The Joe Rogan Experience - #306 - Christopher Ryan

Episode Date: January 3, 2013

Christopher Ryan, Ph.D., is a psychologist, speaker, and author of New York Times bestseller "Sex At Dawn".

The Joe Rogan Experience. I'm sorry if we allegedly got you too high before the show to talk. Well, that long commercial gave me a chance to calm down a little bit. Yeah, that's what those are good for. We stumble through those commercials. It's sort of like when you have a car and it's a manual and it can't start, but you can push that pitch and then pop the clutch and it'll start. And then once it's going, you're okay. That's what it's like. So the commercial acts sort of like a scaffolding for us to get our our our sea legs under us before we uh venture out into the podcast world right

so uh thanks for doing this man your book if people don't know it's called sex at dawn and uh it was suggested to me by our very good friend duncan trussell and uh i read it and i fucking loved it man it's a really really interesting stuff you know I use the the one one of the things that I read that was that I'd never heard before was the origins of the word Yucatan yeah that's really fascinating stuff man yeah it was a misunderstanding and that what the what is it a Mayan person I mean who would say what my mind yeah that what they were saying was essentially I I don't understand you. When they were asking, what is this place called?

Right. They were saying, I don't understand you. And that I don't understand you became, in a garbled sort of a way, what they described the area. Exactly. Describing it as I don't understand you. Yeah. It's amazing because it sounds so authentic.

If you say, well, we went camping in the Yucatan. It's like, you know, you sound like, you know, you're like fucking eating organic salads and doing the right thing. Yeah, you're out in nature. But meanwhile, you're at, I don't know, understand you. That's where you are. That is, in my opinion, like if you look at the whole human race, that's a good example of how screwball-y this whole system that we operate under is. Good word for it.

It's like, whoa, that's still the name. It's still America. How about that? How about there are still Indians? How about that's even more ridiculous? We name ourselves after some dude that nobody knows. You're asking a kid who Amerigo Vespucci, is that what his name was?

That's the guy who America's named after. Yeah, like the only Italian who ever did anything in those days, you know, other than write poems and shit. But as far as exploring, you don't hear a lot about Italian explorers. And we still celebrate Columbus Day, although it's incredibly clear now that Columbus was a huge asshole. Do you know about Columbus? Talking about, like, original encounters, right? When Columbus first arrived in Hispaniola on the first trip, he wrote a letter back to the queen

explaining what this place was like that he and his men had found, right? And it's amazing to read because the first nine sentences are all about how great the people are, how they, you know, if there's food, they share it without thinking. If you admire a piece of clothing, they give it to you without thinking. They're incredibly generous. They're incredibly healthy, beautiful, nicely formed bodies. They've got fruit

in the trees and all the fish they could possibly want. He said, with 500 men, I could subjugate the entire island. Wow. Or however many, 200 or whatever it was. But it's just this whole litany of how wonderful these people are. In fact, it's even thought by some historians that the reason the people are called Indians is not this whole thing about Columbus thinking he was going to India, right? It's actually that in this document that I'm describing to you, Columbus wrote, right it's actually that in this document that i'm describing to you columbus wrote

siguramente es gente que viven in dios which means these are certain certainly people who live in god wow indios and in spanish they're still called indios right yeah wow crazy huh wow i mean we came so close he could could have just said, fuck Europe. Yeah. Let's stay here. Right? Which other people did. Other explorers did do.

It's very difficult when someone's a cunt to turn them around. And it's very difficult when that's the culturally accepted way to live. What is that noise, man? Are you playing, like, shaman's shit in the background, dude? I thought it was crickets. Did you even know you were doing that? That wasn't on purpose, was it? It turned on by itself.

I think, like, it's on a... It was playing the... Never mind. Stupid stuff. You got bugs in your computers. Literally. Yeah, that sounded like there was some dude in the background with, like, a rattle. Yeah.

He was dancing in some way. Maybe trying to bring back the old days. It was the Joe Rogan theme on repeat in the background. like a rattle yeah dancing in some way maybe trying to bring back the old days it was the joe rogan theme uh on repeat in the background turned down super low the how i mean it would be so difficult when you grow up in uh the environment of the 1400s in europe which was just chaos and disease and war and famine and famine and all these goddamn problems. And then to abandon that once you got here, I think they probably couldn't do it. I think they were just so fucked up. And then also like Desperado from a couple of months in a boat on the ocean.

That's got to drive you fucking squirrely. Your feelings about human life have to erode. I mean, they have to. Your appreciation for human life has to erode. I mean, they have to. Your appreciation for human life has to erode. It's like really worst-case scenario. You take the craziest fucks you can find, people that are willing to get on a floating piece of wood,

and you're going to push it out into this never-ending ocean. And it might take a few months, and some of you are going to die. Who's in? Yeah. Who's in? There's a self-selection mechanism at work there. You ever seen the Herzog film, Aguirre, the Wrath of God? No. Oh, you've got to see that, man.

What is that about? It's about the conquistadors in Brazil. And the lead role is played by Klaus Kinski, who is this super intense dude. Actually, Mick Jagger was supposed to play the role, but he got sick or he had a concert or there was some delay. He couldn't do it, so they brought in Kinski. How many movies has Mick Jagger done?

I know of that one and one other one. Yeah? Yeah. No, Mick Jagger was the first choice. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

I love that shit. I mean, that's a great movie. But what was the other one do you know who was supposed to play Hannibal Lecter who was first offered the role and turned it down Keith Richards Jack Nicholson imagine that role with Jack Nicholson

it would have been different it would have been great but very different yeah it probably would have been equally great just in a different way you know people would go crazy no it must be anthony hopkins like relax no it must not be you know when nicholson first came to hollywood he was a screenwriter he wasn't an actor really yeah and he was uh he was living with this dude who was an actor trying to be an actor they were sharing a room somewhere or a place somewhere and the story as it was told to me was that Nicholson was so

unsuccessful selling stuff that he was ready to go back to Kansas or wherever the fuck he was from or yeah Kansas I think and his friend said just come to this audition with me man maybe you'll get an extra role or something just some money so he read for the role and the producer said Mr. Nicholson we don't need you for this, but if we ever need you, we'll need you very much. You think about that in terms of Nicholson. He's always Nicholson. Right. You know, he's always Jack.

He can't be anything other than Jack. Yeah. Yeah, there's an issue with guys that get to a certain role, sort of like, like sort of like a characteristic role, like Al Pacino, like he always has to yell now. Yeah. He's in like, he's always gotta have a big rant!

A big rant! Preferably blind. Yeah. Screaming, you know, like when he played the devil, that dude jumped a shark. Remember when he played the devil?

What was that? Was it a Keanu Reeves movie? Do you remember that? Devil's Advocate? Is that what it was? Yeah, he played the devil. I'm like, listen Reeves movie? Did you remember that? Devil's Advocate? Is that what it was? Yeah, he played the devil. I'm like, listen, the devil would not be so fucking verbose. The devil wouldn't be screaming at you.

The devil's quiet. The devil wouldn't even be emotional. You don't understand. You don't understand what real torture would be like. It wouldn't be some little fucking old dude screaming. Like, stop it. You're embarrassing yourself. Reptilian.

Evil's got to be reptilian with your obviously planned out rant you stop it devil you don't scare me you're not the devil that's the devil lying to you trying to trick you into thinking that he's not that not that scary that wasn't that was terence mckenna's idea of what um what aliens really were is that aliens would hide themselves in the idea of an extraterrestrial being that looked like us and walked like this and flew in a spaceship. They would hide themselves in that form as to not disturb us with their true identity, which would be so alien. Sure. It would be incomprehensible. Right.

So that, you know, he thought that that's what they were doing when they were appearing in such weird sort of classic forms. You're talking about the little elven things? The little greys with the big black eyes. Right, that flash around. Oh, yeah. Okay. Is that this is something that they would hide in? Terrence McKenna got me in a lot of trouble.

How's that? I was, well, this is the last time I took acid. I got some acid from a guy who sort of knew the Grateful Dead, and so the acid was coming from this pure source. Pretty sweet source, yeah. From the stream. So I said, yeah, i'll take some fine um and this guy gave me all this liquid right and i gave some to some friends and whatever because i

what am i going to do with 100 hits of acid you know i was like 35 or something and uh so one friend of mine is a psychiatrist and he's like 50 or something this is in spain and he had he had done acid back when psychiatrists would order it and you know from sandos and they just send it mail order and so he tried three hits and came back the next day and said yeah that's good it's clean it's mellow it's cool so i was reading terence mccann and all this shit about heroic doses right and i'd like done a bunch of acid when I was younger, but I never like, it had been a while since I'd approached anything you could call a heroic dose.

And so I thought this is the last time I'm probably gonna trip, right? I'm sort of at the end of this part of my life, I think. So I'm gonna go out with a bang. And I took four hits of this stuff. And it turned into a very intense afternoon that ended up with me a few steps from a psychiatric hospital. Phew. Dude.

Yeah. I think it was Howard Stern who had a story about taking acid and, like, losing his mind for, like, a couple of weeks. That he took too much. losing his mind for like a couple of weeks that he took too much you can you can get to a point on a psychedelic trip where you question reality to the to like to the brink of sanity you know you get like you don't you don't know if you're ever going to get back from this one yeah i mean honestly that's not a feeling that i've had much tripping and that's why i love tripping because i always felt i really had my feet under me and you know if i was with people and shit went down which it sometimes did um i was like the go-to guy you can keep it together right like i could always like okay get down to it's so funny we'd

like to be cocky and think that we can handle it because we've handled it before right but then all you have to do is just keep going with the level right go oh take five hits right you can handle it because we've handled it before. Right. But then all you have to do is just keep going with the level. Right. Go, oh, take five hits. Right. Can you handle four now? Right. Okay, can you handle five?

And then you're a baby once again. Well, the thing is recognizing where your limits are. Yeah. And approaching them, testing them, but not ever crossing them or disrespecting them. And that's the way you ride a motorcycle. I like to do dangerous things in a smart way so I don't fucking die. But I like doing interesting, exciting, crazy things. The problem with acid or any of the drugs that are not legal is that we don't necessarily know what we're getting.

If you go to a vodka store, a liquor store rather, and you buy vodka, you pretty well be assured that you're buying vodka. Right. I mean, it's pretty standard. Everyone knows the dosage. Yeah, right. Have a couple of shots, you're going to get fucked up. That's cultural sort of information that's passed on and super readily available.

Whereas with drugs, there's a lot of, are you sure? Are you sure? Is this okay? Yeah. Dosage. Have you done this? Where did this come from? Who got this? If you're smart, you're doing that. If you're not, you take some pill somebody gives you.

I used to do a lot of research. Well, I didn't do research. I wrote about research that was happening in the world of psychedelics, right? And people, so I gave talks at medical schools and, you know, I'd go around and sort of be the authority figure on this. And so people always came up to me afterward like, hey, you know the deal with ecstasy really is it dangerous is it not dangerous and it's always complicated because it's exactly what you're saying if you're mdma is one thing but what you're buying in a club is if you're lucky partly mdma it might not have any mdma at all or at least it's a minor ingredient and there's a bunch of other shit in there that's unregulated and uncontrolled and nobody knows what it is.

In Spain you can send ecstasy to a lab or there are guys in the clubs with labs that'll test it for you. Yeah I just got I got some tested the other day that smoked. I guess that was the big thing if it's smoked that means it's like almost 100% pure MDMA. And it was night and day difference from what I was used to taking. It was just like fall to the ground and melt. It was amazing. Right, right. It's a very different thing. And like you say, it's dangerous, you know, because the shit that they mix in them.

But acid LSD isn't really like that too much because it's very cheap and easy to make LSD relatively for a chemist. But isn't there bad LSD occasionally? Like wasn't that the whole thing in the 60s, like don't eat the brown acid? I think that was government propaganda and mass hysteria. Yeah, because LSD, as I, I'm no chemist, but I've been told LSD is like, if you set up a lab to make LSD, you just make LSD. There's nothing that's going to be cheaper or easier to make instead. Whereas MDMA is much more complicated and there's money in mixing shit into MDMA. LSD seems to me to be a legitimate threat to your sanity. There's quite a few people that have gone bonkers after big LSD hits. It seems to me that if you don't have a good

solid grip on it, it's possible for it to get away from you and you never get it back. Yeah. They suspected that happened to the Unabomber. Ted Kaczynski was a part of the Harvard psychedelic studies, like the LSD studies. Yeah. And when he got out of school, he went and taught for a few years to save up all his money so he could get this cabin and then start his attack on technology. But the thought was that they cooked his brain.

There was a documentary detailing it. I think it's called The Net. I think it's a foreign documentary. It's in subtitles. But look that up if you can. But do you really think Kaczynski was insane? Oh, well, obviously he was insane. You think so?

Killing all those fucking people. Yeah, but wasn't he operating essentially out of the same thing that you and I were talking about earlier where we said you got a people problem on that planet? Yeah. He was sort of like. Sort of, but he was murdering innovators. Yeah. That's not the way. That's insanity.

That's 100 percent insanity. If you thought that the world was doing something bad, that there was something wrong with how – wouldn't you work to try to change it? Why would you work to try to kill the people that are creating technology? Well, I mean that's the thing. If you think technology is the enemy, I'm not an advocate for the universe. I think that that's a limited way of looking at things because I think, look, technology, the way human beings operate is the technology will always constantly be moving forward. We're always going to try to innovate.

We're always going to try to create better and new things. But I think that same sort of mentality could be applied to cleaning things up or using things in a sustainable way. And I don't think that it's outside the realm of possibility for us to figure out a way to process pollution and make it turn into some sort of a clean fuel. I think the idea of making hydrogen or using hydrogen, hydrogen turns into water,

which is, you know, there's ways we can have fuel and energy in the future that we can't figure out right now, but there's potential in the future for cleaning up the environment, cleaning up the air, and actually using that as fuel. It is possible. I read somewhere just in the last few days like Norway or Denmark or one of those countries is importing garbage from other countries to use as a fuel source because they don't have enough of their own garbage. That's hilarious. Yeah. Yeah, they're so fucking smart in those little small european countries like iceland they threw all

the bankers in jail they're like you fucking assholes and and elected a lesbian to president powerful lesbian there's the net trailer by the way oh is this it lex we've lost radar contact no this is not that is not this brian stop it sand. Sandra Bullock? No, no, no. Really? No. No, it was a documentary, you fuck. Did you know that? Are you guys being silly over there? You did that on purpose.

Did you do that on purpose? It's not the net. You're sabotaging me. All right, so talking about the evils of technology, right? That day I took all that acid. I went into this park with this friend, we were lying under a tree and my friend was like, no, no, I got to walk, I got to move. I was like, okay, you move, man.

I'm just going to stay under this tree. I'm under this tree and it's this big, beautiful tree domed over and it's a, you know, you can see the blue sky behind the leaves twittering and stuff. It's just so nice. And I started getting into the vibe of this tree and I could actually like feel the vibrations of the tree the energy vibrations of this tree and and i would align my own energetic vibrations with the those of the tree and it was like a fucking brain orgasm it would just be like and like whoa and i couldn't take more than a few seconds of it so then i'd like get out of phase right and then just sort

of like this is all like with my conscious energies it's sort of dancing around getting into and out of phase with this tree's energy and every time it was like a full brain orgasm it was amazing wow so anyway i'd after like an hour or two of this i was exhausted i walked out i started to try to walk i got out I walked out from under the tree and I still heard this buzzing. The vibrations of the tree were sort of moving with me. I turned and I looked back and right above the tree were these high tension power lines. And the buzz was coming from the electrical cables on these power lines. I thought I was making love with nature. I was being fucked by technology, man. I felt so violated.

What do you think was going on then when you were trying to tune into the energy of the tree and you had all this electricity? Like, what was going on there? I'm some sort of, you know, energy overload, you know, frying the circuits in my brain. They say when you're around certain of of those towers you could feel it like you like it just feels fucked up it feels like there's we used to when i was a kid we used to take um fluorescent light bulbs out and if you walked under them with the light bulbs at night they'd light up get the fuck out of here they light up yeah wow what if that made the people that lived under them like havepowers? Could you imagine?

Everybody would want to live underneath that and take the chances if one dude became The Flash from a DC comic book. The Flash. It's like you grow up, you're a baby under electricity constantly. You just see things that other people can't see. But no, actually it fucks you, right? Yeah, yeah. It's not good to live under those things, is it? I don't think so. Yeah, I think it's...

Have they ever shown that, health-wise, to be... right yeah yeah it's not good to live into those things i don't think so yeah i think it's uh have they ever shown that health-wise to be if they did i doubt there would be houses underneath them still well i don't think there are houses underneath them go to burbank it's fucking crazy oh yeah out in the country they cut a line through the woods for them they don't build houses under them yeah those things are creepy as fuck It seems like a stupid way to do it. You know, in Europe, cables are... Fat metal cords. I mean, those are above ground, but most cables in Europe are underground. Yeah, why aren't these underground?

Why didn't they have them underground? Well, actually, they would worry about someone digging in there and hitting them. Ooh. Have you ever seen what happens when they fuck up and hit, like, a gas line and blow up a whole block? You know, I... Have you ever seen those? One of them happened recently. believe it was indiana it was unbelievable the destruction they someone tapped into a gas line and the house was just devastated yeah it just whatever happened it

was probably the pilot light in the uh the stove or something you know some sort of a gas leak there was no house it was nothing and then the houses next to it were all fucked up too, but it was just complete splinters. And these are like in our neighborhoods. There's bombs everywhere just waiting to go off, like high-pressure gas being pumped into almost everyone's house. You sound like Woody Allen. And everybody's cool with it. Woody Allen?

Why, does Woody Allen talk like that? Fearful. Bombs everywhere waiting to go off well that is a i mean if you're near a house that did that what you would start thinking like that it's just if you're a house that did that you wouldn't be thinking at all man what if you're fairly close like within a couple of blocks like you managed to survive but then you you'd stop and think about and go what the man yeah see pull up some photos, man. The Indiana house explosion. Oh, there you go.

Yeah. That's nothing, though. There's still a house. It's on fire and everything, but it's still a house. In Indiana, like, the house was gone. There was, like, no house. Yeah. It's like a tornado or something.

Well, we're just so willy-nilly with the fact that we've got gigantic sources of power at our grasp all the time. Electricity in every wall in your house. Yeah. And very few people even understand it. We just sew a cut, turn the light switch on, turn the light switch off. Yeah. No thinking.

Yeah. Meanwhile, some poor fuck has to put up those crazy cables. And hope that it doesn't give him cancer, too. Yeah. So this book that you wrote is, I would have to say, a very controversial book. Was it you or was it Bert Kreischer that was telling us the story about someone – was it Bert about bringing up Sex at Dawn and someone got angry? No, I bought it a long time ago when Duncan first started talking about it. He just got it, I think.

He told me – he's like, you should check out this book, man. And I was like, okay. So I bought it, and then I started reading it, and then I left it in my car. And then the girl I was dating at the time was like, what's this book? I want a book to read tonight. I'm like, all right, take that. And then right when I'm giving it to her, I'm like, wait, that was probably a really bad idea. Why?

Because she read it, and she was just like, oh, my God god this is so anti-marriage and blah blah blah and anti-relationship and stuff like that she she didn't like whatever she read so she got mad at me no no no no no she didn't know she just got upset she's like why are you reading this book like she almost got nervous you know that's hilarious you know what i uh first really one of the first people that read the book was i guess i could say his name what the fuck what was his name he was a child actor he was in nypd blue ricky schroeder do you know i'm talking about yeah we know ricky do you what did he say oh fuck i shouldn't tell you no please tell me he's crazy he's a nice guy but go ahead tell the story story is that, okay, so I met him at LAX.

I didn't know who he was. We started talking. We're on the same flight to Spain, actually London and then Barcelona, right, because he was living in Barcelona for a while. And he asked me what I did. I said I was about to publish this book. I had one in the galleys, the pre-publication copies. And we talked about the book, and then he came back.

He was in first class or something. He came back, and there were empty seats, and he and I sat and talked most of the way to London. And he was really excited about it. He was like, this is going to be amazing. This is really interesting. And then we talked about a screenplay. He was like, is there a movie in this?

And he told me about a movie he was working on at the time about arab terrorists or something like that anyway um so uh he was really into it i told him the screenplay idea and he was like yeah kevin klein in the lead and you know we're talking about who would and he was like super enthusiastic so he said do you have a can i read the book and you have a car i said i've got this copy. It's my last copy, but it'll be out in two months, you know, whatever. But yeah, you can have this great. Cause I'm going skiing in France or Switzerland or somewhere and I'll read it. And so he's going to get in touch with me when he's back in Barcelona, a couple of weeks, never heard from the guy. And so I was talking to Stanley, my professor about this and Stanley said, well,

you know, I'm going to see Ricky Schroeder in two months in Washington at this event for veterans. I'll ask him what's up. So he did. He saw Ricky at this thing. And he said, hey, you met this friend of mine. And, you know, you were really interested and all this stuff. What happened? And Ricky's wife, according to Stanley, said, I threw that book in the trash. Nobody talks to Ricky about sex except me. Whoa. Yeah. That's the story I heard.

Well, I would never repeat that story because it's a story that you heard. It's really hard to get a real solid story through more than one person. It was just one person. But I mean, if we could cut it out, like cut it out of the... Nope, it's live. Oh, really? It's live? So all this is live.

Yeah. Well, you know, who knows? Who knows what conversation they had. Who knows what was actually said. The point is that a lot of girlfriends and wives have been not interested in the book. And also husbands, I gotta say. Ricky's a very nice guy.

He's a friend of guy he's he's a friend of the family he's good home I said I've hung out with him and his wife many times his wife's a wonderful lady no you said tell it I said I could cut it out it's okay I don't know who knows what really happened listen man people get into situations it's not bad you know. It's your book to a lot of people that have sort of a Sandra Bullock movie view of the world. It becomes very disconcerting. The idea of, for folks who don't know, Sex at Dawn, how would you describe the book? What's the best description of it? It's looking at the origin and evolution of human sexuality.

So it's sort of looking at how human beings behaved sexually before there were civilizations telling them what to do and what not to do. Now, when that subject gets breached for whatever reason, a lot of women will panic. breached for whatever reason a lot of women will panic like if you start talking about what people used to do orgiastic cultures and for whatever reason like the the idea that somehow or another things were different at one point in time and you know maybe males would find that more preferable or maybe you know whatever it is that freaks them out when a guy would read a book like that that's sort of describing just basically a statement of pretty much fact of history there's a tremendous amount of evidence to back up the idea that there were orgiastic cultures so what's wrong with saying that like i don't that that becomes like a real weird do you did you feel a lot of that did you feel that

sure sure sure you know and there's a good reason for that response. I mean, the fact is that women are in a situation now and have been for millennia where the only thing, the only way they could survive really was through a man, either their father or their husband. And the only thing they had to negotiate with was their sexuality because the men, you know, men had all the property, all the money, all the power, all the everything. The only thing women had was their sexuality. So it's not surprising that women feel threatened if the value of that negotiating chip is lessened, as it is if you start talking about orgiastic societies, right? Then you don't trade your sexuality for your food, your status, and all that other stuff. But the key is to understand that they didn't need to.

Our ancestors didn't need to because the women had direct access to their food and their status and whatever they needed in terms of power. These are very egalitarian societies. But we're not in an egalitarian society now. It's getting better, although women are still making 70 cents on the dollar to men for the same work. But, yeah, if you're a single mother, it's tough, especially in the United States, because you're not getting much social support. So those women feel threatened if their negotiating position vis-a-vis men is threatened, as it is if you start talking about loosening up sexual morality. That's funny, the negotiating position. That's really funny.

And that essentially is what a lot of men become. They become negotiating positions. It's a very disturbing thing to see your friend sort of co-opted by some chick who sort of made her way into his life and now is inside of him like a parasite working the controls, becomes really weird, becomes really weird to see. Yeah, but it's also, I mean, we should never forget that women are put in that position. They don't necessarily choose. It's not their nature.

In other words, the gold, you know, we're talking about gold diggers or whatever we're talking about, you know, prostitutes,utes whatever women who are trading their sexuality for something explicitly but we put them in that position how is that so if some women don't do it well they i mean women do it to the sense you know like the uh i think it's all just a matter of circumstance and a matter of where they are and how it turns out. Because there's a lot of women who obviously don't do any of those things. Because they can work for the first time in Western history. So we have to understand that's a very novel moment in our history. And you still go to Pakistan or most of Africa, most of Latin America.

Women don't have direct access to what they need. of Latin America, women don't have direct access to what they need. So in the origins of civilization, like when we moved from having these sort of small tribes of people to larger cities, is that when the transition sort of happened for women and women became reliant upon men and their jobs lessened because now they're living in cities? Well, before cities even, just settled society. So we're talking about the advent of agriculture, which is about 10,000 years ago at the earliest. And what's important to understand there is that that's when the notion of private property really entered human society, according to our vision of this stuff.

So women weren't, that affected women in two ways. One way is that it became very important to trace property. So you had to know who your sons were, because it was going, it was patrilineal, right? So it's going down the male property, it was passed father to son. So who are your sons? Well the only way to know they're your sons is controlling this woman's sexuality.

That's the only way. And there are no DNA tests. And also, this is the time when people started breeding animals. So it became very clear that one sex act could result in offspring. So this is a very important thing. And if you look in the Bible, what's the line? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, right? That sounds like something that's talking about respecting your neighbor's marriage. But if you read it in context, it continues,

nor his house, nor his servants, nor his ox, nor his sheep, et cetera. So it's thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. And his wife is just part of the property. So women really became like, they went from having nearly equal status to males in almost every hunter-gatherer society that we know of to being property. That's fascinating. What prompted that?

How did they morph from these tribal societies of equality to these city societies? that happen, but it's important to understand that the life, human life before civilization or agriculture and after agriculture changed radically in almost every way. Our diet, our exercise patterns, our understanding of interpersonal relationships, governmental structure, how we rule, what kind of decision making happens, childcare, sexuality. Yeah, it's really fucked up when you think about it, but a society, a city, you know, agriculture, that was really the first technology. It's like you don't think of it as technology, but that really was when they figured out how to create things and build things and set things up that made life more convenient for them or made life easier.

And then from then, it's really been all about accelerating that process, accelerating that process of invention and innovation, which really started off with agriculture. If you really stop and think about what we were like when we were hunters and gatherers, these small tribes of very tightly knit people that had to stay together and lived off the land to the first city. From that point on, it was a one way ticket to nuclear explosions. It was just we were on our way to innovating and creating more shelter and safety so you can create better and crazier shit. I mean, literally the first house, the, the first city, the first fences they set up, that was

the first steps. And if you follow it to the pollution of the earth and nuclear explosions and the space shuttle, all the different things that we've done, it literally all comes from that idea. If we never did that, we would be living exactly like these people that are living in tribal situations in the Amazon and parts of Africa. It's kind of amazing. Yeah. And I'll see that at the beginning of that, you said to make life easier. Or whatever. I shouldn't say easier. Make it easier right then. It is. Yeah, exactly. It's easier right then. But that's the key. And people often say, well, then why? Why did we choose to do this?

You know, because we argue pretty strongly in Sex at Dawn. And then the next book is called Civilized to Death. And that tells you where I'm going with that one, right? So I really question whether it's made life easier or better, you know. So that's the argument I want to make in that book. But, you know, people think of it as if we chose it, as if our ancestors chose. Like, hey, let's all just hang out here and plant some corn, you know, people think of it as if we chose it, as if our ancestors chose. Like, hey, let's all just hang out here and plant some corn, you know, whatever. No, what seems to have happened, agriculture has arisen four or five different times spontaneously in different parts of the world.

And in all those different parts of the world, in the years before, by looking at pollen residue and fossils and stuff, they can tell that the years before the advent of agriculture generally tended to be unusually rich. Lots of rainfall, lots of plant life, lots of life going on. And then they entered a period where it tightened up and there was much less rainfall. And that's when agriculture arose. So you see that pattern all around. So the thinking is, okay, you've got a really rich environment, 20, 30, 40 years, right, several generations. Population levels get really high. Then suddenly there's a contraction. So suddenly there's not enough food for everybody, right,

because hunter-gatherer societies tended to be pretty much in balance with like every other species with the food supply. So suddenly there's way overpopulation. Most of the time they would just die off. But occasionally, you know, in these five instances, someone figured out like, wait a minute, this is where all these things grow. There's not enough water, but there's a stream over there. We could dig a channel. So generally the first steps of agriculture are thought to have been the irrigation then later they figured out wait we could take the seeds and put the seeds over here first it was just bringing the water to where the the stuff was and it's it's really freaky when they uh they keep moving the date of that actually

happening back further and further and further. They've just found evidence of cheese making from, like, thousands of years. 7,000 years, I think. Yeah. They found evidence in the area near Gobekli Tepe where they might have been making beer 10,000 years ago. It's really fascinating. Like, they keep going further and further back to when people actually figured it out. And apparently hemp was the first thing ever cultivated. Yeah, pretty crazy. So easy to do. Ston actually figured it out but and apparently hemp was the first thing ever cultivated yeah pretty crazy yeah so easy to do stoners figured about you know the not hydroponic they were in soil yeah yeah they didn't

figure out the whole closet set up yet you go over someone's house and you're like why are you fucking why is it so so, the hum, what is that hum? What's that light coming out from under the door? You open that door and you go, whoa. Yeah, the feeling that you didn't really get but thought you got from a tree. Like, you can kind of, you can get a weird communication when you're in a room full of weed plants. I love, I love growing marijuana. Really. In Spain, it's legal man and i had plants every summer on our terrace that were like christmas trees by the end of the summer it's it's so stupid that people think that if you want to if you want pot to be legal then you also

probably want to overthrow the government and you know you don't support taxes and you think we should be all hippies. No. No, stupid. You shouldn't be able to tell people what they can and can't do. Right. When it's been clearly proven to not be nearly as dangerous as almost everything else on the world. Right. It's just so stupid.

It's so stupid at this point in time that you can't have a room in your house where you just have all these plants hanging out, and you can go in there and chill with them. Yeah. Well, our cats always would hang out in the plants. I bet. The little alien fuckers. Cats are little fucking weirdos. If you could just teach them to hunt those little worms, you know, like make yourself useful.

Eat the worms. The first time I ever went to a grow room, now granted I was intoxicated. I was under the spell of the sacred plant. But when I walked into that room, it was literally like walking into like a different sort of consciousness. There was like a different sort of a life coming out of these plants. And there was like 20 or 30 of them in this room and they were huge. And I remember being in there going, whoa, like this feels crazy. Like this feels like these

things are they're aware or if not aware there's something coming off of them it's not as simple as uh you know this is a rock this is a stick i wasn't that stone i was stoned but not like stoned enough there i thought that uh you know i wasn't really here anymore it wasn't that it was just fairly normal yeah it was like I am right now. But just walking into the room was like, whoa, this is intense. I wonder what that is. And then people will tell you that you can talk around plants and it actually makes them grow better. But how much of that is horseshit?

Have you ever been to Finhorn? No. You know what I'm talking about? No. That's where the whole playing music for your plants and talk to them and all that uh started in northern finland i heard i'm sorry scotland the music part is bullshit but the talking part there is some evidence that shows that it might actually help yeah yeah i haven't investigated it myself but well i know that if i went over your house and all your plants were wilted, I might think you're a creepy fuck.

You know? You know what I'm saying? If you go over someone's house and their fucking plants are all jacked. Like, get us out of here. This place is toxic. I kill bamboos, Joe, at my house. Like, those bamboo, good luck bamboo plants. Like, they're almost, you should not be able to kill them type things.

You just put it in a bottle of water and I still kill those things somehow. Oh, man. I'm glad you're proud. I'm not proud. You're excited. They just die. You're killing life forms. I blame cat.

Cats are weird animals, aren't they? They would make sense that they would go and hang out in the weed room. Sure. It's warm. They pick up on it, too. It smells good. Yeah. And plus, it looks like the jungle to those little creepy fucks.

All those trees. They're probably thinking that they're jungle to those little creepy fucks. All those trees. They're probably thinking they're going to be able to jack something. It's funny when you have a cat. You're not a cat guy. Oh, I love cats. I have two cats. But they're selfish little assholes. But it's weird.

My cat is this big, fluffy cat. She's 16 years old. But I put her in the yard, and there was a bird in the yard. And she fucking went after it and tried to kill it. I mean, it's like you can have them in the house, give them cat food for 16 years, but you get them anywhere near a bird, and they go fucking crazy. Their little eyes go, and they make that noise. Does your cat have one of those cat water fountains?

I just got one. It's the coolest thing. Cats love the water fountains. Yeah, they like the moving water. Yeah. It's cool. So they play with it? They just sit there and put their mouth in it and just sit there.

And then my cat just wipes its face in it and then wipes its paws in it. It loves playing with it. Give me a link and I'll give you those. Powerful Amazon. Yeah. Well, you know about toxoplasma. Do you know about all that? Oh, yeah.

That's a strange little thing that makes mice attracted to the smell of cat piss. Yeah. What a great evolutionary quirk that is. It removes their fear of them, too. It's a strange little thing that makes mice attracted to the smell of cat piss. What a great evolutionary quirk that is. It removes their fear of them, too. It's really strange. And the crazy thing is the numbers of humans on the planet that are infested with this stuff. Yeah. That it affects behavior and that it might be... They said that France at one point in time was higher than 60%.

Yeah. They say they've got it down to around 50-something now, but I mean, how the fuck do they know? Who's getting tested for toxoplasma? Right. They think there's at least 60 million Americans that have it. They think it's related to schizophrenia, right? They say it could be.

They don't know. They know that there's Sapolsky out of Stanford is the leading guy in it. I've been trying to get him. Robert Sapolsky? Yeah. He's a primatologist. He's a really interesting guy. He's a fascinating dude.

He apparently is the leading light in this thing. Maybe, is it the same guy? Crazy beard? Yeah, like Hasidic Jew looking. Not Hasidic, but... Just nutty, wacky beard, yeah. He's got a lot of videos online talking about it, about how he used to work in

an emergency room, and they found that a disproportionate number of motorcycle victims had tested for this toxoplasma. Really? Yeah, that it makes you reckless. Makes you reckless, makes you take more chances. Right. Yeah, they don't know exactly what the fuck it's doing to you. You know, they don't know exactly

how much of an effect it has on some people and other people, whether it takes over their life. Right. You know, but for mice, whether it takes over their life. Right. But for mice, it's a fucking death sentence. Yeah. Their dicks get hard for cat piss. It's the craziest thing ever. It's the craziest thing ever.

And then they go find them, these rats and mice. Have you ever seen videos of them? Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, I've seen. They run up to the cats. Yeah. They're like running up to the cat's dick.

It's crazy. What's the doctor's name that found that out? Sapolsky. Robert Sapolsky tells one of my favorite stories ever, talking about humanity and all that. For 20-some years, he's been going to Kenya and studying baboons there. He's been at the same place for 20 years. Wow. So he's seen generations come and go he has a great book called

a primate's memoir beautiful book about his years in kenya that's him and he's a great writer yeah that's in there and uh well pimp so he yeah he that guy doesn't give a fuck yeah he's great about grooming yeah he doesn't yeah yeah i mean he shoots these baboons with blowguns. Oh my God. And then he gets the baboon. Trangles them? Yeah, triangles them and does blood tests on their, he's particularly interested in the neurobiology of stress.

So he's looking at like how different males in different points of the hierarchy experience stress and stuff. So anyway, so the story is that he's been, he's watched all these generations come and go. And the baboon troop is very male-dominated and they're very – the males are very fierce and they sort of – they're nasty to the females and to each other and everything. So in the years he'd been going there, the Maasai built a hotel for tourists. And this tourist – this hotel has a dump. And his baboon troop started going to this dump because there was

good food there. And the best food of course is meat, scraps of meat that are thrown out by the hotel. So the dominant males tend to get that meat. Nobody else gets any. So one time they threw out some meat that was tainted with tuberculosis. And the upper echelon

of this baboon male dominance hierarchy got wiped out. Whoa. It was like a bomb went off in Washington or something. Wow. And so he was like, whoa, now what's going to happen? This is going to be horrible because when the males reach adulthood, they shift out into a different group. They go out, they leave their natal group,

and they go looking for another group. So these new males are going to come in full of testosterone, looking to kick ass, and there won't be anyone here to fight them off. It's going to be like pirates landing on an island with no men on it, you know? But what happened was the new males came in. In the meantime, the group developed a much more egalitarian, low-stress way of life. And when the new males came in, they adopted this new way of life well so five years later the last I heard from him five years later this group this troop of baboons was

still significantly less uptight than any other troop that has ever been studied isn't that hilarious that sort of mirrors America that if you could like poison the military-industrial complex with like sacred caviar from some fucking – See, now we're back to the Unabomber, all right? Yeah. I'm not defending him. I'm just saying there is an internal logic. Well, not really because he was going after fucking scientists and professors.

He was a nut. If it had been senators, he would have been fine. It's like that quote that no one ever wants to get heard saying, well, Hitler had a couple of good ideas. Exactly. Exactly. But I mean most people that are young folks, people that have regular jobs, people that are out there sort of tuned in and connected to the world are very frustrated by the way this country and the world in general is run because it's run by this one small group of people all throughout the world that have a vested interest in keeping it running that way. And in that situation, I mean, no one's advocating that anybody do this,

but in that situation, it really does mirror this baboon society where these dominator baboons got jacked and then everybody just chilled the fuck out. And then new people came in and everybody just chilled the fuck out right and then new people came in and they also chilled the fuck out the problem with that i mean i i tend to agree with you but i i think the problem with that is the patriot act you can't even say that shit what's that i said the problem with that is the patriot act even just saying that right is like can get you in trouble yeah so i tell i tell a bad story and you get thrown in prison. This is going really well so far.

It's a very good story. No, but what I was going to say is that I'm a little less hopeful than you are in the sense that I think even if the upper echelon of the male baboons got wiped out, we'd probably end up right back where we are because there's too many people. Yeah, there's too many people. That's for sure. But there's not too many people if everybody stops jacking each other and stealing resources. There's not too many people if we don't engage in the – I mean, our culture is essentially a war culture.

I mean, that's just what it is. We're constantly involved in these overseas conflicts, controlling parts of the world that we don't really have any business in. We have military presence in something like 100 different countries. I mean, we're crazy. And that's a lot of money. That's a lot of taxes. It's a lot of shit.

And if we weren't spending it on that and we were instead spending it on some sort of sustainability, I mean, if you could get the direct proportion amount of money that's spent waging war and spend that same amount of money trying to enhance the life of people that are in shit situations, we would have an exponentially more beautiful world to live in. And the same amount of money would still be circling around. It's not like industry couldn't exist if it wasn't for war. That's nonsense. That's just something we've been told by the people that are controlling where we go and what we do. But isn't war uniquely profitable in that you're destroying very expensive stuff,

whether it's the infrastructure of a country or your own munitions, you know, a million bucks a pop for a predator drone strike or something like that, that always needs to be replenished, right? Whereas if you're building, you know, TVs you're building TVs or chairs or jerk-off cans or whatever it is, there's a certain number that you build and then that's all anyone needs for a while. Yeah.

So I think there's a built-in impetus to blow shit up because then you get paid to rebuild it. That's the Halliburton ideology. Exactly. Yeah, I don't know about that. I mean, it certainly seems like that's something that goes on. I mean, that certainly seems to be fueling a lot of the activity that we do. But I don't think that that's necessary. I mean, if you fly over the country just one time, you realize how much open space there

really is. And that's not just here that's like that. I mean, the idea of overpopulation is mostly based around the fact that 80% of our people live near water. If we figured out a way to make our lives more sustainable, to make cities more sustainable, to pollute less, and had all the people that are involved in all this nonsense overseas and dedicate them to doing that, we wouldn't be as reliant on foreign oil. We wouldn't be as reliant on all these things that we need in these other places.

It's just we're governed in a shitty way, and we're governed in this representative way where nobody feels connected to the actual decisions that are being made, vaguely connected. Well, who's being represented? Let's be serious. It's that are being made, vaguely connected. Well, who's being represented? Let's be serious. It's corporations are being represented. The rest of us, it's... Was it Zappa who said politics is the entertainment division

of the military-industrial complex? That's brilliant. Isn't that nice? Oh, Zappa was brilliant. What a great quote. Yeah, and that until that becomes... until humans actually get a say in everything that happens, until the United States gets to vote on our activities. But this is the thing. There are so many fucking people.

To manage this many people, I think the systems that work are dehumanizing, inherently dehumanizing. Dehumanizing, inherently dehumanizing. I think that there's a question of scale that it seems to be, you know, it just sort of makes sense. If you're talking to 10 people, you know, each of those people gets a tenth of your attention. If you're talking to 100 million people, you know, nobody's getting your attention. Right, right. And so I think there's sort of a mathematical, almost like a quality of life, like a limited quality of life. And the more people there are, the more people are taking a little piece of it and the smaller the pieces get. That's fascinating.

But then how – if that's the case, then how come some people are just fucking living high on the hog? Well, that's the thing. We're talking about this upper echelon, right? The people who meet in Davos or whatever, right? What's Davos? In Switzerland, where all those guys meet. The Bilder or whatever, right? You know, in Switzerland, all those guys meet in the Bilderberg type characters.

I've known some of those people. Not a lot. I've known some people very, very up in the world. And they're no happier than anybody else, man. You know, and I think a lot of them are actually less happy. Because happiness isn't about being able to buy whatever you want.

I mean that wears out. It is unless you're in a great neighborhood and you have good friends and you know a good escort agency. If you have all that in order – Are we going into a commercial here? No, no. We're not represented by any escort agencies. Yet. Holla.

Exactly. Yeah, the idea that the richest people are the happiest people is ridiculous. Another Herzog video that I really enjoyed was Life in the Taigao, Happy People. It's called Happy People, Life in the Taigao. No, I haven't seen that. It's about Siberia, these people that live up in Siberia. The eagle hunters? No, no, that's in Tibet, actually. Oh, okay.

Siberia is, the life in the taiga people are these trappers that live in this very small town where they essentially don't use money. They trap and they take the money from trapping, and that's what buys, like, tools and equipment and shit. And, you know, they use it to trade for different things. But all they do is hunt and fish. They hunt, they fish, they grow food. And they're so happy. And the men, they disappear in the winter to go trapping. They take snowmobiles.

They drive like a fucking hundred miles in a snowmobile. And when they come back, everybody's happy. They have these celebrations. The dogs run behind them when they come back. And if the dogs don't make it, tough shit. And these people have no mental illness. They're all happy they're all like cheering and dancing and singing it really makes you wonder like when you look at us you know people are sitting on their couch oh i'm so bummed out oh i'm so depressed right like for what what are you bummed out about like you don't have to do

anything right now yeah like you are in a position right now where you can actually relax but see that's it that's it he's bummed because he doesn't have to do anything right now. Is that the problem? Yeah. There's no meaning. There's no meaning. It's like there's meaning in food when you grow it. Like we're talking about marijuana.

There's meaning when you're smoking bud that you grew and you cut and you trimmed and you cured. It's like you love it. If you make your own beer, your own wine, you cook your own dinner, whatever it is, right? I went hunting recently. I killed a deer and I've been eating this deer for the past four months. love if you make your own beer your own wine you cook your own dinner whatever it is right i went hunting recently i killed a deer and i've been eating this deer for the past four months and when i eat it i feel like a sense of satisfaction so this like was a lot of effort to go like hiking in montana and camping outside and 12 degrees and i got this thing it's like such a much better connection than going to the store and just picking on a steak yeah we still have all these

reward systems set up from hunter-gatherer cultures, don't we? That's it. That's it. And the problem, the sort of the ultimately destructive conundrum at the heart of civilization is that it leads us to where we think we want to go, but it isn't really where we should be. It isn't really the place that's going to make us happy, right? Like everyone thinks if you win the lottery, you're going to be happy. Look at studies of people who have actually won the lottery.

Their lives get destroyed in short order. That's because they don't know me. I could hook them up. They're hanging around with the wrong people. They're staying in the same neighborhood. They didn't change their name. The first thing you do, you take all that money and go to Canada. You go right to Canada.

You go to Toronto where nobody knows you and you party, start partying you got how much money oh man you just need an organizer you just need someone to monitor you want 300 million dollars you were we're gonna make you happy dude yeah and then you get him enrolled in yoga classes keep his brain sharp yeah you know give him crossword puzzles to do he's gonna be okay man we, man. We'll take care of you for $100 million. We'll take care of you. The problem with those dudes is they stay in Georgia. They eat Chick-fil-A's and they just fuck themselves and they fall apart. You can become happier when you win the lottery.

You just got to get hooked up with the right people. It's possible. But in general, that's not what happens. No, you can't appreciate all – joking aside, you can't appreciate things unless you earn them. You really – I joked about it once when I was younger that the amount of work involved to become a stand-up comedian, it's so difficult to go from in the beginning where you just suck to being a competent stand-up comedian that the idea of doing it all again is absolutely terrifying. It's terrifying. And I would have never done it if I hit the lottery. Like if I hit the lottery when I was 21 and I had millions of dollars, where would my ambition go?

And then with that gone, also there's like the character lessons and failing and awkward moments and social situations, all the different various little bits of information that you use to sort of formulate your own personality and view of the world, those wouldn't exist. They would exist in a completely different form because you wouldn't be struggling to make your way through the world with insecurity like most of us have.

You would all of a sudden have fucking $300 million and be in your underwear in a yacht like you're in a Jay-Z video. Do, do, do, do. fucking 300 million dollars right be in your underwear in a yacht like you're in a jay-z video you know yeah you would just keep going until uh the wheels fell off but the other thing is you wouldn't really have any friends because if you if you if you're just a regular person and people hang out with you you can be pretty sure they're hanging out with you because they like hanging out with you right if you just won the lottery and people are hanging out with you on your yacht in your Jay-Z video, you don't know why those people are there. That's true, but I've heard that argument before about being a celebrity. Like, oh, people just like you just because you're – how do you know when people actually like you?

You can kind of tell when people like you. Yeah, but that's because you've been through it. Yeah, I guess. I'm saying if you come up in that world. Yeah. You can definitely definitely you'll definitely see people that are bullshitting you for sure i mean if you just won 300 million dollars he's gonna have you're gonna have some good friends you're gonna oh my god how are you oh my god

i'm so happy for you oh my god we have to celebrate oh my god next thing though someone's trying to fucking look at you like you're a puzzle i gotta figure out a way in this motherfucker get some extract some money off of this bitch you know the people will look at you like you're a puzzle. Like, I gotta figure out a way in this motherfucker to extract some money off of this bitch. You know, the people will look at you like that. If you were some dude who just, especially if you just got lucky. It's one thing if you're some crazy fuck who starts a landscaping business

and owns a hundred different, you know, fucking warehouses filled with lawnmowers and you're sending people out every day. You know what I mean? You like bust your ass and you created an empire. That's one thing like you respect that guy you know stumble into it yeah people won't immediately if they know that you're you know lenny the lawnscape or king they they don't they don't go after you but if you're

some you're lenny the fucking douchebag who was working at lottery king yeah he's working at cvs and all of a sudden scratch the right ticket boom they will go after you you you. You don't deserve it. They're like, fuck that guy. You just got to get your money's worth from every one of the girls. Just really use them all day long. Yeah, but it's not girls that are going to go after you. It's business people. It's a lot of people like, I got this business I'm going to get started. You know how many times people come up to me

and want to start a business? It's such a ridiculous idea. I'm not going into business with you. We're not starting a business together. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? That's not how you make – go to a bank, bitch. There's money in there. They have money.

You go and you sign out some papers. You get a loan. You crazy asshole. I remember reading this thing years ago, like 10 years ago. This guy, he didn't win a lottery, but he inherited like $20 million. His parents had a farming business or something. That is the lottery, but he inherited like $20 million. His parents had a farming business or something. That is the lottery. So he inherits $20 million.

He's like 24 years old or something. And he gets a few friends together and they fly to Monaco. And he's like, yeah, he's going to celebrate with a wild weekend in Monaco with five or six of his friends. Four days later, all $20 million was gone. Whoa. Lost it all. Oh, my God. Four days later, all $20 million was gone. Whoa. Lost it all. Oh, my God. In like four days. Gambling? In Monaco, yeah.

Oh, my God. So they said to him, how did it happen? And he said, well, gradually at first and suddenly at the end. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That sums it up, doesn't it, man? Wow. That is insanity. Well, you can go insane gambling. That's one of the arguments for gambling being illegal. I don't support that argument.

I don't agree with it whatsoever. I'm 100% proponent of personal freedom and personal responsibility. But I've seen people get that crazy gambling eye, and it's a sickness. And it's to exploit that sickness. I mean, it's akin to having sex with to exploit that sickness is like i mean it's akin to having sex with a girl who's passed out from being drunk that's what exploiting that it really is exploiting the gambler exploiting a guy who's sick right who's that sick and over the end and just like letting him continue to gamble like someone needs to come i'm not no because i believe

in personal responsibility no but realistically if you were like you had any ethics whatsoever yeah and you saw some guy who's about to bet 20 million dollars you know yeah you would go hey hey yeah this is not a good time okay you move to my neighborhood relax meet my friends calm down okay i mean one thing to play a little blackjack thousand dollar hand here or there. Let's get crazy. But give yourself a fucking limit. You're about to lose $20 million in a day.

Stop it. So it sounds to me like you've got the same sort of career ambitions I have. What is that? Which is to hang out with really wealthy people and help them not fuck up i mean i had this dream of like i was going to be like the psychiatrist to you know like i'll just i'll be a psych or psychologist to like you know movies george clooney would be much better off if i would hang out at his house you know you say that and it's kind of a funny thing but in in other cultures they I mean throughout history, there have been wise men that hung around great men that offered them advice. Yeah, definitely.

Because especially men who are like big businessmen and back in the day, conquerors even would have a sit down with scholars and they would discuss certain issues. It was like important to sort of be surrounded by people like that. But in this sort of society, it's sort of gone the way of the shaman. There's no shamans, there's no scholars in your midst. There's no, you know, just intellectual that you keep handy. You know, now we have Google, we don't need that guy anymore. But wisdom, you know, and especially wisdom in response to personal issues. Yeah, right. We have it. I guess personal coaching is sort of as pathetic as that sounds.

No, seriously. I'm talking about the modern rendition, like people who are your personal coach. Oh, like life coaches? Life coach. Here's my example with a life coach. There was a guy who was – I am fascinated by women who always – successful women who always date losers. And I've seen quite a few examples of it. It's really fascinating to me to watch this weird dynamic when there's a really successful woman and a guy who's essentially a fuck-up, just a total fuck-up.

Well, this guy, he was a nanny to this really successful woman, a male nanny. And my friend who knows the family was like, what the fuck is that? That's not going to end well. Of course it doesn't end well. She winds up dumping her boyfriend and hooking up with the male nanny. So then the male nanny is living in the house, like the big house where he was taking care of the kids. He's the boyfriend now.

And now he's a life coach. Oh, boy. Out of nowhere, the nanny's a fucking life coach. And I'm like, whoa. There's some fuckery afoot in that household. Someone is just like, that's like a guy who's like essentially like a two or three steps removed from being a con artist. And he's managed to fit himself into this semi legit situation where he's

got this for poor, confused, rich lady. So is, is he coaching his clients to get jobs for pork and for rich ladies? I've resisted getting close to them in, at parties and stuff like that because I don't trust myself. Yeah.

I don't trust my- Like sexually? No. With a life coach? My chimpanzee rage. You might say something or freak out. I might. He's gross.

I've had a conversation with a guy once before and it was just like, whoa. He's just gross There's speaking of chimpanzee rage, but do you want to continue? I was just gonna say there's like certain people you talk to and They're like if you ever like been around someone who literally was like a Hollywood character like in a movie and we're like literally just like Completely fake like if pulling your pants down to the crack your ass was in they're gonna do it yeah sure yeah that was this guy it was just like this it was like this almost like a uh an alien that was taking on the form of a human you know he was so hollywood i mean he had that he had had everything you could ask for. He had beads, like wooden beaded

necklace, and his hair was in a ponytail. I wanted to throw him through the universe. It was just everything about him. And then the fact that I found out that this guy had hooked up with the lady. And you're friends with the lady? No, I don't know the lady at all.

No, the lady's just this old broad that we know. How old? Like Angela Lansbury? She's older than him. She's older than him. Look, there's a lot to this story that I'm going to have to get personal if I keep going any further. Yeah, and I've already done that.

Yeah. That's all right. Ricky's a good guy. I feel terrible about that. Listen, Ricky was on the podcast. I never tell that story. It's okay. I've never included his name until right now when I told that story.

He would tell that story. He would tell that story. Trust me. Yeah, I just don't want to. Yeah, he would laugh about how his wife would never let him read that. Yeah. I mean, I had a great time talking. That's why it was memorable.

It was like, wow, this guy's cool. And he was going to come play poker with us and do the basketball thing. And he was going to come. I mean, I don't care if we don't do the project together. But why didn't he call me? And his wife's a wonderful lady. She just got her thing. Everybody's got their thing.

Together it works. I'm not judging. You know, you're talking about reactions to the book, right? Yeah. Brian? Brian's girlfriend who didn't like the book, right? Or didn't like the idea of the book. We've had so many really personal responses.

So people either respond to it positively or negatively, but it's very personal. Sexuality is very personal. Yeah. And the idea that you're fucked up because you're attracted to other people. Right. That's very personal too because it's sort of a secret that a lot of people harbor around inside of them. Sure. Sure. side of them sure sure some people women have written us lots of women uh to say that they

had to stop every 10 pages and masturbate oh what a good girl yeah what a good girl yeah i did not see that one coming so to speak wow i never fantasized by the way they also masturbate while watching max and ruby while they're eating cheerios those are freak bitches it's every 10 minutes no matter what they're doing. There's one in a million that are just like that period no matter what. Exactly. It's such an interesting subject because of that fact, because of the fact that our society is set up to sort of create this image that gives us these positive sort of feelings inside of our brain

when we watch them in a movie or on a television show or even hear about them in a song, but they don't necessarily represent reality. But our brain is not set up for the media. Our brain is not set up for the influence of television or a movie. Our brain is set up to imitate successful behavior. And we're set up to imitate successful behavior and we're selling we're set up to sort of learn from our environment but we have this new thing now and it's 60 feet high and the fucking words are perfect because a team of writers worked on what brad pitt was going to say

for like two weeks before he actually said it i mean it was like really meticulously done down to the exact comma and then it's music is playing while he's saying the perfect thing. And your version of reality all of a sudden has a new model. And your version is based on bullshit. Sandra Bullock's life was not a Sandra Bullock movie. Right. Think about how every Sandra Bullock movie is like this sweet thing and monogamy rules and it all works out in the end. Meanwhile, she was married to Jesse fucking James, a guy with tattoos all over his body.

He was banging everything like a savage. Just like your friend with the old lady. No. Or not your friend. Sorry. Oh, so you think that he was using Sandra Bullock. You don't think so? No.

I bet he really loved her. I bet he's a damaged dude. And I bet he really loves pussy. I bet that too. Yeah. I don't think he was using her. I don he's a damaged dude. And I bet he really loves pussy. I bet that too. Yeah, I don't think he was using her. I don't know, though. I mean, I don't assume. I always thought that's why people hated him,

because he was like some unknown guy who was screwing everybody's baby. She probably liked him. She probably liked it. I mean, she couldn't. When you like a guy, even if he's like a deceptive guy like that guy, there's obviously something about him that she must have liked. She must have enjoyed his company it couldn't have all been fake i mean i mean you can say it was but what is it okay when but someone's inspired around a person they act differently or act better is that fake too i mean is are you are you fake because you're better as

are you fake because you know you like someone so much that you aspire to be kinder around them or nicer around them? I don't know if that's fake or not. I don't know the dude. But I know that her life, her movies were all these really beautiful, sweet movies that gave you a warm feeling that it's all going to work out. And then her whole life was – that life was – she was – he was fucking that crazy girl with her fucking – what was tattooed on her forehead? We talked about it yesterday. We thought she – you thought she had Nazi tattoos, but they were just photos. No, she did.

No, she has WP on her legs. No, she has – right here on her throat, she has a little Nazi symbol. No. Yeah. There was like a lot of people that found photos of it. Oh, really? That might not be real. You got to be careful about that shit.

I'll show you. It's funny that the swastika used to be like a symbol of good luck. Still is in Tibet and Nepal. They still use it? Yeah. That's bold. I saw this guy in Bangkok. First time I was in Bangkok in the late 80s. This guy,

Thai guy, wanted to open a bar that would attract tourists, because you can make more money from tourists, obviously. So he was looking in old Life magazines to try to get a motif that foreigners would relate to and he came across photos of the nazis he didn't know what was going on he didn't know about world war ii he was like completely out of touch with this but he liked the imagery so he did up his bar in all this nazi imagery oh not no thinking it was going to attract the foreigners, right? Because he was in this foreign magazine.

Opening night did not go as planned. It's crazy because you can go back far enough and you can rock that. Like, you could get Genghis Khan shit and put it all over your house. Exactly. And nobody would have a problem with that. Yeah. I mean, you could go back to like Alexander the Great. If you could find like some Alexander the Great memorabilia.

But if you have any Nazi memorabilia in your house. Yeah, that's a no-no. That's a no-no. You can't have anything. You can't have a hat, a gun. You can't have anything with an SS. You can't have anything. Like it's too quick.

It's too – even though it was 1947 or whatever it was when it ended, it's still too close. You mentioned Chimp Rage earlier. Yeah. And it reminded me of something I was thinking when I was watching your special, which, by the way, I'm sure you don't need me to plug it, but anyone who hasn't downloaded that thing should not consider themselves a true fan. Well, that's ridiculous. That is fantastic. Thank you, man. I'm glad you liked it. It was really, really good.

Thank you. And then, of course, I put it up on BitTorrent. Good. Throw it out there. Here's Radar Magazine. It shows Jesse James, mistress with the swastika. Oh. Is that really a swastika in the center of that bird?

Yeah. Where is it? On her neck? Oh, right. That's close up. Oh, wow. That's dark. That's a really painful place, right, to get a tattoo, right?

Well, she's got one on her forehead, man. Oh, man. Yeah. Other than that, she's kind of hot in a dirty way. Yeah. But my point being that we have these, you know, where I started before this, we have these reward systems set up for being hunters and gatherers, and they're sort of hijacked by movies and TVs and film.

And when something comes along like your book where it pretty much just factually breaks down the history of sexuality. And what I thought was really interesting is one of the things about the word promiscuous and the origins of the word promiscuous right that it meant mixed right and that we look at it as some sort of loose morals and some we have attached this sort of judgment to it and when in fact the idea of promiscuity of today fucking strangers really didn't even exist in these cultures right everybody knew each other yeah that gets us back to what we're saying earlier about numbers it get it does come down to raw numbers at a certain point. You remember Robin Dunbar's number? Yes.

Did you get to that? 150. Right. I'd heard about that before actually. We talked about it on the podcast. I have a real issue with remembering people's names. I can recall crazy shit from fights that happened 15 years ago while we're – I have a really good retention of information. But at a certain point in time, like I ran out of room for people's names and I felt it.

I actually felt it happen. Right. Where it's like – and people will – you'll meet someone. You don't remember what their fucking name is. Then they tell you and then all their file pops up again. Like it was on temporary delete and all of a sudden you have access. Oh, yeah, you're Billy's brother. Oh, OK. And then all his file like fills back in. It's very strange.

Do you like forget people's names as you're hearing them? Like at a party or something? I do unless I'm paying attention. I try not to do that because it's rude. There's that weird thing that happens when you're at a party and you're meeting like 10 people. It's overloaded. It's really hard to like put them all into a file. Yeah. I almost want to write it down. OK.

Bob, is that what you're saying? Yeah. Can I take a picture of you, Bob? Exactly. OK. Thank you. There's an app for that. Then he'd be like looking at his phone when he came back to talk to you.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Bob. OK. Yeah. Cool. Let's pick up where we left off. Can I take notes on our conversation? Just so you – but you're the NASA guy?

Yeah. No, I was saying earlier when I was watching your show, I was thinking about something. And maybe you can respond to this. Like you – watching you, like the way you prowl on stage, I had this – I thought, man, that's a comedian who could kick my ass. And I don't – I can't think of any other comedian who I've – are there tough comedians? I don't know. Generally comedians are sort of – I thought when I first started working for the UFC, I thought it would – I never brought it up on stage.

And I thought maybe this is like really good if people don't know about this. Like on stage, I never – never on stage have I ever talked about martial arts or anything that I've ever done like physically. talked about martial arts or anything that I've ever done physically. Until the UFC became so big in the mid-2000s after 2005, it was sort of inevitable at that point. But before then, I would never talk about

martial arts on stage. Would it fuck up the humor? Yeah, because I look like a meathead anyway. If I didn't know me and I would guess what would come out of my mouth, I'd be like, this fucking idiot. What's he going to talk about? Protein?

What are we going to talk about? How much creatine you take? Stupid. I would make fun of myself. So it's automatic that I think that people make fun of me or that they would discount me as a comedian. But that's just the way I look like. There's nothing I can do about it. My interests have always been in martial arts.

I can't about it. My interests have always been in martial arts. I can't help it. I mean I'm still completely fascinated and dedicated to the art of stand-up comedy. I love doing it. It's my favorite thing to do in life. But I like martial arts too. It's a weird thing. We're supposed to hide that in some way. But as a comedian – I think you've transcended it.

I got lucky. Which is what I noticed. I think you've transcended it, which is what I noticed. I got lucky. And it's like, wow, there's something inherently contradictory about a tough, you know, type A, alpha male comedian. It's not funny because that's a guy – you know, there are two roles in conflict. And you pull it off. Somehow or another, also, like people – the beautiful thing about having a podcast like this is the podcast's popularity came right after the UFC's popularity. And with a podcast, essentially, there's nowhere to hide.

Right. This is who you are. Right. And when you're talking for four hours, or what did we do yesterday? Four and a half hours with Burt Kreischer? Everybody knows who you are. That's you. You're that guy.

You're that guy. It's good or bad, you know? At that point, they're hanging out with you. Yes. It's not edited. Right. So it's like if you have a friend. I have a friend, my friend John Rollo.

And John Rollo is a great guy. But he's one of the scariest looking human beings you've ever seen in your fucking life. He's built – he's about 300 pounds of solid muscle. He's a ridiculously big guy. And on his chest, he has a tattoo of an angel choking a devil unconscious. OK? I mean he's just a frightening man. His arms are...

I'm not bullshitting. There's maybe three. You've seen John Rallo. About three of my arms. His arms are probably like three of my arms. And he's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. Wow. He's just this big, giant dude.

But everybody who knows him, when you're around him, he's a sweetie. Right. He's got like a bunch of cats. Right. And he's the gentlest guy you'd ever want to be around.

So when you're around him and he's saying funny shit, you laugh ever want to be around so when you're around him and he's saying funny shit you laugh why because you know john right but if you met john at a restaurant he started laughing you're like is he laughing before he just fucking snaps and kills everybody in this place you know what i'm saying like once you get to know him then it doesn't matter that he's this big giant scary dude he's just john you know just hanging with John. So I think that has allowed me to sneak in because I did other things because of Fear Factor and UFC stuff. People got to know me already. So they accepted a certain amount of the weird, you know.

But, yeah, as a comedian, you sort of always thought, like, you don't want to go Joe Piscopo style. Joe Piscopo was, like, on the cover of Muscle and Fitness fucking flexing. And that was, like, the end. Really? Like, everybody's like, you can't be, like like a bodybuilder and be funny like get out of here stupid well you know it's interesting because maybe one of the reasons I noticed it as I said to you I've been living in Spain for 20 years right so I didn't know anything about

Fear Factor or UFC none of that stuff is like on my radar right I'm in Barcelona I don't have cable or whatever. So yeah, it was like seeing it all for the first time. It was interesting, yeah. What were you doing in Spain for 20 years? Growing weed.

That's it? Just growing weed in Spain? I'm joking. Lots of different things, you know. I was teaching some English. I was translating, editing. I worked as an in-house translator and editor for the biggest porn company in the world for a while. They're based in Barcelona.

Yeah. I had a gig interpreting from Ebonics to English, if you can believe that, for a film festival. Yeah. Like airplane? Like the lady on the airplane? I speak jive? Exactly. Exactly.

That's a gig? That's on my resume,ive? Exactly. That's a gig? That's on my resume, man. Wow, that's crazy. That's a fascinating gig. What did you have to interpret? People? What happened was, there's this film festival called InEdit.

It's independent films. This one year, they were focusing on films about the origins of rock and – rock and roll, jazz, blues in the Delta, right? So like old-time Delta guitarists, Delta blues guitarists and also the origins of hip-hop in Brooklyn in the 70s. And so they had a team of like 20 Spanish translators who were great and understood English very well. But they couldn't understand these black people right so so first they call up this black dude who was friends with with one of the translators and he listened to the stuff and he couldn't understand either because he's british so so one day i get this call from my friend pinky and she's like chris do you understand black people

and i and i had had a black girlfriend for a while i thought she meant on some conceptual level you know like so it's like yeah i guess you know i'm a shitty dancer but i understand now did you drink like colt 45 to accentuate the process to get into the role smoke a joint go yeah what's up i'm a method translator no so she gave me the DVDs, and all I had to do was just watch the DVD, and they were like, okay, in this part, what's he saying there? And he's like, oh, I'm up my crib. I was like, yeah, we're going back to my apartment. Oh, okay, good.

And then they do the Spanish part, so I didn't even have to go into Spanish. That is hilarious. That's really funny. Wow. Yeah, I've had lots of weird jobs. Did you ever think of just, like, throwing in some fake translation just to fuck with them? Just to be silly and get bored with it? Yeah.

No. No. I did a good job. That's hilarious. So you were over there for 20 years. Yeah. I mean, everybody says that. I'm still over there officially.

Oh, you really? You just visiting here? More or less. I'm basically, it sounds so Hollywood, man. I'm here to pitch a TV show. That does sound a little Hollywood. I'm not going to lie to you. Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to get some beads and put my hair in a ponytail. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. I'm going for it. What's the TV show about? Can you say? About sexuality. It's called Sex Drive.

Is it like one of those History Channel shows? About sexuality. It's called Sex Drive. Is it like one of those History Channel shows? Well, I mean, we'll see what happens. But the idea of the show is I developed the show in Vancouver this summer with a friend, a guy you might know, actually. Or at least, did you see I Am Bruce Lee? Yes.

He's the director of that. Oh, okay. What's his name? Pete McCormick. Okay. He also did a great film on Muhammad Ali called Facing Ali. Oh, nice. Have you seen that?

That's all the guys who Ali fought, they talk about him. Yeah, exactly. I heard about it, but again, it really depresses me watching old boxers slur. It depresses the shit out of me. I really have a problem with it. Any old athlete that's got issues, it really bothers me. So I didn't watch it. It's a great film.

It's really moving actually it's very touching because it's you know you go into it think or i went into it thinking okay it's about boxing it's about macho tough ass guys it's not man it's about love it's about charity i mean ali used to like set up some of the fights like the not not the the main contender fights but between the title bouts you know where you fight someone for the title but you know the guy gets not going to win it's a tune-up match well he he scheduled some of those to help dudes out like he heard this one guy um i think his his son had overdosed and his wife committed suicide and he just had this horror he's going through this horrible period in his life and ali would be like set get him he's you know line him up talk to his people and so he'd do it to

give these guys an infusion of cash yeah and kenny norton was like living in his car when he fought ali was it really yeah yeah it's a really good movie man it's really and and uh joe lou uh joe frazier joe louis joe frazier is like crying at one point wow talking uh about ali wow very interesting pete said i said to pete how did you get because you don't hear pete at all it's it's just the people being interviewed but they're so vulnerable man it's really it's a beautiful film and i said how did you get joe frazier to be that open about Ali? Because he hated Ali. Right.

You know? And Pete said, you know, I said to him, look, Joe, you know, like, yeah, you know, I know how you feel about the fighting and all that. But when you look at Ali now as a man, just as a man, how do you feel? What do you think? You know? And that really brought it out of Joe Frazier. Wow. Yeah.

It's an amazing film it must be weird to go and have conversations with someone about a dude that you fought just 15 years ago and you're still talking about him and people still want to know about it not even 15 years ago it's really 25 years ago whatever it was when they fought that was a long fucking time ago when when did they fight? They fought in the 70s, right? Yeah, well, he was fighting from the early 60s, I think. Wasn't he in the Olympics in 62, maybe? Yeah, I think it was 67 to 70 was when they blackballed him. Yeah.

So, yeah. So you're talking about 40 fucking plus years ago. It's crazy. Yeah. And Joe Frazier recently died. Yeah. He died within a year of doing that interview. Wow.

But anyway, so I developed the show with Pete. And the idea of the show is to try to get the same tone of Sex at Dawn. So it's got some scholarly heft, but it's also fun to be there, to read it or to be in the show. like to read it or to be in the show. So it's without being juvenile to be playful and open, but without being BBC professorial to be scholarly. So it's like ancient aliens but with sex. You ever see that show?

No, I haven't seen that. Like if aliens squirted. The aliens squirt. No. Yeah. No. You actually turned your microphone on to say that too. Your mic't on and at the time of turning your microphone you actually still thought it was a good idea um no um yeah ancient aliens is a show that's a fascinating show about you know

the idea of uh influence of uh aliens on ancient cultures oh right right i know most of it by the way we should mention that the guy has that one dude uh past philip copens yeah yeah yeah unfortunately um if you uh it was only a maybe 40 episodes ago we interviewed him maybe less philip copens and uh really nice guy um and he he uh he passed recently he's regularly he's an author and he's regularly on um ancient aliens and uh unfortunately he found out he had a type of very rare type of lung cancer and within one year finding out or one month rather finding out about it he was dead wow yeah really scary they thought it was like some kind of bacteria infection or something at first and it couldn't yeah it's

apparently pretty rare but a really nice guy really unfortunate and the first guy who ever died who did this podcast right that's the first one who's done the podcast not not with us anymore yeah crazy nice guy sucks it wasn't even 40 i don't think i think it was like 39 or something oh no oh shit yeah sorry i was imagining a guy in his 70s or something. Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah. But Ancient Aliens is a really fun show because it's – they go the what-if route most of the time. They get pretty deep. Like Giorgio Tsoukalos is one of the main guys, and he's a friend of the podcast.

He's been on a few times, and he has this fucking big crazy hair. I don't know if you've ever seen him. You wouldn't see him if you're out there in Spain hanging out with those sophisticated people. But yeah, he will get into this part where he goes, is it possible that Bigfoot is an alien? And they'll go deep into the, is it possible? And if you're high and you're watching that show and he goes, is it possible? And you're like, oh my goodness, where are we going? I'm thinking Bigfoot could be Neanderthal.

Well, they're pretty sure that if there ever was a Bigfoot that it's an animal called Gigantopithecus that did exist. If you've ever seen the images of it, it's pretty fascinating because it was essentially exactly what everybody describes when they describe a Sasquatch. And it lived in Asia. And humans came from Asia. One of the ways they found this out was they did a test in the human genome because a guy who was a Mormon, a devout Mormon, was convinced that DNA testing could prove that the Book of Mormon was actually, in fact, correct, and that human beings did come from Jerusalem, and that all these American Indians were the lost tribe of Jesus. So they did a DNA test, and they found out, actually, most of them were from Siberia.

A lot of what you're getting when you're getting American Indians is people that came across the Bering Strait. Well, coincidentally, that area of the country is the highest area incidence of Bigfoot sightings. The Pacific Northwest, the upper Alaska, that whole way down, that's the only place – not the only place in the country, but it's like – that's where it really started. That's where people really started seeing these fucking things. And that's where they would be. If there really was an undiscovered primate, it would be in the rainforest or the Pacific Northwest.

It's not outside the realm of possibility. In fact, even Jane Goodall. Jane Goodall's convinced. She actually said she was convinced that there's an undiscovered primate living there. She said there's too many people with the same story. Seriously? I didn't know that. They have sounds that these things have made. I don't know. Maybe they existed

and maybe they died off, but if there's a small amount of them, it's not impossible that they're alive. If you stop and think about how rare it is that you see a bear or a mountain lion and you fucking know there's thousands of those. If there was one area where an animal existed, there's a lot of areas in this country where

it's the only place where you can find blank you know it's really hard to find an alligator outside of florida and you know the the south area you know you don't find alligators too often in michigan right you know that's a that's a condensed little area boom there's where all the alligators are this is where the climate's perfect for them it's not outside the realm of possibility there's like a fucking crazy monkey that no one's ever found. It's most likely not the case. Most likely people are full of shit. The problem is they're so big they'd be top predators and it would be hard for there to be a sustainable population of them in that area.

It's true. However, we don't know that they're carnivores. They easily could be eating plant matter just like elephants are gigantic as as well. Yeah, and still worry about the viable genetic material. Yeah. You know, to keep... How many of them. Yeah. I mean, you think about, like, deer.

Right. Like, let's say deer, they're so infrequent that you never see them. Yeah. Could they continue as a species, you know? We had less drought from Survivorman. What the fuck was that? We had less drought from Survivorman on, and he told us a story. He's had two Bigfoot sightings.

Oh, yeah? And what's fascinating about that guy is he's 100% legit. He's not full of shit at all. Right. And he didn't actually see it, but he was in his tent, and he heard something big walking through. He was in Alaska, miles from nowhere. And it flew in on a plane.

I mean, hours by plane from everywhere, you know? And he heard something bipedal walking through the woods something really heavy and then it was like 50 feet from his tent It starts going Makes this crazy primate noise and he struggles to be Scrambles to get his camera and then it runs off and so he doesn't know what the fuck it is But he knows it was really heavy and it sounded like an ape. You know, it's not likely that they haven't

found these things. Did you find any footprints on there? I don't think so. I think it was too cold. An owl in a tree and some kind of land creature walking up to get the owl. The owl freaks out, flies away, and so does the animal. Yeah, it could be, but it doesn't sound that loud and it doesn't sound like an ape.

You know, unless we're there, it's all bullshit. Who knows? He might have had some fucking mushroom that he found under a log and stripped the balls off. I'm not saying that it's legit, but if you see the scientific depiction of a gigantopithecus, pull that image up.

There's one online where they have a reproduction of this thing and it lived alongside humans for sure right at the the minimum a hundred thousand years ago but it could have been alive more than that or sooner than that they they got photo um bones of this thing in like a chinese medicine shop was the first time they found them and like some anthropologists had gotten a hold these bones like what the fuck is this from and they they apparently from there realized that there was a it was a primate tooth and it was a primate tooth that didn't fit with the known species and so that initiated the search for this animal right but when you see the image of gigantopithecus it's

it's essentially exactly what a bigfoot is it's an now where does the aquatic ape fit into all this the aquatic ape theory is the theory of like that's a gigantopithecus right i mean that's a real animal okay and that's from how how long ago is absolutely a hundred thousand years right more recently than that it gets sketchy it's funny it looks like an orangutan but i can't imagine yeah right because it's too heavy to swing from trees. Yeah, and it doesn't give a fuck. You know? Imagine how strong that thing would be. If you stop and think about the fact that a 150 pound chimp is as strong as a 500 pound

man, what is a 2,000 pound primate? What kind of strength is that? I mean a gorilla can literally rip you apart like tissue paper. What is a 2,000 pound primate? What kind of strength is that? I mean a gorilla can literally rip you apart like tissue paper What can that thing do? And blow its nose on you Yeah, and stuff you up its ass in little pieces That's what a gorilla can do Just shred you down into little tampon-sized pieces

And stuff you up its ass This thing, okay, yeah As recently as 100, 000 years ago that's fact but there's um there's speculation that they may have lived uh much more recent than that there's a lot of different you you i'm sure you know there's a lot of different species where they thought it was extinct and they found out that yeah they hey there's one coelacanth that crazy fish with the legs right you know it looks. It looks like a prehistoric fish. Oh, right.

It has weird extensions to its fins. Right. Some dude pulled one up in the 40s or something. Yeah, and they were like, oh, we thought these things were long dead. But especially ridiculous when it comes to the ocean. There's so little of the ocean that we really have a firm grip on. Yeah. But they found the tooth in 1935 a uh apothecary shop it was a fossilized

uh bone and that's uh that's the i guess they used them in traditional chinese medicine so they've been grinding up these fucking bones this thing forever chinese medicine it's hilarious chinese medicine is the tiger penises and the bear gallbladders. I mean, they just need to calm the shit down. Is that just psychological shit? I think so, yeah. Is that what they're doing? They're just giving themselves. It's not a hysteria placebo effect.

It's amazing. And there may be some effect in some things, but, I mean, come on. A tiger penis isn't going to make you horny. Well, yeah. Unless you think it will. There's so much of that need for faith and belief in the entire Chinese culture, especially in regards to martial arts. Like China has been around for – I mean think about how long Chinese culture dates back that we understand. I mean thousands and thousands of years of very sophisticated culture.

They have the most dogshit martial arts in the world. Their martial arts are almost entirely useless. Really? Yeah. They have very few martial arts where there's like legitimate techniques that would work in a situation against a trained fighter because it hasn't been adapted they're not good they're just like clunky like like like real kung fu like you're pretending to be like animals and shit like that that is not the way to fight it doesn't it doesn't work you know there's like there's like there's established

like now because of the ultimate Fighting Championship, there's very clear parameters of what is and isn't effective against the best fighters in the world. There's no kung fu in that. There's a guy named Roy Nelson that says he's a kung fu fighter but really just knocks people out. But isn't a lot of kung fu about fatal blows like ripping your eyes out or taking your throat out? That doesn't really work. You can poke people in the eyes definitely, no doubt about it. You can't really rip someone's throat out. You can try. It's not going your throat out. That shit doesn't really work. You can poke people in the eyes, definitely. No doubt about it. You can't really rip someone's throat out.

You can try. It's not going to go out. It's so hard to rip out a throat, you know? To think that you're just going to go in there like a fucking Billy Jack movie or Patrick Swayze at Roadhouse. You know, that guy's going to be punching you in the face while you're holding onto his neck. It's not that easy to just grab someone's neck and pull it out.

Then people would be doing that all the time. It would be like the number one cause of death. Rip the balls off? That doesn't work either. You kick somebody in the balls, it hurts. But if they're filled up with adrenaline, they're going to still attack you. Really? The idea that you're going to debilitate someone by kicking them in the balls, if he's a pussy, but it can't survive.

If someone's trying to kill you. Can I just say, kick me in the balls, I'm debilitated. Hopefully, you would also never be an attacker where someone would have to kick you in the balls. You'd have a better chance just tickling the person with a chance that he's that ticklish. Yeah, man. A lot of people, I think, probably, if you were trying to tickle them,

they would fucking freak the fuck out. Yeah, if you're super ticklish. Yeah. Are you super ticklish at all, sir? No, he's not. Look at this size. This is the actual size of a gigantopithecus in relationship to a man. G. Blackie is what they call him?

Yeah, gigantopithecus blackie is the actual full scientific name. Well, it was 1930 that they named this fucking thing, you know, those dirty bitches. You know, Quentin Tarantino is going to be making a movie about this. Oh, no, you didn't. Yeah. I saw that movie last night. What did youino is going to be making a movie about this. Oh, no, you didn't. Yeah. I saw that movie last night. What did you think? It's a very good movie, man.

Yeah. I mean, the use of the word nigger is so prevalent in that movie. It's kind of preposterous at a certain point in time. You're like, okay, really? Like, did you have to say it this many times? But the reality is, have you thought about it? Like, that's probably how they communicated. That's what he says.

As authentic as it gets. Right. But that aside, it's a fucking great movie. Yeah, yeah. It's a good time. It's really good. Some really funny moments, too. He's a bad motherfucker.

Almost every one of his movies. Yeah, Gigantopithecus Blacking. Isn't that ridiculous? Yeah. You uncreative fuckheads from 1930. Did you read in, I don't know if you remember in the book, we talk about drapedomania, which was the disease of black slaves who had the pathological desire not to be slaves anymore. Oh, that's hilarious.

Yeah, it was a medical condition. They wrote about it in medical journals. Wow. Drapedomania. That's hilarious. Yeah, you don't want to be free. You're suffering from drapedomania. Isn't that incredible?

You tweeted something today that I wanted to discuss with you. Is there such a thing as sex addiction? Oh, right. Yeah. Was that an article you were tweeting? Yeah, it was an article by Marty Klein, who's a sex therapist for 30-some years. What does old Marty have to say? Marty says no.

Really? No, Marty says that's silly. I could introduce him to some girl that I know and he would change his mind immediately. Yeah, but I mean, there's obviously psychological addictions. Yeah, what he's saying is they're addictive personality types

and it's not about the gambling or about the whatever it is you're addicted to, the jerking off in front of your computer or whatever. It's about a certain personality or different personality types that are highly susceptible to needing that sort of stimulation over and over and over again. And it could be anything that they lock onto. Yeah.

They could lock onto playing cards. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird thing with human beings where again i think we're going back to the reward systems that set us up when we're hunters and gatherers for being successful and one of the things that got us to be successful is persistence right this crazy laser beam persistence of chasing that animal and focusing on that animal and being fixated on acquiring that animal but that can be like for aces. I need fucking four aces.

He's fucking four aces. I got these four aces. It's like that same intensity. It's sort of found this weird path where it's not being fulfilled by modern everyday life of cubicle existence, sitting there and checking your emails and waiting for the fucking clock to strike five so you can run away and have your few hours of freedom. the fucking clock to strike five so you can run away and have your few hours of freedom. Because we're trapped in that sort of a lifestyle, all these reward systems are not being fulfilled and they're sort of manifesting themselves in other ways.

How else can we get excitement? How about we bet the house on something? Okay, let's bet the house on something. We got to fucking do something. We need to fire this kiln up. We need to do something to get ourselves excited. Yeah. Yeah.

Edward Abbey, I think we – there's a quote from Edward Abbey in our book where he talks about how sexuality is the only part of modern life that remains somewhat undomesticated. You know, that we're like monkeys in a cage. Like we just sit there jerking off because there's nothing else to do. You know? Yeah. That is something with people. They'll start their day off by just finding something to jerk off to. That's every day.

That's not a small amount of people. That's a lot of people. Like everyone, every man between 15 and 20 or so. And at one point in time, there's so much access now. At one point in time, it was difficult to find something to masturbate to. But now, I mean if you have a computer – I mean I have friends that won't – they'll have like a computer that doesn't have Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi, they'll break it on the computer just so that they make sure that they never go online with it. Like they'll take a chip out.

I'm going to tell you. If you have a spot in your house where you can't get Wi-Fi, go there and right there. Because otherwise, your fucking computer is right there. That's the portal to pussy. You can see it anytime you want. You just press in a couple of us and there's a girl blowing a guy. You're like, whoa.

It's so prevalent. No one ever thought that was coming. Back in the day when I was in high school and you had to get magazines and when VCR tapes came out, it was a shocker. But now it's on your phone. Well, there's a book called Erotic Engine that argues that every advance in communication technology back to the 1800s has come about because of the desire to see and broadcast pussy. It's fascinating. Yeah. It's all about the porn. Another weird sort of offshoot of the constant technology progress, you know, that seems to...

That's leading us. And that's exactly the model we were talking about earlier. It leads us in these steps always closer to what we think is going to give us pleasure or satisfaction or something. But in fact, it may be leading us further and further away from the things. From true happiness. Yeah. Because it's so simple. and we need to sort of physically and mentally and emotionally catch up with the amount of progress that technology is making and fit into this new paradigm and find happiness within it that is achievable and reachable. And I think it is.

I certainly think that if you give people enough – I think people inherently need, especially men, difficult tasks in their life. They need to work. I think work doesn't mean digging holes, but it means putting your effort to something and finding a result in that. There's some sort of – that's how you become a man. That's how you become a human. That's how you learn how to sort of navigate your way through the world is by trials and tribulations of trying to achieve things or to accomplish things or to explore things,

whether it's just your education, delving into education and you become more introspective because of that and more understanding of yourself and your sort of fitment in this strange world that we live in. But if you don't have that, if you don't have pursuits, that's where damaged people come from. That's where a lot of what's fucked up in this world comes from is that people that aren't being led in a way that's going to develop them, people that aren't being guided in some sort of a multi-step process for understanding and for figuring out who you are and figuring out

what's the best way to interact with people, what's the most harmonious way to live your life, what's the way that makes you and the people that you come in contact with the most happy. And that's who you are. It just takes a long time to figure out how to become that person. And we live in this weird society now where everything is operating on this crazy amount of momentum. And you sort of just hop on the escalator and walk with it as it's going. And that's your life. And you very rarely have a chance to stop and calculate and and formulate a game plan yeah you're right so much of our behavior whether it's financial whether it's governmental or whether it's sexual much of it is based on like these

silly notions and momentum the momentum of the people that set this whole system up way back don't even exist anymore. Yeah. And see, again, we get back to numbers because I start to think it's – I think less in terms of the people who set it up and run it and more in terms of the internal logic of the thing itself, that the society is the organism and we live within the organism, right? Just like so many different bacteria and things live within us. And, you know, you you think of yourself as an individual, as do I. But, you know, you've got the DNA from thousands of different organisms all necessary to your life. I start to think we're inside. It's almost like, you know, when Romney said corporations are people, they're not people, but they're organisms.

They're alive. They've got their own logic and their own needs. And they don't give a shit about us. Right? They're about making profit, which requires destruction of natural resources. There's nothing within a corporation that gives a damn that it's destroying the planet, just like there's nothing within a pathogen that gives a damn that it's destroying its host. But it needs us in order to fulfill its destiny. It needs our creativity in order to fulfill its host. But it needs us in order to fulfill its destiny. It needs our creativity in order to fulfill its destiny.

I mean, if you looked at technology as a life form itself, you would, I mean, we don't think of, when we think of parasites like the toxoplasma parasite or any other sort of parasite that invades, we think of them in organic terms. But if you looked at what technology is doing to people, it's like, wow, that's very parasitic. And us to it as well. You could call it symbiosis, but it's also parasitic because it's polluting everything while it's being created. And it's altering behavior. You can make an argument that technology is bringing us closer together and technology is bridging boundaries of consciousness and spreading information.

You can also make an argument that it's separating people from human interaction. Right. And it's like favoring the ones and zeros and numbers over actual human social interaction. That's what I'm saying, that the process favors, the process is designed to satisfy the needs of the macro-organism, not the microorganisms within it. So human needs are not important in this process. The need of the corporation are what's important. So that's why I think we're less and less happy.

That's why I think we're civilized to death because we're, we're moving further and further away from the things that make life satisfying. I agree with you. How do you feel about antidepressants? I feel that they're like, sort of like drapedomania. I think a lot of people are quote unquote depressed because they're unhappy, you know, as opposed to organic, you know, serotonin, you know, levels that are misaligned. I'm talking about people. I think people are fucking miserable. Of course, they're miserable.

Their lives are meaningless. They're, you know, we mentioned you talk about the things that really make people happy. Number one on the list is living in a community of people who love you. Yeah. That's the number one thing. What you mentioned earlier, you know, with the lottery winners and so on. And as society becomes ever more fragmented and more Americans are living alone right now

as a percentage of the population than ever before in our history, that's demonstrated. That's because so many people are annoying. Sometimes it's better to be alone. Just fucking watch whatever you want to watch, eat whatever you want, walk around naked. Who gives a fuck? Leave me alone. But you're talking about how we get caught on the wheel you know and there's no time to get off i i that that's like the central insight of my life was

when i felt that i felt that momentum building and i took a summer off college i hitchhiked to alaska and uh i got yeah i had did it twice, there and back twice. Jesus Christ. From New York to Alaska, yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. What are the odds of you picking up a ride and going, hey, man, I'm going to Alaska? And the guy's like, holy shit, me too.

Hope we like each other. Hope we get along. What's the longest ride you went on? Oh, I can't remember. Probably, well, no, I can remember. It was from, you know, you take the ferry up the Inside Passage, which is up the coast of Canada. And then the ferries don't go around the mainland of Alaska because the water is just out of control. I think it's called the Chugash Mountains there. So to drive, you have to go up the Alcan Highway through the Yukon

and then go across horizontally to Fairbanks. I think that's like 1,200 kilometers or miles. I don't remember, but that would be the longest ride. A woman picked me and these two other guys up that I'd met and drove us all the way. It was like three days. Wow. Yeah. What a crazy lady. Great lady. up that I'd met and drove us all the way it was like three days Wow yeah what a crazy lady great lady she was in a VW camper van with two little kids what

year was this this was I think it was the second year so was 84 Wow how crazy was she she was wonderful dudes in a VW camper well she picked me up first because I had been with these two guys. And some guy picked us up down in the town. I think it was Skagway in the town where the ferry docks were trying to hitch out. And some guy picked us up and drove us like 20 miles into the wilderness and dropped us off and said, watch out for the bears. He was just a dick. So he just dropped you off like to be an asshole?

Just drove you to some terrible place? Yeah, he was a local guy and he was like, yeah, fuck you guys. You know, he was, it was, I don't remember. This was a long time ago, obviously. 20 miles? But he left us in the middle of nowhere. And the only cars that came by were coming off the ferry, right? Because there's no like road that went into this town.

So we were stuck there. And so I was like, all right, we set up our tents. We had food and shit. We were backpacking in Alaska. We were self-contained. So we camped out next to this river and I had some acid. We tripped. These two guys had never tripped before in their lives. So you just like, fuck it.

We can't get a ride. Let's trip balls. Well, what else are we going to do? We got to wait till Wednesday till the next ferry comes in. Right. So we're there like three days. So we tripped out. Very interesting. Let's trip balls. Well, what else are we going to do? We've got to wait until Wednesday until the next ferry comes in, right? So we're there like, oh, three days. So we tripped out. Very interesting. Anyway, these guys, I had a lot of adventures with these guys.

I went to prison with one of them later that summer. Jesus Christ, man. Yeah, yeah. That's a nutty life. Yeah. But anyway, so we decided nobody's going to pick up all three of us. So they walked up the road and let me get the – so we went out and waited for the cars. And finally this woman stops. And I knew my buddies were right up around the corner.

So as soon as I got in the van, I was like, oh, yeah, how are you doing? Oh, man, I've been hanging out with these really cool guys. Oh, I met them. And then we come around the corner. It's like, oh, there they are. And she just sort of looked at me and smiled and pulled over. Okay. So the three of us drove all the way to Fairbanks.

She sat in the back of the van with her kids, played with the kids. She had kids? She had two little kids, yeah. Oh, my God. That's so crazy. She was great. What a chance she took, huh? Yeah, really.

Wow. She's a sweetheart. A lady with her kids. She was behind. She was like, oh, what do you have, a van? Hmm. Okay. Let me get in there lady jesus wow well glad

it worked out and you guys weren't crazy you didn't wind up dismembering her and the family in the woods man i had my lucky hitchhiking shirt on you know that's a bold move to just go out there and hope to get a ride what's the longest you step like stood out there with your thumb out a few days i remember outside of white horse this was the year before i was with my friend mike we were outside of white horse we were there like two two nights at least we slept by the highway and then weird i swear this is true the next day we get up we walked up the highway a little bit you know got our tents set up and everything you know back in our backpack and uh walk up the highway a little bit and this is like tundra right up and everything, you know, back in our backpack and walk up the highway a little bit. And this is like tundra, right? I don't know if you've been to this part of the world, Yukon.

It's just like flat, empty. It's Arctic desert, essentially. You know, there's scrub, whatever. And walk up a little bit and we find on the side of the road a book that had been there for God knows how long. The pages were just like really tightly curled back from the spine. It was like some sort of bizarre

shellfish or something. We sort of peeled it down and it was a Bible. Whoa. So we lit it on fire and we started dancing around this Bible. We were like just nuts. And this truck comes by, this pickup truck and

at first we were like, you know, someone with a fire. And yeah, it's God, right? They back up to us. And it's these three guys. It's like a dude in his 50s from New Mexico or something. And his crazy-ass nephew, who was like 23, and his nephew's friend. And they were just like, yahoo yahoo like real real bozo dudes like they were pissed off that everything was more expensive in canada they didn't understand the money thing you know that it was different dollars they were pissed off that

the canadians wouldn't let them bring their guns through canada there's all this stuff they picked us up anyway put us in the back stopped when we crossed back into Alaska, and they got out and kissed the ground to be back in America. So they picked us up when we burned the Bible. Wow. You channeled them. I guess. You channeled, like, one of the best examples of weirdness in America, like the super patriotic retards. Exactly.

That's fascinating. Gun-toting. Yeah, that was your vehicle to get over there. They got us out. What a strange lifestyle it is to just fucking hitchhike places and not exactly know who's going to take you or what's going to happen. It's kind of like hunting and gathering, you know? Not really. It's kind of like putting yourself in a metal box with a psycho.

You know, you could take a wild guess and you could be okay. I met some psychos, a lot of psychos, a lot of homosexual guys and a lot of Jesus freaks. Like what happened? What's the craziest thing that happened while hijacking? Homosexuals first. I was getting life coached from behind. Jesus freaks.

Well, I got gotta say the homosexuals were fine they were lonely, they were lonely guys and they were hoping and I guess a lot of dudes there's like a system but like hey I'm not gay

at that time my best friend was gay, I'm certainly comfortable did you bring your best friend over gay. I'm certainly comfortable around – Did you bring your best friend over to blow him for the ride? Yeah, I should have. That would be a good move. Actually, he came to Alaska later that summer, but he flew up. He was a professor in the school.

Well, he shouldn't have to prostitute himself either just for a ride. I mean you're either going to give him a ride or not. Blow the pilot. Get a flight out of it anyway. Yeah, just a ride? Really? But I'll tell you, one of the more memorable hitchhiking things was I was coming back, and I was coming from Montreal down to New York. I had friends I wanted to see in New York, so I was coming down that highway that goes down through the Adirondack Mountains, you know?

Very desolate, kind of empty country. And I always had a knife in my right boot um when i was hitchhiking just like you say things can get really weird and i figured well you know at least i've got a knife and like stop the fucking car right right um but it's under my jeans and i had these army boots and i always had it in the boot under my jeans so i'm i'm out there and uh this guy pulls over for me and he's like crew cut, ex-military looking dude, real fit, tattoos, the whole thing. And he's like, yeah, so where are you from? What are you doing? And within two minutes of the conversation, he says, so you like

knives? And he sort of says it in that, like he's not asking, he's noting. And I said, yeah, yeah, I like knives i guess and he said yeah i noticed you've got one under your boot there on the right and i was like oh geez and i'm sitting in the car how's he notice i've got a knife in my boot like on the other side of the car he said yeah i noticed when i picked you up he said i like knives too and he reaches to his belt buckle and goes and pulls out a knife that was in his belt buckle. And now the knife is like right in front of my face. And I'm like, fuck, man, this could be really bad, you know?

Right. And I'm looking at it and I said, this is a really nice knife. He said, yeah. And like he let me take the knife and hold it and like, oh, yeah, wow, that's cool. That's in your buckle, huh? Like, yeah. And I've got another one here. And he pulls out another knife. knife by now i'm like he's not going to kill me he's just showing me his knives right the guy was a prison guard at attica whoa he drove me all the

way to new york he was a prison guard and the thing was like he's a trained you know he's trained to notice shit like a knife under your right right to see the bulge and that i mean that made such an impression on me because at that point i i stopped carrying a knife first of all because like because those dudes are pros and i'm an amateur last thing i want to do is escalate the situation right right and it just really made this like you know i think i'm getting away with something no there are people people who know what to for. They're always one step ahead of you. It's tough. I don't know if you've ever been interrogated by police.

It's hard because they've done it a thousand times. Yeah. Yeah, I got a question once. Is that interrogated? Yeah. Same thing. I got a question once because I knew a dude who knew a dude who killed somebody. It was a weird conversation because I had a conversation on the phone with him.

And then the cops wanted to ask me about what I knew because they were listening to his phone calls. That was kind of interesting too. I was like, whoa, they tapped his fucking phone. That's kind of crazy. Wow. Yeah. Luckily, I didn't know shit. But it was a weird sort of a situation.

Like, what is – is it legal to know that a guy might have killed somebody like what are you supposed to go right to the cops with that like if you don't know whether or not someone's full of shit or not right what are you supposed to do there yeah yeah i think you're safe but that insight that you get caught up in this momentum what happened that that year in alaska that first year was i my entire life plan changed because I was like on the track to go to grad school right away. I knew a guy who was at Oxford who had me all set up to go to Oxford, do a PhD in literature, which is what I was studying at that point. And, you know, just go right in and be a professor teaching literature, you know, some college by the time I was 30 with

tenure and all set up and, you know, and I went up to Alaska and I met all these people who blew my mind, who were really kind and generous and smart and deep people who weren't intellectuals, right, who had no idea who Nietzsche was or whatever. And my friends back in, you know, my sort of high IQ friends would have scoffed at these people. But in fact, they were happier. They had a better life than my miserable, arrogant professor friends. And it really made me think about where I was going in life. And I said, OK, so here's what I'm going to do. Until I'm 30, I'm not going to get on that wheel. I'm not going to go to grad school.

I'm not going to get married. I'm not going to have a career. I'm just going to float around the world, do crazy shit, meet crazy people, think about what I want to do with my life. But don't start till after 30. So give yourself an actual number. Just to say at least till 30. Like no commitment. Your commitment is to not make a commitment until you're 30. There's a lot of shows that are on the air uh lately uh

about alaska there's a right the subsistence shows well there's subsistence shows their families just survive in alaska and they show how many different villages um rely completely on nature right i'm obsessed with these shows it's so fascinating to me the it's they're so compelling this chase of food you know whether it's they're growing some food, they're collecting salmon out of the river, they're shooting animals and cutting them up and freezing them. And everyone just goes nuts for four months, stockpiles all the food, and then waits. And then the whole thing freezes for eight months. It's really weird. A lot of backgammon.

Yeah, I don't know what the fuck they do but essentially they they barely shower and clean themselves for eight months they were talking about clothes about like during the winter like you barely wash your clothes yeah because you can't yeah things just freeze instantly it's 40 below zero how do you keep clothes wet you know what do you do you go out you put them out because they hang their clothes sort of outside to dry. Good luck with that. You just step outside. It's frozen instantly. There's a guy who lives in Alaska, and he's a cue maker.

And he was on the phone with a friend of his, and he took a bucket of hot water. And it was so cold that he took a bucket on the phone with him. He said, I'm going to do this for you. I'll throw the water. This is how cold it is. He throws the hot water up in the air. Before it hits the ground, it's frozen. It was 90 below zero or something fucking crazy.

See, if I have to be subsistence, I don't want to do it there. Woo! But it's so glorious. Like when you see these people that are hunting caribou or hunting black bear, and you see the landscape that they're traveling on and how few people there are. One of them was this family that's related to the singer Jewel. Do you know the singer Jewel? Yeah.

Her family. Is this Iceland? No. Well, her family, I think the family is originally from Sweden or some shit. And then when Hitler was storming Europe, they decided to move to Alaska and start this subsistence living. And the singer Jewel comes from this family. Oh shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm pretty sure, I hope it's not bullshit. Wow. But to watch the show where this family's like living on the same piece of land that their grandfather got in the 1940s.

It's amazing stuff. Really, really interesting stuff. They're just out there. They have cattle, and then the entire year is a collection run. It's just run around, collect hay, run around, collect animals, freeze them, collect fish. And they have nights where they don't have anything to eat. And then they have to get up in the morning and go trap rabbits. And it's like,

whoa, that is a nutty fucking way to live, man. But, meanwhile, how much different is it than someone living check to check? Being on the subway with a bunch of other crazy assholes or watching someone get pushed in front of the car.

The weirdness that we have to deal with in modern society. Yeah, well, the fact is the stress level is much lower. And Sapolsky, we were talking about earlier, one of his big points he makes about stress, he wrote a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, which is a pretty good book. But he makes this big distinction between chronic stress and acute stress, right? And we're evolved to deal with acute stress, like, you know, sleep, not eating one night, you know, and there's no food, so you go out the next day and you deal with that. What we're not evolved to deal with is chronic stress, you know, sitting in traffic every day, you know, waking up to an alarm clock every morning, you know, all this, you know,

on the subway every day or whatever it is you know that's we're not evolved to deal with that that's what wipes us out it makes us crazy cancer all kinds of other shit the um the kind of stress that we deal with on a regular basis of the stress of not wanting to do something but having to do it all day and being not satisfying whatsoever right like the process what you were talking about earlier the process of gathering food creating food growing food um and and and catching fish or whatever is very satisfying right it's like it feels great well that's what we do for vacation yeah right you know it's like that's how they live we go fishing we go hunting you know we go hiking in the mountains that's what they're doing day to day. Yeah. Of course they're fucking happy. Yeah.

You know, there were these people on Darwin's boat. Do you know about that? I think I talked about it. We talked about it in Sex at Dawn. It was Jemmy, Jemmy York. And there were three adolescent Fugians, Indians, that the captain of the Beagle had picked up on an earlier voyage, these kids. that the captain of the Beagle had picked up on an earlier voyage, these kids. And he took them back to England so they could be educated in England and see the glory of English life and living properly and all that.

And then on the voyage Darwin was on, they were taking them back to Tierra del Fuego where they were going to teach their people how to come out of the woods and live properly and all that. And so Darwin knew these people really well. And by the time they got there, they built them a cabin. They made a garden. They got them all set up and they left them there and said, OK, we'll be back in three months. They took off and they were mapping the coast of South America. They came back three months later.

The cabin was abandoned. The garden was completely grown over and nobody was there. So they went looking for them, put out word they wanted to see them. And finally, one of them came back and went out on the boat to have dinner with Darwin and the captain. And they were like, what's, you know, what happened? What did you, what's going on? He's like, man, he said, like, he said, why should I farm? There are plenty birdies, plenty fishies. It's like forget that farming shit, you know? Like, oh, everything we taught you, you abandoned it. In a couple of months to go back and live in the mountains, you know?

Something that looks miserable to the British, right? But for the people who had experienced both sides, they were like, fuck that, man. Wearing these silly, uncomfortable shoes and clothes and digging in the dirt. There are plenty of fish and birds and stuff to eat. Yeah, when you see farmers, you don't think like happy, good times, singing around the campfire. You think that stoic existence of rising in the morning and milking the cows and pushing the plows.

It looks like death, whereas like hunting and gathering is kind of fun. Yeah, it's inherently enjoyable. Why? Because that's how we evolve. Yeah gardening is fun gardening it's like you gotta find like there's a like there's a like a middle ground between gardening and being a farmer and there's something about having domesticated animals that's pretty nice too sure chickens and you know they have eggs every morning they're super fresh and if you've never had like fresh eggs there really is a difference in the way they taste. Like an egg that comes right out of a chicken, you eat it that day.

It's very delicious. If you could have chickens, and you can kill those bitches and eat them too if the shit hits the fan. I'll tell you what. Casilda, my wife, was raised in Mozambique. And she used to go out in the summers to her grandmother's farm, which is like rural Mozambique. It's rural, right? And they had a dog that was eaten by a tiger and shit you know it's like seriously wrong so so one day cassie and i are in

amsterdam's beautiful spring day by a canal and these ducks are paddling by it's just like you know it's a vermeer painting or something and cassie's looking at the ducks really intently and i said what are you thinking? She said, oh, I was just thinking how great it would be to grab that duck in the front and break its neck and gut it and pluck it and stuff it with garlic and peppers. And, you know, like she had this whole thing like the way her grandmother used to do, you know. I tell you, if the end comes, she's in charge of food. No problem. It's funny how people will eat meat, but yet look at that in a very, you know, as being a distasteful thing to think.

Like me. I mean, I'm ashamed, but it's true. It would be hard for me to kill an animal. that these ideas, have you ever considered that this is a part of what it is, sort of the natural progression from the ape that lives in the forest to being this sort of enlightened, aware thing with massive access to information that somewhere along the line we must separate ourselves from the hunter-gatherer instincts and reward systems. And one of the ways to do that is with antidepressants and supermarkets. And that, like, it is a slow push away,

and that we have to fulfill these weird needs in other ways. And that sort of facilitates the great machine. Yeah. I mean, I think it is essentially a struggle between the interests of the machine and the interests of the organisms that live within it. And so what I'm hoping, although I'm not that hopeful, but I'm hoping that at some point our intelligence allows us to consciously choose our own interests over the interests of the machine, right?

I mean, it's what you were talking about earlier, developing sources of energy that don't destroy the planet, developing ways to interact that is respectful of our individuality and developing sexual mores that allow people to get pleasure in their lives. I mean, I was talking to a friend the other night who was going through a crisis, and he said it was Christmas Eve, right? So everyone's with their families. All his friends were sort of out of touch.

He really didn't have anybody to hang out with and he was going through a really hard time with a family member and stuff. He ended up in a strip club paying a woman $300 to hold him. Whoa. Right? That's the kind of world we're in. You know? People are touch-starved. Babies are touch-starved.

A lot of masseurs will tell you it's not even about the massage. It's about being touched. Right? So I think at some point, we have to recognize, like, wait a minute. This is going in one direction, but the things that actually make us happy are not out there. They're not in that direction. And the only way we can slow it down or stop it or even change direction, I think, is learning to have far fewer people on the planet. Because the more people there are, the more that wheel gets fueled and spins faster and faster.

And the only way to slow it down is far fewer people. Especially in other countries. I mean the United States is probably the best country in the world, so we can keep our numbers very high. So keep having as many kids as you like. But China cut it out. Especially you Mexican immigrants. That's a weird thing to say to people.

People get very defensive when you talk about reducing the number of people on the planet. I'm not saying to kill anybody. I know, but there's no other way to do it. They can't live. If they can't live, someone's going to come or let them die. Attrition. We can let it go with attrition. But what's going on with health and nutrition and science and medicine is like prolonging lifespans and stretching people out.

That's an interesting – what if it becomes infinite? stretching people out like yeah that's an interesting what if it becomes infinite i mean there's there's talk especially if you're in the kurzweil camp yeah of them being able to extend lifespan like aubrey de gray believes that within the next hundred years you're going to be able to be a thousand years old you would see i think a lot of that thinking is based on on faulty assumptions uh maybe not him in particular but there's a section in sex of dawn where we talk about the longevity lie, which is that most people think that human beings in prehistory, these ancestors we've been talking about, only live to 35 or so. Somebody's 30 was an old person. Well, Noah was 600.

He was an exception. We know he was exceptional. Yeah. So a lot of people are saying, well, hey, we've doubled the human lifespan. Why can't we continue it? But it hasn't doubled. The human lifespan is 60, 70, 75 years, even in the wild. Rarely 75 years. But, you know, we're not going to – there's no evidence that the human lifespan has doubled ever. So this thinking that we

can just keep you know increasing it isn't going to work what are you sending me man sending me texts all right there's the lamp it's fairly i thought you were trying to tell me something a secret message yeah me too like get rid of this guest no losing how dare you This is fascinating stuff, man. Do you think it is also possible that as – I would not like to go back to being a monkey. I would not like to go back to picking cow patties up and looking for bugs to eat. Right. We have progressed to the point where we are now living in a civilized society, which I enjoy.

I enjoy the internet. I enjoy television and restaurants. I enjoy the internet. I enjoy television and restaurants. I enjoy cars. I enjoy going to the movies. I enjoy a lot of the aspects. So I don't necessarily buy the idea that no one is happy and that it's impossible to be happy in this environment. Is it possible that it's just simply a matter of catch-up

and that we all must sort of morph and move on with the times, just as we have in going from being monkeys with no houses to people with houses to guys with cars. I mean that this is just a natural part of the progression of the universe and the idea of hanging on to the past, this nostalgia for the simpler times is really kind of silly. And that even our notions about sexuality, our notions of communication and privacy, all those are sort of ancient and they're really – they're only applicable to a world where the internet doesn't exist.

As this internet gets stronger and stronger and more and more pervasive, which it's obviously doing, it's going to eventually get to some point where it's ridiculous to think that you could ever live like the people in the taiga. I hear you, man. But that argument is very similar to saying, look, the sort of wholistic – the food you get at Whole Foods, people can't afford that and a lot of it is bullshit anyway even if it's labeled organic or whatever free range, it da so you know we should all just deal with it and eat at mcdonald's because that's where we're going maybe there's a practical truth to

that but the problem is that just like the body if you don't give the body the exercise patterns the sleep the the nutritional content and so on the you know fiber and all that it evolved to want so on, you know, fiber and all that, it evolved to want whatever you think about, however your identity or your sense of life has adapted, your body still won't respond to it correctly, right? You'll still get sick and die from it. So there's a level, you know, I have a friend who's a cardiologist who says to me, I don't feel stress, right? I don't feel it.

I was like, dude, you feel it. Even if you don't think you feel it, you still feel it. And you're, you're, I mean, I'm arguing about stress with a cardiologist, which isn't a good thing to do, but he's, you know, well, he has to, he's human. That's the point. You know, I think even traffic is stress. Exactly. Well, and, and sticking a catheter up somebody's, you know, artery to fuck around with their heart. It's got to be stressful. Yeah, it's intensity. And that intensity is stressful. It's like people, even great things, the idea of stress is always sort of has a negative connotation.

Right. But it's stress. It's intensity. It's like whether anything, if you're playing a video game, it's stressful. Right. I mean, your system is being taxed. Yeah. You're looking at all these graphics.

You're moving around. That is stressful. It's not negative. You're redlining shit. Your system is not necessarily set up. So, I mean, to answer your question, I think that's a legitimate argument for sure and a legitimate critique of all this sort of thinking. But I do think that there's a part of the human organism that can't adapt anywhere near as fast as society's changing. So it'll always be stuck in the Pleistocene. And the only way to deal with it is to understand what

that environment was like and try to adapt your life in important ways to bring it into sync with that way of life. I completely agree. And I don't mean to suggest in any way that people shouldn't sort of manage their consciousness in a more valuable way or in a more applicable way. What I'm saying is that when I look at the progression of the ape-like creatures that we must have been at one point in time to what we are today, I mean what is it going to be like a thousand years from now a hundred thousand years from now a million years from now we're obviously going to

be something completely different we're going to be moved if we exist in the same physical form it's going to be very odd it's going to it's going to be something's going to happen and this really seems to be like a matter of trying to enjoy this thing that you're trapped in this this dimension that you're trapped in and one of the ways inherently that's I think it's very important is to appreciate the physical and because the especially with people I don't want to say intellectuals but people that fancy themselves intellectuals more than true intellectuals because a true intellectual will probably take into account all the different variables and and understand that the body is a your meat vehicle has to be

tended to yeah in the proper way in order for you to get the right feelings from it and part of your negative feelings with your mind has got to be connected to this thing that's carrying you around right um but i think that concentrating on that is thought as being a base thing, like a not important, you know, it's just so rudimentary. It's like it's unnecessary. It's so apish. You know, we don't really need to concentrate on that. But we do. We do.

Yeah. Sexually, as far as the stress that you get from everyday life of input. Yeah. I'm a big believer in the sensory deprivation tank. I have one in my basement and I've been using them for years. And one of the best things about the sensory deprivation tank is that it offers you this environment where nothing's coming at you, like literally nothing, no sensory input at all. And it's so hard to achieve that anywhere else in the world. When you're in that tank, there's just nothing.

You're floating through space and nothing's coming at you. And it's such a recharge. It's so much better for me than sitting in front of the television for an hour or sitting on a couch, which are the nice things to do to relax. It's nice to sit back and just veg out for a little bit. But that environment is something that not enough people experience, the environment of the isolation tank. Did you ever meet John Lilly? No, no. He was gone before I found out about it all.

I think he died. I don't know when he died, actually. Late 70s, maybe, early 80s. My friend Stanley knew him. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Fascinating dude. Yeah.

You should meet Stanley sometime. Stanley knew everybody. Stanley was my professor in grad school. And we had breakfast together one day when I first started. And then later I got a note saying, you know, Dr. Krippner would like to meet you, you know, come to his office, whatever. And I go talk to him, and he's this sweet old guy. And he says, listen, you know, your life sounds pretty unanchored. You know, you've got a lot of freedom in your life. I'm going to Brazil in two months.

Would you like to go with me? All expenses paid. You know, the people who are inviting me to Brazil will pay for my assistant to go, whatever. I was like, fuck yeah, let's go. So I went to Brazil with Stanley. For how long? That was like 10 days or something. Wow. Now, Stanley is one of the world's most renowned experts in things like telepathy,

altered states of consciousness, and shamanism, and dream interpretation, all this kind of freaky-deaky stuff. What's his first name? Stanley Krippner, K-R-I-P-P-N-E-R. Dude, let's get him. How can we get him? Oh, he's super cool. No, I'll have him come down.

Where does he live? He's 80. He just turned 80. We were at his birthday party in Berkeley a couple weeks ago. Wow. Daniel Ellsberg was there. Stan Groff. I mean, Stanley tripped with Timothy Leary.

He knew Alan Watts. You know, this whole intellectual 60s, 70s, hippie intellectual scene. Stanley was the young guy. He was the in-house psychologist for the Grateful Dead for years, hung out with them. They had an in-house psychologist? Well, he was just, you know what he was? He was what you were talking about earlier,

where the prominent people would just have a smart guy hang around. That's what Stanley was. He was the smart guy. How smart were the Grateful Dead? That's a brilliant move. Yeah. To have a dude like that around with you? Yeah.

We need one of those, Brian. We need to get a super smart dude to come around with us. We do. It's Joey Diaz. For you, Joey Diaz represents the Oracle. Yep. He's the impossible knowledge that can never be achieved. He's about to be a daddy today, I think.

Is it today? Tonight, I think. Are they going to induce? Wow. He tweeted something today about, like, this is his last day of having no responsibilities or something like that. Wow. Crazy. So this book and the information that you put out from it, how has it been received?

Have you – I mean, it's obviously a very successful book. But what kind of criticism have you had to encounter with this? It's been interesting. I would say the response has been 95% positive, which is not at all what we expected. We were expecting 50-50 at best. The negative criticism has been, I'm going to sound like an asshole saying this but I think most of it has been pretty emotional it hasn't been arguing the intellectual points made in the book

it's been just sort of freaking out like one of the first reviews was by an economist named Megan McArdle one of the first negative reviews she reviewed it in her blog, and she just said, like, she just, first of all, said it was written really poorly and blah, blah, blah. But then she said, human beings are not like bonobos. You know how I know this?

And then in bold, because we're not like bonobos. That was her argument. That's a silly argument. Yeah. That's a chick who's worried that her pussy is not that valuable. Yeah. She had just recently been married, actually. Someone told me later.

Yeah. She probably was like totally clinging to the idea of monogamy. But, you know, you're not discounting the idea of a happy monogamous life in that book at all. What you're doing is just talking about the real history of human beings. And I didn't find it. I thought it was going, because I had heard the resistance about it, I thought it was going to be much more controversial than it was. Yeah.

Not really much more, but I thought it was possible based on the reactions that I had heard from people. But I thought it was pretty factual. Well, and we're not arguing, and this is a point I have to make in interviews all the time, we're not arguing that there's anything wrong with monogamy. Just like we're not arguing that there's anything wrong with vegetarianism. Right?

You can choose to be a vegetarian, and it can be smart and healthy and ethical and a very good decision, but don't expect it to come naturally to you. Just because you've chosen to be a vegetarian doesn't mean bacon suddenly doesn't smell good anymore. Right, right. So, you know, understand you're going to have challenges if you take that path. It's an uphill path. And the reason it's an uphill path is because your ancestors lived like this, you know.

So to me, there's no advice implicit in that. And we got a lot of pressure actually from publishers to make it like a self-help kind of book. Really? Oh yeah, they were really into that. Well that's something we were talking about before we started recording about dealing with people and dealing with publishers. Oh yeah. Dealing with anybody who wants to sort

of like direct your vision. Right. You know, ultimately your book is your art. I mean, this is your take on your work on this particular subject. But someone will come along and say, you know what? It would be more entertaining if you decided to make it a game show. Yeah. It's Sex at Dawn, the game show.

Someone approached us recently and wanted to make an illustrated kids version. Whoa, Jack. Yeah, that's a challenge. You might want to leave orgies out of that. Yeah. How do you do cartoon orgies, likeum bob square pants type dudes what do you yeah sorry no please i was just gonna say other reactions like one woman uh didn't believe casilda really exists that my publisher and i conspired to make up a female co-author to obscure the male privileged phallocentric perspective.

Oh, that's funny. So there's been that sort of thing. We haven't gotten any response at all from like the Christian right, you know, who I was hoping would get really offended and freak out in loud voices. But there hasn't been a peep out of them. There's a bit of intellectual bigotry involved in anything masculine. Like anything that is a masculine trait or masculine wants or needs or behavior patterns is almost rife for criticism right away, like automatically intellectually dismissed, whether it's aggression or sexual needs or anything like that. Rife for criticism Like right away Like automatically Intellectually dismissed Yeah

You know Whether it's aggression Or sexual needs Or anything like that Automatically Intellectually dismissed Do you know Neil Strauss? Heard the name

Who is he? He wrote a book Called The Game Oh yes Okay that's right Pick up artists I interviewed him On my podcast

And I said to him Like what do you say To people who say You're just teaching losers How to manipulate women? You know? And he was like, yeah, interesting. You know, how much time do women spend learning how to manipulate men?

Right? But I... Some do, but some don't. You know? Some pride themselves in just being real. But... Yeah. But the point is women are much better at dealing with relationships.

Let's say relationship skills, right? You've got the cosmetics industry. You've got all this cosmetic surgery. You've got, you know, the hairstyles and the fashion. That's all about attracting male attention, right? And holding male attention. I'm not saying women are using it to hurt men necessarily, but I'm saying there is a huge industry around helping women deal with men.

And he was saying like the first time you start talking about helping men deal with women, it gets dismissed in the way you were saying. It's true, but in my opinion, what he's doing is like horse shit. It's a temporary fix. Like, really, what you need to do is be a bad motherfucker. Figure out a way to be a real man, you know, be a real man. I always say, and this is a corny way of saying it, but it really works. Be the hero in your own story.

If you were living a movie and you're the guy that everyone admires and he woke up and this is his situation, how would he handle it? How would you handle each individual moment that you encounter in your life? Well, if you were the guy that you would look up to, how would you deal with it? Just do that shit. It's like true Alaska. There you go. That's what I do. Do that shit. Yeah, but see, not everyone can do that. You say that, but I'm not sure if that's true. I think that limiting sort of thinking is very dangerous because who are you? Who am I? Am I the type of person that can do it or am I the type of person that fails? And is there a difference between the two? And is the difference between the two focus and intensity, belief? What is it?

Is it genetics? Is it circumstantial? What is it? I'm not exactly sure. So to say that not everybody can do that, I think everybody can do it. I think. Everybody can do their own thing. But don't you think it's a mix of all those things?

Yes. And some of those things are out of our control. You know, I mean, I feel very privileged. I grew up, I had unconditional love for my parents. They had enough money that I knew if I ever really got into trouble, they could bail me out, and they would. They'd sell their house. They'd do whatever to come save me when I overdosed or wrecked a motorcycle in Thailand or some stupid shit. So I felt free to do things that I think a lot of kids don't feel.

You know, hey, one of your parents is dead. There's no money. You're helping them. You don't have the chance to say, hey, fuck it. I'm going to hitchhike to Alaska. Right. i wrote a an essay in psychology today a while ago i was reminded remember when the seeks got shot recently in wisconsin or wherever it was and i was thinking about the first time i'd ever met a seek it was i'd been working in new york in the diamond district which is a whole crazy period of my life but But I quit that job and flew to New Delhi,

one-way ticket to New Delhi. I wanted to go see the world, right? So I had about $15,000 in cash in my money belt because someone had told me that you got a better exchange on cash, $100 bills, than you did with traveler's checks. So I had all this cash, right? I was going to go travel until the cash ran out. I figured two, three years was my plan. So I land in New Delhi. I get this little room in Old Delhi near the train station. And every night, I would sleep with my money belt under the pillow because someone had told me the locks on the doors are ridiculous. And somebody told me, watch out. People come in at night. You've got to be really careful. So I had my money belt under my pillow. And I got this ticket to go to Kashmir, very early train. It was like a 40-hour train or something to Kashmir. And it left at 6 a.m. or something. So the night before, I packed up my backpack, got everything ready. So in the morning,

all I had to do was wake up, brush my teeth, and go. Right. So I did. I'm sitting in the train station waiting, having a chai. It's, you know, almost five thirty or something. The sun's coming up. It's already really hot. And this bead of sweat rolls down my spine and I go to touch it. Where's my money belt? I left it under the pillow. Oh, this is like five days into my adventure chris is gonna go see the world you know intrepid traveler dude all my money is in this fucking guest house you know the train so i run with my backpack run back to this thing go up there's the secret the

owner is awake by this point and he's like what are you doing I just ran past him up to the door, banging on the door. People inside speaking Hindi. They won't open the door. I don't know what the fuck. I go down to the front desk and he's like, hey, what's happening with you? I said, I left something in my room. He said, what did you leave? I said, some papers.

I need some papers I left there. He said, what kind of papers? My Indian accent sucks. Right, right. And I felt like my passport. I left my passport. He said, oh, my God, you left your passport in the room. Anything else?

And he's looking at me like there's this look like he's not unfriendly, this guy. But he's not stupid. Right. And he's looking at me in a way and i feel like i'm being tested in a way yes and when i've come to those moments in life which i have several times my instinct is just tell the fucking truth right just naked you know like naked don't try to play a game right you know it's like what i was saying about the knife in the boot. It's like, you're better off undefended in a way. And

I said, I left all my money there. He said, all your money? How much money? I said, about $15,000. He said, do you know how much? $15,000! I said, yeah, about $15,000. He reaches under the table and hands

me my money back. Oh, my God. I look at it. I don't count the money, but there's a stack of hundreds in it. Did you give him one? He said, while I'm looking at it, he said, the boy who cleans your room found this. He makes about $7 in a month. Jesus Christ.

The kid needs a new job. Yeah. So I took a couple hundreds out out and I handed them to him. I said, please give them to him, to the boy, and to thank you. And he said, no, no, no, you'll offend him. You can't do that. Wow. So I said, well, what can I do?

He said, you know, give me, I don't know what it was, five, ten bucks or something, and I'll have a party to honor him among all the employees. Wow. And he says, now you go get your train and be careful be careful with your money and so i think back on that guy i think that guy saved my life because i look at myself now as badass i'm this adventurous guy i went all over the world i've done this i've done that and i always came out of it okay and i've done that guy could have put me on a completely different track where i'd be calling my parents you know collect a week after leaving the country to get, you know, borrow money for a flight back to their basement. That would have been a different life.

So I guess what I'm saying to you is not everyone's lucky. I say yes and no because I say you're just basing your – the whole chain of events on what would have happened if you didn't have that money if you lost that money you could have gone on an equal adventure if not greater it could have been more spiritually fulfilling because people actually helped you and you realize money's not important you know i can barter with my work and who knows and you know your version of why you are willing to take chances in your life is based on a version of having a safety net. Sure. My version is the total opposite.

I don't even know my father. My mother had me when she was young. She worked all the time. No one was ever home and I was raised by wolves. So I essentially figured my own path through life and rejected the normal notions of what you should and shouldn't do because I saw these people were miserable and I didn't want to be like them. Right. what you should and shouldn't do because I saw these people were miserable and I didn't want to be like them. And so I think that water seeks its own level and I think that curiosity in a person and

a desire to see things and experience things, it's sort of – it's a part of being a human and it's whether or not that's nurtured. And whether it's nurtured because you're ignored and you develop on your own or whether it's nurtured because you're loved and you're given the freedom to take chances. I think either or. It's like the pursuit is what's fascinating. Whether it's your life's pursuit or mine or anyone else's where they find an interest and they study it or they chase it. They have an idea and they follow it.

I think that what's most important in your story was that fucking cool guy and that you can do that too. And that we can all, we can all like have these acts of kindness that sort of decades later, you're still describing. Yeah. Yeah. It's,

you know, I, I completely agree with what you're saying. And in my life, I think it's important to have a sense of gratitude because it keeps my feet on the ground. And to keep reminding myself, like, you've been pretty fucking lucky and you didn't do anything to deserve it. You just were, you know. And so when bad shit comes, don't forget about that.

Don't start feeling bad for yourself because, oh, now something bad happened. Well, you know, fuck you. You know, your bad account is very uh yeah it's very weak yeah deal with it yeah i mean just stop just living where you live being canadian you know just living in america living you know living in a first world country living in a country that has fresh water you know living in a place where you know you don't have to worry about these uh armed gangs going through your town and shooting everybody for no reason and no one even covering it in the news because there is no fucking news. That's a big part of the world.

I always said that the apocalypse is here. It just moves real slow, and it's not everywhere. It hits spots. And if you were in Liberia right now, you would think it's the apocalypse. You would think you're living in Mad Max times, dirt roads and rampant crimes and $1 prostitutes, and it and just chaos and murder and cannibalism. You would think that you're in the apocalypse because for them it is. Your idea is compelling that there's too many people, and I really wonder how that's going to be worked out because that's the one – I feel like we can work out a lot of social things because I feel like young people have access to information in a way that really was never possible for any

generation prior so I think if there's ever a time where the momentum is going to be at least slowed altered or stopped now's that time I gotta say I you know I felt really hopeless about western society until the last four or five years. And there's a glimmer of feeling like people really want change. You know, and I think before now, wanting change that badly depended upon things going so far into the shithole that, you know, it's like revolutionary Civil War kind of craziness, right? And now things are like tolerable materially.

But I think there is what you're saying. There's something happening in the consciousness of young people. I mean, you look at what's happened with acceptance of same-sex marriage, for example. It's like a steamroller. And 10 years ago, it was nothing. It was, you know, it was, it's like things are catching flame really quickly now. Yeah, you're ridiculed if you have an issue with same-sex marriage now. Right, exactly.

There's no argument for it. And that's happened in 10 years, you know. I look at Dan Savage. You know Dan Savage? He's a friend of mine. And because he basically is responsible for the success of our book, right? I mean, that's what did everything. That launched it.

Do you have a book? Oh, he's got lots of books. Yeah, he's got half a dozen books. What is his famous one? I could get confused. Well, I mean he's a sex advice colonist. There's Michael Savage who's a right-wing. Crazy nut guy.

Yeah, yeah. This is Dan Savage who's – Dan Savage, you probably heard about what he did to Rick Santorum. What did he do? You don't know about this? No. All right. So Rick Santorum said, so this is like seven years ago or something. Rick Santorum said something about how, you know, if we allow homosexual marriage, the next thing you know, men will be marrying dogs and, you know, trees and all this shit.

So Dan Savage, who has a nationally syndicated sex advice column called Savage Love, it's the most read sex advice column in the country. It's in the Village Voice and the LA Weekly. It's like in every alternative and online, The Onion, he started with The Onion. He says, okay, we've got to find a definition for Santorum. What is Santorum? So he asks his readers to send in a definition for Santorum. What is Santorum?

So he asked his readers to send in crazy definitions for Santorum. And then he had people could vote. And the one that won was Santorum, that frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that sometimes results from anal sex. And he sets up a web page and then has his readers bomb the web page. So if you Google, right now, Google Santorum, that's what you're going to get. Wow. So this guy's political career was done.

Done. It was like the most brilliant information terrorism ever. Well, Santorum's career was done more because he was found to be a liar. He's nuts, yeah. Yeah, he's a nut. He's an anti-gay guy. And he also lied about his marathon running time. Oh, no, no.

That was. Yeah, it was Rick Santorum. No. Yeah, it was a guy running. Oh, no, no, no. It was Paul Ryan. You're right. It was Paul Ryan.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Santorum was just crazy anti-gay marriage guy. Yeah. But I don't think he's done. If he, if, you know, there's don't think he's done. There's a faction of retards that are still alive

in this country that will cling to these simplest of values. They think some of the... Marriage is between a man and a woman. Marriage is ridiculous, period. Even for men and women. It's all stupid. Why not let gay people do that stupid shit too? That's what he says.

But why the hell did I raise him? That was in reference to something. Your friend Savage. Yeah, Dan Savage. The guy who dates Winnie Cooper. No. He's married to a guy named Terry and they have a kid. Oh, why he was responsible for the book's success is that he just really pushed it. He read it and loved it and then then he, like, in his column,

read by millions of people, he basically said, buy this book, you know. Yeah, well, you were talking about the acceptance of gay marriage. Oh, that's the point, right. So my point is that 10 years ago, Dan was radical. He was way out on the fringes, right? You know, he was writing this gay sex advice column that cracked everybody up um but now he's mainstream like he's on the colbert report

five times or something you know he's he had a profile in the new york times dan hasn't changed at all he hasn't changed the language he uses the things he talks about, the political positions he takes, the stream has changed. Yeah. I think, yeah, I attribute that to the same thing, the information that people have access to now. Yeah. They can't just be as flavored by the ignorance of their local area as they used to be in

the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, whatever. When 2000s came along, people just had a completely new perspective. And we have to really take into account that that's a decade. I mean, we're dealing with two decades of internet influence, maybe a little bit more, but not really. That's pretty much it. You go to like 92, 93, that's about the first evidence of the internet's interaction with our culture.

You've got mail. And it goes from that to what we've got now. And we're seeing like real changes look colorado um and washington state making marijuana legal right and what the fuck is going to happen from there and i think the the federal government eventually is going to crumble under the crippling weight of the ridiculous way they run this system unbelievable it's it's so fucked up that people even people that are doing it at a certain certain point in time are going to be like, we're being ridiculous. The information

is all out there now. You can't keep running it like this and pretending that we're a democracy and pretending we're a representative government all about freedom. It's just fucking crazy corporate chaos. It's got to settle down. By the way, everyone's not happy.

You're making billions and you're still fucking miserable as shit. This method of control and financial – the acquisition of financial wealth, it's not satisfying for anybody. It's certainly not the best way to have a harmonious nation. I think that's possible. I think if it's possible to have a great town and it's possible to have a great neighborhood, if it's possible to have a great block and a great group of people that you hang with, then it's possible to expand that out further and further. If everyone had a great community and all those great communities combined and all treated each other as equals and as fellow citizens in this experiment called life,

and as fellow citizens in this experiment called life, if everyone had that same idea, then a great neighborhood could be the whole world. I mean, it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility if it exists in the micro. Why can't it exist in the macro? It seems like it should be able to. And the only thing that seems to hold it back is communication and information.

So there's the language issue. There's the cultural issue. But there's the access to each other that's changing. And it's changing at such a crazy pace that I'm much more hopeful than I have ever been when I was younger. When I was younger, I looked at it like, this is a fucking nuclear war waiting to happen. This is craziness. This is all going to fall apart. But now I think that people understand the world in a way that's unprecedented. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think you're right. It's probably entirely due to the internet. Like right now I'm working with some people to set up a website for the exploration of ethical non-monogamy. Right? The exploration of ethical non-monogamy, right? So it's like it'll have a dating site component to it, but it's also just about a community, forming a community. And what we're trying to do is have it be an online community that will also have regional meetings where you can meet people face-to-face, but that it will be set up along the principles of a bonobo troop. So females will be respected and, you know, valued, and there won't be any, like, hassling of women, you know,

especially women who are openly non-monogamous, which attracts some attention. But also, like, a portion of the profits, if there are ever any profits, would go to bonobo sanct sanctuaries in congo and so you run like a dating site based on bonobo monkeys where people get to act like monkeys apes apes sorry yeah monkeys have tails yeah monkeys have tails monkeys a better word do you know about bonobos yeah sure you know okay the only thing that they don't do is the mother doesn't fuck the son that's that's it But that's probably the most important relationship. It's fascinating, though, that the mother doesn't fuck the son because that exists in humans.

So we talk about bonobos being freaks. The one thing that they don't do, that shit's happening all over the south right now. This mom's fucking their kids for sure. We got to get out of here. We're running. At three hours in, we turn into a pumpkin. Listen, man, that was a really fun conversation, and your book is amazing i'm really enjoying it it's called sex at dawn the author is dr for christer ryan say again dr christopher ryan and you can um you can get this on amazon

on kindle i have it on a nook you can uh you can buy the actual physical book if you're one of those fucking holdouts to a dark day when you needed paper. Do you read books or do you use like a Kindle? Both. Both? Yeah. Kindles are the shit, man. And if you get – do you have the version of it on WhisperSync on Amazon where it's read by someone?

Don't you? Doesn't it exist? What do you mean? Do you know what WhisperSync is? What do you mean? Do you know what WhisperSync is? WhisperSync is a – Amazon has the Kindle Fire and they have – Audible has an application for it where you read it as a book. And then when you get in your car, it syncs up to your smartphone and an actor reads it as an audio book companion.

Like it picks up right where you left off. Yeah, it's brilliant. But anyway, the book is Sex at Dawn and And it's Chris Ryan, PhD, on Twitter. And please follow him. Please buy the book. It's fucking great. You'll enjoy the shit out of it. And if your wife hides it from you, you know you're pussy whipped, son. Okay?

You know you've got to put your foot down. You've got to be a man. You've got to get your shit together. You've got to reclaim your ape heritage. Thank you very much, brother. It was really, really fun. Thank you very much. Thanks for supporting the podcast ladies and gentlemen

and tuning in and thanks for all the positive tweets and messages and Facebook pages and high fives out there in the great wide world of reality and please follow us on Twitter redban r-e-d-b-a-n and you go to deathsquad.tv if you want to pick up one of those

super sweet Death Squad t-shirts with the psychedelic kitty cats strapped up with bombs. I don't understand what it means either, but they're just cool. Go get them. And thanks to Onnit.com. Go to O-N-N-I-T. Use the code name ROGAN and save yourself 10% off any and all supplements. And go buy Blade Slinger from Kerosene Games.

And you can get it on the iPad for $2.99 alright you dirty fucks we'll be back tomorrow with Brian Callen and maybe a Nice House Chronicles as well see ya freaks love the shit out of you Thank you.