The Joe Rogan Experience - #293 - Cara Santa Maria

Episode Date: December 5, 2012

Joe sits down with Cara Santa Maria.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me and bringing coffee. Yeah. If you want some, it's right there. Thank you.

Call your name. It's tempting you. I've had a bit too much caffeine already today, I think, so I'm going to take a breather. I'll have you. How many times a day do you allow yourself? Caffeine? Yeah. I'll have you. How many times a day do you allow yourself? Caffeine? Yeah. Uh, like twice a day.

Yeah. I won't let myself have any more than two. I'm a junkie. That's how I feel. I feel like if you're having like three cups of coffee, four cups of coffee a day. Oh, you probably think I'm a real junkie too. Cause I don't drink coffee much. I drink like Coca-Cola.

Uh, well, is that worse for you? Yeah. Well, cause of the sugar, it's so much worse. But it has way less caffeine in it. It's not even the sugar, right? It's that corn syrup. Yeah, it's the corn syrup. But it has a lot less caffeine. Why is it so delicious?

I don't know. I love it. Why is something so terrible for your body so delicious? And it's all fizzy in your throat. It's so good. Especially if you have like a meatball sub or something like that. Oh, my God. A meatball sub and a cold Coke.

It's like just don't drink them every day. Just every now and again you can get away with one. It's very satisfying. It's my vice. I have to say it's my vice because I quit smoking cigarettes last year. I quit smoking weed like a few years ago. I don't drink. Wow.

And so it's like I got to have something. What do you do when you go off the rails? Just Coke? Three or four Cokes and get crazy? I just yell a lot. I don't know. I don't really go off the rails in that way. No benders for me. I was in the jungle of Mexico on the way to Chichen Itza, and I saw a big banner for Coke on the wall. There's this big poster. In the jungle? Coca-Cola. Oh, yeah.

It's like this jungle store. I mean, I'm telling you, it's the Yucatan. It's like where the Mayan ruins are. And even deep in there, Coca-Cola. It's ever – I mean, it is one thing. You could travel anywhere and know that you'll get a nice cold Coca-Cola. Well, sometimes it's not cold, but – Who would have ever predicted that sugary water would be such a

massive hit with humans I mean that is the craziest fucking business ever it seems like anyone can do that like what they're doing it seems like why would that even be specific to like one company because it's so good like I went to the store not to the store I went to have brunch with a friend

the other day and I asked for a coke and the guy brought me a glass and I was like this coke is so gross what is wrong with it and like he got me another one and then finally i was like i don't know i don't like it you have to take it back and he was like well it's pepsi and i was like when i ask you for a coke don't bring me a pepsi wow she's a connoisseur a connoisseur of the cola pepsi you fraud it's not as good yeah it telling you It's disgusting I don't think Pepsi Is allowed to use cocaine

I don't think Coke Is anymore either Oh no they do No they used to Well they don't They use the leaves And they extract The flavor from

They're one of the Biggest providers Of cocaine To some medical Facility That uses it For medical cocaine That's so funny

The extraction plants like the extraction plants they take the whatever the flavonoids that gives it this particular coca-cola flavor i bet there's just a little bit of cocaine probably it's probably what gives you the burn too not enough for you to test positive but enough for your brain to know something's there well can we can we talk about how fucked up that is by the way way? That like, you know, we, all the time, I came from the neuroscience world. So many labs do cocaine research, but they can't do marijuana research because it's schedule one. Like, it makes no sense to me that cocaine is viewed as having medicinal purposes, but things like ecstasy and marijuana and acid don't have any medicinal purposes whatsoever. Yeah.

Like very few labs can do research with those drugs. It's a weird position in 2012 because the propaganda that led to that position, it's not really arguable anymore. It's too silly. Like if you look at the actual facts of it and you go, come on, you guys are, this is archaic. And then you realize that it's not really about that as much as the legality of these things and moving them into position for legality. It's – that eliminates a huge business, the business of keeping it illegal.

That's true police officers and like gigantic private prisons and the pharmaceutical companies alone would lose millions and millions of dollars every year that's true a lot of people make money off of the fact that marijuana is not legal well at least federally still but i wonder why it is that cocaine is not classified as a schedule one I drug. Well, it's because they believe it has medical uses. What medical? Who gets prescribed cocaine? I don't know.

Nobody does, do they? We should find out. I don't know. It's funny. I mean, I think they use it for, they. We use it in lab research all the time to study reward pathways, to study dopamine pathways. And it's interesting because I think in like in everyday kind of layman common parlance, you'll hear people say all the time, oh, that's so similar to cocaine. Oh, that's so similar to cocaine. When you fall in love and then you have a breakup, the withdrawal symptoms are much like cocaine. It looks like that in the

brain. Well, why do you think we know that? It's because we use cocaine to study everything. Cocaine is such a model kind of molecule that's used in the laboratory with laboratory animals. Every lab does coke research. Wow. That's crazy. It's a really, really easy way to study kind of reward pathways in the brain. Joey Diaz used to have a couple scripts for cocaine prescriptions. No way.

Inside joke, I guess. Yeah. He got me the fuck. Joe's like, what? I really believed you for half a second. Yeah, I guess. He got me the fuck. Joe's like, what? I really believed you for half a second. Like, what? No. It is, well, it's kind of crazy that you can get them for marijuana.

Marijuana is in such a weird position right now. I think there's like 18 different cities, or states rather, that have made it legal medically now. And Colorado made it legal recreationally, which is just like a big fuck you to the federal government. And Washington State did as well. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, well, it's just a – It's only a matter of time.

Like, the scales are tipping. I mean, and Obama doesn't have another term in front of him. Hopefully, he won't do what Clinton did, which was after he got voted out of office, oh, you know, I really think maybe it should be legal. It's like, oh, maybe if you had a position of power where you could do something about that. I think that position is extremely costly. I think to take that position as a politician, the only thing it gets for you is the love

of your constituents because you're being honest. That's the only thing it gets for you. But what if Obama decides to never go back to the Senate? What if he decides to go back to working for the – as a public servant, as a community organizer? What does he have to lose really? Yeah. He doesn't have anything to lose.

Yeah. So I want to see him like affect some real change here in the second term. I would love to see that too, but I just – I know. I'm a bit disillusioned about it too, but – They don't ever seem to be able to do that. I know I'm a bit disillusioned about it too, but – They don't ever seem to be able to do that. Even a guy like Obama who just – was the perfect guy for – if you wanted to have a guy move into a position of power like that, that you thought would be like a completely new face.

A guy who was born biracial, of a single mother, the whole deal, came up poor, worked hard, was very articulate. Didn't really have anything wrong with him. He's like a really bright guy. A lawyer, brilliant. Great speaker, perfect. This guy's going to get... He used to smoke a lot of pot. This guy's going to get an office. He's going to settle everybody the fuck down.

Yeah. But then he gets in and it's like... It's almost like it's a job where you don't get a chance to say what really happens. Yeah. I mean it's probably really hard for us kind of on the outside to know how much – how little power somebody actually gets once they're elected. And I mean obviously I think that we need to be putting the pressure on Obama hardcore at this point because I think that he's made a lot of fucking mistakes. And I think that he needs to clean up a lot of messes, especially with like civil rights abuses, especially with a lot of the, I mean, well, I won't say what I'm thinking.

Yeah, exactly. Civil liberties. And I won't say what I was about to say, but, um, why not? Are you getting crazy? You're about to get crazy. I was about to go a little crazy. So I'm going to dial it back a little bit. But, um, but yeah, I mean, I think that at this point it's kind of our job as, as his

constituency to really put the heat on him. I just don't know if there's really a president. I don't know if it's real. I don't know if there's – you know what I'm saying? I just – I have a feeling that that guy is just working. He's just – I just think it's all so hard. There's just too much money. I think that's what it is.

There's just too much money. And they've been making it for too long and they don't want to stop making it. And even though it's illogical and everybody knows it's illogical, they'll still be like, we've got to go to war with Iran. And everybody's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Nobody wants to do it except the people that can make a fuckload of money out of it. You think we're going to do it? I don't think we're going to do it. I don't think we're going to do it. No. But I think that it would absolutely be something that I would have to worry about if Dick Cheney was in office. I think you'd have to really worry about us doing that. Can you imagine if Palin was in office?

I don't think they would let her talk. I think they would figure out a way to stop that shit. They would figure out a way to just dial her down to reading shit off a teleprompter. Oh, I just got a tweet. Cocaine is used in eye surgery. Oh, yeah, because it's an anesthetic. That makes sense. Apparently there's a bunch of different medical uses well damn it i um i'm shoving

pencils in my eyes right now i've never done coke but i did do lidocaine yeah um wait you did lidocaine no i didn't do it like hey dude it's good crazy but i had some in my body because i'm a doctor i had uh my nose fixed i had it opened up. I had a deviated septum. And they spray this lidocaine up there, which numbs the inside of your nose. And it makes you feel fucking terrible. Whatever it is, like, it just gets in your system. You're just like, oh.

And apparently, people have died from putting that shit on their legs. Like, people have had overdoses. Oh, no. Like, girls that wanted to get, like, their legs. People have had overdoses. Girls that wanted to get their legs lasered put that shit all over their legs and then wrap it up with saran wrap. And you overdose on this lidocaine shit. You can actually die from it.

Jesus. Or not. Maybe I should Snopes that. Snope. But I remember thinking how disgusting it was but it does numb the shit out of you which I guess apparently so does Coke does it Brian?

Coke? yeah I don't know it just makes me talk a lot I don't remember it numbing me though well I mean you can use it your mouth you know I saw have you can use it in a different way. Your mouth. Yeah, your mouth. Like you give your nummies. You know, I saw, have you seen Harold and Kumar go to the Christmas one?

Oh. There's a baby in it that's doing cocaine and stuff and giving itself nummies. And I know how much you like babies, Joe. I highly recommend that movie. It's awesome. Joe, you're not a fan of babies? Oh, I love babies. Oh, you love babies.

Imagine a baby on Coke. If you like babies on cocaine and doing ecstasy, this baby smoking weed, doing ecstasy. A baby? Yeah, it's the greatest thing in the world. That movie's hilarious. See it in 3D, though. Apparently, lidocaine definitely kills people. And in fact, a guy was using it to, he was a murderer who used lidocaine.

He was injecting it into elderly patients. Why? To kill them. Why did he want to murder a bunch of elderly people? I don't know. That happens sometimes with nurses. There's something really weird that happens with nurses. Where they resent their job or whatever, take it out on the people?

It's not just that, I think. I think for a lot of people, dealing with trauma on a regular basis over and over again can give you some really twisted ideas about life, watching so many people's lives pass. This is just totally my speculation. But I would think that if you were fucked up to begin with and you got into that line of work, the combination of the two. I had a friend who's an ophthalmologist, and he did his residency in Miami, and it was during the cocaine war days. And he would just come to me and just tell me the shit that he saw, and you would just have to shake your head. Like just people just torn to bits, blown apart, stabbed to death, and he saw that shit day after day.

And you get desensitized to it, I'm sure. I mean, how do you not? And you want to have some power or some excitement in your life. So you're doing something that you know is wrong. But you can't help yourself because it's a thrill to see if you can pull it off. And they wind up doing it with like 20, 30 people until they get busted. That's so sad. There's been a bunch of cases like that.

All right. This has been like a bummer conversation. Has it really? I a bummer conversation this is kind of bumming me out yeah it's we went from cocaine medical use of cocaine to like murdering old people like i don't want to talk about that anymore that's really sad you're very sensitive obviously because you um you said that you can't watch uh like mma until you know the result i i mean i have before it's watch MMA until you know the result. I mean, I have before. It's definitely harder if you know the person fighting, of course. Right. You're friends with Kung Lee.

Yeah. I mean, I'm close to Kung Lee. He is best friends with somebody who's really important in my life. So I've gotten to be close to him over about the last year. And his last fight in China, obviously, I couldn't watch it live anyway. But I kind of waited until I knew what happened and then was really excited to watch it but i don't want to see him get hurt yeah he's a great guy he's a great guy like he's he's got a great character that guy he's like so sweet he's amazing and he's tough i mean but you don't really

you wouldn't know it well you know he would never like act like a tough guy no he's tough as fuck and he's 40 years old. And he's 40. And he's, you know, like doing movies still and shit. Yeah. And still having him in the fights. Well, and he's kicking ass still, which is pretty crazy. I mean, it's amazing. But I mean, he's doing both. Like he's like, he's a bad motherfucker.

He's still, I mean, he's still pretty new in UFC, isn't he? I mean, he was in Strikeforce for many years. Yes. Yeah. He's only had a couple of fights. He's had three fights in the UFC now. And he won his last two, which is awesome. And he looks great.

I mean, the Rich Franklin fight was incredible. Ridiculous. I know. That was one of the best one-punch knockouts ever. And to do it to a guy like Franklin is really impressive. I wonder... Franklin's fought a lot of people. From huge, huge MMA fans, I wonder, is it more exciting or kind of a letdown when there's a knockout,

like in the first round? Well, you'd like to see a longer fight in a knockout if you want to see like, you know, some people love to see just mastery. Some people love to see a guy like Anderson Silva just run someone over. And some people like to see like a Frankie Edgar, Gray Maynard war. Like everybody has their own like thing, how they like to see like a frankie edgar gray maynard war like everybody has their own like thing how they like to see fights play out some people like to see someone win and not get hurt at all like that's kind of a crazy thing when a lot that's amazing that's what

anderson silva does almost every fight that's what i would prefer to see i think he wins and he never even gets hurt he fucks everybody up and never even i mean he's the most ridiculous example of a guy who wins like in spectacular fashion and doesn't even get hit. I just – I think part of it for me is that when it's somebody you know, it's hard to see somebody take a punch. It's hard to see somebody break a bone or whatever. But also I think because of my background in the field that I come from and studying neurobiology and working with people with brain injury, when I watch these fights, that's all I can think about the whole time. It's like, oh, concussion. Oh, God, twisted head and motion injury.

And I'm just so nervous for the fighters because it's just, let's go in this ring and get some brain injury. Hey, Jason, someone's out here. Oh. Forgot to lock the front door. Somebody here to see us? No, no, no. Just some random dude. The real issue isn't even just the fights themselves.

It's getting prepared for the fights. You know, the subconcussive trauma that you get over and over and over again really piles itself on. Even the little thuds. Yeah, it's rough. I did a piece for my column. I do a video series at Huffington Post called Talk Nerdy to Me. Every week I do a video. And one of the pieces really, really early on that I did was about kind of this concussive

injury, more in like football players and boxers and how it mimics ALS symptoms, you know, how it starts to look like Lou Gehrig's disease after a while. And even though they think it's kind of a separate disorder, it has the same outcome, which is so scary. Yeah, it's very scary. Guys have to know when to get out. They really do. You got to know when to get out and you have to get medical examinations and stay up to

date on all your, you know, all your checkups and neurological checkups and stuff like that because it's a big gamble. And that's why it's so exciting. It's so exciting because everybody knows how much is on the line. And that's why nobody wants to see huge changes, like in the NFL, for example. I actually got to be kind of internet friends with Steve Gleason after I did that piece, who's an ex-NFL player who actually suffers from these injuries now.

And he's got a foundation where he really tries to educate people about it. So we kind of tweet a lot. But that's why I don't think you'll ever see football players going back to wearing leather helmets, for example, which would completely cut down on concussive head injuries because people wouldn't be charging with their heads anymore. It's just so hard for people to wrap their heads around that. I know. The idea that less padding would actually be safer. Exactly. But that's the argument also for the UFC gloves.

You can't hit a guy as many times. You can't hit him in certain – You break your hand. You break your hand if you hit him in certain spots. It's one of the reasons why actually bare knuckle fighting is probably the safest way to do it. It just looks so barbaric to people. Yeah, it's counterintuitive.

But when you tighten up your fist and wrap it, you actually make it a better weapon. You make it so it doesn't break as easily. So you have to be less judicious with where – less accurate. You can punch people in the arms and not hurt your hands as much. I always put my thumb in the middle of my fist. Just wear my rings. Just crazy gangster goth ring dragons and shit. Yeah, the human body is not really designed for it but it's the best way to test the human character that's why it's so like exciting viscerally you

know like when you see a guy fight like you know everything about him you know you know what he's capable of you know like you know that when you see someone like do something that's really spectacular in an mma fight the difficulty of doing that and pulling that off on another train killer when you watch like an anderson silva fight the the spectacular nature that he goes about doing that to, it's like the most exciting artwork because I know how much is on the line in order to create this performance. But when he does it, it's literally like a work of art. Like I look at it the same way someone would look at an incredible sculpture. Unfortunately, I don't think that everybody looks at it that way. And I think that it does just kind

of have this like Roman Colosseum, you know, draw to it, which is just, I want to see two people fuck each other up. You know, I want to get my aggressions out by watching somebody else do that. I blame that on a lack of understanding of martial arts. And I think that the way to fix that would be to teach it to everybody from the time they're little kids. And I think that should be a curriculum in school for boys. What about girls? Well, absolutely. Yeah.

Absolutely. Because you can do martial arts without getting a head injury when you're young. You don't have to actually take a hit. Because boys are angry. That's true. Girls usually aren't that angry. Girls are kind of bitches, though, when they're young. They're angry in different ways, I think.

They're more like chatty angry. Oh. Some girls are aggressive angry. Unless it's like those black chicks on worldstarhiphop.com i've never seen that you never no oh my goodness are they aggressive oh you gotta watch pull one up watch some girl get the fuck beat out of her oh god that's impossible all right we might crash the internet listen i think i can imagine yeah i can probably imagine you can imagine yeah but you can't imagine one of them you can probably imagine. Yeah, you can imagine. Yeah. But you can't imagine. One of them you can't imagine. Really? Because the fucking beating she puts on this girl and the speed in which she does it is so terrifying.

See, I'm smiling now, but if you actually show it to me, it's going to be really depressing. Well, we won't. We don't have to relive this poor girl's misery. But apparently some girl was talking shit, and so this girl came over her house. She pulls her out of her house. I mean mean within seconds she's hit her 20 30 times just stomping her over and over and over grabs her by her hair drags her down the stairs and then says talk about that hoe and it was jesus yeah i've never

been in a fight i can't that's hard for me to empathize with. Well, look, I haven't been in one since I was a young boy myself. But knowing how to fight would protect her from all that shit. Probably. That wouldn't have happened. Yeah. She would have clinched, taken that girl down, headbutted her, got her in a choke, put her out. But she probably didn't want to. But if she knew how to defend herself, she was attacked.

And she didn't know how to defend herself. And that's why it was such a vicious beating. But I think there's this, there's a switch in some people's minds where, where being on the defensive feels like being on the offensive. Like I sometimes ask this, you know, kind of as a thought experiment, you know, I'm very anti-gun, right? Like I don't want to own a gun. I don't want to see a gun. I don't want to be near a gun. And people always say, yeah, but what happens if, if somebody, you know, there's a home invasion and somebody's armed? What would you do? And it's like, I don't know.

I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but I might rather get shot than to have to, you know, kill somebody to take somebody's life. Like, I just don't think I could do it. I don't think I could do it. And I wonder if other people feel. I mean, most people. Oh, yeah. Fuck that. I'm going to kill that guy before, you know.

But I wonder if you're actually faced with that, if you would, if you would want to. I mean I don't know if that kind of survival instinct kicks in. I think as humans we've kind of evolved. We've bred out a lot of the survival instincts that our ancestors had, you know. We do fight to stay alive, but for example example if you look at the way little kids grow up little kids need their parents for years and years and years and years like not until they're probably in there maybe like just before they're 10 11 could they even maybe survive on the streets and even then that would be tough you know but definitely a four-year-old a five-year-old could

never figure out how to feed themselves to take take care of themselves. Whereas if you look in the animal kingdom, it's within months that most animals are weaned. We just, we've, in order to, I think, have these more complex thoughts and these more complex abilities, as humans, we have language and we have art and we have music and we have philosophy. We're not so good at the survival stuff anymore. And I don't know, I just, I don't feel that drive in me. And I think that if faced with death or what I would consider to be murder, even if it was in self-defense, I don't know. Well, that's either you and your own individual point of view,

which is extreme and well thought out. Or I don't think that's represented though by reality. It's probably not. I wonder how many girls would say the same thing. I think it's pretty rare. You think so? Yeah. I don't think your position is represented by most people.

Yeah, maybe not. Most people will tell you about incredible things they've done to stay alive. No, that's true. And I bet you you do have that instinct that really does kick in. Like the guy who cut off his own arm from 127. I think you would too. I might. I might cut off my own arm.

I think the way you're looking at it is looking at it in the way of a person who just does not have it in them to harm a person. You don't have it in there. I might not. You don't have it in there. I might not. I don't know. But you have to take into consideration that human beings are so fucking complex that sometimes one of us goes off the rails into the woods and needs to be put down. And you know what? I'm not a mother.

I wonder if I had a child if that whole idea would change. Because all of a sudden, if I'm not protecting myself but i'm protecting you know my my child that all of a sudden i'd become like this crazy bitch and i would defend anything to the death so it'd be protecting the fact that your child would be horrified if you weren't around that's true yeah that's something that you think of when you're yeah um yeah you would fight to the death do you have kids yes you do yeah and you have that like intense instinct to protect them oh it's crazy it's a crazy instinct you love them so much i mean it's really hard to understand yeah i just thought i understood it because of dogs and relatives yeah i've got a dog who i love but like i don't i can just i i'm like on a drug when i play with my two-year-old it's like a drug

yeah you know and my four-year-old is like a little human we have like little conversations about things about life we talk about stars you We talk about stars. Are they into science? The four-year-old is into everything. She's really smart. I feel like little kids are little scientists. That's the coolest thing about them is that they have just this kind of natural instinct to think scientifically about the world. They want answers to everything. They just explore everything. And they're not satisfied either. If you give them an answer that does not satisfy them, they'll be like, not good enough, but why?

I've had the but why conversation over and over and over again as to why people live in cities and why some people don't live in – like we were driving to the mountains. Like, well, why are these people living in the place like this? How come they don't want to live in the city? I want to live in the city? You know, I want to live in the city. Like, they're trying to figure out, like, where – is there a good place to live? Like, the four-year-olds are going, like, is this the spot?

Where's the spot to live? Because it seems like – she's like, it seems like you can live in a lot of fucking places. And seeing, like, a four-year-old put that together, it's – It's amazing. It's mind-fuck. Yeah. And you're absolutely right. That's a brilliant way of putting it, that they're like little scientists because they

have to be. They're trying to piece together their view of the world from scratch. Yeah. Can you imagine going back? I feel that like – have you ever done acid? No, I've never done acid. Is anybody in the room ever done acid? Yes, of course.

I used to sell Bibles on it. Of course. So that's – I think that that's the draw for some people when they do um psychedelics but i would say specifically lsd as as compared to other psychedelics because one of the central features that i always found and i haven't you know done anything like that since late high school early college but one of the central features that i always found was that you everything's kind of new again like you don't really understand why things are the way they are like you'll find yourself staring at your hand for 20 minutes going like i have

fingers and they move and i can grab things and holy shit and um and yeah i remember one time a friend driving somewhere far away with a bunch of we're all on acid and it was like we had to get gas and it was like the weirdest thing because money, these pieces of paper have value. Like it was very confusing to everybody. But it was such an – it's always such an interesting experience to – everything is so new. And you have to piece it together and make sense of the world around you. And, of course, you have epiphany after it, just constant epiphanies. Like you just think that you're the most brilliant person in the world because you're figuring everything out.

And you document it and you sober up the next day. Or you're shitting yourself crying when you're about to die. Could be, but I've never had one of those trips. Really? Yeah. You never asked in Columbus, Ohio. The worst trip that I had was a really long trip and it was just – I was grimy and I was just over it and I was trying to sober up because I had to work the next day and I hadn't slept and when I was younger I used to dye my hair a lot of crazy colors I kept it really

short and dyed it a lot it's a little like punk rocker raver chick and I remember taking a shower because I thought it would sober me up and my hair was like blood red and so I took this shower and washed my hair and just all this red shit was going down the drain and it really flipped me out but it was so late in the trip that I worked my way through it. I've never had a scary, like, shitting myself trip. That sounds awful. Yeah, I knew a couple people that had lost their fucking minds on drugs when I was a kid, so I was really hesitant until I was in my 30s.

I never even smoked pot. I had a friend who was in my neighborhood who sold coke and I watched him go from this like carefree, fun loving guy. It's always fun to be around to being this withered away weirdo. Well, yeah, those are two very different drugs. He was just hiding in his attic and doing coke all the time.'s like yeah i mean coke is is similar it's weaker but it's similar to meth and you see i mean meth is like the most disgusting compound on the planet i mean it fucks people's lives up what do you what's your take on this mdpv stuff that mcafee was accused of i don't really know anything about it to be honest i haven't taken

the time to really study it i mean it sounds kind sounds kind of nuts. But that's what people do, is they find the newest compound. Because a lot of times, you can get things more readily. They're legal until kind of the feds catch on to it, and they have to start outlawing it. When I was growing up, we used to do DXM all the time, dextromethorphan, because you could get it in, in over the counter cough medicine. And it was like wheat ketamine. Robotripping. Robotripping. Or we would take,

um, Coracidin, which were the little red pills, little red devils. And I mean, and it's a dissociative anesthetic. It like totally fucks you up. Do you take it anally or did you take it through your mouth?

We took it orally. We prefer. We used to just shove them up because they would dissolve in your ass. Yeah, that sounds like a boy. How many of your girlfriends did that with you? He didn't really do that. He made that up. You believe that?

He made you listen to that. Of course I believe that. Don't kids put like tampons soaked in vodka up their ass? Absolutely, they do. Like that's crazy. That's the newest thing. Haven't people gotten really sick from that? I'm sure.

I want to try it so bad. Drunk pussy, can you imagine? That's really, that's the real term, drunk pussy. That's what they call it. But boys, they have to do it in their ass. Straw through the dick hole is what I do. With tampons? With tampons.

Well, it's probably. Vodka soaked tampons in your ass. It makes the most sense, I mean, to be honest. But do girls do it in their ass or do they do it in their vagina? I don't know. It sounds like it would burn. I think they do it in their vagina. Yeah, you're right.

Yeah, I don't think I would. No, she's got one of those. I've got one of those and it sounds like it would burn. I think they do it in their vagina. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I don't think I want it. No, she's got one of those. I've got one of those and it sounds like it would burn. It would probably burn on the other thing that, you know. Probably just all around

this would burn. Why would you put vodka in your asshole? Because I guess you drink so much that you can't get drunk quickly enough. Do you know how fucking crazy do you have to be

to be like, you know what, fuck shots, it's got to go on my ass. Yeah, I know, I know. People get creative, man. But that is – how the fuck – how like self-destructive do you have to be? How crazy?

You just – you know what? You have to be young and dumb. But why in your ass? Why vodka? I don't know. I never put any drugs up my ass. But I do remember like snorting an ecstasy tab. Like why did I need to snort it?

Why couldn't I just swallow it? Swallowing wasn't gangster enough. Yeah, it wasn't going to hit me fast enough. You know, it's like we do stupid shit when we're young. Chicks snorting Adderall. That's another thing. I remember going to this party and all the girls were snorting Adderall because they couldn't get Coke.

And I was like, oh, that's so crazy. And then what did they do? Like clean the house and do their homework? Like that's such a bad idea at a party. I've never done Adderall either. Me neither. do their homework. Like that's such a bad idea at a party. I've never done Adderall either. Me neither. My friend, the late great Robert Schimmel told me that he took one accidentally once and Robert, um, had a health conditions, you know, he had a cancer for a while. Um, and so, you know, he didn't know if this was like dangerous for him to take. So he calls his doctor

and, uh, his doctor said, listen, it's just just you took it, you're going to be fine, but you're on a ride for the next 12 hours. And he goes, I got so much done. He's like, I cleaned my office, I organized my notes, I was putting them into folders and categories. It's like subtle meth behavior. It really is. And that's the thing.

These kids take it every day. They take it every day. They're on low levels of meth every day. Oh, my God. And it's perfectly legal, and their parents tell them to. You behave much better when you're on this, you know, and I mean it's nuts. I've never been one, you know, like I said, I haven't done drugs in many, many years, but when I did do drugs, I was much more into downers than uppers.

Like uppers made me jittery. They made me feel like shit and i couldn't sleep which i hated i love drugs that you could just fall asleep okay i have i have done ketamine before yeah i did not like it i hated it i snorted it i did not like it at all i felt so sick i was in i went into a hole for a little bit i felt so sick i was lying on my bed with a friend of mine and we were just like we had our like we were touching kind of but it would be like if you move, I'm going to throw up. And if I move, you're going to throw up. And you just – you sit there and you – I remember floating around my apartment kind of listening to other people's conversations.

Did it seem like everything was like – like I tried to walk upstairs and I was like – Yes. And it was horrible. I just remember thinking like this is not fun. But all of my friends who did it, they used to do it. I only tried it the one time and they did just as much as I did and they were just totally normal. I mean you build up a tolerance.

They're just walking around like, man, it's fun to be on ketamine. It becomes addictive. Well, I'm glad that I hated it then. I knew one guy who lost his life to it. This guy was an MMA guy. He somehow or another got addicted to it. Well, and I could see that too because it really numbs the pain. Like I think that's why people like – you don't feel anything when you're on it.

But the issue though for me was that like there's other guys that have taken it recreationally and have these crazy experiences on it. But I think they do it intermuscularly. So they can do like a much lower dose probably? I don't know. It's like cleaner? If it's a lower dose or if it's just – Because if you take too much ketamine, you can't move. Yeah. It paralyzes you.

Well, Lilly used to take – John Lilly, the guy who invented the isolation tank, he used to take it and go into the tank. I could see that because then you wouldn't be able to feel anything. Right. Yeah. Oh, God. That sounds horrible. Todd McCormick's first trip in the tank. He took a trip in Lily's tank.

Lily put him in the tank, and then Lily said, do you want ketamine with this? And he was like, well, fuck it. I got to say yes. John Lily asked me if I want to do ketamine. He goes, all right, here you go. Boom. He stabs him in the leg with it, hits the plunger,

and sends him to the fucking darkest regions of the universe. Insane. Blowing in an isolation tank. The first time ever doing ketamine. That's crazy. Didn't he also have a dolphin fucking tank, too, that he fucked dolphins in? No.

What? No, no, no. Lily did not fuck dolphins. But what he did do, there was- That's what his private diary said. No, no, no, no, no. Brian, you're so confused. You don't know the real history. What is happening right now? Infowars.com, ladies and gentlemen. That's what his private diary said. No, no, no, no, no. Brian, you're so confused. You don't know the real history.

What is happening right now? Infowars.com, ladies and gentlemen. That's what's happening. No, but he was – the reason why Brian is saying that, he did do a lot of experience with dolphins. He actually was a pioneer in species communication. He was like trying to figure out dolphin languages and stuff. And the way he was doing it was on acid for real. Okay.

And with isolation tanks. And at one point, like he put an isolation tank right next to a dolphin tank who was trying to communicate with them. Yeah. It's pretty funny how like this is the definition of bad science right here. It's like I'm just going to do all of these experiments on acid. Yeah, everything. Record my findings and tell people I talked to dolphins. And you know he fucked those dolphins.

Well, not only that, it's like we have not, we can't, like, there's not an app where you can go to the zoo and talk to the dolphins. No, exactly, yeah. We don't really know

what the fuck they're saying. It's still, so like, how do we know his research was valid? He's like, well, you know, three chirps means he's happy. Exactly. And definitely not reliable because I'm sure nobody else

has been able to repeat those studies. Well, dolphin noises are a real weird one for us. They're so alien. Like the sound is so alien and bizarre that for us to even wrap our head around the fact that it's a language. Like it's not a language in a linear, progressive way the way the English language is structured or the sounds that we make with our mouths. But they're communicating. Yeah.

But they're also doing echolocation, which is really cool. And I think it's so cool when you see a dolphin or a bat doing echolocation so that they can get around. It's really interesting to think about the fact that some humans who have been blind, typically congenitally blind, blind from birth, can actually do that echolocation. There's some great YouTube videos of one kid who could skateboard. I mean, he could do everything.

He actually since then passed away. I think he had a stroke. But I mean, he was a fascinating person because he had just such evolved echolocation skills. He would just click and he could hear. He could just sense them. I should say sense, not even hear, because it was probably so much more heightened than just hearing, just sense them bouncing back to him constantly and know where he was in space from it. It's so fascinating how there are perceptual things that we probably completely take for

granted because we have eyes or because we have ears, that organisms that are much kind of behind us on the evolutionary timescale can utilize that are just probably kind of latent in us. And if for some reason we lose some sort of ability, we could develop something like echolocation and use it to our advantage. Most people would never think to do it because we can see, so we don't need to.

And seeing is a much more advanced way to navigate your surroundings. We should tape a bunch of bats to some dolphins, guys. And get in an isolation tank. Fuck the bats first. Wait a minute, why bats? How did the bats get in this? Yeah, they used the echo.

Oh, echolocation. Echo, the reluctant dolphin. Going back to drugs, when you said that this guy – like ketamine for the first time in the isolation tank. The first time I ever did GHB. Has anybody here ever done GHB? Yes. The first time I ever did – we actually – we were doing lactone. Like a friend of ours made it.

So it was like I think the precursor to GHB. But the first time I ever tried it, I was also ecstasy what and and i was at my friend's apartment and you sound like a hell of a fucking party i do but i really wasn't i've just had some crazy experience you grew up here in california i grew up in texas oh that's what part what is there to do in tech like a suburb of dallas called plano they do a lot of ecstasy in Dallas. Yeah. And I remember being in a friend's apartment, doing X, and then trying GHB and just sitting there. I mean, I was trashed out of my mind.

And we're all sitting there. It's really quiet. And then they started playing. It was the first time I'd ever heard the band Mr. Bungle. Oh, yes. Who I love. I love Mike Patton. Amazing.

heard the band Mr. Bungle? Oh, yes. Who I love. I love Mike Patton. But it was the weirdest experience of my, if you've never listened to Mr. Bungle, imagine listening to Mr. Bungle on heavy, heavy doses of ecstasy and GHP. Just look at the album cover. I've never done GHP, nor have I listened to Mr. Bungle. You should.

You'd love it. I recommend Mr. Bungle. Maybe. Do you like Faith No More? Yes. I think you'd love Mr. Bungle because I'm the same guy. He also did a – Prepare yourself right now, by the way, for a wave of Twitter hate.

From people that think Fake No More is fucking gay! Oh, no! Come in and giant tsunamis of homophobia. Let's talk about some. Fake No More. Are you fucking kidding me? Oh, no. It's the young kids. They don't get it. They don speak no more. Are you fucking kidding me? Oh, no. The young kids, they don't get it.

They don't get it. They don't get the punk rock. Yeah, that's right. Not only that, these young kids have not realized that it's okay if somebody likes something that you don't like. It's okay. You don't have to hate. You don't have to get mad.

I got a tweet yesterday that was directed to both of us. It was like, Joe, ask Kara about her stance on GMOs because she was obviously bought off by Monsanto. And because I was pretty outspoken about, what was it, Prop 37? I saw that. Yeah, and I voted no. And everybody, like, really gets pissed. Well, explain to everybody, if you could, what Prop 37 represented.

I think it was 37. Am I mixing them up? I think you're right. 35 or 37. Yeah, it was a while ago. Whatever it was. So it was a bill that they were trying to pass or a proposition that they were trying to pass. It was the labeling initiative for GMOs in California.

And I voted against the labeling initiative. And all of my liberal – because I'm super liberal. I'm not even a Democrat. I would call myself just a progressive independent. And the funny thing is, though, that I find, like on my column on HuffPost, I write about science. Fundamentally, I am pro-science, I'm pro-reason, I'm anti-religion, I'm a strong atheist, it's tied into my views with science. And my views about some of these things, like animal research or like genetically modified

organisms, they are informed by my studies of the scientific literature. They're not informed by my party affiliation or, you know, by my political views. So that's where sometimes, you know, generally I think scientific thinkers and left-wingers are in the same camps. But once in a while, I think you have these left-wing anti-science views or pseudoscience views that come up against each other. So I'm very...

And you believe that genetically modified food is that? I think that genetically modified organisms are extremely important. And I think that we probably don't realize how much of them we already eat. Like 70% of the food on the shelves in the grocery store is genetically modified. And I'm not against labeling our food. Don't get me wrong. When I voted against the labeling initiative, I wasn't voting against putting a label on food. I was voting against the way that the labeling initiative was presented. I don't think that it should be a local

initiative. I think that it should be a federal initiative and I think that it's arbitrary to choose GMO as the thing that we're gonna all suffer from if we don't label it on our food. What do you believe is the what's most important about genetically modifying foods? Why is it so important? What is the misconception? Because my conception of it has always been, my perception of it rather, of reading articles that a lot of people are concerned with the long-term consequences of eating certain foods that have been significantly changed to the point where they can resist

pesticides, they have all these strange antibiotic properties, and they worry about the long-term consequences of consuming these unnatural foods. And I think, okay, so I think two points that I can make in direct response to that. I think it's fair to say that they're worried about long-term consequences because they haven't been around long enough to see those consequences. But so far, every legitimate lab experiment that has been done has shown no deleterious effects. The big rat study with the tumors has been, you know, completely debunked. Like there's just- What was that?

Was that just a lie? It was just bad science. Well, no, it was bad science because the truth is the types of rats that they were doing the study on- They were bitch ass rats? They tend to get tumors anyway. Oh, really? And so they weren't really doing a good job of comparing the controls to the experimental model there.

But so, yeah, because lab animals. So nothing has been shown? No, no, there's no evidence. I mean, just no good evidence. So everybody's just freaking out. Everybody's freaking out because they're going, well, it sounds dangerous, so it could be dangerous. And so that, first of all, makes me worried. And then also I think it's the lexicon that we use.

It's this natural versus unnatural, this kind of like whole foods is better because it's all natural. And just the word natural is, like, hilarious to me because organisms, especially plants, mostly what we're talking about here are plants like fruits and vegetables. They have been genetically modifying themselves for hundreds of thousands of years. They swap genes all the time. And then once agriculture began, we started genetically modifying all of these organisms by doing crossbreeding.

We would take, you know, the healthiest looking tomatoes and breed it only with the other really healthy looking tomatoes. And what we were really doing is solidifying that certain genes were going to be passed down and other genes were going to be weeded out. Now what we do is we put individual genes into the plant. So whereas we used to swap something like 50,000 genes without even knowing the specifics of what we were changing, now that we can do it with biotechnology in the lab, we can swap out one or two genes. And somehow that's more frightening to the general public

than 50,000 genes being swapped. And so that's the part that I don't really understand people's argument. So when you're coming at it, you're coming at it, you think, from a position of science where you say the evidence against it is really most of it's just confused people. I think that it's a lot of it's just confused people? I think that there's a lot of fear-mongering, first of all. And the truth is, if you don't want to eat GMOs because you're not sure, you don't have to.

Trust me, the companies that don't use genetically modified organisms in their food already label their packages as such because they use it as a marketing ploy. They're not going to miss out on that chance. So for us to have to mandate a label that says this is genetically modified food is really going to come across to the regular consumer as warning. This is genetically modified food when there's no reason to warn people. The FDA's job is to warn people if there's a potential risk. There's no risk of eating GMOs. And all the evidence so far says that they're perfectly healthy. What about the Chinese studies that showed that it's not just vitamins and protein that some GMOs are providing to the body, but your body is absorbing microRNA? I don't know. I haven't read those studies.

I'd be interested to see it. But I would also be interested to see if non-GMOs are also doing that. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. I mean, it's a tough situation. And the That's a good point. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's a tough situation. And the truth is that scientists aren't monolithic on this. Not all scientists agree.

Many scientists voted to label. But isn't the real issue that if there is something wrong, and especially in the future, if it's, well, you know, shortens people's lifespans in some ways, causes some problem, it's going to be really hard to stop once it's already in place. But it already is in place. That's the thing. I mean, it's not like not labeling it now is going to make it be more in place. We're already eating, 70% of our food is already genetically modified. And you don't think there's any danger about that at all? I'm not concerned about it. I'm really not. And you know what? The truth is, in essence, it helps people. And sometimes I worry if these kinds of conversations that I would be having, like when I would do appearances on The Young Turks, for example, which I think is a really great network.

And I'll sit on with them a lot just to kind of talk science with them. But there's a very strong liberal view on the shows. And so a lot of the people will write in and they'll ask about these things. And I think that sometimes I know it might sound a little bit offensive, but it's kind of like a first world problem. Like it's kind of like a one percenter problem to be worrying about eating these genetically modified organisms. The reason that farmers, the reason that biotechnologists in these university laboratories are doing genetic modification is so that we could feed more people safely and healthily so that people who don't have access to a lot of nutritious food can eat, for example, golden rice that gives them certain vitamins

that they wouldn't have been able to get if they were just eating white rice. It's so that these foods can have a longer shelf life, so that they last longer, so that more people can consume them. But we're looking at it through American eyes, from an American perspective, where we constantly waste food, where we have so much money that we can eat. We try to make our food as clean as possible. And I mean, that's fair. And I'm not shitting on people who want to eat pure organic food, but I don't like the holier than thou attitude that somehow they're healthier because they do it because there's no evidence to

support that. That's my stance. Well, you know, it seems like you've thought this through a lot more than I have. My views on it have always been that if you look under genetically modified foods, you look online, the majority, the vast majority of the articles about it are danger articles. Exactly. So you feel like that's all just scaremongering? I think a lot of it is. And you know, I think that also there's this, this idea that well, if Monsanto is in on it, it must be evil. And I get that because Monsanto is an evil, evil company. But I also think that we need to separate in our minds the difference between bad business practices and greedy capitalistic practices and the basic science that goes into it. And it's,

I know it's hard to do, it's hard to separate those things, but just because I voted no and, and Monsanto voted no, doesn't mean that I'm in bed with Monsanto, for example. But I do see, it seems like an easy thing to do to go, oh, Monsanto's for this. Well, then I'm automatically against it. You know, I mean, it makes sense to me, honestly, of all the other arguments, that's the argument that I appreciate the most. Like when people go, I voted for it because fuck Monsanto. I'm like, OK, I'll give you that. If anybody needs to do mushrooms and look at their life, it's the people that run Monsanto.

I agree. The suicides that are connected to them just in India alone. It's terrifying. It's sad. Hundreds of thousands of people who couldn't pay off their seeds, couldn't afford to run their farms. Yeah, it's disgusting. I mean, and talk about like a civil liberties, a human rights issue right there. It's fucking crazy. It is crazy. When you look at that number, like the number, I'll just pull it up right now. Sure.

Indian suicides due to Monsanto because it's fucking bizarre. And it's so sad because I feel like so many hardworking university scientists who don't get a dime from companies like Monsanto are working really hard to manipulate these organisms for the reason of helping people in order to feed more people that are going hungry. to become bastardized once this huge company can kind of put restrictions on people's ability to get food or grow food in their own indigenous – in the farms in their backyards. It's disgusting. It's so sick. And you know what? Instead of doing this, if they just provided them at a more reasonable rate in a more reasonable way and worked with these farmers, they would continue to get

a certain amount of money from them instead of raping them and taking it all. They could have a nice business with these people and continue to profit and everybody do well. But they have connected 200,000 suicides in India throughout the past decade to Monsanto. That's so sad. That's so fucked up. That's so fucking crazy. I know. It's so fucked up. That's so fucking crazy. And it's also 200,000 people, if you think about it, who are no longer working and making money. And these are 200,000

people who are probably very poor and probably could never raise enough money to levy a legitimate lawsuit against this company. And I mean, it's just, it's mortifying. And it's the same thing that we see, I feel like with big pharma. And this is another big problem where people will lump in biomedical research, they'll lump in research on drug efficacy with big pharma. And there are, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of connections there. But what's wrong, I think, with the way that drugs are prescribed in this country, what's wrong with the amount of kind of danger linked to drugs in this country has little to do with the fact of kind of danger linked to drugs in this country has little to do with the fact that drugs are being developed that can help people. And it has everything to do

with how these drugs are being marketed. We're the only developed country in the world where we can have commercials for pharmaceuticals on television, because we shouldn't be asking our doctor if so and so is right for us. Our doctor should be telling us what we should be taking. And we should have the ability to take generics of things if we want to. Drugs should be affordable for people. I mean, I'm for universal health care. I definitely think that that would change a lot of these problems. But again, I think that a lot of liberal thinkers, they end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater,

and they throw the science out with the terrible company practices. And that is kind of sad to me, I think the fundamental science that's being done to develop drugs that actually help people is amazing. It's crazy that they tell you what would be wrong with you if you need this stuff. Yeah. And then you go to your doctor like, dude, I got that same problem. Yeah. I'm thinking I need this stuff.

Yeah. Like they, it's so unfair because all those people in those commercials have got their shit together. They're holding hands. They look great. They're walking together on the beach and everybody's smiling. I mean I saw a commercial the other day for a drug for COPD medicine. COPD is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. That's bronchitis and emphysema combined.

And the woman's like, now that I take my COPD medicine, I can do everything. And I'm like, no, that woman would hardly be able to get off the couch. Even if you're medicated for COPD, your life is really tough. You can't breathe. You cannot breathe. And this chick was just running around? She's just like, I'm fine now that I take my inhaler or whatever. And it's like people know – if you have COPD, you know what your options are,

you're suffering, and you've talked to your doctor about how to fix this, you know, and so to have all of that information readily available by your physician, I think is important. But to advertise it on television, how did they sneak that through? How did that become a reality in modern America lobbies? Isn't that incredible? Congress? Yeah, it's really incredible, some of the shit that's legal. I know. It's really strange. It's like depressing. It's really depressing.

It's just, in this day and age, we have, with the access to information that we have, the culture hasn't really caught up to what everyone knows. So the reality of what everyone knows about, you know about the insanity of the economy and how it's all structured, the reality of drug laws, the reality of law enforcement, and the reality of ever-increasing civil liberties violations where people have to fight for what used to be what we considered a part of being an American. Yes.

Proud to be an American because at least I know I'm free. It's supposed to be free. It's not supposed to be a place where someone's looking at every fucking email you send and listening to every phone call you make. It's not supposed to be that. And even outside of America, I mean, that's, I think, a really sad part of the civil liberties violations is looking at just the sheer amount of bombings and drone strikes that are taking place. With innocent deaths just across the board.

And to see us do the same type of tactics, even in a lesser form, that we're seeing dictators do in other countries like Egypt, where people are riding in the streets because this guy's turned himself into a dictator. We're seeing those incremental steps behind the cover of darkness. And it's our guy. They'll do certain bills.

They'll release them on New Year's Eve. So everybody has to go back and look at it. And it's our guy. It's not Dick Cheney. You know what I mean? That's our guy. He couldn't be doing that. Well, they're not publicizing that he's doing that, but they are.

I mean, it's rough. It's very strange. Yeah, Obama has taken a lot of this Patriot Act shit that Bush put into play and just amped it up so much. The dronings, amped up the dronings. The warrantless wiretapping. And the idea that they could detain American civilians with no recourse. You can't get a lawyer. You can't talk to anybody about it.

They don't have to let anybody know where you are. They don't have to inform your family. They can just take you. That's insane. We do have the internet at our fingertips. I have my iPad right here and I've got my iPhone and I'm looking at Twitter and I can constantly access anything I want. But it's just as easy to read an article on Politico as it is to go to like LOLcats. You know what I mean? Or Worldstar Hip Hop. Exactly. And so I think that, yeah, was that like a lame out-of-date reference? Do people still go to like –

Like the hamster dance. Yeah, like I can pass cheeseburger. Are people still doing this? You remember the hamster dance was the shit at one point in time, remember? Yeah. Everybody was like, oh my god, this is so cute. This is so cute. Terrible resolution.

But I'd rather – I mean sometimes I would rather watch a bad lip reading than an actual presidential debate or something on YouTube. Do you get offended as an intelligent person when you hear politicians talk in that political bullshit way? Oh, hell yeah. You should see – wait until – I just want to tell everybody. Please log on on Monday to HuffPost Science because I'm releasing a new video where I just like rail into Marco Rubio. I rail into – Who into Marco Rubio. I rail into – Who's Marco Rubio?

Marco Rubio is the senator from Florida who was interviewed by GQ recently and just kind of hemmed and hawed when they asked him how old is the earth. And instead of saying up front 4.5 billion years, he said, well, I'm not a scientist and I can't really say – and there's a lot of debate with theologians and scientists. Well, there is a lot of debate between theologians and scientists about the age difference. That's like saying there's a lot of debate between winos and

cops as to what the law is. That's also true. And this is the law under this bridge, motherfucker! And it's not just that. I rail into some of the guys that recently got voted out of office like Walsh and Aiken.

I talk about... Are you super political? You're following all this nonsense? I try to, especially when science comes into play. This guy Brown who sits on the fucking House Science Committee and he thinks that evolution, embryology,

and all this nonsense about the Big Bang Theory are lies from the pit of hell, is what he said publicly in front of a wall of deer heads, by the way. I mean, it's mortifying that these people- Sounds like my kind of guy. Yeah. There are so many global warming deniers, evolution deniers, who are sitting on the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology. And these people have jurisdiction over the National Science Foundation, over NASA, over the U.S. Agricultural Service.

I mean it's so scary. And they're all just fucking Republican, Texan, oil money. Lobbies are lining their pockets. It's so scary. The global warming one is a really strange one. Are we going to have this conversation? I was a little nervous about this because I saw some tweets coming in. Well, you know what?

It's a fascinating thing because for whatever reason, it's become this sort of right-wing talking point. It has. And it's like something that people get like real reactionary with and they get real – they have like a built-in – instead of reactionary, they have a built-in answer. And someone brings up, what about global warming? It's a cycle. It's a natural cycle. Yeah, or they go, it's a hoax. Some of these guys have called it a hoax.

It's all pseudoscience. Yeah. But it's this weird aggressive like right-wing thing. Yeah, people get aggressive because it's become so politicized so like 99.9 percent of scientists agree that the earth is getting warmer and that human carbon emissions are highly contributing to this right now how the fuck is that an emotional issue like what is it i don't know what is that i don't know and it's it's so funny how many of these you start to see these people flip-flopping lately because they can't hold on to this kind of archaic, you know, just embedded, seeped in such intense religion.

They can't hold on to these views anymore. We saw Pat Robertson the other day on the 700 Club. Like Pat Robertson, the televangelist, the old guy going on about like a woman wrote in and she said, I'm nervous because my kids ask me about dinosaurs and I don't know how to tell them to make it like legit with the Bible. And I really want them to be with me in the kingdom of heaven. And Pat Robertson's like, all this business about the earth being 6,000 years old is crazy talk. All the science says that it's old. We know it's 4.5 billion years old. We have radiocarbon dating.

Man never lived with dinosaurs. We have frozen dinosaur. He said, we have frozen dinosaur carcasses in the Dakotas. And it's like, thank God. I say thank God. Are you just thanking God for Pat Robertson? I just thank God for Pat, the God in which I do not believe, for Pat Robertson because he's, I mean, granted, he's still a total piece of work.

And he said earlier this year that atheists are trying to steal Christmas. They are. And I'm very concerned. They are trying to steal Christmas. Hey, don't take Christmas away from me. Christmas was for the pagans first, so fuck all y'all. Yeah, but it became Christmas and more cool once the Christians got involved. I disagree.

Organize those fucking pagans. Otherwise, they'd be out there with a fire circle living in grass huts like the old school pagans. That sounds like fun. They would have never got their shit together unless the Christians came along and dominated those bulls. But I will say that I am still happy that Pat Robertson came out and had a pseudo voice of reason there. That's a strange one. The 6,000-year-old one is way more bizarre than the global warming one. The global warming one, what's odd about it is that it's an aggressive one.

It's aggressive. It's that people are like, listen, it's been around. It's a natural cycle. They've got ice core samples. They'll show them. It's like that typical's that people are like, listen, it's been around. It's a natural cycle. They've got ice core samples. They'll show them. It's like that typical, did I just hit the camera? I don't know.

It's that typical, is she okay, Brian? How's the hair? Are we doing okay? That weird conservative fucking talk show radio guy voice that sort of resonates in their head. But same thing with evolution.

It's same thing with evolution. I mean, I think people are less, you know, they're more about like, well, we just need to allow kids to learn all the different options. And they try to go about it kind of in a smarter way. But it's the same thing. And this is all the stuff that I rail into in this video on Monday. And at one point, I basically talk about why creationists think the Earth is 6,000 years old.

And then I take you back all the way to the beginning of time, 6,000 years ago. And there's like whole fucking civilizations all over the globe. You know, like humans have been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years. And there's, you know, beautiful pottery and boats and plows. There's agriculture. People are doing math already. There's deep sea fishing.

It's like insane that anybody could believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. It's just a huge block. That's what it is. It's cognitive dissonance. They know it has to be older because they've been to a museum and they've read a textbook. But they feel guilty. There's this guilt that's built into their faith that says, I don't know. If I don't believe this, I might not end up in heaven and God is going to punish me.

And I know it's difficult, but he's just testing my faith. And it's so sad that they're locked into that. It's so sad that these religions can't be more flexible and more progressive. I wouldn't be so anti-religion if I saw more progressive religion out there. I have friends that are in progressive Christian denominations, and I respect that. I mean, I think it's bullshit and I can't believe they believe what they believe, but I'm not going to, you know, say that they shouldn't. I think religions are a type of operating system

for a human being. And I think that a lot of people need some set of rules and regulations and something to look forward to when it all ends and something, you know, the idea of the vast just expanse of the universe and the insignificant aspect of your life in relationship to everything you see in relation to everything you see in the cosmos.

Yeah. I think that fucks with people's heads hard. Of course it does. Of course it does. And I think that the real problem with religions, especially like real fundamentalist religions that are like really strict, is that they stop your thinking and corner it in this trap. And this operating system that you're operating under has this very limited range. And if it doesn't fall in this very limited range, you really can't rationalize, you can't

accept it. So you don't grow. You can't see outside of those boundaries at all. And everybody else is outside looking in going like, come out't accept it. So you don't grow. You can't see outside of those boundaries at all. And everybody else is outside looking in going like, come out here with us. So you don't grow. The air is a little cleaner. And it is. Yeah.

But there's aspects of religion and there's aspects of worship even. There's aspects of just worshiping and having an appreciation for life itself and the incredible wonder of this existence and that alone should be worshipped even if you you call it you want to call it God you want to call love you want to call it appreciation call it something but the the wrong aspects of it they're almost like they're something that inhibits you from getting the the best out of life the wrong aspects keep it's almost like it has all this love to it treat your brother as if it's you and live your life in harmony and do good unto others and you know use these laws because they're designed to

make harmony amongst men but then the crazy shit like, like at some point in time, someone has to like rewrite everything. They do. And at least some groups are starting to. You have to throw out all this stuff and say these are all just crazy stories. Yeah. But this is what we've learned about life. This is what we've learned. And add science to the equation.

Yeah. This is what we actually know about the nature of reality. Here's some confusing aspects of it. Here's some things that we're working on trying to find answers to. But this is what we actually know. And we're on our way. Exactly. It doesn't preclude the idea of worship.

No. And you know what? I say all the time, I don't think that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. I do think that science and fundamentalism are. Any time that you get to the fundamentals of any sort of religious mindset, yes, that is incompatible with science. Well, any really strict ideology is dangerous. Anytime. It's very dangerous.

Even patriotism. It's very, very dangerous. I personally am an atheist. I personally chose to kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater on that because I don't see anything redeeming in religion that I can't find outside of religion. So I don't believe in anything supernatural. I don't believe in God. I don't in anything supernatural. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in ghosts. Wait a minute.

Have you not watched Ghost Hunters? Have you not watched Ghost Hunters? No, I've not watched Ghost Hunters. They claim to have serious evidence. I'm sure they do. Backward speech, all kinds of shit. Hey, how dare you? James Randi.

We have one of those guys on the show. Yeah, watch out. But I do notice that you've had my friend Jason Silva on the show before. Yes, love that dude. And Jason has this gift. Powerful Jason Silva. Yeah, yeah. And he has a gift for that kind of spiritual, almost worship-like wonder of the natural world, of the cosmos,

that is not a religious thing at all, but it gives you that feeling that you get from religion. I actually have a quote tattooed on my ribs down my left side. That's a quote from Carl Sagan that says, we are a way for the cosmos to know itself. And it's really powerful to me because it almost gives me that feedback that a lot of people get from religion, but I don't need to get it from religion. I get it from kind of the wonder of the universe. So if you really think about what he's saying is that the universe is not conscious and there is no great conscious organizer out there. So the universe can't really reflect on itself

because it can't think. But we as human beings are made of the stuff of stars. All of the molecules in our bodies are traceable to molecular phenomena that was exploded in the furnace of a star. So because we are made of the stuff of stars and because our molecules organized in such a way to make us higher thinking, cognitive beings, and we can contemplate our place in the vast expanses of the universe,

we are a way for the universe to know itself, for the cosmos to know itself. And I bet you Carl Sagan was high as fuck when he came up with that. He probably was, too. He was high as fuck. He probably was, too. He was high as fuck. Yeah, he was a big pothead. Love that. He used to love to smoke pot and just stare at the stars. And that's the thing.

He was a working scientist who made so many discoveries and who contributed so much to man's understanding of science. He was using a drug that wasn't, it wasn't like he was on acid and claiming to have all of these huge expanded consciousness experiences. He was using a drug that hardly fucks you up. Like, to be honest, it hardly, it alters your consciousness so slightly that he could still work and he could still make these incredible discoveries, but he could also find the emotional valence and like the poetry in the cosmos and then tell it to us in such a way that I think that he inspired an entire generation of thinkers to grow up, to become scientists, or at least to be scientifically literate and appreciate what nature can tell us.

And he was very open about his appreciation for cannabis and that whole quest for information. He was a fascinating, fascinating guy. He really was. I love the fact that he was a pothead. Yeah, you were just talking about getting high and watching Cosmos right before we started recording. And are you excited about the new Cosmos that Seth MacFarlane is producing with Carl Sagan's widow, Andrian, and they are going to be producing a new version for Fox hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Whoa. It would be awesome. I know. Whoa. I know. So exciting. I just beat the fuck out. Those are some of my most humble moments ever is I got a hold of, I don't remember which series it was,

but it was this 14 DVD series on the the universe and it was one after another just mind-blowing incredible thing i had just gotten this uh projection thing in my house so it was like the sound was cool the image was crazy and for fucking days i never left that room i was just watching these fucking terrifying documentaries on supernovas and the possibility of a hypernova exploding near us would just eliminate life on earth instantaneously. And the fact that they found out they're going on every day all over the universe. They first thought there was like an alien war. They first thought that there was a fucking alien war out in space.

They were detecting all these explosions and they thought that like Martians were shooting at each other. Well, you know, you got to explore all options as a scientist. And this is something that I do every day in my job. It's mind-blowing. Like just yesterday I did a Skype interview with a scientist in Washington who wrote this paper basically that shows some evidence. They're not claiming that we are but they're saying it's not completely crazy to assume that we might be a simulation yes yeah we've talked about that like a hundred times yeah and there's there's like legitimate evidence there that if we

can simulate the fundamental workings of our own universe right now we can only do it on a femtometer scale so we can basically simulate the inner workings inside of a nucleus. We can't go any bigger. But if we can simulate that, and eventually we get to a point where we can simulate more and more and more of kind of living, breathing quantum space, who's to say that we ourselves aren't a simulation? I just told Jill the other day how I've been living my life as if we are a simulation. I just told Jill the other day how I've been living my life as if we are a simulation. And if you look at it that way, it really freaks you out. And I have this new thing where every time I talk about the simulation,

I see an Asian coming around the corner. So they're the bodyguards of the simulation. Trust me. Think of it that way. It'll freak you out. Do you also carry one of those jacks in your pocket all of the time? We've been talking about it for several years now for whatever reason. But now start living it, though.

Live your life like that just for a week. I do. I always have. Everything is a simulation. That's the key to my existence. How do you even live your life that way? It freaks you out. Because then all of a sudden it's like an adaptation.

Well, he lives his life. It's like a story in a story in a story situation. Like he's in a game of Final Fantasy. Amazing. That's what he's doing. I just – I might Buble curse you again. You can Buble curse both of you. I want to hear a Buble curse.

That never worked. By the way. It never worked. You know how it worked, Joe? It didn't work. You were just on – He tried, but those Twitter people who tried to Buble it, that shit doesn't work. You're Buble denial right now.

That shit doesn't work. I never heard him. I didn't have to listen. On the Tosh show the other day, you were on Tosh. Saw it online. And he was talking about Buble. Not interested in anybody else. What is a Buble curse?

Does that mean Michael Buble is going to pop up in my life all the time now? No, no. First of all, the curse is this fuck will talk about Michael Buble for the next three or four days, asking me if I've been Buble cursed. I'm on to your games, mister. All right. You've been boo-blayed cursed also, dear. For the next 30 days, you're going to be boo-blayed out of your mind.

But see, the thing is, I get to leave here. Right. And then I never have to see you again. Trust me. Oh, dude, you're the problem. Now you're saying. On Twitter, you got to do us boo-blayed updates, but I bet you'll be boo-blayed out so much. You have frothy boo- Buble all over you.

He is being an asshole right now. He's sicking those people. Well, you know, it is Christmas time, and he does have a new album out, which means I'm going to start fucking hearing those songs everywhere I go. Does he? I have never heard a single Michael Buble song. You have. You just don't know.

It's one of those things where- I don't have that gene. Everything's in the background until your attention is drawn to it, and then that's all you'll see in here. I'm missing that part of the brain. It's the simulation. That's in the background until your attention is drawn to it, and then that's all you'll see and hear. I'm missing that part of the brain. It's the simulation. That part of the brain is replaced with hate. Oh, no.

Hate for what? Whatever. For whatever. Fucking something bad. Anything bad. I can't listen to it. It doesn't work. It's like a dog whistle.

I don't hear it. And the acid bird that you hear chirping in the morning at 5 a.m., those are software updates to the whole simulation. But see, sometimes I stay up until 5 a.m. This is your simulation, you fuck. You're not supposed to hear that. Your simulation is way different than ours. But what's fascinating about the simulation theory is these guys that are talking about that self-correcting computer code that they found in the computations of string theory. Okay. It's discovered in 1940 by this guy named Claude Shannon and they've discovered

these exact same self-correcting computer code embedded in the equations of string theory. I don't understand that. I don't really either, to be honest. I just interviewed a string theorist who was in town from the University of Paris. I interviewed him on Monday and just kind of tried to get a good primer on what string theory is, what it sets out to do. And I'm going to be writing a video on that soon. So hopefully I'll be able to kind of offer a good fundamental primer on string theory to my viewers. But I don't really understand this thing with the code because the string theorists write their own mathematics.

I mean, that's what a lot of this kind of theoretical cosmology, this quantum level cosmology is about. A lot of times these aren't things that are really experimentally testable. They're things where these physicists are trying to map out or trying to understand the basic particles, the basic waves that make up the universe, and how do they interact with each other using the strong force, the weak force? How does gravity come into play with this, which is a huge problem for them right now, so that they can get this unified theory? Most of it right now is just math. Like, to be honest, it's all whether or not the math works in these different scenarios.

But they're writing the math, you know? They're trying to learn about these things, and they're trying to document them and then figure out how to make the math work once they do that the difficulty comes in experimenting with them because these are such small particles that occur at such high energies that you can really only get them like in in a particle accelerator like at cern or you could find them you know in in a black hole for example but we can't study a black hole directly. So in string theory, this shit is so small that you can't even get these things out of a particle accelerator. So at this point, the only way that they can study string theory is by looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the radiation that was put off from the Big Bang. And it's always around us in the background.

And they've been able to kind of map its signature. It's always around us in the background, and they've been able to kind of map its signature, and they can look for basically evidence, much later evidence, 13 billion years later, almost 14 billion years later, evidence of what happened in the Big Bang, where these tiny particles would have come from. That's incredible. It's crazy. I mean it's kind of like what the fuck did I even just say? I'm not really sure that I understand what I just said, but I muscled through it. This is a real mind blower. There's going to be so many people pausing and Googling during this podcast.

Who's Googling? Yeah, exactly. That's not what they're going to be Googling, you fuck. That's hilarious. Jesus Christ, Brian. And so many good things happened this week in science, too. I had this great thing that's been floating around Facebook from I Fucking Love science's Facebook page.

If you don't follow I fucking love science, they're amazing. Do you mind if I ask a question before? Yeah, sure. When these scientists write the code, like when you see those documentaries or those shows, whenever they have guys talking about string theory and they're sitting there with a yellow legal pad, scribbling furiously, what the fuck are they doing? Yeah, that's – I don't know. What are they doing? Yeah, it's, that's, I don't know. What are they saying?

So they're looking basically at the math of the, they're trying to look at the universe and they're trying to describe it in the only language that we can describe those very, very small things in, which is math. So they're looking at all of these, basically these forces that help particle A interact with particle B.

Maybe there's like a, you know, a gluon in between. They're trying to look at the electromagnetic forces between them. They're trying to see basically all of the quantum fluctuations of this, of this soup of particles that make up all the things that you see right now. And they could be in any given place. It's very difficult to know exactly how fast they're moving or where they are. And they could be in any given place. It's very difficult to know exactly how fast they're moving or where they are. So they have to kind of look at a range of states of these particles. And they're trying to work out all of the math to be able to get a whole spectrum of how these particles interact with each other. And once they have a really solid understanding

of how these particles interact with each other, then we can start to really understand why an atom looks like an atom and how that atom combines with that atom to make a molecule of something and then how all those molecules come. We're pretty good at knowing from the top down. We can look at very big things like universes and subdivide into galaxies and subdivide into solar systems. And then we can even look at Earth and look at all of the life that's on Earth. Within our own bodies, we can look at our organ systems. We can look at all of the life that's on earth within our own bodies we can look at our organ systems we can look at us at the cellular level we can even break down a cell and look at it at the molecular level but once you get smaller than an atom things start acting fucking weird and there's a whole new set of laws that governs the quantum world super positions the freakiest one

yeah it's like anything about you know because it's so hard to measure these things. It's, it's really difficult to measure their speed and their position at the same time because they're moving and they're moving really fucking fast and they, they, their properties change depending on what position they're in. And so once you get down to these really, really small, small, small, but very high energy levels of the world, then you, you start to see different theories that try to describe them. And string theory is only one of those theories. It's actually one of the more kind of bizarre theories. A lot of people aren't string theorists in theoretical cosmology. But string theory is one of the most promising theories that tries to combine this kind of Newtonian and Einsteinian view together. So this quantum molecular view, and also having a quantum theory of gravity, which gravity still doesn't really operate the same way that most people think that quantum mechanics operates.

So a big problem that quantum physicists have is trying to figure out how to fit Newtonian gravity into the equation so that they can get a grand unified theory of everything. And right now, gravity doesn't really seem to fit. Now, when they measure particles that are in superposition, meaning they're in motion and still at the same time, what the fuck is that? What does that mean? I don't think it necessarily means that they're in motion and still at the same time. I think what it means is that they can only measure them. A lot of times it becomes one of these questions where, like, if a tree falls in the forest, does it still make a sound? If we as an observer are trying to understand the molecular world, just by observing it, because we're having – we can't just look at it. It's too fucking small.

So we have to come up with all these crazy rigs to be able to see things. And just by all of the technology that we need to use to see it, we are affecting it. And just by all of the technology that we need to use to see it, we are affecting it. So it's really impossible to see things in their native state when they're this small without actually affecting those things. And now how does that work? Because that's the other thing, like, about the idea of the observer in quantum mechanics. My friend J.D. – shout out to J out to JD. He's a physicist. Cool. He related to me that the real issue is in measuring it and that when you measure it, that's the observer.

It's not necessarily that you are looking at something or that human intention or visual, you know, your visual cortex is tuned in on something. No. It's just the measuring. The act of measuring itself changes the results. Yeah, because it's not like we're not talking about big things. So like I could look at this water bottle and I could, you know, make judgments about it. I could hold a ruler up next to it and make judgments about it. It's so large that the tools that I use to measure it don't interact with its intrinsic properties. But once you get down to things that are very, very small

and you could no longer use a microscope, for example, to measure it don't interact with its intrinsic properties. But once you get down to things that are very, very small, and you could no longer use a microscope, for example, to see it, and you have to get down to more creative ways to measure it, all of a sudden the creative ways that you measure it actually process it as they measure it. And so they're interacting with it, and they're changing its position, for example, or they're changing the way that it acts. Because the only way to really see it is to see it downstream of something else. When he said that to me, I actually got upset

because there's been so much malarkey that I've read and seen online about the idea of the observer changing the results that I felt like, why did everybody have to turn into voodoo? Oh, I love that you just said that. I did an interview with Brian Green, who's a pretty renowned physicist. And I ended up splitting it into two parts. One was about black holes and one was about the multiverse theory.

But one segment that we talked about in between that I couldn't really work into a story, it bums me out because it's such great footage. Because I asked him, how do you feel about movies like What the Bleep Do We Know? How do you feel about it when people try to take what you understand about the quantum world and what you understand about the cosmos and apply it to like woo-woo pseudoscience and say, oh, but our thoughts are quantum and now all of a sudden we can use quantum mechanics to describe

how we think and how our thoughts live outside of our bodies and all this bullshit. And I mean, he was very explicit that no person who studies this stuff, who's dedicated their lives to understanding this, would ever try to apply it to a region of understanding where the math doesn't make sense. And so all of the people who are trying to shill quantum mechanics as an explanation for thought or behavior or love or any of these woo-woo things, none

of them are fucking physicists. That should probably tell us something. The whole thing was that Ramtha lady who's, she channels. She channels. Right there. They're not even telling you what the fuck is going on. They're just having her talk, but they're not telling you, oh, no, no, no, no. She's channeling.

She's channeling some fucking alien. And so many of the people in that movie were misrepresented. I mean so many people were – they would take like three hours of footage from an interview and then cut it up in such a way that it kind of sort of sounds like they're making their point. I did an episode of Larry King. It was one of the first things I ever did when I started doing science communication and being more on air when I was getting out of the university system and doing what I do now. And the episode was all about neuroscience. And one of the things that I said on it was some people would say that the mind is an entity outside of the brain that can put forces on the brain. But we know as modern neuroscientists that mind and brain are the same thing.

They're just two sides of the same coin. And how did they run the promo for that? The mind is an entity outside of the brain that can affect you know they just completely took it out of context yeah they went woo woo i mean luckily inside of the episode they showed it in full so they could see what i was saying but how easy is it and and as scientists you can't be worrying about that when you're trying to explain something you just want to explain it and hope that they don't bastardize it the problem is the people who are making these things have an agenda the um the idea of consciousness or thought being outside of the brain is a very fascinating idea

the idea that the brain is actually just an antenna yeah that tunes it all in and that's why when different areas of it get damaged that's areas that are designed to tune in to whatever whatever is out there the idea of the akashic records, the idea that knowledge and so much of what makes us human beings is actually virtually retrievable from the air. Well, I think that there's a way to look at that without being woo-woo. I don't think it's physically in the air. But there is obviously this idea that thoughts and ideas, once we put them into language, once we write them down on paper, they do exist outside of us at this point. Somebody else can appreciate them and they can live well past us. But I still think that all of that knowledge was conceptualized, synthesized, remembered, retrieved, whatever, by a physical organ, which is our brain. And that thought is fundamentally a function of

brain activity. Like I'm, I'm a really hardcore materialist when, when it comes to that kind of stuff. What is consciousness though? That's, what's really fascinating. It's like, what the fuck is that beautiful organ tuning in? You know, what is, when you're, when you're at your hype level, when you're, you're, you're locked on to some crazy explanation and you're very passionate and like what is that that's coming through that brain? Well, I don't think it's something – it's not coming through the brain. It's being created by the brain. Right. And to me it's the same thing as saying like what is it when an athlete is at peak performance and their heart is working the best way that it can possibly work.

The problem is the brain is so much more complicated. There's so much more metabolism happening in the brain and there's so many individual neurons that have so many connections between them and there's so many different kind of options, kind of permutations and combinations of ways that these neurons can communicate with one another that thought, that consciousness somehow arises from all of those connections. But that's the holy grail of neuroscience. And this is what I love. This is my background is neuroscience.

And so when I do all of my science reporting and all of my science commenting, all the space stuff and all of the physics stuff, I'm not as good at. You know, I have to learn it as I go, which kind of I think helps me when I communicate it because I get where people are coming from when they're like, I don't fucking understand this at all. The neuroscience stuff is like my bread and butter. That's what I love. And that is the holy grail of neuroscience. So when you hear like Deepak Chopra type dudes talk about consciousness being non-local. My eyes rolling. Like Deepak Chopra, it's really hard for me to not just discount everything he says.

Really? Everything? I mean, I know that there's truth there, but he is. He's a woo peddler. He's a woo peddler. I really think he is. I do. Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins, is that his name?

Greg Fitzsimmons loves Eckhart Tolle. He's reading his book right now. Eckhart Tolle is probably the least huckstery of all of them, but he's still... Well, what do you think is huckstery about providing motivation to people and giving people sort of a framework to work on as far as living in the now and taking charge of their life, especially if it's something that someone like Eckhart Tolle had personal success with? Yeah, so compare somebody like Eckhart Tolle to... What about Anthony Robbins? Yeah. Compare an Eckhart Tolle or an Anthony Robbins to, for example, somebody like...

Oh, what's his name? I was able to... God, no. I was able to interview this really interesting guy who has a PhD in molecular genetics and then moved to the Himalayas to become a Buddhist monk. His name is Mathieu Ricard, and he's a French Buddhist monk. And he talks about mindfulness meditation, and he talks about the neuroscience of the things that the Tibetans are doing right now.

But he's not trying to make money off of it. And I think that is a fundamental kind of red flag for me. I'm not saying just because somebody's trying to make money they are selling snake oil. But first of all, what's the motivation? That has to be the first red flag. And then you go into what is it that they're saying. If they're talking – if they're trying to use science and they're trying to kind of go in and pick and choose the science that tells the story the right way. And then they're making these really broad leaps from that science.

It makes me nervous. So it's one thing if you've got like a motivational speaker who's just like, I know this about the world and I'm not basing it on anything. But if you like me, come follow me. And it's like, yeah, that's fine. I mean, what is that? That's like culty behavior, but that's fine. I mean, what is that? That's like culty behavior, but that's fine. But when people pick and choose how they want to use science and how they want to bastardize science to meet their needs, it makes me nervous. I did a piece recently about the power of positive thinking. I've also done a piece about the power of prayer. And I went through the literature and I tried to find

examples where positive thinking actually helped people. And there's just no good evidence that thinking positively is going to actually bring goodwill to your life, like the secret, you know, that's like, well, if I just want it bad enough, I'm going to make a bunch of money. It's like, no, if you want it bad enough, you're going to have to fucking work for it. And then it's going to come to you. And actually, they find that the power of positive thinking can actually be kind of detrimental to cancer patients because it causes a whole extra layer of guilt to the process of dying. You caused this to yourself.

Exactly, because you didn't think positively enough. You didn't will yourself out of this. There's a whole culture around that in America where we kind of blame the victims and where we call cancer survivors, survivors, and we call cancer victims, victims, you know, and, and it's like, and, and you're not doing so well. Nobody says it directly to somebody who was dying of cancer. Well, you didn't will yourself out of it, but they feel that because they say it indirectly to the people who are coming out of it. Oh, it was all that nice prayer and all those positive thoughts and all those Oprah magazines you read, you know, and

it's like, I don't know. I think that's a bad precedent to set. It's also shitty science because if you're, you know, you're only looking at the group that was successful. Exactly. What about all the people that died? And that's the thing. I tried to look at a lot of those studies and I tried to compare, you know, and I found enough stuff out there that kind of shows that the power of positive thinking is not

a real thing. Also, it shows that prayer is not a real thing. I disagree that the power of positive thinking is not a real thing. Also, it shows that prayer is not a real thing. I disagree that the power of positive thinking is not a real thing. I think it's a good way to operate and live your life in a happy manner. Sure. And that will probably lend you to being more successful. You'll have less hurdles. It's like talking about karma.

In some sense, karma is totally real because if you're a fucking nice person and you do goodwill all of the time, sometimes shitty things are going to happen to you. But most people are going to be nice to you too. If you put bad karma out there, to me what that really means is if you're just a fucking asshole all the time, people are going to be an asshole back to you. That's obvious. But I don't believe that karma is some sort of cosmic force that says you store up goodwill with the universe and then the universe pays you back in some way. We feel that it is because that's how it applies to us socially. And so we sort of like – I've always felt that the idea of the birth and the death of

the universe was a weird concept and that maybe we're wrapped around that because of the idea of our own biological limitations. I've always thought that. Time is so interesting because time is a real thing. Flexible though. It's flexible, yes, but it is also a real thing, but we perceive it to be something that's in some ways quite different than what time actually is. Well, when you start getting into crazy shit like a spaceship that goes faster than the

speed of light and then comes back to Earth in 20 years and 500 years have passed or whatever the fuck the math is. Or it would be earlier. Earlier. You'd come back earlier than when you left if it's faster than the speed of light. Well, you'd have to – yeah. You'd have to go really fast, much faster than the speed of light. Could you do that?

Well, you could see. They say that if you are many – like if you're a million light years away from Earth and you could look back and see. You'd see yourself coming there. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you left on a spaceship and you were going faster to the speed of light and you landed on Mars and then you turned your telescope towards Earth, you would see yourself landing. What the fuck? That's why Einstein says you can't go faster than the speed of light.

What if you can? You just fuck everything up. Well, that's what everybody thinks. I mean that's the fascinating thing about thinking about – Do you ever wonder like when you see things like Fukushima and you see nuclear disasters and all the potential nuclear disasters, different places that we have all over the – just California that are on fault lines or near fault lines. Yeah. Does that freak you out? Do you wonder about like the idea behind nuclear power, I mean, sure, it's been very beneficial to societies. But if you have to look at whatever it's been, how many 60 years of implementation, and there's three parts of the world that are broken now.

You know, what's funny is I think that there's this huge disconnect in public opinion between, again, science and implementation. And I always, I shouldn't say always, but I'm often an advocate of doing science for the sake of science. I'm often an advocate of just trying to learn as much as we can. I think that once these things get implemented as technologies and as sources of engineering, that's why we have a government. And government is supposed to be better at making sure that all of these things are checked and balanced, you know, and that we should have good protocols. When the earthquake struck in Italy and all of those seismologists who basically said, I'm not sure that this is going to happen.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. And then so many people died. Everybody blamed the scientists. They charged them with manslaughter. Yeah, they charged them with manslaughter. Everybody blamed the scientists. They charged them with manslaughter. Yeah, they charged them with manslaughter. They blamed the scientists. Nobody blamed any of the civil engineers, any of the people overseeing whether or not the buildings were up to code, whether or not the city was built in such a way that it could withstand an earthquake. And it's absolutely insane to me that the people who were tasked with just trying to understand whether or not, and we can't

predict earthquakes, by the way. We can't. And you're talking about Italy, and that's where the Vatican is, and that's the biggest center of nonsense in the known universe. That's for damn sure. It's the craziest fucking setup ever, and that's in Italy. So look at the kind of fuckery they deal with on a regular basis. But we see this. I mean, that's the thing. We don't have

a global government. We have the UN. We try. Maybe the church wanted them to get charged with manslaughter so they can move into a stronger position. Maybe they tried to push that. I just think people scapegoat. People want somebody to blame. You know what I mean? And the pencil pushers with their glasses sitting behind their desk were an easy target.

And it's really fucking sad because it sets a terrible precedent. And it makes it so that seismologists the world over are going to be nervous to have any sort of report. If a government official comes and says, look at all of this data. Do you think that there's a risk that something like this could happen to us soon? They're going to go, I don't want to fucking say anything. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut because I don't want to get in trouble. Well, not only that, but how could they – the people that are in charge of the legal system, how could they prosecute him when everyone knows that it's impossible to predict earthquakes? Who fucking knows?

I mean, it's like, how could someone make that decision if there's no evidence? That's the crazy thing. They did. That's so crazy. I mean, hopefully they overturn it because there's such a backlash. And like these people, like, what the fuck? Like, they wanted this to happen? Exactly.

Did they cause the earthquake? Like, what the fuck are you saying they wanted this to happen? Exactly. Did they cause the earthquake? Like, what the fuck are you saying? I know. It doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense. It's weird. It makes absolutely no sense. But at least that's Italy.

Yeah, at least that's Italy. That's why my grandparents fled. Mine too. They were like, fuck this place. You're Italian too. Mostly. A little bit Irish. And they fled too.

I'm like half Italian, half Puerto Rican. Yeah. Santa Maria. Oh, damn. Fiery combination for a neuroscientist, young lady. Yes, yes, yes. And you're fascinated by space shit too. I am.

I mean, I don't know as much about it. Exactly. But I was going to say, there's this kind of meme that's going around on Facebook right now. And I shared it on my page. And it just says, this week in science, 12-2, 2012. And it's like, NASA's messenger spacecraft discovered evidence of ice and organic compounds on Mercury. DNA was photographed for the first time. A quasar was observed that puts out 100 times more energy than our entire galaxy.

Jesus! I know. A black hole with a mass of 17 billion suns was observed. And another of Saturn's moons was found to have a Pac-Man-like heat signature. And that's not to mention the findings of the Curiosity rover. So, I mean, this is just this week. Just this week. This is why my job is so fucking cool.

That's pretty cool. And this is the best time ever to have it, too. I feel like that's the case, too. I mean, we've never been in an intellectual climate that's so detrimental to scientific thinking. But we've also never been in a technological climate that's so permissive of scientific progress. I disagree. I think there's always going to be loud people. But I think generally across the board people are much more open-minded to science and understanding of the reality of the universe than they ever have been before.

I guess I should say within – I feel like within this century, within the last century I should say. We're in a very anti-science era. They figured out in the Reagan administration era. They figured out how to make a lot of noise. They did. And one of the good ways to do it is like you can get elected if you get the Christians on your side. And that's just gained momentum. And that's really sad because I would love to see us go back to the 60s.

I mean in a sense to the way that science was perceived in the 60s, to the excitement about NASA, to the excitement about the space race. Well, science – look, if we are the universe trying to understand itself, science truly is the religion because that's the religion of trying to understand everything truthfully and cutting out all the fuckery, cutting out all of the nonsense. Yeah. The problem is that the word religion, just like the word God, I feel like have a connotation. Yeah, they're tainted. Just like the swastika. It's tainted. And so when you go back to kind of –

It used to be cool. Well, it was like – it's like the oldest symbol on earth. And if you go to like these different old parts of Asia, it's everywhere. But now it's tainted. Yeah, there's a place near – I think it's in – somewhere in the valley. And it's this really ancient house that was built by these people from India. And the swastika is all over the place. Yeah.

So they have to explain. It's like a plaque explaining the swastika. Yeah, exactly. But that's what happens. You link it with something fucking horrible. Like religion, in my view, has been so fucking horrible for so long. It's tainted. And the idea of God immediately draws up a Christian ideal of like a white-bearded guy living in – like on a cloud or some shit that's going to cast judgment on you.

So when people talk about, yeah, but I see God more as a – I'm like call it fucking something different because it confuses me every time you use the word God. Yeah, maybe God is just truth. Yeah, maybe. Or we just don't use the word God. Yeah. We just talk about science as being – Call it buble. Yeah, call it buble.

You've got to figure out a new – But science is just incredible. It's incredible and it's awe-inspiring. And learning about our own existence is why we are. So you feel like consciousness is really just a byproduct of all these different synapses firing and all these different cells charging and igniting and filling with thought and tension and instincts and genes? I do. I don't know if – I feel like the word byproduct maybe also gives it a connotation. But yeah, I definitely think that – I should have said product of or the end result of the moving force behind the biological unit.

Yes. I think that mind and brain are two sides of the same coin. Mind, thought, consciousness arises as a physical manifestation of brain activity. So the brain does what it does and through it we have thought so you think that the the concept of the soul and the idea that there's some conscious being trapped in your your your meat vehicle yeah i don't believe in that i don't believe in the ghost in the shell i don't think anything persists once we die for example when we die we rot that's it that's a wrap that's a wrap yeah do you think there's a universal consciousness no No. No. Just universal?

I mean just individual? I think there are laws. There are fundamental laws of nature that cannot be broken, but I don't think that they have meaning in them. I think they just are. You don't think that there's some sort of a pattern, a very clear pattern of constant – like if you look at like from the Big Bang to now, especially if you look at just our culture, the constant innovation and progress and moving forward, just from looking at planets that go from single-celled organisms like we did to what we have now with the internet and having this kind of ability to broadcast something like this on

a podcast. Isn't that showing that there's some sort of a pattern, that it's moving in a very specific direction? Unless there's some horrible disaster that stops this course, we're going to continue to move in a more and more advanced direction. Yeah, I definitely think that we're seeing exponential growth in technological advances, but I don't think that that means that there's somebody driving that pattern. No, not that someone's driving it, but that there is absolutely a pattern and it almost

seems insurmountable. It's like, it's not going to stop. The idea of, the only thing that's going to stop technological innovation and progress is you've got to shut all the power off forever. Yeah. I mean, I personally think that, you know, people talk about the kind of Kurzweilian singularity and when man and machine combine and then we can live forever because we can download our consciousness or whatever. I personally don't think that Ray Kurzweil has the best grasp of how the brain works, how the human brain works. And so I'm not sure that I really buy into what he's selling. But eventually, if we got to a point where AI was kind of sophisticated enough, I think that I worry, you know, when we talk about what is going to be the end for humans, I personally think

that we're going to fuck ourselves up. We're just too much of a warlike, you know. But we're not because you won't even kill intruders. I won't. But I don't have babies. So I'm not passing these genes on, at least not yet. Why don't you go pass some genes on? Right.

Go do some breeding um yeah that's the the question of whether or not we're going to fuck it up is uh certainly a valid one you know we a lot of us have bombs we've done a lot of nuclear explosions yes but we may have colonized something i mean i just i just did a chat yesterday with two guys from mars one which is this dutch company that plans to colonize mars in 2023 and that's in 11 years that shouldn't happen they're just trying to get some money and then they're gonna go all john mcafee well they what was that brian i don't know there's crazy people out in the back wow is that bad is someone to open the back we should have mentioned the simulation i know they're coming to shut us down.

Shut it down. No, I think that they really want to do it. It's a nonprofit organization, and you know what their plan is to get funding? They want to make this mission of the first colonists to Mars. I don't know if they'll be successful, but I do think that they're going to try to do it. Well, they'll definitely kill a few people in space. They plan on making this the most insane reality television program possible. Oh, Jesus.

That's where I just checked out. If they were real scientists, would they do that? Would they turn it into a reality show? It's the only way they can get money for it. Wow. I'm on board. Honey boo boo in space. And I asked them, I was like, what are you going to do if something goes horribly, horribly wrong?

This is an extremely risky endeavor. And they were saying, at this point, we'll have been training these people for 10 years. They're going to do if something goes horribly, horribly wrong? This is an extremely risky endeavor. Right. You know, and they were saying, at this point, we'll have been training these people for 10 years. They're going to be our friends. These people that we're sending up to colonize Mars, they can't bring them back, by the way. These people are going to go to Mars, and they're going to live out their days on Mars.

Yo. Yeah. It's fucking awesome. I'm like, what happens when something goes horribly wrong? And they're like, that's when we have to shut off the cameras. Whoa. I mean, you can't televise a friend of yours dying. Well, they're showing people dying on these Alaska shows.

One of the guys died. I mean they didn't actually show him dying, but I mean he died while they were filming the show. I mean they have had deaths on reality shows before, all they would have to do is just figure out a way to not tune the camera in and tell them that there was some sort of a chemical asphyxiation issue or whatever the fuck it is that kills you when you're on a planet that doesn't have air on it. If you even make it to the planet. You crazy bitch. Like, what the fuck? I know.

It's crazy. And so their idea is that every 10 years, they want to send four more people. So it's like four people, then four people, four people. And they're going to have to be a doctor, an engineer, whatever, because they're going to have to be able to grow the colony out there and eventually start terraforming. I mean, hopefully we'll get to a point where we could blast something off of Mars eventually to come back to Earth. But until then, they're going to have to just make supply runs. They're going to have to just send things to Mars. And we know it takes like, what, nine months to get there.

Jesus! Imagine if you run out of toilet paper. You've got like what nine months to get there Jesus imagine if you run out of toilet paper you gotta wait nine months for a new fucking shipment and hope that it doesn't get you know blow up on the way there

I mean it's it's absolutely insane I can't really wrap my head around it I know they're gonna try it I don't know if they'll be successful but the whole time

I was doing this this segment on HuffPost Live yesterday I just kept stopping and being like are we fucking seriously talking about this right now? Like what a time to be alive. That you're having – I mean I was having a serious conversation with these. So when you send these colonists to Mars, what kind of tools will they need?

I mean it was absolutely blowing my mind. Are they planning on trying to terraform? Eventually, yeah. But they need to have a lot of people there first. So they get a lot of people there and then they have some sort of a power source and then they start terraforming. I guess so. Or they've got the sun, you know, so they just come up there with – Yeah, and no atmosphere, right?

Sun's part. Thin, super thin atmosphere. Is the sun stronger that way or less because it's not reflecting through the atmosphere, right? They did find out that there is – well, it's cold. It's very cold on Mars. During the days, I should say the sols. So Mars has a different day than Earth, so they call them sols. During the sols, they have – it actually does get pretty warm, like in the 40s.

But at night, it's like too cold to survive. It's so, so cold. And there's no liquid water on Mars, so they'd have to figure that out too. What the fuck are you doing? Don't go to Mars, people. Stop it. Stop trying to prove a point, you crazy assholes. Let's clean up America first.

I kept wanting to say to them, like, you're so fucking crazy. But then I wanted to be like, it's because of crazy motherfuckers like you that stuff happens. It's because somebody was like, let's go to the fucking moon and everybody's and probably somebody don't fucking go to the moon you're gonna die you idiot but they figured out how to go how cool would it be if we keep on frog hopping from like mars to another planet to another planet and then it just gets code like they there's no like it wasn't programmed that would actually go that far out and then we reach get out there so it's just all broken they haven't figured out that part of the game yet yeah how whoa do you buy into like this simulation theory

talk i mean do you ever entertain it whatsoever you know i was i was talking to the scientist that i interviewed about it and i was like first of all do you really believe this and he was like i'm a scientist i'm not a philosopher I just try to look at the math. And so I stopped him and said, you know, eventually, because you talk about this at scientific conferences, and you also talk about it to the media, and eventually you use the word they enough times.

So maybe they are right. And I was like, who is this they? I want to talk to you about where, you know. And he had the most brilliant answer because I thought he was going to go the God route, and I was like, oh, fuck. But he had the most brilliant answer because I thought he was going to go the God route and I was like, oh, fuck. But he had the most brilliant answer. He said, Monsanto.

Bublé. Monsanto Bublé. He said, if we are finally at a point in our evolution that we are sophisticated enough to write these fundamental bits of code, because that's the whole point of this. Who's to say that we aren't a simulation if we can write our own simulation of a very small portion of the universe? Well, if we're sophisticated enough to write our own, a very small simulation, who's to say that hundreds of thousand years in the future, we couldn't

simulate the whole universe. So maybe the they is just us. Yeah. Simulating the past to figure out where they came from. We're an iPhone. Well, I said that my take on the simulation theory was that we live in the future like those gray aliens. That's us. That's what we really look like.

We have no sexual organs because we figured out a way to reproduce through genetics. Genetic mutations don't exist anymore. You're just outside of the body completely. We have giant eyeballs with built-in sunglasses because we completely fucked up the environment. We need sunglasses everywhere we go. We don't have a mouth anymore because we talk with our brain and we're bored we we fucked up we engineered all the fun out of reality and so we went back to see where we came from we went back to the roaring 20s of the technological age the time where people were still sending dick pics

to people on facebook and nutty shit was still going on. No one knew the rules. This is the wild west of the internet age. That's true. We live in a future that's just not fun. We've engineered all the good times out of it. And what we've decided to do is go back to the roaring 20s of when it all was fucking wild and crazy and you could get bit torrent still.

When we were watching Rejected. You guys remember Rejected? My spoon's too big. My spoon's too small. We've been talking about this for so long, and although I am joking around when I say that, I don't really believe that we are the aliens because I don't really believe anything.

I don't really believe, yeah. I mean, it's hard to believe something without good evidence, but it's interesting to philosophize on it. And it's also interesting that that sort of archetype, that alien, that sort of really stereotypical alien, it repeats itself over and over and over again with the big head, the little skinny body. So does religion. If you look at all of the lore built into religion across so many cultures, the virgin birth story, the resurrection story, so many religions use that.

Yeah, but as far as like the way a human looks and the way a gorilla looks. You look at other primates and the way monkeys look, we have to figure we all came from some very similar source at one long, long distant part in the past. If you look at a gorilla and then you look at a person and then you look at an alien, it's like, yeah, that's how it goes. Yeah, I mean it doesn't seem that far-fetched. Why would we develop scales or have a shark fin or some shit? That's not it goes. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem that far-fetched. Like, why would we develop, like, scales or, like, have a shark fin or some shit?

That's, like, not our evolutionary lineage. And, by the way, they're developing all these artificial skins, some of them with spider silk that they believe is going to be bulletproof. They're talking about engineering human skin with fucking spider silk. So you become, like, some bulletproof person. Do you know how fucking nuts that's going to be? When people don't tear open anymore, like you can't like – Like that's what it's going to be – that's what it's going to take for people to stop fucking – like having gun violence. But what if you –

Is that we all become bulletproof. Yeah, but what if you couldn't feel shit when you like were touching each other? Well, and – If you have bulletproof skin. I mean, you could only shoot for the balls. Everyone's aiming for the dick. Because nobody would want a bulletproof dick. Your genitals would be the only thing that wouldn't be bulletproof.

Yeah, you would need that. I mean, you know that there are people who have a genetic deficit where they can't feel pain. And it sounds like a perk, but it is not. They usually die because they break bones. They'll have internal bleep. They'll get in accidents and they won't know. die because they break bones they'll have internal bleed they'll get in accidents and they won't know well that's also been the speculation for people that do a lot of uh body like like piercing their balls and craziness like intense body mod like yeah things under their skin yeah they say that

they're having they have a hard time feeling things and like real severe pain is like the only thing that lets them know that they're alive. Yeah. Like there's a disconnect. Yeah. Between that mechanism. They say that a lot of people who choose to have, get, let animals fuck them, like a lot of those guys have the same thing. Yeah, that's weird.

One of the, this is not true. I'm talking about it. Brian has Pierce Polo. And we brought it back to the dolphin fucking. Mr. Hands. It's a nice callback there. Mr. Hands is a very famous internet video of a guy who got killed while a horse was having sex with him.

And they actually made a documentary about the whole situation. It's called Zoo. Because they realized there was a whole group of people that lived in Washington State and were having sex with all these animals. And they had all these video – because it was legal. And so they moved. They met on the internet and they moved to Washington State. And they all like went to this farm and and they got together animals well the animals just fucking animals the animals just fuck

yeah horses horses fuck them okay one of the happy guy and killed them but the horse is still alive yeah yeah that's fine he didn't even bleed yeah you get scratched but he the guy who's getting fucked by the horse has all these piercings all over his balls. And I was talking to a doctor about it. And he's like, there is very often those really self-destructive people have like an issue like feeling pain. Yeah, I could see that. Whether it's a psychological block or an actual physical block.

So what does that say about us with all the tattoos? I don't know. I just think they look cool. I think they look cool too. I like art. I like art. And I don't mind having it on my body. And people are like, well then it's forever. But I don't really think it is. What's this molecule

that you have on your arm? That's dimethyltryptamine. Ah, I did a piece about the near death experience. Kind of questioning whether it was just because of DMT that people feel that way. And also the alien abduction experience. The alien abduction experience and the near death experience, all of them they believe may be influenced by DMT.

We know our brain makes it. We know the lungs produce it. We know it's produced in the liver. And we also know it's unbelievably psychoactive. And that just feels like a little bit more rational an explanation to me. Certainly for the alien abduction thing. Yeah. The alien abduction thing.

What is that, you bitch? A new present. You're getting presents on air, on the podcast. Oh, he stopped recording like hours ago, didn't he? I got you a present. It took me forever to find that. It's a cuckoo clock. It's a chimpanzee cuckoo clock for the studio.

That's amazing. Every hour it comes out and goes. That might be the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life Thank you brother That's awesome man Oh I love it Look it's a cute little monkey That's amazing

Well if it's a chimpanzee it's an ape not a monkey thank you Thank you Even though my production company is called Talking Monkey And my t-shirt company is called Higher Primate There you go I like that I have an issue with monkeys I don't know what it is Well we have a common ancestor Yeah I know. I don't know what it is. Well, we have a common ancestor.

Yeah, I know, but I'm I don't know. But you are an ape. Yeah, I think for sure. Much like the chimp and the gorilla. Yeah, what's the difference? Monkeys have tails, right? And they're more cunty. There's only five apes. There's five great apes. So there's us. Great ape.

Let's see. Can we name them all? Us, gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. And also there's a lesser ape. Oh, what's the lesser ape? Don't say it. That's rude. Yeah, don't be racist. It's not a baboon.

Don't be racist. I can't remember. And then the rest are monkeys. The rest of the primates are monkeys. Do you believe that there is an undiscovered primate living in the pacific northwest that people believe that no they know is bigfoot no no we have to ask everyone now we're so but we're come on we would have found it already okay first of all do you know who says yes who says yes jane goodall she's convinced she thinks

there's a bigfoot yeah she's convinced she She thinks there's a Bigfoot? Yeah, she's convinced. She said that there's far too many stories that are exactly the same. The images throughout time. What's a mythology word? A pictograph over a thousand years ago. Does she think there's a Loch Ness too? She wants to believe. Yeah, I guess so. I'll believe it when I see evidence. Well, you know, they know that

a gigantopithecus existed alongside human beings as recently as 100,000 years ago. In fact, there was bones of them that were discovered in one of those Chinese medicine places. What's a gigantopithecus? Gigantopithecus is an actual bipedal ape that existed as recently as 100,000 years ago, possibly more recently. It lived alongside people. It was eight feet tall, huge.

Where? In Asia. It may have came down the Bering Straits along with people. And the idea is that if they were intelligent, and they probably are, just like, you know, if they're bipedal, they might be the only other option. Did we fuck them? Because we fuck Neanderthals. I mean, there's Neanderthal DNA in many humans.

Yeah, but isn't that under dispute whether or not we fuck them and whether or not we just have their trace DNA in our system? How would we get it without fucking them? I'll pull that up because I don't understand. We fucked them. Do you think we fucked them or they fucked us? Or they fucked us. Either one.

Did they fuck the girls or did the men fuck the females? I don't know. But we probably double fucked them because they are no longer around and we still are. Yeah, we totally fucked them. There's actually – I'm going to do a piece on it. I just got my kit in the mail. Nat Geo has this like genotyping – this, not genotyping, but this genographic project where you can do a

cheek swab, send them your DNA, and they will give you like the background of your ancestry. Yeah, I'm all monkey. They're going to find out I'm not even a fucking human. It's something like you have to do a monthly thing. I was going to do it, but then I found like it was a subscription, some kind of subscription.

A study cast out. Here it is. Study cast out on human Neanderthal interbreeding theory. Cambridge going to do it but then i found like it was a subscription some kind of subscription a study cast out here it is study cast out on human neanderthal interbreeding theory cambridge scientists claim dna overlap between neanderthals and notice how i said neanderthals neanderthal yeah smart person yeah podcast uh and modern humans is a remnant of a common i see yeah it could be that that could be the case also. Huh. Or we could have fucked them. Come on. How do they really know?

For sure we could. Well, somebody fucked one, no doubt. If they were alive at this, it's just whether or not they ever encountered. Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, if people fuck horses. Yeah.

Where's the mermaids then? No. Well, we never fucked. I don't think we ever fucked anything that lived in the water that looked like a person. Yeah, I don't think – well, and we wouldn't have viable offspring anyway. We couldn't fuck a chimp and make a baby. It would spontaneously abort.

But if they're close enough, like a dog and a wolf can have sex and they'll have viable offspring. Well, all dogs came from wolves. Exactly. Which is fuck – it's a mind fuck in and of itself. If we were close enough, we might have been able to have viable offspring, but we don't know. Oh, yeah. I bet some.

Well, maybe a few of them. Maybe the really smart Neanderthals. Or maybe we did fuck them, but maybe it is a trace from a common ancestor and we just fucked them for fun and that's not how we got their DNA.

Well, what fascinates me is, first of all, how few fossils there really are as opposed to how many things that ever lived. Yeah. And when they find something new like that Homo flores the the hobbit man from the isle of flores that makes you

like really geek out like holy shit 10 000 13 000 years ago there was this little monkey man yeah and they just found they just found like the biggest dinosaur yeah or not the biggest the oldest i'm sorry the oldest dinosaur i wish I thought I had it pulled up. What if Monsanto just paid for all these dinosaur bones? There was never really dinosaurs. And it's this huge thing just to control the population. I mean, dinosaur bones existed before Monsanto. You could have Googled.

It saved us so much time, you motherfucker. What if Monsanto was a different thing back then? But what's so funny is that there are creationists who really think that dinosaur bones were put into the ground to test our faith. That's brilliant. The ability to control really fucking dumb people is an art form. It really is. If you watch those dudes that are on the late night TV shows screaming and hollering and hooting about Jesus, there is an art form to that. That's true.

Sam Kinison, who's in my opinion, at least at one point in time, he was the greatest comedian ever. For like a year, I think he's the greatest comedian ever. That guy started out as a preacher. He was a Pentecostal tongue. Oh, jeez. He was, yeah. Speaking in tongues. I'm pretty sure he's Pentecostal.

That's crazy. Yeah, I think I should look that up because I'm a big fan of Kinison. But whatever he was, he was a reverend. And, you know, that's where he got his skill from on stage, that, like, commanding presence. That's a very specific type of performance art. Yeah, that's true. It's just getting rubes to send you money. I just found this article about this dinosaur.

It was called Nyasosaurus perringtoni. Wow. How big was it? It was small. It was the size of a Labrador. But they say that it came from about 240 to 245 million years ago, which would make it one of the earliest dinosaurs ever. And it would have been roaming Pangea at the time,

basically when all the continents were one big supercontinent. Whoa. Crazy. You know my favorite animal that nobody knows about? What? Terror birds. Terror birds? Like terror? Yeah.

Terror birds. What's a terror bird? They were gigantic predatory birds that roamed North America. Oh, okay. They prehistoric. That seems reasonable. I mean, because birds are dinosaurs. Like, we know that for a fact.

Dinosaurs evolved to become birds. Actually, the tattoo on my right arm right here is Archaeopteryx lithographica, which is basically a bird dinosaur. It was a total missing link. These things are fucking horrifying. I think birds today are kind of horrifying. Have you ever seen the documentary the BBC did on the Congo? And there's one gigantic prehistoric bird. I think it's called the Shoebill.

And it's this crazy ancient dinosaur of a bird. It's about five feet tall. And it has this enormous, huge beak beak and it's walking through the water all creepy eyed and fucked up with a huge beak i mean the beak is like three feet long and then it plunges into the water and kills this fish and pulls it out it's fucking weird because by the way that thing would eat a baby oh i'm sure you left a baby on the ground with that thing that thing would eat the fuck out of your baby. Yeah.

I feel like if you just – do you know any friends who have African gray parrots like as pets? Those things live like 60 years. And they're like – you look them in the eye and they look at you all creepy and you can see the dinosaur in them. Like they're fucking scary. I feel like they're scary. Yeah, birds are scary. Fuck birds. Fuck birds.

Birds are just cameras for the simulation. Our national animal is a fucking evil cunt of a bird our national animal look at the you ever look at an eagle in the eye they got that fucking twitchy that is the most reptilian bird you could ever possibly wrap your head around well yeah all the raptors really are i mean they're fucking raptors they're scary just like the raptors from jurassic park like They're fucking raptors. They're scary. It's just like the raptors from Jurassic Park. Yep. That's really the same kind of thing you're dealing with.

And they're smart. They're smart and they're evil. A lot of these birds are so smart. But crows. I love crows because people paint crows out to be really evil. I did a whole piece on crows. They're brilliant. They're clever.

They're clever as fuck. And they're beautiful. They think they might be as smart as dolphins. They're smart. They show clever as fuck. And they're beautiful. They think they might be as smart as dolphins. They're smart. They show that you can use tools. And I interviewed this guy who does crow research. They did this study where they wore masks and like just neutral masks. But they would do a helpful condition and then kind of like a harsh condition.

So the helpful condition, they would feed the crows. And then in the harsh position, they would capture them and tag them. And so then when they went outside wearing the masks, I think for up to seven years, maybe 10 years later, when they saw somebody in a mask that was in the helpful condition, the crows would come up and ask for food. When they saw them in the harmful position, they would squawk at them and try to attack them. And it wasn't even the person. It was just the mask.

Wow. They remembered faces. I mean, it's crazy. There's a lot of crows where I live. There's like, what is it, a murder of them? Yeah, a murder of crows. That live in my tree. That's amazing.

That's pretty dope, by the way. Yeah, I know. Your group is called The Murder. It's so cool. Almost as cool as calling yourself the Death Squad. That's crazy. Yeah, they're brilliant. And they use tools, right?

Yeah, and they snowboard. There's a video on YouTube of a snowboarding crow, which is like the best thing ever. It's like it finds a little roof tile or something, carries it to the top of a roof in Russia, slides down it, doesn't fly away, decides it was fun, and does it again. Like it does it four times in a row. So it's obviously using this as a tool to ski or to snowboard. Yeah, it's having fun. It's amazing.

Why are they so smart? I don't know. Fuck, marry, kill, dolphin, crow, or buble. I want to kill you. I'm going to kill. I'm going to marry you and then I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill the crow. All right.

I'm going to. I want to fuck and marry. Can I just fuck and marry Bublé? No. I don't want to fuck a dolphin, you guys. Well, you should marry the dolphin and fuck Bublé. That way Bublé gets douchey. You don't even have to get divorced because you're married to a dolphin. That's true. I'm just married to a dolphin.

Right. Yeah. It's no big deal. I'll marry the dolphin. Yeah. You say, look, I would love to marry – and it's not even cheating because it's not even a person. Yeah, that's true. I'm sure that's how the guys who fuck horses look at it too. Probably. I'm not really cheating on my wife because it's not even a person. Yeah, that's true. I'm sure that's how the guys who fuck horses look at it too.

I'm not really cheating on my wife because it's not a real person. It's just a horse. I would kill Buble, fuck the crow, and marry the dolphin. Yeah, of course you would. Thanks for your contribution, Brian. Really, really, really super sweet. Appreciate it. You're the best.

I wanted to ask you about Ambien because that's one of the stories that's on your website right now. Yeah, that's a piece we just published on Monday. Tell me what the fuck is going on with Ambien. So it's interesting. I was talking to Ariana about kind of like story ideas. This Ariana Huffington? Yeah, yeah. How cool are you that you get to say Ariana?

It's like saying Elvis. You don't have to say the last name. I was talking to Ariana. And we were just coming up with – Me and that bitch, we were just coming up we were talking about what kinds of things people want to hear about what's on a lot of people's minds it was actually her idea

so many people take Ambien and they sleepwalk and they sleep drive and they sleep eat and they sleep fuck and they wake up and they don't remember any of it why does that happen and so I started doing some research I talked to this doctor um named steven posetta and he prescribes a lot of ambien but he also helps people get off

of ambien he's a sleep doctor oh what a tricky bitch he is what a fucking tricky web he weaves he gets you off and he goes listen as long as you don't take it every day well and that try again that's the really crazy thing about Ambien. It's supposed to be a short-term prescription. You're not supposed to take Ambien for longer than 10 days. So a lot of people who have chronic sleep problems, they'll take it once a week or something. Well, it's just amazing that we live in this culture of addiction where so many people are addicted to cigarettes and coffee and things that don't fuck up your everyday life as far as you're functioning too much. Exactly, yeah.

But we're completely triggered into them and addicted to them. That we would be so – we would so readily prescribe things and just hope the person we're prescribing them to has good self-control. Yeah. Because if they don't, they're going to be physically addicted. If I give you a bottle of OxyContin and I say, hey, man, here's 30 pills. Don't take more than one of them in a day.

And you go, okay. And then you just take 10 of them. And then you're fucking Gonsville. And then you start shaking and you're coughing and you need them. What did I do? Did I just trust a dummy? Exactly. And you could have them take them one a day and they'll still get addicted.

OxyContin is extremely addictive. Benzodiazepines. There's a reason that they say do not quit taking this medication without speaking to your doctor because you can't. You'll go into withdrawal. I mean if you're on Valium, Xanax, you can have grand mal seizures when you try to get off of it. You have back spasms. I mean you can die. The idea is that the pain is so bad that we have to give you this and we have to take the risk.

We have to take the risk. We have to take the risk. Yeah. That seems like a crazy way. That's what it is for everybody. It's all about the risk. The people who take Ambien, the reason they continue to take it is because they're weighing the risk against the benefits. They know there's a risk that they're going to fucking walk out into traffic. I know.

They know that – but their lives are so destroyed by not sleeping that it does help them you know it actually bothers me because i did this piece and all these people are like oh yeah what pharmaceutical company paid you to or like you know or this is so anti-big pharma everybody thinks that you have an agenda when you write science but really i'm just trying to look at the available evidence and write about it a lot of the available evidence when i looked into ambien showed that it's risky. It's really risky, a drug. But it does help people.

You know, there's always two sides of that coin. That's the real issue, isn't there? It's like for some people, if you have good self-control, you can use it as a tool. But the issue is that there's a lot of people who do not have good self-control. What should we do? Should we make things completely unavailable? And that comes to the argument of personal freedom when it comes to alcohol. Or should we make it completely available?

When I'm talking about ecstasy and acid and GHB and all these things that I've done, I had so much control back when I was doing drugs because I'm a pretty kind of paranoid person. And I don't drink because I never like feeling drunk. I don't like feeling out of control. You're paranoid but you're doing ecstasy and ghb at the same time exactly that's my dumbest move there and i never did ghb again after that and i've only done ecstasy maybe like i say only like 10 times i've done acid maybe like five times but i would definitely when i look back at my drug history i experimented with drugs i would never became addicted to any drug I ever did.

Yeah. I've never fucked with anything that's completely addictive. I've never tried heroin or meth or coke or any of the ones that are, I just saw too many people just lose everything. Exactly. And, and still to this day, more, I've seen more people over the last decade or so fall apart because of pills than anything. Yeah. And I played with pills for a little bit because I liked downers. I liked drugs that I could have fun on and then go to sleep on. And the problem with things like Xanax, for example, which I really liked back in the day,

is that for somebody who actually does have a little bit of anxiety, you take a dose of Xanax that's maybe a little higher than you're supposed to, and you feel so good, but you also feel so sober. Like, you're fucked up in that you feel more sober than you've ever felt in your life and so you're talkative you're warm you're emotional but then

you can go to sleep at night because it's a downer i mean it's very easy to sleep on these drugs you wake up refreshed you don't feel like you were doing drugs the night before you don't fucking remember anything that happened i mean it's the same reason that people probably abuse Ambien. You feel good when you're on it. So Xanax makes you feel sober? It made me feel sober. Definitely. So do you normally feel high? No, I think it's that people who are anxious maybe have a little bit of an edge all the time, you know, maybe a little stress. And I also struggle a lot with depression. So I actually do medicate. I take an antidepressant every day. I take a very low dose of Celexa and I know that I need it. I know what I'm like when I'm on it.

I know what I'm like when I'm off of it. I know that my brain chemistry is such that a mild selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor helps me prevent having major depressive episodes. It helps me be functional. And so now I am taking something that's a daily maintenance kind of thing. But back in the day, I think that a lot of my experiments with drugs were attempts to self-medicate. And when I would take something like Xanax or Valium, I felt sober. Have you tried anything like 5-HTP?

Have you tried any natural ways? Yeah. I mean, and I think that for some people, it's a difference between talking about just kind of elevating your mood when you're having a tough day and treating clinical depression. Yeah, exactly. Is this something that you feel runs in your family's genetic history? Yeah, it does. And I've dealt with it since I was a child. And actually, it was only last year that I started taking meds for the first time.

My whole life I've been in therapy, and I've tried to work really hard to not have to take medication. And sometimes I think it takes somebody kind of really hard to not have to take medication. And sometimes I think it takes somebody kind of hitting a bottom or going to a place. It's the same thing with people who actually abuse drugs and finally need to get off of him. They go to a place where they go, I don't ever fucking want to go there again. And that tells them, okay, I need to go into rehab. For me, my antidepressants were kind of my rehab from, from my fucking brain, you know, my brain, I know that I have clinical depression and I know that it's a biological illness. You know, mental illness has a foundational, um, um, root in your biology. And, and so I've done the

intervention with talk therapy my entire life. I continue to do it. It wasn't enough for me, you know, but I tried it for many, many years. And I think that I just convinced myself that I would be okay. But after enough bad behavior and after hurting kind of myself and enough people in my life, I finally decided this is something that's important for me to do. And now I really advocate for kind of trying to erase the stigma with mental illness, trying to be as open. It's not easy, but trying to be as open about it as I can. So many people struggle with it. And it's one of those things, almost like obesity that we see in this country where there is a fair amount of people, for example, who eat like shit and they're fat. And then there's some people who are morbidly clinically obese that have something wrong with them. You know, like, like nobody gets to be 600

pounds without some sort of like mental illness or without some sort of biochemical problem. And I think for mental illness, it's the same kind of thing. There are people who can kind of work through it with a lot of talk therapy. And there are people who have such a difficulty, such a kind of biochemical difficulty where they need medical intervention. And I would love to see it if we could start changing public perception about mental illness to look at it just like, you know, somebody has diabetes, they have to fucking take insulin. And nobody goes, oh, you're just not thinking positively enough. If you just think more positively, your cells can take in sugar. Well, it's always ignorant when anybody tries to explain to you what's going on with your consciousness or your body. That's, it's crazy. And it's one,

it's things that people do because they don't like to see excuses in themselves. So they try to squash them. They do in other people. And what I say – I actually did a piece a long time ago about depression where I talk about it. I was like I have studied this from a neuroscientific perspective. But I also know what I'm talking about because I suffer from it myself. And this is what I've done. And I urge anybody who needs help to get help or whatever. But I talk about the biochemistry and I talk know some of the kind of biological causes of depression but one of the things that i say

in the video is like i'm so sick of people who will come into comment boards and be like oh you know just fucking buck up or whatever i'm like you know what i don't fucking want to be depressed trust me if i could just will myself out of this i would because whatever kind of pain it causes you to watch somebody who's depressed bitch and moan or cry if you if you've known somebody in your life who suffers from depression and most people do and if you've been there for them through a depressive episode and it hurts you to see how much pain they're in the pain that they're in is worse than however much it hurts you trust me they don't want to be going through it same argument i say for people who are fucking pro-life when they're're like, yeah, fucking abortion.

I'm like, you think anybody wants to have a fucking abortion? No, nobody's out there going, I want to get knocked up so that I can kill the fetus inside of me. Of course not. They want the option if there's a worst case scenario situation. So you feel like this is a universal situation that all people that suffer from clinical depression, that it's just some sort of imbalance in the chemicals that your brain, your body produces. I wouldn't say it's just. I think that the nature-nurture argument has to come into play

because this is the problem with neuroplasticity. It's the problem and the perk. If you have, let's say, lower than normal levels of serotonin or dopamine or norepinephrine or whatever the combination is that causes your specific depression, if you have lower than normal levels of that, it's going to cause a lot of, or it's going to contribute to a lot of depressive thoughts. Say that you have a lot of environmental things that happened in your life. You had a difficult childhood or you experienced trauma or whatever the case may be. Combined with this, the patterns in your brain, the actual networks in your life, you had a difficult childhood or you experienced trauma or whatever the case may be, combined with this, the patterns in your brain, the actual networks in your

brain are going to be reinforced in these depressive ways. So you immediately have a thought, for example, and you might go dark on that thought. You might look at something as a glass half empty kind of way instead of a glass half full way. And then what you're doing is you're reinforcing these. So talk therapy can actually help you form new neural networks to come out of it. But sometimes that's not enough for some people because there's still a strong biochemical basis. So they may need both. But I definitely think that drugs are never the answer without some form of therapy. You've got to work through your day-to-day issues too. You've got to

have some sort of cognitive behavioral intervention so that you can learn how to cope with the difficulties of life because everybody has a lot of difficulties in life and people who have mental illness, it's just that much harder to get through the day. It's that much harder to have a relationship. So what's the debate? To keep your job. What's the debate in the buck-up department?

The debate is that- I mean, I don't think it's a legitimate debate. It's not. It's not. It's trolling. Well, it seems like though that before you try any sort of chemical intervention into your consciousness, you should definitely try to get your health in order. I think you should. And I think that it also depends on where you are in the spectrum. Obviously somebody who is severely schizophrenic who is having a schizophrenic episode who is out on the streets.

You see some of these homeless people who is out on the streets. You see some of these homeless people who are out on the streets and they're talking to themselves. That person needs Haldol. That person needs medical intervention quickly. Sometimes the medical intervention has to come first so that all of the other stuff can take place because they're that ill. Other times, if we're talking about generalized anxiety, if we're talking about certain levels of depression, it may be the case that getting your diet in order, talking through some of your relationship issues, your work issues, all those things can exacerbate. Then you'll actually kind of be able to tell, you know, a lot of things are going well in

my life. I'm feeling really good, but I still just have these days where I start fucking crying for no reason. And I'm thinking about ending it all. And it's like, well, where's that coming from? You know what I mean? That might be something that we need to talk about and try and have intervention with. But somebody who is bipolar, for example, they're not going to be able to work on getting healthy because they're so mentally ill, their brain is so ill, that it's going to induce certain behaviors that are counter to their health.

counter to their health. So being able to get on the lithium, for example, to kind of tamp some of the manic behaviors like having unprotected sex or going out and binge drinking or whatever. You hear that, bitch? She's talking about you. No. Really? Where did this come from? I want to hear a backstory. No. I just hang out at comedy clubs. Nobody's getting laid at comedy clubs. I'm joking around. I'm just joking around. Nobody's getting laid at comedy clubs. I'm joking around. I'm just being a silly.

But yeah, I mean, those people, they may need medical intervention first. When you talked about doing Xanax and having that feeling that you were sober, wouldn't you think that would be like the ideal state of consciousness? Have you ever tried to re-engineer that and find what the right mixture is to hit that ideal state of consciousness all the time. I'm just so paranoid now about altering my consciousness through drugs that it's like I'm finally at a place in my life where I'm pretty, pretty stable. I know that I take the Celexa every day or the Citalopram, and I like the dose that I'm on.

For example, and I know that I'm in a room full of men and probably most of the people that are listening right now are dudes. Well, there's at least one man here. But so dudes, plug your ears while I say this. But I talk to my shrink sometimes about the fact that like one time a month, for example, I get a lot more emotional. And she says, you can up your dose during that week. I personally don't want to up my dose during that week.

I don't like the way that I feel, but I also don't want to just medicate that out of myself. I'm on the right dose right now that I can still cry. If something sad happens, I still cry. I'm not a zombie. I'm not numb to my emotions. I found the right level so that I don't always just cry for no reason or so that I don't have like a major depressive episode that I feel like I'm never going to get out of. But I don't have like a major depressive episode that I feel like I'm never going to get out of because that I think I can't speak for anybody else. But for myself, the way that my depressive episodes worked or they happened was just like if you've ever taken acid or you've been on a drug at a certain point, you're like, this is never going to stop.

And it kind of sucks. Like you kind of have this this fear, like, is this ever going to go away? Or is this what I'm like now? And that's how it would feel to me when I would go into a depressive episode. It's like I'm so sad and I'm crying. I'm so low and I don't think I'm ever going to come out of it. And that's when I think for some people, you know, bad things like suicidal thoughts or ideation start to come into play. That's also when us guys run. We run like the wind.

All right. All right. Tickle you. We start crying for no reason. Yeah. And girls, oh, man, we cry for no fucking reason. Or you tickle. That's good. That's better. Cry crying for no reason yeah okay girls oh man we cry for no fucking reason or you tickle that's good that's a better crying for no reason is a hard one crying for no reason is a hard one so i'm going to give you a word of advice all you guys who are listening no matter what she says if she starts crying for no reason and she can't figure out and she and

you go but do you want this no but would you want this no no what you need to do is you just need to put your arms around her really just put your even if she tries to push you away just put your arms around her push you away are you advocating rape no no don't need to do is you just need to put your arms around her. Really? Just put your, even if she tries to push you away, just put your arms around her. Even if she tries to push you away. Are you advocating rape? No, no, no. Don't try to have sex with her. Don't try to kiss her. Don't, there's such a difference between sexual intimacy and emotional kind of almost paternal intimacy.

Now you're just talking crazy. Just put your arms around her. I'm giving you the advice of your life right now. I've dated girls exactly like that and I've had to do that exact same thing. And it works, right? It does. It works. She will freak out, but you just have to squeeze her. I'm giving you the advice of your life right now. I've dated girls exactly like that and I've had to do that exact same thing. And it works, right? It does. She will freak out, but you just have to squeeze her. And then she will calm down because what she needs is to

feel like you don't think she's crazy and no matter what, you still love her. And she'll get through it. You are supporting crazy behavior and I'm not having it. Tell that bitch to get her shit together. No, no, no, no, no. And just go to the bar and drink with your friends.

Oh, my God. Don't listen to Joe. Whatever you do, don't listen to Joe. Bring the pool to you. I want you to get in your car. I want you to put Sweet Home Alabama on and crank that shit. And just drive, man. Just get away.

Okay. Single guys who want to stay single. Listen to Joe. It get away. Okay. Single guys who want to stay single. Listen to Joe. It's not your problem. Listen, there are certain tasks that you do not want to take in life. There's a guy who's making a fucking monument to Crazy Horse. He didn't complete it. His children are trying to complete it.

You know why? He tried to get too crazy. Don't get too crazy. If this girl matters to you, if she is the girl, if you want to marry her, if she's your life, I do. Why would you do that if she's all crazy? Because you love her anyway. But what if you just met her and she's already all crazy? Do you take on that task?

I'm sorry, but all girls, it's part of being a girl is being a little crazy. Wow, you're so wrong. All guys are a little bit aggressive. Not Brian. Not me. Brian's not even remotely aggressive. He might be your ideal man. You've never been aggressive

in your whole life? No, no. He is absolutely not aggressive. I've fought off girls that were being aggressive. He's not aggressive with guys. He's not aggressive with girls. You're right.

I shouldn't speak in generalities. He's a rare bird. I've never met anyone like him. It's not uncommon for guys to be somewhat aggressive and that comes on different scales. I don't even know what you're talking about.

And it's not uncommon for girls to be emotional. I don't want to say crazy. talking about. And it's not uncommon for girls to be emotional. I don't want to say crazy. Look, I eat so much edamame and almond milkshakes. Yeah, the estrogen. You've got all of those phytoestrogens in you. By the way, it's all GMO. Yeah, it is.

That's true. Everything he eats is GMO. And you'll become docile. He's growing fucking breasts. Huge area of all this. Yeah. That is somewhat true that if you eat too much soy, your body – And smoke too much weed.

No. I think the real issue is that soy has a lot of – it has high levels of phytoestrogens, but there's absolutely no reason to believe that eating plant estrogens are going to affect your own human – it's a completely different molecule. What if you're a vegetarian? You're not – it's not going to affect you. That's like saying that if a girl swallowed a bunch of cum,

she would become more manly because there's so much testosterone. First of all, you don't know anything. They would. They'd get stronger. They'd think better. Did you know there's a tribe in New Guinea, not just one tribe, but many, that force the boys at a very young age to ingest their sperm. And it's not just like one of them.

It's really fucking crazy. There's like many, many islands where they practice this, where they take these boys away from their mother at a very early age, and they live in these bachelor houses. They live with men, and the men give them sperm to make them grow. And they think it helps them grow. In Africa, there are many, many, many areas in Africa where they still eat bushmeat, where they'll still kind of murder chimpanzees, gorillas, and they'll drink their blood because

they think that it gives them life force. It thinks that it makes them stronger. There's a lot of lore connected to that. It's not true. The same way that drinking sperm would not make you grow faster. You say that, but meanwhile, these guys are the baddest motherfuckers on earth. You go there, they're flying through the air and climbing trees. Alright, just so everybody

knows, Joe Rogan is advocating drinking your own semen. Joe, did you watch a documentary? That's not even advocating your own. How scientific are you? Did you watch a documentary on this? Little boy's doing this. No! Look, it's fucking disgusting, but it's something that's going on right now. I was having this conversation with a buddy we were talking about,

Greg Fitzsimmons, last night. We were talking about circumcision and how crazy it is. It is crazy. I feel like if I had a little boy, I would not circumcise a little boy. Of course you wouldn't. What do you mean? Of course you wouldn't. Yeah, it's like unnecessary mutilation.

A child – It's prettier. Mutilation. A child just died recently because of that. Oh, no. That's horrible. They did it at home. Someone did it at home.

The kid bled to death. Both of my sister's kids, both of them, went to high-tech new hospitals and both of their – shit got – like they fucked up the first time. So they had to go back months later, put them to sleep and redo it. Oh, my God. Both of them though. Both of them. Put them to sleep. months later, put them to sleep, and redo it. Oh, my God. Both of them, though. Both of them. Put them to sleep.

Put a baby to sleep to fix their dick. Jesus fucking Christ. For no fucking reason. For no reason. It's so dumb. Yeah. But the idea. It's tradition.

Yeah. That's all it is at this point, is tradition. But you get creeped. Have you been with a guy that's had that cock before? Yeah. No, I have. Does it creep you out a little? No, I've been with like three guys that were

She's smart, dude. She's not a dumbass. By the way, it looks... Hey. Whoa. I'm just saying that's big numbers.

Like three. Most girls are like, I saw one once. I'm a very progressive liberal girl, all right? But... What does that mean? You fuck African guys?

No, no, no. No, no, no no no no straight to the motherland but I do think that a lot of more progressive and liberal thinkers maybe people

who have more liberal parents are probably people who are less likely to be circumcised is it hard to date you because you're so smart oh I mean like

no I mean like most relationships are you in attracted to smart guys so that's usually not an issue so you're out dude but but by the way just so you know mean, is anybody here an un?

You're all circumcised here? An un? Yeah, that's what we call them, an un. Oh, no. You're all circumcised? Yeah. Trunk monkeys? Guys who are uncircumcised, by the way, in case if you don't know, it looks the exact same when it's hard.

Yeah, we've seen porn. It looks the same. We know. Why does it freak anybody out? The extra skin freaks people out because I'm really tired. Whatever. The sleeping bag ween porn. It looks the same. We know. Why does it freak anybody out? The extra skin freaks people out. Because I'm really tired. Whatever. The sleeping bag weenie.

It's nonsense. The sleeping bag weenie? Yeah. It's one of the dumbest things that human beings still do. And do under the guise, really, at the lowest levels of it, when the Orthodox Jews do it, when the rabbi has to suck the baby's penis to stop the blood. I don't want to talk about that. Yeah, you don't want to talk about that.

Yeah, that makes me really uncomfortable. It's craziness. I know. It's fucking religion. Beyond craziness. Fucking religion. Fucking religion. Yeah, indeed.

How much shit do you take, like, if you do something like this, how much shit do you take on Twitter, like, from people that are Bible bangers? Oh, you know, I don't have that many Bible beater followers, so I think they kind of know. I don't know. People are going to find out, because they're either going to troll you and pretend they're Bible beater followers. They might. Because, you know you know i am an atheist and i say it a lot you know so hopefully it kind of does but i feel like i need i did i did an episode of um of this

internet show called the point which is um a young turk's spinoff show and it's like an hour long just talk you know three people in a panel and a host and i hosted an episode that was all about atheism and i made sure that everybody on the panel was was an atheist and a lot of people were like ah so one-sided and i was like no no this isn't a fucking debate as to whether or not god exists that's not the point of this show the point of the show is to show you what it means to be an atheist where do we get our morals what kinds of people are we we've got to start getting rid of the stigma because honestly, atheists take more shit than a lot of minority groups.

And it's one of the biggest minority groups out there. But if you look across the board in positions of political power, it's a fucking death wish if you tell your constituency that you don't believe in God, you're not going to get elected. Yeah, it's amazing. The idea that doing things for just because they're the right thing to do and it's great for the community, like that's never considered. Like the people have to have some sort of a belief and some sort of a – Yeah, that they can't possibly get their morals elsewhere. Yeah, it's impossible unless there's a deity involved.

It's so funny when people are like, yeah, but thou shalt not kill. And I'm like, really? If there were never any Christianity, if there's never any Bible or I should say Judaism because it's in the first 10 books, if that never existed, we just would all be like fucking killing each other. Nobody would ever stop and go, probably we shouldn't kill each other. It's so fucking stupid. Like, it's insane. Well, it's just so weird, like, as we were saying before, that like, there are positive

aspects to the idea of living your life in, I want to say a pious manner, or a spiritual manner, because that's really tainted too. A moral manner. A moral manner. I strive to be as moral as possible. And loving. Yeah, golden rule. I feel like the golden rule is so kind of, it applies to everybody. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

And it's possible that if everybody followed that, most of the disputes that people have could be worked out. If you really treat people as if they are your brothers and sisters and you are all in this together. But we've got to figure out how to get everybody on that same road. Yeah. Because if two people can get along and a group of people can get along, then we can

all get along. Yeah, but the problem is- We just have to figure out how to treat everybody like they're in your group. We love the in-group, out-group status situation. We love teams. Everything comes down to that. Everything comes down to in-group, out-group psychology.

Whether it's religion, whether it's politics, it all comes down to us versus them. And it feels like so many people need a them in order to define an us. Well, they need that with Mac versus PC.

They need it with everything. They need it with SoundCloud. And I say they, but we do too. I'm sure that we fall victim to this. Verizon versus AT&T. Hello? iPhone? People get mad if you have AT&T. AT need it with everything. They need it with Samsung. And I say they, but we do too. I'm sure that we fall Verizon versus AT&T. Hello, iPhone. People get mad if you have AT&T

and they have Verizon. They'll talk shit about it. They'll be like, oh, I don't get any fucking service in your apartment. You can't even Google search while you're on the phone. Like, what do you care, man?

Why are you attached to me switching providers? And it goes back to our tribes of monkey people trying to stay alive by being as close together as possible. Yeah, and that outside those are invading. And it's funny because if you look at two of our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, they're very similar.

Actually, the bonobo used to be called the pygmy chimpanzee, but we know that they're two separate species. The bonobo only live in a certain part of the Congogo and they resolve all of their differences through sex they're like the most amicable species they just they're constantly fucking they're always sharing they're just these really positive sex crazed um primates whereas chimpanzees can be very violent and they have i mean they can also be kind but they have a strong um idea of in-group out-group status and they'll kill warring chimpanzees. They still fuck, of course, but they fuck for procreation. I mean it's a very different – they probably fuck for pleasure from time to time too, but it's very different.

Bonobos, when they're observed, they're just always having sex. Young with old, related, not related, while they're eating dinner with a baby on their back. They figured a way to stay out of the zoo. Just fuck like crazy and they'll never put you in the zoo. That would draw so many people to the zoo. The zoo doesn't want that. The zoo doesn't want reality. The zoo doesn't want people to just watch bonobos fuck.

They don't want to watch leopards kill gazelles either. The zoo doesn't let animals do what they actually do in the real world. Well, because they'd also have to be supplying gazelles to these. That would be the shit. It would, but it would be really expensive. Why would it be so expensive? Breed your own gazelles. Gazelles. Why not it be so expensive? Breed your own grizzels. Grizzels.

Why not? That's true. I mean, if you get them to have an animal and lock them in an area, the least you could do is give them some fun. I mean, give them the genetic thrills that are put in place, the reward systems. At least I feel like there's a push with some new zoos, hopefully. I mean, you're starting to see zoos combining with universities where we're seeing kind of animal behavior as really being a big part of the design of the zoo and worrying

more about an animal's well-being. Not just whether it stays alive, but it's psychiatric health. Yeah, I think that's really important. I was in Denver at the zoo and we were walking past this one exhibit and there was this one monkey that was by himself and he was wailing in agony. Just wailing. And you could tell he was going nuts he's in this cage people were spinning

around staring out there's nothing to do but swing from this rope to that rope it's a very small area and he was just screaming and it was like a tortured souls like listening to someone go insane yeah poor monkey that's fucked up you know how much is it worth to watch that guy in real life wouldn't it be better to like have him in the jungle and make a dvd of it and put it up on a big screen but this this monkey might have been born in captivity yeah you know what i mean it might not be able to go back into wild because it would just die but it's like when you go by someone's yard and they have a dog a big dog in a tiny little yard the dog's going fucking crazy that's not cool you're torturing this animal you're fucking with its life and if that's what you're doing when you're doing a zoo like shouldn't they have like

a minimal size at least with the intelligent animals i think they yeah and i think that new zoos are starting to do that the la zoo has a really good elephant enclosure because elephants are up there like elephants with um with apes were much more concerned right because of the um because of the cognitive functions of these animals. So a lot of zoos don't even keep elephants because they're not comfortable with it. Or if they're keeping apes. At least I hope to see more zoos trying. Because there is kind of an argument for and against zoos.

A lot of animal rights activists, which I would never call myself an animal rights activist, but I call myself an advocate for animal welfare. Because I am for using animals in laboratory research but i think that their welfare needs to be cared for um damn you're for for like monkeys or rabbits um use primates in animal research primates are you know i i have been i've been experiencing shifting views with primates i think that the laws have to be much more strict with primates. I would prefer to see primates only used for non-invasive research instead of invasive research. And I just hope that the places that are doing primate research really treat these animals with a lot of care.

They don't always, which is dangerous. What about playing the apes when they all get that shit that makes them smart and they get out? I liked the prequel. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was really good. Yeah, or what about that fucking 28 Days Later? Yeah. When they gave him that rage.

They gave him the rage. Yeah, that's true. That was like some sort of a drug they were working on. But that didn't happen in real life, though. That happened in the movie. No, but what did happen in real life is just as scary when you think about different diseases that do exist. Oh, fuck yeah. It's nutty how many we've created, too.

That's what's really scary how many people have created these biological weapons that if they got out wipe out giant cities whoops we just want to see if we can make it that's true i mean that's true and and we continue to to do this kind of research and what is this research mostly um uh funded by defense yeah i mean this is a lot of money and fucking people up. Exactly. That's so true. Do you know that bonobos will have sex in every combination except mother and son? That's the only combination. That makes bonobos more moral than people.

That's true. Because someone out there has some dude that's fucked his mom. Yeah, that's true. And it's like somehow they know, whether it's instinctual or they've kind of learned some sort of disgust signal through that because if they bred mother and son, they would end up with a lot of fucked up genetic problems. So they can fuck any others, but mother and son can't breed. It's fascinating. They must have just produced too many bad kids and then realized that.

So there's got to be a connection here. But how would they know who impregnated them if everyone's fucking everybody? I don't know. And they fuck face to face, which is really crazy to watch. Yeah, it's really, I mean, it's kind of cool to see them. They have sex like humans do. And most species don't. Most all species have sex from behind.

It's because you've got to look out for predators. They're up in the trees. Well, also a lot of animal sex, I would venture to guess, is kind of rapey. It's a little rapey. A little rapey. Yeah. Have you paid any attention to that giant chimp that they found in the Congo, the Bondo ape? No.

Yeah, they found this guy named Carl Amon. He's a Swiss wildlife photographer, and he started studying them in 96. They have some camera trap photos, and then they started sending expeditions, and they found it's a completely different strain. If you look at Google Image, you can see how big they are. They're fucking – there's a dead one. What is it called? The Bondo ape. Bondo ape.

Bondo mystery ape. National Geographic has some great articles on it. Don't you love Nat Geo? Love it. Love it. It's a complete different subspecies of chimpanzee, but they have a crest on their head like gorillas and they're enormous. And they nest on the ground. They don't sleep up in the trees because they're big, and they don't give a fuck.

And the locals call them lion killers. They say they have two different types of chimps. They do look like chimps, you're right. They're giant chimps. It's actually the same sort of creature that was in Michael Crichton's book, The Congo, that silly movie. The book was apparently very good. Crichton was a great author.

There was a lot of really good science. I mean, he gets very science fiction-y, but, like, come on. But he even got the color of them, because they have a gray color, especially when they get older. Sort of like how silverbacks turn gray. Yeah. These chimps turn gray, too. And they thought it could be some sort of a hybrid between chimps and gorillas.

They're not completely sure that it's not. Ooh, this is interesting. Most likely they think that it's just a subspecies that only exists in this one area called beely well yeah i mean it happens like like the bonobos they're only across a certain river in the congo and they just stayed there and evolved and they don't exist anywhere video of one of them eating a leopard oh that's amazing yeah they don't know if it killed a leopard but they know it ate it yeah they they're fucking huge these are like you know if you think about a regular chimp being 150 200 pounds and having the strength of whatever it is a 500 pound man how big are these things like three four hundred pounds five hundred pounds they're like

at least a hundred pounds bigger than a regular chimp they had a shred some of them that are six feet tall and they standing up they have camera trap photos of them that like they said that's a six foot tall chimp yeah a six foot tall chimp. Yeah. A six foot tall chimp. That's so no Bigfoot but that can exist. Yeah. No Bigfoot. Well I don't I'm just

saying that they've been looking for it for a really long time. But who's been looking you ever watch Finding Bigfoot. That's true. Not that they don't

know what the fuck they're doing but they don't know what the fuck they're doing. I think. But I'm sure somebody who knows what they're doing has looked.

Survivor Man. That's true. Survivor Man's badass. He is badass. He he's like really bad we had him on the podcast you did he's going to go and live in the forest and try to find bigfoot because he had an experience in alaska he had uh some bipedal thing making ape noises really loud 50 feet from his tent in the middle of nowhere he said why didn't he take a fucking picture he tried he tried to get out his camera but the thing ran away he was in his tent and he heard it walking around outside in the middle of nowhere. He said, Why didn't he take a fucking picture? He tried. He tried to get out his camera, but the thing ran away. He was in his tent and he heard it walking around outside

in the middle of the night and then he heard, He said it was really loud and it was only like 50 feet from his tent. He said it was the freakiest fucking thing he's ever experienced

in his life. That's insane. He knew it wasn't a moose. He was walking on two feet for sure. He knew it wasn't a bear. He wasn't making bear noises. He thinks it was an ape.

Wow. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, this has been a three-hour podcast. Holy shit. It went by in ten minutes. It really did. You're right. Listen, you're a fascinating person. Thank you very much for coming on.

Aw, thanks for having me. And if you ever want to come on again, if you ever need anything to promote, please let us know. The Olive Garden. Yeah, if you want to learn about the number seven. I kind of love the Olive Garden, by the way. Oh. What? Oh, love is in the air. I do love the Olive Garden, by the way. Oh! What? Love is in the air.

I do love the Olive Garden. It makes me nostalgic for the town I grew up in. That's me. Cool. Powerful Cara Santa Maria on Twitter, ladies and gentlemen. That's C-A-R-A, not Cara like that white trash bitch that you went out with in high school. Hey! All the Caras with a K are mad at me now.

Listen, I'm so sorry that I sacrificed our friendship just for a cheap joke. I really have no issue with Carrows with a K. God bless you. How about that? Thank you very much to everybody that sponsored this podcast. There's too numerous to mention. They are too numerous to mention, but I'll try.

Onnit.com, Ting, and the game. Kerosene. Kerosene Games. What is it? Bladeslinger? God damn it. You motherfucker. Can I say that somebody has, a friend, Jill, a friend of the show, has put together a Death Squad calendar that has all

everybody's dates. Your dates, Chrysler dates, Everlast's dates, Honey Honey's, mine, and if you go to DeathSquad.tv, it's DeathSquad calendar at the top. And then we also have some dates in San Diego, 12-12. I'm going to be there with a couple people. And then Improv, the 20th. And I'm going to be in Seattle this weekend.

But it's sold out, you dirty bitches. Sorry. You snooze, you lose. Bladeslinger is the name of the game. And it's $2.99 on the iPhone app store and it's pretty fucking sweet

and they're cool so go support them and go buy their what's $2.99 folks it ain't shit it's a lot of work these people put into it have some respect

have some respect for Cara Santa Maria and you can check out her page which is called Talk Nerdy to Me do you get it you fucks see what she's saying I could talk nerdy to Me. Do you get it, you fucks? You see what she's saying?

I could talk nerdy to you if you want me to. Yeah, you can find it on HuffPostScience. HuffPostScience, talk-nerdy-to-me. What do you know about RSS feeds? She don't know shit about RSS feeds. I can teach you. I can learn you. Thanks to everybody else.

Do we include everybody? Yeah, ting, ting on it. Good night. We'll be back tomorrow with the beautiful and talented Ari Shafir, our brother Ari Shafir, first time in the new studio. And that's it. Oh, and there's only a few tickets left for the End of the World show with Honey Honey, Doug Stanhope, Joe Diaz, and me, 12-21-2012,

out to Wiltern in L.A. Holla at your boy. Look, we love the fuck out of you guys. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Bye.