Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 715: Douglas Rushkoff

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Douglas Rushkoff, author, humanist, and documentarian re-joins the DTFH! Listen to Doug's podcast, Team Human! Available wherever you like to listen. Also, one of Doug's books just got a 15 year re-release! Now more relevant than ever, check out Program or Be Programmed: Eleven Commands for the AI Future. And you can always learn more about Douglas Rushkoff on his website, Rushkoff.com. Salt Lake City family! Duncan is coming to Wiseguys Comedy Club, October 2-4. Click here to get your tickets now! This episode is brought to you by: Check out squarespace.com/DUNCAN for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, use OFFER CODE: DUNCAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/duncan and get on your way to being your best self. Minnesota Nice now has genuine Amanita Muscaria in stock, AKA Blue Lotus! Head to mnniceethno.com/duncan and use code DUNCAN22 for 22% off your order. Start with the gummies if you want something playful, or dive straight into extract mode if you want to feel what the pharaohs were feeling!

Hi, everybody. It's me, Duncan Trussell, reporting into you from Austin, Texas, the land of freedom and comedy. The last episode with David Nictor, and a lot of y'all really enjoyed that. And this month, I'm trying to have as many guests on it as I can that I feel like have a cooling effect. or something nuanced to say about the current tense state that lots of us are experiencing, especially if you've been gazing into your demonic hypno-rectangle, which I have been. You ever see the dark crystal? Can you pull something up for the intro, Josh? Yeah.

I want to show you guys something. When I was a kid, I remember when the dark crystal came out. Man, I was so excited. I love Jim Henson. theory on the dark crystal is the dark crystal was when jim hinson was going through his lsd phase and i recommend watching it maybe not so much for your kids if you have kids but i want to show you something that just burnt itself into my memory forever um what you're seeing right now is something that it traumatized me when i was a kid

You know, it's Jim Henson. You think you're going to be getting, like, it's kind of like hardcore Muppets. Some Kermit the Frog, some Miss Piggy stuff. Suddenly you've got these reptilian fucking bird things strapping these cute little potato people into fucking chairs. And then they stare into the dark crystal. And watch what happens. This is the most fucked up shit ever.

You know, back then they didn't care about kids the way they do now. This is, I don't know what it was ready, PG. But, you know, everyone who took their kids to this, you know, they were thinking about, like, Fuzzy Bear. And by the time you're at this part of the movie, which is sort of far end, there's not much you're going to do. And suddenly your kid is watching this cutie get his soul drained by a fucking purple crystal. Look at this. Look at it. It's incredible.

The work they did. It's extracting potato gills. out of this poor little guy and look look at the look on his face he withers eyes go blind turns old what the fuck jim ensign what the fuck it's adrenicrome he's talking about a drina chrome harvesting but but all right you could cut it off now josh but i don't think there is a better depiction of what's happening to all of us right now from staring into our phones. But it's not like it's extracting actual salty poddling jizz from us. It's extracting our humanity. It's sucking out of us something. We're all getting drained, man. It's actually, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

It's actually literally, there's just no telling how much jizz gets distracted every day because of porn in the world. I mean, it's extracting jizz, too. It's extracting a variety of essences from us, many of which I don't even think we've quantified yet. At some point, in the future, they'll probably be like, God, didn't they know they were getting their vatrium gas extracted from the technology they were using? We don't know about vatrium gas yet, but we're gassing out here, friends. And because of that, and I'm loath to say it, but at one point, this has happened a lot of podcasters, dear friends of my would say things to me along the lines of, man, you need to, you know, you should, why are you, why, you should use your platform to, like, spread good cheer.

And I hated that shit, you know, I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to get caught up in that way of thinking, you know, I don't want, I don't want to, I, the notion of significance, I think, is antithetical to being funny. Like, if you think you're significant or something, that's a bad, that's, you're going down a dark road, you know, in general. And I don't think that's what they meant. I think I was sort of misinterpreting what they were saying. But regardless, at this point, I feel like maybe it is a good thing to send some good vibes out into the world. And thus, David Necturon last week, this week, Doug Rushkoff. Rushkoff is, I'm lucky.

I don't even remember how he got to be friends. I've been friends with him for a very long time. And he's one of those people who online and offline has had a real impact on the way I look at the world. His message, which I guess you could call Team Human, his message of connecting. outside of the digosphere, that there's this entire beautiful world right outside our phones. And I know that's a hackneyed thing to say and a cliche thing to say. But weirdly, it's very easy to forget that. And he just has a beautiful way of pointing towards this imminent possibility that's around us all the time.

An imminent world that isn't one riddled with fear and division and catastrophe. an algorithmic enhanced horror, but a more simple kind of world and a world filled with fucking. This is important. So, everybody please, welcome. Host of Team Human, all the links you need to find. Mr. Rushkoff will be down below.

Please welcome back to the DTFH, Doug Rushkoff. You can pick your heart. You can pick your nose, but don't pick your friend's heart's nose. Mr. Rushkoff, welcome to the DTFH. You are the second, I don't know, I don't want to say series because then I'm committed to it, but you were on this list of people after Charlie Kirk got assassinated and everyone just, you know, we entered into like, whatever it is, Chernobyl level. Yeah.

Like cultural radioactivity after that. I thought of you. I thought of my meditation teacher, some people from the Ram Dass community. I just want to have some voices on the show that might have a way of sort of calming us down or at least some ideas on how to navigate the current powder keg that seems to be planet Earth. Well, people aren't going to... people on the people on the left and on the right

may not like what I have to say here but everyone else will well that means you're saying that means it's good that means it's good um the the fundamental

thing that is happening here if you pull back and just look at what's happening is People are looking at TVs and smartphones and seeing pictures and words that are freaking them out. Yep. There's, there's, and I get it, there are, there are bad things happening in the world

and there are bad things happening all the time. Yeah. You know, the, the minute before Charlie Kirk. was shot, a child asphyxiated in violence in China, in Palestine, in Rwanda, and probably somewhere in Mississippi. So I'm not saying that, for those who believe, that Charlie Kirk's death may have been more bad than those other deaths that happened right? before on some cultural level but the there's there's a figure on the screen and there's

the ground where you live the the figure on the screen matters more and more to the extent you are disconnected from the ground right where you live right So it's the Chinese girl who died, who I don't know, who maybe did or didn't, the Charlie Kirk who was shot, these are all horrible things. And they're going on all the time, right? You take a real dose of mushrooms and lie on your back and close your eyes. A couple of hours in, you're going to see, oh, my God, this world is pain and suffering. The unnecessary trauma and grief is, is you open to that? It's fucking, I'm still recovering from having seen it two years ago that way. It's there. So we can create media and technology and culture around highlighting those points of horror in order to activate or entertain people in a particular way. Or we can acknowledge that we have tools that could show us whatever most horrible, thing is happening at that moment and choose to spend a majority of our time helping the other

human beings in the real local reality where we are metabolize the pain, trauma, grief of this moment. Right. Well, I mean, I guess if we're going to make a distinction here between the God knows, I'm, you know, I'm surprised you want to asphyxia. I'm going to say there was like probably some kid in Afghanistan who got ripped apart by. dogs and you know somebody ate a poisonous snail and like their head exploded with a spalunker or something some accidental and some completely intentional children being killed by their parents i mean there's just every moment someone clawed their eyes out probably and and poured into their eyes yeah glycate if i i mean i'm sure there's a list in fact i think i could spend the next hour making up

horrible ways that people have died but one different difference and I think that that really did add that amped up the the collective trauma I think a lot of people are experiencing because the algorithm for a second was just hey want to see somebody get assassinated check it out like everybody was seeing it which you know I don't know about you but I've seen a lot of gore on the internet and like it it fucked with my head it was so horrible but then this was hippies like me assumed like oh this is going to be one of those moments where everyone's like dude what are we doing you can't do political violence what the fuck right and then it's followed by

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so many people gleefully celebrate it just happened like it just happened and people were celebrating or they were adding an addendum to like charlie kirk was assassinated political violence is bad but he did say things that were controversial which is an implicit way of saying you know therefore kind of you know brought it on himself it's like a simple it's like a way of like when someone's like well yeah you were assaulted but right it's interesting i didn't i'm not on on to twitter that much so i didn't see and i could never actually identify um or find an example of that i what i saw and maybe it's just because of the way that my feet comes to me what i saw was an immediate effort to capitalize on this death and potential trauma to, you know, lock down kind of social control.

And others, this became, oh, you see, this is why we have to close leftist media. Well, it, it, what you're talking about here, and you're, you're definitely, now I think we have managed to piss off the left and the right so congratulations to us but yeah but I only watched mainstream so I only saw like you know what Trump was saying not what you know you're talking about so it's like um it's a it's a horrific feedback loop so right you've got a group of people who clearly have been who have dehumanized this person to the point that they're doing TikTok dances celebrating him getting shot and there was a lot of them man and also I we I wish I I wish that Twitter had like,

I wish Twitter had algorithm swapping where I could be like, Doug, can I bar your algorithm for the rest of that afternoon? But, but the, and then, then, because suddenly like all these people who are like horrified are now like, who the fuck are these people? Like, you, it's ghoulish is the only way to describe it. It's, it's ghoulish. And so those people, of course, the reason they're acting like that, if you ask me, is, It's a trauma shield.

It's like if it, instead of having to deal with just the reality of like a dad got a fucking shot, you come up with, there's a rational explanation for this. He kind of didn't say the right things. And then you go gleeful and then you don't have to feel it. It's the same thing like if you're watching. I really, I don't, I don't know about the glee. Oh, they know. Because I know. It was a nightmare.

plenty of it was no you know good people you know people who had the correct response right like that but sadly there wasn't and to finish my point now a lot of people are seeing that and they're like oh my god what the fuck has happened that people are celebrating this share they're just going to start killing conservatives and then of course what comes next government response the government response seeing all that is like don't worry we're going to keep you safe we're going to keep you safe. Now, Antifa is a terrorist organization and FCC attacks Kimmel. And so what you're seeing is just like a back and forth between two extremes manifesting. And then, of course, when that happens, the response from the gleeful people is see, fascist, police state.

And then they're like, oh, I'll show you a police state. You ought to see a police. And then this is all 100% related to what you. initially started off saying. I mean, and that's not the narrative, right, and interesting, I mean, and it doesn't really matter, but that's not the narrative that I would use to describe what happened. I would say this person was shot and the vast, vast majority on both sides was like it is awful that we've reached this state of political violence. And when they do say, even though this guy,

may have been saying really scary things. The fact that it escalated to violence is unconscionable and beyond the pale. And if some friggin, as I would see it, you know, Russian Twitter bots found people celebrating, people celebrating dancing on TikTok about this, I would think that's more akin. to the fake footage they found of, you know, Palestinians or Arabs in New Jersey supposedly dancing when 9-11 happened, which isn't true. You wanted to be fake, but it wasn't. These people said then what happened?

Right. But wait, but if there are these outliers, you know, and they really would be, they really would be outliers, I know people. They're outliers, you know, the same as outliers like, um, um, obviously. Tucker Carlson is an extreme outlier to say that people plan this in Jerusalem over hummus and to joke about the death of Charlie Kirk as, you know, in front of people at his, at his memorial to make a joke about people having hummus in Jerusalem to plot this, ha ha, is an outlier, right? That's an outlier.

We have to look at him the same way you look at, you know, the child in wherever that, that was doing a TikTok dance about this is a that's not that's not where we go and and when it's outliers doing it it's one thing when our when people in the in in the middle and in places of leadership then move into response mode to that or uh that's where you know that that's where it's it's it's troubling and you in Josh and I but my producer is just talking about this, which is if, I don't know, you're on the left and you posted something saying that was unconscionable and horrible. I hope his family's okay. We can't resort to political violence. That's it. That's all you said. You know what happened? You know what the algorithm

would do with that? The algorithm would be like, fuck you. I'm not boosting that. That's not going to anybody's feeds you fucking what and so the outliers that you're talking about what happens is you know some psycho is doing a dance in their car about someone getting killed that gets picked up by big accounts on the right you start posting it as an example not of an outlier but as a general consensus among a blanket group of leftists then that now that an account is posted algorithm is like I guess people like this and then that starts getting blown up and blown up and blown up and it gives the impression I think that's the point you're trying to make that the world is not filled with a lot of people who just want to go about their daily lives and think it's

horrible to murder people but in fact the world is either populated with rabid leftists who want to start shooting Christians or the world is populated by anti-Semitic conservatives who want to blame everything on Mossad. And there's nothing in between. There's no nuance there. I mean, the interesting thing to me about what's going on now is after having resisted and to some extent sort of self-excluding violent people from their ranks, the left living in this, what I'm calling,

a fascistic atmosphere, has taken on, has gotten some violent people in it now. In other words, you know, you didn't, you didn't, you know, really in the 60s through the Sandinistas, you know, you saw, it was pretty difficult for violent people to infiltrate the left. There was the weatherman, which did some stuff. You could say the Symbionese Liberation Army might have been, Patty Hurst, those could be called left. There were those little pockets, but it wasn't generally, you know, people with sidearms and stuff, you know, with the bazookas, you know, it's usually associated with more with the authoritarian, authoritarian right. And the, the, like today's, we don't have to call it today's, if you want to not show this today,

but the subsequent violence at the ice office now, right? Which, again, right away, which side did it? You know, well, one of the ice people were shot, but one of the, detainees was shot so it could have been uh who you as if and that should really help us to see that all right that someone on each side was shot and we're still trying to worry about which side was it that did the shooting what team what team rather than right rather than the ideas we're on fucking team human here we're on team human and there's an energy then There's a quality that's killing people, that's inciting a kind of violence.

And that's why we do have to look at the rhetoric of our leaders. Are they talking about beating people up or are they talking about finding unity and calming things down? If they're talking about unity, are they being teased for talking about unity and told, no, you should hate, you should hate? As our president just said, no, no, I hate. I don't forgive. I hate, and I want to hold on to that. You got, what, what kind of atmosphere is that making? Is it creating fear and violence, or is it creating a sense of, no, we don't need unity, but even tolerance isn't the greatest word, but collaborating, working together here.

And on the screen, that's not possible. The business model of the screen is division, the media bias of the screen, is polarity. But in the real world, when you're a pinko-lefty, progressive, psychedelic head like me, and you are standing side by side handing buckets of mud to the volunteer fireman, right-wing, MAGA hat-wearing guy because your mutual neighbor's house is covered in mud from a flood, which may or may not have come from climate change, the differences are gone. This is really, as far as most of us are concerned, this is what show are you watching on Netflix or whatever? Are you watching the Kevin Costor right wing thing about the rancher in Montana?

Or are you watching like Mr. Robot about, you know, the lefty revolt against money? Or like, are you watching both and go like, oh my God? You know, so it's the show. I mean, when Trump was running again, and people were saying, who do you think is going to win? I was going to win. I was like, why? I think because more Americans would rather watch the Netflix series of Trump season two than Biden's season two, right?

It's basically that. And the more that we're involved in the screen, the more that we are going to be leaning into this sensationalist crazy-making stuff. And then there's layer upon layer upon layer. I mean, for me, this kind of started around 9-11 and some crazy started. then Obama got elected, which we thought was revolutionary, but he turned out to be Ronald Reagan. So we got, we got Occupy, and then it started to get weird. Then we got, you know, then we got Trump, then we got the COVID, then we got Gaza, Israel,

and then we got Trump two, and then we get Charlie Kirk. It's like layer upon layer of crazy, and each one makes so much money for these companies, but each one further distances us from each other. And I'm saying don't ignore current events or whatever. But get off the fucking screen. Help your neighbor. Kiss somebody. There's an old lady who needs your help.

There's people you could do stuff with. Just help people around you. And the government will matter less. It won't matter if FEMA gets there in three days or three months because you're taking care of each other. It won't give Musk. all those people all this power over you because you're not buying their shit you're going to the local farmer and and and doing you're doing you're starting to take care of ourselves that is beautiful that's the most beautiful that that is something the algorithm is going to be like fuck that we're not

posting that shit what you just said it's like that ain't going nowhere every second right every second that you're making love to somebody without an AI fleshpot is like a money That's a moment that you're hurting the marketplace. You're hurting the media. That's right, man. And this is what I love about you. And I got to tell you, you know, I think about what you say all the time. You're so brilliant.

And I can remember the last podcast we did. I think it was the last one. You're talking about borrowing a drill. Like you had to borrow it. And how this connected you with a neighbor and you easily could have gone to Home Depot, bought a shitty drill. so there was a storm in Austin my neighbor's fence my my fence got fucked up by my neighbor's tree and I love my name he's cool but you know I haven't spent any time with him really and so you

sued him he heard he's actually he's in jail right now no and you know we were talking and you know I was I was saying you know we'll just get someone to fix the fence and And then we can split up whatever it costs. And then we started talking like a week later. And we're both like, how come we don't just fix this fence? And I'm like, yeah, I think we can fix the fence, right? Like he's like, yeah, we can fix this. And so then I'm in his car going to Home Depot.

We're driving, having the best conversation about kids and meteors. And I'm just realizing I already liked him. But it's like, I fucking love my neighbor. He is so cool. and actually literate when it comes to I had to explain to him you must understand I I don't know how to do anything with tools or anything I I'm I acted like I knew how to fix the fence yeah I don't and he's like no problem get you and then all of a sudden now I'm like friends legitimate friends I've spent time with my neighbor all because of you

because it would have been so much easier to just get somebody to come and fix the fucking thing. So much easier. And that little moment, it really like, I mean, I don't want to like blow it too far out of proportion, but in a little way,

it changed my life. In a little, my life, the person I live next to, I know more, I know about his kids. I know like he's funny. I know, you know,

like, you know, and he was telling me a story of how, uh, in the neighborhood there was like just this part of it that was just shit gravel and just how he organized the campaign with the city to plant flowers there i've been walking by it i didn't know he did it and right all the neighbors came together and you know beautified this little part of the neighborhood and the whole time like god i wish rush cough was here this i mean that's this a beautiful

thing i mean that's what i've been talking about as you put the social back into socialism and get rid of the ism. You know, it's just social where people doing stuff for each other. Now, when I tell stories like what you're telling, because I do a lot of these, you know, freaking business conferences and stuff, a lot of, we won't call them right or left, but business people are there. They'll say, well, that's all nice and good, but what about the fence company? Now, instead of hiring the fence company, you did this stuff for yourself. Instead of buying a lawnmower for everyone on the block, Rushkoff, you're talking about having one or two lawnmowers for the whole block that people share? What about the lawnmower company?

What about the old lady whose stock dividends and retirement depends on the coupons that he's clipping from the lawnmower company's stock? What about the employee at the lawnmower company? And the thing is, well, what if the employee gets to work less, right? Right. What we've, what we've been finding, this is the interesting thing, is in times of collapse, usually why societies collapse is because they have a pyramidal structure. And a pyramidal structure, it means you're getting a few elites up at the top. Yep. And there's societies where the primary value is acquisition and accumulation.

Right. Go back to the Bible. You know, it gets seven years worth of grain in there. Just store it up. Yep. store it up in societies that survive collapse or don't actually collapse are more distributed and they they they optimize not for for acquisition they optimize for leisure right they optimize for slack so the idea is is i mean remember slack i mean that was our generation's

hell yeah i remember slack you're in slacker town now right so exactly so let's say we buy less lawnmowers. So that means we need less money. So we don't have to work as much. And correspondingly, the guy in the lawnmower company doesn't have to work as much because we don't need as many lawnmowers. So who does this hurt? It only hurts the kind of the shareholder person who wants to make money off all those lawnmowers without actually doing any work. And you know, in the end, kind of fuck them. Fuck them. What if we put a limit on what? Just say you could only be a billion dollars wealthy and then maybe no more after that. Can we put a limit there? It used to be A few million, you know, it used to be a hundred million or something.

But a billion, after a billion, can we just say, just it taps out. You can't work if you want, but you can't accumulate any more money than that. Okay, I'm going to out, I'm going to out hippie you. Here's my dumb dream. And feel free to pop the fucking bubble. I probably need it popped. Here's my dumb dream. So, and I feel pathetic that I'm even talking about how unique it was that I, that I spent time with my name.

neighbor fixing something. He did most of the work. I'm going to be honest. I don't, like, I don't know how to, I don't know. Anyway. But did you document it? Were you the documenter? Did you take pictures of it happening?

I didn't want to even, I'm going to film you. Get a podcast out of it. You know, in my life, there's like a lot of stuff that I do. I get addicted to video games. I've been playing this wonderful game called Silk Song. It's so good. But you know what I've been thinking about? Not that dumb game.

I just keep thinking about riding at Home Depot. I keep thinking about how fun that was. You know what I mean? It's great. I think about time I spend with my kids. I think about, and these things are, there's no, there's no way to quantify it. There's no way to sell neighbor time. There's no way to, so my dumb hippie dream is that if enough people begin to realize that

those moments that you have been talking about and talking about and talking about not only are way better than any kind of consumerist distraction or consumerist pursuit, but they're free. There's no price tag on it, and it's better. It's a free thing that's better. And to me, if enough people started realizing that, then the market cap or you could only make a billion dollars or all that stuff, it wouldn't matter. as much, you know, me and Josh were just talking about the dollars being devalued, but it's like, what if all dollars became devalued? What if the entire quantification mechanism we're using

for this is a good thing? It cost so much money became meaningless because enough people began to realize that is not an accurate gauge for something of value. It doesn't measure value. Yeah. This is what I was writing about in the earlier 2000s. I wrote this Life, Inc. where I looked at not just the establishment of the corporation, but the invention of central currency. There used to be other kinds of currency. And they worked more like poker chips. You know, poker chips have no value, right? They're nothing. Nothing. Right? You trade in your, they're nothing. And the way, that's the way money would work in the medieval marketplace is you'd go there. Someone would kind of prime the pump with these little IOUs,

but they would all expire at the end of the day. You know, they were, they were each worth like, a loaf of bread or a piece of this or what and you would they would they would prime the the baker or someone would sort of prime the activity with a bunch of these ios just so that everybody could trade and get everything they wanted right there was like okay five o'clock trading day ends everybody cash in your chips and it's done right you would have no there was no money right as such so you could you could because it was almost as if the whole society lived in ram and not on the hard drive wow it was all you know it was all cool active yes

active that's it and what you invested in was your people was your friendships was your community not some number thing the old lady the it's like we have to live our lives getting a number to be high enough so then we can retire and the number will go down won't go all the way down before we die it's like ugh it's a nightmare oh it's a it sounds like some fucking mr beast some horrible mr beast challenge yeah the the and so to me like whenever these moments happen and I'm like looking around I got I'm getting lit up people are fucking blaming this thing and I'm getting paid by Peter fucking teal or that I'm you know insinuating that I'm like pro surveillance state or censoring myself for rogan people coming at me man and like it is it's been illuminating for me really it really has in a good in a very good way uh because it it's it really made me realize like oh How many times have I believed something that I saw online that's completely wrong? How many times have I been...

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you're making which is these hypno rectangles are fucking people up It's like, aside, like, I don't like getting, obviously, I don't like being brigated and harassed, but some very small part of me, unfortunately, felt some compassion for these people because it's like the world you're living in. That's not the world. And that's a scary world that you're living in. You know, a world where billionaires are co-opting low-level podcasters. Right. I mean, and I understand, too, that's the world that many of our senators and Congress people live in, you know, that believe that there's Jewish space lasers, believe that many of the Mexican migrants are, have, have bombs planted inside them that can be detonated from afar. I mean, the kinds of things you hear from, you know, are elected leaders, many of them, shows that they are in a nightmare. And that nightmare is contained. contagious enough to get them you know to get them elected it's it's not just you know the so-called little people that it's you know almost everyone is in one form of this nightmare or another you know I have friends I mean usually the way I try to get people out of the nightmare is by pushing them further in the nightmare like I have a lot of friends yeah it does sometimes it could the only good trip is a bad trip sort of thing like I got friends who are

I'm trying to get citizenship in Europe, you know, for, because, you know, they're afraid they'll get cracked down on by government and, or by fascists or, you know, are persecuted because they're Jews or something. And so they're going to go to Europe. And I'm like, dude, Europe. Like, look at this. This country's got a fascist leader. This one's got that. These ones are talking about that way. This one's got neo-Nazi. It's like, where are you going to go? And it's like, You know, it's like, it's, it's, the way, the, the, the extent to which we are networked as a society, as a civilization now kind of means we, we sort of all make it or none of us make it. Right. You know, there's not like a retreat like that.

I would say, if you've got indigenous, you know, leanings or whatever, then the object of the game is not to get in an airplane and go fly to some indigenous people and live with them, but manifest. your indigenity, whatever that means to you, right here, right now, the way you look at someone else's eyes, with the way you source your food, the way you treat your land. It's like, it's pretty obvious. You know, I think one thing you said earlier, which I would love it if everyone just started doing this. So I will make a universal decree. This is now law. Oh, good. You see, fascism for good. Fascism for good. Uh, uh, uh, FF, I like it. I like in your, And your live things. I like it your live ones when you make a law, make a rule.

That's how it breaks the rule. Then you go, you're banned. Self ban for five. Self ban. Self ban. Right. But then you always forgive them. Usually by the end, you go, okay, five days.

Okay, five hours. Okay. You're free. What's fascinating is they'll do it. What's fascinating is they'll do it. They'll self-ban. But here's my decree. Yeah.

I think what we all need to start doing, and we will do this. now the law is whenever somebody commits violence, political violence, any kind of violence, let's just say political violence. How about this? Instead of trying to figure out, was it a groiper? Was it a conservative? Was it a trans person? How about we do this? That person is not on our team. Whether you're right or left, that's not us. Whatever that is, we'll come up with a new name for for them a universal i don't know what that name could be i don't know what that name could be man the the malefights that was a malefight a malifite a malifite so if you if you decide to like use violence to fucking hurt people it doesn't matter who you voted for that's irrelevant you're

now a malefite and we don't like malefights it's not going to work out whether it's a leftist malefite, a right-wing malefite, a Groyper malified, a nihilus malified, a Christian malified. Right. What if it's state-sanctioned malefite? It's where it gets tricky, right? So I guess you got a judge then. We can't be the judge of it, but it's like, okay, so if you've got a bunch of recently hired ICE agents with masks, so first day, it's like, oh, and you're just a little too enthusiastic and kind of shoot a couple people or whatever you know I've got the seal of malefica I'm allowed it's a certified malefite well you know what I think it's a fair point but but but and this is a cop out I'm gonna admit it cop out yeah hopping out phase one

right phase one let's start with us right if somebody who isn't a doesn't have the seal of Malefica. Yeah. Does a violent act instead of who are they. I guarantee it was a fill in the blank. I guarantee it was an immigrant. I guarantee it was a trans. I guarantee it was a maga. Instead of doing that, let's just say that's not us. It's that's not us. And so that totally stop getting lost. Right. And even if they claim it's us, it's not us. It's like it's that's they're from a and I, I agree. They're from a different tribe. They're from the tribe of violence. Yeah. And that's something else. And whether they did it for the right or the left or the trans or the anti-trans or the for fascism or for anti-fascism, they're all team violence. Team violence. They're all team

violence. And that's not that's not our team. Yeah. Then then what? Then we're not going to fight each other over this or that. Well, it was the poisoning of Lord Garthor. They got into their mind. They fell under the hypnosis of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the right, instead of this shit, right, but the problem is now, and this is more of a, uh, a, uh, a bigger political thing, um, the, the, there elements of our government now in order to enact the plan that they're trying to enact really do need to create a frightening violent. enemy in order to exercise authoritarian control. And that's, um, that makes it tricky.

That makes it tricky. But I agree. If we can keep doing that and saying it doesn't matter, it's just team violence, just team violence, then the, um, the, the response of government would need to be different. Well, maybe. If we can't get activated that way, then they would need to respond differently. Right. Because for the thing you're talking about to really work,

it needs a lot of fear and it needs a lot of division. Once we get those two things and once we've like created and this is the thing I'm sure you've experienced, I experience it all the time, which is a demand for like, declare what team you're on. Just say it. Are thou a conservative, which are thou a leftist say what you're with? And it's like, you know, what wing are you with? You know, and to me, this creature that we're living on, it's got a lot of fucking wings and it's a ball.

And it's, you know what I mean? There's a lot of flapping wings. And that invitation to take aside and narrow yourself, shoe-o-yourself into this place. The next step is, therefore, you should also accept all these other ideas that go along with that side. It's not just that you're like, you know, I think it's, most of the next step. countries have some kind of immigration laws I can understand why you'd want to have that but do I think it's make sense to separate parents from their fucking kids does any of this shit look good to me do I know it's I remember when Fox was doing crisis at the

border it was one of the most surreal things to watch is they're doing a piece on crisis at the border creating an image of these people is like essentially like like Mordor, like these people are coming in from Mount Doom, man. These are, these are like, they're, they're coming to eat, eat. Right. Well, they're using zombie, zombie apocalypse imagery to describe foreigners and migrants. And that's preparation, you know, unfortunately. That's preparation for climate change.

When they're, when they're saying it, they cut to these monsters and you see these monsters. These monsters are pregnant women, holding their children who are crying and they didn't even try to edit that it's like at least cut to someone who looks mildly sinister

why are you cutting to this family the kids got shitty fucking shoes because he's been walking so long they're fucking clearly like just like this sad mix of hopefulness and despair and it's like but but because that's there

does that mean like open borders no but let's have a little fucking nuance here man can we have a little That's the problem. That's the problem. So the digital age, even though we think it's really complex, it's not. It's complicated, but it's super, super simple. Everything digital is right or left. Digital is like a spin cycle. It pushes everything to ones and zeros. So all of the things, all of the systems by which we've kind of gotten by over these last centuries are being

stress tested by, wait a minute, is it this or it's that? Is this a border or is it not? And it's like, well, it's always been a little, you know, everything is like that. Everything is not that it's cheating. It's just that it's not absolute. It's a border, but it's sort of semi-permeable because we kind of need workers to do the grapes and stuff. And then we let them, then they go back and it's, I can get it for your wholesale. You know, it's like it's a little bit, you know, Everything is like that. Nothing is really fair. You know somebody at a club, you know, a young comedian behind you becomes your friend, whatever. And yes, they do get an advantage because you tell the manager at the club, Johnny's actually pretty good. You should give them a thing. Sorry, it ain't fair. It's always, it's always like that. And we're growing so intolerant of that. We've become so absolutist in our understanding of things, which is why we move toward either totalitarian leftism or authoritarian right. It's like because it's got to be a thing and the fact is there is no system that works Not not like a checkerboard. It's way more weird mycelial and all and the thing you have to develop is not the ideal system

What you have to develop is the the sort of emotional slack you need some play in the wheel you need margins you need a shoulder on the road You know even though you should stay in lane you just kind of need a shoulder there just in case something happens some given the fucking thing that's it slack the system is too tight we need slack in the system it's like we we're in the that's the craziest thing about it is you the promise of tech was more slack but it's the opposite it's had the opposite effect it's we're we're when we connect on the phone we get tight we it makes you stressed and balled up and and you get nervous and scared and the conversations, they just inevitably get stuck in these, like, one of these two lanes.

Yeah. And these lanes, the lanes are not real. They're not real. The lanes are the stuff. It's like way back in this present shock book, which I keep thinking about now, I was talking about the difference between living on the ticks of the clock or living in the duration of the second between the ticks. And these things that we're talking about are the ticks. That's not where life happens. life happens between that's when the second occurs between the ticks that's where you and me

and love and sex and mushrooms and yeah and making the thing with your neighbor that's where all that lives yeah and this this television zone this internet zone the certainly the social media zone are pure tick they're pure tick and that's where you got to be on this ticker that ticker and it's like that's not the place where you breathe that's not where you metabolize and if you spend your life on the ticks you're going what the fuck just happened where was that you know and our whole nation is moving on to those sharp it's like the longitude and latitude lines it's like that's not

the planet those are lines it's not the planet it just in and it's it's that that if you ask me man this is 100% because of of not enough regulation for technology this shit is You know, God, I wish you could remember the name of the book. It's like the history of drugs in the United States. And, you know, back when cocaine was in Coca-Cola, you know,

and there was a disorder, which I think was depression. It was their term for depression. I think they called it, I can't remember. It was a really cool. Like malaise or something. Yeah, they had to them. Yeah. And they were saying that people are getting this affliction because things are

beginning to move so fast. And fortunately for us, we found the cure. Yeah. cocaine everybody's doing blow you could go to the pharmacy get cocaine it's in your Coca-Cola and for a second people are like this shit is gonna save the world baby Freud's fucking shooting yeah okay into his veins surgeons are like on blow coming up with ways to sterilize their equipment and then you know just like what we're discovering now as it turns out cocaine it's not a good long-term plan for happiness and then regulation

happens cocaine becomes illegal and because it's fucking poison and here we have some combination of drug and radium you know we have this beautiful glowing thing that aside from like the technology itself it's a host to a legion of algorithmic based manipulative apps that are fucking people's heads up clearly we know it fucks fucks up kids we know that it's like kids who gets screen time. It fucks them up. But because of what you were saying earlier, it's not going to get the kind of regulation it needs. Right. Or when it does, it gets politicized. So the governor of New York, this woman, Kathy Hochel, she's a Democrat, and she got the law in New York that kids are not allowed to use their cell phones during school. Great law. Yeah, you would think.

But, you know, in what we could loosely call the Austin content, is very activated by that as what do you mean what the ostriching don't please don't don't fucking pile on the ostrich don't join that fucking mob we're idiots let me just say that this is what my wife says about the current like furious attack on the quote rogan's fear yeah is by the way talk about it that ain't a fucking sphere and you know what I mean the idea of this like crystallized unified group of Austin comedians. Like you're

a WWE team that comes in. Oh, it's the Austin brothers. My friend was pointing out like, you know, in the in the green room, everybody thinks we're all like reading mind comp for some shit. You know, we're playing like, and he's like, dude, you got people in the green room who voted for

Jill Stein. You got people who didn't vote. I know. I know. But you know who I would argue is most responsible for that is Mark Zuckerberg because Mark Zuckerberg when he tried when when Trump was elected and Mark Zuckerberg wanted his show now he's going to be a bro rather than a lefty he announced you know a bunch I'm going to be more like Twitter we're going to I'm going to be more masculine you know I think this this is toxic amazing and the third thing he said I'm going to move the content management team from San Francisco to Austin. And that was a way of trying to socially signal that he was going to be, you know,

uh, uh, you know, more musk-like in, in what he was doing and less, uh, uh, you know, reed Hoffman like, I guess, less, uh, uh, Clintonian. And it was like, dude, you, you hurt yourself and you hurt Austin in that, you know, because Austin, whatever, Austin is also friggin, this is what I talked about in my South by talk. It's, it's fringe wear, it's Rick Linkletter, it's Mike Judge, it's Bruce Sterling, it's, it's everything weird is in Austin. It is such a, such a wonderful gumbo. It's a gumbo of freaks out here. And in the, so the, so the, but again, it's more the same bullshit. It's like, you know, my wife says, I just wish these people could just spend. like 15 minutes with you idiots like I wish she could just like be around you guys and and

right recognize no but the thing is whether it's through fault of his own or not Joe Rogan as an entertainer comedian podcast host right and I think he would he would say he's got he's no closer to god or genius than you are right he's he's a human yeah he ended up with so much with an undo, an unhealthy for everyone amount of political leverage. It created a very brittle kind of a fulcrum. You know, to have something that matters that much is, and there was no way, and not that there was anything he could do to dissipate it. If he was going to stop it, I want to stop my show.

It's gotten too important, you know, but it was like it, it ended up magnifying something that didn't have to be. Yeah, well, I'm glad we're talking about this because this is, this is, because I've thought about this, uh, obviously, um, because I'm a comedian. And I know comedians. I've been around comedians for over 20 years. And I know there is, it's a personality type. There's a lot of qualities we share. And, you know, we're fools. Like, I'm professionally, right? And so now, what goes? what goes along with being a fool is um uh that and i don't mean it like idiots either i just mean no no the classic fool the one who can speak truth to power in the court and try things out right or wrong at least it's going to make people think and and and and so you know it but also i mean like another quality that goes along with being a fool is is is curiosity we're very curious and And this is, you know, how are you going to write jokes if you're not curious?

If you're not constantly analyzing and wondering, is there an Illuminati? What is it like? What would it be? What does the president smell like? I wonder what the president smells like. I've never smelled a president. And so if, and it'll never happen. But if I got a phone call and I like, Trump wants to be on your podcast, you think I'm going to be like, no?

Hell no. I'm going to be like, yeah, I got to smell a president. I want to know what's it like to be. around that. I want to see it and hear it and feel it and talk to it and know it. You're not thinking I want a signal boost some point of view. If Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, anybody that I was curious about, but especially someone controlling a nuclear arsenal, wanted to like have a conversation with me, I'm going to say yes. No, there's that. That's all true. That's thing. But the problem, and I still think this is the problem in our civilization is scale, that you can,

can't scale up to that to there's a limit to the scale that a human being should be able to achieve and not because they're too rich but because it's too brittle it's too um i would never with you you know i would never want to be that famous well because the problem is is like when you start when you when you when you no nor would i like in the the i think that's one of the many things i love about him is like he really has managed to like not go completely insane from that, whatever that is like. And, and, and, but also the other thing people forget about all of us and especially like podcasters is that we are, we're like always having conversations.

And like, you know what I mean? Like, like, here I am having a conversation with you, a self-described, what did you call yourself lefty pinko? What did you say you were? I forgot. I forgot, something nice. Yeah, and it was wonderful. And in those conversations, change happened.

Like, I, I, you, my conversations with you have evolved me as a person, you know. And similarly, Rogan or whoever it may be, people don't seem to understand that none of us have fixed or solidified or crystallized in some view and especially not comedians. But one thing I know I only speak for myself here is that whatever phase I happen to be in, whether it's Because we're diving into Blue Lotus, one of the most popular plant medicines sold by Minnesota Nice Ethnipotanicals. Wait, don't skip this ad. Listen, a lot of people have heard of Blue Lotus or even tried it. Most come away thinking, eh, it's a gimmick.

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Yeah, but the thing is, the role of the fool in society, though, is at a particular bandwidth. This is why I talk about scale. It's like Trump is a great comedian, but I don't think a comedian should be president. Right?

Because, right? Fuck. Right? Let me let that sink in for a second. Ah, fuck. You know, that's so funny. I'm sorry, I don't want to cut you off. I just, let me let it sink in for a second.

I'd be inauthentic if I didn't. here's why that wow i'm sorry if everyone's already thought this when i watch him i have often thought it's a that's a comic like he's doing stand-up this is stand-up he's got jokes he's doing some kind of like uh rodney dangerfield thing he's that charlie kirk thing you mentioned earlier he it's not like he said like Darth Vader. I do not love my enemies. I deplore my enemies. I hate them with all my. He said it in a really funny way. He's got that grin, that goofy grin on his face. You know, I hate my enemies. I really do. I hate him. Maybe you could change me a little bit. I don't know.

Right. You know, I just happen to be up here, you know, literally saying the antithesis of the New Testament. And, you know, I'm just basically spitting in Jesus' face right now by exactly saying I do the opposite of what Christ recommended the world should do. But you never know. I might, you know, well, exactly. And that's the way you bring the most dangerous proclamations to a people is you say it like a joke. And people are like, was that a joke? Oh, yeah, that was a joke? Was it a joke?

Until it's not a joke. Right. So it's comedy can be used. It's not that comedy's bad and it's up. but comedy can be used to get people used to certain ideas that start funny and then end up believed or real or whatever. And I look at Trump as a master of that, of presenting policies through comedy until they're not. Oh, that was a serious proposal or not? No.

You know, it's like, you know, Kim Jong-il, my nukes are bigger than yours, buddy. you know uh what what is he no he's not is he um so when comedy's being used as a weapon in that way we're all we all end up on this sort of spectrum of but i don't think rogan's weaponized comedy i just no but his comedy can be weaponized by others but but it's more a matter of when comedy's being used like that especially in the field of politics we do need to i would argue we need to reclaim comedy for the fools. There was a time, Paul Krasner, right? He used to write the magazine, The Realist.

He kind of invented fake news when he published, he used to publish half true, half fake stuff. He published a magazine that after the assassination of JFK, he said that he had a witness who saw Lyndon Baines Johnson penetrating the exit wound in JFK's neck on the plane, right? And people friggin believed it, right? And but, but at least it was coming from a poor fringe, San Francisco beatnik dude. It, it didn't quite, um, it wasn't the headlines. And it was part of this world. It's like that weird safe space we had, even for conspiracy theory. I used to Alex Jones stuff you know what I mean when you would get it on like a CD a bootleg CD and pop it in it's like disinformation and it was like oh could that be true is that

I wonder and the alien I wonder there was like that Art Bell sweetness late night that we had a it was part of a counterculture of think your people and anything was possible it's like I feel like what happened is either because Trump became mainstream or Joe got so big somehow comedy became the figure rather than the ground. It became the subject rather than the the groundlings attacking the thing on the stage. Okay, okay. Now, here, now, I can put this into context because I don't even, I don't think that's even anomalous.

I think it's part of the archetype because this is what I've heard. I don't know if it's true. And I'm sorry if I've mentioned this before to you or on the podcast, but I have heard that there was a, there was something they would do with a fool. So, you know, every king had the fool, the jester, whatever. And like once a year, and maybe this is just a made up story, but it's an architect. Sounds good. Once a year, they would make the fool the king.

In the morning, the fool would come out, dressed in the king's robes. Everybody thought that was fucking hilarious. It's like, look at the idiot. He's like, he's wearing the crown. But because they're cosplaying as the king, people would treat him as the king. Now he was getting all this dignity and respect. People weren't like, you dumb asshole. Well, you kiss the dog's ass.

You literally, I saw you lick the dog's butthole yesterday to get a laugh. You're not a king. Everyone's like, yes, your majesty. And what was fun about it was by the end of the day, the fool had started taking himself seriously. The fool was kind of enjoying the kind of king thing. And that was the funniest part of all is this solemnity that was suddenly coming out of the fool because the fool. is a fool and now that people have been treating the fool like a king the fool's reflecting that back and then the next day back to kissing the dog's asshole and never you know but this

is part of the the archetype which is um and unfortunately uh because of technology fools like me we we get to do this and and and it would if you don't have enough media literacy it would be pretty easy to stop looking at the thing as what it is and you know with what i love about joe is he's really good at interviewing people he's one of the best interviewers i think he like really is like his ability to sort of zero in on places that need to be zeroed in on and like sort of attacking weak parts of a person's argument i don't think that you could even call that comedy you know I don't think what you're seeing there is like, I think it's just good interviewing. And, but still in all, I think instead of creating some kind of limit for the reach that any of us might have via technology,

why not figure out a way to remind people that a lot of what you're seeing, whether it's me or whether it's CNN or Fox or Joe or whatever, It's, it might not be as real as it seems in that moment. And that's not bad. That's entertaining. But you, right. It's upsetting too for people who, you know,

it's, the news has always been compromised. You know, they were William Randolph Hearst, sent America to a war in Guatemala because Chiquita Banana, you know, the company wanted to get rid of a, uh,

uh, uh, uh, new duly elected. president who was going to reclaim the land for the people. So America invades saying it's a communist threat. And it was them, you know, or we're saying that, you know, marijuana is bad for you because DuPont was making nylon rope and we don't want hemp and blah, blah, blah. Oh, yeah. It's what it is. Or the New York Times and these are all the mainstream media news

sources that were obviously ceded by something like CIA in order to get us into the Gulf War when they weren't really making a weapon of mass destruction and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's always, it's always been like that. It's just now that we're sort of waking up to it, there's a kind of a disillusion that goes along with it, wants to throw out the kind of the baby with the bathwater and believe nothing and go crazy and nihilism. Yeah, we go into a kind of a nihilism. And again, and this is the thing, I'm sure people, you know, I'm going to get more anger from the left for

not like challenging that, you know, whether Joe Rogan's a good interviewer or not, but I'm not, I was on, I thought he was fine. I didn't have a problem with him. Let me just say this. Don't left leave Rushkoffel. No, you started attacking Rushko. He's one of you. No, I'll get, yeah, I know, but it's okay.

But I'll get that from, from the brittle ones and from the brittle right and whatever. But I still think the answer in all these cases is, is what we're talking, is more slack, more the sort of self. lenience and more live human relationships with other people. You gotta, I mean, I feel terrible that they're so little fucking in our society apparently

now, like Gen Z, I don't get to fuck enough now. That's really not good. Not good. Fucking, let me just make a case for fucking. Fucking is not just to get laid. Fucking is also, it's a way of

co-metabolizing this this thing that we're going through together. There's a moment that can happen when you're making love with somebody where you're like, oh my God, we're really in this chaotic swirl, but I've found another soul here where, you're here, I'm here, and I'm here because it's you and you're here because it's me and oh my gosh, to be appreciated like that right now. It's like it's important. And there's other ways to get something like that sensation.

by sitting with people do I mean these all sound like lefty pinko things like ecstatic dance but but but campfire um smores with your kids you know and there's things you can do talk about fucking again oh but the fucking but it's like these things are so missing from society it goes all the way back you know bowling alone that great book about the loss of clubs and boy scouts and things the kinds of things if you think back if you're an adult and you think back to like just do it as an experiment your best time with your dad it's like oh right he took me fishing on this boat we spent this time together it's like nothing that he got me none it's just there are these moments you remember the eye contact you remember those those moment that's what it is that's

the time of your life you know and um boy this other shit it doesn't it's not that it doesn't matter it's that there's almost nothing you can do about it except every couple of years show up and vote for try to vote for the one that's the less awful but what you can do during the time between those two year or four year intervals you can make the world a place where it matters so much less who we put up there because everybody getting along just just do that or another way to say let's take one percent of us in America. That would be four million people. Take four million people and dedicate them to understanding the issues. Right. Are you one of those four million people? If you want to go be one,

get to join the club, understand the other 396 million of us. Sex. Let's both sex and drugs and rock, we're all. No, but, but be with each other. Make the, meet your neighbors. Take care of shit. Absolutely. Make the neighborhood nicer. Be nice to kids. Do some tutoring. Take care of the old lady. Make a barbecue. There's all these things we could be doing. If 99% of us were taking care of each other, imagine how much less work those 4 million people who are figuring out the problems would have to do.

And Gaza and Israel and the Middle East, we're using less oil now. We're hanging out with each other more. We're using less AI now because we're fucking and playing cards and enjoying each other. So now Qatar and whatever, those places don't matter so much because we're not buying all that crap from there. And the climate change, whether it's real or not, whatever you believe, we're making less of it if we're hanging out, you know, playing cards together and having sex.

I love it, man. This is, to me, this is whatever, I don't know where that falls in the political landscape, whatever you just said. But that's where I feel most at home. Right. And I don't think, I hate to think that that's going to be co-opted by one side or the other. because everything you just went through is to is possible i think it's possible i believe in your dream i believe it's possible anybody anybody who's ever god i'm so sorry to say this i just i would sooner smash my remaining ball with a hammer than do ecstatic dancing but i must say anyone who's

been to like a good uh underground party coming up on ecstasy dancing with a group of people feeling the feeling it happened that moment where you realize I'm not a me anymore I'm a blob at this point I've become a blob I don't think I don't even know if the person I'm dancing with is me or I'm them or I don't know what this is as Jesus said wherever three or more of you are gathered in my name there I will be something else comes in the room the the whole is greater than the sum of the parts for its pearls suddenly this spirit enters the room that reminds you of what humanity is capable of and it's way more interesting connected than divided and way more powerful connected than divided and the any what if you're singing the song a division whether it's subtly

or whether it's overtly you are not getting us any closer to that world that you've been writing about and talking about and really believe in and and honestly it's probably a little dismaying for you right now to look out and see something that seems to be quite the opposite of what you've been teaching us about for a while. Yeah. I mean, sometimes I phrase it like, oh my gosh, I really failed here, didn't I? But, you know, it's funny. In Jewish lore, and right now it's like, you know, Russia Shauna and Yom Kippur, it's the high holidays for Jews. There's this medieval poem that they read on we, they. It's interesting. I said they. That's how alienated I feel from that whole thing right now. There's a poem called

Unitana Tokef. And it's this famous poem. They're written in medieval times, really dark, terrible, you know, when they're all shoved in the ghetto by the Vatican or whatever. And it says, it's this famous poem that says, you know, between Russia Shon and Yom Kippur, you know, it is written, you know, who will live and who will die? Who will get sick and who will be healthy? Who will this? Like, God's writing the book of life during this week. Like, on Yom Kippur, or on Rosh Hashanah, it is, the book's opened.

And on Yom Kippur, it's decreed and closed, all those things. And they go through all this. And everybody's like, doesn't want to get to this poem because it's like, oh, this is the really scary shit. Like, you know, God's deciding right now and I better be on my best behavior and be really pure. Please don't put me in the bad book. it's okay it's like you know he's making the list and checking it twice it's like it's that but it's not just for your presence um and except and i'm like what the fuck is this thing why is this

so horrible why are the jew so bad why are they what is that and then i go back and look at the poem and at the very end of the poem it says you know this is going to happen this is going to happen whatever's going to happen's going to happen and through compassion and care for each other is the only way that we can lessen the decree. So it's like the shit's going to fucking happen, right? But we have a choice in how we engage with each other through it. And then I don't mean it quite this coldly, but it kind of matters less if you're going to live or if you're going to die.

It really doesn't matter. If you're going to be rich, you're going to be poor. You're going to be right. You're going to be wrong. It's like, or if the world, if we're going to die individually the way we would hope, or if we're going to all die together in one big thing. Right. We're all going to die anyway, right?

We just don't know if we're going to die together in one moment or separately with little children and other things living on. But it's like, whatever happens, if I'm here for you and you're here for me, that's it. It's still, it's still, this is all abutist stuff. It's still okay. It's just what's happening. We're here. We're co-metabolizing it together in compassion and in love. That's what we're called to do.

to fix the fucking problem really because all the fixing tends to make it worse but to just be with each other in love it it will be okay you did it you did it I knew you would you did it and you didn't fail you didn't fail this little temporary moment it's like if anything this moment is going to show us what happens if you go in the opposite direction what you've been teaching and And that, maybe that's what we need. Maybe that's what the world needs. We all need that.

Maybe we need a taste of like, okay, here's what the opposite looks like. And, you know, it's a matter of realizing you cannot be right. You are not right. We are not right. You can't be right because logic, this is not a logical universe. This is a chaotic universe with animals eating each other and stuff and little things in pain. It's just, you can't be right in this. So all you can be is nice, you know?

Yeah. This is what Ram Dass said. I would rather be in love than be right. And this is, you know, what do you get from being right? Like, you know, even if you are on paper, right, but you're using that as a bludgeon. You're using that to humiliate to show people how dumb they are. For no, there's no, your rightness in some regard is wrongness in a million other ways.

It's so brilliant what you're saying. And not to say there shouldn't be justice. And we do need to, like, have boundaries and all this stuff. Compromises. Those are compromises. They're not the thing. Again, they're the ticks. They're not the time.

There's stuff we got to do, the fences that you got to build for whatever reason you have that fence. It's a compromise, you know? It's like God's land doesn't have a division in it. But you've got this fence to accomplish something for a moment. Mr. Rushkoff, thank you so much for this. I will think about this conversation for the rest of my life like many of our other ones. And thank you so much. I'm so happy we're friends.

I'm lucky to have you as a friend. Me too. I'm lucky to have you as a friend. Yeah. Well, how can people find you? Everybody's going to want to tune in your podcast. Yeah, do that.

You're all podcasty people. Go to teamhuman.fm. You know, and find team human on the thingy, whatever thingy that you use to listen to stuff. and that's a gateway drug to all my other things and you are the best drug out there I'd be snorting you and playing cards and sucking on feet till the crows came home excellent you're the best thank you so much

love you love you that was Doug Rushkoff everybody do subscribe to his podcast all of his books are brilliant links down below order some tune in he doesn't And it's not just him, by the way. He's got this incredible community of people connected to him. And I think that all of us could use a little bit of what Mr. Rushkoff is putting out in the world.

Thank you so much for listening to the DTFH. I'll see you next week. Until then, Hary Krishna.