The Biggest Problem in the Universe: Uncucked - Episode 23

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

Welcome to the biggest problem in the universe. I'm Maddox. With me is Dick Masterson. Hey, what's up, buddy? How's it going? And Sean, our audio engineer. All right. First thing's first. Who won? I'm confident about last week, because I brought in a good-ass problem.

And you brought in a Wiki-How article. Like, you don't know, Dick. I hate this so much when you win. First of all, doesn't really matter, all right? It doesn't matter. It's not a contest. It matters today. Yeah.

Okay. So your California drought, Dick, bags, barely edged out by 20%, my problem of hippies. Read it again. Yeah. You know what? Because it was essentially the same problem. And I think people recognize that indirectly through the episode.

Sometimes, so that's what you get with the biggest problem in the universe. You get synchronicity with co-hosts. So you're saying that you kind of won because it was the same problem? Is that the shit you're trying to pull right now? Yes, except completely won. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you.

I got some comments. jump into comments? Here's a good one. You remember my erotic stories from real men last week? Oh yeah, with the gross intro, right? It was very funny. Yeah, people seem to like it.

Here's the comment. But Sanchez here, he wrote in. Maddox, you are such a hater. You did hate on that guy. You were hating on his hookup. Yeah, because it was a, that was kind of like, you won, but your dad is also the coach of the baseball team.

Okay, okay. Yeah, you're a hater. Yeah. Here's the rest of his comment. I don't get laid often, and I actually suffer from a stuttering problem I've had my whole life. So, how do you feel about that? So Dick helping me get laid is a fucking miracle, and he's a great modern-day humanitarian for it. I don't know, I didn't read the whole comment before I brought it in.

Regardless, one of my idols calling me an idiot means I can die happy. Love the podcast. Keep up the good work. Hey, as long as you don't die happy, don't die sad, as long as you die eventually. We're okay, we've done our jobs. Okay, well, I got a comment from Max Meza. Speaking of helping people, he says, Dear Dick and Maddox, three days ago, I was wallowing in deep depression.

I decided to check the X-Mission site. It's actually Maddox at XMission.com. In a vain attempt to see if Maddox had updated his site, and to my surprise, I saw a link to the podcast site. So I guess this guy just finally stumbled across the podcast. He says, at first I was skeptical about Dick as a co-host, but his drunken and arbitrary tirades Are the perfect foil to Maddox's cool and calculating machine logic.

That's you? That's me. Cool and calculating machine? Man, this machine better have a warranty. Okay. It's fucking broken. With sweaty veins standing out of his head at every turn? The machine is this.

I'm watching this every time. Well, the competition in my debates is you, who I believe three of the rebuttals you had last episode were fuck you and who gives a shit. Well, you know, whatever it takes to win, Maddox. Check the score. Because I fucking won last week. So maybe you should incorporate more of that into your debating. Yeah.

You know what, Dick? That was the first time you've ever sent me actual problems and research and research. It's the first time in history of this podcast. Episode number 22, we've been doing this since last May that you finally sent me some research. Finally. He wasn't ready for competence. You don't think people leaving their fly down was a well-researched problem? Fuck you.

All right, let me finish this comment. He says, so he's like, it's nothing compared to Maddox's. cool in calculating machine logic. That's not to say I don't like Dick. Far from it. I love Dick. Cool. I'm going to end the comment there.

He goes on, but I think it's funny if it's in it. I got one from Sarah Hoffman. She said, how vaccines cause autism. And then she linked to how do vaccines cause autism.com? And I clicked on it, getting ready to get really pissed off, but it said they fucking don't. That was the website. So that should have had a satire tag, quite frankly, because I got duped. Well, that's what it's there for, and that's a great...

I thought that was really funny. Thank you, Sarah. And then we... I got a comment from Tim Nadu Rifkind. That's a dumb name. Okay, here we go. I mean, you know... That's a hater.

The Tim part. He says, no, Dick. People don't hate Governor Norquist because he wears a suit. They hate him because of his pivotal role in our fucking stagnated Congress by bullying all of the Republicans and Tea Party morons into signing a pledge to never... raise taxes. That's this guy. That's Norquist. I remember now. He is a governor. I did know who you're talking about. Oh, he was a governing? Yeah, Governor Norquist. He's a piece of

shit. He made everyone sign this absurd, like, uh, uh, non-compromising, dig your heels in, stand your ground, bullshit, no, never raise taxes rule, which is arbitrary and stupid. No one can adhere to that, so they found clever ways to raise taxes without calling them taxes, including the Democrats. That's what Obamacare is by the Supreme Court's own ruling. is attacks, right? Is it ObamaCare your problem today? No, no, you dick. But yeah, that's Governor Norquist.

You're right, it's all of our problems today. Dick? All right, you got another comment? Yeah, I do. I have a correction to make, actually. Last episode I said the Dreamcast was out in 2001. Do you remember that? Yeah.

John Bromley from East Brunswick has corrected me, hey, Dick, you fucking idiot. The Dreamcast came out in 1999, Shut your whore mouth and suck Maddox's Dick for wearing an awesome shirt. So, sorry about that. Yeah, I got that wrong. Get to it. I got one from Justin Dreyer.

He says, if Dick doesn't start using condoms, his penis is going to be the burning man. So you brought in hippies last time. And I remember you specifically said that there's been no hippie inventions. Yeah, nothing good. They have never contributed anything to society. But there's a lot of people who brought in... Yeah, there was a lot of people who brought in scientific discoveries that were influenced by drugs.

Yeah, but they're all drug-related, too. It's like LSD and shit like that. Okay, what do you got? Well, this person, Gil Rios, says there's a legend that Francis Crick was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double helix structure of DNA, and he was definitely not a hippie. Okay.

He was on a bunch of LSD. So he was not a hippie. Here's the clincher, though. Yeah. I can't seem to find a reputable scientific, source regarding this. So I don't know, I don't know if that disproves what you're saying.

You know what? Thanks for the comment, Gil. I'm sorry, I cannot accept hearsay as evidence. Thank you though. Thanks for the attempt. I have one from Paolo van Erp. He says, Hippies are fascinating creatures. I'd like to dissect one to see if I can

find out what makes them so useless. Yeah. Science. Speaking of science. Oh, you know what? But your whole problem with hippies was your neighbor, right? No, that wasn't my whole problem. My whole problem was everything about them. He was kind of about your neighbor, though, really.

Wasn't it? She was an example of a problem, of the problem of hippies. She's the one that you deal with. She's the only hippie you deal with, really, right? No, man, if you go to the beach, it's all fucking hippies everywhere. And hippies are essentially, I would say probably 50 to 60% of homeless people are hippies. Because you can't really tell. They might be hippies, they might be homeless, they've always got their drums with them.

Yeah, I would say 100% of them are schizophrenic, probably. Not 50% to 60% are hippies. Well, here's a guy who wants to help you with your neighbor. Hey, guys, this is Joe. I just want to say this podcast was on fucking point. All right. I'm down in L.A. too and have to deal with these douchebags every fucking day of my life. Probably at the beach.

So anyways, Maddox, I got an idea for that cunt of a neighbor of yours. Whoa. I'm going to go ahead and shit in a bucket for like a week. Dick's going to have to go out there and clean out all those fart condoms, fucking weirdo. Then we're going to go to Home Depot. We're going to rent a paint spray. We're going to mix that shit up with some water. middle of the night, we're going to paint her fucking house.

We're going to paint her car, salt her lawns. I'm done. Got to deal with her. I think that might be a little extreme. I don't know if it's gone far enough. I don't know if it's going far enough. That's not bad. Not a bad suggestion.

Thank you. I got another one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See if it works. Here's another one for you. Hey, Maddox, man. Like, I think you need to mellow out on hippies, okay, man? Because, like, you know, that's just your...

opinion and stuff, okay? Like, you know, you should really try, like, mellow out and, like, you know, some peyote or something. And you're a fucking fireball hippie bullshit with you. Okay, there it is. I was waiting for it. But, you know, I think for a second there, like, if you listen to his drawl, I think he's, so he was trying to do a misdirect there and fake us out, right?

But I think he really is a hippie. He's deep down a hippie, because he has that kind of low, slow drawl going about it. He does. Speaking of drawls, you brought in anti-Veval. vaccine people a couple episodes ago. There's somebody called in somebody called in to complain about that. Right. There you go. Now,

you guys really think that vaccines contained in mercury formaldehyde and aluminum are good for you to inject into your bloodstream. There's no turn on this one. Because that don't make any kind of sense. I mean, really, come on now. As consumers

and human beings, we need to rise up against this bullshit. Thank you. Come on. Talk about this, man. Talk about it. So talk about it. What do you think about that? Who is that fucking Cleveland?

He obviously subscribes to the Dick Masterson School of Arguments, which is, I mean, really? Whoa, whoa, whoa, keep going. Yeah, Dick, here's your rhetorical, your rhetorical approach. You get flustered, repeat yourself, prefixing it with, but I mean, come on, really. So what I'm saying is, and that's exactly what he did in his. 30 seconds in his 30 second message. First of all, rule number one of the Dick Masters of the Dick Masters

in arguing method is drop your Southern accent. If you're going to talk about science or whatever, I don't care if you were born in I don't care if you were born in a moonshine still in Kentucky. You fake like you have a normal newscaster accent. Yeah, I agree. Fake it, dude.

Okay, we should probably get to the problem. Yeah, we got a lot of problems this week. Go ahead. We do. My first problem is, Snapchat's of not tits. Snapchats of not tits. Are you familiar with Snapchat? I'm going to explain what it is. It's an app that...

It's an app that, first of all, no one over 25 should be using, and I think that number is going to shrink as the episode goes on. It's an app that lets you send pictures to someone else, and they disappear when the other person gets them. Right, so the idea behind it is that you can send news. to each other and then not have to worry about it coming back to haunt you like Scarlett Johansson. Yeah, that's one use. You know, maybe if you're like a spy and you want to take pictures of confidential documents and send them back in,

maybe hypothetically speaking, if we're not just going to say it's for teen sexting picks, maybe that's a use for it too, Maddox, I don't know. Oh, maybe, Dick, yeah. Maybe it is for spies. Spies use Snapchat and they didn't say. So I hopped on, um, I started talking to this girl over. Instagram, right? I figured out a way to hit on girls over Instagram. Yeah, what's that? Just add them because they're so self-obsessed. Yeah, but you can't, private message them. Did you know

that? No, because I can't, I don't have Instagram. Well, buddy, uh, I know I'm screwing up because every chick is on there. They are. And it's all the ones who are the most desperate for attention to it. Yeah, they're all narcissists. They have like thousands and thousands of pictures of themselves in swimsuits that, you know, actually this sounds pretty good. I'm going to get it. No, you get, yeah. And it's no, there's no, there's no effort on your part. You just add, add, Dad, da, da, da, da. And your competition, like, you can see the guys hitting on them are, they're totally retarded. It's like watching people who don't speak English as a first language hitting on girls. Anyway, I started talking to this girl, and I find out that, come to find out, she's a lot younger than I thought she was.

How much young? How young is this girl, Dick? There are, there are, I'll just say there are porn magazines dedicated to how young she is. Does that help? Is she barely legal is what we're looking for? Is it barely illegal? No, barely legal. Please, please.

Barely legal. This is recorded. Okay, so she's 18. You know. Maybe 19. Maybe. So she says, hey, hop on Snapchat. I want to send you some pictures.

Oh, this is a scam. Here we go. What's Snapchat? Right? Okay. I'm 33. I don't know what fucking Snapchat is. Yeah.

So she goes, oh, she explains it to me. I load it up. I create an account, go through all this trouble. Yeah. I get all these pictures loaded up. You know what they are? Hmm. Pictures of her dog.

Yeah. Pictures of things she's looking at on her computer. Yeah. Pictures of the fucking fan in her bedroom spinning around. Like, what is this? What is the point of this? What? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's all it ever fucking is. Every, like, almost every girl I've added on there. And then a bunch of my dude friends add me. and I don't know what the fuck they're gonna send me, because it's never tits. Good question. Why are guys adding other guys on Snapchat?

I don't know, man, but I have probably like 40 people on there, just, you know, because everyone adds everyone. It's another fucking thing. You just hit plus plus plus. Everyone in your contacts list shows up. And then all I get all day long are dogs and horses. Yeah. Real dogs or horses are just ones they download.

No, real ones, but I don't care either way. Wait a minute. People are sending you dogs and horses? Where are they? I don't know where they are. There's one person in particular. I don't know who it is because they use the alias or something, and I can't. I haven't deleted them because it might be a close friend of mine, but it's also a kind of a stupid friend of mine, I guess,

because all they send me these pictures of horses. And I think, oh, my friend, my close enough friends know that I hate horses. Yeah. So I don't know why I'm getting these all the fucking time. And I can't tell if it's a colleague or somebody I mean. met at a party or something. I have no fucking idea. And I'm waiting just for one picture of themselves or tits. I would accept either. So you just have a stream of horses coming into your phone all day? Yeah, all day long, all day long. And then I have some friends who just have the best

fucking life and it's like in your face because it's like Facebook to the next level. It's just nothing but like cool parties are going to, good food they're eating and fun stuff they're doing all the time. Because now they have that Snapchat timeline, which you can add anything. that you're doing to your timeline, and they can see it for 24 hours. You know more about Snapchat than me. I didn't know that. I just know I don't get the pictures that I was promised

by the premise of the app, and it really pisses me off. Because you also get in trouble for not responding. It's worse than tech. You know how text fucked you? Yeah. Chicks will send you a message, and they're like, well, where's your response?

Where's your response? Snapchat is worse because they don't have to think of anything to say. Yeah. They just take a picture of the fucking toilet and send it to you and say, well, what did you think of the toilet? Here's a picture of my new bedspread. What did you think of my bedspread? I don't care.

Hey, Dick Masterson, this is the grave you dug. Now lay in it. How did I do you create? Because you're the emoji fan, huh? This is the next step, the next evolution or de-evolution of emoji. Because now, instead of sending you a standard set of emoji, they are creating their own. They're sending you pictures of their dog or sending you pictures of their fan or whatever it is in their in their house, their cousin, or even, God forbid, their boyfriend.

I get, like, chicks sending me pictures of their boyfriends. Over Snapchat? Yeah, through Snapchat, and it's infuriating. I'm like, I don't want to see this. I don't know who this is. I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit about your boyfriend, your family, anything, anything other than like, whatever, whatever it is.

I don't care. Don't send it to me. Yeah. Why do I? And it's urgent, too, because it sends a notification to your cell phone. So you reach down and like, oh, God, what is this vibrating in my pocket? Yeah. It's a new tone.

You can't customize the notification. sound. So it just comes in as like this weird tone. I'm like, oh, is that a calendar notification? Am I missing a meeting? No. Just a snapchat of some chick's boyfriend. But then you're like, thank God, oh, it might be some tits. Great. I was having a shitty day. Now I get to see some tits. No, but it's a horse. It's a horse. That's why it's not emojis, because emojis are never a cocktees. Emogies are always a cocktees, according to you, because you think that they're suggestive. They are suggested. It can be. No, they are, they are suggestive. A picture, a promise of a picture that disappears.

is by definition of cocktees. You definitely think you're getting tits, but you never are. To be fair, I have gotten a couple of spy documents. That's a good point, Dick. Yeah, okay. So let's go to the bigger question here, though, is why is this a problem,

let alone the biggest problem in the universe? Why is this even a candidate for being a problem on the list? Did you not hear that I am getting cock teas with the promise of tits that I'm not getting? Did you not hear that part? That's a big problem. Yeah, but Dick, you also may or may not have chlamydia, so I don't really care. Wow.

Which your man saved you from, which so many people mentioned last episode, by the way, Dick. How weird it was, he kept referring to your man the entire time. I got a comment about that, actually. Let me read it where it is. This dude. Brian Togas. Dick gagging on cock is the only possible way you can. could sound any gayer than you already do talking about my man.

There you go. Farting out condoms with you and your man. Yeah. Sean, people loved how hard you laughed at that during the last episode. I still haven't recovered. Yeah. All right. Well, is that all you got?

Do you have any research, statistics, evidence, anything to back up? I did do some research. Yeah. Actually, yeah. Did you research how many Snapchats you received that didn't have tits in it? Like, what do you got? Yeah. Most of them.

That's the research. Yeah. I am 100% pissed off about not getting tits at my Snapchat. Fair. What's the mentality behind it? You tell me. It's just crazy. It's more narcissism.

And yeah, I did want to mention something to the point, Dick, that it notifies them as soon as you've looked at it, so they know you've seen it. And they expect that response. That's why I don't check Facebook messages anymore. I see that I got something. And as soon as I read it, they know I've read it. and I haven't responded for a couple days or weeks or whenever I respond to messages at my convenience on my schedule.

Not when you've seen that I've read it. I may read it, but then I put that in a to-do list somewhere because it's not my fucking priority. So that's why I don't use WhatsApp. WhatsApp is the same fucking problem. As soon as you even start typing a message, and iPhones do this. Another reason iPhones are pieces of shit.

So when you start typing a message to someone, it shows that dot, dot, dot. And then if you're trying to think of what to say or edit your response or you get interrupted, then the other person on the other line might think, oh, he's really thinking hard about what to say to me. He must really care. When reality is, the mailman came to the door.

Fuck off for a minute. Yeah, I've started using what you're talking about to my advantage. Like, this girl will send me Snapchat's, and I won't look at them. And I've noticed they get progressively more sexualized the longer I let him sit there, right? Classic technique. So if you're under 20 and you're sending a lot of sex around with the

whatever the girls of your college, your high school, whatever the fuck, whatever age you're supposed to be using Snapchat. Yeah. You think that works. Because here's the other problem with Snapchat is if you don't look at them after a while, they just disappear. Is that true? That's true.

Oh. After like I think 24 hours or something, they just disappear anyway. Oh, shit. Yeah. And then also they do this other coy thing where you can decide how many seconds to display the message you send to somebody between. between 1 and 10. So if it's a nude, if God forbid,

they actually use the app for what it's invented for, they'll send it to you for like two seconds. So it's like, I can't even get my fly down. It's not even enough time to commit to the spank bank. I don't know, man. It's like putting a dollar on a teller's desk and say, here, deposit,

then just yanking it real quick. I can't even find where the nipple is in two seconds. I know. Is this a belly button? What am I looking at here? Can I at least see it long? long enough to tell whether it's an original or you just snapped a picture of some magazine, some, whatever, garbage.

Let's get to a real problem, man. Okay. Yeah. Ebola alarmists. What? Yeah. All right. That's a real problem.

Okay. So, what do you know about Ebola? It's this horrific disease, right? This horrific virus that kills people, makes them barf up blood, whatever. But it's so overblown. You think the hysteria is overblown Well, maybe Let me read you some statistics here, okay?

Oh, great. So, I'm going to read you this virus And tell me if you think this sounds scary Or if it's overblown, okay? Okay This virus will swamp our hospitals And by this time next year Between 250,000 and 500,000 worldwide will be dead

Thousands of them in the U.S. and Britain What, from Ebola? Pretty scary stuff. stuff, right? I don't know that that's a real, that's a projection on based on what? No, it's a real statistic. I know what he's doing. Yeah. He's referencing some other disease. It's like the plain old flu or something. It is the flu shot. Is that what you're doing? Oh, you got busted. Yeah, well, that's obviously what I'm doing. It's the flu. That's the flu. Okay. That's what we're not worried about. That's killing 250 to 500,000 people yearly. Nowhere near that for Ebola. Ebola's down

at like 4,000, isn't it? Yeah, something around 4,000, and it has anywhere from a 50 to 90% mortality rate. Yeah. Not that big of a deal. I'm just letting you know in advance that I totally disagree with you on this one. But I want you to get through your stats if you got any more.

Great, yeah, I got plenty of stats. Shouting at you. Yeah, I got plenty of stats, Dick. I got stats for you. Yeah, these, these, uh, and you got to be a contrarian. I know, you always do. No, I actually do think it's a problem. I think Ebola is possible, like,

out of all the diseases that everyone's ever freaked out about, this one might be worth worrying about. Okay. Well, since Ebola, the first Ebola outbreak in February, around 300,000 people have died from malaria. While tuberculosis is claimed around 600,000, this is from The Guardian, it's claimed around 600,000 lives in the same amount of time. Ebola might have our attention,

but it's not even close to being the biggest problem in Africa right now. It's not even the biggest problem in Africa, let alone our list, dick. Yeah. Even Lassa fever, which shares many of the terrifying symptoms of Ebola, including bleeding from the eyelids, kills many more than Ebola and frequently finds its way to the U.S. You know what this is? This is an Ebola. This is SARS. This is bird flu.

This is killer bees. This is the California drought. This is a slow news week. I'm going to disagree with you. Okay. Because I don't think it is. Based on what, Dick? Well, all the things that you're talking about, all of those other diseases that are sending those hundreds of thousands of people in hospitals, those are all curable.

No, they're not. They're not, yeah, they are. No, they're preventable, but they're not curable. Not all of them are curable. The flu is not curable. But the flu only hurts, like, infants. It only kills the very young and the very old. It's very different than Ebola.

No, that's not true. And I'll tell you why on that point. Did you want to finish something there? Or because I want to... I'm just explaining what's different about Ebola. and these things, these other diseases that you're quoting. Okay. Right?

Well, there is no cure, but it's not just the infants and very old. People can, just regular people can die from... It's not just, but it's mostly. That's who's at risk with the flu. Okay, very young and the very old. Good point. The most vulnerable of our society, go on. No, no, no, but you and I are not at risk to getting killed by the flu.

Well, I'm not. I'm not at risk of being killed by the flu. Maybe syphilis. Yeah. That one might take me out, but not the fucking flu. Ebola, however, can get either one of us. No, but the odds are extremely rare. So it's lightning dick.

Lightning could also strike us. Of course, but lightning strikes don't have the potential to go to rise out of control. If Ebola gets out of control, it could grow exponentially. That's a possible problem. I'm not saying you should be freaked out about it. But it's different. Influenza is not growing exponentially. It is what it is.

It's going to kill that many people all the time because that's what it does. No, influenza is way more contagious than Ebola. Ebola only transfers through bodily fluids. Influenza can transfer through the air. You can just be in a theater where somebody sneezes and you could get the flu. But it's not growing. The amount of infections for the flu is not growing. The amount of infections for Ebola are growing and it's not airborne and it could be.

But the rate at which it's growing is infinitesimal compared to any other disease that actually kills people, including malaria, that I just read. You're saying that the growth of Ebola is infinitesimal. compared to the flu? The rate of growth. The rate of growth, but it's not. What if it's, what if it is exponential? It's not. They've already done models and statistics and calculations.

It does, it's just not that contagious. It really isn't. You have to get bodily fluids in or on you and then absorb them into your body in order to get Ebola. Yeah. That's way less contagious than measles, way less contagious than malaria, than tuberculosis, that all these things that actually kill people that we should be worried about. And we're not, because, you know, Dick, what if the rate of lightning, grows out of control and we just

start dying from lightning. Wait a minute, is it? Have you heard that? No. Did you know about this? Should I start wearing a tinfoil hat to protect myself from lightning? Dick, I think you should. I'm not being a contrarian asshole. Like, I'm not being a conspiracy theorist. I think there's a couple things about Ebola that make it more worrisome than the bird flu.

Okay, well, it's okay to be wrong. So here's this article I read today. It says, don't worry, be rational. Just go ahead. Go ahead. I'll tell you. shitting on the people that are trying to help. Yeah. That's what... Get right in line.

Step right in line with the rest of them. Go ahead. I think I'm a lot smarter than I am. So on that point... Said that fucking asshole. Go ahead. You said dick that you think that the flu is only attacking old people and babies,

which... They're at risk. Of course. I don't... 100% the flu victims are not that. Everyone is not at risk of the flu. Yes, they are not. I am not because I'm invincible.

But here's the thing. I'm okay with the flu. taking out old people and babies. I hate those segments of the population. However, I do want to... That's well documented. Yeah. Yeah. In T-shirts, comic books, writing, and an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit. Hey, speaking of T-shirts, do you want to talk about your new

store launching? Is that something you want to do? Actually, yeah, that'd be kind of cool. You know what? I'll just mention that right now. Yeah, I'm transitioning to the new store, and it's the first time in 11 years that I am changing storefronts, and I've launched a whole bunch of new products. That's a weird commercial We just crammed in there.

You get a lot of commercials this episode. Keep going with your Ebola. You know what, though? I finally have a glow-in-the-dark shirt. It's coming out next week. I'm going to launch it next week. What does it say? Just my logo.

My face. Oh. Yeah, cool of shit. It's like huge, too. It's a cool, glow-and-dark t-shirt. Anyway, dude, real quick. So you said that the flu is less, has less chance of killing you than, say, Ebola.

But here's the thing. This article said why extreme fear of Ebola is bad for you and for your health, right? It's from this website I'll link on our site So they interviewed this guy He's a risk perception consultant David Ropec Which I didn't even know was a thing

But he says Because it's not It's just some asshole making up What he wants to do No no so listen to this He says when we worry It's biologically equivalent to stress Okay worrying is stress

Chronic stress Chronic stress raises our blood pressure And increases the risk of cardiovascular problems Suppresses our immune system And makes us more likely to catch infectious diseases, including Ebola, and it makes us get sicker from them when we do.

It interferes with our neurotransmitters associated with mood. It's strongly associated with clinical depression. Chronic stress interferes with digestion, memory, and depresses fertility, and slows bone growth. So you're not freaked out about a murderous disease that kills half of the people touches and is incurable, but you're worried that stress will give you a loss of bone growth? Are you fucking... That's the position you're taking on this? Ebola, no problem.

Stress, you might lose your bones. Or it increases your... Or have diarrhea. You know, I got that right now, actually. It increases your risk of even contracting Ebola in the first place. Listen to this insanity that's going on because of Ebola. In Cleveland, schools are closing and they're being washed down in bleach. Hey, fuck school.

Any excuse to shut down to school so these kids can have a day off. Come on, everybody's working hard. Keep a day off. What are you pro school now? Yeah. Dick, we need fewer dumbasses. People are going to airports wrapped in plastic and duct tape. These idiots, yeah, I just flew.

Yeah, I just flew through Dallas, Fort Worth, and I was in Omaha this weekend, and I saw it everywhere, man. There's hand sanitizer everywhere. People are wearing masks, people are wearing latex gloves on a plane, eating peanuts with their latex gloves that they've touched everything else with. You guys are idiots. Yeah, look, that's hysteria. I'll give you that. That's hysteria. That's stupid. But the disease itself is not innocuous, I don't think. When the government and the news are both telling me that I don't have to worry about something,

that's when I start getting worried. They say, bird flu, it's going to kill you. Okay, I don't need to worry about that. It sounds stupid. Ebola, don't worry about it. We got some plans. We don't have a cure. Might mutate, but just don't worry about it. Relax, relax, relax. No reason to get hysterical.

That's when I go like, wait a minute, what do you mean? Don't worry about it. Congress is threatening to pass legislation to ban flights to and from Ebola countries, which, by the way, that means America because we have Ebola over here. Eight people have gotten Ebola in America, and one of them have died. One out of eight. That doesn't worry you? No.

At all? Absolutely not. Look at the odds, dick. What are the odds you're going to get Ebola? Pretty much zero. You have better odds of winning a lottery. You have better odds of getting sniped by a DC sniper, the same one they put in jail. Those are your odds.

You have better odds. So listen to this. I agree with you. I agree with that. Yeah. So again, according to the Guardian, they said during the SARS outbreak in 2003, now a lot of people might not remember this,

but SARS happened, and it was this upper respiratory tract infection, right? It stands for severe acute respiratory something. And that may actually stand for something. But in 2003, Asian Americans became the targets of just, of this like hysteria with public health, excuse me, with public hotlines inundated with calls from Americans worried about buying Asian merchandise, living near Asians, and going to school with Asians. Okay, let me just say, I think those people would find something else to be retarded about if they didn't have SARS. Yeah, it's called Ebola. If they didn't have Ebola, it would be anti-vaccinations. You cannot...

That is just as stable as influenza. People being retarded. So here's the thing, Dick. Ebola, this is the first modern outbreak, large-scale modern outbreak we've had of Ebola. We've never attempted to treat Ebola with modern medicine. And so far... Really? Yeah, it's the first time.

So we're sending free shoes to Africa? We haven't bothered to try to cure their Ebola? No, no, no need. And the poor president of Liberia, which is actually like this nice-looking grandmotherly woman. She's like pleading to everybody She said, hey, please help us out. We need help here.

And everyone's just kind of how Congress's a response is, let's ban flights to Liberia. Compromise, man. Yeah, great. That's some kind of compromise. They did the same thing with bird flu in Mexico. Remember, during the height of the bird flu epidemic, and I'm using the word epidemic loosely here,

I drove down to Mexico. This is actually something I've never told on my website or to any of my fans. I drove down to Mexico to try to get bird flu. I went around and found some Mexicans and like paid them to cough and sneeze in my face. Are you serious? Yeah, I have pictures of this. You have pictures of Mexicans spitting in your mouth?

No, they didn't spin my mouth. They were just like breathing in my face and, you know, whatever. I was like, I was so confident that bird flu is bullshit because it is. The flu has a higher mortality rate than bird flu, the normal flu. I just want to say, I'm the weirdo for having a man in my apartment, yet you are driving down to Mexico. to get strange Mexicans to sneeze and cough in your face? You win the fucking weirdo award this week, buddy. You just found random Mexicans to sneeze and cough all over you?

You know, they were merchants. They were trying to sell hats and trinkets and stuff like that. You're just hoping one of them had the bird flu. No, not bird flu, it's swine flu, actually. Yeah, it was swine flu. Oh, I'll make up your mind. Yeah, oh, it's the same difference. Whatever.

It's some bullshit that it's slow news week. Oh, swine flu is the deadly one this week. You better be careful. Swin flu is the really bad one. It just sounds scary because, oh, they associate. an animal with it, an animal that's known to be dirty. Yeah, but something I feel like the hysteria is now the news story. It's not even that the Ebola, like what you're saying right now seems like the talking

points of, like, what is that jackass's name? Shepard Smith. Governor Norquist. No, no, no, Shepard Smith, the news anchor. Yeah, on Fox. Yeah. He came out with that extremely, like, patronizing baby talk. presentation on Ebola.

What do you mean? No. Yeah, it wasn't patronizing. It was actually very factual. It was one of the few things, a few times. Oh, it can be both. Go on. First of all, I brought it. You want to listen to this and tell me it's not fucking patronizing?

Let's hear a little bit of it. All right. Together now. He's taking a deep breath for you. Like a yoga class. For the next few minutes, I'm going to give you the facts on Ebola. Okay. It'll take just three minutes.

Three minutes. Cool. I got three minutes. But first today, given what we know, you should have no concerns about Ebola at all. Done, I don't. I don't. How is that fucking. Unless a medical professional has contact personally and told you of some sort of possible exposure,

fear not. Yep. What is, what is, what is, what is, that's, that's very patronizing. No, it's not. Getting on TV and telling you that you shouldn't be afraid unless a doctor talks to you? Because, you're a fucking doctor, Shepard Smith? No, no, but he's a journalist and he's doing his job. He's telling Americans not to worry about this overblown bullshit, which maybe some, a certain Dick Masterson with a burning penis might benefit from listening to. It's grand, He's getting up there and being so overly sentimental and caring as precious viewers. You want to hear more? Yeah.

Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and the television or read the people of the words online. The people who say and write hysterical things are being irresponsible. Amen. Oh, God. Thank you, Shepard Smith. They are being irresponsible. No news yet, by the way. No facts about, could have cut that three minutes down to two minutes if you lost all that shit.

They've reported all these facts on different segments on Fox News on, CNN. Anderson Cooper has talked about it. People, people, I saw a tweet the other day where someone was imploring CNN to stop sending Anderson Cooper to Ebola countries. I, first of all, are you kidding me? And how weird and kind of cool would it be if a very famous news reporter just died from Ebola? Like that, then that would be kind of, oh, these guys are shaking their heads, whatever. That would be kind of an interesting at least. Yeah, yeah. But it's so unlikely. Dude, put me in a room with someone to the Ebola. As long as they're don't sneeze or cough on me.

Like, I'm not going to go to Mexico and have people with Ebola or Liberia have people with Ebola sneeze in my face. Okay, that's stupid. That's the way, and it does have a high mortality rate, if you get it. But that if is everything. You're not going to. It's really unlikely. That's the thing about exponential growth of something like this, though.

Once it gets out of control, it's out of control. There's a flow chart that shows how contagious different diseases are. Measles is by far the highest, and these anti-vactor dipshits in Malibu are not getting vaccinations and that has a higher mortality rate than Ebola. Way more people die from that shit. Measles has a higher mortality rate? Like percentage or numbers? I take that back.

Probably numbers. I think numbers because many more people get measles than they do Ebola. The mortality rate is the issue here to me. The fact that it might kill you on a coin toss is pretty worrisome. Based on 1920 statistics of mortality of Ebola. This is the first time again that we've been trying to. to treat it with modern medicine, intravenous treatment, keeping fluids, just keeping people hydrated,

which they weren't able to do effectively before IV drips when people got Ebola. Just that alone has brought down the mortality rate. We haven't even really started. And already today I read an article, I think it was on Scientific American, about how they just came out with research that shows how the process, how the Ebola virus penetrates our cells, and it's dependent upon one specific type of amino acid. Which they may be able to find some medication to block in our systems.

If you have Ebola, and that's that. That's the end of Ebola. It'll be another little footnote in history of SARS and bird flu. And smallpox. Yeah, well, until these anti-vacter morons bring it back and kill all of us. Smallpox wiped out like a third of people, didn't it? It was pretty bad, yeah. Which is similar to Ebola, isn't it, smallpox?

I don't know. Except Ebola has a non-human human health. host. Smallpox didn't have that. What is the non-human Ebola host? Bats. I think it's bats. Are you sure it's not? I heard it from a gun. Huh? Monkeys, vote it up, people. Yeah, well, if they do cure it, isn't it because

of all this media hype? Nobody was looking for a fucking cure before. Now, all of a sudden, everyone's hysterical, we got to find a cure. No, we don't, dick. It's just... I got you on that one. We're just trying to help out poor Grandma Liberia. They're president. We do not. Nothing in us gives a

fuck about. The U.S. doesn't care about Africa. Yeah. Is that... I'll agree with you on that. Yeah. What's your next problem? No, let's take a minute to thank our sponsor. Today's show is brought to you by Warby Parker. Visit warbyparker.com slash biggest for your next pair of eyeglasses.

You enter that code and you'll get free three-day shipping on your purchased eyewear. So let me tell you about Warby Parker. It's a new concept in eyewear, contemporary eyeglasses that are extremely affordable and fashion forward. They do look pretty good, dude. I checked out the website ready, you know, because I've had some opinions about glasses,

especially from Oakley and Rayban and all these other competitors, which are all the same company. But these ones look really good on Warby Parker's. Well, they sent us some free ones. You should try them on. I don't know. I don't know what it would take for you to buy an expensive pair of sunglasses. They're going to give us a pair for running this ad.

So I brought in, I offered the suggestion that we should have some kind of a game to see who gets the one free pair of sunglasses. sunglasses, whether it would be Maddox, myself or Sean, and what was your response to that? I said I should get them all. Yeah, there you go. So Maddox is going to get a free pair of sunglasses. Yeah, or we can each have a lens and then we can change custody. So I just put on, Dick handed me these, this cool pair of aviator sunglasses.

Yeah, you look great. Yeah, right? Sean, huh? Whatever, Sean. Put them on straight, shithead. Well, I'm wearing headphones. You can't move the headphones for a second? Can you guys hear that?

It's like making the squeaky noises. Oh, it's because of my headphone. Okay, there we go. They're on straight. Here's the copy. Let me read you this. This is what Warby Parker says. The industry is controlled by a few large companies that have kept prices artificially high,

reaping huge profits from consumers who have no other options. They're trying to get around that. Their prescription glasses start at 95 bucks, including lenses. Options include glasses, reading glasses, and sunglasses. And they also offer you the ability to try them on at home, which you are currently doing. Yeah. I kind of like that.

I don't like going into the store and try and shit on with a bunch of assholes. And you've got to go to the mall when you do it too, which is a bigger pain in the ass. It's about time online retailers finally started making this try-on at home thing of reality, right? Because why are you going to go into a store or a mall or whatever and stand in line at a kiosk and talk to one of those idiots, those underpaid morons? Which, by the way, I needed a cable. I walked into one one time and asked these guys, I said, hey, I just need a USB charging cable. Guess how much it costs just for a USB micro USB charging cable? 20 bucks?

Yeah, 25 bucks. Yeah. Where, oh, yeah. Everywhere charges $25 for a cable that costs like $3 to make, less than $3. They got us pay for the storefront, though, man. Where'd you go? Oh, so I just went places that weren't selling them and just asked them if they had a cable to sell me. Whatever, man.

Warby Parker, you don't have to deal with that. Yeah. That's my point. Good job. These glasses look really good on me. I think I win. Well, there you go. Take them home with you. They're yours.

Great. Done. All right, are we doing another problem? Let's do it. My next problem is chatty Uber drivers. Chatty Uber drivers. Yeah. And why is that a problem, Dick?

And I actually agree. Already you're immediately to the cutting down of my problem. Yeah. Look, let's hear it. Let's hear it. I hate cabs as much as the next guy. Cabs blow. Yeah, they're the worst.

Absolutely. They never know where anything is. No, and they take the slowest route. They're belligerent. And everything they try to do to improve the cab riding experience backfires. They put in those monitors in the back, those TVs that you can't turn off. Oh, my God, dude. I'm getting flashbacks of driving to the airport at 6 in the morning with the same fucking ads playing over and over on that television.

Yeah, the same like three-minute entertainment tonight clip. Yeah. And it's mostly in New York. Every time I go to New York, their cabs, it seems like they've taken. uh two steps one step forward and two steps back and they're liars their credit card machines are not always broken even though they say they're oh they're so full of shit and they're so yeah they're so belligerent they always they always insist on uh uh if you don't if you don't tip them because they took the slow route or they went the wrong way and they kept the meter running they're idiots

so uber's a godsend yeah right fixes everything by by taxis so uh explain uber for some people uh who don't know uh you get on your phone you request a car you request a Uber, you get on the app, and then somebody, just some person who's signed up to be a driver, shows up where you've requested them and drives you to where you want to go. Yeah. And it's all handled with your iPhone. It's great. The payment goes through it.

Everything goes through it. It's perfect. Or Android. Yeah. Except that these motherfuckers want to chat your ear off every time you get in the Uber with them, right? They always have some deal that they want to work out with you. And I don't know where they get that. This is just a plea from me to everyone

to stop chatting me up in Ubers. Yeah, why? Because I got my phone back here. Interesting, Dick. Weren't you the same guy who complained about everyone being on their phones early on in our podcast? I don't need a five-minute friend. I want you to pay attention to the road, all right?

Okay, I'm on board with that. But yeah, so just so they get a... they're quicker, which none of them ever, like, I've only ever had one aggressive Uber driver. Yeah. And it was me. And I wasn't driving Uber. But they're never aggressive. They're always being very polite and very slow.

I'm guessing it's because of other passengers. Well, you know what? Speaking of other passengers, the real problem, we get, I think we get criticized for not bringing in female problems on this show. Well, you. Yeah, well, okay. I'll cut to that. But it seems like these Uber drivers are like out of control. harassing women.

Yeah. Have you heard about this? Yeah. It seems like every week, some broad's getting abducted. Well, you're also hearing about it. Like, look, dude, as a percentage of Uber drives that actually happen, it's extremely low. Just like the percentage of all interactions that happen with strangers, the number of them that end in homicide are extremely low.

The number of them that end in rape are extremely low. the number of them that end in burglary are extremely low. However, the number of them that end in uncomfortable harassment is extremely high. I don't think so. I think you're just hearing more about it. I think every chick has a story or multiple stories about Uber guys chatting them up in weird ways. Well, that may, I don't know, man. I mean, it's...

Because I didn't think this was a problem. Yeah. And, like, this girl I know was telling me about how big of a problem it was. I was like, you're crazy. These guys are just... They're doing their job. They're driving a car. They're semi-professionals.

Why are they going to just, why are they going to, why are all these guys nonstop harassing you? Right? So, sure enough, we take an Uber to my place. I hop out. She keeps going. As soon as I get on the car, as soon as I get out of the car, the guy was silent the entire time, turns around and goes, oh, so, what were you on a date? Didn't go well? Wow.

I was like, are you got to be fucking kidding me, man? Well, I do have an anecdote similar to that about a friend of mine who took an Uber to a bar one time. and got out of the bar, she thanks the guy, and he asks her if he can come in with her. Pretty creepy. Yeah. And then it puts them in the awkward situation where if they say no, it makes them seem rude

and then they might get a rude encounter with that Uber driver. Or if they say yes or it doesn't matter. Of course you're not going to say yes. No, of course not. Some asshole that you just met in a car that you hired to drive you around, you're going into a fucking bar with him. Are you kidding me?

You know what's weird is I've actually gotten burgers with several Uber drivers. I don't know why, but this has happened multiple times. I don't even remember the circumstance because I was probably drunk. But I was going to a burger place in Hollywood, and this Uber driver overheard our conversation, me and my friend in the back, and we were talking about how good these burgers were. And he was like, well, yeah, these do sound like good burgers. They put bacon on them. I'm like, yeah, they put bacon on them.

Avocado. I'm like, yeah, dude, you can get an avocado. burger. So we pull over and he's like, all right, well, I should probably eat something. And we're like, okay, so I guess you're joining us. And he did. He just came in. What the fuck? It was our friend for the night. You know, honestly, they're going to fuck it up. They're going to we're going to have to go back to taxis. No.

Because these people, these guys, these chatty Uber guys are going to fuck it all up. I don't know, man. I'll never go back. But yeah, some of the Uber drivers are creeps. I've actually had the experience of networking with Uber drivers. Dude, that's exactly what I was going to say next. I don't want to hear about your band. I feel like back 10, 15 years ago, you'd have to hear about someone's band whenever you were stuck in a car with them.

Now you have to hear about their social fucking marketing project. And I'm sick of it. I don't want to hear about the TED talk you listened to that inspired you to think about quitting your job and starting a revolution online. Yeah, you know, it's funny. You mentioned that. That's almost exactly what happened to me this afternoon.

When I took a... It wasn't Uber. It was Lyft. Lyft is another service that's similar to Uber. I took it home from the airport. The guy actually was like really nice and he told me all about his social marketing project

and I gave him some pointers and he said I should hire you, blah, blah, blah, we'll change contact and we'll see where that goes. But I don't know, it was a nice, it was a nice guy. It was a nice chat. I didn't mind it so much. I mean, I guess I'm fortunate that

that I'm not a woman. Yeah, that I'm not a woman in being harassed by it, which, yeah, it does suck. But I don't know, I don't know how pervasive it is. I think it's more pervasive than you and I can even imagine. Well, so if it is, though, they are essentially risking their professional reputation. What?

The Uber drivers, because you can rate each one of them. If they have a low rating, if they drop below a four, they get kicked off the service. Yeah, but you know how chicks are. They never do that shit. Well, then it's not a problem. Because they don't want to hurt anybody. They don't mind, like, they don't want to be harassed. But they don't want to stand up for them.

Dude, they don't one-star them. I've seen them do it. They'll tell me a horrific story. And then they'll go like, oh, four stars. Like, I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to cause problems. That's your fucking fault, Stockholm syndrome.

Like, if you have, if you're not rating these people lower, then you're encouraging it. You can't complain and then complain to your friends and then not complain to Uber or Lyft. If this shit happens, you need to nip it in the bud and get these creeps off the road. Yeah. If you think that it's a problem, otherwise shut up about it. Well, that's what I'm doing.

Yeah. That's why I brought it. it in today. Oh, thanks, Dick. Look, look, don't start the conversation. That's all I'm saying. That's, that should be the rule. If it's a woman in the car, don't talk to her. But I get some chatty Uber drivers, and it's just, they're just rambling, they're lonely, whatever. It's, it's, it's not just Uber, though. I've had cab drivers. I've had professional car services pick me up, and the guys, those guys are the chatiest, actually. You might be right about that. I had, I got some great strip club stories from one of those guys in Florida.

of all places, in Tampa of all places. I believe it. I get so many good celebrity stories from those guys. And I don't give a shit about celebrities, but they always have a good story about someone who took things too far. They had to make a midnight run to pick up some prescription drugs or something, drop off or someplace in Compton, like some interesting stories. What was one? Do you remember? Someone told me about Chuck Pollanick.

Chuck Pollanick, they picked him up and he had a big bag of prosthetics with him. I don't remember. Prostatic, like, limbs? Yeah, prosthetic limbs. Because I guess he goes to, at his book signings, he throws out prosthetic limbs into the audience or something. That sounds like something he'd do. Yeah, and people faint during his readings.

And if you see him, have you ever seen him? No. He's the author of Fight Club. He just looks like a really normal dude. Yeah. Like if I saw that guy in a Whole Foods, I'd think, oh, yeah, okay, I could see that. Probably buying some alfalfa something.

Yeah. Yeah, pretty normal looking dude. Anyway, dude. Okay. I had one of those social marketing people last week. and I was telling him about the podcast, and I'm like, well, what's the secret? How do you get so many downloads?

Like, how do you start something like that? And I was like, oh, it's easy. You just glom on to someone who's way more famous than you. As I'm a digital cyber TV. Whoops, wrong button. I meant to do applause on that one. Anyway, yeah, that's pretty funny. Yeah.

Good secret. Okay, so can I move on to my last problem here? Yeah, you can move on to your problem. All right, I got another real problem this week. Meetings. Okay? Meetings are the bane of every professional's existence. First of all, nothing ever gets accomplished in them.

That is the number one problem with meetings. Nothing ever gets accomplished. I used to work for a telemarketing company, and I had this manager, who everybody loved, super nice guy, but he would have these spiritual team meetings every day for an hour, pissed away an hour. Let me read some stats for you. This is from The Guardian. One weekly executive meeting ate up a dizzying 300,000 hours a year at a large company. They did a study, which is impressive given that each of us only has about 8,700 hours a year to begin with, including sleep.

Oh. 300,000 hours pissed away in meetings. And the weekly meetings took up, so they were looking into what exactly where these hours were being chewed up. So the weekly meetings took up about 7,000 person hours for the executives involved. But they also had to meet with unit heads. And then those unit heads had to prepare for those meetings with team meetings. So another 63,000 hours. And then those team meetings generated numerous preparatory meetings. And then that total doesn't even include the work or time it took to prepare for the initial meeting in the first place.

Yeah. So meeting after meeting, after meeting, nothing ever accomplished. So here are the type of people you have in meetings, right? You got the kiss ass. This is the guy who's just going to suck the boss's dick, never disagree, always support. I hate that guy. Then you have the yes man, right? This is different than the kiss ass because the yes man is also he's not necessarily going to blow sunshine up the boss's ass,

but he's not going to say no to a bad idea. He's got to grow an idea. That's important about being a guy. You get to understand what the boss is talking about and then and then rephrase it and add on to it so it seems like it's even better than it was. Well, you know what? Which one you are? I'm all of these guys, Jackass. Okay. Then we got the insecure dickhead who can't give a pass to any idea but his own. Sure?

Yeah. He's always shooting down. I had so many of those assholes and my old job. Oh man, I forgot this guy's name, but it was a real shitty name like someone from friends, like Chandler or something like that. But he brought in this, he was such a snobhouse. He was such a weasel. He would come in and pretend like he was everyone's friend. Then one day, he left this document out on his desk. And my buddy was a snoop. So he went over and took a look at it and goes, hey, hey, Maddox, check out what I found on this dude's desk. And I look at it. And it's this end run that he's proposing that would cut like everyone's job and then only support the technology that he knows and he understands because he's insecure about himself and he doesn't want to learn our technology that we were using in the workforce. And what he was proposing was so. super shitty. Like we were using this, we were a C, C++, and 4GL shop with my SQL back end and a lot of different SQL stuff. Oh my God, it's alphabet soup. He was proposing going to Visual Basic. And I know only programmers out there will understand the significance of that, but it's kind of like going from professional tools like Black and Decker to Fisher Price.

Yeah, that's a good analogy, right? I'm not a programmer, and I understand. that because it was once explained to me as being the Sesame Street of coding. It is. It is. It's one step above dragging and dropping icons. Actually, it might be exactly dragging and dropping icons. Then you have the action item list. Every meeting

has an action item list. And I hate that those two words combined make my skin crawl. Action item. You skipped a very important part of the meeting though if you were already at action items. You skipped the 15 minutes of horseshit for play. Oh, I'm getting there. Oh, you're meeting's at a

order then. You gotta start with 15 minutes of jokes and bullshit. That was actually, that was actually next on my list, the pleasantries. Yeah. Oh, God. Oh, how's the weather? How's the traffic? Oh, what are you guys up to? What'd you do this weekend? Okay, so 15 minutes just pissed away with pleasantries. Because you have to. You know, it's, well, you go back to the telemarketing company well to talk about meetings, but we've been in several entertainment meetings. Yeah. And they all work exactly like this. Exactly. Especially the pleasantries part. The pleasantries, it always piss.

I used to be with a pretty high-powered agency. And they would send me to so many meetings every week. And every single one was a half-hour meeting. And I would tell them, guys, first of all, half-hour is not enough to accomplish anything. Because I broke down the meeting minute by minute. I said the first 10 minutes are going to be bullshit. We're going to talk about the traffic. Then we're going to talk about five minutes, about five, ten minutes about their introduction, about who they are.

Then I give them my introduction about who I am. Because invariably, these were blind meetings. they didn't know who the fuck I was. So are you doing the math here? We're at about 25 minutes into our 30-minute meeting. That leaves us five minutes to discuss any ideas or potential opportunities to work together. I said, thanks, but no thanks.

No more meetings. I'm done meetings. No, that's where you fucked up. Yeah. But it's a multiple meeting process. You know, it's a courtship. No, but you got to learn those parts are the meeting. They're the purpose of the meeting.

It's not meant to accomplish anything. It's establishing a relationship. Oh, well, if it's not meant to accomplish anything, then guess what? Mission accomplished. Yeah. Well, yeah. You've got to take another one, though, to keep going. Yeah, but they're not going to take another meeting with you if you don't hook them during that first one, and you don't get an opportunity to hook them because you don't have a time to pitch them your fucking idea because you're pitching them yourself. What's the difference?

The difference is huge. Between yourself and your idea, what's the difference? What if they just like you? And then I want to have another meeting. Okay, that happens. What alternate reality is this where he? walks it and they just like him. Shut up, Dick.

That is the goal, Sean. But here's the thing. If I come into a meeting, nobody knows who I am, and they're interested in me professionally, I have to give them the Wikipedia pitch, which is like, I've wrote this book, and I wrote this other book, and I have this website, and this is who I am, this is why you'd want to work with me, especially Hollywood types, because they care a lot about that kind of shit. You have to make yourself sound big and important, otherwise they're not going to return your phone calls.

And, yeah, Sean, I mean, ideally, you would have another five, ten minutes to. to make your personality apparent because on Wikipedia, anyone can read those bullet points about me and not know anything about my personality. So in your mind, how would the perfect meeting go? Where are you going to get to that? I don't want to derail your...

No, the perfect meeting would be me just sitting at home getting work done. I remember one time I was in a meeting at a programmer meeting. It was programming in sales. And someone suckered me into this meeting and I was there for about 40, 45 minutes and this girl got up to excuse herself to go to the restroom

and she got up and I just sitting there doodling and I looked around everyone just like sitting there staring at their laptops not doing anything productive and I knew I had a deadline and I could have been working instead of this meeting so I just stood up and I said yeah I too would like to go to the bathroom and then everyone just like looked at me and knew I wasn't coming back and I didn't I was like fuck it I don't give a shit fire me

I'm done I'm done with these meetings they're mind-numbing and they all have an arbitrary one-hour time frame. Most professional meetings. I'm not talking about these blind meetings that the agency would send me to. Well, they're still professional meetings. Yeah, they're professional meetings. So there's actually a name for this, okay? These meetings that don't ever accomplish anything. First of all, they found that in meetings, the overly confident dipshits got their voices heard loudest. Not the most competent people in meetings. Kruger Dunning effect. Yeah. Excuse me, the Dunning Krueger effect. Yeah. And so they, they,

That shouldn't be a surprise. Yeah. Loud jerk-offs get heard more than people who are formulating their opinions. Of course. And they don't want to speak up because the loud dickheads who seem confident, they don't want to contrast them, especially in a meeting and risk sounding dumb because, oh, man, he's so confident. He must be right.

So they have a name for this. It's called the bike shed effect. People won't speak up about, and this is from The Guardian, people won't speak up about the big, complex, important decisions because they're scared of embarrassing themselves, but they still want to feel and appear as if they're making a contribution. So they'll make sure to weigh in on the unimportant stuff instead. The result? Triviality gradually comes to dominate. A decision about the construction of a new bike shed, for example, will be debated for an hour and a quarter and then deferred for a decision until the next meeting,

pending the gathering of more information. Yeah. Does this not sound like Congress? Yeah, it does sound like Congress. A big bunch of... Yeah, there you go, Sean. Thank you. Bravo. That's exactly what Congress is. Just one long series of meetings and never accomplish anything. If they could accomplish less, I would be happier. I don't know if it's possible for them to, Dick. No, they could just not do anything. If those guys just went to the Capitol and just sat there all day, that would be perfect. Dick, what do you think they're doing that's accomplished?

They're passing laws. They're trying to do stuff. They're talking. Anything that they do. There was a study, I think, a couple years ago, or maybe it was even last year that found that Congress passed the fewest number of laws in years. They're not doing anything, dude, and that's exactly the problem. They need to get some shit done. And they need a compromise. Oh, no, no, no. No, they need to not do anything. Okay, anarchy, dick.

You know why they're getting fewer laws passed? Because of fucking Governor Norquist, that dipshit, who made everyone agree to this draconian no-tax policy, which has caused them to not raise taxes, but instead to find clever loopholes and call it something else. Other than a tax? Other than a tax. So it was a pointless thing. Who gives a shit then? Well, it's wasting time.

I give a shit. I'm a very efficient dude, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, I don't think, I don't think meetings are as big of a problem as not getting tits on your Snapchat. Okay. Oh, boy. Maybe I think I'm a lot smarter than I am. Yeah.

Yeah. No, wait. You don't like meetings. You like efficiency. Maybe I am a fucking idiot. Yeah, that's the one. That's the one. You like a lot of efficiency.

in your life. Yeah, Dick. That's why I turn off, okay, and Windows XB... People just don't work like that. Oh, I know, Dick. And, you know, I was just like stewing on the flight home today. Yeah.

Your stupid fucking voice was that going in my head with your stupid argument about the apples. Like, you know, Maddox, here's what you don't care about apples is that people who buy Apple products care about their time. Dick, first of all, if you don't research what you're buying,

how do you know it's the best? What the fuck are you talking about if you don't research? You rely on other people to do the research for you. They're called experts. Oh, really? Did you call them geniuses in the genius bar?

No, they're called them experts. This works in every field. You still have to talk to them and read their opinion somewhere. That's called research. Oh, that's what you mean by research, reading opinions? Yeah, that's research. I don't think that's research. Of course it's research.

You don't need to know every feature of everything to make a decision. No, you just need to know that it's the best. And you can go to Newegg and buy each component that has the highest rating and know that you're getting quality stuff. That's a huge waste of time. For somebody who doesn't like meetings, it's a huge waste of time. Oh yeah. And you know what else is a huge waste of time? Spending double or triple for hardware,

because you have to work hard to earn that money. All right. Your PC fixation, your fetishization of constructing these gadgets that you worship has nothing to do with the meeting problem. Okay. You love efficiency. So I think this is especially sticks in your craw because it seems like a waste of time.

But I don't think it's that. big of a waste of time. Dick, what the fuck are you talking about? How is it not a waste of time? These people have to, you have to get people on the same page. Yeah, a lot of meetings are a huge waste of time, but they're necessary. It's a necessary evil to get anybody doing anything. Shoot off an email. Here you go, idiots. Yeah, that's not, that's not the same. You can't share as much information over an email as you can in a meeting. You know, Dick, I've had to do, so I worked for a telemarketing company for almost a decade, nine and a half years. And in that I called for exactly one meeting,

and I sent in the email, the subject line, I believe even said, 20-minute meeting, and I stuck to it. I came in and I said, sorry, guys, no pleasantries, we have 20 minutes. I handed everyone out a flyer with bullet points of everything I wanted to cover,

and I went right through it, and everybody was so on point because they knew I wasn't fucking around. Everybody took notes, they wrote down exactly what I wanted them to get, and then on the 20-minute mark, I even had a timer on the counter, on the 20-minute mark,

wheel marched right out of that office and went right to work. No bullshit. I came in there. I explained my document. I explained my process. I explained what needed to be done and how to use the software that I developed. That's it. That was the point of my meeting. Not what you did this weekend. Not traffic and not the weather. I just got in and got the fuck out. And you know what? I had to do this one other time. I had to coordinate something with eight different people. It was for the alphabet of manliness when I got all the illustrators from my book. So I had to get everyone on the same page. right?

Because that's your point that everyone has to be on the same page. Yep. How did I do that? I created a program that allowed everyone to upload their artwork so that everyone can see what everyone else is drawing

and then communicate via chat message at your convenience to see what everyone else is doing. Not a fucking meeting that's going to suck eight people's time in and waste an hour of eight people's lives. Eight hours, dude. Yeah, it's a problem.

300,000 hours a year wasted at this company. Just that a company? Yeah, that's someone's life right there. Multiple people's lives, probably. I don't know. A baby who got the flu. Yeah. All right, you want to wrap it up? Do you have anything more about meetings?

Yeah, they're wasted time. Stop calling them. Dunning Kruger effect and the bike shed effect. I'll be linking to these studies. This is really interesting. They even have a study for the overly confident loudmouth dipshitz on this website called Science Direct. It's a white paper, someone actually found. They found that people overcompensate when they're really confident. Anyway, yeah, that's pretty much. Oh, yeah, I just want to end on this note about meetings. So you want to know how I know that meetings aren't productive because nobody is paying you to talk. That's not your job. Your job is not to sit down in a meeting and chat. If it was, then meetings would be productive. And they're never productive because that's not your job requirement.

You're not communicating ideas. You're not communicating everything. And the worst kind of meeting, I would say is the conference room speaker phone meeting. Isn't that the worst? You should have done conference calls. They're way worse than meetings. They don't work at all.

I have it on my list. Yeah. And every time I'm on a conference call, I imagine everyone back there like putting me on mute while I'm talking and then just jerking off. Like just standing with her pants down, just really hairy dicks right into the speaker.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Either that or playing guitar whenever I'm on a conference call. Yeah. gross so meetings meetings meetings and

Ebola alarmists are my problems I mean yeah I don't think that's as big of a problem this one than is with SARS you know what I'm saying does that make sense so you think there's no credibility in Ebola being a danger at all

it's a dangerous virus but it's really unlikely to be communicable to the majority of the population yeah it's just really unlikely you're not going to get Ebola in fact on my flight to Omaha

it's kind of funny I the entire time I was flying to Dallas and from Dallas to Omaha. The widest people, right? No one's going to Omaha, except I sat in this back row with just like a ton of like straight up from Africa, Nigerians and Kenyans and librarians or whatever. I'm like, of course, of course. It would be me and put in the back.

But, you know, whatever. I didn't give a shit. I'm fine. I'm not bleeding from my eyelids. Yeah, I think, I don't know if I would go through Dallas. Yeah, why? I wouldn't feel comfortable with it. Oh, yeah.

I would probably do it, but I wouldn't want to be there. So let's do the math here Because you know the people who are exposed Ebola hop on a cruise They hop on planes They just are they irresponsible They're just didn't live in their lives man That's the problem

Yeah But they don't know that they have Ebola Necessarily because the symptoms of Ebola Are kind of flu-like when you first get them But they were just around it Like shouldn't they pause for a moment No because it's really unlikely And overblown that you'll get it

Even in Liberia That they have what 8000 cases of it Something like that It's a drop in the bucket. It's less than one half of one percent of the population. Are you kidding me? That's nothing.

All right. I'd go to Liberia. We'll see. We'll see what people think about it. I have Snapchat of not tits. Snapchats of not tits. And chatty ubers. Chatty Uber drivers.

You know, the Snapchat one is different than Tinder, too. Tinder, by the way, has screwed me again. How's that? Well, you remember last time I told you about Tinder. Tinder had me banging this girl who lived in Santa Monica, which is like a half hour drive away. Oh, no. So that was a...

Well, that's unfortunate. Yeah, that was a pain in the ass. This time, you're going to love this story. I matched a porn star on Tinder. Cool. Wait. One that you know. Oh, I know her.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, shut up. So I matched her, and I didn't message her. I just got lazy, and I hate Tinder. Like, I hate doing that shit. So I was just like, ah, whatever. And it kind of slipped my mind. So I was doing a show last night over UCB,

and she was on the panel of the show. Oh, that one. Yeah. So she called me out in front of everybody for not messaging her on Tinder. Wow, that's hilarious. That was funny. You're not going to go out with her, are you? I don't know, maybe.

I probably should. No? Check out her videos, dude. No? No. No. I mean, yes, for the story, but no. I don't.

So yes. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Well, so those are your problems. We'd like to say thanks again to Warby Parker for sponsoring this episode. Yeah. Also, thanks, Dick, for the plug for my store.

I'm going to link to it on the Who part of the web page. Cool. Yeah, so you guys can check it out, and I'll have that glow-in-the-dark shirt. It should be pretty cool. Yeah. I like glow-in-the-dark shade. Let's go out on something different. We usually go out with the theme song.

Somebody remixed our conversations, our arguments that we've been having so far. It's called, what it's called, Maddox and Dick, Stop the Fighting. Stop the Fighting. By Waterboy. Yeah, W-A-U-T-R-B-O-I on SoundCloud. This is pretty funny. Yeah, so we're going to go out on that. Enjoy.

Go to the website. This is, okay, I don't get this about you people. Okay. So what, are you talking? Yeah. Everyone on this planet. Why is it important to you? Is that a serious question?

Yes. Listen to the sentence you just said. No, no one gives a shit. Yeah, why don't you hang out with your dumb-ass monkeys, pretend that I'm, a stupid idiot. Yeah, I'm trying to explain why are we,

I'm just saying all these stats. I know, I can tell. It doesn't matter. I got, you know what? No, I'm not suggesting we wipe them out. No,

because people who think, because people, there are people who, every single hour. Yeah, of course. Marketing. So in your mind, I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here

and let you, you sucker. Go, what, Sean? I was just going to say, it's, it's, it's, can you, wait a minute. Yeah, you got in there.

Well, it's not. It's such a labor-intensive process to bullshit industry. You don't know that. F you! Well, eat it, Dick. You know why? I am the winner.

Also, if you're sitting at the bar... I don't want to sit at the bar and jab dudes. Dick, how is that at all rational? You make an emotional decision. What's rational about plugging a piece of your anatomy into a dude? No, you're not explaining... And every time I talk... Is I a gay joke?

You don't need to get married to do that. Or... You're saying poor people didn't do this? The, they're, uh, they're, they're, dude, that's, no, I don't, I, no, that's my point. It's so much more soul crush. Germany, it was a joke. We stomped all over everyone. Right.

Yeah, but that's our industry. I mean, I guess, sure, but who cares, really? At the end of the day, who cares? First of all, you're not drinking all the diet soda. No, gross. Are you, guys, because I will not check. That's a, that's a trick, because you're just going to splash your dick at me. Yeah.

No, I do, I do it to chicks. Yeah. Yeah. I'm agreeing with you. Oh, okay. I get all tied up. You know that chick was thinking about like balls. Oh, yeah.

That's what I got between my legs. Thanks for listening.