The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Capitol Riots and Pandemic Sex

Episode Date: January 17, 2021

Elizabeth Bernstein has been a reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 20 years.  For the past decade, she has written a column she created called “Bonds: On Relationships,” about the psychology of relationships.  Graham Kay is an award-winning comedian seen on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Has an Autism Awareness Podcast called “Autastic.”

This is live from the table, the official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy cellar. Coming at you on Sirius XM 99, Raw Dog. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Aderman here. In lockdown. 2021, we're still locked down. I'm here with Nolan Gorman, owner of the world-famous comedy cellar, Perry L. Ashton Brand, our producer. With us, Graham Kay, award-winning comedian, as seen on Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He has an autism awareness podcast called Autastic

and posts new comedy sketches weekly on YouTube and Instagram. I should also mention, he is a Juno Award nominee. Yes, that's right, he's Canadian, folks. But he loves America, and he lives here now, and I think he has a green card. Do you have a green card, Graham? I do. It was the he has a green card. Do you have a green card, Graham? I do. It was the best time to get one.

Graham asked me to write a letter on his behalf saying that we couldn't live without him here in America. And so I lied and I said that he's indispensable to the comedy scene. And who would fill this fourth square if it wasn't me? There's nobody else. And of course, it's been a jam-packed week, obviously. A lot to talk about.

Did Trump get impeached, by the way? We're recording this on Wednesday night. Yeah, he did. He did. I just found out now. Yeah, he got impeached. He sure fucking did. I saw a video on youtube it was a uh alan dershowitz

video where he he um kind of breaks down the legal case for impeachment and needless to say he comes out against impeachment and he makes a very convincing case for one thing they're not impeaching with any intent to remove him they're impeaching only with the intent to keep him from running again. And according to Dershowitz, this is unconstitutional because the constitution says that impeachment is for the removal of officers. Any thoughts about that, Noam? Noam Chomsky No. I mean, I can look up the impeachment clause. I mean, I always thought that's what it was for. You know, it's if the intention is to make sure that he never runs again. I mean, it seems a little bit undemocratic that the past is going.

I mean, so old it might not matter. But let's say, you know, this was 20. Let's say he was 20 years younger. It seems a little weird that the past is going to impose its will on the future on something like that. I'm more interested in the pros and cons of impeachment. And Dershowitz also said that there's no possible case that this was incitement under the meaning of the law. Yeah, well, that's what I mean. I've been, you know, emailing back and forth with my smarter friends today. And this is a squishy thing because it's not, it's pretty clearly

not incitement under the law. And then the question is, well, okay, then what does it mean to, for the purposes of impeachment, what does incitement mean? By the way, just for the record, I think that there's a stronger case to impeach him for trying to pressure people to overturn the election as it were. But incitement, I mean, and if you can't tell me what it means, then how does he defend himself? Like, you know, I don't think, we're caught up, and a lot of people will come to me answers

who are like, I think you should be worrying about more important things and don't you know people, and a lot of these answers reminded me of like, when people after 9-11 were bringing up objections to the Patriot Act, he would say, I think you should have more important things to worry about now than, you know, that.

The World Trade Center came down, you know. I'm sure that when Roosevelt was rounding up the Japanese, people said, wait a second, what are you talking about? There's a war going on. You know, it's very easy to make somebody seem like they're on the wrong side of things when they're bringing up logical things at a time when everybody's caught up in an emotional. And when I say emotional, it doesn't mean it's not correctly, it's not the right emotion, but it's an emotional wave. But I think it's weird to impeach somebody for a charge if the charge doesn't have a meaning and you can't and or i think it's weird for a very smart person to say yes i believe it's incitement and so what do you how would you define incitement and they don't have an answer to that that's seems to me prima facie sloppy thinking you should certainly know what you mean and be able to say what you mean it now i will say that you know, you could say that,

but for Trump's words, it wouldn't have happened, but that's not incitement. I don't know if you could say that. I don't know. I don't have enough. You can make a case. You could certainly make the case. You can make the case.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if Trump didn't say what he said and didn't encourage this, it wouldn't have. Well, tell me, maybe it's incitement wait maybe you know the facts i don't know was this protest already planned it seemed like it was right the rally was already planned the fbi had uh you know uh transactions online saying that it that it was they're planning it so yeah yeah so it doesn't it doesn't seem an open and shut case at all but without trump's words i mean it was a pipe bomb planted. That was before Trump's words. Right. I mean, so, you know, so I tried to.

Charlie Savage wrote a thing. What did Trump say? And I tried to. It was before Trump said that, though, because he said it multiple times. That the, that was like the second or third time that speech a few hours before the March. Yeah. Well, so listen, so this was, this is my personal standard for incitement. I, you know, I would say if I hold, if I, if I heard those words, what I think he was telling me to do what was done, you know, so here's, you know, here's like the, the main paragraph I'll read it. And I'm, and'll read it and I hear it and I listen to it and

I say, would I have been in that crowd? Would I have thought he's telling me to go breach the barrier of the Capitol and go in and take over the Capitol? I don't think I would have thought that, but I'll read it. Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It's like a boxer. We want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we're going to have to fight much harder. We're going to walk down to the Capitol. We're going to cheer our brave senators and congressmen, men and women. We're probably not going to be cheering so much for them, but because you'll know, we'll never take our country with weakness.

You have to show strength and be strong. And then shortly after that, he says, I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. So that's, now, it fires people up. It rallies them. When you fire people up, shit can happen. It can't be taken out of the context of, you know,

a month of saying that he was robbed and all sorts of things. But is that insight? Would I have heard those words and said, he wants me to go in and, you know, take over the Capitol? I'm going to tell you, even though it might risk my invitations at polite company parties in the future, I don't think that's, I would have taken it that way. I would have taken it as you need to go protest, you know, scream and yell, no justice, no peace, fight the powers that be. I would take it in the context of those very well, those other kinds of fight analogies that we're used to that have been associated with violence, by the way, but nobody ever said was incitement to violence.

So that's my, I don't know. Now let's get a Canadian perspective because there are reasonable people, peaceful people. I mean, is he being impeached specifically for that or is it also for trying to steal the election? No, for the incitement. The incitement to violence. I thought that he also said, you know, march, I want you to march on the election. No, for the incitement. The incitement to violence. I thought that he also said, you know, march, I want you to march, march on the Capitol. Like he specifically said that

sentence. Well, there's one other thing he says, when you catch somebody in fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. Talking about Mike Pence. I don't see that as violence. I mean, I'm not cherry picking. I'm just, I mean, I'm assuming that the Times was cherry picking and I'm reading their cherry picked article. So that's, I'm scanning. So help me God, I'm not trying to leave. I tried to read the most.

I thought I read that. I read that he said March, but- Oh, here it is. Yeah, here's maybe what you're referring to. Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down and I'll be there with you. We're going to the Capitol. We're going to try and give the Democrats, we're going to try, the Democrats are hopeless. They're never voting for anything,

not even one vote, but we're going to try, give our Republicans the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness they need to take back our country. So, I mean, I don't think this is incitement to violence. I mean, it's reckless. It's reckless in the sense that things were getting so hot that a responsible president would have gone out there and said, listen, I'm going to say some things here that are going to get you all fired up. But let's be clear right at the onset, we are to have no violence. We are not going to be like them. They're the party of looting and protest. That's not us.

So don't even think about it. Like that would be a wise man to say those things because any wise person knows when people are that riled up, anything could happen and anything could happen. But you could say that about black lives matter speeches too that riled people so up so much that violence happened and nobody would say it was incitement to violence well with their it was just it was just it was just incautious and and if they want

to if they want to say i mean there's gonna be a trial there in the senate so if they want to say if they could define incitement as being incautious, yeah, he's guilty, you know, but tell me what it's like. I think the main difference in people's minds, well, between the black lives matter. I shouldn't say incautious, reckless. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. No, I think because they find his theory that the election was stolen such lunacy, which I think it is. I think it is too. That in and of itself, that's the difference that people see between Black Lives Matter and Trump. If the election really was stolen, well, then it would be a different story. But because he kind of made it up, either he's lying or he's a lunatic. I mean, here's the thing. He pressured government officials clearly to redo their arithmetic to find votes to change the election, right? Or to at least to give him a fighting chance to fight it. He pressured the guy from Georgia. He pressured Pence.

He pressured... That seems to me a much clearer violation of his... Oh, I mean, I could understand that standard. Did he do that? Did he improperly pressure people to, you know, like, suborn whatever it is? And that seems like a much cleaner thing but you have a cleaner case for the guy is like a nut by saying that this election was stolen yeah well if they want to say but that's the thing if they want to if they want to say listen the real reason we're impeaching him

is because we can't trust this guy another day which can't actually that can't be the reason because the trial is not going to happen until the senate comes back but if that's so then they should just say that there's something about this which is i have a question yeah um so they're doing this because so he won't be able to run again in four years if he gets impeached again impeachment is the is the the process not the yes to get convicted he has to get yeah so he has to get convicted. Yeah, so he has to be convicted. Yeah, so, okay. So this is... How would they convict him? You know, is this going to tie him up at all

so he won't be able to, like, ruin the country anymore or... No, no, he's... I mean, it's a dangerous... Let's be honest. Anybody who sees how nutty this guy is is crossing their fingers and hoping the next, you know, whatever number of days it is passes.

Impeachment is not going to, I mean, one could say if you're really worried about him, you don't, you don't what's the expression about a hornet's nest. You don't, you don't stick a hornet's nest? You don't, you don't stick a hornet's nest. I mean, one could certainly say, and it would say in other contexts, if you're that worried about this guy right now, and there's no way to remove him, maybe it's time to go easy right now. Maybe impeachment is not the thing to do to a guy. We can argue that if we're going to go by it, if, but for standard impeachment might cause violence.

You know, if we're going to say that were it not for A, B wouldn't have happened. We could apply that perhaps to an impeachment. Well, impeachment might cause violence, especially, I don't think impeachment is going to cause violence. But in the context of what happened to Parler taken down and Twitter and all the, I mean, it's a perfect storm. Why don't we talk about that? The fact that they, Twitter censored Trump, because apparently Trump, he said something on Twitter to the effect that, the fact that Twitter censored Trump because apparently Trump, he said something on Twitter to the effect that, well, this is what happens when you steal an election. And Twitter shut him down.

And I think Facebook shut him down, and I assume he doesn't have an Instagram account, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a TikTok account, but he's been shut down. He definitely doesn't have a TikTok account. Apparently, YouPorn uh all right with him but but i mean you know now we all know and it's been said 80 trillion times that yes these are private companies the constitution does not forbid them from doing this but should they be doing this they just give him um a bunch of prostitutes and hamburgers and he'll be he'll just have his

hands full and then let him go on on twitter but like have like uh you know when you screen share with tech help and they go on your screen and they can see what's happening and then he thinks he's on twitter but he's not well i think he has access to hamburgers and prostitutes anyway yeah that's true you know but um that's a good point dan i'm sorry thank you i don't mean to you know overanalyze no you're right i'm just learning i mean if you read if you go on and read the uh twitter explanation of why they uh banned him lifetime ban i believe um it's pretty lame i i don't see why they just couldn't have um put his uh tweets on double secret probation you know case by case basis and uh let them through so i mean i can just read a little bit of it here

says it violates their glorification of violence policy and And so I'll give you one example and you can tell me, oh shit, I'll give you one example of what they say here was glorifying violence and you can tell me how ridiculous it is or not.

I think it's ridiculous. Trump tweeted, 75,000 great American patriots have voted me America first and make America great again and have a giant voice long in the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly or in any other way or shape or form. Shortly thereafter, president also tweeted,

to all those who have asked, I will not be going to the inauguration on January 20th. And they wrote, assessment is, we assess these two tweets reference above as under our glorification of violence policy uh a number of factors trump's statement that he will not be attending the inauguration is being received by a number of supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and seen him as disavowing his previous claim made in tweets one and two.

So his second tweet also may serve encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the inauguration will be a safe target as he will not be attending. So you understand, like, this is the best they could come up with. By Trump saying, I'm not going to the inauguration, he was telegraphing that I won't be there, so if you want a bomb, go ahead. And that's their glorification of violence. That's Twitter talking. That's actually them trying to explain themselves. I mean, what?

Am I crazy? Well, wasn't there, didn't he also say? I'll message it to everybody. I don't, I know sometimes this stuff is so silly that people say, oh, he can't be being straight with us. That's ridiculous. That's preposterous. anybody can look it up and if and if you write write us at podcast at comedysower.com if you don't think i was being straight with you it was blogged

i think they also had a problem when he said that this is what happens when you steal an election in response to the riots no he got bombed but, he got banned before that. I'm reading the two tweets that they identified. Those are the tweets they identified. Permit suspension of Donald Trump. And those are the only two tweets that they identify. I read them to you.

I don't know. Do you think that now that he's off Twitter, he will have less of an ability to incite violence? No. He can go on in front of a camera, say whatever he wants now that he's mad. Now that he has also the, he can get off the election thing and he has a real righteous cause, which is they banned me and they banned you and they took down Parler. And then people on Twitter will just tweet

what it is that he said. And then how will Twitter look if they have to start suppressing all the tweets of Twitter accounts of people who were reporting what the president said? And how are they gonna get them off Fox? Censorship, this is the ugly truth. And this is what I'm amazed that people are not getting this,

leaving aside the fact that Twitter does, I think, have the legal right to do it. They are a private company. Censorship begets censorship. This is why the only way China could effectively control its country is by shutting down the internet all around. They control the bubble of the internet. You shut They control the very, you know, the bubble of the internet. You shut down Twitter. It's impossible. All you do is anger everybody. Now everybody's

moving to Telegram, I read. Well, Telegram is encrypted and law enforcement can't even monitor it. You know, then they shut down Parler, which is nuts. And they shut it down with no notice. And apparently they gave like 24 hours notice and then wouldn't return any phone calls and um i mean now what is that going to accomplish there are two there i don't know about any other countries but i know that in canada and i also know that in germany they have pretty strict hate speech laws um that they do enforce seemingly without begetting other restrictions, like you said.

Like the slippery slope isn't happening there. Well, yes to no. First of all, just because it's related, Angela Merkel apparently has publicly objected to the fact that Trump was taken off Twitter. So that's interesting. Second of all, I remember a story when I was in Canada, like, I don't know, has publicly objected to the fact that Trump was taken over Twitter. So that's interesting. Second of all, I remember a story when I was in Canada, like, I don't know, seven, eight.

There's a comedian that, and that is, there's a comedian in Montreal who made fun of him of a physically handicapped. Oh, yeah, yeah. We had him on this show, I think. And Mark Stein also said some stuff about, you know, Islam or whatever it is. And he got tried for hate speech laws.

And, but I have had a theory for a long time that. Those are very isolated cases. And they were, they were, they were, you know, rebuked even by the left in Canada. It was like, everyone's like, this is ridiculous. Well, there was a case in England of a book more recently. There are cases. Of course, with all these things, you don't know what the self-censorship

that comes from this stuff. But it sort of holds these groups, like the Proud Boys or whatever, from getting out of hand. Well, what Graham is saying is that we can't, if we restrict free speech a little bit, it won't necessarily snowball into, like, if we just say, no more hate speech, you can't use the N-word, you know, or you can't... I don't speech a little bit it won't necessarily snowball into like if we just say no more hate speech you can't use the n-word you know or you can't think it's just a rule like

that i don't know i i imagine a law that says you can go to jail for using the n-word i mean this is well there's well we're not saying that i'm not saying that anyway but we're saying that other countries have sort of had those laws i mean in germany if you deny the holocaust you can go to jail yeah i don't i don't i don't like that. I think it makes people suspicious. But this is my theory for a while. I think that, listen, I don't know what those hate speech laws are anyway. I mean, Charlie Hebdo was making those outrageous cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, and they did so with impunity, as they should be able to. But I mean, if that's not hate speech, then I guess the hate speech laws are just, you know, if you can draw the Prophet Muhammad having anal sex and not worry about the hate speech laws, then maybe the hate speech laws are just symbolic.

But let me get my main point is that I think that for a long time, America is the anchor point on free speech law and America being so clear about its First Amendment, I think the other countries in Europe and Canada could only get so far away from us without being a little embarrassed. I worry that if America moves towards Europe, that will be licensed for Europe to move even further in that direction. I also don't know if Europe has the same issues that we have. I don't know enough about Europe. I know that America has done very, very well all these years without regulating free speech, and I wouldn't jump the gun. I don't think we should start prosecuting people.

They haven't regulated the news, news though the way the news can broadcast things like there you know there's all those laws that were taken down in the early 90s by the bush administration about having uh you have to show both sides on a newscast and that was taken away and then it's just a slippery slope with what we have now but those there's always there was always editors that would stop uh like an educated non-lunatic that was a stopgap between somebody printing something crazy in a newspaper and Twitter. Hold on. I know you're a Canadian, but you're referring to the Fairness Doctrine. And that was not a rule about news. That was a rule about if you wanted to use the public airwaves broadcast, because that was considered to be a finite resource the

number of um the you know the various the number of tv channels essentially so like abc is not on the public airwave nobody is anymore it's cable i mean back then yeah so i mean i guess they still broadcast but it's so it's it's it's an irrelevant law at this point i mean i have i have uh rabbit ears here because i make a lot of money. And I get ABC and Fox and whatever, and that's public airways, right? No, you're right. But I'm saying that the only reason that Fairness Doctrine existed was under the rationale that because there was a limit, because there was such a limit of number of people that could broadcast we needed to protect it but right now there is no limit even if there's a limit still the number of people on the airwaves

we have thousands of channels youtube internet whatever it is the notion that we that that that we might be deprived of different points of view it's obsolete there was no loosening of loss by uh dick cheney in the early 90s. No, I don't think that's true. I saw that in that movie, Veep, or whatever it was. It's not true. It was totally false, that Adam McKay movie. It's actually one of his lies in that movie.

It had nothing to do with Cheney. I think that their standards should just, their standards should be Twitter and the other social media should just be, if it, if it's constant, if it, if the constitution would not prohibit the government from censoring this, we won't either. I mean, that would, I think, be a sensible standard for them. Obviously as a private company, they can do what they want. But the Fairness Doctrine was revoked in June 2011.

Yeah, but it was like neutered 20 years before that, right? I mean, I don't know. No. I mean, I heard about that. Like I said, it's an obsolete law because we don't know no i don't i do i mean like i said it's an obsolete it's an obsolete uh law because we don't get our there's no limit we get our news um from from the internet now we're just there's no we're not we're not starving that's what i'm saying yeah we're not starving for opposing points of view are we there was always some sort of like i mean even on fox there is

some sort of uh of checks and balances. On Twitter, there's none. So it's like, it's just a new... Yeah, it's like picking up the phone. America has always been okay with what we have, but the world's completely changed with social media, right? I mean, what could Twitter's standard be, Noam, if you were in an ideal world?

No, I... Listen, in an ideal world no i i listen in an ideal world listen i think jack dorsey has been um indecisive uh ad hoc and um and he's to blame here a little bit if i had twitter we i mean we've known these problems were on the horizon for years already if i had twitter i would have pegged my standards of the first amendment i would have created a a very clear standard and a Twitter court, as it were, and I would have given people the right to appeal and create some sort of hearing. And I would have made it such that anybody who gets thrown off Twitter, like all good laws and rules, that they're very predictive, that you should be very clear to people that, oh, if you do this,

you're deciding that you're ready to get thrown off or you're a very good chance you might get thrown off. But what they do is like the Ayatollah Khomeini, if you've seen it going around in the news today, the Ayatollah Khomeini still has tweets or Khomeini has tweets there, you know, calling for that Israel's a cancer and we need to destroy them and bring them down. So, you know, I would fault Jack Dorsey immensely for the, for thinking

that, you know, yeah, well, we're going to allow this. We're not going to allow that. And, and essentially in the end, I don't want the Muslims blowing up Twitter. So I'm going to let them do this. I mean, I'm reading his mind, but why else is he is he he allowing iranians to do such a thing but even if that's not the reason that's no way to run a business i mean that's no way to be to be respected have a standard and apply it's more than a business it's become the way discourse is conducted in america yeah but his job is to run a business right i mean his job is to maximize the value of his shares there's two questions what. What's best for Twitter and what's best for America? What's best for society? I think what I'm describing is best for both. I think that it shouldn't be so obvious

from the totality what the political point of view of the owner of Twitter is. And it is obvious. In other words, I'm saying that, sure, you could have created a standard where it would have been very clear that Trump should have been thrown off and throw everybody off also who meets that standard. And then if you don't like it, start up another company like Parler and that would be fine.

But the fact is now this thing with Parler coming down and Parler when it was brought down, I've never been on Parler. Have you, Dan? A little bit. A little bit. It's kind of a sense i'm sorry what i'm sorry to um cut you off but elizabeth is here and okay tell her five minutes when parlor was was was brought down uh there was it was the number one downloaded app in the country and i mean it is a bad look when all the most powerful tech companies in the world lock arms and find a way to suppress this kind of thing from, you know, this is, if

it's the number one app in the country, it's not just a bunch of crazy people, you know, violent people downloading it. It's everyday people like Dan Natterman, you know, everyday conservatives, whatever, who just want to hear other points of view. And the whole thing put together is really scary. And the thing is, Parler will be back. And then the offshore, whatever it is, and then people say, oh, oh shit, they're back. Well, if they're really a threat, I mean, maybe we need it. This is how you back them. Okay, now we need the government to stop. Okay, we got to go because Elizabeth's here and we don't want to talk

about politics when Elizabeth is on because that's not her thing. Go ahead, Graham. I just have a quick thing. The leader of the Proud Boys fired me once from a job I had.

Gavin McGinnis? Yeah, he fired me. Now that is a step up. I don't think he's the leader of the Proud Boys anymore. He's the founder. He is the founder, right. I met him one time. I had no idea who he was. He hung out at the comedy cellar a step forward. I don't think he's the leader of the Proud Boys anymore. He's the founder. He is the founder, right. I met him one time.

I had no idea who he was. He hung out at the Comedy Cellar a couple times. Hello. He fired me from Vice Magazine like 12 years ago. Yeah, anyway. But anyway. On that note, okay. Hi, Elizabeth.

Hey, how are you guys doing? Okay. Elizabeth Bernstein. Okay, enough about Trump. Let's talk about sex. She's been a reporter for the Wall Street Journal for 20 years. You look fabulous. You don't have to age me, but thank you.

Well, that's what was written in your bio. Don't blame me. It is. For the past decade, she has written a column she created called Bonds on Relationships about the psychology of relationships. Now, you have a lot to teach me. I don't know much about psychology of relationships. But anyway, welcome, Elizabeth Bernstein, to the program. Thank you.

Let me introduce you around. I'm Dan Natterman. You know Noam Dorman. He's the owner of the world-famous comedy teleperial Ashenbrand. He's our producer. She's also an author. And Graham Kay is a comedian, originally from Toronto. Ottawa. Ottawa. Ottawa. That's the capital of Canada.

That's right. And he's living here now. And he is with us as well. Graham, you know Dan is Canadian. You know that, right? No, no, no, no. He's not Canadian. My parents are Canadian.

And when I was born, I was dual. But at the age of 25, I didn't even know this, by the way, until relatively recently. But I was dual citizen until the age of 25, at which point I had to fill up some paperwork, and I didn't do it. I'm sorry, Graham. I stand corrected. Dan was Canadian until the age of 25. You rejected it. I didn't even know. I didn't know that I had the option, to be honest. You stabbed us in the back, and I understand. Well, I don't really need you guys anymore

because I'm too old to get drafted. So I don't need to be a Canadian anymore. I mean, that would have been, I guess, a potential benefit if I ever wanted to dodge the draft. I could have just scurried up. I don't know how wise our military is, but somehow I don't think you were ever going to be on the front lines of any war.

Nor would I, nor would I, nor would I. When I first got my green card, the American border guard told me that I wasn't allowed to vote, but I could get drafted. That's what he told me. Elizabeth has two recent columns that I would like to talk about both

because both of them are important issues one of them is and perriel probably would like to lead the conversation here is um how do you improve your boring sex life during uh a pandemic and the other one is how to stop the negativity in your brain both Both of these are, I think, hit home with people during our recent times. So which one do you want to handle first, Ariel? I think that we should tackle the second one first. I feel like if you get rid of the negativity, then maybe your sex life will improve. Okay. So go ahead, Elizabeth. Tell us about your comment on negativity. And it's really nice to see you. I haven't seen you in a long time. It's almost four years. No, it's been a long time. It was in person last time, but thanks for having me on.

Good to see you too. How to stop the negativity in your brain. That's a big topic right now. I don't think I'm the only one that's been pretty negative in my head. What I do in my column is I talk to psychologists, researchers, and I hear from a ton of readers. A lot of people write me all the time. What I've heard over and over is I cannot stop these runaway catastrophic thoughts no no matter what's going on. And it seems like every day is worse than the next. And now it's not even just in our heads. We're watching stuff. So I talked last week to a really interesting researcher who is an emotion regulation guy. He's got a new book out called Chatter, which I thought was actually really, really good. And he taught me some techniques, which I hopefully taught readers about that. One of the things is you have to arrest a thought immediately when you're having a negative thought. You want to stop it as soon as you can. And you want to do something called cognitivory appraisal, which sounds really techie. But what it is, is you want to replace that negative thought with a positive one, but a true positive one. It can't just be a made up, you know, I can't decide I'm going to win the Nobel Prize,

but you know, possibly I can meet my deadline, that kind of positive thought. So what kinds of negative thoughts are people having in the pandemic that they weren't having before? Or what effect is the pandemic having on people's thinking? Are they negative thoughts directly related to the pandemic or are they just more depressed and so everything becomes negative? It starts off where it's sort of the pandemic freaks people out. Now everybody's pretty negative. And what's happened, and research shows us over and over,

psychologists tell me about it every single week, no matter what I'm reporting on, is that we are all now sort of in a heightened fight or flight response mode, where we're really activated. Our brains are activated, ready to fight or flee. So in that mode, you may start out worried about, you know, maybe I'm worried, want to keep myself safe. I'm down in Miami where people don't wear masks. It's, you know, everybody's just running around. So worried, can I keep myself safe? But in that heightened fight-or-flight mode

over weeks and months, now anything's going to get me. I'm worried about anything. Well, you know, am I gonna... Anything. Am I gonna lose my job? Am I gonna break my leg? It just doesn't even make sense anymore. People are so stressed out. By the way, did you see, I've known that Cuomo tweeted

that we gotta... I think I sent it to you. He said, we gotta open By the way, did you see that, knowing that Cuomo tweeted it, we got to, I think I sent it to you. He said, we got to open up because we can't, you know, we can't continue to be locked down. Yeah, but I don't know if Elizabeth wants to get dragged into that. But let me, and I'm curious to know

if everybody in the panel feels the same way. I find that if I have negative thoughts, thinking positive thoughts has absolutely no, it just doesn't help. It's almost as if the chemicals that cause negativity are there and they have to dissipate unless something really,

like something happens or something takes my mind off it. I only, I feel like i'm just i'm i'm a hostage to those negative feelings i is am i wrong i don't think a lot of a lot of if i could just judge my drugs drugs would help me go ahead then i just don't know if noam if a lot of these techniques work with noam in general because he's just so hyper analytical and skeptical he's going in with a very skeptical attitude well do they work for you you're not exactly a beacon of happiness i haven't tried the positive thought experiment but but there's more to that so if you can't do the positive thought people know it's uh nature and nurture so it's a personality it's how you were raised it's

some genetics um you know but if you can't if you can't adjust your thoughts and many many people can you know there's other things and you you said a word you can distract yourself know if you can't if you can't adjust your thoughts and many many people can you know there's other things and you you said a word you can distract yourself noam you can i do this with reading read just get into something anything that will distract you and that lets your brain stop like fleeing i will say this i will say this is uh you know related to me i just started learning guitar and uh i found my mood to be quite quite improved since that although my fingers are not improved i got i got a i tried a bar chord and i sliced my didn't slice it but i severely injured my uh index finger no i don't know how you do those things well you're not not obviously not the way you're doing it but uh and

my my my tips of my fingers are painful, so that's a distraction. But I've been very into it, and I don't know how long I'll stick with it. Well, I can tell you what works. I actually know this works. I don't know if it makes you happy, but I learned this years ago, like 1999 or something, when I was opening up a business and I had a tremendous amount of pressure. And I was depressed. And a great relationship pressure on top of business

pressure. It was a dark time for me. I was fighting with my father. It was a bad time. And they had this kiosk, you know, digital machine video machine at the, at the bar was at, and it had one of those games where you had to instantly, like, get three seconds to answer, essentially, it was a card game, but essentially three seconds to answer kind of a math thing. Oh, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it required such absolute attention. You literally could not multitask. You didn't, I noticed right away away i was not able to think about anything but answering that next question and if as long as i played that game i was not able to dwell on any of my problems because

it was too fast so i don't know i don't know what that how that can be done by analogy in other situations but i didn't notice that was a very powerful lesson to me at that time like holy this works. It made me happy. But as long as I'm playing it, I could not think, I could not be disappointed. I wanted to ask Graham how he has been, we haven't spoken to him in so long,

how he's holding up under the psychic strain of lockdown, American style. I am good. First of all, I think think I'm like half joking, but being locked down is very close to a comedian's normal schedule. You're home alone all day. And I really was only seeing people for two hours, three hours at nighttime. And that's it. And so I do that.

That's like saying I was only eating two meals a day, so I don't to need i mean those three hours were damn important i know but i like i have like a little bubble i go on walks with those people i'm good i'm just built for this i'm okay i mean i i'm good at creating projects and whatever and making dumb videos and and just doing it that way i can't i'm i'm lucky that I have residual money, so I'm not starving. I'm not saving any money. Were you in your high or something? Yeah.

Yes. Yes, I was. I was the third guy in a wheelchair. But yeah, so it's like, I don't know. I'm good at making goals. I'm good at being alone, I guess. I don't know. I'm just used to it.

It's like being on the road forever, kind of. Well, I think that we're very lucky that we're having this pandemic. Even five, six years ago, it would have been much much more difficult zoom is not a replacement for physical being there physically with somebody but it's pretty it's not that bad i mean you you know if you have like a an hour long zoom call with somebody it really feels like you've been sitting at a table with them it's not like uh you know it's not sexual. Here's my wife.

We got to talk about something else. I'm leaving. She's leaving. You know, it's not quite the same as being with people in person, obviously. But what I'm saying is imagine life before Zoom. Yes. Imagine this pandemic. And imagine without Amazon, without delivery.

I mean, it's all yeah elizabeth not the worst it could be like a lot of video games like i don't play video games but all my friends are if they seem to be really it just seems really helping them yeah it's a good size we'd be done by now with this is it possible that without this technology we just wouldn't have gone into lockdown because it would be like fuck it we ain't doing it absolutely we're barely able to hold lockdown now elizabeth the last few times i've been on the road the traffic is gnarling you know like like it doesn't look like a lockdown to me no people have had it and you can't blame them elizabeth what do you think about zoom as a substitute or partial substitute for in-person contact is our people is it a great

benefit to have it yeah i think it's a great benefit i have it? Yeah, I think it's a great benefit. I agree with Noam. It's a great benefit to have it. I can't imagine if we couldn't see people talk. It gives you some sense of being connected. But I think the touch and even the non-sexual, the hugs, you know, the being together, like I do think that people crave that. And the more it goes on, the more it's wearing on them, you know, and, and the travel for me, I'm in Miami. I used to go up to New York about once a month for a week at a time. And, and I just, it's, that is what I miss the most.

Like, so, and all of my friends up there, my job, everything. So I'm used to also, this is my baseline working at home alone. That's fine. I've worked at home for many years alone. But the travel. No, I was going to say, you know what else I noticed? This could be wrong. It could just be getting used to it.

But I noticed it was video technology for a long time. Skype, right? I never, ever wanted to talk to anybody on a video phone. It was an assault 10 months ago. Someone just FaceTimed you out of the blue yeah but now and perhaps it's just we got used to it or perhaps it's because we're happy to see another face now i prefer the zoom call i never did before you know so i don't or both maybe both factors is that is that that reverberate with you guys my my brother has pretty severe autism i mean

he's verbal he can talk he's sort of like rain man without any skills um he he he he really benefits from i mean i taught him how to download whatsapp and we talk all the time. We talk every day. You have the Tom Cruise in this story? Yeah. Yes. I have Tom Cruise. Except I have like a bicycle instead of that cool car. Except you're older and not Tom Cruise was the younger brother. Yeah. Uh, that's true. Yeah. I'm older. So go ahead. Anyway, it was a good point, Dan. Uh, well, let me slip.

I like to keep our analogies. Yeah. Yeah. But I-I-I... It does help him, um, emotionally cope with this, because he's... He does live on his own, um, semi-assisted, but when there's a lockdown, the assistant, the people can't visit him. And he...

You know, so there was a month there where it was just FaceTiming with me because my parents, they don't know how... They can't... Even though he you know there was a month there where it was just facetiming with me because my parents they don't know they can't even though they don't know how to do it they won't do it sounds like he's like a lot higher functioning than a lot of autistic people i mean he he doesn't understand that um that like five dollars is worth more than ten cents because ten is more than five like you could never explain that to him well he is verbal though and he can live on his own yeah with a lot if like the alarm goes off then then you know not like he can't deal with that if you know it's interesting you say that because i read an article apparently when

jewish people have autism it's exactly the opposite. Yeah. Superpower. I'm sorry. As benefited is all I'm saying. Okay. The next thing, Elizabeth, can I move on to the other column? Now that my wife is out of the room.

Sure. But I was going to say that I really, can I say, I really relate to what Graham's saying because my father had a very tough stroke, a bad stroke about a year and a half ago. And he's a, he has aphasia. So he does not understand language. He can speak, but does not take it in. So it's the same thing without FaceTime right now. Like I would not be able to, there's no calling him. There's no like language but in facetime you can you know communicate a little bit like at least we see each other and and so i really relate to that and i think in that way it's something to think about there's relationships that would have just dropped off without this technology but again we probably we might not have without this technology the laws might be different you know because we might just be unable to have a lockdown and just like fuck it we'll just take a chance but no i'm going to get onto her next call i just googled to make sure i remember i just had a flashback from some from one of the actual things i guess i learned in college but i'd thought about aphasia that's um sometimes caused by when the two

hemispheres of the brain can the corpus callosum is that right yeah i know his is he had in um he just it just wiped out the language area of his brain. It's just it's just just devastating. It's called the broker area. It's not it's but he doesn't remember. I need to remember something about the broker

area when I took abnormal psychology and lived it in college. Broker's area. Okay, maybe maybe it's not nice to talk about because his father actually and lived it in college. Broca's area is... Broca aphasia. Okay. Maybe it's not nice to talk about because Elizabeth's father actually suffered from it.

All right. I mean, it's okay. I'm fascinated by it, but I just don't know the answer to the area of the brain. Yeah. If you read some of the stories about people with it,

I don't know if your father is one of them, but it's like they have the most weird, you know, manifestations of it that are, you know, that are so interesting and, and give insight into how the brain processes things, right? They can understand, but they can't speak. They can, they can read it, but they can't say it back to you and all kinds of.

There's nothing we can, no language he can understand at all, but he can, he can sometimes speak completely. I mean, go on and on. You understand every word he says, but he does not understand a word back. It's actually kind of, I mean, think about that. He doesn't understand what he's saying though, even if he doesn't understand. Sometimes.

Sometimes it's gibberish. And sometimes it's, if he, if it's, especially if it's something he's accessing from before, it's all right there. It has nothing to do with senility. He knows exactly what's happening. He got a COVID shot today. He knew he was getting it. I mean, he knows what's going on,

but he doesn't, he can't. When he speaks, he thinks he's fine. He thinks we're not, why don't we understand him? You know, sometimes people have the stroke or they have some brain event and their first language is wiped out but their second language is because it's in a different part of the brain yeah they can still speak a second language which they might not speak very well but to whatever level that they can speak

it exactly aren't this go ahead sorry reading sorry we can we can't tell how much he can read but he pours over the new york times for hours a day which is normal for him anyway before but so we get a sense that he is taking in a much more reading than he can read zero language i'm sorry so what if you were to like have a white erase board and be like you know he can sometimes read it and sometimes not so we just can't tell how much you know sometimes we're sure he's wrong he's reading a times article we're sure he doesn't know what he's talking about. We look over his shoulder. He's, he's completely right. Sometimes the whiteboard, he doesn't understand a word. It's, it's just, he can't really write a little bit, but not much. Like he, you know, he did call his accountant and, you know, yesterday out of the blue, my mom heard him in the other room. So he somehow accessed the number, not on

his cell phone, on the landline. He was mad. My mom didn't, wasn't giving him money. So, which is just, he can't, he can't have it, but she heard him, you know, talking, I need you to transfer some money right now. So, so it's just really, he's actually like incredible, but it's just also a devastating thing. And then when, when Graham was talking, it made me realize like I wouldn't get to FaceTime him, you know, if it wasn't for some of this technology. I do visit them.

They're in my pod. Anyway, we should probably move on to the next part. Dan, isn't there some story somewhere where somebody had a stroke

and started speaking another language and that's how they discovered that there was the story, that the person had a whole backstory

they didn't even know about either adopted or... No, I think you're right. Yeah. That's particularly fascinating know about. I didn't know about that. They adopted or, you know. No, I think you're right. Yeah. That's particularly fascinating. I'll have to Google that. What is that?

Is that the one with the man who mistook his wife for a hat? That's Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks. That's right. What did he have? Didn't he have? I don't think he had anything. He was just a researcher.

I mean, he might have been on the spectrum, but... Okay. Okay, well, anyway. Wait one second. Elizabeth, is it true also that, I mean, it seems like part of what you're talking about of replacing negativity with positivity. I mean, if you're actively trying, I mean, Noam no I don't think you could ever do that it's just so part of your um but is there like something about gratitude or really like actively trying to focus on um what the things that you're grateful for, like if you're actively trying to do that, assuming that you don't suffer from like clinical depression, is that sort of in the world of?

It is. And you know, I wrote a column, a whole column on gratitude because the research is fascinating on it. And also something interesting I was just thinking of, it's not like necessary or even desirable to completely replace negative feelings because it's A, how we stay safe from an evolutionary perspective. We need to be scanning for the threats. And some personalities are just not going to do it. But you don't want to banish all negativity. You just don't want to feel like crap all the time. You just don't want to be miserable. You don't want to be depressed.

And so the research on gratitude is really interesting. It shows that if you even look at three things today that you're grateful for, and it can be something so simple, like I had a good cup of coffee or, you know, I managed to, you know, get two loads of laundry and whatever it is, whatever it is within your parameters, it can really help you. And they say like, write them down every day or write it from yesterday or write them every day. And little practices can help balance. Like it's, again, you don't want to get involved in negativity, but you want to bat out so you're not miserable. All right, Cariel, you keep trying to get to the other topic. Fun fact from Elizabeth's column, by the way, you can think to yourself at the rate of 4,000 words per minute, which means that in a minute and a half, you can process as many words as the State of the Union address.

That's just remarkable to me. Okay. Next column. Sex. Sex. Can we make our sex lives fun again? First of all, that's a leading question, I'd say. But a few people report feeling sexy in the pandemic.

But there are ways to reignite the sparks. Let's do it this way. Perrielle, why don't you share with us the areas where your sex life is boring you, and then Elizabeth can tell you what she learned about how you can improve it. Well, I think that any, I mean, having been in several very long relationships in my, you know, throughout the course of my life, I think that there's something in the beginning of relationships where like the sex is presumably like amazing. And at some point after several years, that, you know, sort of spark or zing, if you will, that just changes, right? Yeah. And you know, they know researchers know exactly how long that is, 18 months. It's 18 months. And this is one of my favorite facts

I ever learned in any of my, I ever like doing my column is Catherine the Great had a great deal of lovers. And in her palace, she would install them like in an apartment very close to her apartments in her palace. And they always, when she was young, when she took, you know, the reign, but as she got older, she got rid of them every 18 months to two years oh my god they bought them like a daca and off they went and then the next so starting out you know i can't remember how old she was 25 maybe but i don't quote me on that but starting out so as she aged and even when she was much older they were always 25 and then two years later off they went into the, you know, off they went to the steps. And then she, and so that's why. So nobody knew that.

But researchers believe now it's because after that two year, about 18 months to two year spark that if you, you know, if you're the queen or you're the, you know, you get rid of them. 18 months is a year and a half, right? So I should have 10 lovers every 15 years i think if you're not a queen or a czarina uh you will die alone if you do that you will die alone or you've got to try to find a way to keep the spark going right so how do how do in europe and in other cultures like that's totally normal right yeah this is probably why because you get somebody you know

to entertain yourself and also this is why they look the other way like go entertain my spouse because frankly i'm a little tired of them and all of my person and but when but now finances children home we're gonna live together it is a very french way is that true do they really do that still like is that a man say that like yeah i think you know i i've others i've i've read and read and read about it i myself have not personally experimented with it all right so let me go through i do think it is hold on let me go through the bullet point now i mean in europe specifically just to clarify what i was saying so elizabeth wrote this column more than a month ago so if she's she's like me this might not be fair to

expect her to remember everything was in it but i'm gonna go through the bullet points and maybe if you remember you do thank you these are her tips for um what you should do. First of all, dress for success. Your husband doesn't want to see you in your schlubby robe all day, Perrielle. Go ahead, Elizabeth. Thank you. Thanks for the prompts, Noam. I did forget what I wrote. Yeah, you want to get out of the sweatpants, the schlubby robe.

Oh, my God. That's terrible news. It's terrible news. Wash your hair. i know there's too many people i hear from that have just stopped showering like you want to you know you don't have to have your you know you don't have to have your power suit on but you might want to put some clean clothes on and i mean now ladies march ladies let me ask you a question do you think it's the same do you think a man are you are you care as

much about a man getting dressed as the man cares about your appearance do you think yes yes well i mean like i said you don't have to dress up but like you know don't look like the biggest schlub again you know yeah i gotta get out of my hulk pajamas yes you have to take off your super your superhero pajamas. I mean, I'm sort of still stuck on the fact that I haven't shaved my legs since March. Oh, God. Is that true? First of all, if not, then I feel like-

Don't mention Europe in this answer, please. Now go ahead. It's outrageous that you would be that scammed. I mean, have you shaved your legs since March oh no okay so why i mean unfortunately i stand corrected can i tell you i i i react the way i react i i i'm not proud of it it's a total double standard yeah it's just it's just the effect that it has on me. I can't help it. Unfortunately. Let's not get off topic. Okay, next.

So I suppose that if you had hair on your chest, you wouldn't have that lasered either, right? It's double standard. I'm just saying, it is a double standard. Okay. You know what? It's not a double standard. There's two standards because there's two different sexes here. I think it's really hot that you have really hairy legs.

This is where gay men have a point. I think it's really hot that you have really hairy legs. This is where gay men have a point. I don't. Is Graham gay? He's not gay. I'm just saying as an abstract notion, women are in their natural state. They basically are men.

Yeah, I mean, you guys have decided in some patriarchal structure that we're supposed to be hairless beings oh shut up okay here we go uh uh uh number two interact with the world restart for connection my is this the right column yeah how is that how does that apply to sex i say that about sex yeah it says um uh interact right so yeah try to are you reading about the fairness laws by mistake did i how is your sex yeah okay let's let's skip that because that's that may be straight okay build space in your relationship independence is sexy mystery huge mystery breeds desire on top of each other right now if we're living together we're just there's just no space like so we used to go do things

we'd go off into our own jobs we'd go out and see our friends like not always together with our partners and so uh we had hobbies and i just feel like the longer this goes on the more we're on top of each other and it's's just boring. You just don't have anything to talk about at the end of the day, even if you're not talking about the news. So it's huge. You want to at least get out. Try to build those things back in, your hobbies, talking to your friends. Even if you're not going out, you want to build space any way you can right now. What do you think about separate bedrooms for a couple? I know people have really successful relationships doing it. People have been married, you know, young, younger people married for a long time because the kids have different schedules or

somebody, the night owl, early bird. But back to space, something that I just remembered a number of years ago, I did a story looking at long-term couples and asking people been married like 40 50 60 years what the biggest uh pieces of advice were i really thought it was going to be sex it was space over and over and over again he they gave me space that's how big it is what do you say perry l do you have enough space no i don Do you have separate bathrooms? Do you have separate bathrooms in your house, Perrie, for you and your husband? We do, but I mean, what about separate houses? You may be right.

Well, that's what Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, we see how successful their relationship was, but Mia Farrow and Woody had separate apartments. I don't think they were married, but they were basically married, and they had separate apartments. Well, they only did that so he could fuck his daughter, no? No, no.

Okay. Build Okay. Rethink how you initiate sex. A kiss or shoulder rub or dinner out used to do it. But now that we're exhausted and stressed all the time,

we need to build up to sex to give ourselves time to relax and get in the mood, put sex on your calendar. Go ahead. Take it, Elizabeth. So, you know, now that we're sitting next to each other on the couch all the time and our schlubby clothes, you know, somebody's hand goes over, Hey, or, you know, you look at each other. it's not enough. Like, we're just, like, A, you're just, you're just annoyed. Like, we're just sick of the person. And again, we used to naturally have these things. At least you would go out or you knew,

like, especially dating, all dating is, is like an employee, you know, it's on your calendar. If you're dating someone you like that you're going to have sex. So, you know, and then couples that were, you know, married or long-term couples also would sort of plan it in. You know, you would go out to dinner, you get a babysitter if you have kids. There were just these almost natural ways. But now again, it's very, very hard to go from, I have sat with you all day long where you're working in the next room. Now we're just sitting on the couch watching Netflix to, oh, I'm so hot for you. So you have to build it in. And it does help even to say, hey, you know what? What about Tuesday night?

How's your calendar? You know, because then at least in your head, you start planning for it. You can get yourself ready. Are we talking about the same thing? Here's one that Periel will like. Try cooking your husband something he likes for dinner and saying something nice to him.

No, that's not in the column. Elizabeth, aren't we kind of just going in the direction of have an open relationship? I mean, we're pussy-putting around the issue here, it seems to me. What we really want is somebody else, you know, sexually. It is probably what we want often, certainly after that two years period. But you know what? The research on polyamory, which is exactly that,

isn't so great either. It's showing that, you know, they don't laugh. Like that open relationship causes a lot of problems. That's why they don't want an open relationship. What we want is a lover on the side, which is not the same thing. Right. This is why you know that there's probably,

I would say definitely, but I don't want to upset anybody. No God, right? Because what kind of God creates a world where men and women, I mean, you think at least give us that. Let us be sexually attracted to our partners.

Like the first day for the rest of it. Nobody, he doesn't do that. He creates a world in which we're sick of each other sexually after a short time yeah you should read the mark twain story the mysterious stranger it's very short but the whole point of that story is that essentially that we're created for the amusement of god and this makes this makes the the plot line okay i'll accept that explanation. Okay, try something. Wait, wait, slow down, though. Slow down.

Doesn't the idea of, like, putting something on the calendar, though, like, sort of take away from, like, the sexiness and spontaneity of what makes having sex so much fun to begin with? Yeah, it does. The idea of it is a little distasteful, right? I agree. The problem is like these days it's not happening if you don't like find some room, right? And then

also it gives you the chance and you don't have to put your nice clothes on every day. You just plan for it, right? I don't want to come late for coming early. All right. You don't have to put it on your calendar at an exact time. You could be like, you know, the cable company, Saturday between 10 and 10. Exactly. But maybe you don't have to call it sex night or sex 15 minutes, whatever. You can be, it's all like date night and you like make a nice meal and you dress up and you make a night of it. And that, that's code for. Yeah. We know my situation. i'm single but i just want to ask that's why you're better at this graham yeah actually i just got a new girlfriend so it's uh well you're gonna need this after in 18 months you're gonna come back and watch this yeah yeah i screwed up the joke

coming too late for coming too soon but anyway can, can I go on to that? So she says, try something new. The Kinsey study found that one in five people tried something sexually novel during the pandemic. And those who did were three times as likely to report improvement in their sex life. This makes sense because research has long shown that novelty boosts arousal and desire. So what about that?

So you want to try, I mean, this is research for many years. You want to keep trying something new. And I did ask the Kinsey researchers, you know, who are pretty experienced at looking at everything sexually, you know, this is Kinsey Institute at Indiana. You know, is it ever a chance that a couple's just tried everything and they were, they were adamant? No, no, no couples tried everything. So there's always something new. Like what? Like shaving your legs. The bar's low for new here, Perrielle. But you could, it could be a position, could be a toy, could be a room, could be somewhere else in the house. Like could be anything that you just

you know seems like it might be fun to you you haven't tried oh i don't have the energy you know it's all so depressing you have to dress it up but even then it's not gonna be that exciting is there a drug you can take just to make you hot like why don't you like that's something new you could try viagra exactly yeah you maybe you should do yeah no viagra doesn't make you vi? Like why don't I have to like... Well that's something new, you could try Viagra. Exactly. Yeah, maybe you should do, yeah. No, Viagra doesn't make you horny. Does it? No, it doesn't, but it gives you a stiffer wood.

Yeah, I'm saying, but if you're hot, you wouldn't have that issue. Well, I think if you walk through it... But just having a bigger, stiffer piece might be exciting, you know? Yeah, exciting for you, you're like, I wanna... Yeah, don't mind none of it. But just having a bigger, stiffer piece might be exciting. You know, that might be exciting. Yeah, exciting for you. You're like, I wanna.

Yeah, don't you worry. It's like a new toy. Don't think with it. Like, if you've got a raging hard-on for like three hours, don't you wanna do something about it? First of all, I don't like that sexist, why is a man's hard-on to be, why is it an anger thing?

Like, why do you view a man's hard-on as an angry thing? How about a, you know, extremely romantic hard-on? We use the word raging for a lot of... A pining hard-on. But don't we use the word raging for a lot of extreme emotional states? One could have a raging appetite. One could have...

Yeah, but rage is... Anyway, I just, you know, Periel sees a lot of significance in language. Okay. Do we know what the top 10 or top five new things to do would be? Or is there anything new? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter for the couple because it's where their comfort lies, right?

So it's anything new. So, you know, anything they haven't tried. But over and over these researchers talked about different places like the kitchen island oh i forgot now the story's all coming back to me i did query a lot of people for it over and asked them just how are you shaking it up over and over the kitchen island came back from readers saying like this was a good thing for them try that so a little tidbit there maybe too much information from our creators not easy to have sex on a kitchen island no it's not you have to be super tall i would imagine i don't know yeah things fall and then you can disrupt the base

and then you have to pay your landlord you say experience speaking there i mean but no but let me ask you as a married man with children the fact that your wife is is the mother of your children does that take away the the the the the the hotness i mean you might love her all the more but doesn't that take away the sex appeal no well it shouldn't it should make you you know think wow this is absolutely the greatest woman look what she's done for me but a great woman is not necessarily a sexy woman. There's a knowledge that this woman gave birth to your child. Are you asking that fact that it's your child,

which you think would make it less sexy or that any child came out of your children. So it's like hard to, is it harder to think of? No, no, I just, no, I haven't had that. I don't know. That hasn't happened. That doesn't sound right to me. Okay, and the last one. Oh, and it says you should read erotica to each other.

I guess I could read Periel's book. Anyway, practice erotic. Elizabeth Periel has a book. The Only Bush I Trust is My Own. And her second book is On My Knees. And these books, these are good books actually. Practice erotic empathy. Stop focusing on the things you hate about your body.

Your partner doesn't notice them nearly as much as you do. And her backup for this, previous parts it says, is a link to the Kinsey study and this study and that study. Here she says, your partner doesn't notice them nearly as much as you do.

Elizabeth says, I promise. This is her footnote. So Elizabeth promises. You're good, trust me, you're good though. But seriously, I mean, I do really believe this because people spend so much time worrying about how they look and what's up. And then they, they, they don't, if I'm worried so much about how I look,

then I'm never going to like reach out. I'm never going to accept, you know, my partner reaching out to me. And then you're just like sort of dead in the water there. But, but I promise you, like, I really do promise partners not so worried about it. When, if your partner initiates, your partner's interested. I thought you were going to say, stop focusing so much on the things you hate about your partner. That's harder. But that is absolutely not, that's, that's good advice though. Right? Like you want to focus, this is for anything, anytime, going back to the original stuff, we started to talk about

like readjusting negative thoughts. You want to actively like train yourself to sort of search for the positive. So again, like this is just good relationship advice. If you're annoyed at your partner, stop and make yourself focus on something you like about your partner, what you really love about him. I don't think my wife could find anything. Anyway. All right. Well, that's, that's about it.

You know, Elizabeth writes endlessly interesting columns and, you know, we should probably, if she was interested, we could have her on more often because every single one of them is like ingenious topics. I just read some of the best advice our elders ever gave us, how we can reconcile with each other when our politics are so polarized. Nervous about get togethers because of writing. Regain your focus. I mean, all of them are like right between the eyes, things that are on our minds. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah, this was really fun. Yeah, I'd be honored to come on. It's super fun to see you guys. Like it's back to what we're talking about with Zoom. It's nice to see faces and talk about interesting things, have a good laugh. This was good for me because I'm right in that first 18 months.

Like I'm in the first two months right now. So it's like I'm taking notes. I took notes. Dude, do me a favor. Put an X on the calendar. You met somebody in the quarantine. Wait, Graham, you met somebody in the quarantine? Yeah, yeah.

I met her at an outdoor birthday party at a park for somebody else. Wow. That's cool. And how did you know she was, how did, what did, you took a risk? I pulled down my mask to be like, hey, this is my face. And then hoping she would do the same

because we were hitting it off and then she did. And I liked the bottom half of her head. And then... I find that you can, you can tell if somebody's attractive with a mask. Yeah.

Especially with the mask, like depending on the mask like the n95 that comes away from the face contour the face yeah the ones that contour the face like the cloth you know the surgical man i think you can i think you can get my it's my feeling and not people have disputed this that you can guess somebody's level of beauty man or woman on the on the standard one to ten scale the ten one to ten beauty scale that we've been using uh since we were kids within one point you can you can in other words if somebody's a nine if somebody's a nine wearing a mask you know that they're an eight or a ten or a nine that'd be a pretty gnarly bottom half like a mouth area in rare rare exceptions, that could happen.

But if the top area, you can see the symmetry, the skin, you can see the quality of the skin. You can see the nose because if it's a surgical mask, you get a feeling for that. And unless there's some deformity, I think you can, it's my feeling that you can guess within one point on the standard one to 10 hot scale. Well, you know, I'd love to see if there was research on this i've never heard of it but also your eyes like our eyes mean so much and so when you're covered like this your eyes mean even more and i wonder if that would make you like even you know have a it's like they say if you're blind you know you hear more like i wonder if you can't see this

if you're even more focused on the eyes which is a huge element of attraction we need to do research on this i need a grant we're over we're over time what is it um under budget i just really want to put in for revisiting the hairy leg thing now we don't we don't want to revisit no i'm serious i think it's a really i mean it's outrageous to me well i don't know how much of it is cultural like in other words if i was raised where women were unshaven would i be attracted to unshaven i don't know but i wasn't raised that way and i'm horrified by the no but the thing is that like you guys just take for granted like it's such a given that it's so disgusting if a woman doesn't shave, which is really kind of shocking to me.

Yeah, it's terrible. But what can I tell you? One has a visceral reaction. I can't help it. I don't like blue cheese either. I can't control that either. That's a good way to put it, Dan, because your cultural food, cultural tastes and food, also, you're putting a value judgment on it. It's just what we're raised on. But it's social conditioning.

It may be social conditioning. Thank you. Wait, sorry. What did you say, Elizabeth? I said it is social conditioning. But it goes back to even liking locks. It is what you're raised on. If you have a visceral reaction to something or not, it does tend to is what you're raised on. If you, you know, have a visceral reaction to something or

not, it does tend to be like, you know, what you're used to, what you were kind of raised on. What gets me is the idea that, you know, back like you should, you know, that women should definitely keep themselves up, but maybe men don't have to. Like that's, that to me is a little sticky too. We, we do, we definitely do, But it's also just a lot easier for us to keep our... It is easier. Look at Graham. He looks beautiful with that three-day scruff. So manly.

Let me ask you this, Mario. Let's say nobody shaved their legs. I've seen women who don't shave their legs. Some women have barely any leg hair. And some women, you know, are like monkeys., like monkeys. Now let's say, but let's say there was no, nothing about shaving. Still, I believe a lot of men would prefer the woman with less leg hair to the one who was like, you know. I mean, it's like, you always tell me when I make arguments that you vehemently disagree with, pick a standard and let that just be the standard for everyone.

So why isn't leg hair the same thing? I'm making a point that there's a spectrum from no hair to hairy. And it's true, all women shave their legs to be hairless. However, in other things, certain things do, like there seems to be like aess. However, in other things, certain things do, like there seems to be like a universal type of backside,

which is like, there are certain things which are found attractive. No, no. There are plenty of cultures in which women don't, it's not the same standard as the American standard.

Even in Asia, they prefer to have a bigger backside from what I've known. I mean, listen, if you're saying that standards of beauty, like what people find attractive, are all random, I would have to say no. I think there's plenty of science to show that there's no culture on the face of the earth that looks at Brad Pitt anditt and goes oh my god he's disgusting i don't believe that you're getting off topic i'm talking no i'm not off topic i'm talking about body hair right now what i'm suggesting is that maybe the shaving of the legs comes from a a the ability to bring yourself to what is maybe within humans

more naturally considered attractive, which is to have less hair on your legs. Yes, it could. Meaning like working out gives us the ability to be more muscular, right? No. Okay, maybe not. I'm with Perrielle on this.

These are the logic to what I'm saying, isn't there? It certainly is. What Elizabeth said, she said she's with Perrielle on this. are the logic what i'm saying isn't there it certainly is what elizabeth said she said she's with periel on right i'm but that's fine but i'm just saying there's a logic to what i'm saying there are certain things we find more attractive that that don't seem to be cultural and and we're wondering if if this is one of them or at least in part you know that there's been a movement in the past 10 or so years where there are a lot of... Who could think that this is not beautiful? Come on now. This is culturally...

That's universally gorgeous. Yes. I was beautiful too at that age. I'd like to see what another 40 years does to her. After her dreams have gone unrealized. I'm going to have to go. My daughter has to tattletale, and she can't be stopped. No.

You want to tell everybody? Tell everybody. Say nice and loud. Go ahead. Well, it's a little weird, but Manny. That's her brother. Well, Manny was taking a shower, and he found the shaving thing, and he put it it on his lip and now he has a cut on his lip and it hurts. And so it was a bad advice.

Oh, that's all right. Is Mother mad at him about that? I mean, she was. She shouldn't be angry at that. Okay. Milla, how are your music lessons going? You playing piano or guitar? Piano.

Piano. Well, we'll have to get the band together. Very good. Oh, is she? She really is. My family is musical. There's musical genetics there. Yeah, yeah.

She has all the advantage. Okay. Upstairs with you. I got to go, too. I'm coming, too. What an adorable scandal. It is adorable. Now, at some point, somebody is going to brainwash that child into thinking that her natural state needs

to be altered to conform to a manufactured patriarchal standard of beauty that's what that's yeah all right all right it is changing like being single and i'm i I'm, I'm like in my late thirties. So I will, I, when I would be dating women in their mid twenties to late thirties and that younger generation, no bras, very loose shaving regimen. Yes. It has, that's right. It's really is changing pretty quickly. It's great. You better start swimming. I just you'll sink like a stone.

Listen, it was in the 60s that way too. Hairy armpits and no bras. It's changed. It's great. It really is. You see a lot of younger women

really rejecting that and I gotta say, it makes me very happy. Yeah, so let's hope the woman's movement doesn't stop until it doesn't please men at all.

And then again, declare victory. All right. I have to go. I have to go. Goodbye, everybody. Nice to see you. It was very nice to see you. Thank you.

Hey, you can go. Everybody, please say where they can find you, our lovely listeners. Yeah, I always say at dan natterman nobody nobody nobody comes but at dan natterman on twitter i'm not on parlor but nobody is anymore for us it's the podcast though dan podcast at comedyseller.com for all your questions comments suggestions queries i said comments already. Insults or constructive criticism or just disyrambic praise. Is that the right word?

Dithyrambic praise. I'm not even sure that's a word. Dithyramb is a word. Elizabeth, where can everybody find you? You can find me at ebernsteinwsj. Not on Parler either. I'm at instagramk on Instagram. WSJ. Not on Parler either. I,

yeah, I'm at Instagram K on Instagram. Instagram K. And Mr. Graham K on Twitter. And I miss Parler. Yes, yes we all do. Alright, so see you next time

on the Comedy Cellar Show live from the table. Bye, everybody. Bye, guys. Thank you.