Modern Wisdom - #762 - Mark Normand - Secret Hollywood Rituals, Shane Gillis & Toxic Masculinity

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Mark Normand is a podcaster, actor and a comedian. Is Hollywood a secret cabal of child-eating sorcerers? It might be. Mark has spent enough time in its orbit to know. And if nothing else he can riff on some good theories for 2 hours with me. Expect to learn what Mark thinks of the downfall of NYC and Bail reform, why the resurgence of Shane Gillis on SNL might not be the death rattle for woke culture, how Mark remains positive in the middle of negativity, if he's worried about being deplatformed, his thoughts on what is considered offensive in Hollywood, the one word you can never say to an American and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Mark Normand. He's a podcaster, actor and a comedian. Is Hollywood a secret cabal of child-eating sorcerers? It might be. Mark has spent enough time in its orbit to know. And if nothing else, he can riff on some good theories for two hours with me. Expect to learn what Mark thinks of the downfall of New York City and bail reform, why the resurgence of Shane Gillis on SNL might not be the death rattle for woke culture, how Mark remains positive in the middle of negativity if he's worried about being deplatformed,

his thoughts about what is considered offensive in Hollywood, the one word that you can never say to an American, and much more. Mark is essentially impossible to podcast with. The guy is so quick and moves at such a pace. He is by far one of the most difficult people, but also super enjoyable. I love sitting down with him.

I think his insights are great and he's hilarious. So I really hope that you enjoy this one. Don't forget that you might be listening, but not subscribed. And the next couple of months have got some of the biggest guests that we've ever had on Modern Wisdom plus a world first and the only way that you can ensure you won't miss those is by hitting subscribe. So navigate to Apple podcasts or Spotify and press the follow button or the plus in the top right hand corner. It really does support the show and it means that you won't miss episodes and it makes me very happy.

So go and do it. Thank you. But now ladies and gentlemen please welcome Mark Normand. Hey, good to be back. What is this, big three? Three, man. Third time. Third time and two from the airport. I come straight here.

Yeah, flying. It's Women's History Month. Oh, no. Don't say that. Wow. We just exited Black History Month. That say that. Wow. We just exited black history month. That's true. Wow.

That was a tough month. Just like, I feel like there's more black on black talk and trash than before. How so? Well, you got the cat Williams, which was like the black Epstein list, you know? And then like, what's her face did it? Monique did it after here.

I don't know. They just feel and now like P Diddy is getting, you see all the P Diddy stuff? No. Oh my God, you gotta get on black Twitter. It's wild. Blitter? Blitter, yeah.

What's P Diddy been involved in? P Diddy, oh, black Twitter would be Malcolm X. All right. P Diddy is getting called gay and apparently hooked up with a bunch of young boys and stuff. So he's getting called gay and apparently hooked up. So it's like the R Kelly 2.0. It's the R Kelly sequel.

Yeah. No urine, sans urine, but, uh, yeah, apparently had like a Bieber moment and an usher thing and a meek mill and all this. So check it out. Yeah, I, watching that Cat Williams Club Shashee appearance made me realize that black people live in an entirely different universe, like linguistically. Oh yeah. That's not a surprise to anyone,

but you just seeing that kind of a conversation. You know, when someone comes in, they've got a very strong accent and you kind of tune the radio in your head, you're like, where am I? And then you kind of hit the rhythm and you're like, ah, yes, yes. It took a little while for me to, because, and it's not just that it was references are different and the cadence that they speak at is different. And the, the, the way that they use pauses is different. And the colloquial terms of these, everything is so different.

Yeah. The pauses is different and the colloquial terms of these, everything is so different. Yeah. Well, I feel like they, black people come up with all these, these terms and lingo, and then we take it like a year later. Whitey will get it a year later and then we fuck it up and then black people are like, we need some new shit. Like white people are still saying bling, you know, and stuff like that. So we're permanently chasing down the cool of black people.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah. But we have our, Whitey has its contribution. Right, so we're permanently chasing down the cool of black people, is that what you're saying? Yeah, but we have our, Whitey has its contribution, like we'll invent basketball and then black people will come and be much better at it. Yeah, yeah, or like we'll invent a car and they'll put a rim on it or whatever. Okay, so you're saying that they're like modding all of white culture and making it better. Well, better, different, their own, whatever you want to call it.

But I think we help each other. There's a lot of like, hey, whitey steals everything, but like, you know, there's some back and forth. I understand. What month would you have if you could design one? Ryan Long said that he wanted to have a premature parade, which was for guys that nut too quickly. Oh, that's right.

That should be in February. It's the shortest month. That's true. Geez, I don't know. What would I take? I would take a premature, maybe a flaccid, flaccid month. No, I'll go something off, off dick. Were you?

Sleep in month. Sleeping in month? Yes. That would be nice to have a line. What I didn't realize, there's basically every Friday, every single week is like a, where the hell am I going on a plane today day for all comedians that you guys jump on planes.

And you know, if I ended up texting someone on a Friday, it's just about to, I'm getting on a plane to Phoenix or I'm getting on a plane to Utah or I'm getting on a plane to wherever. Like there's always that. That's it. That's what your Fridays consists of. Yeah, totally. Like I'm here on a Thursday and this feels foreign.

It feels weird to not be on a Friday flying out. But yeah, by the way, if I'm taking a month, let's go off offended month. Nobody can get in trouble month. So you can just say horrific shit in this month and not get in trouble. That would be fun. Like a purge. Oh, God. Yeah.

Well, you could do that. That would be nice even just as an amnesty, like a joke amnesty. Right, right. 12 hours, you can say anything you want. No one's allowed to get mad at you. Although the N word, it would get out of hand. The first day would be ugly. That yeah, maybe not.

Speaking of Utah, I went to Utah for the first time and you taught me, you taught me about Mormon soaking. Yes. We going right into soaking? I was just in Salt Lake. They still do it. I brought it up and the crowd goes wild. Can you explain for the uninitiated,

pull this sucker down a little bit for me. Sure. What is soaking? Soaking is they can't have sex or they can't thrust, so they're allowed to put it in and just hold it there like a gun in a holster. And then they have all these loopholes much like the Hasidic Jews, they have all these loopholes where a kid can jump on the bed next to them and so it'll cause a humping movement without actually humping. Cause the kid was jumping on the bed.

It's their dumb religion. That is the maddest thing, but I didn't realize it's the first time I've been to Utah, first time I've been to Park City, first time I've been to Salt Lake City. And, uh, I didn't realize that coffee isn't allowed. Yes. But energy isn't allowed. Yes. But energy drinks are allowed.

Yes, loophole. Tattoos are not allowed, but breast augmentation surgery is allowed. Oh, is that right? Yeah, so you can get cosmetic surgery, but you can't get a tattoo. Wow. You can drink like Nutanical Monster or whatever,

but you can't drink coffee. And there's just, I don't know, I feel like the litigiousness should have been more watertight. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think these rules were made before they'd thought of Red Bull. Yes. You know, so they're like, ah, coffee's out. But you go there and the people are repressed. They're great comedy crowds because I think they're like, oh, he said that horrible thing that felt so good. I can't fuck my daughter or whatever. So the whole thing is wacky.

But when you think about it, Sarah Silverman had a great bit about how we make fun of Scientology, but it's just because it's new. If someone brought out Christianity today, you'd be like, wait, wait, she got pregnant without fucking, there's a baby Jesus, who?

Wise men, don't eat fish on Friday, whatever it is, you know, like it's just new. And I think the same with Mormonism. It's just, it's, it seems silly, but it's just cause we're not in it. Yeah, that's interesting. I, uh, I heard a rumor. I don't know if this is true, that the third largest cash reserves in the world are held by the Mormon church.

Really? Someone made them open up their accounts. Maybe there was some investigation and obviously there are a nonprofit or whatever, but just endless numbers of crazy rich people. Wow. Mormons and contributing to the Mormon church. And apparently the Mormon church basically built all of Salt Lake as well. Yeah.

So. Have you been to the campus, the Bring them Young? No, what's that? That's their university. That's the Mormon University. Beautiful campus, ornate, like crazy architecture. Really nice. These religions have so much money.

Scientology has crazy real estate in like Clearwater, Florida and LA. Crazy money. They're really nice. My assistant is Mormon and he's phenomenal. like Clearwater, Florida and LA, crazy money. They're really nice. My assistant is Mormon and he's phenomenal. He went and did his missionary thing, came back immediately married,

immediately moved in with his wife. I spent Christmas Eve with him and the wife and the parents-in-law at the cathedral. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're nice people. Fantastic. Just some weird sub rules. What about the polygamy?

Is that real? I don't know. They can have multiple wives. Yeah, well that was Big Love. There was a couple of reality shows about it. I don't know if that's real though. It might be outdated. I think that they're trying,

that there's a current push at the moment to make polygamy be ratified in the same way as gay marriage was. So that you can have like a thruple marriage. That's not something legally that's recognized at the moment. That's true. If you get married to two people,

three people get married. Yeah. That's not, you don't have the same sort of legal protections and I don't know, maybe this is part way between kink shaming and like you, you don't know the way that we structure our new worlds relationship. Well, that's the problem now is if something's new and you push back on it,

everybody's like, you're a bigot, you're close minded, but that's a slippery slope because now we're getting into maps, minor attracted person, you know, like you just, if you shoot that down, now maybe you look like an asshole and you're like, no, no, I'm just trying to help kids. Yeah. You see what I'm saying? Well, I think anything that's new,

anyone that has any desire and that desire being told is wrong, might quickly gets accused of cake shaming or this is, it's some sort of judgment on them as a person. Yes. It's definitely not the way that it should be. Right, well, progress is good, but people always, they always go too far.

They're like, let's see what else we can get away with. You know, we got this, we got that, we got this. Now how about that? And you go, well, that's crazy. It's like smoking. All right, hear me out there, legs. Hold on. First it was like, hey, you can't smoke

in the restaurant this half. You're like, all right. Then you're like, hey, you gotta smoke at the bar. Then it's like, hey, you gotta smoke at the outside. Then you gotta smoke 10 feet away from the entrance. And it just keeps going and going. Now it's like cigarettes are illegal. So you gotta kind of hold the line at some point.

It's good to have progress, but I feel like people get a little power hungry. Yeah. Did you see Google's Gemini? Yes. Hilarious. Yeah. That's the new like battleground for woke and stuff. I don't know how much that is indicative of Google's underlying woke desires to, you know, trans the entire world and stuff like that.

It totally might be. I read the press release where they were apologizing. Oh, really? Yeah. They think I put out, it's like, um, we, we made some errors basically. Like, was that, and he's like, oh yeah, no shit. Like it's the biggest news story in the world from the biggest company in the world that's 90% of the entire planet's search volume. And now everyone is skeptical about whether or not

your company has got good underlying principles. Yeah. Yeah, and it just, it didn't seem very satisfactory to me, but what can you say? I suppose in that situation, what are you gonna say that's gonna fix the problem? I know, but did you hear that they're mad at Elon Musk? Oh, so the guy who invented it got into a fight

with Elon Musk and was like, I'm gonna do this to get back at him. That's a rumor. Call in if you know what I'm talking about, but that's out there. There's Bill Ackman and then there's another guy. The other guy hates Elon. And so he was like, let's go all in. I mean, that's the worst.

Whoever designed the optics of that thing didn't really get it right. But it's a microcosm for what's going on in the whole country. How so? Well, it's just like, Hey, it's going to go not let's go no whitey. Let's get a lot of diversity and all diversity is great. And, you know, blah, white people have done horrible things. But when you're going inaccurate, that's when we gotta cut it. It's like what I was saying before, we went too far.

Like, you know, diversity is good, but when you make the Nazis Asian on AI, you're like, well, what are we doing here? Now it's not even accurate. It's one thing to be nice and progressive, but now we're inaccurate. Yeah, they managed to piss off the left by having black Nazis and the right

by having black founding fathers. Right, exactly. Yeah, it was impressive. Yeah. What if you type in racist? Will it be go to back to black? Well, I saw that- Or clan member? They'd been able to, they'd been able to make non-racist images actually very racist by saying, show me an image of 16th century philosophers drinking grape juice and eating watermelon.

And that was for black philosophers drinking grape juice and eating watermelon. Wow, that's a nice little move there. Yeah, they talk to me about New York. How's New York doing at the moment? It's good. I mean, the news about New York is like, hey, there's a migrant eating out your wife at every moment and you're going to get killed by a hobo.

And look, the guys are still jerking off. The migrant thing is crazy. I went to Mexico City for New Year's just to give it back, you know, like, hey, how do you like it? They got a honky here. But the migrant thing is kind of crazy just because they're getting credit cards and all this stuff. So it's like, where are they being deposited? They are in a lot of hotels in New York, New York.

Yeah. So some hotel owners like, oh, fuck, how'd I get screwed? Who's telling the hotel owners that they have to do this? I think mayor Adams. Right. So this is Manhattan or? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think they're spread out, but it's mostly Manhattan. I've seen them come in on buses. It's pretty wild. Okay. So is it just because there's lots of room in New York that, well, like, because I wouldn't think Mexico border in New York isn't exactly a short trip.

It's not like it's as far as you can get. Totally. So they're on those buses. It's got to be hell, I feel for the people. Yep. But you know. That's the worst part of the journey. It's not the dude trying to get you across the state line illegally. It's the fucking four day bus journey to get to New York. Exactly. And it's got to be rough for these folks, but I think it's also, wasn't Texas like, hey, how do you like it? Wasn't that a thing?

We're sending you the buses of migrants. Didn't they put them in, they put them in some really nice retreat, some place that rich people go on holiday. Martha's Vineyard. Martha's Vineyard and said, we're depositing them all here. And then there was big kickoffs. Yeah. Yeah.

There's this big fight at the moment about whether or not it's a state problem or it's a federal problem. And it seems in the law to be pretty much unequivocably a federal problem. It's like the state doesn't get to choose who comes in and out of the state from other countries. It's like the country first. But then, yeah, I didn't know, man.

It's bizarre that this is happening to New York, which is supposed to be this, you know, like flagship of America. It's super tourist hotspot. I went to the Bahamas about six months ago and I was talking to the dude that was driving me interesting Bahamas because it was settled by the Brits and then developed by the Brits. They drive on our side of the road.

So they drive on the left-hand side of the road, but because they're only 30 minutes off the coast of Miami, they drive American cars. Oh, you're driving, you're driving a left-hand drive car on the left-hand side of the road. Weird. Nightmare. Yeah. But it's all a British, uh, road markings, British speed limit.

It's pretty, which I like. Anyway, I was asking the guy that the Uber driver and I was saying, um, what's a crime like around here, you know, are there any areas that I shouldn't go to? I was in there for two days. I managed to get myself into gang problems. It would have been definitely a me thing. Yeah. And, uh, he said there is sort of, um, you know, violence and gang activity on the island,

but every tourist should be pretty reliably safe. Oh, that's interesting. Why he said, because if gangs do stuff to locals or to other gangs, the police sort of treat them as you'd expect. But if they do it to tourists, they come down on them like a ton of bricks. Because if there is negative tourism information, that hurts everybody. That's good. Completely dependent.

But you'd think that the same would be true in New York. Yeah. Well, we so dependent on tourism. But I think the country has got this thing going on now where it's like, we already got you. These people are new, so we're going to be nicer to them. That kind of feels like the general consensus in the world. You know, like, hey, this is, we already, you already live here. These people are new, we got to be nice to them. I don't know. That just feels like it's in the air now, where it used to be the opposite. It used to be like, we're already, you already live here. These people are new, we gotta be nice to them. I don't know, that just feels like it's in the air now, where it used to be the opposite. Used to be like, we're Americans, we come first.

And I'm not saying that one is right or wrong, but I do think that it's flipped in society lately. But I think we should send a busload of drag queens to Texas. Just, you know, as like a little revenge. What do you guys hate the most? Well, send trans drag queens to Texas, just, you know, as like a little revenge. What do you guys hate the most? Well, send trans drag queens to Texas, just to get you back.

Wow, RuPaul Texas, that'll be interesting. With everyone in a pink fluffy cowboy hat, like they're on a bachelorette party in Nashville. Right, right. Well, the problem is the bail reform. Not to be that guy. You know about this? I don't know about that.

Oh, this is bad. So this is the thing where all these people commit crimes and they get out immediately. So like, then they'll commit another crime and everybody's like, why is this person out on the street? And you're like, well, they got bailed out. That's a new law. Who's bailing them?

Bail reform. I think it's, if they're not committing a crime with a gun, you can't keep them in prison. Yeah. You haven't heard this? No. This is what's fucking up the city.

It's more than the migrants or anything else. Yeah. Give it, we need JMo here to Google that. Pull it up. Pull it up. Okay. But, uh, bail reform is, is really bad. So like if you, if I hit you with a hammer, I'll go to jail and get out that day because

it's not a gun. But if you hit me with a gun. I'll go to jail and get out that day because it's not a gun. But if you hit me with a gun, it might be an issue. Well, did you hear about the four migrants who beat up the cop? No. Oh man. All right. Well, yeah, that was a big, big news story in New York and they went to jail and got out that day.

And then they got out of prison. They're on the news like, we're back out, baby. Fuck all you guys. Oh my God. So it's the morale is low. Yeah, I bet it is. In the city. And what's it like being, you know, day to day living in ex-wix? I presumably, like every time that I go to New York, I just do the full tourist thing. I always end up on Times Square, even if I don't mean to be there. Like I just, I don't really know where I'm going. And you meet people, you're like meet in the middle of Times Square. Like it's the only fucking landmark that you know.

Yeah. Um, but obviously that's not you, you know, you're going to be going to work, you're going to be going to shows, you're going to be, you're going to know the routes to take. Yeah. So it was a felt sense of someone living in New York.

How often are you interacting with the, uh, downfall of the city? Not too often, just cause I know my route. I know I got my head on a swivel. I've been mugged a couple of times already that my first year there. So I've got it down pretty good. It's kind of when you got the map open

and you got the checkered plaid shirt on and the polo and you're like, hey. Wide eyes with the camera around the neck. Exactly, exactly. Khaki shorts and that whole thing. So that's kind of when you get fucked, but I still love it. Like I travel every weekend and you go to Salt Lake City and it's pretty, but I'm

like, there's nothing going on. There's no energy. You know, I'm walking around. There's no one on the sidewalk. I need that part. So I like New York for that reason. And I'll probably never leave. I arrived during Santa con, which is like, an absolute fever dream.

Yeah, that's wild. And a little offensive to Jews. Why? Well, they don't celebrate Christmas. So we're really in their face with it. Hanukkah con we could do. Ooh, that'd be nice. Yeah. Hanukkah con. Talking about the the cat Williams thing, I was listening to him speak to Rogan and he was saying that Hollywood is not really there to entertain you. Propaganda in Hollywood is built into the ingredients list. You're kind of.

Wait, can you, can you translate that? Hollywood is not really there to entertain you. Propaganda in Hollywood is built into the ingredients list. Basically that. What does that mean? That I think a lot of what he thinks is happening in Hollywood is curated narratives in order to be able to deliver a particular message to the public out there. Now I didn't realize that this entire well-established law about black guys having to go through

this ceremony of wearing a dress on a movie. Like this is part of it in order to be able to get a big role. This is complete, like well-established kind of almost, it's like taken as a given. Right. That black guys need to do that, apparently. Apparently, I don't know.

There's a bag of cash waiting for you, you just need to put on the dress first. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, look, I can't speak to it because I'm not a Afro-American, but I feel like those black guys who never wore a dress who made it, are they're not? Well, I hope so. But I feel like I was talking to Ryan about this and he seemed to, he seemed to like just, it's taken as a given that's in there. But yeah, you're kind of circling some of the more mainstreamy bits. You do like late nighty shows and stuff.

What's the experience, because obviously you're like straddling independent stuff, comedy stuff, and then mainstream stuff too. Yeah. What's the tenor like inside mainstream TV at the moment? Like, what's it like when you're like... It's weird. It's definitely, it's like you said, What's the Tanner-like inside mainstream TV at the moment? Like, what's it like when you... It's weird.

It's definitely, it's like you said, there's definitely like a message that we have to uphold. And the weird thing about the message or whatever you want to call it, the narrative, is I'm okay with the narrative. I get it. We've always had narratives, like in the 50s, the husband and wife had two beds and they're fucking married and they have kids

But they have two separate beds, but we all know they're banging But it's the 50s, you know So now the message or the narrative is different But my thing is you can't even bring up the narrative people act like there's nothing they're like no What are you talking about? Haha, and I'm like, well, wait a minute. So we're doing this shit But I can't we can't even bring it up either? That's where I get fucked. As long as we can acknowledge it, then we're good.

What would you say to people that say, you're seeing racism, why there isn't any, like this isn't racism, this is just representation or something? I would say I'm all for representation, but like, you know, some of these comedy festivals, they'll, they have to check some boxes. So they'll bring on a black guy who's not that good, but he's black.

And you're like, well, there's tons of funny black guys, but you just went with the guy who is black instead of a funny guy who happens to be black. And that's to me, that's the ultimate racism. That's like a soft racism. Why would they, is there a subsection of black comedians or black actors and contributors to stuff that happens on TV who push a narrative that is more publicly acceptable? Is that why those guys get chosen? Ooh, that's a good question. Maybe. Yeah. Like Tom Segura has that funny thing.

Where they're like, Hey, we're looking for like some people of color. And he's like, well, I'm Hispanic. And they're like, yeah, not Tom Segura has that funny thing where they're like, we're looking for like some people of color. And he's like, well, I'm Hispanic. And they're like, yeah, not that color. Not that we did more Hispanic than you. And he's like, so you're full of shit. So stuff like that, where I just, I'm fine with, with all the bullshit. You just got to acknowledge it just so I don't feel crazy. What Francis Foster's Venezuelan from trigonometry,

Constantine Kessin is Russian. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, you know, you've got two guys that are as fucking immigrant-y as you're gonna get. Sure. But- They don't look it. No, yeah.

Isn't that strange that it's not... Well, it's all optics at the end of the day. You know, you want to be able to go, look at these guys I booked. And you want to have a fucking sombrero and a guy, you know, with like a poncho on, just because it's easy. That's a crazy image, but we want a guy in a daishiki who's really black selling purses. That's what you want.

But if you go, hey, this guy's black, and they're like, well, he looks white. You're like, well, he's an albino, but he's black. That doesn't count. We'll get back to talking to Mark in one minute but first I need to tell you about Manscaped. If you're still using an old face shaver from four Christmases ago to trim your gentleman's area join us in the modern world. There are purpose-built tools for the job and the Manscaped Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra is exactly what you need. It's got a cutting

edge ceramic blade to reduce grooming accidents, a 90 minute battery which can help you to take a longer shave, waterproof technology so that you can shave in the shower and an LED light which illuminates grooming areas for a closer and more precise trim or if you're just a particularly crevicey person that likes to do it in the dark. More than 10 million men worldwide trim their most precious area with Manscaped and you can join them or if you need to get the man in your life a gift, or if you just need to hint at them that perhaps they're a little bit hairier than you would like them to be,

this is the perfect socially acceptable gesture. Also, there is free shipping worldwide plus a 20% discount. If you go to the link in the show notes below or head to manscaped.com slash modern wisdom and use the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's manscaped.com slash modern wisdom, use the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's manscaped.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What are your thoughts post Shane's SNL appearance?

Have you thought about what this means for comedy? Is it the landmark moments that sort of some people hope it is? I think it is a big deal. I don't wanna be one of these, hey, this is a knife in the chest of cancel bullshit. I don't think it's that profound, but I do think, to me it's funny cause SNL is like, you're out,

we're fired. And then five years later, they're like, ah, he still said the thing that they hated. So I'm like, which one is it? So it kind of just shows that, let's say a lot of this shit is bullshit. Like you see the Brian Steltzer, you know who that is? He was a CNN...

He was a CNN panelist or whatever you call it, pundit. And he was like, oh, he's like, ah, these Republicans. And now he's gotten fired and now he's gone Republican. So it's just kind of funny that like things flip and flop and we can go 100 miles an hour in one way, something changes and we just U-turn and go the other way. And you're like, well, what about all that stuff that you were doing? So it's all silly and we're all going to die one day.

Well, I don't know. I mean, people who change their opinions with the wind. Yes. It, it does make you think that they're pretty unreliable. You know, if SNL and this wasn't, I wasn't really paying much attention five years ago when the Shane original thing kicked off, but you just said, what was the on the front cover of American life or something? Who? Shane. Oh, I think it was like newsweek. Right.

Which is a big deal. Yeah. That's a, it's a big thing that's going on. It was him, Cosby, Harvey and Shane. And it was like, what are we big deal. Yeah. That's a, it's a big thing that's going on. It was him, Cosby, Harvey and Shane. And it was like, what are we doing here? Yeah, it's crazy. And then you think, okay, so in five years time, I mean, I don't know. It would have been interesting for SNL to have made people understand why they

changed their opinion because it sounds an awful lot like, well, Shane's more popular now, right? Because it's not, he's more popular now. Right. Because it's not, he's still, I mean, during his opening monologue, he managed to say the word gay, retard and cracker. And we're all okay. Nobody died. Everybody's fine with the words. We're gonna be all right. Well, you know what I love about it? All these outlets are like, he bombed, he bombed. First of all, it wasn't a bomb

He was a little loosey-goosey. He looked a little nervous, but he got big laughs. I thought he did well But I know a couple comics who have bombed on there, but they didn't write that about them and they were like definite bombs So why won't you write it shows that there's an agenda always there's always something more behind it Which is weird in journalism because it used to not be like that. You're supposed to just report on facts. Well, I guess everyone's got an opinion, right? Do you like it? Yeah. Do you not like it?

I did see someone had done a search and so many of the headlines just appear to be the same thing, almost like- I know. That whole kind of coordinated- Well, it's the same with late night. Every late night is like, we hate this, we like the, you know, they're all the same jokes.

Just that's why when John Stewart got The Daily Show and he did like the Biden's old and Trump is annoying or what it was like, whoa, you hit two, you hit both. That was like revolutionary. Yes. And then he got attacked for that. Did he? Yeah, well, you know, people got mad at him.

He got some backlash. What, that you shouldn't be talking about Biden's cognitive decline? Exactly. There was a, the White House physician did an assessment of Biden's health. And he said, it was like, you know, this has been, it's one of the most overdone topics.

Like, is he capable to do the job? He's going to be the oldest president ever that comes into office if he gets reelected. The same is going to be true of Trump as well, even though Trump doesn't seem at least mentally to be the same. White House doctor claims Biden fit for duty after physical. President Joe Biden is allegedly fit for duty following his yearly physical exam, according to White House Dr. Kevin O'Connor. O'Connor says that there were no new concerns identified during the course of the exam from the last time Biden was examined in 2023.

He claimed that Biden remained fit for duty and fully execute all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations. He also called Biden healthy, active and robust. While the results from Biden's physical exam seemed positive, no cognitive exam was performed. That's classic. Well, did you see the thing with Trump where he said, he said something on a panel and he was like, how about that Mercedes? And everybody's like, he got his wife's name wrong. Oh my God, he's slipping. He's slipping.

There's all these articles about him slipping. And then it came out that Mercedes was the name of the woman running the panel. So, but they don't go back and they don't go, oh shit, we fucked that up. And you're like, well, I haven't seen you guys do that to Biden when he slips and he eats ice cream and talks about Palestine. Yeah, so like and like I don't care, but that's what I'm saying. Like there's always a an agenda or a message that you can't go against and I'm fine with the message, but you just got to acknowledge it. That's what kills me.

Like the AI thing is great proof because you're like, all right, something is going on. Unequivocable, obvious knowing, something is going on. Unequivocal, obvious, knowing of what's going on underneath. Exactly, that's all I ask is just to go, all right, you're right, it's happening, back to work. Yeah, it's kind of interesting when the mask slips. And I think people have just got such a problem with the accusation garnering so much attention

and then the retraction being so piss poor. Yeah, always. We like a headline. That's why they have to write Shane bombs because it's like, we gotta grab them. I wonder, yeah, thinking about Shane getting back onto SNL and going, all right, is this a landmark moment that shows that we've gone past the peak woke stuff and everything's kind of coming back around?

I don't know how big of a deal SNL is in the US. I don't know how much stuff's downstream from it, but certainly that guy who went to Apple and then went back, John Stewart, the guy. Yeah, I always get him and John Oliver mixed up. Oh, both were on The Daily Show, but one's British. Yes. Uh, he's sort of starting to push things a little bit. Bill Ma's kind of always been relatively kind of one foot in each camp, but at least he's kind of called stuff out. I don't know, like ultimately, rather than looking at narratives and what

sort of, um, desire or what kind of big story or messages being pushed, it's way easier to just look at incentives. It's like, what are people incentivized to talk about? Because if they're incentivized to talk about this one thing because it makes them look empathetic and caring and like they're an altruistic truth teller, people will just do that. By far the easiest thing is to make it either cancerous or uncool or obviously manipulating to do that thing, to do the forced diversity to do.

And I think almost, who do you know in normal life that cares about that stuff? No one. Yeah, that's true. That gives me hope is when you see just, you know, like I remember I went to a thing with my wife's family and I'm, uh, they were like, you want a beer? I was like, throw me a Bud Light. You trans whatever.

And he was like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, you know, Dylan Mulvaney and he's like, who? I'm like, oh, you're a healthy person. Yeah. You got your kids, you live out in the suburbs, you, you, you golf, you know, that, that guy's living life. And I'm out here like, uh, Hunter Biden, uh, Mitch McConnell. I'm writing all these jokes and I think all that shit slips in and it makes you sadder Yes

So he's living it right and I think we're kind of dialed in to the world and the culture and all that shit And I think it might be eating away at us. Yeah, I think you're probably right. What's your strategy for remaining? Positive because you've got to keep on top of this stuff I know in order to be able to do the jokes and the topical things. But you also don't want to be completely at the mercy and have your brain sucked out of your ears. I think you gotta just be aware of it. You gotta kind of go,

all right, I'm watching a lot of Gaza strip stuff. I gotta pull back a little. Is that your relaxation music on an evening time? Some people play a video, a 4K video of a fireplace. You just got Gaza Strip. Right, yeah, yeah. I've just got the Iron Dome getting bombed. That's my screensaver.

But yeah, so I think you gotta be aware of it, you gotta be conscious of it, and you gotta keep it silly. Gotta keep it funny. You know those comics who go up and just, this is happening in the country, and you're like, well, this isn't fun. You got to put a dick joke in there somewhere. So somehow keep it silly and be aware that this is all news.

It's all going to go away. The guy lit himself on fire the other day. That will go away in three days, which is sad. Yep. Um, but, uh, that's just how, that's just how it works. And none of this affects you directly. You go to the gym, you eat your protein, you get laid, you move on.

It's a two-way selective amnesia or sort of short-term memory that the press or SNL or whoever seem to very quickly be prepared to forget the thing that they stated as absolute 100% undeniable fact. But then the audience also forget the thing that they were previously vehement about. How many people, I would love to see someone do a study of the proportion of people with

Ukraine flags in their bio and in like, how does the graph peak? And then it sort of tails off and it tails off and then, Oh, the Gaza happened. And like that, that was a big drop. Yeah. Yeah. The stock of Ukraine discussions really, really hit October 7th, put a big dent in that, and then we'll continue to go along, continue to go and go. And it's this flimsiness of people's convictions about things that they care

about, like, look, if you're gonna force me to read a hundred tweet thread or you posting about this particular thing over and over and over again, or news stories being dominated by this thing, then have the courage of your convictions to stick about and keep talking about that when it's not popular. Of course, it feels like fashion. They're like, oh, you're still wearing those pants? Those are so out. And you're like, oh shit. But instead of fashion though, like you made Ukraine

your whole personality and now it's kind of faded out. And so now you got to just pretend no or hope no one noticed and go to the next thing. Hey, remember Stop Asian Hate? Are they okay? Did they get stopped getting hated? What happened? But that was a hashtag for eight minutes and we all got on board and then it moved on. I think I've heard someone call it the opinion pageant. Ooh, I like that. Yeah, where it's all about what opinion are you holding and what's fashionable at this one time.

You have a team, speaking of opinion pageant, what's your bomber jacket that you were wearing? Oh, I have a Miss Teen USA vintage coach coat that I found at a thrift store. Was that owned by Donald J. Trump? Did he do that? What was it he did? No, he did Miss America.

He did Miss America. Yeah. No, this is, I just found it at thrift store and I was like, I'm buying this. It says Miss Teen USA. So I love the idea of some guy with a whistle and a gut was just like, all right, wringer it, we're going to, we're going to win it this year, Kelly, you know? So I had the idea of some guy with a whistle and a gut was just like, all right, wring her in, we're gonna win it this year, Kelly, you know. So I had to buy it. Like in a boot camp for Miss Teen America?

Yeah, yeah. When I was a kid, a girl, I know girls in high school were like, oh, I'm dying to do Playboy, I hope I can get in Playboy. And then Playboy became this evil thing. So it's funny how much that shifted. Remember the Playboy Mansion was every guy's dream? Like if I make it to the Playboy Mansion, I'll be set. I've made it.

Yeah, and now that's gone. And now girls do OnlyFans instead. Yeah, right, good point. It's strange, like I think something that in with one perspective could be seen as exploitative is seen as empowering when done just at a slightly different kind of angle. I love the empowering.

That's a real catch all for horseshit. Isn't it? You know, it's like, oh, I'm stripping now. It's empowering. You're like, all right, I guess I got to go with that. I'm a hooker. It's empowering. I mean, that might be one of the patriarchy's greatest tricks.

Perhaps the patriarchy is as powerful as we think it is. If it's managed to convince women that getting naked and selling their nudes on the internet to the price of a cheeseburger is actually something approximating empowerment. I get it, was that us? I thought that was them. Well, that's my point.

That's the real Psy-op. The real Psy-op is that we convince them that that's something that they should enforce between themselves. Sure, well, I mean, feminism is great because it's like we wanna be shirtless like men, we wanna pay for dinner, and you're like, bring it on sister, rah rah.

I found a interesting study looking at who pays for dates. So for Gen Z, an age old question, who pays for dates, young people tend to lean more liberal on a range of issues pertaining to relationship norms, but when it comes to dating, the idea that men should still pay prevails in heterosexual courtship. Research has found that young men paid for all or most of the dates around 90% of the time, while women paid only 2% and they split the check around about 8%.

On subsequent dates, splitting the check was more common though. Men still paid a majority of the time while women rarely did. Nearly 80% of men expected that they would pay on the first date, while just over half of women expected men to pay. Surprisingly views on gender norms that didn't make much of a difference. On average, both men and women in the sample expected the man to pay whether they had more traditional views of gender roles or more progressive ones. The findings strongly showed that the traditional pattern is still there.

The persistent tradition of men paying for women may seem like a harmless artifact, but in a relationship, some acts don't exist in a vacuum. Wow. How about that? It's like that old Bill Burr joke, you know, like women want equality, except for a couple of things over here.

Like if somebody breaks in, you gotta stop him, you gotta pay for dinner. The ship sinks, I get off first. So that's his joke, but it's an interesting point. We all want equality till you gotta lose something. The WNBA is like, hey, we should make as much as men, but male models make less than women. But I don't hear any women like,

hey, they should make as much as women. I sent you that video the other day, the highlights from the WNBA. One of my friends replied to me and was like, hey, they should make as much as women. I sent you that video the other day, the highlights from the WNBA. One of my friends, one of my friends replied to me and was like, dude, look at the stands and the stands are just empty. And you think, well, I don't know. Again with that, it's not saying that the WNBA doesn't need support, maybe female basketball players.

It would be great if more of them were incentivized to do stuff. But for all of the people saying you aren't supporting the WNBA, why aren't you attending? Of course. Why aren't you in the stand? Sure. And this is why I've had this idea for ages about how hypocrisy is kind of the perfect

purpose-built issue for the internet. Because it's like, do you remember those games, maybe even exists still on like iPads, where it would be a spot the difference thing. It would be in a touch screen in some pub somewhere and you'd be like looking between these two different images and be like, oh, okay, so that's there and that's there. The reason that hypocrisy works is because what someone said or tweeted previously is

available for you to see. And then the new thing that they said or tweeted is available for you to see. And you're able to compare and contrast the two. And he said, well, it's interesting because you once said this thing, but look what's happening here. And this is why, well, look, you just said that the WNBA needs way more support, but you haven't bought your season ticket to the like W Lakers or whatever. So I put your money where your mouth is.

How is it that you can talk about this and not cat? Like I saw you court side at like a bowls game, but I didn't see you court side at a women's bowls game. Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's obvious, it's dead on, but that's how people are, I think. They don't like having the hypocrisies pointed out, quite rightly as well.

Yeah. You know, it really shows up the less gracious parts of you. But yeah, I think that's what people are looking out for. They're looking out for, hang on a second, is this person fucking telling the truth? That's like comedy, that's where comedy comes in. We come into that little opening and really blow it up. You know, like when Caitlyn Jenner

turned into Caitlyn Jenner, a lot of women were trying to be nice and they were like, she's beautiful, look how pretty she is. And then I would go, well, you look like her. And they'd go, fuck you. And I'm like, oh, isn't that fun that you can just, you're full of shit and I can prove it. It's like when guys say, I don't see color. You're like, yeah, you do. All we talk about is we need more black people in this movie. This is a racist. I'm like, so you saw the color. What if I'm like, I'm black? You'd go, no, you're not. And I go, aha. So again, I'm okay with all of it. You just got to stop lying to me. That's when you start going nuts.

Yeah. Again, looking at that sort of Shane thing, how effective do you think deplatforming is generally or the kind of cancellation thing? Because we had, um, who's the fucking big guy that plays at the mothership a good bit and he got in some trouble about doing a George Floyd joke. Oh yeah. Yeah. Lucas. Yeah. Yeah.

David Lucas. Yeah. What's your, do you live in permanent ambient fear of the wrong clip going on up on the internet? A little, it used to be way scarier just cause people would really like, they made a career off of getting you. So it was like, they were more incentivized to get you.

But now I think, I think going after George Floyd, I guess that is pretty, that's pretty dicey. No matter who you are. Flying close to the sun. Yeah, so I'm not actually surprised that happened. I don't support getting him in trouble, but like, I'm not surprised. And also he put the video up. So, you know, you're kind of like, if that happened, if I made a joke about that, I would not be posting that. So there is, there are

some degrees to this, but, you know, he is a comic and he can say whatever he wants and people can backlash and then he can rebut and that's how it goes so but I do think deep platforming is Pretty shitty because it's all we talk about is compassion But what about the guy or the gal like a what's the lady from the Mandalorian? The UFC fighter lady who got in trouble. Yes for tweeting. Yes, you know Like she went through hell and then there's like a lot of like suicide talk when that happens.

Like they really go through hell, but people go, well, she's working again, she's fine. And I hate that she's fine because you're the one who always talks about compassion. So like, let's say you called a guy the N word and then he went back to work the next day. And I was like, he's fine. Well, what about the N word thing?

Like that still hurt his feelings. So it just feels a little hypocritical to me. Yeah, there's definitely something about a person overcoming a difficult situation and you thinking, well, because they overcame it, that means that it's not a big deal. Yes. You don't know how much difficulty people went through

to overcome that. Of course. So as a good example of this, I'm trying, I'm purposefully trying harder to be more disagreeable in my personal life and on the show as well. Yeah, I just, I've found myself to be a bit of a people pleaser. I don't-

Yeah, me too. Sitting with discomfort, especially on the show, just makes me feel like- Me too. We were, why do we have that? What's wrong with us? Well, I'm in fucking therapy. So I've got like a million bro psychology reasons

for why that's the case. But at least for me, if I say something that I know is purposely going to push the guest or even someone that I'm sad opposite into an area of discomfort, it makes me, it's like toe-curlingly difficult. Same. So I understand if you look at Douglas Murray

or Ben Shapiro or even Rogan or whoever, and you go, well, they're able to do it. And you go, yeah, but it comes more easily. Well, actually, I don't know. In all truth, I don't know. And this is the point that I'm making. But if you, people please are number one, or me, people please are number two, does that, it's

like, it's like the skinny guy that manages to get muscular. You go, wow, look at what you had to overcome in order to be able to give this lukewarm push back against a person. Something tells me that Ben Shapiro's cringemeter when he makes somebody else in a debate or a discussion feel uncomfortable is not as hyper attuned as mine or yours might be. And that's the same as this, well, think about either they look okay. And so you don't know how much work this person

has had to go through in order to be able to feel okay, they might've had to do fucking a thousand sessions of meditation and gone to Peru and done a ton of ayahuasca or maybe they cried themselves to sleep for three months. You don't know, just because someone comes out the other side looking okay, doesn't mean that they didn't go through some bullshit.

And that, and look, it's fine if you wanna be mean and be a bully, but don't act compassionate also. That's what bugs me about it too. So I completely agree. Like you're putting someone through hell, like I know a couple of guys who went through it, and Jesus, they're like different people now. I know a couple guys who went through it and Jesus they're like different people now they you know how the president goes in and then comes out and looking older they're like that you know they had night terrors and therapy and all this shit and

I think it's like a biological thing where when you're outside the group you know this uh this we're all social creatures so when you're outside the group and outcasts, it fucks with you. It almost feels like you're dying or something. It's like this panic attacky feeling. It's very stressful. Yeah, so I think that's hard on somebody. There was a conversation I had with Robert Sapolsky, who's this evolutionary biologist guy.

And he was teaching me about epigenetics. I thought epigenetics was total dog shit. I thought it was like the God of the gaps for behavioral genetics, basically, um, life circumstances can change your genome, not just change the way that you feel or your memories. They can actually impact you on a genetic level and that can be passed down.

Now you get perilously close to like ancestral trauma and stuff here, but there was a study done on pregnant women who entered poverty during their pregnancy. That's interesting. Poverty is a very reliable stressor. It's a very reliable way to make you, uh, it's really ruthless because being in poverty, it takes up so much of your mental stress that getting out of

poverty becomes more difficult. It's a really vicious sort of catch 22 trap. And, uh, they were able to show genetic changes in the kids. And here's the wild thing. When, when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, the egg that was going to make you was inside of your grandmother, because when a female baby is born, they're born with all of the eggs that they will have for the entirety of their life. So at one point, there was grandmother, mother, and egg that would make you

all inside of the same person. Ha ha ha! Jesus Christ! Anyone else hard? This is a lot going on here, man! Ah ha ha ha! Boy, the human body, it is wacky. It is, but my point being that, you know, the stress that people go through, and you're totally right.

I mean, those photos of Barack Obama. Yeah. You know, cause he went in and it's, you look at someone like Joe Biden or Trump, and you're like, he's kind of, he's not exactly looking his best. He was all going in. Entering, yeah. Whereas Barack was, you know, this sort of sprightly, kind of, it's not exactly looking his best. He was all going in. Entering, yeah.

Whereas Barack was, you know, this sort of sprightly, kind of handsome dude. Handsome black guy. Going in and then he comes out and he's very line face and the gray has very, and some guys just cross that threshold in any case. Like me and you have got a little, the gray coming in. Oh yeah. On the old beard, but yeah, I think just giving people

a bit more grace, and I find this in myself as well, playing the, making a judgment about someone, making a very quick call about, oh, well, that's because they're a bad person, or that's because they're untrustworthy, whatever. I'm like, hang on a second, you don't know anything about them.

But you've seen this small thing and you're arguing for people to give more leeway. Both of us today have been saying, oh, why don't we try and just see the best in people as best we can. And maybe we even need to do that with the ones that are trying to push the narrative. Schulz taught me about how he thinks internally

it's not coordination, it's cowardice. It's just people scared of losing their jobs. People don't believe it. And you think, well, cowardice is pretty bad and it's caused a lot of evil shit to happen. But still, yeah, just slowing down, slowing it all down and being a little bit more forgiving to people would be a good idea.

We do look to like the outlandish, brash people kind of, like Muhammad Ali, you know, in the 60s, like I'm the greatest, I'll kill anybody. And you're sitting there in your little house as a kid going like, whoa, you're not supposed to be that arrogant. And he's doing it and he's a killer out there in the ring. So I think comedy has that where like, holy shit, Tim Jones just said that,

you're not supposed to say those things. Oh my God. And it's fun. Richard Pryor was the king of that or George Carlin. How so? Well, Pryor was so revolutionary because like you had Cosby, you had Flip Wilson, you had Moms Mabely, but he was out there like,

I'm gonna say the real shit. I'm not gonna walk the line. I'm gonna make fun of Whitey. I'm gonna say the N word a bunch and he's smoking and he's dirty. And then Carlin was like, what's up with this? What's up with that? He made fun of the man, the establishment,

and that's what was fun about it. And they got pushback, but now we have the internet, so you can get pushback right to your door. Whereas before you just got like, you know, a letter from the Catholic church or something. In other news, this episode is brought to you by JustMeats. If you're looking for more high quality, ready-made protein delivered directly to your door, JustMeats is the answer.

It's grass-fed and grass-finished beef, precooked and pre-seasoned, and it is ready in two minutes. So if you are, like me, someone who knows they need to eat more protein but doesn't have the time or the attention span to be able to actually cook something for yourself, this is the solution for you. All of their meat is sourced from local ranches across the Rocky Mountains and requires exactly zero cooking skills to be able to prepare. Just put the pre-cooked meal on the stove and within seconds it's ready to go. Whether it's their Texas-style brisket, Latin-inspired chicken, or Hawaiian-flavoured pork,

all of their dishes taste phenomenal. You are not eating enough protein in your diet, and this is a hack that means you can have stuff that tastes great, is responsibly sourced, high quality and only takes you two minutes to prepare. Right now, you can get $15 off your first order by going to the link in the description below or heading to justmeats.com slash modernwisdom15 using the code modernwisdom15 at checkout.

That's justmeats.com slash modernwisdom15 and modernwisdom15 at checkout. That's justmeets.com slash modernwisdom15 and modernwisdom15 at checkout. I found a study that recently was done. De-platforming norm violating influences on social media reduces overall online attention toward them. From politicians to podcast hosts, online platforms have systematically banned deplatformed influential users

for breaking platform guidelines. Previous inquiries into the effectiveness of this intervention were inconclusive because one, they consider only a few deplatforming events. Two, they consider only overt engagement traces like likes and posts, but not passive engagement like views. Three, they do not consider all the potential places users are impacted by this deplatforming event might migrate to. They did this huge study, a quasi-experimental study of 165 de-platforming events targeted at 101 influencers.

They looked at Reddit and then manually curated the data and did all of this stuff. Through a difference in difference approach, we found that de-platforming reduces online attention. After 12 months, we estimate that online attention toward de-platformed influences is reduced by 63%. So it works. And on Google by 43% on Wikipedia.

Wow, so this is a really effective thing. 63% on Google and 43%. Further, as we study over 100 deplatforming events, we can analyze in which cases deplatform is more or less impactful, revealing nuances about the intervention. Notably, we find that both permanent and temporary deplatforming reduce online attention

toward influencers. Overall, this work contributes to the ongoing efforts to map the effectiveness of content moderation interventions driving platform governance away from speculation. So we got some hard and fast data. 63% on Google and 43% on Wikipedia from deplatforming. That sucks for those influencers who were part of this test. They're like, great. Now I'm fucked because you had to run a test on me.

I think that it was, they looked at existing deplatforming events. I see. So you're Alex Jones is your Mylo Yiannopoulos, your Tates or whatever would have been looked at. Mm hmm. And, uh, I've never, I've never understood the whole, oh, it's a Streisand effect. You know, it makes people. Yeah. More.

Sometimes though. But it's very, I mean, Shane is, I'm trying to think... Kanye? He was already huge before, but Chappelle already huge before. So yeah, that you kind of have to have a base. And you have this leeway as well. And it's all about optics, you know, I think that Kanye is in an interesting position because he genuinely doesn't care.

Doesn't seem to care. And then, Jesus, God damn it. I missed, I was watching the Super Bowl. I even texted you during it, but I missed the Kanye advert. Did you see that? Yeah, yeah, it was awesome. I only saw it after the event. Yeah, just him on a phone.

Hey, I spent 7 billion bucks, buy my album. Thank you. So good. And it worked. He made millions on it. Yeah, but so he kind of doesn't care, as is evident by his handheld super vertical shot Super Bowl advert. And then Chappelle and Shane have got this like, they gift people joy in a way.

Yeah. So I don't know, I feel like you guys, I said this ages ago that I feel like everyone should do standup once so that they always have the ability to say, hey, I'm just a comedian. They've just got that as the get out of jail free card. Well, my thing is, look, you can hate the comic, you can hate the message the guy has to say

or the girl is saying, but like, why does it have to go away? Like why the deplatforming? Why can't you just go, that's not for me. You know, when you're on campus and they're doing like a, you know, a trans drum circle for climate change, you go, all right, I'm not going to that. I'm going to get drunk, but you're not going to go,

we got to shut this down. And that's the part that bugs me is like, why are they shutting down? That's so Trumpian. All these people who hate Trump are very dictator-y. You know, it's the same with like defund the police people tend to make a lot of rules also. So I'm like, you're just policing everything.

It's very mirrored. I saw a house just round the corner from where I live that's got defund the police sign in the front garden. And every single morning I see this and a private security sticker in the front window. Yeah, there you go. Every single time that I walk past it, I think like, is this a joke?

We need a word for that. Like the climate change activists who's on the private jet to give his lectures about climate change. You know, the Republican Senator who's like, God hates fags, but he's blowing a guy in the rest stop. You know, there's this overcompensation of like, you gotta do this. I'm not doing that, but you gotta do it.

So the closest thing is luxury beliefs. Ooh, do tell. So a friend, Rob Henderson's repopularized this. It's not his original invention, but he says, luxury beliefs are beliefs held by the upper classes that bestow status on them, but incur costs on people of the lower class. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. So defund the police is a perfect example of this. Another one that's kind of obvious is two parent households have no advantage or getting married has no advantage for raising a child. So you look at the number of college graduates and people in the upper echelons of society, almost all of them are married in monogamous relationships with a classic nuclear family

setup. And the lower classes that may believe this particular narrative that's pushed by them are the ones that suffer in the same way as you behind your gated community tweeting. Yeah, we really need to, you know, these police are racist and we don't, we, they shouldn't be there and all the rest of it's like, yeah, but you're not a black guy from inner city Chicago. Yeah, exactly. I know. And it looks good on paper. Like I saw in California, they're doing a thing where they're lowering test standards for black kids because they're having trouble in school. And I'm like, I guess that's nice because moral pass, but you're fucking them

in the future. Like, isn't that way worse? There's a huge problem in Illinois at the moment in the schooling system, some huge percentage of kids can't read at grade level and then they finish a high school and they get out and it's just, there's no, there's nothing there. They finished like K through 12. They've maths ability is way behind where they should be reading comprehension is way behind where they should be. You comprehension is way behind where they should be. You think, what are you learning?

I know. What are you doing in school? I know, it's scary. And you're following the Roland Friar? No. Oh, this is right up your anal, baby. This is Chris all day long. I don't wanna get too much into it,

but he's a Harvard guy, Harvard professor, very like the youngest black professor at Harvard to get tenure or whatever you call it, I don't know. Brilliant guy. From the hood, black guy, made it to Harvard, did it, wrote a bunch of books, esteemed, everybody loves him. He started doing studies on police and black crime and all that. And he came out with a study that there's

actually way less black death from police than we think, and they're not actually going after black people as much as we think they are. This is his study. He couldn't believe the numbers because of, you know, cause what we've been hearing for years and years.

So he did it, he did it for a year with eight interns working under him. He couldn't believe the numbers. So he said, let's do another year and do it again with eight different people just to make sure we got it. And it came out the same way. And everybody at Harvard was like, don't put this out. It'll ruin you.

Which goes back to what I was saying about how I'm okay with the bullshit, but at least let me acknowledge it. They don't even want you to acknowledge it. So he's like, I'm putting this out. This is data, it's facts. So like, it doesn't look good, don't put it out. They tried to get him fired, they you to acknowledge it, you know? So he's like, I'm putting this out. This is data, it's facts. They're like, it doesn't look good, don't put it out. They tried to get him fired, they tried to ruin him,

they tried to meet to him, they tried all these things. He beat everything and he put it out and now he has an armed guard with him all day long because he's getting death threats. So he's got his kid at the grocery store with a fucking security guard. And the irony of like, hey, I'm just saying it's not as bad out there for black people as we think,

to saying that to now needing protection from a cop. I mean, the whole thing's wacky and I'm not saying he's right or wrong, folks. Don't come after me. I'm just saying this is happening in America right now. And it's fascinating. That's wild. I've got a friend, Carol Hoeven,

who wrote a book about testosterone. And when she did Rogan's show, she cried, I think, four times. When she did my show, she cried at least three times. We went for breakfast in Austin. I think she cried twice at breakfast. She's just a very emotional lady. It's in, like, joy and sadness and stuff, too. And she'll start talking about her son and immediately start welling up.

She just loves her son. Anyway, she talks about biological differences between men and women, spicy. She was at Harvard. She had, I think it was one of the most popular courses of undergraduates in psychology. I think it was like some insane number might have been 500 people that attended this particular course that she did really interesting course.

And after she did the Rogan thing and then the book came out and then she maybe posted a couple of things as well. None of her teaching assistants were prepared to work with her. So these are post grads, usually doing a PhD or something, and they'll be part of some lab, but you need your TAs, you need the teaching assistants. Tits and ass. Cause it's... Sorry, sorry.

TA. I'm listening. You need that to help you because it's a huge class, and marking work, and they kind of assist during the lecturing. I've got a few friends in Austin here that work as TAs for their professors, the head of their labs and shit. And that's like soft cancel. She was being pushed out.

How can you do your course if no one will work with you? And then there wasn't backup from the Dean, and there wasn't the rest of it, and she's out now. She's out. She's been pushed out. I'm pretty sure she had tenure. Ah. Which is supposed to be the protection.

Yeah. And then she was part of this Bill Ackman thing, you know, where he called out Claudine Gay. Oh, right, right, right. A couple of months ago. But the weird thing there, and I spoke to her about this, she was basically used as a very fortunate political football.

Yeah. To be kicked around. See how perfect, this shows that the woke mob are trying to push people out that say things that aren't egregious and no one, this is something I haven't really thought of before. No one considered what she wanted as a part of this. So she's already lost her job. Good point.

But just because she's a very same with Shane, like Shane strikes me as a large, ruddy, robust guy. Yeah. And you using him as an example of somebody who went through difficulty with SNL to then sort of come out the other side of it. I don't, I don't feel that he's taking that as, Oh, you know, you've re-triggered my PTSD from this awful incident that occurred to me five years ago. He doesn't strike me. But the woman that cried five oh, you know, you've re-triggered my PTSD from this awful incident that occurred to me five years ago. He doesn't strike me. But the woman that cried five times on a podcast, maybe does. Yeah, right.

This is, you know, again, do we care about people's feelings or not? Yes. It just comes back to trying to give people a bit more grace. Yes, there you go. It's, we shouldn't be boiled down to this one, one tweet or one thing we said or one joke we made or one thing this lady did, you know? But that's what we do. And I think we have negativity bias.

So we go, this is the thing, fuck you. And you're like, what about all the good I did? And they're like, ah. Forget about that. Forget about it. Shane actually has a great sketch on a, ah, the fucking lounge. What do you think you're eating? The lounge, it's horrible food.

So Shane has a great sketch where he's a fireman. He saved a bunch of people's lives. And the guy's like, wow, did you just save that whole burning building? The babies, the women, everything. Yeah, yeah, that was me. And he goes, looks like I found some tweets from last year.

And it says this, this and that, it's gay and whatever. And he's like, oh yeah, why are you pulling that up? He's like, dude, what are you doing to me? And it's a nice, it's kind of a nice microcosm of what's going on, like this gotcha shit. But the guy just saved a building full of people. So that's funny.

Sorry, not good enough. Yeah, but I feel like, are we talking about this too much? I'm worried that- No, not at all. So I've got something I want to teach you about. Okay, great. Women are loving men who embrace baby girl vibe and ditch toxic masculinity.

Delving into the new trend of baby girl, following Jacob Elordi, Timothee Chalamet, Pedro Pascal and more. This includes men carrying purses, wearing shorts and sequins, and embracing the traditionally feminine aspect. A man who is a baby girl comes across as sweet, charming, a bit bashful,

and seemingly in touch with the feminine side, ready to talk about their feelings or carry a purse to brunch at any point. Heterosexual women, especially Gen Zers, are rusting, which means romanticizing and lusting. I thought rusting might mean something else. After men that they consider to be baby girl. This trend signals a sharp departure from the uber masculine sex symbols of previous generations. A lady explained to the post, and men outside the limelight are taking note,

think the definition of what is masculine is changing. The director of Talkify Matchmaking Service told the post, some traditional masculine norms are shifting. Masculinity today is not about being a tough guy, but about being honest, respectful, protective and emotionally expressive. About 31% of American men have actively changed their behavior to become more vulnerable and open with people they are dating, according to Bumble's 2024 Dating Trends report. Well, I think this is nothing new.

You know, like Mick Jagger, David Bowie, they all went through this like, what do you call that when you're kind of feminine and masculine? Androgynous. Right. Androgynous. Androgynous. Right. Androgynous, like I think this is, you know, in the sixties guys grew their hair long and every dad was like, you fucking homo, like look at these, get a haircut pussy.

And I think that was crazy then, you know, having long hair or tight pants or whatever. So I think it's just, this is just another swing of this and masculinity is the norm. So we got to go against the norm. And then eventually baby girl, whatever masculinity is the norm. So we got to go against the norm. And then eventually baby girl, whatever will be the norm. And then being masculine will be weird. So that'll be in.

So I think it just, it all just flipped. Everyone's attracted by whatever looks novel. Yes. Hey, that's a better way to concise way to say it. I've been, me and my housemate have been thinking a lot about things that a bitch that you don't realize a bitch. So trying to pick up a moving ping pong ball. No, that's a great one.

Very bitch. Starting a stopped bicycle. Oh yeah, that kind of awkward. I got one. You know when you close the door and it doesn't close the car door and it doesn't latch all the way and you got to give it that booty bump. I hate the booty bump, but you got to do it. These are great.

This could be like a TikTok running series. Wearing as a man, wearing a towel wrapped around your upper chest rather than wrapped around your waist. Oh, I got another one. Standing like this is very masculine. But if you just rotate it like that, it's so much gayer. What is that? Why? It's just the same hands, same hip. But if you flip it, you look you look so much more feminine. Doing that thing when you wash your hands.

Oh, yeah. The finger from behind. Yeah. That's pretty bitch. I'm turning here. He has Zach has one, which is turning around ever. So if you walk past the entrance to somewhere, you're going around the block and coming back in. Cause if you go and then turn around,

that's pretty bitch. That's good. He had one at dinner the other evening, which we were sat outside and the receipt blew off the front of the table. And we've been talking about things that are bitched that you don't realize a bitch for six months now. This is gold.

We've accumulated this huge, big long list of, I could go for the rest of the podcast. And I was watching that and we hadn't come up with chasing a receipt blown in the wind. And I was watching it happen and sure enough, the wind picked up and is he sort of, you know, you bend over and you that, and then it goes away again. And I was, and he came back over and he went,

this is adding, this is being added to the list, isn't it? That's a great one. It's getting added to the list. I would say applying chapstick can be pretty bad. Eating a banana. Banana, classic. Oh, a heavy door. You ever have a door where you're like,

ah, oh, it takes all the manly confidence out of you when the door's too heavy. Sleeping in a blanket with your arms all the way under as opposed to having your arms out. Interesting. I think that's pretty bitch. Holding a coffee mug with both hands. Yes, that's a great one.

Massively bitch. My wife, she says, if I see a guy with flip-flops, the vagina is just sewn up. Like those ones? The tongue, it's the idea of that thing between the toe that really freaks her out. She's like, it's slides, I'll do a slide. But the tongue is what gets you.

Which is interesting because crocs are obviously the most sexually arousing type of footwear that are available. You know what my favorite thing about crocs are? That flap, that little ankle holder. If you put that up It's called sport mode. Yeah, which to me is like, what are we getting? No, that's what this is did that that like Let's sport. What are you gonna go run a mile with that?

I'm playing football someone's there is a croc marathon Come on record. Really? Yep. There's a croc mile and there's a croc marathon record people can go and look this on look this up I'm like, I will yeah, I'm sure it's a croc mile and there's a croc marathon record. People can go and look this up online. I will. Yeah. I'm sure it's a elite athletes. Yeah, well, look, I think that, oh, do you know what the beer mile is? No.

Okay, well, I think it's technically called the Chunder mile, but you do, I think four laps of a 400 meter track, which would be 1.6K, I think that's a mile, I think 1.6. Or maybe you start a tiny bit behind the line or something to absolutely nail it. And at the beginning of each mile, or at the beginning of each lap, you drink a bottle of beer, I think,

or maybe it's a pint, I think it's a pint of beer. So it's four pints and four laps of a running track, one mile. And this is a very prestigious in the running world, super prestigious record, super, like the guy that wins this, there's an entire channel that's, that's committed to it and they track all of the things and there's people that and they've got, you know, tactics for how they're going to drink. And it's not just your ability to run. It's your ability to not run and not throw up. And it's called

the chundamile because as soon as everybody finishes, four pints, two liters of beer just comes back out. Oh, I love it. And it's fun. It's like highly held. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This should be televised.

This is way more, way better than pickleball. Dude, I think. I do love pickleball. I adore pickleball. Me too. Problem is it's the, it's got the highest disparity between how fun it is to watch. Yeah. And how fun it is to play.

Great point. So true. There is no more boring sport to watch. It's like scissoring. Way more fun to do. Watching scissoring I don't love. Ah! But yeah, you're right.

And I always say pickleball is like COVID because it swept the nation and old people love it and fat people are scared of it. Have you played Padel? Have you tried that? No, is that paddle? I always say pickleball is like COVID because it swept the nation and old people love it and fat people are scared of it. Have you played Padel? Have you tried that? No, is that paddle? Yeah, paddle, whatever.

I don't know. I'm around some people that are European and they call it Padel, but I think that maybe Padel is something different to paddle. I don't know. Anyway, I tried to play it over the weekend in Miami and I've decided that pickleball is tennis for old people and Padel is tennis for old people. Yeah. And Padel is tennis for rich people because it's all everyone that's there has got some.

Got it. Nice Rolex on and everyone's like, I don't know. It just, it was very strange sport and I'm all for pickleball and I think that Padel can go fuck itself. Okay, okay, yeah. Pickleball to me is so perfect. I don't wanna try anything different

because I love it. Do you play indoors or outdoors? Oh, you must be playing indoors in New York. New York's mostly indoors, but there's a basketball court two blocks away from my house and it's just been, the basketball's over. It's all pickleball. It's a bunch of yuppies out there with little nets going at it. I would love to see street ball New York players coming up against iced soy frappe. Right, right. It's total gentrification of sport. Of the sport.

Yeah. Yeah, it used to be like this gritty kind of a, yeah, like real basketball court with like street guys. That's a great skit. If you did a, it's the pickleball gentrification. It's got nothing to do with the number of Starbucks that you've got or whether or not there's a Chipotle. That's when you know that someone's been fully gentrified

when there's a Chipotle. And then it would just be through pickleball. All that you would do is find different courts to put pickleball in and that would sort it out. Yeah, I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and I used to skateboard. Back when skateboarding, it was like a grungy white guy thing in the nineties. Now there's all, it's all over the place, which is great.

But we built a skate park and it happened to be next to a basketball court. And we came back one day and it was burned down. And it was kind of like this racial thing. Like, Hey, don't take our basketball court. Yeah, it was heavy. New Orleans is hardcore. It really is, it's a wild place.

We'll get back to talking to Mark in one minute, but first I need to tell you about Element. Stop having coffee first thing in the morning. Your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't even active for the first 90 minutes of the day, but your adrenal system is, and salt acts on your adrenal system. Element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio

of sodium, potassium and magnesium that helps to curb cravings, regulate your appetite and improve your brain function. There's a reason that I continue harping on about Element. It's a product I've used for over three years every single morning that I wake up, whether I'm on the road or at home, I start my day by having one of these in water because it really does help. It tastes phenomenal. It's got no sugar in it, no gluten or fillers, no other artificial junk or BS, and it really makes me feel fantastic.

Best of all, there's a no BS, no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So you can buy it right now, completely risk-free. And if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you love it. Right now you can get a free sample pack

of all eight flavors by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. I've seen videos of you shredding. Shredding. Shredding. Oh, shredding.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, recently. Yeah, I was- You still got it? I was pretty good. I'm an old quiff now. I can't, I'm crackly and stiff, but I was pretty good in the day. That's all I did all day, every day.

Wow. Very similar to stand up, a lot of parallels. Have you tried wake surfing? No. That's fun. What's that? So wakeboarding is the one where you're quite far behind the boat and you're kind of strapped into this thing.

And that's when they do the crazy flip. Yeah. And it's super fast. It's usually maybe 25, 30 miles an hour. Fun. But also if you wipe out at 20 or 30 miles an hour, you feel it and you're attached to this board thing. Wake surfing is much slower. It's like 11 miles an hour.

And you're actually surfing up and down, carving up and down the wake that's made by the boat. So you'll have seen people, it's where they're, as far as from me to the wall behind a boat and they're kind of- With a rope. With a rope, but then you let go of the rope. Oh, okay. Because the boat makes a particular shape wake behind it.

If you're goofy, then you can have it on the other, the boats can usually switch side. Got it. So it can make a smooth arc. And I did that, I've been doing that pretty obsessively for two years since I've been here. Really? Yeah. But I didn't have the background in skating.

Yeah. And my friend, Alex O'Connor, who is a philosophy, theology, hyper nerd, debates Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and all of these people. I know that guy. Yeah, he's great. He's phenomenal.

Doesn't strike you as someone that would be a master of physicality, but he had this background in skateboarding and I'd been trying so for ages, this is a year ago when he came out, he wore a suit to a boat party and it's like the true philosopher. And first time that he gets pulled along on the rope, stands up, no problem. Wow. So there is a skill set, I think, inside of people that did skateboarding as a kid or some sort of balanced sport. Sure.

Dance, probably other stuff. Uh, put a ball in a paddle or a bat in my hand. I'm laughing, but balanced sports. Interesting. Yeah. I think there's two kinds of people. The people who want to go straight forward, like skiing, and then the people want to go sideways, like surfing or snowboarding. And I'm a sideways guy all day long. I snowboard. I don't like being straight up. It's, it freaks me out. Is that weird? I don't know. I saw a video of the first time that snowboarding was introduced to the slopes of America. Mm-hmm.

And all of these sort of old granola grizzled ski guys that were running the slopes or whatever were saying that they're like missiles and they're super dangerous and they wouldn't let them on the lifts, the lifties wouldn't let them on. So they had to trek up and then they'd find some unprotected part of the mountain and they wouldn't let them on the lifts, the liftees wouldn't let them on. So they had to trek up and then they'd find some unprotected part of the mountain and they'd snowboard down. But yeah, they saw it as this, it was a travesty to the world of snow sports. And this was only in the eighties, I think.

See, that's how it goes. Whenever something's new, it's attacked. Yes. But everything, the car was attacked, you know? Like anything new that comes out, people will go at it and they say, this is horrible. Like the self-driving cars are coming. You know, everybody's like, that's crazy.

They're going to run people over, blah, blah. But I'm like, they're coming. There's a pretty good amount of evidence, I think, even now with the data sets that they're playing with and the level of sophistication, which is obviously going to get better as there's more training sets. It's way, even now, way safer than a human driver.

Like the risk profile is lower, but there's something strange about if you're in an accident that happens because of a person, I wonder, I'm trying to work out whether there's something more reassuring about putting your life in the hands of other people and yourself or outsourcing it to an algorithm. Yeah. If you were in a crash that crippled yourself, would it be easier to deal with? Good point. Than because of some bug in a computer code or the fact there was a weirdly shaped cone and it caused it to swing off the road.

Right. Oh my God, that is scary. Now you're suing a corporation instead of you're getting mad at yourself. Yes. I wonder, I really don't know what the humans, I guess it's going to change person to person, but on average, I don't know how people feel about that. I don't know if they would feel more comfortable being injured by their own hand or surviving at the behest of an AI. Yeah. Ooh, that's dark. I guess I'd rather myself, but that's no good either.

Yeah. It's a lose-lose. Yeah. Well, that was, that Kat Williams thing was, that he said was interesting. Like in the future, you'll, there's no police chase because the car will just be tuned into the internet or satellites or whatever. So if you're in a getaway, the car will just stop and the cops will get you. The dude who lives across the street from me, his insurance for his Tesla is organized by Tesla. I didn't realize that you could go full stack manufacturer and insurance company.

The problem is that Tesla has access to the metrics diagnostics that come out of his car. And they know how close he drives to the cars in front. They know how fast he accelerates and breaks. And his insurance premiums are higher because of his more dangerous driving style. There you go. That's why I'd never heard this story. I can't believe that's not broken on the internet.

I know. But yeah, if you get your car insurance through Tesla because they know the metrics and the diagnostics of how you drive and they've got the whizzing around thing to see how close you are to other cars. They know how close you came to an accident every single time you need to drive. Oh, I don't like that.

I don't like that information out there. I have a 1973 BMW with crank windows and a stick shift. Like if you don't buckle up, it doesn't go boop, boop, boop, you know, it just, it's all analog. And I love that. I like cash. I'm not one of these libertarian off the grid, but I do like a little bit of a leave me alone.

You know, you don't want to be dialed in. Like these people pay for everything with their phone. All that shit is a paper trail. I don't like it. It makes me nervous. Uh, speaking about the shit from the past, I found a job advert for Ernest Shackleton. So Ernest Shackleton was the British explorer who first went across the

Antarctic on foot, unsupported. Okay. So he needed a crew, I think it was about between 18 and sort of 25 people went with him. There was a stowaway actually, which is pretty interesting. There's a great book, great book by Alfred Lansing called Endurance, which was the name of the ship. And they leave in 1914 and they actually were due to leave the day after World War I was announced. And they sent a message to the King

asking whether or not he still wanted them to go. They were all men of military age with military experience and you know, they were rough fighting robust dudes and they said, look, if you don't want us to do this thing, even though we've been planning it for ages, we're not gonna go. And he sent back like crack on, we'll beat the Germans on our own.

But he put a job advert out, and it's one of the best job adverts I've ever heard. It says, men wanted for hazardous journey, low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in event of success. Wow, I love that. So cool.

Yeah, now who are the guys who read that and go, this is me. Apparently there was, he was way oversubscribed. Really? Yeah. That's kind of gives me hope. I mean, what year are we talking? 1914, that would have been probably 1912. Well, you gotta think back then,

like you ever seen the movie 1917? Yes. About the World War I and the British kids. That's the one that's only got like five cuts in the entire movie. Yes, yes, amazing movie. But they show these kids and they're like, hell yeah, I'm signing up for war. What else are we doing?

We work in a mill, I'm homeless, I'm toothless, I'm a chimney sweep, I'm just a Oliver Twist, limey loser kid. So they all signed up because they had nothing else going on. And I think that there's probably a lot of that back then too, like adventure, hell yeah. I work in a factory.

Yeah. So I think we're missing that. Yeah, I think so. Well, there's just so many other things that people can do. Of course. Convenience and comfort and distraction and entertainment and all the rest of it.

There was a TikTok that was put up that I saw by a girl that said something like, you're going to make me a little girl go to war. I'm sat here eating cereal in my pajamas for the third time today. And I think, you know, you wouldn't be sending that 21 year old girl off to war no matter what. Yeah. The sense, the subtext is there are other things that I can do with

my time to entertain me. Whereas men wanted for hazardous journey, the low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in event of success. Someone to go, well, I mean, the alternative is to just stay here in Leicester or Manchester or something. Yeah, so I think we need to teach people sometimes

you should go towards the discomfort. Instead of just all all everything is comfort like uber eats Netflix and chill tinder You don't have to approach the girl. You can just tinder her. Everything is getting more more more more dialed into Less effort and ease and I think that will fuck us if it hasn't already there's a website called spurious correlations It's one of the best things that I found. So this guy is tracking will fuck us if it hasn't already. There's a website called spurious correlations. It's one of the best things that I've found. So this guy is tracking thousands and thousands of different metrics and he's looking for correlations between the two of them.

I like that. So the total rainfall in San Francisco correlates with the number of printing press operators in Rhode Island for some reason. Whoa. The number of people press operators in Rhode Island for some reason. Whoa. The number of people who die by drowning in backyard pools and the total volume of Nicolas Cage movies released in a single year are the same.

Wow, that's wild. So just because he's, US bottled water consumption per person and the solar power generated in the Sudan, like very, I mean- They affect each other. This is- Wow.

Super strongly correlated. It's like a time travel shit. You step on a roach in an 1801 and it affects- The butterfly effect. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, the number of movies Nicolas Cage appeared in and votes for the libertarian presidential candidate in Georgia.

Like, and it's a, dude, that's a tight fucking correlation there. Wow. That's a, you know, there's that study that men who kissed their wives before going to work getting less car accidents. No way. That's a fact. Yeah.

So there's all this, this is, this is cool stuff. Yeah. I love shit like that. There was a really great story in Matthew Walker's book, why we sleep. Talking about the impact of low sleep on surgeons and doctors that work in hospitals. And I can't remember what this shift's called. It's like a triple shift or a special night shift

or something, and they're awake for this insane amount of time and the percentage of surgeons and doctors who do these shifts and then get in car accidents and are redelivered back to the same hospital where they were just working to get looked after. The same thing happens around daylight savings. So when we lose an hour, the number of heart attacks, I think, or strokes or something, increases by 25% and so do road accidents. The same thing is decreased on the other side when you just give people an hour more sleep.

And they tested this with college or high school students in a particular town and they allowed their, I think instead of getting into class at 9 a.m. or 8 30 a.m., it was 10 30 a.m. and the total road traffic accidents in the entire city went down by a statistically significant amount. Jesus. Teenagers have a later, uh, go to bed and get up time. So sure.

For the parents of teenagers, uh, you don't have some dysfunctional broken child. It's just, that's the way that their body clocks tend to operate. That they're staying up late and getting up late. Uh, but yeah, the, the impact of, of that sort of stuff is, uh, I love it. I mean, the impact of that sort of stuff is crazy. I love it.

When Uber came out, cities lost so much money because DUIs went way down. DUIs bringing a ton of income to the city, with legal fees and police and whatever. So yeah, everything correlates. It's all connected, baby, the great magnate. That's cool. Yeah, so I've got my car now. I did it. Good for you. Thank you. Right

side of the road. Yeah. Well, whatever. I'll get used to it. Um, but I've still, I've managed to habituate using Uber so much that there's still time where I'm like, I'm just gonna, it's to think that you can get from where you are to where you need to be for 15 bucks. I know. With a driver that arrives at your house when you want him there. And then he'll drop you off exactly where you need to be. And you're pretty safe. And if there's a problem, you can call an SOS thing and you know exactly how long. There's no parking.

It's like a hooker. You just, you leave, you know, there's no attachment. That's the best part of a hooker and Uber is it just, it's over. We're done here. Have you ever used the comfort thing on Uber and then you get to select your preferred temperature and your amount of conversation? No. So, you know, this UberX, Uber Priority, Uber Comfort, XL, blah, blah, blah, blah, black

and all this stuff. And one of them is comfort. And if you select comfort in certain cities, you can select the temperature and the conversation. I love that. Preferred. Cause I mean, let's be honest, we've all gotten that Uber and it's like crazy loud music

and the guy seat is way back and you're like, this sucks. And then the guy's got crazy BO. BO should be on there too, by the way. If we're going to do music and conversation, deodorant should be part of that. But yeah, no, that some of these Ubers are a little brazen, you know, the shit they they get away with. Have you ever got in one where someone's had either their friend or their partner with them?

No, I've never seen that. That's hilarious. That's happened a bunch of times. Happened in London a couple of times to me. Someone's just there like hanging out with their wife or girlfriend or whatever. And they're just in the front seat and they're just like nattering away. And you just sort of join this short family vacation from where you're going to where you end up. That's wild, yeah.

Uber gets a little too comfortable sometimes, but isn't it amazing we live without Uber? Like the fact that, I don't know how old you, I'm 40. So like getting a cab was an issue. I'm from New Orleans. So it wasn't like a yellow cab on the street like New York where you hail it. It was like, call the company, set up a time,

pray to God they show up. You got a flight to make. That's insane that we lived like that. Now I Uber eight times a day. Yeah, yeah, it's phenomenal. And I understand that there was problems and pushback from taxi driver people because it was taking over, but it's just so much better.

It's so much better, taxi's fucked up. They got too comfortable. Yeah, they thought that they had it all sorted out. Yeah, I really love, really, really love Uber. I do too. Like I'd go to sleep at my friend's house and my parents would be like, can you come get me? And they're like, ah, okay.

Now they'd just be like Uber. That's so easy. There's a in Ibiza part of Spain. So the way that Spanish taxis work yellow cars at night, they have a little thing on the top and if it's vacant, it's green. And if it's taken, it's red or off. And the number of times when I spent, I went to Ibiza like 30 times in the space of five years. Are you doing the Ibiza now?

You're that guy? No, I did it, I did it. You can't say Ibiza? It's Ibiza. Is it a T-H? It is for us. Okay, okay, Zed. Yeah. I forgot.

Look, it's, we're trying to anglicize everything, taking over the country, one mispronounced. Good point. Country at a time. Uh, the amount of time that I've spent looking down a road, waiting for a car with a green light to come on at some horrific after party, coming down from a concoction of mystery drug and just thinking I really, really want, and then if I'd had a new bro to be in bed, there you go in bed staring at the ceiling, hating myself, speaking of red light, had an Uber, I'd have been in bed. There you go.

I'd been in bed staring at the ceiling, hating myself. Speaking of red light, green light, can I throw a fun nugget at you? Yeah. This is why I'm obsessed with YouTube because shit just pops up. There's a town called Syracuse, New York. It's a real shit box that used to be like a booming

metropolis with like, you know, manufacturing and it all went overseas. So the town's kind of fucked, but there's an Irish neighborhood. The only one in the country has a stoplight, only one of the country that's the green light is on the top and the red light is on the bottom. Why? Because the Irish immigrants who moved there in 19 whatever didn't like the British red being above the Irish green. So they flipped it like a couple of street toughs

just went in overnight and flipped it. And it's the only one in America like that. And it's still like that? Still like that. Yeah, so that just shows people are serious about their ideologies. I forgot to teach you about this thing. I learned about poor sleep quality is linked to self-defeating humor and

profanity. Oh my God. This is me. I was going to say this explains the entire comedy world and a novel explanation into the intricate ways our physical states impact our use of words. Researchers have discovered a fascinating link between poor sleep quality and an increased use of specific types of arousing language, namely humor and curse words.

The study published in Current Psychology explains that those experiencing poor sleep quality may be more inclined to use arousing forms of language as a physiological mechanism to counteract feelings of tidiness. So they make themselves the target of a joke. That's more commonly reported among participants that experience more sleep problems, noticeable relationship between sleep quality and the frequency of curse word usage. Wow, that's pretty good.

See, these correlations are great. Yeah, but this one's actually, this isn't spurious. This is studied, not spurious. But I think, especially being British, there's a problem, Americans have a problem with you peppering a sentence with swear words. Yeah. Daniel Sloss has a fantastic bit about this.

He's good. Where he's pretending to play the drums and each different part of the drum is a swear word. And he says, as Scottish people, it just sort of falls out of you very, very quickly. Whereas with Americans, it's, you are, apart from maybe the comedy world, much more sort of uptight around profanity.

There's still a big concern. I mean, I use the C word on my- Wow, it's a different thing here. On my- There's normal in England. Yes. Here it's heavy duty. Yeah, it's a real weapon of mass destruction.

Yeah, oh yeah. There's no other acceptable, unacceptable, more unacceptable, acceptable word. Like after that, you're onto the N word. Exactly. You're into real no man's land territory. Yeah, you call a woman a c**t and it's fighting words. Yeah.

It's game on. Whereas you call your friends that in the UK. Yeah. So yeah, just learning, re-centering the scope of my linguistic usage and realizing what words are in and what words are out and what I can say and what I can't say. Yeah, yeah, we do the F word a lot.

It's all a buffer. It's all like, I'm trying to think of something. So what's the name of that fucking, that drink you sell? And it's not good. And if comics use it too much. The problem now is the word like. This is like an American epidemic. This is a real problem.

You watch like Gen Z and all these people, everything is like. You know, you'll watch Candace Owens or something go yell at a college kid. And they're going, well, like you said, like you were eating. And it's like, no, no, not like she was eating. She was eating, but they, they fill it with like,

and it's so frustrating. You sound dumber. It bleeds into everything. I had a really great conversation two years ago with a linguistic analysis lady and she was explaining what's going on here. And they're referred to as filler words. Yes.

Found this out. This is fantastic. So um and uh are two different use cases. People will um, and uh, at different times. Uh, is knowing what they need to say, but searching for the word. Okay. More commonly. And um, is trying to work out the direction that they actually want to talk in.

The reason being, if you were to just open your mouth and make a noise of talking, what you end up with is something like, uh, like it's that it's just the noise of use a Mac book and it's got that spinning wheel. It's the spinning colored wheel of linguistics, the Mitch McConnell. We call that. There you go. Perfect. That's how we call that. There you go.

Yeah, perfect. That's, it's a holding pattern. And like has come in to say, it is something approximating this thing that I'm about to say. That's what like is, but it's also been used as a filler word and it's taken up both of those,

which is why the frequencies increase so much. Great, great point. Yeah, because it is a useful word. This tastes like chicken. Yes. So now we're going Yeah, because it is a useful word. This tastes like chicken. Yes. So now we're going, okay, it's similar to chicken. Correct. But everything has become, I was reading like a book.

No, you were reading a book, you were reading the Quran. Like just say the book, but it's just a filler. But you're right, it's a filler and it's the other thing you said. Here's a second swearing study that I thought was brilliant. Repeating the F word can improve threshold for pain. I've heard that.

During an ice water challenge, recent study found that repeating the F word during an ice water experiment increased subjects tolerance and threshold for pain. However, reciting made up swear words showed no such pain reducing effects. Numerous studies have shown that the use of swear words can strengthen pain tolerance

during an ice water experiment. UK researchers Stephens and Robertson set out to explore the mechanism behind this pain relieving effect in a unique way. Team of specialists invented two new swear words with properties similar to known curse words. They then tested the invented words on a cold press or experiment to see

whether they would mimic the pain reducing effects of known swear words. One then tested the invented words on a cold presser experiment to see whether they would mimic the pain-reducing effects of known swear words. One theory suggests that the swearing produces analgesic effects through autonomic arousal caused by increased emotion. So you're basically distracting yourself from what you're feeling by increasing the emotion inside of you.

It's like getting angry and then punching something. Right. To explore this idea, researchers chose the made-up swear word, fouch. Ah. Selective. Professor Fouch.up swear word, fouch. Ah. Selected for its... It's a fouch. Yeah.

What a fouch. Selected for its emotion-provoking potential. Another theory suggests that swearing alleviates the pain by distracting attention away from the painful event. Researchers accordingly chose the second made-up curse word, twizpipe, for its potential to evoke distraction through humor. So fouch and twiz pipe don't work as well as just screaming the F word if you're in pain.

That makes sense. But twiz pipe sounds like a slur for British people. Doesn't it? These fucking twiz pipes over here. Yeah, a little bit. I don't know. It's fascinating how language gets sort of used and abused. I was thinking, as I often do when I wake up first thing in the morning,

was thinking about the N word and I, it's so, what did I seen? I'd seen Derek Poston doing his podcast and I think they're playing, it's kind of like wheel of fortune, but it's called who's that N word. And they show, they put it up on the, um, on the screen and then they've got to guess. Is it all black people? Yes.

Okay. And, uh, I was like, it is absolutely why. And it's just the most liberal use that it's every, it's the saying, like smattering a word with fuck, right? Like, or like it's that. But I just thought it is so insane that we have this, it's fascinating, isn't it? Boundary around that particular word itself. I know, I blame slavery.

It's the only reason that it could be this powerful. You know, because obviously it's silly. I grew up, I went to public school and all my black friends would be like, come on, say it. And I was like, I'm not saying it. I was like, come on. And then eventually after an hour you'd say it and they were like, ah.

So it just proves like, okay, you can exist with a white person saying this word and not lose complete control and beat the shit out of me. But it's just something about that word. It's just garnered this, because people used to say it on the news and stuff in the nineties. No way.

Oh yeah, they'd be like, they'd be reading like a police report and the man said to, you know, and it was just like, you couldn't say it at somebody, but you could still say it. Reference it. You could still reference it and now you can't even reference it.

Wow. Yeah, and that, they're talking about empowering. That's the ultimate empowering. By the way, another thing white people invented, the N word, but, and black people took it and made it cool, but, uh, it is empowered. That is empowered. Like using it, only you guys can use it and you can't. And if you do, we get to fuck you up. Yeah. It's, it's really, really,

when you try and think about it just from outside of the culture and knowing the history of it and how fraught it is. You realize this is so funny that we have this sort of arbitrary boundary that's going around this particular word. And it's a hilarious word. Whenever black comics use it, the joke is twice as funny. Correct.

But I have an idea and I've tried this on stage, but it's too, the world's not ready for this shit. So tell me what you think, thighs. All right, so what about an OnlyFans for racism? So a black guy will be like, you sign up for my OnlyFans and instead of seeing my vagina or seeing my tits, you can call me the N-word for a fee. I think there's something here

and you can do it with Jews, Asians, uh, gays, and you, cause people are going to say it anyway. So you might as well get the money from it. Right. So you're kind of like a punch bag for people's racism. It's like a letoff valve. Yeah. Yeah.

Like talk about empowering. You read my friend, I was, it all started cause I was bitching about people being mean to me in my comments on my videos and my black friends like, Oh, are you, are you hurt? Look at me. And it's just N word, N word. I was like, oh, you got me beat there. That's horrible. And I was like, it sucks that you can't harness this and get paid because women are like, I'm getting harassed all day. If you're looking at my cleavage, I'll make money off of it. It's too bad. Black people or Jews, like Palestinians. You could monetize the racism. Yes. Wouldn't that be great? I'll make money off of it. It's too bad black people or Jews, like Palestinians have signed up for that all day. Yes, wouldn't that be great?

Wow, I didn't realize, I wondered why on a bunch of different comments sections, there was so many ninja emojis. I had to have it translated by my housemate. I said, dude, am I missing something? And he laid it out for me. Yeah. And I thought, Oh, Ninja please.

Yeah. Exactly. The, uh, another friend that I had a similar conversation with, he's got this, he's got a disorder where he yelps in the night. So it's very common amongst men that are late 20s, early 30s, very common. And it's called parasomnia overlap disorder, POD. And basically if he's startled during the night,

then he'll make a sort of a, whoo! Like makes that kind of a noise. We were away on a stag do bachelor party a year and a half ago. We were sharing, it's one of those like the cheapest hotel that we could find in Leeds or Manchester or wherever we'd gone to. And everyone's in a single, like a twin room with a single, but just classic British stag party. And I farted really loudly.

So what that resulted in was that was the one, two punch. And I just remember thinking like, what a phenomenal issue to have. It's if someone breaks in, you're an earlier, early alarm thing. If you've got some sort of an issue in the house, you're the guard dog. Yes, correct. But he doesn't wake up. No. So he just gets, but he wakes everyone else alarm. Yes, correct. But he doesn't wake up. No.

So he just gets. But he wakes everyone else up. Okay, okay. So he'll get killed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He'll get killed by the intruder and first he'll go, oh, and then gets stabbed. But his missus is awake.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Which helps. So she can watch them come in and do that. That's nice. The sleep stuff is fat. My brother used to sleepwalk. It's all wacky. Really?

Sleepwalking is crazy. One time my mom found him naked, sleepwalking and speaking French at a window. Yeah. Cause we were in French immersion when we were kids. So he was naked staring at a window going, je me sais quoi, ho ho, you know, je m'appelle Mark or whatever. And yeah, so sleepwalking is fucking weird. Cause the psyche, you know, subconscious shit's coming out.

I'd love to know why, like what, what it is or how that even works. Are you conscious? Are you unconscious? I think you're, you're uncalled, like he doesn't remember it the next morning. He's like, what really? You were walking, you were upright, you know, you were presumably opening doors. Crazy. It's one of my friends is trying to lucid dream. Oh, yeah.

So he wants to be able to control his dreams and understand what he's doing and then doing dream analysis. So he's writing in a dream journal and stuff like that afterward. And I had a weird dream last night about I was late for a lecture at university. I haven't been to university for 15 years. and stuff like that afterward. And I had a weird dream last night about I was late for a lecture at university. I haven't been to university for 15 years. Late for a lecture at university and I was held up by someone doing a photo shoot of horses.

And I texted him and was like, dude, can you do some dream analysis on this? Do we know what it means? Yeah. I'm not really too sure how I feel about analyzing your dreams as a deeper insight into your psyche. Yeah, it's hard to tell how accurate it is, but it is pretty cool.

You know, you're like, oh, what does this mean? What does it mean when I'm like eaten by spiders and it means, oh, you're taking on too much work and you hate your dad or whatever. So yeah, that is fascinating. I'd love to know how accurate that is. It's the original Apple Vision Pro. The original VR, lucid dreaming.

What is that? What are you doing with those on? I haven't put it on, although I've seen a bunch of people that have got it. Like a lot of people I know have sent theirs back. Really? Yeah, I mean, it's four grand. Oh, geez.

Plus you need the battery pack and you buy a special bag for it and something else. Maybe people are watching porn, I'm not sure. But I don't know. The VR thing for me is the one area where it was promised that this was going to be, you know, world changing, life destroying technology. And as of yet, I just haven't seen anything like the mass adoption. And someone's tried to say, well, look, the Apple vision pro is the same as the first iPhone. Look at how much more developed I from one through 15 was.

And now it's, I was like, yeah, but I remember when the first iPhone came out and people couldn't wait to get ahold of it. It was itself a useful revolutionary piece of kit. And no one sent it back. Yes. This. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm with you.

But I mean, it just feels like we keep upping all this virtual stuff. How long till it's gonna be a, go to a party and it's gonna be like, let's just play Scrabble. Like that's gonna be a novelty. And so we're gonna get so far technologically that eventually it's gonna be like charades. Come around to my house and let's hoe a garden. Yeah.

Like hit some fence posts in. Yes. Because it's the only thing that's gonna feel real. Exactly. And you're like, oh, my hand is cut. Whoa, how about that blood? This is crazy. Well, you kind of, we were saying this even before we started, like for every

reaction or for every action, there's a reaction and then a counterculture re-reaction to everything. And then there's a group of people saying that the people that are talking about this, they're the real problem. Yeah. It's a very predictable sequence of things that you go through, but you're already beginning to see in Austin, people say, I'm out.

I'm, you know, I'm going to, I'm full Ted Kaczynski in this. I'm going to get myself a ranch in dripping Springs or in Bastrop. And two weeks ago I went to Bastrop to this dude's house. It's beautiful, amazing house. And it's just him and his wife and his dogs and their kid. And he just wakes up on a morning and goes for a dip in the river. And it's like, he's regressed by a hundred years.

Wow. 150 years, this sort of agrarian life. And he's got, oh, this is my tomatoes are coming in very nicely. Yeah. So it's going to be a good harvest this year or whatever it is. And I think that this is people doing the

whole counterculture thing. I think so, but could you do that? That might be a personality thing too. I could never live like that. I'd struggle to be away from people and novelty and stuff like that. Same. This, this is nice, you know, building up your channel, like goals and stuff.

I can't just have the tomato. It doesn't fulfill me. Maybe it's an age, it's definitely a predisposition thing, but yeah, the dopamine side of life is still fun. It's just that we're all way overclocked on it. Way overclocked. You got that right. Yeah.

And it's hard to go back. Once you get that taste, it's hard to go back to, it's like success. It's hard to go down in success. You really hate yourself. There's a Will Smith bit from his memoir, which was written by Mark Manson, the guy that did the subtle art. Oh yeah. Yeah, he's good. And he says, um, uh, gaining fame is amazing.

Being famous is a mixed bag and losing fame is terrible. Wow. That's so good. Yep. So true. And look at the slap. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a big decline.

Nose dive to no fame. Isn't he filming I am legend two? He is. Yeah. I mean, that could be the salvage moment. Better be good. Yes. Yeah.

If it's bad, then every single knife that someone has got behind their back is going to come out and diddle in with it. Kind of cool though, how much it helped Chris Rock. Has it? Well, I don't know about mentally. I'm sure that that'll fuck you up to get slapped on live TV and the whole world saw it. By the way, that was just such an insane moment.

That's never happened before. That actually happened. Yeah, that happened. It's real, all these conspiracies, it's real. But his special did better that year than anyone else's because we're all like, I gotta hear about this. And it's kind of nice when the country all knows about, we're all so splintered.

So when the country all knows about one thing, it's kind of nice. You know, that's why COVID was kind of interesting cause it was the first time we were global since like the Olympics. Correct. Well, there was one moment, you know, for six weeks from March, 2020,

where everyone was kind of in it together. Yeah. You know, I knew what it was like to be in March, 2020, where everyone was kind of in it together. Yeah. You know, I knew what it was like to be in Wuhan, China, what it was like to be in New York city. Everyone was locked down, everyone was scared, everyone was uncertain about what was gonna happen. Sure. Then very, very quickly, it just came back to god damn it.

I know, so quick. We will go negative quick, but yeah, that slap was wild and that was kind of cool for comedy because you had to hear about it. You know, Chris Rock's already a great orator. Now we're going to hear him talk about this that we all know about. And it's kind of like Richard Pryor, he lit his hair on fire and went to jail in the seventies. And he did a special about it. And it was probably the best special of all time. It's called Live in concert. And he talks about the whole thing, but he does it hilariously.

He shoots his car, he hits his wife, he does drugs, it's, he goes to jail, it's great. It's interesting that you need everyone to have an insight about one thing. It's like if everyone, well, I guess this is one of the reasons why COVID and masks and vaccines and stuff was such a popular talking point because you know that everyone knows what you're talking about. Yes, yes, totally.

So the buy-in, you know, if you start doing a joke about some obscure skater that you liked in the nineties, you don't have sufficient background information for it to be funny. Yeah. For it to really be interesting unless it's a super accessible story. But yeah, that's the, that's the consistent trend. When something happens that's completely global, it's so easy for people to wrap themselves around that narrative. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, it's the same as the Taylor Swift. I was just going to say that. I was just going to say that. It's the Super Bowl, so it's already this huge thing. Plus the biggest entertainer of our time is dating that fucking quarterback or whatever, not the quarterback, that's Mahomes, whatever he is, Kelsey.

And it's like, we're all in on this. Some people hate her, some people love that whole thing. It's fun to come back and be a country again. You can bet, I didn't realize this because America's a crazy place. You can bet on anything. You can bet on the coin toss. You can bet on whether there'd be a streaker.

Did you see that guy? I saw that. Who bet that there would be a streaker and he then struck. Oh, I didn't know that was him. I think that that's the truth. Oh, that's illegal. I might've been, is it?

Well, you can't fuck with the betting like that. Try and fucking stop me. Okay, well I made a bunch of money on Usher because I bet he would take his shirt off and he did. And I bet- You're kidding me. Yeah, I bet something else. Where do you go to bet this? I did it in the room, but there's all these websites for it.

But I did it, it was like a bunch of comedians at a Superbowl party and I went and I was like, I bet he takes his shirt off. One guy's like, I'll take that bet. We're doing cam like a bookie in there. It was great. But yeah, yeah, the betting is fun. How many times it's gonna cut to Taylor Swift.

Whether or not someone's gonna show a Bud Light on camera. Right, right. All that shit. I know, I know, I love that. I swear you could do, whether the two captains would shake hands at the start, what the order of different songs was going to be, whether there was going

to be fireworks, like in everything, there's nothing that's not up for betting, which is wild because in the UK sports betting is something that's completely ubiquitous. Really? It is everywhere. You can, there's basically no age restriction apart from you'd need to do ID on your mobile betting app, but you can bet on absolutely everything. It's not as inventive as what you guys do, but we have betting shops. Oh, so on the high street, there will be, um, Corral or Coral, uh, bet Fred.

Uh, there'll be a couple of others and guys will just go in and they'll have sport or horse racing, but this isn't like a, we used to have that OTB off track betting, but it's kind of gone now, but you have sports bars or bet like sports betting bars. This is different to that. Cause there's no booze being served. You can't, there's no refreshments in there. It's not an enjoyable place. It's purely there.

Those are addicts. For the act of, yeah. It's purely there for the act. And there'll be a fruit machine, slot machine thing in the corner. But it's not like this is dependent on state by state basis. Wow.

This is just everywhere. Are you glad you're not a gambling addict? I mean, that is fucked, that'll fuck you up. Of all of the maladies that you can have, like alcoholism and gambling, I think you should, we should all wake up every single day and be like, thank God that I didn't get that one. I know.

I was watching, who was I watching? Dana White talking to Kyle and Bob Mennery on their podcast they did a couple of weeks ago. And they're talking about Steve from the Nelk Boys. And he's got this sort of gambling compulsion. And I think Dana's got a bit of that sort of, he's got a bit of the darkness in him too when it comes to gambling.

He regularly bets 50 grand a hand on a blackjack. Oh Jesus. I mean, he's got to be a zillionaire, but still. Yeah. I mean, even he says that for him that's squeaky bum time. Yeah, yeah. Squeaky bum time. The worst kids show of all time.

Squeaky bum time. He kind of describes this state that Steve must get in. And it sounds like it's coming from a, like, I know this because I get in it type thing. And he's like, when he's, I called it like rolling or something like that. When he's doing this, you have one job and the job is to get him out of there.

And you can't do it this way and you can't do it that way. Cause he's gonna say that and he's gonna do the whatever. So he's going to say that and he's going to do the whatever. So he's got and he's on my, I think that this is, it sounds to me like a guy who has not only been through it and wanted people to get him out of it, but it's also had to talk himself out of it too. And apparently Steve had been at this set

of tables for 24 hours and you just think, God, I'm so glad that that's not a pathology that I have. A hundred percent. Yeah. I've lost so much in gambling, just with bachelor party, Vegas, friends. You just fuck around blackjack and I always lose. So I just like, ah, I'd rather save $500 than a fuck around on this blackjack table.

So I'm with you. So glad we don't have it. And do you have a thing where you're like, this is my one. Issue that I need to get over, I guess kind of like phone use. Phone is bad. Yeah. I find myself, you know, you'll be on a plane and you'll get it out and you'll scroll and I don't have a signal.

What am I doing? I know I do the same thing. It's embarrassing. I think Heidman taught me this. I, I used to call it an addiction, but I don't think it is. I think it's a compulsion. Ooh, yes. The reason is that, you know, you'll know where the apps are

on your screen. Yeah. And you'll scroll. It's compulsive. It's a compulsive. Completely. Compulsive behavior that has, you know, reward attached to it. So it's somewhere between a compulsion and an addiction.

And yeah, that, that. It's like a cigarette. You know, the cigarette guys on a plane, they have to pick up the pack and they kind of flip it around a little bit. They know they can't smoke. Okay. And well, I guess they're vaping now, but like a lot of guys I know grew up smoking and when they couldn't smoke, they would just touch the pack and a similar, you're not going to, they'd put it on their lip. They put it back in and a similar to the phone. You're like, Oh, there's the YouTube button.

Can't see it. Can't see it. And even I'll just hit it and it'll come up as white and flowy, you know, and I'm still playing with it. It's weird. There was an interesting study done on air hostesses or whatever they're called. S you would-

Flight attendant. Flight attendant, thank you very much. Flying from Dubai to Paris and Dubai to New York, and they wanted to look at cravings for cigarettes. And what they presumed was that the longer time it was from takeoff, the greater the craving would be. So the longer flight you should see both flights tracking at the same speed, and then one should be able

to satisfy the craving, and the other craving should just continue to go up. What it turned out was that the longer flight had onsets of cravings that arrived way later. And what it reframes around cravings for addictions are that your craving is very heavily mediated by when your next expected hit is going to be rather than when your last hit was.

Now, when you have like a physiological dependency, like let's say you're on heroin, you're gonna know if it's been 48 hours. But with something like smoking, if you know that you've got six hours to wait until your next cigarette, right now you're probably not gonna be feeling it too much, but an hour before and 30 minutes before,

it's really gonna ramp up. So it was all about the next expected hit. That was what really determined craving. It wasn't about how long it had been since the last one. How long it's going to be. Yes, because that's where the dopamine comes in. They think, I can't wait until I get off this plane. I'm going to go downstairs

and I'm going to light that motherfucker up. And I'm like, you know? Like that's what they're thinking about. Whoa, that's good. That makes sense. But to me, when I'm, we were sitting on the runway for a minute and I still have internet and I really,

I like gorged, you know, cause you're like, I'm not gonna be gone for four hours. So I'm gonna really take it in. And then you get, I did a United flight, you get free text. So now I'm texting people I hate just so they can respond back. Ah!

You know, cause I, I'm like, oh, what text have I put off? Let me knock that out. But you're right. And the problem with the phone is, we all know it's harmful. It's bad for you. It fries your brain, but you need it. You go to the restaurant, they go,

we don't have paper menu. You go to the airplane, we need your boarding pass. You gotta pay with your phone sometimes. So like, no other drug is like that. You know, it's not like, hey, if you wanna do your taxes, you gotta smoke this crack pipe. You're like, no, no. You know, and the phone is such a c***

because it has the balls to have a meditation app on it too. What a dirty move. I always said, that's like putting a button on a gun called a safety, you know? Like, what are you doing to me? You know you're f're fucking ruining my life. And now you're going to put a meditation app on this thing that's ruined all of our attention spans.

Come on. It's evil. They got us. They got us by the balls. We can't, you can't not use a phone. Yes. One of my friends has a solution. He calls, he has two phones.

One's the cocaine phone and the other is the kale phone. Oh, I love this. Yeah. So he has two phones, one's the cocaine phone and the other is the kale phone. Oh, I love this. Yeah. So he has two numbers. One has got email and messaging and social media and all of that stuff on. And then the other one has just got Uber and Kindle and Audible and PayPal or whatever. Your basic your basic stuff. So you can live with that one. Right. But the other one is all of the limbic hijack.

That's great. Dopamine. We need that with wives. You know, you need like a wife who has your kids and cooks and cleans and has, you know, whatever. Then you need like the whore wife that you can really. The freak. Yeah, the one that you choke and jizz on. Yeah, lady and the freak.

Yeah. That would be nice. The Mormons figured that one out. Hell yeah. Mark Normand, ladies and gentlemen. Hey. What's the people got? What have you got coming up? I got all kinds. I'm all over the road. marknormancomedy.com. I'm coming to your town. We're doing theaters. We're everywhere. And I got podcasts. We Might Be Drunk, Tuesdays of Stories, Buy a Bottle of Bodega Cat. I saw you had a couple

out there. Appreciate it. So it's a whiskey. And yeah, check me out on the socials. I'll be offending someone. Hell yeah. Appreciate you man. Praise Allah. Thank you.