The Biggest Problem in the Universe: Uncucked - Episode 85

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

Welcome to the biggest problem in the universe, the show where we discuss every problem in the universe from junk drawers to Star Wars. With over 5 million downloads, this is the only show where you decided what showed or shouldn't be on the big list of problems. I'm Maddox with me as Dick. Hey, what's up, buddy?

And Sean, our audio engineer. Hello. Oh, fuck Star Wars, man. Right out the gates. Dude, somebody owes me 30 bucks back. Wait, it sounds like you owe yourself 30. How did you spend $30? Disney owes me $30.

plus the 20 that I spent on refreshments. What? Plus my time. Plus wasting two hours of my time or two hours and 20 minutes of my time at midnight last night. That movie fucking sucks. Wow.

Star Wars is the worst movie since someone got filmed dying of AIDS. Is that a movie? I'm sure that's happened. I don't know if that is a movie. I'm sure that's happened. It may have been an old, what's his name? Paul, no.

Tom Hanks. No, no, no, the artist. Prince. No, the Campbell Soup guy. Warhol, Andy Warhol, may have been one of his experimental. Oh, no, wait a minute. They're at Midnight Cowboy. That's a movie of someone dying of AIDS, yeah, literally.

But that was a good movie. Look, it was horrible. It was horrible, it was horrible. Please don't see it. Please, God, don't see it. Whatever you do, don't go see this fucking movie. It's horrible. It's horrible.

Okay. It totally negates all three of the first. movies. Totally. Because everything's exactly the same. They come back and the entire galaxy is still fucked. Do you, like, is that a... Is that a baby or a horse?

It's a baby. What is the fucking point if the movie starts out where you won? Everybody risked their lives. A bunch of bothans were lost to get the plans for the death star. A bunch of people died to kill the ultimate evil

and take back the entire galaxy for the forces of good, and what did it do? Nothing. Everybody still lives in squalor, and there's still stormtroopers and assholes and weird cloaks doing shit. They didn't even change the fucking name of the good guys. They're still called the rebellion.

What are they rebelling against? No, they're not called the rebellion. They're called, um, it's, uh... It says the republic, but it's the rebel factions of the republic. How are they rebels? Is there a democracy or what? Who the fuck is anyone? And why are they doing anything?

Uh, you, you better, be careful, buddy, because you sounded a lot like a star lord right now. A star lord? Yeah. Why? That the movie was horrible? I shit all over Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy, and everyone jumped down my throat and here you are shitting on one of the biggest blockbuster. Not one fucking protagonist. Nobody in that movie wanted to be there. Black guy, coward, wanted to go home. Chick wanted to go home and deal with her crippling emotional

issues. You're meeting Han Solo. You're getting ready for the adventure of your fucking lifetime and you want to go home to wait for your parents? Fuck you then. Where's the regular person? Where is the regular guy who wants to go on the adventure of a lifetime throughout space and meet a bunch of stupid Muppets? Where's me? Where is me in this story?

Nowhere, it's a total piece of shit that... Who wrote it? J.J. Abrams? No. Who wrote it? Whoever wrote it just wanted to write a story about a fictional little girl that they wish they had, which is that chick, who does everything perfectly all the time, and uses a lightsaber for the first time

to beat up a Sith Master like that goofy stupid life Hey, hey, a Sith Master who gets beat up by a janitor and a woman who's never touched a lightsaber before who for some reason existed in the middle of nowhere and was not a prostitute

She's a scavenger Somehow that logic makes Dude, fuck that movie It's the first profession I didn't invent it I didn't invent it but it's there for a reason Do you know how many pissed off emails people are going to get? for spoiling this?

Oh. Are you going to get... Sean, I spoiled this on Twitter pretty bad. So I took... Wait, wait, wait. What did you do? I spoiled. I photoshopped a picture of a coffin with the name of a character that dies on...

Hans-Oh, shit. No, no, no. So everyone got pissed off at me, and I just want to take that back. For anyone who saw that on Twitter, I'm sorry. Hansol does not die in this movie. Wait, what?

Are you really apologizing? I'm saying, yeah, Hansel definitely does not die in this movie. I'm sorry if I upset you. That is definitely not a spoiler. You're fine. I like how that kid looked like an emo version of Rocky from Mask. Yeah, there's even a Twitter account called Emo.

It was the all-ugly cast. Now, there's a Twitter account right now. It's a parody called Emo Kylo Ren, where he just writes really angsty messages to Hot Topic and things like that. And it's to its appearance. It's a cast of daddy issues. Everyone in that whole fucking movie has daddy issues. Girls waiting for dad.

Guy hates his dad. He hates his dad. wants to kill him. Black guy doesn't have a dad, I guess. Is that to make it more relatable for the urban market? That statistically, that's true. Statistically, that's true. It's a tragedy. I wish it would not be that way, but statistically.

I thought the movie was, okay. It was just fine. It was fine. I'm not, you know, I feel like I'm in that little island in the middle where nobody, like, I don't love it and I don't hate it. I'd give it a solid six out of ten. It was fine. I fell asleep during the movie.

I don't fault that. I don't damn you in your ratings. You told me, we had an argument, Maddox and I had an argument for like an hour and a half about whether bridesmaids was good. Because I thought it was the worst movie I'd seen since Star Wars of Force Awakened. Before Star Wars of Awakening, now it's the second worst movie I've ever seen. And you said it was good. And then I said, well, grade it with a number, like on one to a hundred. You said, oh, I'd give it about a 50.

Like, okay, then we think that's awful. No, you fell asleep during this movie that you think is okay. No, I'd give bride me a day. I like bridesmaids, is it bridemaid or bride? Whatever. It doesn't matter. Better. I liked it better than Star Wars.

But yeah, Star Wars was fine. It had very high expectations. I don't know if I liked it or if I hated the prequels that much that it makes this movie not suck as much shit. I don't know. To have a movie, you need somebody who wants to be in the movie. That's it. Everyone wanted to be in that movie. Daniel Craig wanted to be in the movie so bad.

No, no, you need a character. The characters wanted to be there. No, they didn't. They all wanted to leave. Admiral Akbar wanted to be there. That guy hasn't been employed in years. He's doing shit since the last movie, since the, whatever, the Death Star blew up, the last one. Yeah, I know this time they got the Planet Destroyer and it sucks up.

Star-killer. It kills whole stars, man. That's so big. Yeah, kill stars and then kills planets. I get it. I'm surprised that Admiral Akbar didn't just pop on the screen and go, it's a trap. Hey, everybody, it's a trap. Facebook me and Instagram, your favorite star memes this Star Wars while you're watching a fucking movie.

You're watching a fucking movie. You're watching a fucking movie. That was the entire movie for me. It was just constant. You're watching a movie. You're watching a movie. Like, fuck off. I get it. You already got my money. Just give me a good movie. You're a hater. It was not terrible. It was not terrible. It had this movie. It wasn't terrible, but you fell asleep in it. So how would you know? I fall in asleep through lots of good movies. And I don't fault it to the movie. I don't fall to the movie. Like, I was just tired. And I had those D-Box seats. So for those who don't know, yeah, the D-Box seats are, it's like that 4D movie experience now that they're marketing it as, right? Where you feel your seat shakes and it vibrates and it goes up and down and all this other bullshit. And I turn my sensitivity up all the way.

So there's a scene where, uh... So you had like a vibrator? You were watching this movie riding a vibrator, a Sibian? Oh, it was violent. That sounds real cool. It was like, it was sitting like a, it was like sitting on a rodeo bowl watching this movie. And so it's weird. what they decide to accentuate with the vibrations.

So there's this part where, what's her name, Ray at the beginning, the chick, she takes something and puts it in her holster. And the seat shook so violently. It startled me. It was the most violent, like, almost like someone just came behind you and just took your seat and shook it as hard as they could. Like, what the fuck? If someone was doing that behind me, like kicking my seat, I would lose my mind. And now people are paying a premium.

People are paying money to get their seats kicked. That's the next step Because they're not going to make good movies anymore They're all just going It's more special effects Now in theater effects Soon they'll have like Analog personalized effects

Where a guy will just sit behind you And jiggle you Or laugh at your little A guy will be sitting there Waiting for you to comment in his ear And then go Oh good one, good joke Good joke

Just get a little affirmation for all your Your witty quips More like something's awakening Oh good yeah yeah Good one GSI GSI Yeah. The fifth the fifth the experience. Anyway.

Yeah, it was fine, man. What do you expect? They had high, look, for a movie with as high expectations as this movie, they did okay. Like, they could have done way worse. They could have been as bad as any of the prequels. It wasn't. It wasn't great to die. Like, it was a little clunky.

Some of the scenes didn't need to be there. The whole first opening act with, what's his name, the pilot, you could cut that entire thing out of the movie. He had nothing to do with the movie. Nothing to do with anything. but, you know. And why did they need the force to torture that girl? They put her in the torturing room to get the information out of her. He's like, I'll use the force.

Doesn't work. Like, oh, I guess we're fucked then. What, do they not have knives in the long time ago in a galaxy far away? Yeah, maybe they don't. I don't know. That's why everyone uses light sabers instead of swords. Don't go see it. That's all I'm saying.

See yourself a favor. Don't go see it. I convinced my brother-in-law to run away from home, essentially, at midnight to go see it because his wife was sleeping. His wife was knocked out for like 10 minutes. I'm like, hey, let's go see Star Wars right now while the warden's asleep. And he's like, oh, I don't know if she wakes up,

she'll be pissed. And I'm like, you do want to come see the Star Wars movie with me. Well, speaking of the force. Speaking of homeschool? Speaking of problems? What were the problems? Did you just say brother-in-law and then his wife? Yeah.

I mean, that's technically accurate. What do you want my, oh my sister, Sean? So sorry, my sister. It was weird. Oh, my God. Hey, speaking of weird guys, it was weird. The biggest problem from last week in the universe was homeschooling. Oh, yeah.

And then elf on a shelf. Yeah, I agree. Hom schooling is disgusting. Then elf on a shelf. And then dead last, not even a problem in the negatives, Christmas trees. Christmas trees, Dick. That's bullshit. So, Dick, last episode when I brought in homeschooling, we, we, we,

debated a lot of stuff. We debated like what is the stats and why didn't you bring in any? I did bring in some. I mentioned that 85% of the people who are homeschooled do it for religious reasons and that it's really difficult. I did way more research just to confirm like

how scarce these studies were about homeschoolers and the few studies that I found were all written, were all done by people who worked at ecclesiastical schools like archdiocese schools, Catholic schools, big advocates for homeschooling and they were also kind of championing the religious aspect of it.

They were saying, well, it's a good thing because you can teach them religious studies at home, et cetera, et cetera. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the homeschool learning experience. And in doing more research, I found that the majority of people on YouTube who are homeschooled liked the experience. Sure, it sounds awesome. Yeah, of course. You have to deal with a bunch of shitheads screwing around in class, making unfunny jokes. Well, yeah. While you're trying to learn while I'm there.

trying to learn about spelling and reading. Teach me how to read, please, and spell this bullshit I will never need to know in my entire life. Oh, sure. Teach me about you and your, please, so I can get on Facebook and look smart. That's the wrong version of your. That's the wrong version of your. I learned it in school because I was paying attention.

Don't be a mush mouth. Learn fucking grammar, so you don't sound like an idiot. That sounds fair. And the other big thing about a lot of these studies, they said, what I did find in fairness is that the majority of people who are, who do go to college, go on to college who have homeschooled, do well in college, and they do well on their ACT and SAT tests. However, they're only testing people who get to that point where they're in college. Like, again, it's hard to test people who aren't in the system if you're dropping out

before that. And also, they count homeschooled students as anyone who's had any amount of homeschooling. So if you did one grade at home because you were moving or you were traveling someplace or you were sick for a year, whatever, they count you as a homeschooled student. So it's kind of wishy-washy. It's all over the place. However, I had some clips. I didn't get a chance to play last episode. This is from a kid named Micah Buzan on YouTube, and he loved his homeschooling experience. And he talked about how it was kind of a culture shock for him when he transferred to a private school.

Listen to this. Hello. I'm Mikey Buzan. and I was homeschooled. Fix your fucking audio, Michael. I'm a homeschooler. But homeschooling was definitely, it's like the best time of my life.

And that all changed when I went to private school in seventh grade. Oh. Complete culture shock to my homeschool brain. Just like everyone. Well, there's more? That's fine. Yeah, I don't want to pause the video. It had gone in with the expectations

that everyone was going to be like homeschool people at Good Shepherd Academy, but they weren't. There are all these social rules, and there was a dress code, and... That sucks. Heavy emphasis on grades, and it was really... It sucks as well. It was very confusing. It was the worst year of my life, actually, seventh grade. Yeah?

Yep, hated it. Sucks. Yep, hated it. Now, listen to this. A tie with every other year. Here's what happened to... Or worst year of my life. Here's what happened to him. Here's when he showed up to the first day of class

His first outside homeschooled. Can I guess? Did he get his pants pulled down? Well, he wasn't wearing pants. Listen to this. Oh. I showed up with a pink and purple backpack And I had duct tape wrapped around my shoes

Because I wanted to be like Sonic. I had a Pokemon shirt on. And I had shorts, which were against the dress code. This is a private school. There's a, you know, a dress code and all these rules. He wanted to be like Sonic. Yeah. He showed up to his first day of school, his first day of class, dressed up as Sonic, because he hasn't been socialized, and he doesn't know these are social rules.

This is obviously a joke. No, it's not. This guy has lots of YouTube videos. Look up his YouTube channel. He's always advocating homeschooling, and he's talking about all these things that he did. He's just a weirdo. So homeschooling is bad because he didn't learn how to conform to your expectations? No, it's not about conforming to expectations.

It's about understanding social. You don't show up to a bar wearing shorts and flip-flops and expect to get in because you know that socially that's not accepted. I do. I've been denied from many bars for wearing shorts and flip-flops. There you go. Never at the Pacific Dining car, which is why I go there. Garbage. Why is, what is the deal with Sonic and autism? Why do autism like Sonic so much? Okay. Sean, do you have any opinion on? Why does every autist, how do you, what's the correct term? Autismo? Why does every autismos?

I believe it's autism. Like Sonic the Hedgehog so much. I think Sonic's cool. They just draw him over and over again and make 3D models. No, they don't. They don't. They make just really cool kids sometimes make Sonic. They make really cool 3D renders of Sonic.

Sometimes Sonic's awesome. He does have to go fast. Sonic's the fastest. He's got to outrun the autism that's always chasing him. I'll get you, Sonic. Shut up. What an asshole. I think Sonic's crazy.

great. I love Sonning. Wait, wait, I got another clip. Oh, another clip of this guy. Yeah, wait, wait. Yeah, I got another clip. He's not this guy. This is another one, Dick. This kid, now, I'm not sure if you have a time machine hidden somewhere and you went back in time and made this YouTube video, but this sounds so much like you. Oh, really? Yeah. It sounds cool. He's a real cool kid, cool with a K. His name's Trevor Moran. Here's his video. Listen to this. He's talking about the virtues of homeschool. Listen to this. Okay. What's up, everybody? It's Trevor Moran. TGIF and the theme this week on O2L is Hom schooling versus Public School.

A lot of you guys already know this, but I am actually homeschooled. I do online school. Actually. Praise Lord, it is the best thing to the world. I've had to do this because I'm so busy. And it's good that I can miss days and work on the weekends, and it's just, it's a big bundle of fun. Let's start off with pros and cons. A pro of homeschooling.

You can eat whenever you want. Yeah. Do you do that at public school? No. I don't think so. Pro number two of homeschool. I don't have a specific time to wake up or arrive anywhere. Plus one, but heavy.

Boom, that's a pro, bro. I got nothing. Yeah, he's got nothing as a pro for public schools. This kid, there is no pro. That was like the- Home school sucks. That was like the verbal version of riding on a skateboard. That kid was weird from the word go.

I believe he was homeschooled. Oh, yeah, that kid was cool. The other guy I'm not convinced of. You guys aren't fucking cool. That kid is cooler than both of you. He's got a sick-ass soundtrack. He's making his own TGI Friday variety show on YouTube. Yeah.

No, he is cool. He's too cool. Too cool for school. He's cooler than shit. How about that? He's literally too cool for school. You want to be cool as shit? That kid's cooler than shit.

Yeah, I think he's exactly cool as shit. I brought in, I got a bunch of pro-homeschool and anti-homchool voice music. The problem is everybody had such a personal connection with homeschool. Yeah. They all were, they're all enormous voicemails. I'll play, I'll play this one. So let me if you want to hear more. Hey, this is that fuckhole who called in last week.

So I'm listening, you know, although I'm very proud to have been a caller featured on the show. I'm also a whole schooler, you fucks. Yeah, I can tell because you're your voice. I was in college by the time I was 15, computer science. I was getting shots handed to me left and right by jocks. Drinking. Yeah. And I was banging girls who were over 18.

Granted, they looked like fucked up squirrel. So you were sexually abused. Go on. Oh, please. Statutory. And I had those moments because I was fucking homeschooled. Mysterios, you're all right. You're the sound of reason on this fucking vessel of bullshit.

What? It's a tight ship, but you guys sure do sail on the sea of bullshit. Sterios disagreed with you, you idiot. Yeah, well, there's your homeschool education. Home school. So he was statutory raped. Yes. Drinking, that's awesome.

Illegal alcohol consumption. Oh, age is just a number. Yeah. Yeah, age is just a number that can get you thrown in jail, right, Jared? Like someone's gonna, like, it's totally different when the chick is older. Come on. 15-year-old dude and an 18-year-old chick, that's... Is that wrong?

There's something psychologically not baked. Where's the abuse? With adolescence. Exactly. Thank you, Sean. No, there's something psychologically not baked with adolescents that makes them kind of fucked up. and it makes you fucked up to have sex with them when they're that young. But an 18-year-old chick, they're rock solid.

Every single 18-year-old chick I've ever talked to, she's got it all figured out. I wouldn't hook up with an 18-year-old, just at a glance, I probably wouldn't. It would have to be, I mean, no, it's just weird and creepy. Well, it is easier. Here's a list of people who are homeschooled. Louis Carroll, you know him? Yeah. Allison Wonderland?

Right. Andrew Jackson. Okay. Do you think you're better than him? Yeah, I do. Mozart, home-schooled. Are you aware of that? Do you think Mozart was in public school

getting held back instead of home writing symphonies? Hold on, Mozart's an exception. He had talent coming out the ass. If you are a prodigy and you're writing full symphonies by the age of six, yeah, you get a free pass. You can drop out of traditional school and focus on your career.

Taylor Swift? How about exactly the same? Pretty much. What was the normal education back in those days, though? Oh, stop. It was mostly homeschooled anyway. Who cares? All right.

And his dad was an instructor, too, Mozart's dad. Emma Watson. Ah, shit, she was homeschooled. Well, yeah, also pain in the ass, big pain in the ass. I got a comment from Josh Geoveli. He says, hey, Dick, the effect on these kids is that they grow into adults that don't have necessary skills and knowledge to function in society or the scientific education they missed out on leads them to realize that they want to be a scientist.

But they're 28, missed the free ride for years of college. they have bills and can't afford the classes and just want to get a simple degree to get a leg up in the career they wish they had a chance at earlier in life. If that sounds very specific, it's because it is. And he says, I know and believe a parent should be able to parent as they see fit,

but there's a limit. We don't allow parents to mercilessly beat their children as a form of discipline and with good reason. Controlling every facet of their education has a potential for abuse. I totally agree with that. If you are getting your lecture and lesson plan from, a parent who is also responsible for feeding you

and giving you your vacation and toys and allowance and everything else, it puts an intense pressure on you to not dissent and not challenge anything you're taught. Yeah, that should be. You should have pressure on you to do well in school. And by the way, not everyone is terrified of their parents like you are. I'm not terrified in my parents. Every example you give is these authoritarian parents.

A lot of parents raise and teach with love, the opposite of what you're describing. Well, just because you have good intentions doesn't mean that you're doing the right thing. Here's the problem. A lot of people don't understand really what a good teacher really is. I used a data teacher for a long time,

and I'm very close to a lot of teachers. And this specific school, the teachers are required to make lesson plans every single night. And they go home, and this isn't like some worksheet that you're getting that day. They're making custom-tailored lessons for you based on their pedagogical experience. They look online to see what other teachers are doing,

what other schools have done, what works and what doesn't, and then they custom tailor their lesson to the classroom. And if there's any student who doesn't understand it, they are trained to recognize that. Parents are not. Just like that girl who I quoted in the New York Times article who said that my child is very gifted and has a very special brain and whatever,

it's the Dunning Kruger effect, but it's even worse because it's your own spawn who you are predisposed to thinking higher of than other children because you created it. You can't just avoid that cognitive bias. You need someone who doesn't have skin in the game on that level to be able to tell your kid, hey man, you're fucking up, hey, hey, buddy, you need to study this a little bit harder, you need to do this thing, you need to do that thing.

Parents aren't doing that. I'm amazed we can get that for so cheap. Well, Dick. It's a miracle. We can get all that stuff for, what, 40,000 a year? What a great deal? I mean, what do you think they should get paid? I just think it's very impressive that we've figured out how to hire all these

custom tailoring learning solutions for developing mines and for such a cheap price. He thinks it doesn't exist. Yeah, I know, I know. Dick thinks that like money necessarily correlates, like, the people who are teachers. No, no, but the-

Can we get it cheaper? No, the people who are teachers are not doing it for money. No shit. Because they could go into the private sector. I didn't even call that money. They could go into the private sector and make way more money

doing anything they wanted to. No, they could. I had a teacher at the University of Utah. He was way overqualified for teaching at the school. He was a fellow at Princeton in physics. And he is one of the professors who was instrumental in creating blue laser, blue laser technology for Blu-rays.

This was back in 1996, I was talking to this guy, and he was teaching my class. The only reason he was doing it is because he liked to ski. He wanted to be in Utah because he liked to ski. Lazyness. That's why he became a teacher? No, it's not laziness, Dick. The teachers who are teachers are doing it because they have a passion for teaching. They actually like to do it. And you can tell there's a world of difference

between a good and a bad teacher. A good teacher likes to be there and enjoys teaching. Meanwhile, parents have kids because they hate kids. I'm not saying you don't love your kid. Just because you love someone doesn't mean you know what's best for them. I'm winding you up. I get what you're saying. It's fine.

I just don't, do you have more points to make on homeschooling? I do. The bottom line is this. I read all the comments. Some people who said they had a great homeschooling experience and they went on to have very successful careers. Which is what the numbers say. Like, you have to admit the stats say they do better.

There are no stats, dude, I got a peer-reviewed study done by, let me find this guy. Is it Michael Cogan? No, I don't know. Let me find it. Eric, Eric something, I'll link to it. What's the name in the study? Let's hear it. It's got, let's see.

Major findings include the achievement test of scores of homeschool students are exceptionally high. The median scores are typically in the 7th to 80th percent. 25% of homeschool students are enrolled one or more grades above their age-level public and private school peers. That's a big, that's a pretty big stat. A quarter of them come in an entire grade level above their public school counterparts. Yeah, but those are only the parents who are reporting their students as being homeschooled. Some of them never make it that far. And those students who don't, you don't ever hear about them.

They get shipped to China to make iPhones? What happens to them? No, they become, they, I don't know, I don't know what happens to them. The median income for homeschool families is significantly higher than all the families of children in the United States. Almost all homeschool students who come from married. I don't know. It's a big... There's a lot of factors in this.

He does bend over backwards to say it's not conclusive that homeschooling is better. Although that's what the numbers are saying here. Yeah, no, first of all, Dick, homeschooling isn't even practical, a practical option for most people because parents work. Parents have shit to do. Yeah, they work to pay taxes to build public schools. No, they sometimes work to put money, to put food on the table as well. They're not just working to fund public.

schools. And by the way, they're good and bad public schools. There's good and bad homeschooling experiences. I'm not denying that. And someone on Twitter tweeted at me and said, hey, Maddox, can't you see any advantage to homeschooling? Can't you see any pros for it? I'm like, of course I can. There's lots of pros to homeschooling if you have a good teacher, if you have good parents who are trained. But that's not what I brought in. I brought it in as a problem. And I'm not going to argue for homeschooling when I think it's a problem. Okay. I got a I got a prank email. I'm done with you home school.

Do you have more as a name? No, no. Okay. We get these prank emails all the time where people send in stuff that's obviously fake because they want it to get read on the show so then they can go in the comments and say, ha, ha, ha, you guys reacted to something that's obviously fake, you're stupid.

I can spot those. I'm going to read this one. Yes. I spotted this one immediately. Yeah, I see if you can do the same. It says, Dear Dick Maddox and Sean, it's from Mia. I started listening to your show when I was diagnosed with cancer. Okay, already.

Probably fake. Well, I don't know. You guys really pulled me out of a state of crying from unhappiness to the point of tears from laughter. So, right? She was depressed and this podcast turned that depression into merriment.

That doesn't sound fake to me. That sounds totally fake. This is obviously a fake email. I'm happy to say that I'm now still in remission and am so excited to see what next year holds in your continuing regular and bonus episodes, which you can buy on the site for $1.99.

That's not in the email. I'm adding that. I just want to thank you so much for being such a welcomed form of happiness in a pretty shitty time of my life. Yours truly, Mia. So, better luck next time, Nea, with these joke emails.

Right, that was not a joke email, Dick. That sounded like a sincere email. You're welcome, Mia. Glad that the show offers you some reprieve from your suffering. That sounds awful. But, no, but seriously, thank you for listening,

and we're glad that we have listeners out there. And Dick is an awful person. Yeah, I mean, I'm the awful person just because I can spot a fake. That's not a fake. Hey, before we move on to the proms, I got a song, Dick, this is from Christopher Strand. Oh, cool, I like that guy.

Listen to this. New song from Christopher Strand. It's about my wedding services because I did that wedding veil review a long time ago. So it's a commercial for my wedding services. I think you'll enjoy this. Are you about to get married? Do your beloved friends and family sound like this?

Well, I want to eat, but I want to be the first. Then you should call. In all, Maddox's wedding services. He doesn't mind opening trays of food. If I show up at a party, and I see a big table full of trays, no one's touched, aluminum foil on top, guess what? I'm opening them. I'm going to eat, and I'm going to be the first to eat. He'll tell those picky eaters and vegans, no.

Your picky eater, stay home. We're not going to invite you. No one's dancing? Maddox has it covered. This fucking dipshit wedding I'm at, no one's dancing because they fucking plant it shitty and they ordered, they invited a bunch of shitty coward guests who aren't dancing. I'll fucking get up there. I'll dance.

Great. If this sounds like what your wedding might need, visit maddox wedding services.biz. Like this, satisfied customer. There's Maddox. Out there by himself before the bride and the groom have their first dance because he doesn't understand wedding protocol. Dancing some weird Middle Eastern dance,

screaming at the band to play, and that they're all cowards. 10 out of 10 Unsure about the wedding night Call now and ask for the backs of sand package For advice from self-proclaimed sexpert You guys don't even understand the level of expertise When it comes to sex that I have

Don't let your special day be ruined by special people If you call Maddox the wedding guy today He'll turn your wedding from this Into this Sounds like that homeschool kid from early made this song. It's more like it. Don't be a jerk.

Let Maddox do the word. By hiring Maddox's wedding services, he agreed to provide Maddox with the following. Bicycle parking, soup, a biolong hot sauce, barble cinnamon whiskey. Food allergies will be tested. Yeah.

Says a well-adjusted, socially adjusted man from public school. Yeah. All right, Dick, you got a problem. Oh, yeah, I got a quick one. Spending too much on Christmas presents. Okay. We're past Christmas, right?

I'm not going to bring in Christmas presents all year. This is our first post-Christmas episode. My Life Coach, I call my life coach up, like last week, a week and a half ago. Maybe two weeks ago. Because my cousin in Nebraska wants to go hog hunting. Cool. And here is the catch. We can get a helicopter.

We can go helicopter hog hunting. Hunting big-ass boars and hogs and havelinas and whatever. they got wherever we're going from a helicopter. Right? I don't know. Like pretending we're in Vietnam. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sure, okay.

Right? Okay, for like $1,500. So I'm like, oh my God, calling my friend up, like, dude, we're going, we're going hog hunting. This is going to be amazing, right? These guys are from the Midwest. They're bringing Midwest guns. I'm embarrassed to bring my guns to this.

Yeah, what are they got muskets out there? Except there's a dirt road to get there. Sean, we have a helicopter, Sean, you prick. We can fly over any dirt road. Yeah, they're going to drive into the helicopter. You have to get to the helicopter. Yeah, there's a dirt road to the helicopter. Just come pick me up, I imagine.

Okay. So my life coach says, oh, I can't. I'm saving money. I can't do this. I don't know what's become of me in my marriage and in my old age, but I can't do that. I'm saving money. I'm like, you're saving 500.

You're bailing on hog hunting to save $500? Like, okay. If that's your guiding principle, this is once in a lot, Have I ever asked you to go helicopter hog hunting before? Right? This is a memorable experience. Wouldn't you want to do it?

I would rather go hog hunting on ground by foot like God intended rather than this remote control bullshit where we're sitting there with technology. What do we need like stealth? Stealth bombers to kill these fucking pigs? They're just pigs, man. Give me a crossbow and put me in a swamp somewhere. I'll fucking kill a hog. Wait, do you think there's a drone involved in remote control? Well, it feels like remote control.

If you're just sitting in a helicopter, the pilot takes you to a hog. There you go. You feel like a lazy idiot. Like Dick Cheney doing that shooting ducks at that reserve where they're driving them around in a Jeep. Get the fuck out and fat ass and walk around. Kill them like you're supposed to. Jump on its back and stab it in the neck with your arrow. Okay, that's what I thought.

Yeah. Okay. So he bailed. Well, whatever. So let me. I'm going to go by myself. I'm going to go have a helicopter hog hunting trip all by myself. Me and my cousin are going to go.

Fuck you. So I get a text. from my life coach Christmas Day. And he goes, oh, no, I really fucked up. This is the fuck up to end all fuckups. I'm like, what did you do? He said, he waited until the last minute to buy his wife of like two years a Christmas present.

He said, I was really under the gun. I was really pressed for time. And she's always been talking about wanting to get a hot air balloon ride. All right? So he popped on the Google, hot air balloon ride. And he goes, boom, purchase. He goes, it was a little, it was more than I wanted to spend, right? It was more than I wanted to spend.

So I was already really far in the hole on it. Like he wanted to spend a couple of bucks because he's trying to save money. He ended up spending like, you know, like $800, 900, 900 bucks on this, on this hot air. That seems like a lot. Seems like a lot, right? Yeah. So she opens it. They're all over at her family's house.

She opens it and she goes, oh my God, a hot air balloon ride. And in Napa Valley, this is great. And everybody's like, whoa my God, what a, What an expensive present. What a wonderful present that you just got her. I can't believe you would spend that much on. He goes, what do you mean? Napa Valley.

Isn't Napa Valley like an hour away? Wine country. No. It's nine hours away. It's next to San Francisco, you dumb shit. It's where people go on, it's where Bachelorette parties from like the OC go to drink all weekend

and blow a ton of daddy's money. It's implied that you're going to stay at some fucking winery. Yeah. Well, this guy was homeschool. Yeah, was he really? No. No, no, no, he wasn't. He wasn't.

No, no. So he's texting me this. While she is on the internet looking up like vacation bungalows in Napa Valley for 1,000 a night, like 1,200 a night

with like luxury romantic bungalow cruises. So this idiot just dropped Can't go hog hunting for a couple hundred dollars but just dropped 3K on his wife's Christmas present. Talk about spending too much money

on Christmas. Stupid. That's all. Big mistake. Hey, You could solve, it sounds like his gift was a solution to both problems because he could have taken his wife hog hunting in a hot air balloon. Huh?

Take the hot air over the Midwest. Now that's fucking hog hunting because then you don't really have control over the hot air balloon. The wind's blowing you whichever way you go. Oh my gosh, you're blowing away from the hog. You got to get better aim. So you think that the technology is the issue for you. Yeah. I don't want too much control.

You want to even the score. I think that if you, yeah. There's an element of risk to it. You don't know who's going to win. You could kill the hog, or you could fly into power lines and die. Yeah, Sean, there you go. Or you can drink too much and fall out of the basket. Hilarious.

I think it would be so funny if you broke your neck hog hunting. Because that's a story that everyone's going to ask. I mean, not you obviously, but they're going to ask your friends. Like, what the hell happened to that? I mean, not you, obviously. Because your neck is broken. Yeah, but it's got to happen to one of your friends. You would say that to anyone that you were telling the story, too.

Dick, I would be the friend, your friend, who would tell your friends later, after you died hog hunting and broke your neck and obviously would be like, yeah, he fell out, he got too drunk. Oh, I get it. Yeah. I get what you're saying. I would be that guy. I just don't know why he said not you obviously to me when it would always be one of your friends doing it. No, no, I'm saying, not you specifically. Like, whoever died, you wouldn't be telling that story,

obviously, because you're dead. Oh, oh, okay. I thought you meant you didn't want me to die. I misinterpreted I misinterpreted. I'm misinterpreted what you're saying. Hog hunting. Yeah, man. There's also this company that has made this new type of tracking system for, it's a scope that does auto tracking for guns, real guns. And they call it democratizing precision or democratizing aim.

Oh, that's cool. So what it does is it's basically this little monitor as your scope that tracks motion of the target. And when it moves a little bit, you press the trigger once to track it, and then you press it again to fire. And it automatically calculates the right trajectory and aim and adjusts. just slightly, so it hits your target like 90% of the time. Wow. I need two of those.

I would never take something like that hunting. I think that takes everything out. Basically, you're just pressing a button and then killing meat. I think that's stupid. Yeah, but it doesn't give you something cool to say after you've done it. That's still on you. You need like a gun that'll also spit out like a cool catchphrase. I'm sure that's version too.

It's going to say good job on the screen or a little, LED, like way to go, man, or maybe it'll be written by that cool kid who was homeschooled earlier. Trevi Trev. I like that guy. All right, that's my problem. Everyone's probably feeling a little bit of buyer's remorse right now. We all get excited for the holidays and spend too much.

And you never get the reaction you want for his presence. Back in Utah, I used to spend thousands of dollars on my friends. And I think I mentioned this on the podcast. I'm not sure. But it always left me feeling empty inside. Like, I hate, like, I would spend so much money. and I never felt like they fully appreciated the gifts I bought them. And I never felt like, you know, I expect them to just open up my gift and think,

oh, wow, cool. Yeah, when you would never do that. Like, you don't go to the store and buy, like, a video game, and then get it in the car and go like, oh, my God, wow, I just bought myself this video game. Like, you want a reaction that's totally unnatural when you give somebody a friend. No, that is exactly how I react when I get in my car. Are you kidding? I bought a video game this weekend.

I was so excited. I sat in the car looking at the cover and, like, pouring over the back. I still put the game in my system and I go to the options. Every single time, first I want to see all the options, right? It's like a new car. I want to feel it. Like, oh, what can I tinker with here? What's going on over here?

And then I never change anything because I want to try the game. As they intended. As they intended. Like listening to an LP. Yeah. Yeah. I go through that ritual. No, no, you got me wrong, buddy.

But as far as spending money on friends goes, I decided a long time ago, I sent an email to all my friends saying, Hey guys, I'm no longer, I'm no longer buying Christmas gifts this year. Don't buy me anything, please. And I change my policy to, if I see anything that I think you might like throughout the year, I'm just going to buy it for you. I've done it for you, Dick. I got you some action figures. Yeah, those are cool.

Yeah, because we, Dick and I are both huge fans of, what's his name, Ryan Youth Comics, Ryan North? Yeah, Ryan North, Angry Youth Comics. They're hilarious. We got, we found this, we were walking through this comic store, and we found these in the very back, and they're obscene. Like they make no sense from one panel to the other The stories just go in tangents And they're highly scatological

Like in three panels Someone will be swinging from a rope like Tarzan And the rope is made out of feces And then they'll swing and like Their erection will go into like Hitler's ass Oh yeah That's like that's like a possible comic I'm just making that up

But we got so excited about these comics We started showing them to everybody To be like brand like You gotta look at this comic that we secretly found And everyone hated them and didn't think they were funny. I have alienated myself from certain people in my life because I've showed them this comic and really pushed it a little too hard.

These comics are a little bit racist. There's one... Yeah. Like they can be... Some of them are like, you know, on that line and maybe they fall over the line a little bit. A little bit more racist than the Star Wars aliens. Right? Little bit.

No. I think the Star Wars aliens are new bar. Yeah. Okay. By the way, did you see that Nemoidian clip we post? on the website. Oh, yeah. That girl, she made those full-sized

Nemoids and the way she, like, caresses the body, kind of weird. Anyway, man. I did, the best reaction for, the best dollar to reaction I got, I got my nephew,

little Lego men from the Lego movie. Yeah. Which was like, $3 a piece, right? Nothing, nothing, right? Everybody's showering this guy with gifts.

And I got him, just a little Lego guys, right? He opens it up. He's three. He goes, oh, my God. One by one. I was like, oh, my God. Raine, curb your enthusiasm there.

Yeah, that's when he nailed it. Yeah, I got a girl toaster one year. She hated it. Awful. That was, she was saying she wanted a toaster for years, and then I got her toaster, hate it. I got her toaster oven. So it's one step better.

And that was like a big gift, and huge letdown. And by the way, I spent like, like, yeah, but that was in addition to, like, I spent, like, $800 that year for Christmas. And that was, like, one of the gifts I got. They got, like, gift cards and movies and clothes. and clothes and it's just I feel like nothing really clicks nothing ever hits I throw everything in the wall

nothing sticks everything falls flat so I you know I decided a long time ago I'm gonna spend the money on me and I've been so much happier I spend money on myself and I love myself and I know exactly what I want and I feel great I I travel the world I went to Paris the first year I told my friends I wasn't buying a gift I took the budget I had for Christmas gifts spent it on myself and I went to London and Paris and I had the best time man Great life tip Yeah

Merry Christmas to me You got a problem I do I got a big problem dick Okay It's called filter bubbles Yeah filter bubbles This is something

It's not really clear What it means Can I guess what I think it means Okay what Those pictures Like the guys will take a picture Of a girl in a bikini And they'll put big circles on it

And fill in the area Between the circles And it tricks your brain Into thinking that they're naked Oh, yeah. Under the circles. It's weird. It's a weird phenomenon.

But I wouldn't say that's a problem, because I think that's a solution. Yeah. It's implied nudity. Yeah. It's a little bit closer. It's asymptotically a little bit closer. Well, those are definitely filter bubbles, dick, but not the filter bubbles I'm talking about. I got something a little bit smarter than that.

This is... You didn't figure that out, did you? Those guys figured out how to trick your brain into think you're seeing a naked girl. Yeah, it's clickbait. Real special, real special clickbait Because I've clicked on it before. But anyway, a filter bubble, this is from Wikipedia,

a filter bubble is the result of a personalized search in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click behavior, and search history. And as a result, users become separated from information that disagree with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them

in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. So this is a huge problem because most of the internet is starting to do this. Sites like Google. I mean, that right there is like 50% of most searches. So wait, wait, let me it. So if you're like on Google searching for like a certain type of like if you're searching for information about Hillary Clinton all the time, it'll then suggest like information about global warming or something like that. Possibly. Like things that might be related to that. Like if I'm searching, my Google search, if I'm searching for like a Trump rally, it'll say like,

here, you also might like helicopter hunting. Is that an example of what you're talking about? It's like the same filter. Possibly, but if you search for Trump rallies or if you search for Hillary Clinton rallies or whatever. If this is a KKK joke, I swear to God, I will pop you. Oh, by the way, I posted that animation. I made an animation about Trump. I was going to make that joke. I'll pop you in your ass again, Sean. You're going to make a KKK joke?

Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I posted this thing because Trump wanted to ban the Muslims and people were like, Maddox Islam isn't a race idiot But the KKK hates Muslims They hate Jews Those aren't races

They hate actually They hate most Christians Who aren't part of their specific cult Anyway Well who doesn't Like what I like Guys I'll kill you

Here are the sites that do this right now Google Yahoo is doing it Facebook Facebook's a big one YouTube Netflix Netflix suggests only movies that they think that you might like Oh, I see what you're saying.

Okay. It doesn't happen in Netflix. Yeah, and news websites, and even advertisers do this. There's this guy named Eli Pariser. Pariser, or Pariser, either way. He wrote a book about filter bubbles, and he did a TED talk about it. He quoted Mark Zuckerberg, and this is essentially in a nutshell what the problem is. Mark Zucker said, a squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

And that right there is this problem in a nutshell. nutshell because it makes it brings your worldview, it makes it a little bit smaller and that's why they called filter bubbles because you are in this little bubble where your things that affect you are very narrow in scope

Wait a minute, can I ask a question? Yeah. Is that Zuckerberg quote saying that that's good or bad that this, because I'm more interested in a squirrel dying in my front yard than people dying in Africa for I think good reasons? Like the squirrel dying in my front yard

might affect me. My dog might eat it and get sick. I have to take care of the squirrel who's dead in my front yard. Okay. Well, you don't have a dog or front yard, so that's irrelevant. But Mark Zuckerberg's... Okay. Gotta go fast. Never mind. You got me. Stumped. I'll tell you why it's a problem. Mark Zuckerberg didn't say that as if it was a problem. He was saying that as justification for making... the Facebook algorithm that gives you this filter bubble. Oh, okay, so he was kind of agreeing with me.

Yeah. Okay. This is from Eli Pariser. He says in the Atlantic, in an interview he did with the Atlantic, he says, since December 4, 2009, Google has been personalized for everyone. So when I had two friends this spring, Google BP, you know, the oil company, one of them got a set of links that was about investment opportunities for BP. The other one got information about the oil spill. Presumably, that was based on the kinds of searches that they had done in the past. If you have Google doing that and you have Yahoo doing that

and you have Facebook doing that and you have all the top sites on the web customizing themselves to you, then your information environment starts to look very different from anyone else's. And that's what I'm calling the filter bubble, that personal ecosystem of information that's been catered by these algorithms

to who they think you are. Not necessarily who you actually are. Curated by these algorithms. Well, yeah, you could, I mean, curated implies some intelligence, Some autonomous being deciding something for you. This is like an algorithmic, it's not quite curated so much as analyzed. Well, I'm just thinking like Drudge Report.

Like, I go there to get news. And it sounds like the same thing. Like, I'm only getting news the Drudge, the ultra-conservative drudge wants his readers to see. Right, right? That would be part of a filter bubble, or are you saying it's only algorithms? Well, you are voluntarily going to Drudge Report, so that's not part of the filter bubble. If you go to a conservative website, voluntarily and you're doing that on your own,

that's just you doing that. But here's an example of a filter bubble. Like if you're searching Facebook, if you're looking on Facebook in your news feed, Facebook very, very precisely and very specifically shows you articles and news stories that they think that you might want to click on that might interest you.

Oh, that is funny to see what people's news ads are and what their newsfees are and then make fun of them about it. Like if all they have is like celebrity stuff or like pregnancy stuff. It's like, oh, what were you searching for? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it suggests, especially when it suggests things for, like, single people, like, they think that you're a loser.

So embarrassing. Or sometimes they get your sexuality, your sexual orientation wrong. They give you, like, gay shit. Here's a bunch of dildos. That worried me. I used to watch adult swim a lot, like, back in the Mono and the Adult Hunger Force days. Yeah. And they would always show these ads.

Aquitine. Yeah, Aquitine. Hunger Boys, thank you, Sean. They would always show these gay sex chat lines. and it took me like a couple months and I'm like, wait a minute. Is this, am I supposed to be interested at this?

Should I check one of these out? Why is this all these gay sex channels? Because somebody did this research. Yeah, what else is in your search history, Dick? We don't know. That was a TV. Oh, the TV was serious. Yes.

The TV ads were saying that. But those aren't customized. Yeah, somebody bought the ad space. Is that similar? They must have gotten some demo info. That's what I'm saying. What is this? But it's less reactive.

At least that one, like, marketing people are looking at demo info, but still, I don't like it. Here's the danger of filter bubbles. Okay. Algorithms deciding what you should or shouldn't be exposed to will narrow your scope of thinking. You won't be exposed to new ideas, and you will only see information that reaffirms your point of view. It's basically algorithmic confirmation bias. Conservatives will only see posts from conservative websites, and liberals will only see news from liberal websites. Now, I already see it happening on Facebook. As Maddox, I'm like, my Maddox account, I have about 5,000 friends and, like,

24,000 followers on my news feed, and it's a wide swath of people from all political viewpoints. I consistently see conservatives only posting links to conservative websites like Newsmax and Fox News and far-right bloggers, and liberals only post to liberal websites like Huffington Post and Mike.com and far-left Tumblr accounts. And CNN. CNN isn't. I would say CNN is left-leaning. I don't put them in far-left. MSNBC is left, yeah. Maddox, people do this anyway. People filter themselves. Is this a chicken or the egg? To we're in their life opinions. Well, here's where it becomes nefarious, Sean. I conducted an informal experiment on a few of these people to casually track the amount of dissent they receive with each post. So I had a theory

a long time ago that the more staunchly partisan someone's viewpoint was on Facebook, the more likely it would be that people who oppose that point of view would hide or unfollow posts from that person rather than engage in a protracted political debate with a friend or colleague. Sure. Right? And over time, I tracked a few of these people. Over time, I hypothesized that you'd see less and less dissent in the comments of status updates, which is probably because more people who disagree with them are hiding them. So the only people who are left commenting on their status updates are people who agree with you, creating a reaffirmation filter bubble. Everyone in your world seems to agree with everything you say or posts, so you might think that your opinions

are more popular or widely shared than they actually are. Yeah, I'm not trying to discount what you're bringing in as a problem. I just want to know if you think it is the chicken and the egg. Like, this is, people do this, this exists, because this is what people like. Like, they, even if you ignore the internet, they're going to go to, they're going to go to a watering hole where they can talk to people who share their beliefs. They're not going to, like, people don't want to be filibustering in any medium, the internet or not. They want to hear kind of what they think. They don't want to get into long arguments about everything, right? Well, this didn't always exist.

This has made things way, way worse, because it's one thing. to not be exposed to those ideas because you're choosing not to. Because you still might have the chance of being exposed to an idea that doesn't reaffirm your worldview. In fact, back in the day, when people got most of their news from network television news, they were exposed to things from the left and things from the right. But now with so much choice, and it's artificial choice, you're only seeing ideas that reaffirm your worldview. And because it's happening subconsciously, because it's invisible, and it's happening behind the scenes,

you might think that that's what everybody thinks. It's a huge problem. Oh, that's definitely true. Yeah. This is, again, from the same guy, Eli Pariser in The Economist, he says, a world constructed from the familiar is a world in which there is nothing to learn, since there is an invisible auto-propaganda

indoctrinating us with our own ideas. I think that's a huge, huge problem. when you're being indoctrinated by your own ideas. That's why, generally speaking, I rarely ban or delete or unfollowed people who I disagree with and dissent with. I decided to consciously stop doing that a long time ago because... What, on Facebook? On Facebook, yeah, or social networks. Because if I did, then Facebook would then alter what I saw.

And it would be disingenuous, it would be dishonest. I don't know, man, I don't, I block or I like... unfollow people on Facebook, like, who always post political shit. Yeah. I'll definitely do it immediately if it's left-leaning more than right-leaning, but I kind of just hate it overall.

I don't think that that's bad necessarily. I'll also do it if I, like, follow to chick to stalk her and she starts posting pictures of her and her boyfriend. I'm like, oh, unfollow, unfollow. But I don't want to unfriend her, because then I lose her sphere of friends. Sure. Yeah. Smart. Of course.

Dick Tip for it. Yeah. Dick, I think that this has greater repercussions than just politics. I think that a long time ago I was going to write this article with regards to music and why I didn't believe

that most people actually know their musical tastes. I don't think that most people actually know what their musical tastes are because most people used to get informed about their music choices by listening to the radio or MTV, but that totally undermines authentic cultural trends

because the music they promote is set by the agenda of the record label who's trying to make a lot as much money as possible. So if the record label has an artist, they really want to promote heavily, they will pay radio stations, and it's called payola.

This is an illegal practice. They will pay radio stations to heavily play that track, and then now they do it with like backdoor deals. Yeah, why would that be illegal? Paying for a play? Because it becomes monopolistic. When you have a few record labels who control all the distribution,

and they're paying someone to play a, also because the radio waves are controlled are regulated by the FCC they should be ideally for everyone that's why they have to play public service announcements is because a certain amount of their time they have to play for everyone everyone should have access to those airwaves it's not fair for someone just come because there's a finite amount of radio airwaves

right and it's in radio station's best interest to have a handful of popular songs that sell really well because they don't have to spend as much money on marketing to promote an unknown artist, and it gives them more power to negotiate when it comes to signing artists because they have all that money and power by creating a monopoly. So when artists come to a record label, the record label says, well, we own all the distribution, we own all these radio stations, we have all the power, you have no leverage to negotiate anything.

Yeah, fuck you. Great. No, man, I think they are literally fabricating our tastes in music and TV shows, and these filter bubbles. But isn't that like what launched the whole whole whole thing? hipster movement. Like honestly, this idea of manufacturing taste, that's what gave birth to people just hating things that were mainstream. That's what caused going back to vinyl. That's what caused like, oh, I don't like, like, that's the meme of hipster. I like something because no one else

likes it, right? Yeah, surely there's, like, that's what you're describing is they hate it too, and that's where it all came from. Yeah, it could be. I mean, that's a different argument. That's a, that's a cultural, we're trying to get to the genesis of a cultural movement of hipsterism. I don't know, maybe, that may be the case. But this filter bubble thing, back to the filter bubble, is really insidious because when you start to limit your worldview and you basically stop growing as a person, when you stop challenging yourself. When I see a news story, one of my favorite outlets to go to when a news story breaks is the Google News homepage. I go to the Google News homepage because it shows all the different news outlets from all around the country

covering the same exact story. And you can see very clearly and obviously which ones have a political spin, a political angle. Like I can see how Fox News is going to publish a certain headline versus CNN or MSNBC or Huffington Post. Huffington Post is always left-leaning. Fox News is always right-leaning. Newsmax is always right-leaning.

I can see very clearly how each news outlet covers the same story. And then I sometimes click on both to see if they cover all the same facts. and the details. And how they present them. That's funny. It's always, like, when Fox News reports something that's not very popular with conservatives, they will post the bad news or the dissenting opinions in the third or fourth paragraph. Versus like a left-leaning website, Huffington Post, it'll be right in the headline.

No, I'll give you a great example. Hillary Clinton had headlines praising her for wanting to shut down ISIS's access to the internet. And it's like, she wanted to engage Silicon Valley's top whatever's to figure out how we could use the internet. And then like the very next day it was blustering retard Donald Trump wants to shut down parts of the internet by asking Bill Gates. What an idiot. It's like, well, wait a minute. Aren't those kind of the same? How are you reporting that one like that or the other one like that?

That's a bad example because in essence, in essence, in essence if they want to do the same thing, fine. But the way Donald Trump said it is like, let's call up Bill Gates. Like Bill Gates has any control over the fucking Internet. Bill Gates doesn't even work in computers anymore. He's running his philanthropy firm. Donald Trump sounds like a moron when he says, I'll call up Bill Gates. The way he's phrased it. Clearly, right?

Yeah. The way he phrased it. No, no. That's what they were trying to confirm is your suspicion that he said it stupidly. He literally said that, though. Yeah, again. Do you think the way he phrased it was smart? Of course not.

Okay. The way he speaks is to appeal to like a fifth grader. Okay. Do you think that's not an act? The way he talks? No, it's not an act. I don't think so. Oh, my.

He is so consistent, Dick. Like, he is, he's always big and number one, the best. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think it's an act. I don't think so. Okay. You think it's an act? Well, how could an actor ever be president, right?

Yeah, here's the thing with the, I've never seen. him break that character? Well, I don't know what to tell you. He's very good at it. Well, that's an interesting theory, Dick. I don't want to go off into a Trump hole, though. Yeah. Black hole. The blackest of black holes. It's a trump hole.

Should be the whitest, because he's think he's a KKK member. The whitest of white holes. Oh, he's got a black hole inside somewhere, buddy. All right, anyway, that's my problem. That's a good problem. I... Gosh, I don't know. What's the effect? How can we measure this? Because there's definitely an ideological divide happening, right?

How do we fix it? What do we do? Well, for one, I try to limit the amount of this filter bubble could have an effect on me. So YouTube is a great example. If you watch one video on YouTube in political and nature, that's all YouTube will recommend. Oh, dude, this girl came over to my apartment and watched a stand-up, like a stand-up special. Now, all I get on my YouTube suggestions are stand-up specials, and I hate stand-up. I do not, I would rather do anything than watch stand-up.

I'd rather watch Star Wars again than watch stand-up. But now, because of your filter bubbles, all I got is look at Aziz Ansari or whatever on the stand-up. There you go. There you go. Though it is a big problem. I agree with you. Yeah. And then, like, I watched a couple of let's plays for this guy who I can't stand, and that's all YouTube

recommends anymore and I watch like all of them because I'm like well I guess that's on now I guess I'm going to watch it because I'm too fucking lazy to go in and clear my browser cache or browser history so now Google owns it now Google's got it they got your search you can but it's really hard

what I do now though you gotta hack the Google what I do now when I want to watch something that may start suggesting other things like it I'll do it in an incognito browser or I'll have a separate browser with a separate cookie space entirely that I don't use for anything except for searching for things that I don't want

to show up in my feed forever. I'm so tired of it. I try to do that with porn. I look at all the weird porn in another browser and then I look up decoy porn in my regular search history. Because if anybody looks at the regular search history and they don't see any porn, they're going to be suspicious. Yeah. But if they see normal stuff, they're like, okay.

I use ad blockers as much as I can. Add blockers limit the amount of influence. And that's the other thing too is that you can get stuck buying the same brand forever because that brand is targeting you and falling you around on the internet if you look at a type of shoe on Zappo

Zappo.com, you know, the shoe website they have tracking ads that start suggesting that type of shoe everywhere you go so you start seeing it everywhere I hate being psychologically manipulated you really do yeah I really do and I found out recently I have a friend who worked in retail for a long time

she was a manager for Abercrombie and some of these other companies, I found out that they have a very specific playlist of like 12 to 20 songs during certain times of the year, and they have a certain tempo that they're all going for. And they found that this is the tempo, this is the beats per minute that is most conducive to shopping, and they tweak it here and there,

they tweak with sense of the store, the smell of the store. I hate the psychological warfare going on. Because I feel like we're all kind of like subdued slaves who are walking around just like meat with money that they are just taking from our pockets. We should have an ad company where you start with this and then you leave the room

and I sell from this point on. Okay, so speaking of all that stuff, here's what we want to do. Everything he said is true, here's how we use it to manipulate. I watched this, my dad's Netflix,

back when we shared the same account, I watched some sex romp comedy called like Sex Pot Triple D because I was dating this girl whose friend was in it. Okay. And it never, then his Netflix was ruined

He turned it on and home and it was like Oh you like sex pot Double Triple D or something I bet you would like One in the Pink And he's like what the hell What did you do? I gave you you had that login for one day

And you ruined it with your sex romp comedies Yeah that happened to me I had a Netflix account where I was curating my list For years I was like I just want to see cool horror shit And sometimes anime And then a bunch of sci-fi shit and documentaries That's all I wanted to see

would be in the nerd category. Just type in at the beginning. Nerd, extra point-exter model, please. And then like kung fu movies. I thought that's all I wanted to see, right? So this girl came over one time, who I dated, and she watched, like, while I was out, I, like, ran some errands, came home.

My Netflix queue was completely ruined with a bunch of cute pink bullshit. It was all pink. Everything was pink. I'm like, what the, what is any of this? What is all this bullshit? It was all, like, documentaries about butterflies and ponies. It's enough to give you a headache.

Yeah. Right? You know what else gives you a headache? What? Concussions. Oh, yeah? That's my problem. I think we can all agree that the future of our NFL stars are the most important problem facing the United States, right?

Oh. Right? Is that crazy? Is it fucking crazy that anyone cares about ex-NFL players' mental health? Is it? It's like investigations and cover-ups and that we're doing these studies to see what the long-term effects of concussions are on their mental well-being? horrible. We don't need to study to show that.

You're bashing your head against other giant men every day all day. Yeah, but the NFL is denying that this effect exists. Who cares? Well, because the end... I think you would care, because the end result of this... The end result of this is pressure put on the NFL to make the game safer, and it's going to make it less enjoyable for guys like you who like to watch it. Well, you know, you know what the end result is,

and this is why I brought it in, because I wanted to zing this one by you. So if mothers think that football is not safe, they are not going to let their little kids do it. Right? Okay. These little kids will not get into football and will not go to high school and play football where the entire public school system worships football

like it's the third coming of Christ. Right. Right? So I think... What? Well, that's already happening. Lots of parents are not allowing their kids to play football for that exact reason.

Yeah. So I'm bringing in concussion. is a big problem because it is a huge problem and it happens to kids. Let me get the stats here. Let me get my precious stats. I'll go straight to the youths. Per year, high school athletes sustain 300,000 head injuries a year, right? 90% of which are concussions.

By the beginning of high school, 53% of athletes will have already suffered a concussion. So what are the reper? 300,000. What are the repercussions? Yeah, concentration and memory complaints, problems, irritability and other personality changes, sensitivity to light, sleep disturbances, psychological adjustment problems, and depression.

Geez, have you had concussion sick? Many. Yeah. Have you ever been knocked out? Once or twice. Once or twice, yeah. You've had a concussion then too there, dearie. You're talking about CTE, the end result, right?

Yes, the end result is even worse. Oh, yeah. You find these. That's just for a concussion. Like there's no clear line between, well, you get knocked, it's not a video game, you get knocked on the head one more time and all of a sudden you're a huge raging asshole with mental problems. Well, it's more, it's like, it's something that accumulates over time, right? It's an aggregate effect where if you get a lot of concussions, then these problems start to develop. Because everyone's had like one or two concussions.

Yes. You know, I got stats on that too. Hold on. 2.5 million people a year are associated with traumatic brain injury. which is like a superset, or a subset of concussions. You get a concussion, it is, I forget which one it is. Comatic brain injuries, you got hit in the head. That would be a subset.

You fell over, you were trying to kill the third death star, your Han Solo, you tripped like an old man, you fell over, you hurt your head, you're a little kid, you can't walk around you, you, you get assaulted, you get somebody throws a beer bottle. You're shooting a pig out of a helicopter, you fall out. Exactly. Concussion time. Big problem.

Here is the, so you can get chronic traumatic encephalopathy. That's what all the NFL guys are getting, right? Originally called Punch Drunk Syndrome. Nobody needs to investigate that for boxing, by the way. They do, they have. That's why boxing regulation has, they started limiting the number of rounds, because boxing used to go on for, what, like 20 rounds or something like that? Go on for days.

Yeah, well, they limited it. Infinitely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they'd go 100 rounds. It was until somebody couldn't get up. Right. And so that's when, that's when people, they notice that there's some serious injury going on after, like, so many rounds. Then they try to limit it to now, what, 12 hours?

Am I off base in thinking that, like, am I giving people too much credit when I think, how the hell did nobody think this would affect their health? Like, what do you want? You're getting paid millions. This is why you get the money. Well, the NFL has been shown to suppress data

that shows that their players have been suffering from traumatic brain injury and things like that. Because the NFL knows that the next thing is regulation or pressure, public pressure to, to make the game safer, which is going to make it less interested. People just don't want to hear about the effects of concussions, or they actually don't know? Do you think they actually could look at what's happening in a football game

and say, well, who knows if there's brain damage going on? I don't know. Could go either way on that. No, they know. It's like the tobacco industry. I think some people don't know how far it goes. Yeah. Like, CTE is a relatively new diagnosis,

and the person has to be dead to diagnose it. Yeah. Well, death is the worst diagnosis. You don't want that. The death is way worse than CTE. An incorrect diagnosis of death would be the worst possible diagnosis. Yeah. Second only to, or first over, right over pregnancy.

That's probably the worst diagnosis of all. 33% of sports concussions happen at practice. Oh. Stop practicing. There you go. That's everybody stop practicing. What? Practicing is a way of cheating, isn't it?

No. In your worldview, I would think that you just show up and whatever you got on game day, that's what you are. Whether you're sixth, Or first, or the coach's kid, no practicing is just another form of steroids. If that's what, it all comes down to expectations. If you have the expectations that the person you're going up against isn't going to practice, then yes, practicing would be cheating. But everybody goes to play football games with the expectation of having practiced.

Okay, so Rocky 4, Ivan Drago was cheating. Well, he was taking steroids, yeah. But he's also practicing, and he knew Rocky didn't have a practice facility. Rocky was also practicing. He was running through the snow and dragging boulders. He had to jerry rig that stuff, though. He had to A-team it. They put him there on purpose to screw them over.

That makes him smarter. Yeah. All right, that's why it's a big problem. Yeah. Kids are getting beat up by it, man. Kids are, they can get amnesia. That's the last thing we want. Amnesia?

Kids can't remember shit anyway. They're dumb. Yeah. Kids can't remember shit. I talked to a kid. He forgets what I'm saying halfway through the sentence. No. Stupid kid.

That brain's been rattled too much. They need a, they need a, bake a little bit more. Their head needs to get harder. One in five high school student athletes will sustain a sports concussion during the season. One in five. That's way more than our homeschooled. And you thought homeschooling was a big problem for

child development. How about beating their heads around? Yeah, I don't know. One is physical abuse and one is psychological. Hom schooling is like letting a kid do whatever they want and letting them think that they're the king of the castle and they can eat fruit loops in bed and play

Minecraft for four hours a day and then, you know, Dane to do a homework assignment. That's worse than a concussion. That's... Mom, soup! Shut up, Sean. She brought me the soup voluntarily. That's what it was. I was just sitting down there.

God, you should run North Korea. If that's your version of volunteering. What? You're screaming at someone until they bring you soup? No, she would... I didn't scream until she brought me soup. She would love to bring me soup. That was my mom's favorite thing.

She'd come down sort of the big steaming bowl. What a woman. It's also, she could get so much pleasure out of bringing a man's soup. It's also how he learned a spell. How, alphabet soup? Alphabet soup. No, I never got alphabet soup. It was always a weird soup.

Impulsive behavior, depression or apathy, short-term memory loss? I guess these are all symptoms of CTE. It's a big problem. Maddox, I know you're not on board, but... No, it's a problem. Hundreds of thousands of youths every year. Yeah. Their heads busted around.

Yeah? Well, so what's the solution? Like, seriously, is it stop football? I asked my, I asked my brother-in-law that because he played football in college. He played at UCLA. He played in high school. It's a big star in high school. He got injured towards the end of his high school career. Ended up marrying my sister. Can't win them all. Now he's got two kids.

He said taking their helmets away, which I thought was interesting. Because they get those helmets on, and the helmets make it worse. Because the helmets are supposed to stop your skull from getting cracked. But you put the helmet on, you think you're invincible. You go spearing in to other dudes bashing your heads against theirs to try to kill them, and your brain still gets all the negative effects of the collisions. They found that in college hockey versus the NHL. Yeah.

College wears full face masks. And so they go crazy. High sticks, butt ends, everything is coming up all the time. In the NHL, you know that a stick is going to, you know, it's going to lay somebody open pretty good. and everybody just, you know, you try not to high stick. Oh, that's interesting. So in college they don't have all the equipment and it's safer? They have more equipment.

They have more equipment. Yeah, they wear face masks, full masks. Huh. And so they're more careless with the sticks. You know, it's counterintuitive, but I've seen this. This actually affects people who ride bicycles, too, as well. I read a study. Oh, yeah.

I'll go on with your stupid horseshit football problem, shithead. What? Man, it's, I'm trying to end football for you. So other high school nerds can get their kids. computer department's paid for. Instead of it going to football stadiums. Dishonest. Dishonious.

How is that disingenuous? You love football. You would not forego a football team in high school for a better computer programming class. Ooh. That's a tough. There's a lot of assumptions in that question. No is the answer.

No. No, I don't know about that. The problem is where are you going to get a computer teacher who can teach these kids? Well, these days anywhere, it's way more prevalent. and today than it was way back to the day. Yeah. Skype them in. Anyway, what are you to say?

Cyclists, there's a study a while back. So I got this email from someone a while back. All the same tired bullshit arguments about cyclists, like, if you guys want to be safe, if you guys care about your lives so much and why don't you always wear helmets?

Because they look stupid. Well, they did studies and they found that people, that cyclists, counterintuitively, who don't wear helmets, are way safer cyclists. Really? Yes. And I know firsthand, because this happened to me, I rarely wear helmets.

Sometimes I wear a helmet if I'm going to be riding at night in a terrain that's unfamiliar to me, where I might actually fall or hit something. Wait, do you want to cut that part about you wearing a helmet? Are you sure you want to leave that in the episode? Why? I'm just kidding. Fucking asshole. So I rarely wear helmets.

And one of the times that I did, I was riding through, I was riding with this mom. and I was riding through a parking lot, a parking garage, and we were all kind of pressing the button for the little gate to come up and come down so we could get through, right? And I was just careless. I didn't even look up, didn't even care. That was one of the few times I wore a helmet,

and the thing came down and bonged me on the head really hard. And had I not been wearing the helmet, I probably would have cracked my head open. This thing hit me so hard. But if I wasn't wearing the helmet, I also probably would have been a little bit more cautious. And they found that the argument is this, essentially, if you're going to wear a helmet predicated upon the risk to your health or personal injury,

people who walk should be wearing helmets because you are way more likely as a pedestrian to get in an injury, a life-threatening injury than a cyclist not wearing a helmet. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah, there should be walking helmets. How about that? They should be. Yeah. Everyone should be wearing them.

Should be wearing out. Dick, about the concussion thing in the NFL. One of my favorite onion headlines of old time, I think, happened at, last year after the Super Bowl, said the ticker tape confetti that they were raining down after the Super Bowl victory was made completely of shredded concussion studies.

Concussion studies? I'm just shocked. Ever since this controversy started, I'm shocked that it gets any attention at all. Like, how the hell did anyone not know this? I mean, people know, but now it's coming, it's coming to the forefront. People are talking about it more, yeah.

Yeah, it's going to make the NFL safer and less interesting to watch. Well, that's my problem. Concussions. For, wait a minute, 5.3 million Americans live with traumatic brain injury-related disabilities. Yeah, but how many of those are due to concussions?

100%. Yeah, there you go, 100%. That's not what it says. Yeah, Dick, I think it's a real big problem to people. I mean, if it makes the NFL any less interesting to watch, nobody would watch it. Because already, it's so fucking boring. So that's a huge problem.

Well, okay. What do you got? My last problem, Dick, is envy. Envy. Yeah, and jealousy. Originally, I brought it in as jealousy. I was going to bring jealousy in as my problem. Those are two very different things.

But when I looked into it, envy is a, well, it's a toxic emotion. It's distinctly different from jealousy. And envy is what occurs when you desire something that someone else has, but you lack it. And jealousy occurs when something you already possess is threatened by a third. person. So that's the distinction. According to psychology today, they said so envy is a two-person situation

whereas jealousy is a three-person situation. Envy is a reaction to lacking something. Jealousy is a reaction to the threat of losing something. So essentially what I just said. So yeah, that's a distinction. However, they are related and that's why I kind of lump them in as the same problem. Or, yeah, I brought them in together,

right? Wait, are they together? Jealousy and envy, yeah. You're bringing in what? Slash? Jealousy slash-envy, Oh, man, what a vote grab. Then don't vote for it. I don't give a shit. Envy was one of the original deadly sins in Christianity. I looked into this, like, where the concept of envy came from.

The concept comes from the fourth-century monk Ivegris Ponticus, who listed the eight evil thoughts in Greek. The fifth one was translated as sadness. So originally, when they didn't have a word for envy, they just called sadness in a group of ancient texts called the Philocalia. It's an old set of text that were written as guidelines and instructions for monks who wanted to practice a contemplative life. Sadness. Yeah. The term translates to sadness at another's good fortune. So almost...

That's a good feeling. Sadness... Oh, at another's good fortune. So the opposite of Schadenfreude. Yeah. Yeah, I probably experienced that a couple times a day. Sadness in another person's good fortune? Yeah.

I don't feel sadness. I feel annoyed sometimes when someone is too happy around me. Like when someone posts on Facebook that they just got married or they bought a car or any kind of good news, I'm like, I gotta fuck you. No, it's, there's one person. You know, I said I don't like to really hide or unfollow too many people on Facebook. It's very rare when I do. But one person I did was this girl I met a long time ago who I was going to go out on a date with. We like hung out once.

Didn't happen. Whatever. So then I saw her Facebook status updates every fucking day. I'm so blessed. Bless, bless, bless, bless. Oh, my friends are the best. My life is the best. I'm so fortunate.

I'm so happy, blah, blah. Just to the point where it almost sounded like she was trying to convince herself. And I had to see this shit in my Facebook feed? Fuck you. I hit her. I hit her forever. I haven't heard from her. I don't even remember her first name.

Started with an L. Anyway, yeah. That shit annoys me so much when someone's a little too happy. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. This is from the book by Bertrand Russell. He wrote a book called The Conquest of Happiness. He wrote about envy.

He says envy is one of the most potent causes. of unhappiness. And I think I agree with this. He says, envy is one of the most universal and deep-seated of human passions. It's very noticeable in children before they're a year old. They found that even children,

social psychologists have, there's a big debate on whether or not envy is a cultural phenomenon or whether it's biological. What? There's a debate on that? Oh, yeah. How the fuck is that possible? Well, there's a huge debate on it.

What do you mean, how is it possible? What, they think that it's not just built in? They don't just as a human look at something You're like, oh, I really want that. Fuck you. Well, because certain cultures... I'm going to take that thing. No, there's certain cultures.

They found the prevalence of envy and jealousy is way less than in others. There's this video where Jimmy Kimmel does this prank every year where he has parents pretend like they ate all the kids candy and then, you know, record the kid's reaction. Oh, yeah, it's funny.

Yeah, and the reactions are all over the map. Some of them are super angry. some of them are aggressive and hostile. Some of them are just sad. And then some of them kind of have like this really weird, warm compassion saying, it's okay. And they immediately forgive their parents.

Yeah. That like, you know, that like sweetness and tenderness versus the anger and hostility. Which would you be? Which one would you be? I'd probably be sad. If I was going to be honest, I'd probably be sad. And I'd be, you know, I'd be sad and also I'd be like, I'd just draw another line in the wall,

but yeah, there's another one. Of course, you ate my candy. Oh, so you'd be aggressive in like a manipulative way. Like, here's all the fuckups for eating my candy. There's one. There's one. No, no, it's not manipulative. One day I'm going to start a podcast.

I'm going to talk about this time. There are the grievances. No, it's more like, it's more like I saw it coming, of course. Oh, okay. You're disappointed. Disappointed. That's what I would be. Very disappointed.

Heavy-handedly disappointed. Anyway, man, yeah, there's a lot of debate about this. The very slightest appearance of favoring one child at the expense of another is instantly observed and resented in children. Sure. This is from the book. It says, distributive justice, absolute, rigid, and unvarying must be observed by anyone who has children to deal with.

But children are only slightly more open to the expressions of envy and of jealousy, which is a special form of envy, than are grown-up people. The emotion is just as prevalent among adults as among children. So the perception of justice that is doled out unevenly creates envy and jealousy. Let me shorten that for you. Who's heard this? Why did you like that bitch's status on Facebook? Fuck you.

This is from psych.psu.edu. There's a publication. It's sex differences in jealousy and couple relationships. And this talks about jealousy specifically. wins. Well, evolutionary psychologists have distinguished between two kinds of jealousy, sexual and emotional. Sexual jealousy is evoked by the perceived threat concerning a partner's sexual infidelity, whereas emotional jealousy arises from the perceived threat of a partner's emotional infidelity.

Sexual jealousy is reportedly more common in men than in women, and across a wide variety of cultures, men are more likely than women to divorce partners who are sexually unfaithful, and even to batter and kill such partners. That's why it's a big problem. Men are more willing to do that? Yeah, you know, I always think that. Yeah, seems pretty obvious. Well, yeah, but it's a big problem. Like, that in itself is a big problem.

And men are way more likely. The jealousy. The battery and killing. That's a big problem. What about the cheating? Well, the cheating's a problem, of course. But on the scale of things, if someone cheats on you, you're not justified in killing them. That's a good point.

Thank you. You know, there's probably a debate about that too. Thank you. No. So the reason there is a debate on whether or not it's biological or it's cultural, is because the argument that biologists have made, like anthropologists and people of that nature, is that there is a reproductive advantage to men who are jealous sexually of their women,

like sexual infidelity, whereas women, they argue, have a biological imperative to be jealous of men who are emotionally unfaithful. Sure. Because if men are emotionally unfaithful, they're going to be less likely to provide for the women. That's the argument that they make. Yeah. Yeah.

So, anyway, that's why there's that debate. Envy is often a sign of narcissistic personality disorder. Do you know this? Nope. Yeah, this is interesting. This is from Wikipedia on Envy. It says individuals with narcissistic personality disorder are often envious of others or believe that others are envious of them. A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person's ability to use contempt to

minimize the other person. Yeah. It's kind of a way that narcissists kind of look at another person and write them off and minimize them by being envious of them.

They kind of... Yeah, they use contempt and their superiority for them. Have you been envious of anything? Yeah. If anyone had, like, beautiful hair? No. No, fuck that guy's hair.

No, dickhead. In Hinduism, envy is considered a disastrous emotion. Hinduism, this is a real big one in Hinduism. It's everything I hear about Buddhists, or excuse me, not Buddhist, but Hinduism. Hinduism maintains that anything which causes the mind to lose balance with itself leads to misery. And a lot of that stems from desire, like want is sadness. Who is it?

That's a Dalai Lama quote, isn't it? Specifically, that's the oldest Buddhist thing ever, that desire is the root of pain. Desire is the root of sadness. Sidhartha. Yeah. Envy leads to. to anger, which leads to aggression. This is a huge...

Can you do that in a Yoda voice? And fee. Anger, two leads. Well... Fuck Yoda, though. Yeah. You're such a hater. Star Wars hater.

Anyway, this goes back. I just have this quote from William Shakespeare. I think he was a writer. It's from Julius Caesar. He says, this is a quote from... Yeah, Julius Caesar. It says, why man, he doth bestride the narrow world. like a colossus

and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves that was a statement about the jealousy and that led in the story to murder the final outcome from all these stories in antiquity and literature is murder when people become envious of others

isn't there a good side of envy like if you're seeing a guy playing guitar and getting all this attention you're like fuck I want that I'm gonna go do what this guy's doing it could be Or like Maddox gets all this attention from chicks, I'm going to go buy one of his shirts, so I can be more like him.

Yeah. And get some attention. It could be if you have a healthy approach towards that. Like if you envy somebody's stature, and you try to become more like them, without trying to also destroy them, then that's a healthy way about it. If you are inspired then,

that's not called envy. That's called inspiration. You've got to destroy them. There can only be one. No, no. How are you supposed to know you became them unless you destroy them? No, you're not. It doesn't make any sense.

What you're saying logically doesn't make any sense. You're not supposed to. You can coexist. I've actually dealt with this with a lot of fans over the years. Oh, yeah. Like misery level? Oh, yeah. For sure.

Yeah, for sure. There's been some really creepy shit that's happened to me in the past, which I won't even go into right now. Oh, come on. That's fascinating. The episode's going way too long. But I'll hint at it. I'll talk about it some other time. But yeah, some fans who have been trying to bite my style for years,

they're basically two kinds. There's ones who are trying to be me and they are doing it in a really fucked up wrong way. They don't understand what I'm about so they do it in the way that they think, which is way off base. And if they don't get the same success that I do, they resent me for it.

Sure. And then there is a type that tries to do what I do doesn't quite get it, but then they discover their own voice and they start their own career. And I've gotten so many emails from writers over the years who said, hey, man, you inspired me to become a writer. I try to be like you back in the day,

and I did essentially what you just said. Inspiration and envy. Two sides of the same coin, I think, a little bit. Could be, but you could also be inspired by nature, which you don't envy, although I do have contempt for. I do envy nature, sitting there all day with no cares in the world. Yeah, with the assholes buzzing about in helicopters

trying to kill the pigs. Anyway, that's my problem, man. All right. I do want to hear what you were envious of. Was it a computer? No, most of the envy I've experienced was when I was younger. When I was younger, and I saw, you know, I grew up in a lower middle-income household, so I didn't have a lot of things.

And so when I grew up seeing a lot of the kids around me being way more affluent and having a lot more than I did, that part of me became envious of that. Hmm. But I didn't want to destroy it. I think more along what you said at the time, I wanted to, have that as well and I aspired to have it and then over the course of my life that's changed my priorities and goals have changed

so right now all I really live for is experiences I don't care about things that much but anyway man that's my problem about jealousy jealous jealous jealous jealous guy with girls rarely in fact it was a it was a point of contention with one of my relationships where you were jealous or she was jealous no no neither

well she was jealous for sure she wanted you to be jealous she wanted me to be jealous John isn't that crazy yeah yeah I was, I rarely ever get jealous, and she upset her. And she actually confessed to me one night. She said, hey, it really bothers me that you're not jealous. Yeah. When other guys flirt with me or whatever.

And I was like, yeah, well, I don't know. I just am. I'm real secure. Hmm. So, yeah. It's them. It's their fault if you're jealous or not. They bring it out of you.

Some girls really rarely work it out of you and others don't. No, if they're trying, of course, anyone could do it. Uh-huh. If they're trying, but then they're just shitty people trying to upset someone. But anyway, so my problems this week were the filter bubble and jealousy and envy. My problems are spending too much on Christmas presents and concussions. See you next Tuesday. Here's an anti-homchool guy.

I forgot to play this earlier. Dick, what happened to you, man? You used to be cool. I have this retard cousin who's homeschool. And she can't even fathom that I'm not religious. because that's all that she's ever seen in her life. Yeah, that sucks. All that she does is go learn from a bunch of other Christian fucks.

And all they teach her is that God is everything. Like that she asked me about public school. I told her that they don't teach the Bible. She was shocked. I then asked her if she was aware that I'm not religious. And the idea of someone not being religious wasn't even something that she could comprehend. How can you defend

an institute that fucking produces such goddamn moron? I thought your book was real good. Oh, thanks. But now I'm not too sure about you. Dick, dick, go fuck yourself. Wait, Dick. Which is the system

that produces the morons? Home schools. Oh, okay. Yeah. I was confused. How could I get confused? How could I get that? How did I get confused about the Institute that produces morons. Dick, you know who else? Home schools?

I mean, the Bible has as good as stories as like the stories that make you read where the red fern grows like that's any better than Samson and whatever the giant words. Very comparable. Yeah, we should all read the Bible in schools.

Or David and Goliath? That's a good story. Oh, okay. It's as good as like, Call of the Wild. Like, why don't have to read Call the Wild? Like, that's better than, you know, Jesus teaching all the things you teach.

That's it. They're horning in on your game here with your tolerance and whatever else you will. we're saying on the bonus episode. You know who else homeschools, Dick? ISIS. Do they?

Yeah, man, that's all they're reading is the Quran all fucking day. They're not being taught critical thinking. They're sure shit not being taught about our values and our ways of life, or liberty or democracy or any of Western philosophies or principles that prevent terrorism. Yeah, ISIS is also being homeschooled. And they're achieving their goals. No, they're not.

If their goals are to get scud missile shoved up their asses, yeah. Yeah, it probably is one of their goals. Okay. A bunch of Pussies Nothing good But grades Come from homeschooling

Do you want to turn Your daughter into a whore Or your son into a killer Homeschool that motherfucker That's a fact Because that's what you'll get Nothing is weirder Than homeschooling

That's a fucking trot It's like being locked in a closet Yeah, it's just like being locked in the closet That's been that fucking statement Yeah Vote it up bitch Yeah, thank you, Weird Matthew McConaughey. Yeah, what time did that one come in?

Oh, I didn't mark that one down. Yeah, man. Weird Matthew McConaughey's against you on the homeschool. There's a lot of votes here. There are voicemails. I just want to compile them and put them up somewhere. There's too much. Too many to play.

Yeah. I thought it was really interesting last time, Dick, that you asked for evidence that homeschoolers are weird and not socialized properly. Are you seriously asking for evidence that someone who has no experience being socialized in social situations is not going to be good at it, well, there is

the evidence. No, I would like a guy who tells stand-up comedy while he's dressed as the Green Lantern and a guy who makes all of his Halloween costumes to please explain to me what is a weirdo. That's what I would like. I would like two comedians to tell me what well-adjusted even

means. What does that have to do with anything? That you guys are saying homeschooled kids are weird. Oh, yeah. You're weird as fuck. Both of you are weird. Well, yeah, sure, but in different ways. I'm talking about, like, in social situations, I know not to do certain things in social... I'm not going to show up to my first day of school

with duct tape and a pink backpack and dress as Sonic the Hedgehog. What's wrong with that? He doesn't wear the right clothes for you? Dick... What's wrong with the kid showing up to school, dress of Sonic the Hedgehog? With a pink backpack?

You're gonna get your ass kicked. Not if he deadlifts. Oh. A homeschool ad. Thank you.