon, and just like poke a 10 telescope around and surf us and check out our radio signals and like listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch HGTV and kind of figure out what the human species is all about. Some Bollywood musicals thrown in. They're not being pretty obvious. What do you think? Yeah, they're definitely showing up a little bit. Yeah, I mean, they're, they want to be seen. Why do they want to be seen? But if they, if it's invasion, they would have done that a long time ago. Unless the other thing is too, the reason that they're observing us is because they planted us here in the first place. So the old, you know, alien, ancient alien visitors and the ancient

semen, you know, aliens bred with, with apes and, and created human beings. So they're, we're, they're offspring and they're, they're chickening in on us. And you know what, we're not doing very well. You heard it here. Well, yeah, maybe that some, that's a speculation to some people like the, what are the accelerationists? Have you ever heard this insane idea, which is, we actually go the opposite direction, we accelerate towards the apocalypse, because that will, you know, if there is some beings like that, they're going to, they're going to show up. Also, have you heard the term? It's not X. It's the idea is that they're, they're not from, it makes more logical sense that they're from the earth than they're from outer space. And so

it's, it's this idea that they're sort of, they've been here for a long time to sort of observing. I don't know. I mean, I don't want to get too, too far into that. I was just thinking, because both of you probably have some access to data. I'm surprised someone hasn't reached out to tell you what it is. What's coming, the report is on the way. Okay. So we only have a few more minutes. Both of you are like, I guess, for lack of a better word, like, I don't know what to call, would you call yourselves activists? You're, you're very public and about your views and your views that you're public about behind it. You just sense this deep intention that you want to help. You want to help his, his, oh, two parts of the question. One is if you always had that feeling

or as you started like experiencing, as your career started blowing up, did you start thinking like, Oh, I've got a responsibility. I have to do something because people are listening. And the final part of the question is, can you give some actual like real world direction to folks out there who would like to take that leap from being a sort of bystander of the apocalypse to being someone who's maybe helping it, you know, or helping forestall it. Yeah, great and important question. Thank you for asking it. And I definitely always volunteered my time and, you know, helped, you know, teach and volunteers at schools, the Harvey Milk School in, in Manhattan and even in your read phase, I always was doing that. But when you were going back to fame again,

all of a sudden when I became famous on the office, I was just inundated with like, Hey, will you MC our event? Will you be on our board? Will you lend money? Will you give money? Will you be our spokesperson? Will you do this commercial? Will you fly here and see what we do? And I realized like, Oh, shit, I better, I better figure my shit out. And so I did a deep dive as I like to do about philanthropy and how it works and giving back and making the world a better place. And what I arrived at is that the thing for me that is more important than anything else is education, because I mean, first of all, I wouldn't have a career if I didn't have education, if I didn't have certain teachers in the right place at the right time, helping me. And as I did an

even deeper dive into the world of education, I started working with some nonprofits, one was called the Mona Foundation. I realized to that all of the research in education is all about girls' education. So educating girls, teenage girls, but you know, girls from 10 to 20 years old is the number one way to reduce poverty and to uplift communities, begin grassroots movements. Because when you educate a girl, girls are connected to community, and they obviously raise their babies with what they've learned, literacy or what have you. But they also share it with their sisters and aunts and their cousins and villages. And so you educate a girl, you're educating 100 people. So my wife and I started a nonprofit in Haiti

that we work on a lot. I mean, we spend a good, you know, 10 hours a week each, just as board members on this nonprofit. And we have about 40 Haitian employees, and we're in about 13 locations with educating 800 girls. We've taught hundreds of girls to read and given dozens of scholarships with this is called Lide Haiti. But I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to toot my own horn. I would just say that begin the process of activation with whatever speaks to you in your heart, dear listener, of the Duncan Tressel comedy family hour and comedy. No comedy, just family back in. Nothing is funny about this. I'm putting the comedy back into the Duncan Tressel. Duncan comedy Tressel and his family hour. And find what makes you come alive and go do that thing,

you know, what what what inspires you start down the path, however small, it will grow, it will the trickle will turn into a mighty river, because there is something uniquely profound and human about our ability to give to one another and to serve one another, it it redoubles our happiness. It is a cure for depression. It is a cure for anxiety. It is a cure for disconnectedness. It all lies in giving to others. And this is a universal credo in every religious system. And I just how start however small you want to do it and let it grow. Yeah, as a matter of fact, that's how rain and I met. We met because we were both doing an event to bring attention to the plight of the Baha'i in Iran, people know rain as a Baha'i and

I'm Iranian. So it's kind of a natural connection there. Rain is probably sick and tired of hearing me say this because I say it like at least once an episode. But I truly believe that you are what you do. We all have a sense of who we are. We all talk about maybe the values that we hold here, the morals that we have. Values and morals are shit if they're not put into practice in the world, right? They're not really values or morals, are they? If it's just something that you believe in the privacy of your own mind, then it's useless. It's monastic, it's masturbatory. True spirituality is about works, not about faith. So my wife and I, my wife is a very sort of world renowned social entrepreneur. She created something called Kiva, which

has lifted literally millions of people around the world out of poverty. And she and I always have this thing where we're from different religious backgrounds, we're different culturally, different ethnicity, but we share the exact same values. And those values are in a sense our faith and our identity. It's the thing that binds us together. And we both believe that as the book of James in the Bible says, my favorite verse, faith without works is dead. So it's not about being an activist. I'm going to be an activist. It's who I am. It's figure out who you are and what you believe, and then put those things out in the world. Otherwise, it's not really who you are. God bless both of you. Thank you so much for this wonderful hour.

I'm just so excited that you both decided to come on the show. Metaphysical milkshake, folks. This is on YouTube. Is it, is it, but you have an RSS feed or is it just? Oh yeah, it's RSS. It's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and wherever find podcasts. Or if you want to watch us have the conversation, which seems silly, but some people like to do that. Then we're also on the YouTubes. Yeah, you can find our YouTube channel, Metaphysical Milkshake. If again, for some reason, you want to watch us talk, which I guess people do. I like watching it. We like watching you. We love you, right? We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. Oh, you guys are the best. I do love you. Thank you so much

for coming on the show. Hotty, hotty. Thank you, Duncan. Thank you, Duncan. Hotty, hotty. That was Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan. Subscribe to Metaphysical Milkshake. A tremendous thank you to Upstart and BetterHelp and Squarespace for supporting this episode of the DTFH and thank you for listening. I love you. This is a two podcast week. We're going to be back tomorrow with DTFH favorite artist, Mystic Robert Ryan. Until then, I'll see you tomorrow or the next day. Hare Krishna. Here's a little bonus. It's the title track from Rex Reed's Crystallized Piss album, Lady of the Lake. Enjoy. When life gets crazy and when doesn't it? Shoprite helps you keep it all together.

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