Duncan Trussell Family Hour - ARI SHAFFIR

Episode Date: March 3, 2015

COMEDIAN AND FRIEND Ari Shaffir (This is not happening, Paid Regular, Skeptic Tank Podcast) joins the DTFH and talks revolution.   Go to squarespace.com and use offer code DUNCAN to get 10% off your first purchase.

You buy Squarespace.com, go to Squarespace.com and use offer code Duncan to get 10% off a beautiful, powerful website. Oh, it's that time again. The scrolled sub-cast is sliding down your brain tube to lay some soft gelatinous jellyfish, shake stomach seeds deep in the warm musty. My nose is your brain. His spoliosis pours in the direction of Mecca and his bald spots got a tramp stamp. His developmental message nips his wop wop. He won't kiss the signs and doesn't care what.

Spread those armpits wide. Let that fly out of your butt. Because here he comes, like a baneling baby rolling in a paradise. It is raspy lesbian voice. Hug down your spinal treasure trail and shove those earbuds deep in your hole. It's that beloved. Hi friends, it's me, Duncan Trussell, and you're listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast. I welcome you.

I've got to go on the road tomorrow. I'm flying up to Winnipeg, and that means that I've got a ton of stuff I have to do to prepare for the trip, which means I don't have time to do any kind of opening monologue. But I don't need to do one because the ultimate guest of all time is here, the sweet, perfumed, lotioned Ari Shafir. So we're going to dive right into it, but first, some quick business. ISIS should not have a better website than you. This episode of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast is brought to you by the White Wizards at Squarespace.com. Squarespace is a place where you can make simple, powerful, and beautiful websites for only $8 a month,

and you can start a free trial right now with no credit card. There's never been a greater time in human history to start a business. In the old days, if you wanted to start a business, you had to bribe City Hall. You had to give donuts to cops and build some brick and mortar store, jutting out of the time space continuum. Quite often in a part of a city where there was a 95% chance that the mafia was going to drag your ass over the cash register and tap dance on your balls. But no more. Do you have a great idea for a business?

I've said it before. I'll say it again. I know someone who makes money selling her socks online. Think about that the next time you find yourself moaning over your horrible financial state. There's an entrepreneur out there who has managed to convert her stinky socks into cold hard cash. If she could do that, I guarantee that you could figure out a way to transform a website into a money tree or at least something that gives you enough money to buy the booze. You've been pouring all over that aching dark horror in your heart that is filled with unaddressed pain and the fear of death.

This is only $8 a month. They've got a responsive design. Every website comes with a free online store and they have 24-7 support, which I have tried out and it completely works. They are very, very good at getting back to you if you have any kind of problem building your website. You probably won't because it's really easy to build websites on Squarespace. If you go to Squarespace right now and you use the offer code Duncan, you will get 10% off your first purchase. This is a great way to show your support for the podcast by supporting this cool company. It's an amazing time in human history.

This stuff didn't exist before. There was no Squarespace. We didn't have the opportunity to just make a beautiful website by clicking a few buttons for $8 a month. You had to get on Adderall. You had to suck back speed or get hooked on crystal meth as you tried to learn HTML. This would lead you down a bad road because inevitably you turn into one of those early 2000 style pseudo web designers, which I'm ashamed to say that I was. It's an awful thing, man.

You don't want to get sucked into that dark winding road that starts with Craigslist and ends with some guy with a giant greasy neck beard shoving and thrusting his crotch into your mouth in the middle of the night as he babbles about the fact that you haven't paid him what you were supposed to for the subpar crap website he made for your fruit dispensary business. Do you want that? Do you want to smell the musty oily pubic glands of some angered psychotic road rage style web designer as he lowers his taint into your nose screaming that you have to pay him another $300 for the awful HTML digital extrusion that now on a daily basis humiliates you and makes you seem like a subpar businessman?

You don't want that? Go to Squarespace.com today, $8 a month and you can create a beautiful, powerful website with commerce. You can also create some of the greatest prank websites of all time and you can try it out without using a credit card. So go to Squarespace.com, use offer code Duncan and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Much thanks to Squarespace for supporting the DTFH. On the 4th of March, I'm going to be in Winnipeg with Johnny Pemberton. I'm going to be in St. Paul on the 5th. That's sold out.

Madison, Wisconsin on the 6th. With Danieli Bilelli. Chicago with David McClain. Columbus with Emil Amos on the 8th. Chicago on the 7th. Madison on the 6th. Chicago's sold out too. There are a few tickets left for Winnipeg, Madison and Columbus.

Get those tickets right away. They're going fast. Last I checked for Winnipeg, there was about 30 tickets left. So you probably want to get them online. You don't want to just show up at the door and that goes for all the other clubs. Just get them in advance. I never do it either. I don't blame you for not doing it and whatever.

I hope you come to the show. I hate doing that. Get the tickets in advance. I feel like I'm selling goddamn Oriental rugs out of some downtown Los Angeles warehouse. There's lots of other great ways to support this podcast that don't involve dragging your meat body to a show. You can go through our Amazon portal located at DuncanTrustle.com the next time you're shopping on Amazon.

Bookmark that portal. Go through the portal. Buy something awesome. I highly recommend picking up some Alpha Brain. I'm not sponsored by on it in any way, shape or form. And I actually go through Amazon when I'm buying Alpha Brain because I love this stuff. It gives me what I consider a kind of low level, Adderall buzz. And I'm embarrassed to ask the folks that on it to send me the stuff for free.

So I just go through Amazon. I recommend that stuff. If you want a nice, neutropic blast, it goes well with caffeine and a shot of espresso and some Alpha Brain. Hallelujah. You can go through our Amazon portal and we'll get a small percentage of whatever it is that you buy. And we also have t-shirts, posters and lots of cool merch at DuncanTrustle.com at the shop.

So I hope you will go and look at some of that stuff. We've got some really cool mugs and that badass shirt designed by a Los Angeles artist, Ron Regi. Okay. That's it. No more business. Today's guest is one of my best friends on planet earth. He's a hilarious comedian.

He's got a show running on Comedy Central right now called This Is Not Happening. You can also segment on that that you can watch on YouTube where I talk about a terrible acid trip I had. You can pick up a copy of his special paid regular by going to his website arishafir.com and I highly recommend checking out his awesome podcast Skeptic Tank. Okay everybody, please spread those heart legs and allow my dear friend Ari Shafir to come plunging into your reproductive organs. Welcome Ari Shafir.

It's the DuncanTrustle video. Hey bro. We're recording. Don't let people know that Polly Shore says the word pussy. It's going to shock the world. How's the show bro? I'm like, it's pretty good man. I've seen some good stories.

How's the pussy? Oh Jesus. Oh, savages. Ari, what is happening in the world? We have an emerging police state. Yeah, did you see the Chicago thing? No, I didn't. What is it?

What? They're running a black water type site? Now can you talk to me a little bit about that because I have not explored that. I don't even know what that is. Okay, well I've read a lot of headlines on the subject and what it is, is they are, we're interrogating people. There was a CIA style, CIA slash Gestapo style, that goes hand in hand now. Those words are interchangeable.

CIA style and Gestapo style, they mean the same thing. Oh, that's fun. Yeah. So a CIA style, just warehouse where they would arrest people, not let them call their lawyers or anyone they know, just keep them in there for months while they're trying to like coerce. How did they get the right to do that? Like how does that work legally for them? I think there is none.

I think there's no legal basis for that. But the thing is you don't need a legal basis to do something if you know there's been no punishment. Right. If all they'll make you do is stop doing it. I never paid my SAG dues on time, Screen Actors Guild. Yeah. They had no late payments.

Yeah. And so every commercial I shot, pretty much, unless I shot one like a week after I shot another one, they would say, hey, you're station 11. That's what I think it was called. Station 11. That means you haven't paid your dues. You can now have to work until you pay your dues. And it's like, oh, okay, cool.

I'll come down and pay them. Or you get like three days to pay them. And they're like, why didn't you pay your dues? I'm like, because no late fees. What incentive would I possibly have? And they're like, well, now you have to come pay. I'm like, yeah, but I would have had to do this errand anyway. Right.

So why shouldn't I do it? I don't know. Why shouldn't I continue to not lay pay? But these cops, isn't there some? There's got to be, like now there's public outcry. There's Chicago police department is all over the news. I should have brought a manual so I felt like that's crazy. It's such a black mark on them.

They'll shut it down. But do you think Rahm Emanuel knows about these things? I don't know. But I just know that if you don't punish people that do things wrong, don't publicly punish them. I got TSA guy that detained that dude for however many hours in Philadelphia, I think. And he's still working there.

And then he lied in court about what the guy did. And he's still working there. They should publicly show pictures of that. Like, hey, here's a fucking, here's a guy. If they show us power, the police, if they have a crooked cop and most of the cops aren't crooked, then they should really hold up posters of the crooked ones and say, look how he punished them.

These guys doing 10 years in Leavenworth now. Right, this guy has... We're on your side. Maybe they... Not, he was forced to retire and he gets his full pension. Or we're gonna say a word about it. Like, well, whatever happened with that, you should publicize that majorly if you did the right thing.

You have to do that because if you don't do that... We'll just assume you guys keep doing this shit. Right. And why wouldn't it keep happening? Do you think that's the nature of power? Yeah, I thought about this on the way over here. It's like, have you ever lied to get your way? Yes.

Yeah, I have. Like, probably hundreds of times. Right. I mean, I told, what's his name today? That I wanted him to meet me over here. But he's like, tell him when you get there and I'll go. But I'm like, I'm gonna get there and start this podcast. Right.

So, it was my weed dealer. So, I said... All a joke. All a joke. Part of the brand. Part of the brand. So I said, I'm there. But I was still 15 minutes away.

Because I wanted him to leave. And meet me there right when I got here. Right. So you're saying, you know, this is the... Of course you lie to get your way. The saying is, as above, so below. It means, if you want to understand the way things work in the upper echelons, look at the way things work in the lower echelons.

Humans are humans. And you'll see that it's that way all the way through. So... Oh, right. The conspiracy theorists point to this monolithic organized power, as though it's somehow separate from the way things work in everyday life. Yeah, in everyday life. Your fucking coworker talks shit about you to your boss to get ahead.

That's right. I mean, not everyone does it. But the same percentages of your coworkers who are shitty are the same percentage of government people who are shitty. At their best. When I worked at the summer camp, and it was really cool because I went there as a kid, and I kept...

Camp happy trails? Camp. Camp happy trails? Camp happy trails. Camp treasure trails. It's a picture of, like, the bottom of a pubes running up to a belly button. It looks like a lake. It was a...

I went there every year, and then I became a counselor in training and a counselor. But when you're at a place for your whole life, there's certain rules that you consider to be unbreakable, sacred rules. And I remember when I became a CIT, and then I remember when I became a counselor. And part of the camp is, like, there's a nap time for the kids. So, like, I don't know, at one o'clock, the kids all take a nap.

But I remember I was like, it's nap time for the kids. I'm a counselor. I've only just been... I have bosses, you know, I'm working for people, and there's a knock at the cabin door, and it's one of the guys who runs the camp, one of the upper guys, the activity director, another guy, and they're like, come outside, Duncan.

So, like, I come out of the cabin, and they're like, let's go float on the lake on an air tube. And I was like, what? I mean, this is... What? You're just gonna... This is... But we're supposed to be watching the kids sleep?

There was someone there watching the kids when we left, but still it was like, that I could do... I'm allowed? You mean you guys... Which wasn't part of the training? This wasn't what we... And that, so to... We don't know what we're being paid to do.

I always think about that, because it's just an innocent thing. Floating on the lake isn't gonna hurt anybody. Someone's still watching the kids, but it was still outside of what the job description was, and it was still technically breaking the rules. It was more fun for you to do that. More fun.

So, if a summer camp that's happening, why wouldn't it be happening with senators? Why wouldn't it be happening with congressmen? I think the reason people think it couldn't is because you sort of place, from when you're little, like, this is government. It's like this almost like sanctimonious thing

where it's like, they are good people. Oh, right. But as you get older, you realize like, that's a guy who's my age. Yeah. He's not one of the older people. He's like... Yeah.

He's 40. Yeah. He's just some guy. What I mean, he had a business six years ago. Yeah. And now he does this? That's a guy. Yeah, it's not like a priest who like...

Not a super hero. Devoted his life to this. This guy's devoted a few years to getting stuff. Yeah. I don't know. It's a guy. And the president's a guy. And the people who work for the president

are just guys and gals. And the people in the Supreme Court are just guys and gals. And the whole thing is just people who are like any other people. Yeah. And that's a really important thing to realize when you're considering the idea of the great police state or the growing police state.

You're looking at a real problem, which is that people in positions of power write the rules. Yeah. And they're not going to write the rules so that they get in trouble by the rules. Yeah. They're going to write the rules so...

Everyone after them gets in trouble for like, yeah, who turns themselves in? Yeah. It's just not going to happen. And that is the concept of democracy. The concept of democracy is we have a steam valve release for the boilers. Do you ever read The Shining?

No, I saw the movie. Well, The Shining, and I don't even think they mentioned this in the movie. In the book The Shining, one of his... Boiler room? I don't remember that from the movie. One of his main jobs at the Overlook Hotel was watching the boiler.

Because the gauge slides is what they said, which means that if you don't watch the boiler and release the pressure in there regularly, the whole fucking thing can explode. And so it's a beautiful symbol and a book about a guy who's got a serious fucking rage disorder living alone in a fucking... Steam valve problem?

Yeah, steam valve problem. In the same way... Oh, that's a good... It's a good... It's a great symbol. The conviction is so good sometimes. So Stephen King's so great. But that steam valve release...

Oh, it fits Gerald. The Shining's Stephen King. The steam valve release... I'm joking. I'm joking. Yeah, I'm kidding. The steam valve release concept applies to this fucking country. The idea is voting is supposed to be a nonviolent revolution.

Every time. Every time. And whatever the people want is what happens. The wheels spin, things will shift, but that's what the people want. The people are running the fucking show. And the people want voting reform too, but the only people that are gonna put that in the place

for the people are the people who have, like, fucked up. But this is where it brings us to where you and Russell Brand seem to agree. Yeah. You guys both talk about wanting some kind of revolution. No, I see one coming. I think you don't want it. This is not something you want.

No, there's so many people are gonna die. Describe to me what this revolution is gonna look like. How does it play out? Guerrilla warfare. Anyone who thinks it's... Well, I used to think that too. It was like, how could you possibly take on a tank? The US government has the army of a...

Yeah, it's like, well, we're not gonna... They're not gonna fight on a battlefield. They're gonna be... Here's what you need. If you... Let's say you have 3,000 people you've ever met in your life that you kind of know, you know, maybe you know their name. You're like, hey, what's that guy's name again?

Just that much. Yeah. I mean, 3,000 people. If one out of those 3,000 people says, yeah, I'm gonna take up arms. Yes. I'm gonna take a gun and if somebody asks me to murder someone who's in power, who's stopping us from getting our way,

or like that guy who shot the TSA or the guy who lit himself on fire in front of the White House, if one out of 3,000 of those people say, okay, yeah, I'm gonna do that, that is an army, a guerrilla army of 300,000... 300 million people in this country. So 3,000, 30,000, 300,000, 3,000,000, 30,000, 300 million. Five zeros.

100,000 people. 100,000 soldiers in this country. Right. See, you're saying... And they're not on a battlefield. They're just walking by some congressman. Right. And they're just gonna stab them.

Do you know about the Weather Underground? Mm-mm. And I know there's people that are also of those 3,000 people. Some of them are in the military and they have access to weapons. But go ahead, what's the Weather Underground? So the Weather Underground was a militant organization back in the 60s whose log line or motto was bring the war back home,

because they wanted to end the war in Vietnam, but they knew that people in the United States did not know what the devastation of war looked like. So they would place bombs inside government buildings. They would call the government buildings and say, you need to evacuate. We're giving you two hours, three hours to evacuate. But we're gonna blow that fucking building up.

And they would detonate these bombs. Wow. So they were a militant organization. They wanted people to see what a rubble looks like. Yeah, they wanted people to see disaster. That was their motto. You know, because the problem in the United States is that we have no concept of what it means to go to work

and come back and your house has been exploded. We don't know what that looks like. That's what war looks like. We don't know what it's like to go for the feeling of trying to get food to be associated with their feeling of, I might die. Some guys like, you know, there was no reason to go to Iraq for the war.

And he goes, well, based on what happened in 9-11 and how many of our people died, yeah, it's justified. I'm like, no, look at these numbers. Thousands of Iraqis have died. And Iraq wasn't responsible for 9-11. They weren't even involved. Yeah. So like, what do you mean?

How does it justify what? People just like, don't see it. So they just go, yeah, it all makes sense. This is why they can't have a draft. Because if they had a draft, then the revolution that you're talking about would be more likely to take place. But because there's no draft. They're only signing up people who want to be there.

Yeah, they're signing up people who want it as a job. They're signing up people who want to, who really do. This is one thing that I was thinking, man. Like, clearly, we need people to defend this country. We do. There's no way around that. We definitely need people to defend this country.

In fact, I want you to, I won't show it to you. Defend the country. I'll give you an example. Defend this country. Not offend another country. Sam Harris just tweeted this awesome, Sam Harris is an author. He's just a philosopher.

He's like this one of these, like, I don't know what the word for them is. Vocal, docking style atheists. But he wrote a book about spirituality without God. But he also has a podcast. And lately he has been in the camp of people like Bill Maher, who are saying that Islam is evil. And that Islam is built into Islam is anti-Semitism,

built into Islam is the subjugation and enslavement of women, built into Islam are all these things that if you take it literally, which is what the people who are in ISIS are apparently doing, it looks like ISIS. In the same way that if you decided to start living according to the laws of Moses, it would look very violent and brutal. Sacrificing animals all the time.

Stoning people. Stoning people, same idea. But my point is that he posted this thing where it's these two, I don't know what they are, what sect of Islam they are. I don't know what their titles were, but they definitely have their own little Islamic talk show. And in this really creepy grinning kind of way, they're talking about why they hate the Jews.

And they're saying, look, you don't understand, we don't hate the Jews because of the land that they live on. We don't hate the Jews because of Israel. We hate the Jews because we are taught as part of our religion that we must hate the Jews. So it's like what they're saying is this is not a fixable problem. It's not a matter of land. It's not a matter of shifting something geographically.

It took our birthright from us years ago. We have built into our religion the idea that we are supposed to hate the Jews. And the way they're doing it is in this beaming, smiling, grinning way. Now, I don't think that represents all Muslims. But the fact that... I don't even know if it's Islam and Muslims. It's the same. But the fact that those motherfuckers exist in the world, right?

And that they exist in enough numbers that they're taking over a nice portion of Iraq makes me think, well, shit, we need people to defend us from that kind of loony, loony tunes, right? So we need that. But you know who else needs that? Switzerland and England. And they don't go into other countries

and just kill hundreds of thousands of people. No, they don't. And I think that that's kind of the real, like, interesting problem that we face in this country. Defend. Defend. We need people to defend us. It's like if your dad was somebody who was a contract killer who had, in the last 10 years or so, killed 18 to 1,000 very powerful mob bosses, right?

Your dad did it. You didn't do it. Your dad did it. You sat at the table and ate delicious food from the money he got from the contract killings. You got to enjoy a spacious mobster mansion for a long time. You didn't do it. But the chickens are, you know that eventually the chickens are going to come home to roost because he made so many enemies

that eventually one of them is going to want to kill you. But it's not fair. It's like, well, talk to those 17 people, but the 18 says, no, I think they should kill the kids, too. You know your daddy actually killed. He killed my kids, so... So I know you seem like a pretty nice guy. You know a nice guy? My son Bobby. He wasn't even involved in the mafia.

And now he's dead, so sorry, buddy, but... Right. So that's kind of the predicament we're in in this country. I want your father to feel what I've felt. It's a predicament, man. Yeah. It's a predicament because when you consider, like, well, we have managed to piss people off in an impossible way.

Like, there's no way coming back. Like, I can remember once on the school bus when I was in the fifth grade, I don't remember what exactly I did. I think there were two rednecks. Yeah. And there were older redneck kids, or one of them was older than me, one of them was younger.

I was a kid, but they were bullying me. And I think I punched one of these kids. I just, like, punched him. Yeah. And a fight ensued, a scuffle. But his big brother, I remember, said to me, I'm going to kick your fucking ass one day. And then I remember for the next five years.

Worried? I would not only be worried, but, like, I remember, like, four years later, I was hanging out with some friends. And his big brother did what many rednecks do, is, like, he just fucking grew, like, some kind of gargantuan thing. He went from being someone who's already big

to being something this giant, ruddy-faced, fucking, like, vicious redneck. Like, Doyle rules. Yeah. He was big. And I remember, like, hanging out with some friends. This might have been when I was in high school. So we're, we've cut from elementary school to high school.

Yeah. And I can remember being at a party. And one of my friends came to me, like, like, hey, man, I was out camping with Randy, whatever the fuck his name was. Dude, he wants to kick your fucking ass. Still. Still.

There's no fixing it. The ass-kicking potential was there. You know? It's the same way. It's like, all I did was punch his brother. We fucking vaporized people's generations of people's families over and over and over and over again. How do we-

And we're smart about our public policy on drone attacks and fucked up drones. Like, when they accidentally bombed a wedding party, just 13, 14 people who didn't do anything in Yemen in a country that we're not really even in. Yeah. They're official policies. We don't discuss that.

Which is a smart policy. Because then you get people like, that does bring the war home. Like, what do you mean? You killed a wedding party with any of the militants? Not one? Yeah. You even owned a gun? Yeah.

What do you mean? So just let's just not comment on it, and no one will know about it. And then people will be more likely to support shit. Yeah. I don't know, man. I don't know. I do know what they're going to do eventually

once the revolution gets started. Yeah. They're going to shut the internet down. Because the communication is the only way that revolutionaries can plan stuff. So they shut the internet down. Then they start going door to door. You have McCarthyism again.

And people just start like, oh, that guy's a revolutionary. That guy's a revolutionary. Even if you discuss, oh, the military's wrong, or the government's wrong in this. Oh, you're one of them. So what are you? You can't be one of the guys to say, well, I'm not going to pick up a weapon.

I just think the government's wrong. Like, you're inciting them. You're part of them. They're going to go door to door. They're going to start arresting people who have nothing to do with it. They'll be camps. Nobody's going to give up power. That is a dire forecast, Ari.

Do you really see that coming, you know? In our lifetime. In general. Mm-hmm. Every... Well, the other option is that the people who are more and more not represented, the higher and higher percentage of the poor, not getting the benefits of the riches,

want to turn to voting to change it. And as it becomes more and more evident that voting won't change it, they go, what are they left with? I think it was Jefferson who said that. He said that if people aren't given the opportunity to make change through peaceful solutions, they'll make change through violent solutions. Right. So it's like, after a while, you're just like, get off me.

And you just slap. Right. After a while, you're like, hey, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do that. And then you just slap somebody off you. That's normal. Right.

People... That's what that guy who shot up TSA was at LAX. Right. Enough of this. And I can't complain to anybody. No one's doing anything. Right. And then you just get violent.

And you get more and more of those people out there. You get them talking at bars. They go, why do we accept this? And people go, no, voting's the way to do it. And you're like, when? When has it been the way to do it? Right. Right.

Because voters feel disempowered. But what do you think about this new... So then is the government just going to say, okay, you know what? We've taken too much power. Let's give some back. Let's take power away from big business. What do you think about the FCC ruling that just happened? I love it.

But it took a lot of people to say, don't do this evil thing you're about to do. But look. And it's still going to happen, Duncan. But? Not your child is going to get taken away. But look. They're going to slide it in later. But look.

Look at... We've been fighting for three years on this and we won by a three to two vote. Yeah, but we won. By a three to two vote and it'll become... It'll go to vote again and it'll go two to three instead of three to two. And then the fucking cable companies will have their power and they won't relinquish it. Yeah, but I don't think that's going to happen, man. I don't think you're...

Because here's the thing. We did the same thing with not being able to arrest citizens without trial. I don't think it's going to happen. And they didn't say, okay, we're voting it down and then they just voted it in. You're right. It could happen. Then they just voted it in later. The thing that I do find...

We won. Everyone stop paying attention. But you are seeing what I love about the net neutrality ruling is having the fact that it worked and that the voice of Reddit was part of what moved those people in the direction of voting in the way that even though some of them already had the belief that the internet has to maintain fair and open, just like Fox News, fair and balanced. Fair and balanced. Fox News.

By the way, hats off to Fox News, one of the top news networks in the world right now. Okay. You say whatever you want, but their motto is not a problem. What? Fair and balanced is not the issue with Fox News. Fox News is fair and balanced. Whether or not they do it is the problem. Guys, get off O'Reilly's back, would you?

But get off his back. I don't know about any of that stuff. Oh God, it's the best. I don't know which one's liberal. We'll get into that in a second. But I do have a more optimistic outlook than you do and I think the net neutrality ruling shows that as skeptical or cynical as you might like to be when it comes to the democratic process, and especially when it comes to the democratic process pre-internet, when you

see things like that happen, which are at least partially a direct result of the power of the internet and the internet communities coming together to influence the democratic process. Because goddamn man, I watch that. Yeah, Anonymous helps with stuff like that. That's right. And I watch that. What they do is label Anonymous a terrorist group and then anyone who says that they agree

with Anonymous gets to go to jail. But they're smart enough to fucking rename themselves. They don't care. The point is, though, that what you're seeing is it still sometimes works. Oh sure. It's going to be back and forth. Exactly. And by the way, I don't know who's going to win the revolution.

I just don't think the revolution's going to be violent. It could happen just on the internet, just online. I think the revolution is... You see that where they go, let's not stab a congressman. Let's tell everybody where he lives and say, egg his house. Right. You know? And that'll get it if people go, all right, all right.

What's your guys' issue? It's a boycotting. Absolutely. You could do that. A boycott machine. We need a boycott machine. If that happens, let's say everybody say, hey, let's find that senator who's trying to fuck us, who's clearly in bed, like Feinstein, when she was saying we got to pull back the NSA

and then just gives them tons more power. And then you see she worked for them and she's totally in bed with them. And we're still trusting her to make their reform. Let's say everyone says she's the problem. And they say, what we're going to do is we're going to find out her route to work, and we're all going to take that way and make her traffic way worse. Do something bothersome for her life, completely nonviolent. Right.

Eventually, she'll see it. If you get the traffic terrible enough all around her, she'll see it, she'll feel it. She doesn't want that to happen. Right. That's their goal. Now, then it's on her to react. Right. So either she goes, hold on.

Let me see what these people are angry about. Or she goes, let me try to hurt these people. Fight them. Let me try to stop them from doing it. Yeah. Not through saying, I'll give you some of your demands, but saying, let me put you in jail. Right. I had the power to.

Right. Right. That's what big people on World Star Hip Hop, like, yeah, you don't fuck with me. Yeah. You kidding? That's, she has the same feeling. Her power is not in muscles. Right.

Her power is just in, she writes the laws. Okay. Yeah. Right. I know what you're saying, but like, I think that this is the golden age of activism. And I think that activism does work. Activism does create changes. And guess what it does?

Activism puts people in jail. That's the point of activism. The point of activism is that you are willing, civil disobedience, you're willing to break laws for a greater law. You're willing to put your life on the line in a nonviolent way. You gotta hope you can get out of the country in time. And stay in a Russian airport for six months. And he got, but he got out.

God, he was so careful. And all those people said he should have gone to the government. It's like, are you kidding me? Looking back now, should have gone to the government with what was happening? Yeah. But he got out. He got out. And Assange got out.

And there's a lot of people backing those people. He's sort of got out. He's a prisoner in a giant church. He's a martyr. Yeah. But that's what, you know, of course that is the... Can't have a normal life. What is that great fucking wonderful saying, the tree of liberty?

Have you ever heard this before, this saying, I'm sure you've heard this. What is the tree of liberty that's built on the blood of the... Here it is. What? It has roots. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Thomas Jefferson.

Yeah. Must be refreshed from time to time. You gotta feed that tree with blood. Yeah. Because it goes a certain way. It's like you have this ideal. Same thing with Mao and communism. We have this great idea that we're all equals.

But then the people in charge, they're just people. And they'll start fucking up more and more and more. And I think it happens exponentially. The more they say like, oh, people won't do shit, then they start abusing the power more and more. It starts with a little bit. Those people get taken down here or there. You have...

When we grew up, I've heard of public officials getting arrested, but it happens less and less. They protect their own. Then it gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah. And you gotta have blood. Take it back. Get back to the regular democracy, regular liberty.

And then it gets corrupted a little bit over time. You're talking about the... Those great videos that pop up every once in a while, horrifying, horrible to watch, where a fucking elephant realizes it's an elephant and just goes rampaging through the streets. This thing has been... The little monkeys taught it that it was not an elephant. It convinced it somehow that it has this powerless thing when it's giant. I don't know how much an elephant weighs.

Many, many, many tons. And that fucking thing, when they get just mad enough, they go nuts. Who's the elephant in the government? You can't know. The elephant is the people. Right. And so... Yeah, they'll go on a rampage.

So what all tyrants forget is that the people as a whole are so much more powerful than any one individual. The people as a whole, they could do anything. Yeah. They're incredibly powerful. So if you divide them, if you create... It makes them less powerful. Ridiculous divisions among them, it makes them less powerful.

If you create one common enemy that they all have, imaginary or real, then you can actually... If you look at the biomass of the people, if you're a tyrant... Let's all hate someone together. Yeah. If you can find a thing for them to all hate together, then you can actually channel their energy in those directions and control them. So if you look at the people as a kind of gigantic animal that tyrants want to tame, domesticate, and use for their labor, use for their nutrition, use for their energy...

Yeah, but we don't have a tyrant. We have a net of tyrants wrapped around that elephant. Well, yeah. No, we... They're working together. Well, you have a... So it's like... You sort of follow it up.

I really love that. And I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but I really love the term follow the money. When people say follow the money, if you want to know why something happened, follow the money. See who gets paid for it? Who made the most money from it. That's the first person you should look at. Might not be always the person who did it, but look at that guy.

Yeah. You get the fucking... When a mystery... In a mystery book, you know, the person you want to look at... Who robbed the place? Well, who's spending a shitload all of a sudden? Yeah. Who just got a new fucking car?

That's it. So you sort of like... So you look... Okay, who's making money off war? Who's making money off of the suffering of the world? Who's making money off of the destruction of the world? And so you do that. You just like, all right, let's see who the six richest people on the planet are.

And you look at those people. You find out who those people are. And usually somewhere in those people or their ranks of friends, then you might be able to find this common enemy, right? You might be able to find like, here's the culprit behind a lot of this is that there is a, as Paul Simon says, in that stupid song, a loose association, a loose association of millionaires and billionaires. Just a...

Yeah, just a... These are the days of lasers in the jungle. Thomas on a soldier's shoes, is that that? No, it's miracles and wonder and... Yeah, it's cool. But you got, you know, millionaires and billionaires, right? The friends, pals up there, just like we were talking about earlier, right? There's a bunch of super, super wealthy people.

Think about somebody who has $10 billion, right? There are people out there who have $10 billion. Somebody who has $10 billion, $10 billion, right? Think of any congressman, any senator. Think about the friends of the congressman and the senator. Or think about anyone working, the businesses around the congressman. Imagine if you have $10 billion, right? And you go and have lunch with one of these senators who is in a state where you're trying

to get one of your fucking fracking... Logging rights. Logging rights, right? And you have dinner with them, you're sitting down, you're just talking, man. It's awesome. He's kind of excited, even though he's not going to act like it, because he's sitting with a billionaire. Yeah.

You're talking. It's a powerful guy. It's a powerful guy. You guys are laughing it off. I've seen one of the UFC ones. There's some super rich guy. Everyone goes, oh. What?

Yeah. Yeah. But it's pretty easy just to, like, in a smart way to talk to the billionaire, but hey, man, how's that blah, blah, blah doing? And the senator's like, well, not as good as I'd like. And you're like, oh, what? Let me see what I can do. Are you kidding?

Let me see. I'd love to invest in the next thing. I know a bunch of guys are working that. Let me see what I can do. I'm putting a good word for you. That's it. I'm putting that. And there's the whole way, the whole fucking thing.

Who doesn't have access to that congressman? A garbage man. No. No. But the idea is if the people can figure out a way to turn back into the raging focused beast that is the horror of all tyrants. How are they going to figure out that way? Through the organizing power of the super advanced technology that garbage men do have

access to, which they didn't have access to 10 years ago. Don't forget. There's a whole brand new player on the scene, man. And that is the law of exponential returns, which is that at this very moment, there is a technology that is completely, as far as we can tell, is not completely impossible to control, but mostly impossible to control. You have a wildfire of technology. Yeah, but I don't want to have control until way after I'm dead.

Eventually they'll lose it, but it's like, I kind of want to like have some fun here while I'm on earth. You're going to have some fun. You're going to have some fun. Here are the two options, too. You can be like Australians who just know that their government is crooked and said, you know what, we can't change it. Let's just drink.

And they have a lot of fun with their lives and they go on two month vacations when the government says, and I would do this, too, like these fucking idiots in Arkansas don't know shit. I'll tell them what's best for the country. Trust me. I know it's best for the country. I've read everything. You don't know anything.

But then you realize that people in Arkansas, maybe they don't want what you want. Maybe they just want a peaceful, fun life. Right. They don't want like to be in 72 other countries. Well, look at the, maybe they don't want power and money. Maybe that's not their goal. I think you're in too much. It's like your agent telling you like, I know what's best for you.

It's like, dude, I don't want to go to Minnesota in January. I think your pessimism is based on being in too much of a hurry. I think the machine that we're in is broken. Yeah. Pieces of it still work. Piece of it still work. Absolutely. I think the government works a lot.

And it does fix itself. Marijuana is gradually becoming legal. The prohibition on marijuana is being lifted. There's the potential that within eight years psychedelics could be prescribed. And with these, with people gaining more access to psychoactive… So you think then it gives the revolutionaries more power. It gives them more control. Like if it's an up and down of who has the power, it gives the people, the revolutionaries,

the people, the more power, the more they know and the more stuff gets out there. The tyrant, the people in control. So if I have… You become like the king of England when you have no real control, power. You, when you, okay, so let's imagine that you have, you are a lion tamer, right? And you have a lion that is weighs six times more than you, is 15 times faster, designed to kill. So there's some things that you want over the powers that you want over the tiger.

You want to be in control of what it eats. You want to be in control of the information that it receives. You want to be in control of every single facet of that lion's life. Now in the old days, if you look at this idea that the society is a lion, that the people are a lion, right? And you look at this poor lion back in the 70s or 80s or 60s, that lion didn't know shit about what it was because the information coming into the lion was all being mostly controlled by a small group of people and the information streams that were getting was

coming. The lions are like raised in the wild until they're like two. And then hopefully in a few years, the more information gets out, it'll be like a lion raised in the wild until four. Well, the lion's getting, the lion's getting the information. You're a lion. The lion's getting information coming from everywhere that's like, you are a lion, listen, here's the potential that you have.

You are a lion. You have always been a lion. But like, what do you do? I went to this million mass march in New York and they were walking around saying like, we did it. And it's like, people barely listen to the message. Well, it's annoying people. But then it's like, what if they do hear the message, then what can they actually do to

change it? Well, you just saw it, man. The fucking FCC just created a goddamn free internet. You just saw that. You know what the reason for that was too? What? It's all these other businesses said, no, you're protecting those businesses, but these businesses are going to be hurt by it.

That's right. So the businesses went to war with each other. That's right. And they used the people. They said, hey, and they both opened up the information. So what do you people think? People think we agree with the smaller businesses over the bigger businesses. That's right.

Or cable companies less than cable companies, these old dying, old fucking dinosaurs who've been spraying us with their goddamn poopy content forever. Those people are like watching the last thing these fuckers want is the demo democratization of the content. They don't want people to be able to decide what fucking content they want to watch. When you used to have a TV network, you just shotgun sprayed this nonsense at people networks. That's all there was. You're allowed to watch.

Fucking watch. And then you have control of the entire paradigm when you do that. But this fucking lion, the lion of the people, not only is it suddenly getting access to all of these videos showing like how to become a wild lion again, how to escape from the cage, how do not fall prey to the mistakes of the other lions that want to do it. Do you think Comcast is just going to stop trying to get that power back? Nope. I don't think so.

But I think they're going to become more and more irrelevant. That's what's going to happen. And here's another thing that you're forgetting. They become irrelevant when we get a new way to get the internet around. Bang! And that's going to fucking happen. But why is that going to happen? Because people say like, we can't rely on these guys to give us fucking internet anymore.

Market pressures. Market pressures, man. People started getting fucking dish network when cable stopped kept going out. That's it, man. Market pressures. Uber popped up when calves refused to take credit cards. There you go. No, no.

I drive you to ATM. No, man. I'm already at my location. I drive you to ATM. I just take my credit card. There you go, man. It's broken. And that is the machine that we're in working.

Market pressures will create, at this moment in time, completely unexpected. So if Comcast wants to say, look, I've created this business that allows me to provide internet to people, who are you to say I'm not allowed to take money from Netflix and say, hey, can I get to the top? Because fucking supermarkets do it. Good shelves go to Coke and Pepsi. Bad shelves go to Werner's. You know?

Yeah. And that's a right that supermarkets should be able to have. Yeah. They should have more expensive tickets at a stadium for more money, the ones closer to the field. Oh, yeah. But the problem is that you... But so then you were saying that the people, I'm just trying to think this out, then the

people, well, citizens of the world, customers will go, oh, fuck, man. And then some guy will go, hey, there's a problem out there. Here's a better solution. You can sling-box the internet from China or from wherever, and that might work. Well, no, you look at what's his name. I don't remember. I think it's Elon. Put it on the air.

No, who is it? It's not Elon Musk, but there is a... In one of my podcasts, I just went up to Singularity University, and the whole point of Singularity University is the study of... Yeah, it was a place called Singularity University. It's fucking badass. It's a badass place. And they study the law of accelerating returns, or they study the technology advancing.

And one of the things he was talking about was how, in the same way right now, what we're doing right now, this technology that we're using was formerly completely inaccessible to people who weren't millionaires or had big businesses. In the same way, right now, if somebody said, hey, Ari, get a fucking satellite up there into space, would you? You think you can get a satellite up there into space? I'm like, fuck no, I can't do it. But these guys are saying, in 20 years, that kind of technology might be consumed, which

means that if you... But it's also making losses, too. 20 years ago, you weren't allowed in the United States to arrest them without a trial. And now you are. Yes. No, no, no, no. I mean, they're making gains as well. That is true.

But here's the difference. In the old days in the United States, when you wanted to drag somebody to a black prison in fucking Chicago, right? Which I'm sure happened. And the old days... You couldn't get the word out about it. Instantaneously, the word spreads all around the planet. All around the planet, everyone's like, what the fuck, Chicago?

In the old days, you could have had some... You could have some fucking guy in your basement fucking just shoving a goddamn leather pole into his asshole for having a gram of weed. You released him onto the streets, he's like, the Chicago cops fucked my asshole for weeks. So what? What is it going to be? Who's going to listen to you? Nobody cares.

But now video. That's why the cops didn't want anybody to shoot video. And it... They're just fighting against it so hard. But it's not working. Yeah. It's not working. And now more and more precincts are going, we'll just use the video, hey, cops, stop fucking

around. Yeah. So that's the way I see it. That's why I say you're in a bit of a rush because you want things to change right now. But and this is like... This is in a scenario where there isn't a major terrorist attack. But like you see what's happening with Uber in a lot of places, that's a good one, it's a market.

So this came out of the market, Airbnb, Lyft, yeah. These came out of a market that didn't quite satisfy what they needed. That's right. In a lot of these cities, the cabs have fought back and they've gotten the laws changed. So like here at LAX, you can't get an UberX. You can only get Uber, those limo ones, the big ones. Right. But it's like, why?

We don't want that there. And it's like the cabs have fought back and they'll say, oh, because of this and this, you can't let them do that. Cabs are doomed. Cabs are doomed. They could do whatever... Anything that they do is just the pitiful... You're saying it's just like, you're just making delays.

It's just a hurdle. Temporary. They will always jump over it. Temporary delays because market pressure... Like Napster, they were like, you can't do peer-to-peer. You remember the heyday of Napster? Of course you do. Yeah.

I was in college, you were in college. Yeah, I remember Napster. I had to shift. I had to shift from 12 a.m. to 3 a.m. but record stores just stay open. Tower records stay open until like 1 on Tuesday, like Monday nights, Tuesday because that's when the new records came out. And so you can go get the Beck CD, the Alanis Morris CD. I had both those CDs at 3 a.m.

I got back by 3.30, burned with the cover, burned on these CDs because remember those label makers they had too? And they shut Napster down. They're like, nope. And they're like, cool, we did it. They're like, no, you didn't do it. You didn't ever know. You just made them say, oh, I can't go straight to another peer, I have to go through a computer

first and then. Or we have to go straight to a peer, you can't go through a computer first, I think that's what it was. Yeah. And man, here's where I- You're just delaying it. I get it. I understand what you're saying.

I understand what you're saying. Here's what's an even more beautiful thing which I like to fantasize about is that these market pressures, as they call them, are the thing that creates the demand for... Market pressures, the thing that created demand for democracy in the first place. Yes. There you go, man. Yeah. And I'm sure there's an-

How many new forms of government? I'm sure there's an- But the old form of government doesn't just go away. They fight. That's the revolution. No, no, no, no. They fight. But this is what I like to believe.

This is what I like to believe. You know that- That before it comes to a head, they won't have such free... Let's think of the term jihad. The term jihad. Okay. Let's think of the term jihad. It's a cool term.

It's a term. It's my middle name. It's my middle name. Your middle name is jihad? Shut the fuck up. Yeah. No, it is not. Yeah.

Let me see that. Well, this is an expired dog. How the fuck do you- I cannot believe they let you fly. It's David, you two. Oh, yeah. It's the most normal Jewish middle name, David. Oh, yeah.

I can't believe you were going with that. Oh, my God. You're gonna end up in five. You would have known my name is jihad before fucking right now. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times.

I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times.

I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times, I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times.

I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. I've fallen to times. So how, what do you think is the biggest nugget that you can find out about someone like that late in a relationship? What? Here's the idea.

What are market pressures, right? They're these invisible things. It's overall zeitgeist, overall feeling. It rises within the heart of a person. It rises within a person. So I like to believe that this thing that is arising inside people, it actually is something that existed before people. That feeling that comes into a people that we call market pressures is the capitalist

way of talking about a force of evolution that exists in the universe. The capitalist way of talking, and you have new people coming in and talking in a different language, huh? Yeah, no, I think that they've identified, this is what Kurzweil has identified. I think that they have identified something that exists in evolutionary symptoms that has as one of its, in evolutionary systems that has as one of its symptoms what we call market pressure. And that really what it is is the desire to be part of the exponentially accelerating

movement in the direction of novelty and perfection that we're experiencing in the universe. And Jihad would be aligning yourself with that principle. It would be an accelerator. Yes. Being the first one to be an accelerator. I'm going to be an accelerator. Before like the cardigans, before everyone started doing it.

Yeah, and all those who stand in the way of that exponential acceleration, all those who try to get in the way of this curve that's happening, all those that get in the way, not only will they be destroyed, decimated, and torn apart just by the sheer subjective gravitational forces that they're up against, but they'll also be taken down by the people because the people who have aligned themselves. Do you think Milton Republicans feel the same way? No, but that's why they look, that's why they get, they increasingly. They don't feel like we're creating change for the better and these people that are standing

in the way will become irrelevant soon. I think that. We want this police state. We can trust police. We don't want gay people to get married. We don't want black people to vote. We don't want women to be able to vote. We don't want, you look, look at, look at the, look at.

Over the years. Over the years. They get taken down. They get taken down. This is that Martin Luther King quote. What is it? I'm going to, the universe, hold on. It goes.

But it's like, it's like in Libya, they let the, they let the people have the internet. They get the information and. And look what happened to fucking, uh. That didn't, non-violently. Well, no, it didn't. I'm not saying that, uh, I'm not talking about the, the, the, uh, we're going to avoid violence here. Uh, hold on.

There's this great quote. Uh, okay. Yeah. Listen to this. Yeah. Martin Luther King, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it. Uh-huh. Sorry.

Okay. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. So this is the idea that, uh, that in that bend, that curvature that Martin Luther King has identified, has been identified by Ray Kurzweil. It's the curvature that happens in evolutionary systems that have, uh, accelerating returns. And that is what we're in right now as a system that is producing accelerating returns, which is mean, means that. It's like, it's who's a version of what justice is.

Well, well, no, this is where this is what I'm getting to, man. It's not who's version of what justice is. If we're talking about a transcendent principle, the percentage of people who would have believed, especially when I was growing up in my conservative, uh, or my Orthodox Jewish, um, upbringing, uh, if you're dealing drugs, like, yeah, of course you should be going to jail. They caught the right guy. That guy was dealing marijuana. But then later my feeling is, uh, that guy shouldn't go to jail at all.

Right. Uh, I don't know. Get a store. Yeah. Um, my parents might still feel the same way, but it's like more and more people start thinking like that guy shouldn't go to jail at all. But I don't know. I don't know if the percentages get better or if I'm just seeing those people.

Well, I think that the percentages not only are getting better, but they're getting better faster. Yeah. And I, and I, and I think that that. Right. Super fast. Super fast. And I, and cause it's like, I mean, I was, but if I'm not being aware of any of this to

super aware of a lot of the, the egregious things that big business has done to the law. That's it. And also an aside. And that's just like the egregious things that big business has done. Those things that come out through documentaries on Netflix or those things that come out through legal means are also being, uh, uh, or side by side with information that's being obtained, uh, surreptitiously by these, uh, I think I mispronounced that word, but by people like Snowden.

You got it. You're looking at whistleblowers, corporate leakers. So you're seeing that a lot of this stuff also, because the thing is like it used to be all of their secrets were kept in locked file cabinets and basements with armed guards. Now their secrets are being kept inside file cabinets that are accessible by anyone in the entire planet. Once you get smarter. Yeah.

And they're yanking those secrets and they're disseminating those secrets through the world. And more and more and more, the people are seeing the actual shape of the lion tamer that's trying to keep us subjugated to the selfish whims of a small group of people who want to experience high levels of pleasure, completely inaccessible to other people on the planet. I think a lot of it too is though that that's true. I think a lot of those, sometimes people get more conservative the older they get and the people that were activists become the problem. Yeah.

You know, that, that I suppose that's a, there's a very few Bill Walton's in the world. Yeah, man. The thing is like these kids that are coming up right now, they're understanding of principles that when we were kids, we had no understanding of because we are in and when we were growing up, we were in a kind of low level North Korean sea of propaganda. Yeah, but we thought marijuana cause 70s and those people were, they're all in power now and out of power already. Guess who?

One of, one of them's in fucking power right now. Fucking be rock Obama and when be rock Obama's in power, no matter how much you hate the drone king and all the fucking weird secret, he's the one that put in, we can arrest anybody whenever we want. He saw the NSA abuses and said continue. Yeah, but you know what else he's doing and I'm not a no, he wasn't gay marriage more and what else is being legalized while he's sitting back there and the fucking up there and the some weed is yes.

Yeah. So you're looking. So like, listen, man, it may just be that some of these people figured out that if you want to fucking, you know, create steps, you're gonna do little steps and awful compromises. I don't know. I'm not defending anybody who thinks it's okay to fly over a fucking city and bomb people with drones and just don't talk about it. Yeah.

People and never have to try an indefensible position voted down once then say fuck, we'll try again. We'll get it in. Indefensible position. But here's another at angle. You got to look at. But weed is legal. That seems like one of those here.

Take this. Idiots. I don't think so. Cause you're with people. You go fuck. Here. Here. Here.

Here. Take this healing psychoactive substance. All right. Your bloodstream makes you contemplate not only your own life in very deep ways and quite often compels you to improve or at least makes you feel kind of shitty about aspects of your life and put that in your bloodstream. Oh, people. Now that, it's not like booze where you drink the shit and you feel like you wake up in

the morning and don't want to do anything. So you're saying if you ingested this amazing thing, then you wouldn't be likely to grow up and vote in the power to arrest people and never, and never try them. I'm saying you're talking about marijuana, getting into the bloodstream of the people and you're also talking about the potential for psychoactive chemicals like psilocybin to be legalized within eight years. And if you think that is not going to. What?

What's eight years? This is coming. And forgive me, people over at MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. But these guys are some of the people who are behind the study of psychoactive substances because formerly it was impossible to study these substances in any real way. Now we've got a lot of data that's not just coming from active studies being done with people using MDMA or psilocybin, but you also have all of these. Baby stuff, baby stuff, and bigger stuff.

But you have all this data from just like surveys of people who've been doing it for years and years and years. And you can look at like one of these studies just came out where they showed the difference in suicide rates and depression from people who regularly have used mushrooms versus people who haven't. And people who've used these psychoactive substances seem to have lower rates of depression. I'm probably misquoting that study a little bit, but the whole point is you're looking at a country that had been put into a slumber by lack of information and lack of psychoactive

substances. You're looking at what happened when those psychoactive substances entered the bloodstream of the people. That was what we call the 60s, which was actually a pre-show revolution where you saw this explosion of art. You saw this explosion of social movement. And then they pulled back the psychoactive drugs from people. They sure did.

But guess what? Now it's coming back. Now not only is it coming back, but every time. But now it comes back and also we can make videos about it. Yes. And they're like, oh no, no, no, no, no. You're not even. It's not even what you think.

Yeah. You can see experience in tons of people and message boards about everything you need. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. I'm an Aquarius. Yeah. Well, this is your age, friend. And you're looking at, I think you're looking at something that's going to make the 60s. I would love that.

You're going to look at something that's going to make the 60s look like one of those fucking backyard inflatable bouncy house parties with a bunch of like greasy kids eating fried chicken and jumping around on the fucking thing. That's what the 60s are going to be compared to what's coming. Well, I have advice to the new people as the psychoactives get bigger. Guys come up with a new like a fashion about mushrooms and stuff, like the same pictures like that, like on your, on that thing, on your base. Yeah.

Like that was from the 60s. So don't just rely on the fashion from the 60s. Yeah. Get new stuff. Yeah. Well, we're all relevant today. We're always going to like rainbow colors, brother. Okay.

Maybe. Every time a kaleidoscope, like, come on. You're not going to get us away from like, we like rainbow colors, brother. We like it. It's colorful. It's pretty. Colors are pretty. Yeah.

Colors are pretty. You're not going to get away from that, but what you are going to get to is the ability to use 3D printers to print out some of the insane geometries that you see during these dimethyl tryptamine trips. You're going to look at like the ability to actually, one of Terrence McKinnon's great and ridiculous dreams was that he thought that he thought it might be possible to go into the DMT realm and actually bring back something from that realm, like pull something from that place and bring it here.

Obviously, I don't know how much of that sounds like French. Is that French? I mean, it's all about different dimensions in the ship, but it's like, it's all like, you have to go to LSD in order to go to the other dimension, but it's like, yeah, you fuck up when you take something back. You're not supposed to take something back. Never take something back. Because then, though, their weight on that dimension is less and our weight is suddenly

more. Now there's no more balance. Cool. Well, I think it's a, there's a potentiality or 3D, 3D printers become a nexus point through which the contents of the psychedelic mind emerge into this dimension and from the seeing these like shapes and forms and runes and sigils and all the content of the things that exist in the deep levels of the subconscious mind or the external astral plane, whatever you want to fucking call it, to suddenly see those things in this dimension existing in

a three-dimensional shape or form. We don't know what that could do because we, but we do know what happens when some of the information from those places comes into this dimension in the linguistic form and that is that when people bring back the info from the DMT realm and they're capable and careful in their articulation of it, it can create some pretty profound social change. So what about the structures there? What about the forms themselves? Are these things fucking alien machines?

What if these are gears that we could actually bring back that could create shifts that we aren't even aware of? Who the fuck knows? But the point is, we are getting to a point, thanks to technology, where with greater and greater and higher definition, we can articulate the secret contents of the mind and that, sir, is going to be your revolution, or at least part of it. I like that. That'd be wonderful.

But. That'd be great. It all comes down to how it's played out, I guess. Well. There's one little thing that happened that might make you mad or less mad. There is one little problem. What? Proliferation of nuclear weapons, biotech, and a small group of fucking lunatics in the

world who would rather destroy the entire planet than experience any form of techno-utopia, especially one that involves outliers, the sacrifice and abandonment of religion. That's one thing people want to do, the sacrifice and abandonment of national borders, the sacrifice and abandonment of all ridiculous theologies, theocracies, political systems, all forms of power structure that have limited and. People that go burn it all. Yeah. Just blow it up then.

Yeah. Well, guess what? We'll climb out of the fucking ashes and all you goddamn redditors and internet people. Good luck for surviving in a collapsed society, you motherfuckers. Yeah. Let me shut down the roads. Yeah. Roaches.

If the roaches in your house decided that realized that you were about to fucking spray the whole thing and get rid of them, they're like, you'll just burn your fucking house down, motherfucker, and then we'll still be fine and you'll be fucked because we're roaches or cockroaches. We don't care. We don't want the things that you want. Sounds like the improvs. What do you mean?

They set up the corporate improv. They set up in a town where there's a mom and pop comedy club that's been there forever and they go, we'll operate at a loss for years while we take half your business. Oh, that's fucked. And put you out, then we'll be the only club in town because we have a court. We have 30 other ones that can support us. Right. But that is not the individual improv, but the corporate ones are like that.

That's their goals. But that's the problem, man. That is a problem because 7-Eleven to the mom and pop shops and fucking the East Village, all those bodegas. 7-Eleven comes in and says, fucking, you'll be gone soon. Yeah. Yeah. That is one of the little bits of that's a bit of fucking poop in the machine here,

man, is that, yeah, you got that ability for people to do that in various ways. And for me, it's just the worrisome thing. I hope it won't happen. What? That violent revolution? Okay. Let's imagine a small group of people as a last resort. I mean, if they all, yeah.

Back them in the corner, right? And as a last resort, or not even as a last resort, but just as a viable option, all they got to do is like detonate a dirty bomb in any of the major cities of the United States. Pin the detonation of that dirty bomb on any country that you want to create a fake enemy. Just try to, yeah. And now you have created the, what would be the precursor to the thing you're talking about, which is a police state where freedom of speech gets curtailed. And so then you realize like, oh shit, not only is there loonies running around the Middle

East who have a real strong desire to pull something like that off, but if we believe that there are nefarious agents that exist in governments of the world or outside of governments in the world, whose sole motivation is to have power over the most number of people and to extract and harvest the energy from those people in the forms of money, then now you have two groups that exist in the world who have a desire to detonate or to pull off a massive attack in the United States. Not just one, you have two, which means that, so, yeah. So now you're in, now it's like shit, man, not only do we have people outside of us that

would like that to happen, but there's people inside of us who, if they knew it was going to happen, they might not want to stop it. They might want to let it happen. And a lot of fucking truthers say that's what happened except in the 11th. I was in New York when that guy from Baltimore went up and shot two cops in their car, sitting in their car, because of Eric Garner and because of what happened to Ferguson. And I think his thing, I think he said, they kill one of ours, we kill two of theirs, we might have said they kill two of ours, we kill two of theirs, I don't know.

But it was the NYPD. He took a train up from Baltimore to kill two NYPD officers. And the reaction afterwards from the people was not that of outrage. Like when two cops get killed, two innocent cops, they were just sitting there, they didn't do anything. These guys weren't the problem. They were just sitting there in their cop car. They weren't the problem.

They're part of an organization that has problems. So then they kill. And then now the reaction is, they could either go, well, now we're going to fucking clamp down on anybody. And it looks like it's wrong. We're going to beat the fuck out of, or they can go, let's start wearing fucking, let's stop beating people up. Let's say when we don't put people in choke holds, we actually don't put them in choke

holds. I don't know, man. I just see it happening more and more. The outliers are the ones that fucking ... Well, that's what you have to worry about. They start the violence off. That's brother. That's the spooky thing that this guy at Singularity University said is that ...

Commend their bravery. He said that accelerating, whose bravery do you commend? People willing to take up, put their life in danger to fucking, because they're so mad about this injustice. I don't think they're smart. I don't think they've thought it out, but their bravery is ... It is a problem. I used to think like that.

They have that more than I do. I used to think like that, too. I used to think like that, too. And I would have these ... And this is when I first started meeting these Rom-Daz people. And sometimes I still think like that, but ... And I remember I was always like, ah, we got to fucking fight back and burn it down, burn down the house, fight back, fight back. It was the grunts. That's what's going to happen.

Usher them. Usher them. In the same way that if you go back and look at the predictions for our time period, like back in the 30s or the 40s, nobody ... As far as I'm aware, even though there's some ... There's a theologian. There's a Jesuit priest named Taliar de Chardon who kind of predicted the internet in a weird way. But usually when you look at the drawings of what the future looks like, it's really

funny. Like, you know, like Victorian era future predictions or like ... It's also flying cars. Everyone's out. In reality, probably no one's out. Carriages will fly, you know, but they're using like their highest tech and then just applying to the highest tech, like what they would like to see happen, right? So or the carriages would not have a horse, but it's still like the way the carriages

look. They don't look like fucking cars, you know? So in the same way, they didn't predict the internet. They didn't see this unifying technology that emerged out of nowhere and that we all ... Which is profoundly and continues to profoundly shape business and society. So in that same way, man, I think that we have to open up ourselves to the potentiality of the emergence of a new form of revolution that does not involve participating in the same acts of violence that they set up for us.

Yes, because the moment you do it, it's matter and anti-matter. When you say it, it's pretty much just wait and it'll get taken care of. If you're rushing it, you're going to fuck it up. I'm not saying wait. I'm saying be vocal as you can using the technology that we have at our hands to at least put out there the idea that if we all work together and if we all focus our internal desire so that it creates a market pressure, then maybe we can summon out of the ether a new modality that is even more effective than the standard practices of revolution

which are generally violent. Maybe we can come up with a new ... Well, I think in their terms. I heard Howard Stern talking about podcasts and why they're irrelevant and he goes, that's not the way to become a fucking radio guy. You had to train at these stations and you're like, no, no, dude, that's not their end goal. Nobody wants that. Their end goal is not to get their own radio show.

He goes, these losers, they don't know how to go out to break. They don't know how to do a segment break. What do you talk? We don't even think in those terms. It's so ridiculous what he said that it's almost sweet because this is this idea. First of all, it's sweet because Howard Stern thinks. He's a cute old man. Yeah.

There's something sweet about it. First of all, Howard Stern thinks that people in the world actually want to wake up at 3AM every morning to do a fucking radio show. Are you out of your mind? Nobody wants that life. Number one, nobody wants that life. No one wants to get cooped up in a fucking radio studio constantly. No one wants to be a workaholic like you, Howard Stern.

Nobody wants that. You know what I would like? His interviewing skills. That guy is a great fucking interviewer. No doubt about that. She was. Yeah, he was. But yeah, but he's ridiculous because he's completely underestimating, misapprehending.

Just not understanding what would be the value there. Or allowing his desire for the way he's letting- It's like when people look at skateboarding. It's like, it's not going to, it's like seeing what people do like out of it, what people like. Yeah, you can't imagine the changes that are going to happen in the next few years. Because the changes are happening, it's so important to even more so today, if you're putting information out there.

To be right. To be right, but also to encourage acts of civil disobedience that don't involve blowing the fucking brains out of people who have moms and dads and kids and a life. And more than likely, man, they didn't fucking wake up in the morning and think, let's go shoot some fucking, let's go shoot some fucking black- And the problem is senators and whatever, even like Philip Morris executives, they're not looking at the actual desk and saying, I did that. They're just like, that's numbers, people get canceled, people don't.

And they're a friend. Yeah. And then it's like, you're not evil. You're just not really seeing the actual damage you're doing. It's gonna be shown. Let's see that. Let's see them for what they are, which is like instead of painting everybody in the visage of service.

They're evil. We're not. It's like, we're all evil. Yes. We all be there in that position. How about this? Because I'm a lawyer, then all of a sudden you're working with some client. How about this?

We're all doing the best we can. We're not that. We're doing the best that we can. And God damn it, we're gonna figure out a way to do it in the same way. Not kill you. Take you out of power. We're gonna figure out a way to do it. Take you out of power.

A different way, other than violence. We're gonna figure out a way, maybe not even to take you out of power, but to transform you from the inside out and keep you in power. Sure, that could be that. What about that? Steve Simone, I like what he says. He goes, he always votes against the incumbent when he votes because he's like, you haven't done it.

You haven't changed anything. So you're done. Next. Yeah, right. Next guy, give it a try. Keep the wheel turning, Matt. I don't know if the new guy's gonna do anything, but I know the old guy won't, so goodbye. And bring that idea, man, if you bring that sense of optimism into your own life and imagine

that there is the potentiality at any given moment in your existence for some new bit of information or new epiphany to emerge into your mind that completely and radically transforms your approach to your existence in a way that puts you in a heightened level of happiness than you ever had in your life, then maybe it'll come. It's better than going around and thinking things have always been this way, things are always gonna be this way because that line of thinking, not that you think like that, but some depressed people do, that line of thinking is the old school line of thinking, which is that one plus one plus one plus one plus one.

But we exist in a system of accelerating returns, not just in an outside universe, but in an inside universe. It's not two plus two. It's two times two. Times. I want equals the same thing. Two times two and two plus two is the same thing. Then times two again, now you're seeing the difference.

Or times four. Now it's eight instead of six. Two times two is four times four times eight times eight times 64 times 64. Do that math. Square it. Yeah. And that could happen. And when that fucking crazy expansion happens, and guess what?

It already did happen. You know what? When it happened the first time, the big fucking bang, this nice goddamn super collapsed singularity exploded out into time. And we are particles that came from that initial boom with the fucking exploded out, man. And it exploded out fast. The initial expansion of the universe theoretically, and they don't know, of course, they're just all theoretical.

The fuck knows what that was. But it went, it may have expanded faster than the speed of light. It was such a massive explosion. In the same way, this thing that we are approaching, it could happen just as quickly. It could be just as explosive. And that means that the, our intentions, the intention of every living sentient being on this planet, if the intentions are off, then you could actually shape or form this massively accelerating thing.

It's like having a chimpanzee on the steering wheel of a fucking Ferrari going 200 miles per hour. You want to- I did a bit in my new special about non-violently protesting the TSA. How does it go? Well, I don't want you to give it away. Just like the things you can do or say to lie to them or fuck with them in some way. I've seen you do it. You can feel like you're not part of the problem, you're not accepting it.

You know, I was thinking about, I saw this amazing, remember, I don't remember back when that fucking awful piggy pepper sprayed those college students, remember that? Yeah. So, and do you remember the protest against the dean of the school? Did you see that awesome protest? I don't know. I should show it to you, but they all gathered where she gets off work, kind of what you're talking about.

And I believe that they sat there and as she walked to her car, they just silently watched her. But it's so many students just sitting there and the silence is just like thick and this woman walks out shamed with all these students just quietly watching her not saying anything. And I was thinking like, yeah, maybe that's the answer to the TSA as you get the majority of people as they're going through the TSA to not look at them or talk to them, you know, to not say anything to them, to not acknowledge them, to alienate them or to give them a feeling of like, we are going to, in this game that you are forcing us to participate in, our

participation is going to be as minimum, we are going to participate in the most minimum way in the smallest way so that these people don't even, you know, that would gradually wear on you, I guess, it would wear on you, you know? Maybe even they just hired new people. Yeah, I don't know the answer to the fucking TSA problem. The point is though, it's like nonviolent protests is cool. It's fun. It's cool.

You feel like you're actually doing something. Way more powerful, man. Way more powerful. And historically, nonviolent protests have done some pretty incredible things in this country. Shroomfest is here. It's August 29th through 31st. Yeah!

Coming up. Well, not really. It's kind of far away. When is this coming out? When do you put these out? When is Shroomfest? August 29th through 31st. I'm probably going to put this up tomorrow.

Well, then people should work now on getting their supplies for Shroomfest. Oh, yeah. You don't wait till last minute. That's what everybody does. I can't get any. Do you have a website for Shroomfest dedicated to Shroomfest? Yeah. If you Google Shroomfest Primer, you'll see everything you've ever wanted to know about

Shrooms. Ari, what else? Have you ever read that? I haven't read it yet. Did I get it wrong? Oh, okay. I haven't read it. Okay.

What else is going on, Ari? Where can people find you? How can people see you? Talk about your new show. My new show? This is not happening. Duncan did one of them. It's not a new show.

Actually, it's been around for five years. We did some for TV and the internet. Yours has now, I think, the second most hits. That's amazing. Maybe third. That's crazy. Yeah. Up there.

That's crazy. I told you. I was like, it's going to get $100,000. You're like, no way. Now it's got $200,000. Wow. That's amazing. Howdy, Krishna.

Thanks, you guys, for watching that. Yeah. And you did a fucking cool job of it, too. Well, that's because of your encouragement, Ari. You're really good at directing that thing. You're really good at, like, remember when I called you and went through the thing with you? You're really good at producing that show, man, because you put me at ease.

You made it so that, like, you know, it's, like, something like that, if you do stand up for me, if you do stand up. It's outside the box. It's outside the box. It's a little creepy to do something that doesn't have the normal punch lines that you're used to. I've done this 75 times. I know how this goes.

Yeah. It's harder when you don't. Harder. But it was fun, man. It's a cool show, too, man. It's so great that it's comedy-centric. Yeah. I got to do a better job of that, actually.

I talked to them when we had a year in, like, talk, and it was like, I need to talk to more comics. I need to work through with them. I feel bad about, like, you're my good friend, Renize is my good friend. I don't mind talking to you. Like, hey, so how are you doing? Let's talk as colleagues. Other people, I felt like I was, like, infringing on their creative process and, like, assuming

that, like, I can help. I don't know. It just felt wrong. No, man. You never felt like that. Your directing was always, like, do what you want. But then it's also, like, here's how to make it more concise, or here's how to, you know what I mean?

I don't think you need this part, because it kind of distracts me. Yeah. It's cool. And I think people when they're, I think people are kind of out of their element when it comes to storytelling, especially comics, you know, only in the sense that, like, even though comics are storytellers, it's, like, that kind of storytelling is different. Yeah. Some people are really good at already Big J, Joey Diaz, Jay Larson.

That is storytelling comics, you know? Yeah, they just know how to do that so good. Oh, Joey Diaz is such a great storyteller. But man, I mean, also, there's the added pressurized, like, for me, man, it's, like, when I'm doing shit in front of cameras like that, it's heavy, dude. I tried to settle up so it didn't feel, it just felt like a show instead of a taping. It did feel like a show, but it still felt kind of, it was, it was, it's always, there's no way around that.

Yeah. It's always going to be pressurized, but it's a cool thing the way you do it. You know, it actually reminded me of the way Derek Waters directs drunk history. It's a kind of similar approach, which is this, like, it's not like he's like, he, like, just lets you feel like you can do anything. It lets you feel like whatever's coming out of you is going to be just fine because he knows that's going to put you in the mind state where the best is going to come out. Dude, JP did this for me before I did Conan.

He was like, hey, if you want to go into the crowd, like, if something happens, you should do that. And I was like, okay. And he goes, and they're going to give you like countdown every 30 seconds, let you know when you're done. And he goes, don't worry that much about that. Wow. I was like, don't go crazy, but like, and I was like, all right, it just made you feel

more free. Yeah. But also I have a new special come, my next, my last special, it's, they're airing it March 13th on Comedy Central. I thought they already aired it. This is the one I did two years ago. Oh, cool. That was like out of print.

So great. That's coming right up. You guys watch that. Every Thursday nights is this not happening. Rogan's is coming up. Segura's. You got any road dates coming up? Diaz.

Yeah. I'll be in Portland next weekend and at the Helium and then Brea and Sacramento. Beautiful. And I'm going to Australia, fuck around and go to Thailand too. I feel that. Glory. I hope Bennett is out there listening to this and will entertain you as a guest. I want to go all around.

I want to do some shit in Thailand. Oh man. Thailand looks like a hoot. I've always wanted to go there. Beautiful out there. They talk about this full moon parties. They tell me all the, all these cool people in Hong Kong and they expose like, oh, there's some cool shit out there.

I want to do it. Well, Thailand people reach out to Ari, follow him on Twitter, watch this is not happening. Watch his special. I'll shoot a rocket launcher off an elephant. There you go. Make that happen for my sweet friend. Thanks for coming on the show, Ari. A big thanks to Ari Shafir.

Go to his website, AriShafir.com and thank you Squarespace.com for supporting this podcast. Go to Squarespace.com and get 10% off your per, per purchase. With offer code Duncan, that's 10% off your per purchase. Make sure you give yourself a back rub. Buy an electronic massager. And if you have the dough, get a massage chair for your mom. She's gonna love it. It's gonna rub her whole body in ways you never can.

See you next week.