The Biggest Problem in the Universe: Uncucked - Episode 18

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

Welcome to the biggest problem in the universe. I'm Maddox. With me is Dick Masterserson. Hey, what's up, buddy? So this episode, we have a very special guest with us. We have Ryan Holliday. Now, he is the directing marketer for American Apparel, the director of marketing, rather, for American Apparel.

And he has a huge body of work. He's written two books, case studies. Rather, I should say that some of your work has been used for case studies for Google, for YouTube, and even, Twitter has used your work for case studies. Yes. Even Twitter. Yeah. Wow. I should reverse that order because Google's more impressive.

Yeah. Yeah. But you've been written about in New York Times, Fast Company, Ad Age. You've worked with Tim Ferriss, the author of The Four Hour Work Week, Tucker Max, which many of my listeners know. And even Robert Green, the author of 48 Laws of Power and Mastery. Whoa. I know that one. Yeah. It's a big deal, man.

And your own books, you have the best-selling, Trust Me, I'm Lying, Confessions of a Media Manipulator. And The Obstacle is the Way, the Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. Say hello. Yeah, it's good to be here. I've been a big fan for a really long time. I read your stuff when I was in high school. Were you talking to me or Maddox?

Definitely not you. Yeah, well, thank you. My friends had that sticker in the back of their pickup truck. Oh, yeah, my Maddox logo sticker. That's cool. They didn't know that you knew me. Well, I didn't then, but now I do. So we got introduced through my editor,

who was also Tucker Max's editor and Dick's editor. That's how we're all kind of friends together. Jeremy Ruby Strauss. He worked on all our books together. And you helped market Tucker's book. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, I think that's how we finally got introduced. He's the godfather of fratire, Jeremy Ruby Strauss, right?

I guess, yeah. And a bunch of other huge books. I mean, he's like the guy behind the guy on like a million huge books. He's done everything He's one of the few people Who I can genuinely say Get It like in the publishing industry Which is very rare

So and that's how Did you work? You didn't work on Tucker's movie Just is just like No I worked in the movie too Oh the movie is all cool All right Well thank you for coming

This is our very Our very second guest With that resume I cannot wait to see your problem All right Yeah Yeah this is gonna be great All right So let's get to the comments from

No wait who won Who won last week Okay Yeah Number one last week was nepotism. Yeah, big problem. Followed by the Parents Television Council.

God damn it. Two for me. And then your shitty passengers problem, Dick, which you didn't even mention a single shitty passenger. You. I'm a great passenger. I save lives. And Jennifer Lawrence's Tits is your last one.

Which a lot of people called you out on for, they didn't like the phrasing of that problem. It's kind of all year. All right, well, whatever, I lost. You lost. I don't need to know why I lost. I just need to know that I lost. I mean, why it's not important.

You're not going to learn anything from it. No, I'm not even going to try. Yeah. All right, so I got some comments. This one's from Buddy Wagner. He says, Dick, dude, Nick Cage sucks hardcore donkey nuts. I've actually seen Nick Cage fight through a crowd of people to get at a huge donkey scrotum and choke it down.

Watching that was better than all of his movies put together. Really? What's that guy's name? His name is Buddy Wagner, or Wagner. Buddy Wackett. You didn't like Con Air. You can honestly say that Con Air wasn't like one of the best movies you've ever seen.

That's a lie. That's false. Dick, he didn't parse his words here. He said he... The Rock? The Rock is not Donkey Scrotum. The Rock is a great movie. I don't know. He said he's seen all his movies

and he'd rather watch Nick Cage suck a big donkey scrotum. So it says he didn't parse his words. Has he seen National Treasure? No. Also good. All three of them. Are they really... Is this bullshit or are they really good?

I kind of think it's bullshit out with all three of them come. I got a comment for you. Kyle Tarsia, nepotism is only flawed when someone unqualified is the only one benefiting. For instance, the only reason Dick is on the podcast with Maddox is because of nepotism. So he's got you there.

You know, Dick, I actually brought that same comment in. And I was going to say that maybe, He's right, you know, you are on the show because of nepotism. So maybe we should have an informal interview process with all the listeners. Okay, let me tell you something, Kyle, and anyone else who thinks that, if it wasn't for me, this would just be a figment of Maddox's imagination. Just like every amazing idea this guy has, it takes some asshole to squeeze it out of him. Yeah, yeah, well, there's some history back there.

We have six, actually, this is kind of what we've never talked about this, but we have six previously recorded episodes that we shot, that we recorded a year ago before we actually relaunch this, which is actually something they say that all podcasts should do, record six episodes and throw them away, because they're probably going to be shit. It's like the same thing with writing. You shouldn't, like, if you're publishing everything you write,

you're not holding yourself to a high enough standard. Absolutely, absolutely. That's, I did a Reddit, excuse me, I did a Reddit, AMA, ask me anything, and people were asking me why my content isn't as prolific as other writers. I said, look, nobody cares if you publish 100 different articles. They only care about the one or two good ones. Right. Harper Lee wrote one book. I think also the reason you're not as prolific as other writers is because of Dark Souls

and Dark Souls, too. Mostly, yeah. Okay. That is fair, actually. Not quality control so much as Dark Souls. Yep. Well, so you read my nepotism comment. I got one from Ryan Williams Smale. He says, thanks for the good show and thanks for the audiobook.

I got the Mountain of Madness because it sounds like the tape from Evil Dead. So that was just this guy talking about one of the books he got from our new sponsors. What do you have? Let's see, I got Ben West, Dick, you need to marry that Korean woman. You aren't going to find any better than that on Tinder. That's probably true. Yeah. Although I think I saw her on Tinder.

Yeah. You know, I was talking to her about Tinder today. Yeah. She goes just for hookups. And I was like, I mean, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no.

No. I got one from Nobody Really It's got to be a real name On this one He just asked Whose phone kept ringing the whole show It wasn't mine

Dick, do you know anything about that? Sean? No, Dick's phone was vibrating No, it wasn't! My phone was not vibrating It was like an earthquake over here What the fuck is this? It did

With your fucking vibrations the entire time Because I mixed the thing And it was... Yeah, I heard it a couple of times Why do you automatically assume it was mine? Because it was sitting right next to your hand No, this is it. It was Sean's. This is exactly what Sean would do if it's. He jumped right in with it was mine. I saw it on the table. It was vibrating the entire show. This is unbelievable.

My phone's on silent behind me. My phone's on Do Not Disturb. My phone's in the toilet. Hey, we got a moving along. We got a really awesome fan art. Did you guys see this? I woke up, I woke up still drunk like in the middle of the morning and found this pop up on my Twitter. And it was like the awesomest thing I'd ever seen. I retweeted it immediately. Sean, have you seen this? No. Here, check it out.

It was made by a dude named Tim, French guy, a cup of Tim. A Cup of Tim.com, and on Twitter at a Cup of Tim, it's awesome. He's got our problems on there. I guess we're having dinner in hell. Yeah, there's every reference of the show ever, show Ryan, too. We'll pose this on the website. It's pretty good likeness. Tim, Tim is an illustrator I've known for a long time.

I actually met him out in France when I was out there, and he's a really cool dude, not too cool, but just cool enough. So yeah, his work is incredible. I've always been a big fan of his work, and he's been a big fan of mine. So thank you, Tim, for that fan art. Have you ever got creepy fan art before? Yes. Oh, my gosh.

Like what? Just me in various sexual positions with animals. And I got one one time where they were really trying to draw a bad caricature of me, but they, like, they exaggerated my nose and the circles. under my eyes and my baldness. And then I looked at it, I'm like, that's actually pretty good. They pretty much nailed me. Yeah, anyway.

So should we get to the problems? Yep. What do you got this week? The TSA. The Transportation Security Administration? That's right. Just to make sure. All right.

Yeah, and I'm going to make it very simple. Everyone hates them. Everyone thinks they're a joke. I think we all know that. But here's why I brought it in as a problem. Because I realized this week that they've ruined planes. They ruined flying. Yeah.

They ruined man-powered flight for all of us. Yeah. So I was sitting around with a bunch of, like, you know, adults, not people older than us in the previous generation. They were telling me that they had a, they got a sale one time or something, when, like, United Airlines was going global or something like that. They had tickets where for $700 you could get unlimited flights in, like, 10 days,

which seems like it would be, Awesome. Go wherever you want, wherever they fly for 10 days. And I realized that if the airlines were to do that right now, I wouldn't buy it because the idea of waiting two to three hours and going through all the lines and going through all the TSA bullshit would completely ruin the experience for me. But was that $700 in like $1952? So it was really like ridiculously expensive? Ryan, let me tell you something about numbers. I'm not very good with them. All right. It could have been, it could have been 500.

It could have been... Either way, if it was two grand today, would you pay it? For unlimited travel? Yeah. Yeah, that's actually a good deal, Dick. Right. That's a great deal. Yeah, I mean, that's like, that's the conversion, right?

$2,000, $3,000? Yeah. No, $700 and $1952 would be like for ridiculous. Oh, the 70s, yeah. Yeah, about two, three grand at most, right? For three grand, if you go on three flights, you've paid for that. But what other form of transport? is pleasant.

I feel like you're laying something at the feet of the TSA that every other form of transportation also fails. So this is what you could do before the TSA got there. You just walk on the flight. Yeah, and planes got hijacked all the time. And then they crashed a bunch of them into buildings and started 10 years of war. The TSA is not preventing that. The TSA is not preventing planes getting hijacked and flying into buildings. I'll tell you what the problem is.

It's Canada. Okay, so when I was going through an airline security check in Canada one time, I walked all the way up to my gate with my luggage in hand, and I realized something's wrong because I still have my luggage. And so I turned around and went back to the security station that I somehow just walked past. I said, am I supposed to go through here? They're like, yeah. They said, where'd you come from?

I'm like, over there. Like, how did you get there? I'm like, I just walked past you guys. So I did some research. Yeah. Along those lines, 70% of weapons make it through. TSA. How do they know which weapons got through and didn't?

Right? So they keep all of the internal testing they do on the TSA. That's all private. By the way, somebody audited them, and they found that the TSA was getting alerted when the undercover testing crew was coming in to bring their fake weapons on board and test them out. So they did a big investigation of this.

Nobody got fired. Nobody was found to be at fault. They raised the contract. So that's who's watching The Watchers. a company that lets them know when they're going to come test them so they don't lose their contract. There's that other stat where it's like

the TSA has caught like one terrorist in like 10 years and like 400 TSA agents have been like fired for stealing. Yeah. It's like a ridiculous. So that's a point in your favor.

Thank you. Yeah. So but on your your criticism of all forms of travel, they're all pretty, what about bike riding? Do you like bike riding? writing, Ryan? No, I'm not poor.

Okay. Or a girl, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. I don't live at the beach and I'm not poor, so I don't ride a bike. He's made me so angry. Oh, Maddox. He's a huge, he's a huge, he's a, you can't.

You ride a bike? He's a best way. It's a best way around L.A. It's the best way around, yeah. Yeah, but that's because L.A. sucks for transportation. Yeah. Yeah. If I lived in, in, like, any, any place rural, like in Utah, I hardly ever rode my bike. Sure.

Because it was just miserable, and everyone's such an asshole. But out, here you're constantly stuck in gridlock because people like Dick don't use their horns. I'm a big, I'm a big horn using. Your honker, thank God. Yes, smart guy. See, Ryan, head of American Apparel, director of marketing, and he uses a horn. Yeah.

Do you guys have pre-check? You know what pre-check is? Pre-check lets you skip, you pay like $400. You go through a background check, you get fingerprinted, and then you get a skip. You don't have to take your shoes off. You don't have to take your laptop out, and you go through a shorter line. I thought they were ruining that. They're ruining it because they let like old people go through sometimes who are like not a threat.

But the point is it's like TSA sucks. This is the genius of government, right? The TSA sucks so hard that then you can pay to get around it. And then if you have money, you skip it. And like it, the airport in Austin is like seven minutes from my house. And security takes me about three minutes. So I can leave like 10 minutes before my flight boards. Oh, that's beautiful. It's amazing.

Because you have that precheck. Because, yeah, I paid for it. And then if you pay for global entry at the same time, then you don't have to go through U.S. Customs when you reenter the U.S. Oh, which is just the biggest bureaucracy, U.S. Customs is such bullshit. It makes traveling miserable. Everywhere I go in the world,

I've never seen a bureaucracy as worse as America's customs. It's almost like a mini DMV in the airport. Yeah. Every other customs I go through anywhere in the world, you just breeze right through. Denmark, Sweden, France, you just breeze right through. In America, just stand in this long fucking line, and then they have people barking orders at you.

And they never check anything anyway. I was just bullshit. I just put down pornography for everything I'm going to declare. I'm like, I just looks at it. I'm like, yeah, dude, I just got a whole bunch of porn. What are you going to do?

It's like, welcome to America, fuck you, waiting line. Yeah, welcome to America waiting line. Yeah, we suck. Yeah. But then you go to some crappy country and it's like in and out because they want you to come there.

Have you ever traveled in the Middle East? No. Either of you, have you, have you... No. So if you travel in the Middle East, that is security like it used to be. They don't give... They don't check anything.

They don't go to fuck. Because they know, no one's bombing. them, huh? Right? Right. No one's bombing them. No one's hijacking their shit. Right. So they're just breezing people through. They don't even check. They just kind of wave a wand at you. It beeps.

They don't check what beeped. They just keep waving people through. They don't give a shit. Yeah. Middle East is a great place to travel. Yeah, unless you get on some like Malaysian air flight. Oh. Yeah. Well, and people were demonizing the pilots for that. Which one? Because they flew over Ukraine. Oh, yeah. Ukraine. There were other flights in the area

they didn't get shot. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Well, I like that, too. It's like when the first plane disappeared, we're, like, mad that that could happen. It's like 50 years ago, like planes were just disappearing all the time.

And then now it's like, how dare they? It's like, that's what happens, man. You're flying a bullet through the sky. Right. Some of them aren't going to land. And the reason it's such big news is because it happens so infrequently. Sure.

No one would cover this if it happened every day. How long has Amelia Earhart been missing? Yeah. Why don't you guys find Amelia Earhart and then bitch about Malaysia Airlines? Yeah, right. They've only had like a couple months to search for that one. Yeah, and she was the pilot.

You know who to blame there. So, Dick, what do you propose? Like, what can be done about this? Like, what? No, nothing can be done about it. We're screwed. Once you get a government organization going, there's no stopping it. It's like out of control avalanche.

What do you think about... I'll tell you what's going to happen. What do I think about what? What do you think about profiling? Because they talked about this after 9-11. They said, look, we shouldn't be testing Midwestern grandmas. We shouldn't be checking kids or any of these people. We should start profiling just people who look sketchy and ethnic.

And which, by the way, right after 9-11, I got flagged for random searches every single time I flew. And I went to stand in this line of other people who randomly got flagged. And they all had tunics and beards and weird hats. And they all looked super Middle Eastern, super ethnic. Were you offended by that? As a guy who looked like that, did it bother you? No, it didn't bother me. because I get it. I'm like, all right, you know, if I haven't shaved for a couple weeks, yeah, go ahead and time me down. I don't think it would bother me anyway either. That's why I don't really care about it. It happened to me. I got the full private room pat down on everything.

Well, sorry, Sean, someone's phone just went off. Literally. Okay. All right. All right. Hold on. I can explain. I can explain that. I can explain that one. I think we can all explain. I thought, guess who just won the race to zero credibility. I thought that Do Not Disturb meant no buzzing either. But apparently on Facebook Messenger, it doesn't mean that. It goes ahead and buzz you. Do you listen to the podcast at double speed, too? Oh, you guys.

I think it runs in the family. Oh, boy. Yeah, it's the iPhone thing. Actually, I just heard another podcast other day where the guy was trying to figure out just how to silence his fucking phone. And it took him five minutes and three people to figure out how to just do silence. And that's it. How did he figure it out eventually? Tell me the answer.

By, no, trial. You want to know. You got racially profiled, Sean? Yeah, why would you get racial profiled? You looked like the widest Irish Greek man ever. I have no idea. Other than if anybody's ever been to the Philadelphia airport, they know what I'm talking about. It's just one of the worst airports in America.

I've been there. I don't remember the worst people and the worst layout. Yeah, I got the full. They said they detected a foreign substance. What was that? Seamen? They actually don't know. And then honestly, like, the guy, you know, I went in the,

I went in the room and they took my shoes and they put them in this like oven looking thing. I shit you not. And I said, what are you checking for? And he goes, explosives? And, you know, knowing that I had no explosives on me, I was like, okay, that's, you know, that's cool. And then the other cop who had to like grab. Not cops. TSA people, right?

They want you to think they're cops. No, they're not. They're just dressed a little different for the people who actually take it in the private room, I think. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, you're right. and he like hemmed and hawed about that he had to touch me in my my private areas. Like he was really nervous about it. Like, you know, because probably thought it, you're an attractive guy.

You're packing. Well, I mean, you want to. People don't know. I'm saying that he was probably really nervous about. I'm like, dude, just do what you got to do. Like, he thought it was a much bigger deal than me. Like, I was like, like, I'm not going to get a boner, you know. What if he did, though?

Well, then, you know, I don't know. then I would have just intentionally missed my flight, I guess. To wrap it up, they said, the guy goes, you know, this happens about three times a day. The sensor just goes off and detects a substance that isn't there. Whenever they see someone, they want to molest in the back room. Which is basically what happened. So, anyway, it giggling pervert molested you, took your shoes off, probably because he wanted to see your feet. Yeah, I don't, I don't.

Well, it sounds like you were the opposite of racially profiled. The machine went off. You're making people like me look bad. That's true, actually. The machine dimed me off. You know what, I'll say this, though. There are a disproportionate amount of hot black people who work at TSA, right? What the fuck are you talking about?

Where are you going? Right. Sam's, this beautiful woman that Ryan's brought into studios nodding her head like, this is true. Yeah, what are you talking about? Thank you. Disproportionate number of hot black women at TSA? Yeah. They're just...

Are they hiding in all the enormously fat black women? What the fuck are you talking about? I don't know, man. Maybe I've just had the luck, because I'm going through the right security checkpoints. It's like your shallow howl or something. Maybe you just have really well-stand. Do you go to the security checkpoint at Foreplay

beside L-A-X, or do you go through L-AX? Oh, that's not part of L-AX? No, Forplay is a strip club. Oh, man, that might be the problem, yeah. Because they always want to check my wallet at Foreplay. Yeah. Anyway, Dick, okay. TSA costs.

I wrote shit down. 7.6 billion dollars. That's so much money they're getting for this. $7.6 billion. Yeah. To molest Sean. What did 9-11 cost, by the area? 120 billion, something like that?

What do you mean? 9-11. The cost us are innocents. What? Okay, Dick. Thank you. Like just the straight infrastructure cost, or do you roll in the war in Iraq in there? No, let's say, let's end it at just the immediate aftermath.

The first, say, 30 days to two months. So the loss in air travel, business. Wall Street. How many billions of dollars? I heard it's like $1.20. It's got to be like trillions, right? Trilion? Okay, well, never mind. That argument is gone.

No, yeah. But if we're talking about people's lives, here's something interesting I found. Yeah. This TSA shit is encouraging people to drive versus fly because they have such a pain in the ass. They're just like, ah, fuck it, I'll drive.

And all these extra cars in the road are causing vehicle fatalities. Hmm. I got a number, too. Let me find it. I got his stats for you Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, 6% people more drove

because of the TSA, 129 more people died in like the course of three months in 2002. This dude figured that who's that, who's that stats guy that always does like the weird of stats like for presidential election?

Nate Silver said it was like four fully loaded 737s crashing each year and costing airlines a billion dollars in business. Wow, that is, that's amazing. That's actually really, where did you get that stat from? I don't know.

man the internet gosh dick i mean i got to i got to look this up afterwards but anyway that's an interesting that's really interesting actually yeah so four four airliners are going down the equivalent yeah worth of people dying yep because people are driving because they're bad drivers yeah they're bad drivers they're people who lollygagged they're people who are idling they're a road rage accidents happen man yeah but you know what that you know what's so sad about that statistic too is that People who would otherwise never even travel by just pedestrians. Those are people who are getting killed too. Because one of these, you know, one of those people is going to be an old man who fell asleep at the wheel and drove through a farmer's market.

Yeah, that happens. That happens like twice a year, I feel. I always hear about some old person just, I don't know what happened. And then they wake up in the middle of just a pile of bodies at a farmer's market. And you think those people would be flying if TSA was easier? Maybe. Or if they had family members who cared. Well, that's my problem.

They ruin flying. I think they're going to ruin self-driving cars, too. The TSA will? Yeah. Oh, they might, yeah. I think they're going to get their mitts into buses. I think they're going to get their mitts into sporting events. They're going to fuck that up.

They're going to fuck that up, and I think they're eventually going to fuck up self-driving cars. Yeah. Well, here's hoping they don't. So, Ryan, you're our guest problem this week? Yeah, yeah. Or guest this week who has a problem, rather. Sure. Well, I didn't do my homework. you guys with stats.

I didn't know this is what was required of me. Stats are not necessary to make an argument. Dick, I have pressured Dick into bringing stats, so that's all, yeah. Problem number one could be how fucking hot it is in this room right now. It is pretty hot, yeah. We turn off the AC during the recording. He's covered in sweat.

Yeah, but that's partially anger sweat. Yeah, it's very much anger sweat. It's also mostly booze. There's this, like, sweaty, whiskey smell in the room. Yeah. Well, okay, so what I thought I would talk about is something, this is what my first book is about, which is just how bullshit and corrupt and terrible

the online media space is. Yes. And I think you and I have a lot of agreement about this. Your stuff on BuzzFeed has been awesome. Your shit about... So your stuff on BuzzFeed, sorry, is what? What do you like about his stuff on BuzzFeed? Well, BuzzFeed is one of the worst journalism outfits to ever exist.

It started purely to troll our Facebook feeds. It was a way of selling sort of cute nostalgia and pirated content essentially that has now raised, what, $100 million in venture capital funding. More, they just got a new round of funding. Yeah, like another $50 million. And at the same time, did you hear they had to delete 5,000 of their own articles?

Because they don't even meet BuzzFeed's incredibly low standards. Wow, that's amazing. That's like people going through their Twitter account, deleting tweets because they didn't meet the tweet. I mean, first off that you would have 5,000 articles and you're only like a couple years old, is like kind of says something. And then that you would have 5,000

that don't meet your standards is like appalling. The standards of BuzzFeed. Right, right. So BuzzFeed wrote 5,000 articles that even BuzzFeed thinks sucks. And they tried to delete them sneakily so people wouldn't see. And of course people caught them.

Sure. So, and what else have you written about BuzzFeed? Oh, you did that great thing about ABC News with the Robin Williams thing. Yeah. Which then everyone on the internet ripped off. So sort of the thesis of my first book is the economics of creating content online have sort of totally corrupted and

taken over news and media in general. So it's what people are chattering about online that drives the offline media conversation, the 24-7 media cycle. That is all driven by the economics of the internet. And the economics of the internet are essentially a million blogs trying to be heard over a million other blogs. And within that, every, most, the, majority of bloggers at these places like at BuzzFeed, at Gocker, they're paid on the page view, right? They're paid or their pay is somehow tied to how much traffic their articles do on a monthly basis, which essentially makes everything that they publish a conflict of interest in one way or another, right? They could write the story the truthful way or they could

write it the way that gets them the most traffic. And this is a force that's sort of acting on the information that all of us get as a society and it creates this weird feedback loop where we're acting on shit that some 20-year-old college grad from Sarah Lawrence churns out at a basically New York sweatshop for content. Right. Yeah, it's on, by the way, thank you so much for very eloquently spelling that out. So creating this, it's almost like a race to the bottom with these click headlines. And that's why I feel like on my own website, when I don't have any ads on my website,

it's always been that kind of platform. I don't really care if you click or not. Right. People, people, I lose fans all the time. They send me emails, like, hey Maddox, I've been a fan for 10 years. Your last article sucked. You're really gone downhill. I'm going to stop reading.

And I always write back, I say, adios, dipshit. You're not doing me. Yeah, of course they keep reading. They want attention so bad. Yeah, of course they're going to keep reading. Because what else is out there? BuzzFeed? Well, it's like, look, you ultimately monetize your content in a way that creates good incentives.

You sell stuff to people who willingly buy it, right? You sell T-shirts. Yeah. You sell, what else do you sell? T-shirts, stickers, posters, books, comics, yeah. And so that creates a relationship of reciprocal value between you and your fans. You're not trying to generate a bunch of traffic to create a graph that makes it look like traffic is going through the roof so then you can turn around and sell your crappy company to Time Warner or AOL. You know, and then all of a sudden they've got this sort of done on their hand.

That's what these companies aren't trying to become sustainable businesses. they are like essentially Ponzi schemes. It's a cash grab. Yeah, totally. That's all it is. So Dick last week brought in a problem. He was talking about Jennifer's, the celebrity leaks, right? Jennifer Lawrence's tits.

Say the whole thing if you're going to bring in my problems. Thank you. I brought in and researched. Not you. Thank you for researching, going through the effort of looking at all the pictures. Yeah, that must have been hard for you. Yeah, it must have been real hard. No, I was not hard.

That was part of the problem. Yeah, so Dick wasn't turned on enough. So here's the thing. All these companies, Gawker, Huffington Post, They all wrote these, and even you said Forbes, right, Dick? They wrote these big screeds about how awful everybody is for looking at these pictures. And then there was some charity organization that even turned down money from Redditors who somehow profited from the server.

Even now, Wired Magazine came out with an article saying that Reddit paid for X number of months of hosting through the scandal, right? But they're also profiting. These people who are reporting about, even just saying don't look at the pictures, you're still profiting as long as you run ads on your website. Well, let me ask you this, Ryan, because my thinking is, and I'll say it first, and then give my example, when has it been any different? Because you said online specifically. Do you think it was different?

Do you think that online media has affected the offline media in such a way as to cause this problem? Specifically because yesterday, I'm sitting in this restaurant, throwing back a couple beers, and I'm watching Anderson Cooper on mute slam Ray Rice over and over while they play the slow-mo of him punching his fiancé over and over and over. I'm like, you guys are just making money off this awful video all afternoon.

Yeah. That's all I'm seeing here. Yeah, so what I talk about in the book is, is if you look at the history of media, if you go back to the late 1800s early 19, In the 1900s, media is mostly sold not by subscriptions. It's newspapers printed every day, and the whole idea of extra, extra read all about it, right,

is comes from newsboys shouting at the corner trying to get you to buy this paper versus that paper. And that intense competition, rather than like, hey, I'm a New York Times man, it gets delivered to me on my doorstep, which is sort of what ensued later, is what creates the yellow journalism scandals of that period, right? So Faddy Arbuckle, the famous movie star,

is crushed by this sort of fake, fake rape allegations in New York, or in Los Angeles. The Spanish-American War is largely driven by sensational media coverage. So, but the New York Times emerges in that period as a, as a contrast to all that. Like the slogan, all the news that's fit to print is a statement against that kind of crappy journalism.

And so, like, when you look at the Pentagon Papers, when the Pentagon Papers leak, the New York Times story is like, interesting archive of documents related to the Vietnam War surfaces. It's like this super low-key headline for what was a world-changing bomb show. Because the New York Times has

X million number of subscribers at this time. They don't need to be sensational and ridiculous. Now Jezebel or Gawker gets some tiny leak about whatever and it's an all-caps headline screaming about how this is like the worst thing that ever happened. And so I like

to sort of contrast those two things. I think it's interesting you're talking about CNN. Well, who broke that story? It's TMZ Sports breaks the Ray Rice video. And they put their watermark over the video. I'm like, are you guys fucking kidding me? You've got a video of a gigantic violent man beating a woman unmercifully and you put your watermark on it? Did nobody pause and say, wait a minute. I don't think this is appropriate. Like, I didn't even want to see the video after like a dozen times. Yeah, yeah. Twelve was enough for you. Yeah. And that's, when I'm saying it's inappropriate, you've fucked up.

Sure. Yeah. Dick is pretty much. So at what point, look at what they're essentially doing. They've created a universe where, or we have, I guess, where associating your brand with a man punching a woman in the face is a positive thing. Positive. Yeah. Sure.

Well, and what's crazy is the way in which these media outlets now sort of dominate everything we're talking about. So it, like with the celebrity nude scandal, right? Like, for the last few years, celebrity scandals have been leaking all the time, right? Like Scarlett Johansson photos, whatever. None of these people have problem leaking the photos if it's one celebrity. And then, like, the Holkogen tape, like Gawker went to court to defend their right to mock and post a video of Hulk Hogan having sex. And they actively told their viewers to read it to watch the video.

Yeah, right, right. And then 25 celebrities get hacked and they realize it's sort of beyond the pale. And now all of a sudden, they're admonishing up. us for daring to look at these photos. Yeah. Like, we're the perverts. Like, they didn't create the fucking market for this shit. Create billion-dollar brands or multi-million dollar brands off the back of it.

And then when Perez Hilton can't get first to the story, now all of a sudden he's like, oh, I won't post these. It's like, dude, you posted underage upskirt photos of Miley Cyrus like three or four years ago. You had no problem. But then this one breaks on Imager and Reddit, and all of a sudden you want to talk about how evil and corrupt and perverted it is. They're the worst. Yeah, exactly.

That's actually what were we going to say to this. I was going to say that that's pretty much what I meant to say last week. All of that stuff. All of that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, instead of the old victim blaming, huh? That was, Dick's argument was like, well, they shouldn't have the pictures. I'm like, yeah, but when people's bank accounts get compromised, you don't say they

shouldn't have bank accounts. People are allowed to have properties. People should be able to take naked photos of themselves. Yeah, you should be able to do whatever you want. Right. You can. Yeah. You can. Surprise, surprise.

Your shit got hacked. Boo-hoo. Yeah, but look, I don't think that having a weak password is any excuse to say, well, it's their fault. And who knows if they had a weak password or they just exploit a shitty ICloud, which is super shitty anyway. But, anyway, I don't want to get on an Apple rant because that's coming. Okay. But, Ryan, I want to ask you... Literally for him, that's coming.

An Apple rant. Oh, I've had a heyday this week with the iPhone 6 announcement. So, Ryan, I want to ask you, in your... in your book, trust me, I'm lying. Is there some way, is there some particularly egregious way that they are manipulating media, be it traditional or online, like to get there, to get these clicks? Well, so the book is about like stunts that I've pulled with online media. So like with the book, one of the things that I did was I went out, there's this service

called helper reporter out where basically lazy journalists go like, hey, I need a source about like almond farming. And then like some almond farmer goes, oh, like, let me be your source, right? And so it's basically like Craigslist for lazy journalists. So one of the stunts I did for the book to promote it is that I just went on and I pretended to be an expert about literally anything for like six months. And then it got so easy. I just had I paid my assistant to pretend to me and do it for me. Like I did this under my real name, having announced and gotten a ton of press for writing a book about media manipulation.

Wow. I was quoted in ABC News, Good Morning, America. America, Yahoo, I was on 2020, and then the New York Times. I was an expert in the New York Times about vinyl records, and I know literally nothing about vinyl records.

I mean, I'm 27 years old. Do you remember some of your records? Yeah, I was like an expert about boat winterization, like how to prepare your boat for like the coming winter for this like Canadian newspaper. So I pretended to be this source for like months and months. And then I revealed it when the book came out and everyone's like, oh, you lied.

How are they supposed to know? It's like maybe if you want to know about vinyl records, you call a record store or a record label. You don't troll for sources from random fucking people on the internet. I mean, the slogan for this website is, no such thing as free publicity there is with Haro. And so, like, this is how your sausage gets made, right? And so that's what I sort of talk about in the book is the way in which these places create this content, which then your average reader thinks is real. Like you think if you're reading and you see a quoted expert in the New York Times, they must have some credentials.

They're not just a random guy pretending to know about vinyl records based on what he Googled three seconds before he emailed this reporter. You would hope, yes. Yeah, you would hope. That's the paper of record in the United States. Yeah. And here I am quoted. And the New York Times does not, even after this,

does not ban its reporters from using this service. I heard a long time ago, so this happens everywhere in print. I heard the New York Times is particularly good about it. They vetted their sources and checked it up. So I guess not. Of course not. Why would they? They have to create more content to compete with all these blogs.

Like everyone is competing for a finite amount of eyeballs, right? And so this guy who did this for the New York Times was a freelancer, just phoning in articles. He knows what he wants to say. So he asks for a source to tell him what he wants to hear, and I raise my hand. And then there I am. And my parents are like, hey, we saw you in the New York Times today. we didn't know you were a vinyl record fan apparently you didn't either

right no I wasn't I learned what LPs stood for in the article that I was quoted in that's incredible I love how the criticism of that was that oh you lied to the office how are they supposed to know well I don't know maybe because they're journalists and it's their job to know it's their job to find out

just Google somebody it just takes five seconds and find out whether they're full shit or not totally yeah or maybe do more than you know just talk to your sources via email Yeah, you know, when I was writing the alphabet of manliness, I worked with a couple of different publicists, and that's when I started to notice this thing happening. So someone came out to my apartment in Utah, and they did an interview with me from the Associated Press. And that one AP piece got picked up in so many different publications, because some of them, the publisher would pay for, some of them, they were genuinely covering this trend or whatever. But that's when I started to notice this on my radar, that all these pieces started to come up around the same time, and it's usually driven,

by some publicist firm or marketing firm, and they're trying to get that. So anytime you notice on Google News, Google News is my favorite news portal because I can see how all the different media outlets cover the same headline. Yeah. And I like to see those because sometimes you'll see

six stories drop about something the same exact time about coffee or milk or whatever. I guarantee there's a lobby behind them. Yeah, or you see, okay, so X happened. And this is where I came to this, like, working as a publicist for a lot of clients. It's like you would see something of general, effectively happen, right? Like a lawsuit gets filed or a store opens or, you know, something, you launch a new campaign, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you would see, like, one person cover it. And then you would see all those different outlets cover the same thing. And you would see how as the headlines come in, they get more interesting as they have to compete with the ones that come before it. Right. So it's like on Google News, it's like the first person, it's like, hey, you know, like, blah, blah, blah happened. And then it's like, world's craziest blah, blah, blah happens. And then like they're having, because they all, they know that if you're

the most clickable headline on Google News, the algorithm is going to favor you. It's the same thing. Like what is upward they do. They know that like we've got to get lots of shares on social media, like on Facebook, right? So they just see what does well in the on the Facebook feed. They know how that algorithm works. And then they create this syrupy artificial bullshit content about, you know, like you think this preacher is going to, you know, talk about people who are gay in a bad way, but what do you know? He's actually really open-minded, and then we're like, oh, I love this, and it's like blowing up.

Or, like, check out this kitten, you know, eating snacks. And it just, like, you see it, the whole thing blow up because they know exactly how to play to our instincts to get us to click on things. It's almost like they're, they've built in a twist ending for every single headline. Like, but you didn't see this coming. Yeah, right.

Because they know, like, there's this crazy study. Somebody actually did it of the New York Times. I think there's like, what's his name, Jonah Berger. He studied like 7,000 articles that made the most viral, the most shared list in the New York Times. The number one predictor, well, the biggest predictor is the valence of emotion it makes you feel. So like extreme happiness is better than like sort of sad, right?

Or like extreme humor is better than like moderate rage. And it turns out also anger is like the most high valence emotion. So like articles that make. people angry get shared more. So you don't think, like, writers who are sitting there with page you quotas are going to try to piss people off. Right. Dr. Phil's badass made more money off of people angry than me than I ever have or will.

Yeah, that's true, actually. Yeah. It crashed your website, too, when you're on Dr. Phil. It melted the server. Just a big lead block. Yeah. They used me for, like, 80% of the VO on that fucking episode. All the commercials, every single commercial was me, me, me, me, me, me.

So with these clickbait websites too. So they get people in and it's, there's actually this new, I don't even know what to call it. It's a new genre of website. So it's not news satire like The Onion and the Daily Current. And it's not quite news. It's just lies. Right.

Just fake things that they know people kind of want to be true or desperately don't want to be true. Right. And then they post it and they know 50% of the population will not know that it's fake and share it. And then all their friends will be like, you're such an idiot. What are you doing? And then that creates like a back and forth

that's good for them. And it's still going to create people clicking and they're getting that click stream. Well, it's sort of like arbitrage, right? It's like whatever we have to do to get people to click this thing. And then we immediately sell it via an ad exchange for advertising dollars.

Right. And then we profit. Like, it's not like they're trying to build a brand that people trust. That's not the model. They're not trying to sell t-shirts and books. You're the customer that they're selling. Like, they're tricking you

and then selling you to an ad exchange. Once the click has been made, the sales has already been made. You can't unclick. Yeah, you can't unclick. The view's been loaded. The ad rank has been loaded. The page view has been loaded.

So, and they don't even care about their reputation because as soon as their reputation gets out there, oh, that's a bullshit news site. They just register a new domain, shift all their content to the new domain. Now nobody recognizes it anymore. Yeah, and the people that they're targeting don't care where it's published.

They care what it says. Yeah. Right? They're just looking, it's like the confirmation, but they're explaining the confirmation bias. Like we desperately want, like, I desperately want, like, proof that Obama is not an American. So you post that thing, like, I'm going to share it, and I don't care what the source is because I need to say it's so desperately. I generally have a rule of thumb. Any website that has the word world in it or truth, worldtruth.

Dot TV or dot US. Any kind of health website, any real pharmacies, anything that with the word real in it, I don't automatically believe. Anything with the word truth in it, I don't believe. anything with honest or any natural, I don't believe any natural websites. These are all just, just... Well, and then what you have to do is you have to immediately unfollow any friend or acquaintance that shares one of those links,

and it's a great way of sorting out the dumb people from your sort of like network of people. Now, see, I would disagree. I'm going back and forth on that just internally because I have a lot of dumb friends. Yeah. But I feel like if I do that, then there's no hope. I'm like their bridge, you know?

I'm like reaching out and handing, with my hand like come on a fucking Messiah complex on this guy always coming to save the day yeah dick through driving and through enlightening I guess so okay well good problem

what would you what would you title it a problem why is it a problem you mean other than like the last 10 well there's this great quote and I forget who it's from but he says something like look like America is a country ostensibly ruled by the people right

and the people, by public opinion, right? And the media is what influences public opinion. It's a good point. So, therefore, this is the lens through which our democracy then operates on. BuzzFeed killed America. Yeah. That's the headline I put on my link page. That's a great BuzzFeed headline.

Yeah, that's a very neutral. Top 10 ways that BuzzFeed killed America. I want to say that's H.L. Minkin. Does that make sense? Baltimore Sun, early 20th century? I think I know that quote. Yeah. Dictionary, Sean.

Thank you. So, great problem. What would you title? What would you title this overall? Because I know there's a lot that's kind of onioned into this problem. But what is it? Like, click bait or? Clickbait's one word.

Like, there's a couple. Like, I think outrage porn is another great word for the kind of things that try to piss us off. I love that. Let's do outrage porn. That's, because you notice, too, they even do it with positive stories. Like the ALS Bucket Challenge. every single website near a month into it

they were really running on fumes and so they started using these titles they said this is the last ALS bucket challenge you'll have to see oh my gosh so-and-so celebrity

killed it it will never be better than this and then I saw like five of those yeah well I think I think it's a bunch of they like they know like ten different triggers to pull to exploit us right

but I think outrage porn is a big one I think the other one is like I call it like sort of sanctimony Like it's like, let's just create the most Like syrupy, cloying, sanctimonious bullshit You can possibly imagine.

Like, what's the stuff that white liberal people Will get excited about? Oh my God, I'm so sick of that shit. Polygon, mike.com, policy mic? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. Everything on there infuriates me. Even stuff I agree with.

I'm like, fuck you for exploiting this. Like, seriously, they're not creating any content. They're taking some video that somebody studiously created on YouTube, put a rapper around it, and then publish it on their, website with some bullshit, you know, a 50-word article, article I use in quotes. And then these people call themselves writers.

Yeah. And then they're making a hefty living off of this, too. I don't know about that, but... I think their bosses are making a lot of money. Okay, there you go. It's a giant pyramid scheme. You mentioned that, Dick, right? You said it was like a Ponzi? No, that was Ryan. Oh, Ryan again. Well, good job.

All right. Well, good problem. Outrage porn. I love that. because that's his, and even the Daily Show called them out for it. They said, John, they always had these headlines on Huffington Post because they love John Stewart so much and they want to really get on his band, right? They're like, John Stewart obliterates Glenn Beck or he eviscerates Sean Hannity. And then John Stewart's like, dude,

I just called them out on a minor misquote. Yeah. I didn't quite eviscerate or obliterate anyone. I didn't decimate Fox News. They still exist. Well, yeah, and that's the thing is like they have to exact, like here's an artist doing something, and then they have to exaggerate it and put context on it

so then they can make a few pennies off what he did. All right. Well, guys, great problems, TSA and outrage porn, but here's the biggest problem this week. My problem is babies. You don't have a sound effect to accompany that? Oh, yeah. There you go.

Babies. So first of all, so what do you do with them? What do you do with babies? What do you do with the baby? And you take pictures of them, you enjoy them, you teach them, you let them enrich your life. Boring. You create a family with them. Propagate the species.

Why don't you give me a real, but basically live. You live with a baby. Yeah, that's life. That's like a shitty roommate. It's not paying rent. It stinks. It makes noise. The sound of a baby crying is the worst.

I didn't even bring in a baby crying sound effect because I hate it that much. It's the worst. Okay. But first, here's my problem with babies, right? Every friend of mine who's a parent When I go over to their house They want me to hold their baby Yeah

That's something that you're supposed to like Why am I supposed to like that? Because it's a little creature Oh great That you're genetically encoded to love Because of its helplessness I have possums in my backyard I can hold those

Have you held a possum No because I don't want to hold a possum I don't want to hold a baby But I'd rather hold a possum Would you hold a possum If you could go back in time And meet you as a baby Would you hold you?

Shit, no I'd put me down and go play video games or something. Like, come on. But you're glad somebody held you, right? I guess. I mean, maybe. I don't even, what, John? You wish they, like, abandoned you on the steps of a church?

I mean, no. That could be worse. But what are you going to say, Sean? The moment has passed. Oh, well. Well, now it's definitely passed. So, so they always want to hand me their babies. And in very, I'm scared shitless of holding their baby.

It's like the most valuable thing they own. Oh, here we go. Right? It's the most expensive thing you own as a baby. baby. Well, okay. Yeah. So they hand it to me and invariably I hold it wrong. They hand it to me and I try to cradle it and they say, oh, you got to support its head. You got to support its head. Yeah. But why are you hand me? That's the one thing you have to do is support its head. Oh, then if I support its head, then the rest of its body flopped over and its legs are falling out of my arms. How do you hold a baby?

Pick up one of your shirts and show us how you hold a baby. Here, I'll just hold this bottle like a baby. Look at this. Like a hero. Look at that. I'm holding a baby. That's not how you Hold a fucking baby. How are you guys such experts on, but you guys don't have babies? How do you hold a woman? Let's start there. Not like a baby.

Yeah, that's kind of gross. Well, yeah, I regret the way I phrased that. But you've got to support the head a little bit, you know. I'm not grabbing a woman's head. Like this. Look, look, look, look. There's the head. There's the head.

Wrap it up. Like that. How little are these women there? He's holding something by the hair. Sam's shaking her head. Sam's shaking her head. Sam, I know how to hold a baby. No, no.

I'm held babies. She's shaking no. Are you saying no? Are you saying it's gross? What the fuck is wrong with both of you guys? Don't like holding babies. What have you dropped the baby? Why would you hand me that? I would be more comfortable with them handing me their expensive jewelry, their laptop.

Their fucking flat screen TV, I'll hold that. I'm not going to hold a fucking baby. Jesus, give me anything in your house, any valuable you have. A baby's the most expensive thing you own. And I found out how much. It's not a valuable. It's a human being, you jackass. Oh, yeah?

Well, I have some stats. I got a stats for you. A lot of stats for you, actually. So how much would you say a baby's worth? Like, what would you pay for a baby? What do you mean? Like, are you talking about people who can't have their own baby and they need to buy one? Say that there was a black market where you could buy babies.

There is. Okay? Yeah, you pay women who are like drug addicts and going to prison. You can facilitate. 20 grand? You're actually pretty close. It's a lot lower, though. It's about 10 grand.

Really? I did the math here. So surprisingly, Google didn't have any actual stats about how much a baby costs. But the closest I found is how much it costs to raise a baby for about one year, which is about $10,140. Okay. So if the baby dies at the age of one, then you will have spent... Jesus Christ.

Like, I'm just doing math. This is math. Math doesn't have any conscience here, all right? So if the baby dies at age of one, that baby costs you $10,000 to raise. So if you... And by the way, I fought hard to be a godfather for my friend's kid. You fought to be one or to not be one? No, I want to be a godfather.

Why? Just like another thing I can say I am. Oh, I'm a godfather. Is that the only reason? It's not because you want to impart some of your fucking wisdom onto the baby, and you thought that would put you in a position to do that? Maybe. Yeah?

Then I think you get what babies are all about. Well, so my friend asked me, he's like, hey, Maddox, you want to be a godfather of my kid? I'm like, yeah, of course. I said, wait, he goes, do you know what that means, right? And I said, no. He said, if anything happens to us, you have to raise the kid. Like, hey, free baby. Free baby.

So babies, yeah. You want those are terrible? So I have this friend of mine who's looking to, like, adopt a kid. kid, which is like free, but you have to go through a lot of stuff. Yeah. But you have to like pay like certain fees or whatever for adoption. Like shots and stuff? Yeah, yeah. And so this is like, I'm trying to say this delicately. Different races cost different amounts of money. Wow. And non-white babies are like less. So white babies are the most expensive. See, white babies cost money and white babies are the most

expensive. Isn't that simple supply and demand though? Hey, Sean, watch out. Why don't you just be real fucking careful What you're about to do? Yeah, Sean. Rock real delicately there. Aren't there a lot more babies of other races? Jesus. That are in need of homes?

I don't see how that's racist. I'm going to ask you guys something. I'm going to ask you something. What would you do with $188,000 right now? What would you do? Did you find use for that money? I spent half of it on car insurance over my entire life. There you go.

Or you could raise a kid to 18 years old. And that's without two. Without college tuition. Is your primary problem with babies the cost? No, they cost a lot, and they're also so fucking fragile. They make me nervous around them. I don't want to kill one. Like, if I'm over at a friend's house, that would ruin dinner.

If I kill their baby. They would ruin more than dinner. Yeah, well, if I dropped, okay, let's say I didn't kill the baby. Let's say I just dropped it. Yeah. Sorry, man. Hey, sorry, I dropped your baby. I guess it's got brain damage now.

I'm sorry, I'm a terrible guest. I'll go home and fucking, I don't know, I guess hang myself because I ruin this person's life and my friend's lives. And now it's going to cost more than $180,000 to raise. Yeah. And then I'm not going to be able to impart anything on that kid other than the dent in his head. So here's the thing.

Adults, we can all agree that adults are stronger, right? I think so. Then babies? Yeah. Depends on the baby. Depends on the baby. I was a pretty strong kid. So here's something.

Babies just sometimes just fucking die. Sudden infant death syndrome. Have you heard of this? Dude, I think, yeah. I think it's a myth. Yeah. I think it's a myth. It's on the CDC website.

There's all these statistics. I think that's just a nice way of saying, like the mom kind of went a little loopy and killed the baby. I really think that that's true. I think that's true. Yeah. No, well, they actually have tips on how to try to avoid sudden infant death syndrome. There's, by the way, there's no.

And one of them is keep an eye on mom and make sure she's not depressed. Dude, postnatal depression is a big thing. Yeah, I guess. So that's another reason not to have a baby. They cost too much and postnatal depression. Hold up, though. Yeah. They do give you some major tax savings.

See, that pisses me up. Now I'm paying for other people's babies. Fuck that. So there's no such thing as sudden adult death syndrome. Adults just don't die because they slept on their stomach one day. That's stupid. Babies are always dying. Listen to this.

Always place babies on their backs to sleep. Yeah. That's insane. Are you kidding me? What is wrong with that? That's ridiculous. You have to have a baby on its back, otherwise it might die. What if it just rolls over at night?

They don't. They don't. There's like devices that you can put on the baby. Oh, now you got to buy devices, boy things. You just use a club. Just pick it up at Cragan. What's a club? It's one of those things you put in your steering wheel.

No, they don't roll over in the middle of the night if you put them on their back. Babies are always squishing around. Are you kidding me? They're always like... They're not amoebas. They have a skeleton and it's just they lay there and like it. Yeah, they have such a strong skeletal system. Then why is their head so soft?

Here's one of other tips, they say. Will my baby... This is actually one of the Q&A. They said, will my baby develop a flat spot on his or her head from back sleeping? That's another concern you have. You might have like a mongloid-looking kid because it slept on its back because you don't want it to suddenly die suddenly in its sleep because you can play a stupid baby on its face.

I think the pressure of babies is what's getting to you. All these like I got to be careful of it and keep it safe and make it some head round. I'm like sweating right now. This is the first time I sweat this entire fucking show because now I'm thinking about babies and how nervous and anxious they make me. And listen to this. So keep soft objects, soft objects mind you, toys and other. toys and loose beddings out of your baby's sleep area.

Don't use pillows, blankets, quilts, sheepskins, sleep positioner, or that's what you guys are saying, or pillow-like bumpers in your baby's sleep area. Keep all items away from the baby's face. Can you imagine if an adult had to live under those restrictions? No toys, no bumpers or anything in your bed? Do you have bumpers in your bed? I considered it at one point because I kept rolling out.

But I, you can't have sheets in your baby's crib? No. Listen to this tip. That's it. You just don't have those things. Then what's a baby going to cover with? It's just going to sit there. They wear a onesie to bed.

That's it. I wear a wincee about it. It's very easy. It's just like a box with a sheet over it. You put some pajamas on you. There you go. See you tomorrow, idiot. Great.

So simple. So simple to take care of this baby. Almost a plant. Yeah. Almost. Except plants will get flat foreheads if you sleep on their back. Listen to this. No, they don't get flat foreheads, I guess.

Yeah. I don't know. And now they just found out that those helmets don't really work. Yeah, I've read that. Yeah. And sometimes they can even cause other complications too, right? The helmets. Yeah, like being a nerd.

So listen to this. Here's another tip. Avoid letting your baby overheat during sleep. How the hell it says dress your baby in light sleeping clothing and keep the room at a temperature that is comfortable for an adult. Which, by the way, how condescending is that? What are you going to just crank up the heat for the baby's room? There's a lot of dumb parents.

That's why their kids keep dying. They suddenly die. You didn't do anything. And that's what they're saying, Dick, you're saying you can put a onesie on it. No, I'm saying it's a nice way of saying you killed your kid is this sudden infant death syndrome. Like, they're like, oh, you know, just kind of died. Sorry. It's 90 degrees in here, but we don't know what did it.

You know how crushed I would be if I just bought a laptop and it died like a year later? Right? The hard drive started clicking. I would be devastated. I would be devastated. Let alone a kid. Like I would be, like, what am I going to do? 10 grand down the drain.

And pregnancies have the same problems. Like not all pregnancies go to term too. Uh-huh. Right? They just die there. That's fetuses. That's a whole different episode. It's a whole struggle though, right? Because you might have a miscarriage.

You got fetuses. Then once it comes out, oh, it survived the miraculous journey through your wife's vagina. it's out there and the hospital and all the germs that could possibly have and all the complications and preemies, preemie babies and all the different, and then congenital diseases and heart disease and cancers and all these awful things that kids can have. And then now it's now it might just fucking die anyway because it's sleeping on its on its stomach. I'm getting a real interesting insight into you right now. I think you would be like a really, really worried protective

parent. You'd probably be a great parent. Doesn't it seem like it? Like you're freaking out at the hypothetical situation of your kid getting a misshapen head. It's slander. I will not stand for that. I think Maddox always secretly wanted a cabbage patch kid as a baby, as a young man and never got one. Maybe. I'm seeing you like outfitting the crib room with like all this automation shit that you have in your house. Like to check for the temperature and infrared cameras and make sure he's not rolling over. Right. Like programming a connect to make sure he's not moving at night. Right as well. Got to make sure you got to check its temperature. You got to stick a meat thermometer in this guy.

Like what do you, how are you? you're supposed to monitor this stuff? Never mind everything. They're just supposed to be around. Oh, you just got to be around all the time? Yeah. That's what drives me nuts. Like, all my friends who have kids now, I just say, hey, man, can we talk on the phone for 20 minutes?

Like 15 minutes? No. Yeah, they can't. Oh, sorry, I got to watch the kid. You're watching the kid. You're just talking to me. Why do you also have to, like, use your eyes and your mouth at the same time to watch the kid? You just need one of those.

Use your eyes. No, they need to concentrate, though, on the baby. Concentrate to make sure it doesn't die. It's a full-time job. Just to make sure this person doesn't die. Or wreck your stuff. They love wrecking stuff. Isn't that what cribs are for?

You can't put them in a cell all day long. They have to get out and roam around and like learn motor skills. Oh, so they get out and roam around. So what if they're roaming around at night, huh? They're suddenly on their stomach and sudden infant syndrome. You get them out. You take them out of the crib and put them down and then encourage them to grow. You guys make me so mad.

You guys are such experts about babies. Why don't you guys just go have babies? This isn't even expert stuff. What's the solution to the baby problem? Just This is always where his problems fall apart Okay, Dick Let's just be a children of men scenario

Ryan, this is the biggest problem in the universe Not the biggest solution to the biggest problem in the universe I have no idea Here's my solution Be rich enough to hire someone to raise your child Like a nanny, a full-time nanny or something Then that way you can go live your life Go to comedy shows, go to bars, whatever

Like go just Comedy shows and bars Number one thing you do with your freedom Not travel Travel too, sure Sure. As long as there's a comedy show. Yeah, you travel to a comedy show. Come on, guys. And you take a delightful form of transportation, apparently for poor people, bikes.

You just ride your bike. Why am I the only one living in this universe? Why are you guys so weird about this? About babies? Yeah, you guys are the weird one. I honestly think it's the pressure. I think you can't handle the pressure of fucking up with a baby. I don't want to fuck up, yeah. It's a lot of pressure. I don't even want to do things that, like, stress me out in my real, like, day-to-day life.

Like, if I go to the... How stressed you get about not fucking up a website? Imagine how you'd be about fucking up a human being. Exactly. Yeah. No, I agree. She texted me a picture of a baby today, and I just said, ew, didn't I? Oh.

Oh. Oh. Yikes. They're gross. Was that the right? They're gross. And have you ever seen a barely newborn? It's the grossest thing.

Like, everybody posts that picture right when it came out of the oven. And it just looks like an amoeba. Like on TV they use like a six-month-old And it's like all nice And it's got like hair and features Yeah it's like clean itself up a little bit You see it on TV You see it on Facebook

It's like why would you show anyone this? Yeah You know? And does your baby do any tricks Or does it like Is it just boring? A boring baby Well for like three months

They're like nothing Right When are you okay with kids Like at what point It's good question When am I Like at what point are they not babies And then you don't hate them

Like our is like a toddler okay in your book. No. A well-disciplined like five-year-old. I won't go lower than five. A well-disciplined five-year-old. If they can wear like a suit with a little clip-on tie at that age, like you see those little suit stores, like the kid's suits, they're about five. No, I'll give you an

example. So my, I have a, my brother was, got to a point in his career where he's very successful, very high up. He and his wife, both executives at companies, they had a beautiful house in the hills over the Bay Area. And they got to that point in their lives where they decided okay, we've made it.

We're doing well. What's the next step? How do we challenge ourselves? And they decided one challenging thing they could do is try to raise a good family, which I agree, yeah. Is this their phrasing of what happened or your interpretation of what they did? No, no, his phrasing.

He actually told me this. He said he wanted to challenge himself, right? So they decided to have kids and try to raise great kids. And guess what? They're fucking killing it. I mean, not the kids, but they're raising their kids well. Their kids are they just one kid? right after.

Yeah, it's just like they're up to number four right now. Yeah, their kids are great. They're so well-discipline. They sit at the dinner table. They ask if they can be excused when they're, when they play video games too much. Like on the dot, to the minute, they say, okay, you're done playing video games and say, okay, mom, they pack up, go to their room, they clean up after themselves. They put the dishes away.

They do their chores. They're awesome kids. They do their homework. These kids are well-mannered. They introduce themselves. That's what piss me out about kids. You go to someone's house. A kid comes up to you.

Like, you introduce yourself to him, hi, I'm Maddox. And the kid just looks at you. you like an idiot and then puts his face in his mom's dress. How dare he? Treat me like another human. Another human is present, idiot. What if adults did that? What if you went to a business meeting and someone introduced themselves?

You just like put your face in someone's dress. Rob Ford did that when I met him. You met Toronto Mayor Rob Ford? No, it was just convenient. The line. Oh, Jesus. How about this? Maddox.

Children lower your blood pressure. What do you think about that? That's why. No, no, I got a fucking study over here, dude. That's bullshit. Do you really? What's that? I do really.

What's the source? Oh, shit, I didn't print that. Policymic. Policymic.com. Wait a minute. Brigham Young University. Oh, yikes. Brigham Young University.

Well, well, well. Okay, that might be a fuck-up. Family capital of the world. Brigham Young, Provo, Utah. That plays bullshit. All these stats I printed out now look. really specious. Yeah, Brigham Young University, family,

family watch.org, parents, television research council. So your brother's experience, has that made you think about wanting to have a kid? Because just for the challenge of it? Yes. Yes, so there are some variables here. Like it's a fucking video game? It is. It's a challenge. Like, you want to raise a successful family, you want

to do it well, and you want to have all the pieces in place, right? So these are the pieces I think that you need to have in place. You need to have a stable relationship. You need to have money, and that's about it. To have a baby. To have a good jeans too. Okay, good jeans helps.

Good jeans helps. And then maybe not invite your friends over who are nervous about carrying the baby because I might drop it. Yeah. Don't hammy your baby, people. Don't be friends with you. They insist. They push it on it. Hold it.

Hold it. And then if the baby cries, I don't know what to do. Oh, God forbid it's shit. Oh, the worst. I want to see you hold the baby. I got to see you hold a baby. I'm sweating. I'm so nervous and angry and upset right now.

I don't even. I'm never going to hold it. Is there a doll in here? Do you have any dolls? We can see you hold one. Why, do you have a doll in this house? No, no, in the closet. That would be so weird.

Oh, here it is. I do have several issues of 17 magazine, but no dolls. Which I brought in for research, a couple of episodes. Okay, don't look at me like that. So babies are the biggest problem in the universe. Damn right, they are. So you guys better vote that up. Okay, so let's go over the problems.

Let's go over the problems. TSA. TSA is out of control, bureaucracy. It's a big fucking waste of money to ruin flying. And Ryan? Media, we can't trust anything we see, watch here. Outrage porn. Outrage porn. Right, that's manipulating us.

Absolutely is. And mine is babies. So, tune in next time. Vote for these problems on the biggest problem in the universe.com. Thank you for... Do you want to pitch anything? Do you want to promote anything? That's fine. We can keep going. Yeah, why don't you...

Yeah, let's mention... What should I say? Talk about your next book. What do you have coming out? Yeah, so I got Trezabam lying, which came out. It's taught on a bunch of journals in schools. Yeah.

Trust me on lying. That was with the Harrow lying spree? Yes. That sounds really funny. Yes. I'm on Twitter at at Ryan Holiday. I have a new book out that's about Stoicism,

which is Roman philosophy. That's called The Obstacle is the Way and it came out in May. It's got great reviews too, by the way. Just people love it. And that was actually kind of my introduction to Stoicism. I took a philosophy class in college,

but I didn't really, we didn't cover Stoicism. So I started reading it, I started reading about your excerpts and some of the comments and sort of wikipedying it and looking this up, and it's really fascinating. Guys, I know a lot about stoicism, too, all right? Oh, yeah?

What do you know, Dick? I'm smart, too. You got some bricking on studies. You tell us. You tell Ryan and I what it's about. You know, I don't want to show off. I don't want to show off. Let's not do that.

That's very stoic of you. Thank you. I was going to say that. I was right about to say that. All right, great. Well, we'll link to your books and your Twitter account on our website. Check it out. And don't forget to vote on these problems.

next week. For sure. And yeah, that's it. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for having it. Yeah, thanks for coming in, Ryan.

Yeah, thanks.