Going Deep with Chad and JT - Ep 140 - Ozan Varol Joins

Episode Date: July 12, 2020

What up dudes?! This week we have rocket scientist and lawyer, Ozan Varol, on the pod. We talk to him about working on the Mars rover, fixing education, and mushrooms. He's a brilliant and kind man. G...et his book "How to Think Like A Rocket Scientist". Sponsored by Manscaped: Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code GODEEP20 at Manscaped.com. If you wanna trim your pubes during a contagion.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:01 All right, what's up Stokers of Stoke Nation? This is Chad Kroger coming in with the Going Deep with Chad and JT podcast. Guys, before we begin, I want to remind you once again that we are brought to you by Manscaped. Manscaped, thank you so much for keeping our trims pubed, for looking after our hogs, for making sure that we're looking fresh and clean. Because in these times more than ever you need to be proactive yeah i think that makes sense so you used manscaped the fresh nose trimmer fresh lawnmower 3.0 with code go deep www for 20 off at manscape.com and i'm here with my compadre, Jean-Thomas. What up? What up, Chad? Boom, clap, Stokers.
Starting point is 00:00:46 Boom, clap. And we're here with author, rocket scientist. What are some of the... You teach law, correct? I do. You teach law now, correct? Okay, cool. Yeah, that's right.
Starting point is 00:00:58 Law professor, Ozan Veral. Thank you for having me. Thanks. Yeah. We're pumped to have you on. We just your new book think like a rocket scientist i'll put it in the frame it's a excellent book so and it's such a fun read yeah we're so pumped to talk to you likewise how do you think like how are lawyers different to hang out with than rocket scientists? Far less interesting. Oh, really?
Starting point is 00:01:31 I think so. I mean, you know, lawyers, look, I love them. I mean, I teach law students, but I think the subjects tend to center around the same things, whereas rocket scientists are working on cooler stuff. They're more cutting edge than lawyers. There's just so many things that can happen when you go to light a rocket and only one of them is good
Starting point is 00:01:54 as... This is one of the SpaceX guys' quotes, but I love that. There's just so many things that... So many uncertain scenarios that it's just more fun to talk to them. To rocket scientists. Why'd you switch?
Starting point is 00:02:10 For a number of reasons. One, I didn't love the substance of the classes I was taking. Like rocket science is, it's supposed to be interesting, but honestly, the instruction in college, I thought sort of suck the life and soul out of what is inherently an interesting subject, which is, I think a testament to the education system in college, I thought, sort of sucked the life and soul out of what is inherently an
Starting point is 00:02:25 interesting subject, which is, I think, a testament to the education system in general, which we can go into some depth about. But it was too much theory for me. Like, I've always been more practically oriented. And the classes were so theoretical and so disconnected from practical realities. I mean, I was working on this Mars mission at the time, which was really cool because that was very practical, right? You're building a rover that's going to go to Mars and designing operation scenarios and whatnot,
Starting point is 00:02:54 helping pick landing sites. But the classes, it's like, you know, yeah, we can re-approve E equals MC squared, but how is that moving the needle? So that's why I started looking elsewhere. And my senior year of college, I took a class that was taught by a Cornell law professor. And he taught the class only for undergrads.
Starting point is 00:03:13 And it was like a breath of fresh air. He taught real, we used like real law cases and he used a Socratic method, the question and answer method. And I remember thinking, like sitting in the class and the first case we read was about this like nose job that was gone wrong and the patient was suing the doctor and the question was damages and I was like oh like as like as you know as like I don't know irrelevant as that might sound
Starting point is 00:03:39 I was like man this is a real dispute between two real people uh i can sink my teeth into this in a way that theoretical physics i really couldn't um and i would have had to go get a phd in astrophysics and frankly like there were classmates who were much better than me at the substance of it and so i ended up doing a pivot and and go to law and becoming a law professor that's so cool yeah what what do you think are the what kind of changes do you think could be made in the education system to get people more excited about science and more involved yeah so i mean children are naturally curious and naturally self-driven and then we rob them of that curiosity of that natural self-drive by basically feeding them answers on subjects that they don't care about you know authority figure steps up to
Starting point is 00:04:35 the front of the classroom and then just like reveals newton's laws as if they arrived by some divine visitation and and then the students memorize the laws, memorize the formulas, and then they plug them into a problem and that spits out the right answer on the exam. And the mentality is so outdated for a number of reasons because it gives one the misleading impression that life is a series of right answers.
Starting point is 00:05:00 And as long as you know the right answers, you'll get far in life, which is not true. And it also gives the perception of like certainty that you know newton sort of came up with these laws you don't see the messy reality like the the the science textbooks reveal the principles but not the the messy reality that the years that newton spent tweaking revising these laws you definitely don't learn about newton's experiments in alchemy when he was trying to convert that into gold and failed spectacularly. And so I think it begins by asking, what is school for? And I don't think the answer is it's for students to memorize a bunch of answers. That may have worked well in the industrial age
Starting point is 00:05:46 when you were training people to work at an assembly line and they had to follow instructions, but it doesn't work in the knowledge age that we're in, the information age that we're in. So I think school should be more about learning to ask the right questions, honestly, which is, I think, far more important skill and far more rare in today's world.
Starting point is 00:06:05 Answers are cheap. By the time that Siri or Alexa or Google can spit out an answer, the world has moved on. But the students who can identify problems, good problems to solve, ask good questions, reframe problems, that's the other problem with traditional science education and math education is you get these problems from the teacher but there is no way of redefining them first of all students are not finding their own problems they're handed the problem and then there is no way to change the problem and that's wildly disconnected from reality like in the real world people have to go out and find problems themselves and then they have to change the definition of the problem reframe the problem so they can generate better answers uh and we don't teach any of that in school yeah i was i was talking about
Starting point is 00:06:55 this with jt the other day about how like in my 20s it when i when i finished college when i was out on my own it sort of uh re-energized my curiosity for learning yeah once i was out of school i was like i love learning which because i feel like school they sort of treat it like a burden you know it's like it's like oh you got to read mark twain that sucks and it's like you, oh, you got to read Mark Twain. That sucks. And it's like, you got to do some, you got to go to lab or do science. And it's, the approach is so, like, it's something you have to, like, overcome as opposed to, like, engaging your curiosity. Totally. So education in many ways actually ends up getting in the way of learning and stifling people's natural curiosity. And honestly, it's human nature too.
Starting point is 00:07:50 Anytime someone forces you to do something, you've got to resent it. Even if you might, on your own, go out and seek a Mark Twain book, the moment the teacher forces you to read something, you might turn it away. And so I think there's a lot more room here to allow for that natural curiosity to come about but we don't do that it's all about standardized tests and and teaching to the test and and grading and grading is i mean that's one of the other downsides of education is completely gets in the way of learning um even as a law professor it's like students are so focused on the grades that it just, you know, everything is about, is this going to be on the exam? And I don't blame them because that's where the incentives are. But it totally gets in the way of learning. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like education is always kind of looking backwards
Starting point is 00:08:39 too. Like I went to film school and they're teaching you about like film noir stuff from the forties, but that kind of structure is like obsolete now everybody's writing for tv but then even if they would have taught us contemporary tv it's like the way you would write for a netflix show is different than how you would write for like an hbo show because the way people consume it so i don't know i don't know if they have enough time to like catch up to i don't know making it more contemporary for the the students totally yeah i mean the status quo bias is so strong in educational institutions. As you said, it's always about looking back to what was done in the past. And it's not just the substance. It's also like the administrative policies. I remember it was like
Starting point is 00:09:19 my first week of teaching and I walked into the faculty lounge and we teach this class it's called criminal procedure it's a pretty complicated class we teach it at like to beginning first year students and normally it's an upper level class so i was curious why we were teaching it in the first year and i walked into the faculty lounge and one of my senior colleagues was reading the paper and i said hey why do we teach criminal procedure in the first year? And he like lowered the newspaper and said, we always done it that way. And then went back to reading it. And I didn't have tenure yet,
Starting point is 00:09:54 so I kept my mouth shut and didn't say anything. But I mean, I think that mindset is very much exemplified across educational institutions. It's like, you know, and it's true for businesses as well, right? That's the status quo bias is also strong there, but we've always done it this way. I don't know. It strikes me as a really lousy reason to keep doing something.
Starting point is 00:10:15 There might be a perfectly valid educational reason for teaching that class to beginning law students, but we've always done it that way. It's not a good reason. Totally. Nice. law students but we've always done it that way is not is not a good reason totally nice um how did you how did you feel when you saw the falcon 9 uh launch oh god goosebumps i mean i just it was i you know so i write a lot about spacex in the book um and I've just been, I mean, I've been an admirer of the organization for a long time.
Starting point is 00:10:49 And so just to give it some context to the launch. So there've only been three major governments that have been able to put people into space, right? US, China, and Russia. That's it.
Starting point is 00:11:02 No other major government has done it. No other company has done it. No other company has done it. So SpaceX became the first private company to put people into space, which is astonishing if you think about it, right? I mean, they beat not only so many other powerful governments, but also traditional aerospace companies like Boeing to the punch. So it's an amazing story. And if you look at the beginnings of SpaceX too, it was not a glamorous start. The first three Falcon 1 launches were just spectacular failures. The company was on the verge of going under at the end of 2008. Elon Musk was borrowing money from friends to pay rent.
Starting point is 00:11:48 He had just gotten divorced and all of these horrible things were going on. And 2008 was a bad year to begin with. So seeing that and so seeing where they came from, which is nothing, and these three failures, and then fast forward to 2020 and SpaceX becomes the first private company to put people into space. So yeah, so watching that was breathtaking. I mean, I get goosebumps every time I watch a rocket launch. first private company to put people into space um so yeah so watching that was breathtaking i mean i get goosebumps every time i watch a rocket launch but like that one in particular uh having studied the company for so long and having written about it had special meaning to me uh so it was
Starting point is 00:12:15 awesome to see a liftoff and safely deliver the two astronauts to the international space station yeah it's uh there's something about space exploration, because I think people always debate, like, is it worth the money or whatever? But there's something that it does to humanity, I think, just seeing us explore and sort of reach these new heights. I think, you know, the most powerful and universal human emotion is awe, being in awe of something. And I think space does that more than anything else, at least for me. It's just incredible. Just thinking about the stars in general, but also like seeing us explore these new heights. You know, I opened the book by telling the story of John F. Kennedy step up to the podium at Rice University Stadium in September 1962 and promising to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth before the decade is out.
Starting point is 00:13:14 And, you know, that promise, of course, turned out to be true, that pledge was, the mission was accomplished. But what people don't know is how unlikely that was in September 1962 when he made that pledge. A lot of the people in the audience thought he was out of his mind. NASA officials thought he was crazy because so much of what would be required to put a man on the moon just hadn't been done yet. No American astronaut had worked outside of a spacecraft. Like no American astronaut had worked outside of a spacecraft. NASA didn't know if the lunar surface was solid enough to support a lander. Or like if you landed something, it might just cave through.
Starting point is 00:13:53 They just didn't know. They didn't know if the communication system would work on the moon. Kennedy said some of the metals required to build the rockets hadn't even been invented. You know, we sort of like jumped into the cosmic void and hope that we grow wings on the way up and and we did um in less than seven years and so so i think that and that is such an inspiring story and it's particularly inspiring if you put it in the context of like human uh human flight in general so thinking back to to Wright brothers, when they took their first flight, a child who was six years old, and the first flight was like 10 seconds long and moved for like 100 feet maybe, a child who was six years old when the Wright brothers took their first flight
Starting point is 00:14:39 would be 72 when flight became powerful enough to put a man on the moon. That's crazy. I mean, it's just astonishing, right? Like 66 years from Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind. Yeah. It's just, so I think that is inspiring on so many levels and it generates that universal emotion awe. And when like Neil and Buzz walked on the lunar surface, when you watch the interviews of people around the world who had watched the lunar landing, everybody was saying we landed on the moon.
Starting point is 00:15:11 It wasn't the United States landed on the moon. It was like humanity achieved this. So it's a very unifying emotion, which is, you know, one of the things I love about it. Totally. Yeah, it sort of goes into the section of the book where you talk about moonshots or having these big dreams uh which i thought was so great is just sort of making this declaration that you will do something and then um like elon and and and nasa so yeah it's cool stuff how uh so you worked on some mars exploration projects uh do you want to maybe uh sort of talk about that a little bit about sure yeah yeah happy to do it
Starting point is 00:15:55 yeah so um i worked on the what was later called the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers Mission, which sent two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to Mars in 2003. And I did everything from plan operation scenarios as to what was going to happen when the rovers landed on Mars. I helped pick landing sites. My senior thesis in college was actually writing code for snapping photos of the Martian surface. And so that was just a really, really cool project to work on for so many reasons. Because when I first started, so I started in 1999.
Starting point is 00:16:35 1999 was a terrible year for Mars exploration. There were two really high-profile accidents. So two missions failed. One was called the Mars Climate Orbiter, and the other is the Mars Polar Lander. And Mars Climate Orbiter famously failed. It was supposed to be an orbiter around Mars. It wasn't going to land on Mars. And it was supposed to enter into orbit at like, I think, 127 kilometers above the surface. Instead, it ended up being 57. And so it either burned up in the atmosphere or skidded across it and didn't get into orbit.
Starting point is 00:17:10 But what happened was, so Lockheed Martin, which programs a key trajectory software, was using the inch-pound system. And then the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA that was actually operating the orbiter was using the inch-pound system. And then the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA that was actually operating the orbiter was using the metric system. And they didn't use Unison measurement. And so the numbers were completely off by a factor of four.
Starting point is 00:17:37 Oh, my God. Yeah. And so it ended up, because of that, entering into Mars at an altitude of half of what it should have been. And it ended up, because of that, entering into Mars at an altitude of like half of what it should have been, and it burned up or, again, skidded across the atmosphere, which is crazy when you think about it, right? It's like, how does that happen? You know, I remember my high school physics class. Our teacher would give us zero points if you got the right answer, but you didn't include units of measurement.
Starting point is 00:18:07 And it always like annoyed the hell out of me. I just had a, I don't know, relaxed, lazy approach to units of measurement. So if you put like 120 instead of 120 meters, you get zero points. And you fast forward to like what happened with the Mars Climate Orbiter. It's like, oh, well,
Starting point is 00:18:22 these rocket scientists would have failed my high school physics class. Yeah, so that was one high-profile crash. And then the Mars Polar Lander that year, which was supposed to land on the polar region of Mars, also crashed. And then our mission was going to be next in line, and we were going to use the exact same landing mechanism
Starting point is 00:18:42 that the Mars Polar Lander was supposed to use. And so our mission got put on hold. And so there was just so much, so many early failures. We had to come up with an entirely new way of landing on Mars because the landing system didn't work. And then we were initially supposed to send only one rover. And then it ended up being two rovers because the administrator of NASA just asked this question that none of us had thought about asking before. Like the status quo, which we talked about how powerful it is. NASA would send one rover to Mars every two years and hope that nothing bad happens along the way. But so many things can go wrong when you're sending a delicate robot 40 million miles through outer space. And so, yeah, I remember the day when my boss walked into my office and said, I just got
Starting point is 00:19:30 off the phone with the administrator of NASA. And he asked, what if we sent two rovers instead of one? In hindsight, it makes so much sense. Like, because you're hedging your bets and double the roversvers means double the science we sent them to two very different regions of mars um and with economies of scale when you're building two of the same thing the second thing ends up costing a lot less than the first um and i'm so glad we did because both of them landed safely their names are spirit and opportunity and spirit lasted for six years and by the way these were built to last for 90 days um so that one lasted for six years and then opportunity
Starting point is 00:20:11 kept roving for 14 years into a 90-day mission which is incredible yeah how long do you think till humans get to Mars? That's a good question. I don't know. I really don't know the answer to that. I mean, I'm hoping it's within my lifetime. Yeah. And I think, you know, SpaceX is getting there gradually.
Starting point is 00:20:38 That's their moonshot. And they're working backward from that in terms of developing the technology that will be required to get there um so i don't know i i'm hoping it's within our lifetime but i i tend not to like forecasts or predictions just because they end up being wrong like 99 of the time you know um which which is like i was giving a keynote earlier today and um and the questions were always a lot of the questions were what do you think is going to happen in 2021 like which of the changes that we're seeing in the world right now will have become permanent and and my answer always is i don't know um i just and no one knows anything you know um there's a quote i love from lao su i think he says those who predict or those who
Starting point is 00:21:24 forecast don't know and those who know or those who forecast don't know and those who know don't forecast or don't predict because they just end up being wrong and then we're only seeing the winners too like whatever an expert is right it makes the news but when someone is not right it doesn't make the news and no one says like oh dr stew you know you've got only a 10 batting average maybe you should sit this one out um yeah the same people like keep appearing and keep making these confident declarations and there's a lot of they provide certainty right like we're in this messy reality now no one knows what's going to happen next but when if an expert can get on tv and say this is what i think is going
Starting point is 00:22:02 to happen in jan. People latch onto it because it provides them some certainty in this messy reality we're in. It's just the sense of certainty ends up being super misleading because in most cases, it's false. Right. If you were in charge of allocating science spending, where would you put like the biggest share of the pie right now? That's a really good question. Let me think about that for a moment. You know, I would put a lot of it, and I'm going to speak in generalities here, but in terms of coming up with strategies for prevention as opposed to cure. Right now, when it comes to health at least, there's so much, where we treat people after they get sick, as opposed to trying to prevent them from getting sick in the first place. So I think there's a lot
Starting point is 00:23:11 of value to spending money on research, on prevention, not just research, but actually execution of prevention. So that's one realm, I think, because, you know, of prevention. So that's one realm, I think, because there are so many preventable diseases that with an early intervention would just never come about, but we wait until it's too late. And then that ends up being just an enormous, enormous burden on the healthcare system. That's number one. Number two, i think space certainly although you know now the private companies like spacex and blue origin are taking the lead on that uh so if we're talking about like allocation of government spending you know i don't think that that uh needs to be i mean it certainly should be there because nasa still has to be in the game um because it nasa has a
Starting point is 00:24:03 project for example of of of landing on moon on the moon i think it's i don't remember the timeline it's called artemis um so space flight definitely uh let's see what else is top of mind for me um i think you, the other thing that could use, and so these are very personal, but they're top of mind. One of the things that I'm observing with the pandemic is a rise in emotional and mental health problems. We're not meant to live like this, right? We're not meant to look at Zoom screens all day.
Starting point is 00:24:45 And the isolation is, I think, exacerbating many people's emotional and health issues. And so I would invest a lot of funding in the mental health and emotional health area, because it takes a huge toll. And I think this is one of the right now unforeseen or unnoticed consequences of the of the quarantine is the the rise in uh emotional and mental problems that i think is going to generate consequences in the long term and one area within the within mental health that i i wish the government invested more money would be research on psychedelics and the promise of psychedelics and treating like post-traumatic stress disorder um and i mean there are already fda trials underway uh for mdma and using mdma for for treating uh post-traumatic stress disorder and they've been enormously successful so far but they need money to be able to move forward and there's so much
Starting point is 00:25:43 stigma attached to psychedelics because of their association with the counterculture. The connotation. Yeah, exactly. In the 1960s. But they hold so much promise just based on the research that was done in the 1960s and then some of the emerging research right now as well that's happening. And I think they have the promise. I mean, they can be certainly dangerous as well, And I think they have the promise. I mean, they can be certainly dangerous as well. But when done correctly, they have the promise to remedy some of the mental health problems that we're seeing in the world right now. So I would definitely put some money toward that too. it seems so willy-nilly. Like they're just having big parties and they're like hitting on each other's spouses and stuff like that. And you're like, all right, well, these guys are obviously smart,
Starting point is 00:26:28 but it doesn't seem like they're following a scientific playbook. But I mean, I love psychedelics. Like shrooms have been hugely, how would I say it? Like they've taught me a lot about myself and actually made me feel better about myself. Like when I first did it,
Starting point is 00:26:42 I remember I was like, oh, I'm going to find out I'm a dark person. And then I took it and I was like, no, I'm a happy ape, which is kind of like that Richard Feynman quote that he says confused it, but I felt like a happy ape. And I started running on all fours and I was like, oh, this is not a bad way to, have you, have you experimented with psychedelics before yourself? I have, yes. I actually haven't talked about it publicly before, but I have. And, and the setting is so important by the way. I mean, you know I actually haven't talked about it publicly before, but I have. And the setting is so important, by the way. I mean, when I did psychedelics, it was done in a therapeutic setting, and it really just made a world of difference. And I'm so glad I didn't do it in
Starting point is 00:27:18 a recreational setting first. That was really important to me. And so many sessions leading up to the actual journey to where I thought were invaluable in terms of having the right mindset going in and identifying your intentions and what you want to get out of the session and then the integration sessions that happen afterwards. doing it in a controlled setting, again, these are like just prefacing, these are dangerous substances. They're illegal in the United States, but when done correctly in the right setting, they have enormous potential to address issues like post-traumatic stress disorder. And then research also shows like alcoholism, addiction, you know, and so, so yeah, so I think that, you know and so so yeah so i think that that is one area that that deserves a lot more funding and if you are so if you're listening to this and if you are so inclined i know maps is currently running a fundraising campaign to support their phase three i think mdma trials that's ongoing right now so i would highly encourage you to go to their website and check that out. Because there's a lot of promise in them. Yeah. Yeah, I saw on Goop Lab on Netflix.
Starting point is 00:28:36 What's your name? What's your name, JT? Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth Paltrow. Yeah, yeah. show yeah they did a controlled uh shroom episode in like jamaica or something i was like because i had a bad experience with it in high school but that was i unforeseen circumstances mainly my brother coming home and i didn't want him to find out uh i thought he was bart simpson um but anyways yeah yeah it looks it looks like it's so beneficial. Yeah, it can be. And again, just to underscore, when I did it, it was like two people in the room, a man and a woman, to sort of represent the masculine and the feminine.
Starting point is 00:29:16 And they're holding space and they're trained. They've done this before. And that made a world of difference for me because you feel a lot safer. And then they help. They don't interfere, but they help guide how it progresses and and so it just ends up being a very different experience than if you were doing it recreationally or just by yourself or with your friends or something totally yeah oh yeah it was making me think with psychedelics how they can you know open your brain to like you kind of close doors if your brain's like a mansion you know we close certain rooms off we don't go in there
Starting point is 00:29:47 it takes psychedelics you start opening rooms you're like oh i didn't even know i could go in here and it's i was scared of this room now i know it's safe and it feels like so much of like science and mathematical breakthroughs come from being able to think outside the box like that and i there was a writer i like david foster wallace who said most mathematicians have their breakthroughs like before they're 25. Like almost no one has their breakthrough after that. Because I think, to me, I interpret that to mean your brain kind of shuts down to new possibilities at a certain point.
Starting point is 00:30:14 Yeah, there's a lot to be said about that. So what psychedelics do, and then specifically speaking about like psilocybin and LSD here, what they do is, one of the things they do is they quiet the default mode network in the brain. And the default mode network is like the central operator. All of the different regions of the brain talk to each other through the default mode network. And then the default
Starting point is 00:30:36 mode network also is responsible for that sense of self. Ego is where the default mode network lies. And so when you take psilocybin or LSD, and if you look at like the brain scans of people who are on psilocybin or LSD, the default mode network shuts down. And all of these different regions of the brain that normally only operate with each other or talk to each other indirectly through the default mode network end up directly connecting with one another um so these yeah so that the sense of self quiets down and then um and then all of these like new neural pathways get get activate activated um and as you said it was a jt yes yeah yeah and as you said jt like a lot of creative ideas come from cross-pollination so to be able to connect
Starting point is 00:31:26 these like disparate ideas you have in your brain uh that's where that's how breakthroughs happen um but we don't there is so much obsession with specialization these days that a lot of people just end up doing one thing for the rest of their lives and so they don't have the opportunity to be able to connect these different ideas and generate creative thought with them. So the example that popped to mind is Charles Darwin. So when he came up with the theory of evolution, origin of species, he was inspired by a number of things. He was inspired by a geology textbook he read and an economics textbook he read. And the geology textbook basically said
Starting point is 00:32:08 the changes that we observe on Earth happen gradually over thousands and hundreds of thousands of years through erosion, water, and wind chipping away at the Earth's surface. It's not one mega event, but it happens
Starting point is 00:32:23 over time and darwin looked at that and said huh like i wonder if evolution might work the same way where like these gradual changes are happening in species it's not one you know change overnight and then there was an economics textbook by um i think thomas malthus was his name anyway um yeah well yeah exactly yep like the world kills a bunch of us to keep the population small. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, his idea was like populations tend to outgrow resources, creating this competition for survival. And then Darwin looked at that and was like, okay, well, what does that mean?
Starting point is 00:32:57 So, if there is a competition for survivor, which species survive? And the answer was to those that are best adapted to their environment. Yeah. And so he took these ideas from very different disciplines and then he combined them. And so, and then by the way, there were a lot of people at the time who had read Charles Lyell's geology textbook. There are a lot of people who had read Thomas Malthus's economics textbook. Lyell's geology textbook. There are a lot of people who had read Thomas Malthus's economics textbook. There are a lot of people who had studied species, but it was a rare person who read Lyell, who read Malthus, and who studied species and could actually make the connections between these three different fields, which is so important. I mean, all new ideas tend to be
Starting point is 00:33:41 combinations of existing ideas from very different fields. I call that... Just a little bit of backstory here. I learned English as a second language. I grew up in a family of no English speakers in Istanbul, Turkey. And I started learning English when I was in middle school. And so when I came to the US at 17 by myself, I had learned textbook English. Textbook English meaning like, you know, the bus stop is around the corner and this and that.
Starting point is 00:34:12 But people don't talk like that, right? So there was just a lot of idioms and expressions that didn't make sense to me. And I remember freshman year of college, I don't remember what we were talking about. But one of my friends was like dude that's like comparing apples and oranges and i was like all right what's wrong with that and he said he says oh it can't be done you can't you can't compare apples and oranges i was like what do you mean you can't compare apples and oranges they're both fruits they're both round they both have like a slightly tangy taste they both grow on trees. There are just so many similarities between apples and oranges, but we're sort of indoctrinated into this mode of thinking where, no, you stick to your own discipline. You don't compare apples and oranges. But that's where a lot of original ideas come from. Netflix is a good example of that. Reed Hastings was pissed off because he had rented
Starting point is 00:35:07 Apollo 13 and then misplaced it. Then he got a bunch of late fees. He found the DVD, returned it, paid his late fees, and he was at the gym working out. He realized that with the gym, he could work out as much or as little as he wants,
Starting point is 00:35:25 and he still pays $40 a month. And he's like, huh, why don't we do that with videos? Why do we need brick-and-mortar stores, and why do we need late fees? Why don't we create a model where you rent as many DVDs as you want, as many movies as you want, and pay the same fixed price? And that was a seed for Netflix. I mean, it looks so obvious in hindsight, but it wasn't obvious at the time.
Starting point is 00:35:49 And it's like the people who can make these connections between very different fields tend to be the original thinkers. Yeah, I almost wonder if that can be taught because it almost feels like the ability to like take concepts and use them across different disciplines might just be like, I don't know, an inherent ability.
Starting point is 00:36:06 But I guess if you're talking about like with reworking education, it could be something. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I think like the educational, if we can change the education system and if we can change parenting as well, like, you know, and encourage parents to allow their children to pursue their curiosity, I think that would go a long way. And yeah, and so get rid of this obsessive focus on specialization. And actually, because to be able to make these connections, to be able to connect the dots, you have to collect them first.
Starting point is 00:36:43 And collection happens when you are curious about something and curious about a number of different things, and then you pursue them. And children do this naturally. Like children don't specialize in anything. Like they have different interests and they go after them. And then the other thing that needs to be done if we're like trying to train this way of thinking is one, allowing the connection of the dots
Starting point is 00:37:03 and then the collection of the dots, or the collection of the dots, and then the connecting requires a lot of silence, actually. Silence meaning, like, this is why great ideas come to people in the shower, where you are stepping away from distractions, and you're in that environment, you're just alone with your thoughts, and your subconscious then has the room to be able to make these connections between the dots that you, you collected. But most of us don't make room for that, right? Like we're moving from one email to the next, one notification to the next, one meeting to the next, without pausing and reflecting and like giving ourselves time to, to just think. is time to to just think uh yeah my stimuli center is like a melted battery right now hammer that thing non-stop yeah and it's amazing what you can what can happen when you like can build an airplane mode of sorts into your day where you're just like and you can start small
Starting point is 00:37:58 and just sit with your thoughts for 15 minutes it's going to be really hard to begin with there was actually a research study that i quote in the book where they had like college students. They took away their phones and all of their devices. And the college students had the option of either sitting quietly with their thoughts or administering electric shocks to themselves. And like a ridiculous percentage, I't remember especially among men i think like don't quote me on this but it was around like 60 or 70 percent of the male participants shocked themselves and for for women it was like in the 20s or 30s uh but it's you know it's really hard for people to just sit still and think and get bored um and because you think, I think like boredom is just sort of like something to be avoided,
Starting point is 00:38:45 that it's painful. Like for me, it brings up memories of getting yelled at by my teachers for daydreaming. But your brain, when it's not... Guys, I'm interrupting this podcast. I'm interrupting this podcast. Let you know once again that we are brought to you by Manscaped.
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Starting point is 00:43:19 It's stifling and it's solitary, but some of the best ideas that have come to me come to me in that environment yeah do you think like should you um like is walking one way to do for like skateboarding even like longboard skateboarding totally walking surfing like Totally. Walking, surfing, exercising. There's so many examples of scientists literally walking themselves into the answer of a problem that they were thinking about, right? Einstein and his violin, he would play his violin when he was stuck. And then in the middle of playing a song, he'd be like, oh, I got it. And then he'd move in. I don't know. I mean, I struggle with it too.
Starting point is 00:44:07 It's like distractions are everywhere. And so I try to control my environment and put my phone away and do things like that because I know if my phone is within reach, I'm going to take a look. It's just human nature. But if I put it on
Starting point is 00:44:24 airplane mode and in the kitchen i'm less likely to even just putting that little bit of separation there it goes a long way yeah i found i have to physically leave it like in my apartment and just go yeah i'll seek it out uh yeah yeah and also steve martin who you talk about in the book, I watched his master class, and he talked about how to get material. And he's like, you just got to study different topics like history, science, and that's where you'll get your ideas. It's not from sitting down and just trying to force it out. It's going back to that sort of diversity in thought.
Starting point is 00:45:01 Yeah, totally. Yeah. And also, I love the story of him sort of when you talk about like redefining first principles how he he thought about stand-up and sort of shifted it on his head to um you know so he wasn't doing the traditional structure and it's uh that was always really inspiring for for me personally just in my life uh or career well it went with what we're in so that's awesome yeah i love that story too i mean he you know for those who are listening who don't know it it's like when he first started doing comedy stand-up comedy there was a standard playbook formula which was like all jokes had to have a punch line uh yeah and steve martin was like
Starting point is 00:45:46 what if i did the reverse what if like there was no punchline what if i built tension and never released it uh and and people were like you're out of your minds i think one newspaper called him like the most serious booking error in in la history yeah and then you know the most serious booking errors quickly became the most profitable one because he was standing out from the crowd. And he wasn't following the standard playbook that everybody else is
Starting point is 00:46:13 following. I call it the in the book, I call it the George Costanza approach. Yeah, it's one of my favorite episodes. Yeah, there's an episode of Seinfeld where he like just does the opposite of what he's done before. He walks up to this gorgeous woman at a diner and he says, I'm unemployed and I live at home with my parents. And ends up getting a date with her.
Starting point is 00:46:36 So there's a lot to be said about that because the long-hanging fruit has been picked already. We're all in this race to the center uh doing the same thing and like if you can think through like what if i did the reverse and even if you don't execute just like the the process of thinking through that question often forces you to or forces you out of your current perspective and like makes you think about different ways of of approaching the problem yeah what if i did the opposite and in those specific instances like braving the humiliation of being new or different and then totally not letting the reaction to it define how you go forward exactly that's such an important part
Starting point is 00:47:16 too man and it's so hard because whenever you buck conventional wisdom like the the people just laugh at you they're gonna chop you down yeah they're gonna chop you down exactly same thing happened to dick fosbury who uh who's an athlete um ended up revolutionizing the high jump but so when he first started doing high jump he was in high school and he was performing at a junior high level uh and at the time all athletes were jumping face first parallel to the bar. Right. They would clear it. And the method just never worked for Fosbury. So he was like, what if I did the opposite?
Starting point is 00:47:56 And this was like on the bus ride to a track meet, going back to like getting moored and daydreaming. He was literally staring out a window. And he's like, oh, the rules allow you to clear the bar any way you want as long as you jump off one foot. And so he thought to himself, well, what if I jump backwards instead of forward? And his coaches were like, drop it. You're out of your mind. One newspaper called him the world's laziest high jumper. The fans would literally laugh at him from the stands.
Starting point is 00:48:27 And then he proved his critics wrong he won the gold medal in the 1968 summer olympics by doing the opposite of what everybody else was doing and now like that's the standard method used in high jump events so yeah there's a lot of like whenever you're straying from the herd you get humiliated and you get laughed at um and a lot of people give up. It's the NBA. Rick Barry is the best free throw shooter of all time shooting underhand. Other guys won't do it because they just don't want to look stupid, but they're like 40% free throw shooters.
Starting point is 00:48:56 Yeah, exactly. Come on, Andre Drummond. Make yourself a little unique. Yeah. Yeah. When I read that in the book too, about the high jump, I was like, wow, I can't even – I had no idea that it changed at a certain point.
Starting point is 00:49:12 And it's hard to imagine people jumping forward. Right. Like, it just seems like, oh, my, what are you doing? Just picturing that. And, yeah, with the sort of Steve with the sort of steve martin example like when we when we were we do stand-up and when we started louis ck was like the big guy everyone looked up to you know and then we're just like oh you got to be sort of like this self-loathing kind of vulnerable guy and that's sort of what i started doing and people were like what are you
Starting point is 00:49:44 like you're like a surfer and you're like you're like kind of good looking and I was like I was like yeah that's true like and I'm not sad so I sort of had like that I wouldn't say it's I wouldn't equate it to a Steve Martin moment but it was more of like that kind of like oh yeah well what if I just go the opposite and sort of talk about what's really on my mind which is like how much i love being tan and that seemed and that sort of that worked so yeah that's just an example but yeah it's hard though finding that like authentic self so what i mean so what worked well for you chad and in sort of giving up the idea of following Louis C.K. and actually staying true to your voice?
Starting point is 00:50:32 Yeah. Can you say that question again? I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like you mentioned, initially you were sort of trying to emulate Louis C.K., right? Right, yeah. initially you were sort of like trying to emulate louis ck right and then yeah and then you you then change to you know talking about surfing or being tan and and and whatnot it sort of doubled down on on that so i'm just wondering like what what prompted the the switch and how were you able to find your own like true and the reason i ask this is i'm always curious about how creatives from
Starting point is 00:51:06 different disciplines operate uh yeah the same thing comes up in writing too like in writing you sort of think about emulating your favorite authors and that eventually you sort of develop your own voice uh and there are things that can get in the way of that too and so i'm just curious how you approach it from a like a stand-up perspective yeah well um i think that the first thing that happened is i was at the comedy store and i was at an open mic and this guy was judging all the comics and i went up and i i was you know like six months in and he was like and i i made this joke and it was more of like a you know um And it was more of like a, you know, just a joke about myself being in like therapy or whatever.
Starting point is 00:51:51 And he was just like, you're just another white guy. Like, you're gonna have to give me a reason to listen to your white humor, you know, like, like, show me something that I haven't seen before is basically what he was saying. But he's a little bit meaner about it. But it did sort of set me on a different course so i'm like i'm like oh yeah maybe i i do need to sort of do something that sets me apart from the pack um and then uh and yeah so then i started thinking about i was like i was like when have i been funny with my family because that's or when have i been funny with my friends it's like oh when i take on a little bit more of like a and uh i have a little bit more of an ego you know and sort of and sort of i'm proud of things that i shouldn't be proud of that kind of uh like you're saying yeah what's up like your tan yeah i was talking to my dad. I was like, when have I been funny? It's like, when I talk about my hair or my tan or like, or when you, when you guys talk about how lazy you think I am, but I'm proud of it.
Starting point is 00:52:52 You know how much TV I watch and sort of starting from that approach and sort of working from there and then, uh, workshopping it on stage and just, and also some, you talk about like just failing a lot and then sort of learning as i go right but that was sort of the basis for it i guess does that answer your question i think yeah totally no totally yeah that's cool i like that so yeah but uh yeah i remember when i first saw it i was like this, this is different. It was like, and I could see that the audience loved it too. Yeah. But yeah, it was so nice to see someone be like, no,
Starting point is 00:53:29 the world's a good place. And that was so different in comedy from what, and then it almost felt like he was satirizing that the world was a good place too. So you can do both, which is kind of interesting. By embodying the character, he was kind of satirizing the character. Yeah. Well, that's what I saw in JT too, because he because he had a unique really unique approach like this sort of extreme vulnerability but it was
Starting point is 00:53:50 sort of like a a positive vulnerability like he was so vulnerable but it was like kind of like a positive coming from like a positive play like it was just something i hadn't seen before so i think you know that's sort of i guess why we partnered up because it was sort of I hadn't seen before. So I think, you know, that's sort of, I guess why we partnered up. Cause it was sort of, he had such a unique perspective about like a lot of people are vulnerable on stage, but he took it to a different place to where it was like just so much. It was just,
Starting point is 00:54:16 he found a way to speak. You're only as dark as your secrets. It always feels good to get them off your chest and just, and then no one can really hammer you for anything because they already know they you got nothing to hide so i always think of secrets or like hiding stuff is like you're putting more armor on your body and it makes you move slower but if you give away all your secrets you can you can move like the like pedro pascal on game of thrones you're quick you don't have anything to like slow down your movements yeah i like i like that and no i
Starting point is 00:54:47 think that's true like there's a lot of truth to that i think like shame if you just hold on to it um it's heavy it just yeah it's heavy it gets stronger over time too like when you i don't know i i used to be of the mindset that if you ignore that stuff that they just like go away if you sort of like lock them up in a basement it just disappears and it doesn't happen like they go into the basement they start downing red bulls they start doing push-ups and they come back stronger than ever before uh and then you have to contend with that and so yeah no letting them out into the light is is a much better much better approach did you find that with I've heard scientists are actually pretty healthy
Starting point is 00:55:25 through and through because I guess their work helps them understand things. Maybe that's kind of like a general. I don't know. I think just like in any profession, there are healthy scientists and unhealthy scientists and same thing for doctors too. They're healthy doctors
Starting point is 00:55:41 and then there are unhealthy doctors who don't follow the advice that they shell out to their patients. So yeah, I think it's a mixed bag. I think even doctors fall prey into the confirmation bias and all of that. And it's so much easier for us to solve other people's problems and to solve our own right like you know if someone came to me and said came to me like you know the list of like issues i'm working through say today uh if someone came to me with those issues and said what should i do i know exactly what to tell them uh but it's
Starting point is 00:56:17 so much harder for me to internalize that advice um it's just how human beings operate what about with death I'm really obsessed with death are scientists by and large not as afraid of dying again I don't think I could generalize one way or the other what about you yeah you know so I used to be
Starting point is 00:56:37 really afraid of death and then honestly like going back to the psychedelic experience that completely flipped the paradigm um for for decades i was convinced that science and spirituality couldn't be reconciled like i just had a very materialistic view of the world not in the monetary sense but materialistic as in if you can't explain something using the scientific method, or if something isn't falsifiable, I just had no interest in it. I was like, that stuff is like new age woo-woo fluff.
Starting point is 00:57:11 Like, I don't even want to, I don't care about that. That's kind of where I'm at. Like, to me, it's just like the body, the material mind, they're just like, you know, circuits. And then when those things die, kaput. Yeah. So, I used to believe that too. I don't anymore. die yeah so i used to believe that too and i don't anymore um and now like you know the idea that like consciousness originates in the brain is basically an assumption so we have nothing
Starting point is 00:57:33 proving that um and i think as a result of my psychedelic experiences it's like i just walked away with a strong sense that like consciousness not necessarily, and this is just me, very subjective, but consciousness isn't necessarily tethered to the body or to the brain for that matter. And that was just a sense I got and that completely flipped my relationship with death. So yeah, I used to be afraid of it and i'm still am a little bit but like not nearly to the same extent as before yeah did did you sort of experience that that that feeling of oneness yeah yeah i'm trying to wrap my head around i just i just read alan watts and he talks about that and i'm i'm trying especially when i go surfing i'm like i'm one with the ocean right now but it is hard to grasp yeah it really
Starting point is 00:58:33 is i mean and like and the experience itself is like the word people use is ineffable in many ways but you do just sense this like profound love uh in a way that like i just hadn't before and just a oneness with with the universe um you know the book that i would recommend if you are interested in this stuff is michael pollan's how to change your mind uh it's just phenomenal not only does he dive into the research but he also recounts his own experiences with different psychedelics. It's a really, really good read. But that experience just completely changed my view on death and on the nature of consciousness in general. I just walked away with a very strong sense that there is a lot more to reality than what we're able to see
Starting point is 00:59:26 and observe uh and part of it is is like i think what you were talking about this jt it's like the brain shuts down a lot of incoming information to isolate what's going to be the most relevant to us relevant to our survival that is uh and then everything else and aldous huxley called this a reducing valve the valve reduces the incoming information um and but when you open the the doors of perception a little bit and amplify consciousness then you're able to observe so much more than what you see on a day to day basis uh and and it completely changes you i mean i mean that experience was i would say like top three most memorable experiences of my life wow wow do you think do you think well well i want to know what the other two were but then i also want to know so do you think dying is necessary like do
Starting point is 01:00:20 you think that with ai and stuff that we should look forward to kind of maybe a much longer life or maybe a forever life? I don't know. I think, you know, I do think dying serves a purpose. Like, it's just a natural cycle of life. But not only that, it's like, you know, people die. And so, like, they allow room for newer things to emerge um a lot of like the blocks to change in various different fields happen because the people who are entrenched into the in the status quo are still alive honestly that's like once they die and then these like new paradigms take hold
Starting point is 01:00:59 and so i do believe in that natural cycle of like you live your life you die and then you give way for for the new to come in it's like you know it's like the snake uh shedding old skin and the old skin has to come off for the new skin to emerge um so yeah no i think there is there is a lot to be said about that what was it i think that was your second question was there a first question in there you said it was a top three oh yeah top three yeah i think the this the others would be getting married definitely um i don't know what the other one would be i don't know let me circle back to that getting married or like meeting my wife basically because that was like i was living in chicago at the time and i thought i was going to be a bachelor for the rest of my life and then i met her and then like everything changed um
Starting point is 01:01:49 and so so that was a complete transformation uh just like the psychedelic experience and if i think of a third one i'll let you know yeah please do yeah cool nice should we be afraid of ai good question i don't i don't know enough about ai to be able to make uh to be able to give you a good answer on that honestly well like yaval harari he's like he's like don't be afraid of it but then every time he talks about i'm like you're scaring the fuck out of me dude and then you know and then there are smart people on both sides of this camp. And so, yeah, and I don't know enough about it to be able to give you an answer that's going to be useful. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm like, please. No, no, no. I'm glad you asked.
Starting point is 01:02:40 It's just I've trained myself to just say, I don't know, instead of trying to. No, I admire you. Yeah. So, yeah. If someone asked me, I would weigh in for an hour with no knowledge or information. Do you want to, Chad, do you have any more? I was wondering, with space travel, I was wondering, with space travel, do you see us moving beyond the rocket to something like, if we were, in the future, we're able to travel to other solar systems or galaxies,
Starting point is 01:03:19 it seems like with a rocket, it would be very difficult. It seems like with a rocket, it would be very difficult. But do you think there's a way, do you think we'll find a way, basically, like a portal, like an interstellar? Yeah. Yeah. That's a fire question. Yeah, like wormholes.
Starting point is 01:03:37 Wormholes, that's right. Yeah, wormholes, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe. Yeah, I don't think the rockets are, And gosh, I mean, rockets are so outdated. That's like one piece of technology that hasn't changed at all. And so there's a lot of room for development there and for new paradigms to emerge.
Starting point is 01:04:00 And maybe wormholes will be one of those someday. But even within rockets, man, there's so much room for improvement. And SpaceX is doing some of that. Like now rockets are becoming reusable, which is fantastic. They used to burn up in the atmosphere or plunge into the ocean,
Starting point is 01:04:19 requiring a new rocket to be rebuilt. I mean, imagine doing the same thing for commercial flights. Like you fly from, I'm in Portland. You guys are where? Los Angeles, somewhere else? Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah. And then I step off the, people step off the plane
Starting point is 01:04:33 and then someone like just comes up and just lights the thing on fire. Yeah. I mean, it sounds crazy. That's basically what we did for rockets for decades. And then, but Boeing 737 is actually about the same price as a modern rocket, but airplane flights are so much cheaper
Starting point is 01:04:48 because rockets or airplanes can be reused over and over again. And so I think there is still a lot of room for improvement within the existing rockets in terms of making them reusable as quickly and efficiently as possible. And then the other thing
Starting point is 01:05:04 that's interesting is like we have these chemical rockets where you're using fuel, chemical fuel basically to ignite them. But there is now a new generation of rockets that are electric in the sense that they're expelling these ions to be able to propel themselves forward. And those, and I write about it a little bit in the book, but those are a lot smaller than traditional rockets. And so there's a lot of promise there in terms of like their capability. Once something is in orbit,
Starting point is 01:05:36 it's just that they're not powerful enough to put things into orbit. But once something is in orbit, in terms of maneuvering them, and then actually even using ion engines to be able to send things from uh the the earth's orbit and say to mars uh that i think is going to be really important going going forward and who knows you know maybe someday i'll be like interstellar and we'll find some wormholes and be able to travel through them so yeah yeah yeah that'd be cool um all right do
Starting point is 01:06:07 you want to help us answer some questions we typically answer some of our listeners questions and give advice on a litany of situations um i do i do have i have a meeting in like eight minutes that i have to run to we'll pound through these all right sounds good um how do i realize i'm stoked when i'm stoked what's up chad sounds good um how do i realize i'm stoked when i'm stoked what's up chad and jt how do you know that your stoke levels are peaking aka you're having fun in that moment and how do you like to take full advantage of that high stoke level basically i'm asking how do you know you're in the good times before the good times are over you want me to answer that yeah do you want to take it
Starting point is 01:06:45 i've i've been terrible at this my whole life like i was terrible at finding that that being stoked moment and then leaning into it or like finding joy and leaning into it it was always like about like what am i going to accomplish next and what am i going to accomplish next and then you realize like success doesn't bring you happiness and then and then life happens in those really small moments of joy and now i just like when i see it i just try to lean into it whatever it comes up i'm like okay this is joy it's this like strange emotion that's arising in me and i'm gonna hold on to it and and and squeeze it for what it's worth and and just reminding myself that it's like the small moments um like the morning cup of coffee
Starting point is 01:07:32 and we just we just got a new puppy and like playing with the puppy um and and like chatting with my wife Kathy at night and like it's those small moments of for me at least that that bring joy but I need to be very intentional about it just because it like doesn't come naturally to me um of of leaning into excitement and joy I just when I see it happening it's like I just gotta grab it and then and squeeze the shit I think it's from actually when I started like thinking about what I'm grateful for, like in the morning. Those are the times where I'm like i'm like oh oh yeah things are really good and i am stoked uh so i think that that's something i've used but it is hard to to really know in the moment like this is one of the best times you'll ever have you know because
Starting point is 01:08:37 it's hard because you just and that in the moment you don't know and i do fall victim too to the sort of like pursuit of success. It's like, I need to keep achieving things, you know? And, and, uh, so, but yeah, I think, I think it's just that maybe the key is just when you recognize it to sort of sit back and say like, thank you for this stoke. sort of sit back and say like, thank you for this stoke. Yeah. No, dude, that's very closely related to it. There's a Kurt Vonnegut little quote I like where he said he had a good uncle as late. I got it up right now. My late uncle, Alex,
Starting point is 01:09:15 when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say and talking lazily about this and that almost buzzing like honeybees, uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim if this isn't nice i don't know what is and so i think you know his uncle gave him that and then kurt v gave that to me i think if you surround yourself with people who can appreciate the moment it'll become kind of learned and i think you'll pick up on it but it is nice to say stuff like that like when you're having a good time, just be like, Hey, this is fun. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:50 I had moments like that in college a lot where I'd look at my buddy Mason. I'd be like, this is awesome. Like we're just raging. Yeah. Yeah. What up Mace? Um,
Starting point is 01:09:59 all right. Ex-girlfriend. So recently me and my girlfriend broke up on mutual terms. I talked to one of my buddies and she's telling everyone i have a small dong do i confront her about it or do i do something back i'm not sure by the way love the podcast i'm gonna defer to you guys on that question for sure i would say own it even if you don't just be like yeah she's she's right. It's small and I love it. And then she has no more ammo. Yeah. And then she loved you despite your small dong. So you sound like a fucking beast. It sounds like your attributes are scoring near the top.
Starting point is 01:10:39 So I'd be like, yeah, I'm a small dong dude, but that hasn't kept me from, you know, having strong romantic relationships where obviously they're upset at me and they got to talk bad about me afterwards. I had an impact. This little dong had a big impact. And so, and then, you know, after that, you let it go. And then you just try and live your best life and, you know, grow your metaphorical dong in any way you can.
Starting point is 01:11:00 Yeah. And don't do anything back. Yeah, don't do anything. But what are you going to do? Yeah, that won't make you happy no it's i think it speaks to her character that she's trashing you and you got to be like i don't have to do that because i'm at peace with whatever happened yeah and i have a small dong yeah and you got a small dong which is awesome dude you know it's like how didn't they say in like marie antoinette's time like it was cool to be fat because it showed you had like wealth.
Starting point is 01:11:25 I think we're coming into a new time period where it's going to be cool to have a smaller penis. You know, they're sleeker. They're more elegant. They're not as garish. You know, they're not as ostentatious. We're moving back to antiquity. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:11:42 We're a small penis. Oh, go ahead. We actually have a good follow-up uh chad jt my dogs what up i'm reaching out to you in a time of emotional crisis my friend jen exclusively dates guys with small dongs and is really embarrassed about it she doesn't mean to only date dudes with tiny wieners, but it seems like her destiny. Could you dudes share some advice to help her come to terms with this? She likes cool dudes. She's going to have a great life. There's a lot of people to choose from. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:12:14 Sorry we gave those to you. We'll do this one quickly. This one's a little more above the waistline. Hey, Chad and JT and any possible guests you might have on. For the past few months during the QT, I've come to the conclusion that I am abusing alcohol. Some days I'll drink easily double-digit drinks. Other days I'll only have a couple.
Starting point is 01:12:38 I wake up some mornings and I decide to make a drink to take the edge off. When I don't have a drink, I feel very irritable and not like myself. It's gotten to the point where I'm drinking pretty much every day, and it's become a very unhealthy lifestyle. What are some ways I can take my mind off the booze when I feel a craving? I think you need professional help, probably. That's going to be the best place to start. Probably a therapist is a good place to place to start but i mean it's
Starting point is 01:13:07 really hard to do that sort of thing on your own um especially like if you have a support network and you're living with other people who can who can help you um and keep you accountable sure but it's just this is and it's a big burden to carry just by yourself. So I would recommend getting ideally professional help, but if you don't have access to that and if you have people who care about you around you, starting with them. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, dude, for sure. I think therapy was the best. That's what helped me get, just even understand that I had a sex addiction problem and then um and then going to the meetings they're free and the people there
Starting point is 01:13:49 are really really cool and you'll hear some of like the most beautiful truths about human existence that you've ever heard from all these different people that you wouldn't have ordinarily met and you'll make a lot of good friends out of it too so yeah i think you got stuff to be excited for get in there and meet those folks and and get around some like-minded people who have gone through those issues. Yeah. But, dude, good on you for identifying it and for emailing in about it. Yeah. You're on the right track.
Starting point is 01:14:18 All right, guys. I have to, yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on, guys. Of course. My pleasure. Check out the book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist. It was great talking to you. Yeah, you too, Chad. You too, JT. yeah well thanks so much for coming on guys of course my pleasure think like a rocket scientist it's great talking to you yeah you too chad thank you so much likewise man all right have a great one two days later bye guys thank you for listening to our chat with ozon verall
Starting point is 01:14:39 what a legend dude rocket. Rocket scientist, straight up. Yeah, smart dude. For real. I'm a smart dude. Yeah. All right, should we get started with our Beef Spays and Legends? Dude, I would love to. Chad, why don't you kick it off? My dog, what's your Beef of the Week?
Starting point is 01:14:59 Dude, my Beef of the Week is updates. Just updates. Xbox updates. Apple updates. Xbox updates. Apple updates. What else? Updates. New underwear. New shirts.
Starting point is 01:15:13 You know, it's like, but mostly just software updates. Why do they keep me having to update everything? Just stop. Like, it's fine the way it is. I don't need updates. It usually screws everything up you know i log into like a game or whatever and the map's all different and i'm like what the fuck just happened like oh dude new update i'm like that was so unnecessary i was perfectly happy
Starting point is 01:15:37 with things the way they were and then i look at my phone and it's like i have like four new apps i'm like dude what is going on they're like oh apple update you got the update nice work and i'm like dude i don't want the update i like i like it the way it is quit fucking with my head yeah companies they're fiddling too much yeah it's like they're kind of like they're like kind of like just like they just want to get in there like oh wait we need to i'm like dude just like leave it it's fine i literally had zero complaints i don't even know what to complain about but you guys are finding stuff to be like oh dude they probably don't like this i'm like no i liked everything the way it was so stop yeah quit tinkering you know where that you know where that's supposed to be good is in sports games?
Starting point is 01:16:26 Uh-huh. But they never do it right. Yeah. Like updating the rosters and stuff as they get changed throughout the year. Yeah. It does bug me with Call of Duty because then, like, they're like, hey, they nerfed this gun. Hey, like, quads now are different than they used to be.
Starting point is 01:16:45 And then you have to, like, wait a couple weeks for, like like there to be enough of a backlash for them to change it back yeah and you're like bro like you think leonardo da vinci kept walking back into the fucking museum and like adding you know gave the mona lisa bangs yeah no he was done yeah what if he did that and he's just like oh dude check out my update and everyone's like oh dude why'd you do that you didn't need to do any updates and he's like but i'm tinkering i didn't think people were fully satisfied it's like dude leave you know leave your work of art as it is yeah for sure aaron who's your b for the week my b of the week is with the 405 freeway. Bro.
Starting point is 01:17:28 Generally, there's dozens of reasons to hate the 405. But during the QT, it's not so bad, right? It's like, traffic's not terrible. It's great, actually. We got to San Diego in two hours. Amazing. My beef is with how freaking bumpy this stupid freeway is. I have an SUV, so it's like a truck, so it bounces around a bunch anyway.
Starting point is 01:17:56 But the 405 is just insane. It's so not smooth. It's crazy. It's just like a hazard yeah for sure yeah it's a terrible freeway it is crazy sometimes you'll be like cruising then you just get some casual air and you're like what dude yeah yeah did i just get air in my truck exactly i did I did some, some like, there'll be some things where I'm like driving
Starting point is 01:18:27 and it's like, I'll hit like a pothole or something and it's just like, do-doom. I'm like, oh, my car, man.
Starting point is 01:18:35 There's nothing I can do but it just totally destroys your, your wheels. Yeah. I didn't sign up for froding, dude. I mean,
Starting point is 01:18:44 that's true. Yeah. That's true. My beef of the week is um with someone i know and love but also hate it's with myself dude oh nice yeah i've just you know i've been really proud of myself throughout the quarantine for being really precautious i mean you know at times i think i was governed too much by fear, but, uh, but I thought overall it was, it was, I was doing a public good and especially cause I was staying with my mom and dad for big stretches of it. So, you know, there was that very urgent incentive to keep my parents safe. Um, but since I've been staying at my mom's place alone in orange County and kicking it with some of my friends that I grew up with, I've just been getting sloppy. And then, you know, the 4th of July, uh, you know, we, we, we shot some stuff, we were out in public, we were wearing
Starting point is 01:19:29 masks, but like, then I, I, I don't know. I just have kind of, I think without even realizing I was doing it, I just was getting a bit too loose with it, you know? And then I went down to the beach yesterday and it was busy and I played volleyball against some dudes and, you know, I was rubbing my eyes after touching the ball and stuff. And then I was supposed to hang out with this girl on Thursday who I've been seeing, who's been like my quarantine girlfriend. And now, you know, she doesn't feel great about me coming up and I can't argue with her. I'm like, you know, I, you know, I could, I could put, she's staying with her parents. I'm like, I can put you y'all at risk um and it's tough it's tough man i just got to buckle down i mean i keep i want to keep working out with my buddies when they come
Starting point is 01:20:10 over we're outside i keep my distance but i don't know it's tough i was talking to my doctor friend who i've been hanging out with a lot and he talked about how in medicine with some drugs there's a toxicity versus therapeutic threshold where some drugs, they work really well. They have a very small window for where they work because if you give them a little too much, it'll kill them. But you actually need to give them close to that amount for it to work. And that's how I feel like I am dealing with the quarantine right now. I need to push myself to not be Howard Hughes, but I also don't want to get too reckless where I get myself into trouble. And I'm trying to find that,
Starting point is 01:20:49 that balance, you know, between recklessness and actually living my life. And this past weekend, I think I tipped too much into recklessness, but hopefully I get out of it without getting the Ronin and spreading it to anybody. And,
Starting point is 01:21:02 and, you know, and I'll learn from it oh and dude actually i wanted to read someone sent us a poem about about rona about rona and he actually he was a young fellow who got the rona oh wow yeah and so he said long awaited i his name is micah really sweet guy micah we wish you well man you're gonna be all right he says he's feeling good you're gonna get through this okay and we appreciate you being vulnerable and sending us this poem long awaited i chilled deep inside my abode spending
Starting point is 01:21:36 time inside my dome breathing clean air and wondering how the world had fared for many days inside my home i chilled waiting for the rona to lose its scare but many moons have passed and Nice. For now it is on chill and the schmole is me. A day of freedom was celebrated, but it was the Rona that was set free. Nice. Yeah. That's great. Good, dude. You know. And, yeah, it's hard, but, you know, I got to live it like I preach it, bro.
Starting point is 01:22:20 Mm-hmm. I got to mask up. I got to stay safe. And, you know, not be in big groups. But those are the big ones. For sure. And, you know, just keep loving virtually. Yeah, it's tough when, like, you know,
Starting point is 01:22:39 because people will ask you to hang out. And it's like, I feel like, you know, it's like when you get tortured you know everyone has their breaking point and it's like how many times do you say no to your squad um which totally i've been saying i mean i i saw you but like i've been saying no pretty much to, to most people, but it's like, it's, I don't know. That's what happened to me yesterday. Yeah. You can, you can get to, to like,
Starting point is 01:23:16 it's such like a collective thing. Like when there's like too many people, like that are not being sit or like they're just hanging out you know and it's like then you're just like in your mind you'll be like oh it's okay you know it's so easy to fall into that trap i think because everyone else is doing it and then fomo kicks in um but then like like i've had times i hung out with some college friends like three weeks ago and i got pretty hammered and i woke I woke up like, I kind of blacked out. And I was like, next day I was like, Oh, that wasn't too bad. And I woke up the day after that. I was like, Oh fuck dude.
Starting point is 01:23:54 I was not safe at all. And luckily I was fine. But it is like, it is, it's tough. It's little things too, dude. Like you'll just catch it, you know, cause you, you, you let down your guard a little bit and then all of a sudden, you know, I grabbed a cigarette from Luke Casey, you know, occasionally like once every six months I'll smoke a cigarette and you know, I grab it out of his pack. And then the next day I'm like, ah, but if he had something like that's not safe going into someone's, you know, if you want a cigarette, you got to get your own pack, bro.
Starting point is 01:24:20 That's just the reality of it right now. Yeah. And then yesterday I went for a jog with my buddy Tom on the beach. We ran to this busy part of the beach. And then all of a sudden he gets a hair up his ass and he's like, oh dude, let's play volleyball. And next thing I know I'm on the court and I'm like, dude, I don't want to do this. And he's like, all right, hey. And I'm like, let's just have us two on this court. We'll play twos against the other guys. And then they're like, hey, do you guys want to play threes? And Tom's like, yeah, let's play threes. And then
Starting point is 01:24:42 all of a sudden there's another guy on my side coming over to clap my hand and talk strategy he's like a 65 year old like army vet and I'm like dude can you back up bro and he's looking like what and I'm like I'm sorry dude like I'll pass to you as well as I can but I don't want to be close to you and it's just and now I now I have a lot of you know ambivalence about it I mean mean, it felt good yesterday because it distracted me because literally I was scared from 4th of July so I needed to get my brain off putting myself out there too much
Starting point is 01:25:09 and the way I did that was by putting myself out there again. It was like I took more of the, it's like taking a chocolate laxative to fix your constipation. Yeah. I stole that from Slavo Zizek, that blubbering fool of a philosopher
Starting point is 01:25:21 with the annoying lisp. Chad, who's your babe of the week? Dude, my babe of the week is my forearm tan. You know, last time I did my ankle tan. And dude, my forearms are looking fresh, dude. in a lot like pretty golden you know like i've been wearing a short sleeve wetsuit so i've been getting those forearms nice and golden you know they look my forearms look like tater tots i'm just pumped so yeah shout out to my forearm tan for being a babe. Dude, that's a beautiful comp with the tater tots.
Starting point is 01:26:07 Dude, thank you. Aaron, who's your babe of the week? My babe of the week is the ice cream flavor, rainbow sherbet. And it's sherbet, not sherbert.
Starting point is 01:26:22 We all, it's a common mistake. Are you sure about that? I'm absolutely certain. I'm, I'm, I'm sure about it. It's a common mistake. Are you sure about that? I'm absolutely certain. I'm sure about it. Dude, I just bowed to you after that pun. I just hit you with a karate bow. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:26:38 It's probably some sort of Mandela effect thing. It's just great in the summer. It's the best thing you can have it's nice uh nice little sweet sour treat uh i go with the rainbow because you can never i find if you buy at the store you can never you can never quite uh be sure about single flavors like sometimes you buy just the orange and it just sucks whatever reason. So I go with the rainbow. It's usually like a lime green and like a strawberry and an orange. Just,
Starting point is 01:27:14 just great. And it's the, it's the best thing I think at Baskin Robbins of the 31. So a shout out to rainbow sherbet. Hell yeah, dude. Nice. It needed to be said i love him but sure dude on the on friday or thursday i i just bought a whole thing of briar's mint chip it was a quart i ate it all while we were playing call of duty i know i was getting updates on it
Starting point is 01:27:42 that was a solid update that was an update I wanted was chat. How are you along on that briarsmanship dude? Yeah. I did ice cream updates are legit. Yeah. Babe. My baby of the week is a gamblers. So gamblers don't have sports right now, but I picked this little tidbit of information up from Tyler Cowen on his
Starting point is 01:28:03 podcast. Gamblers are betting on shark migration patterns right now. But I picked this little tidbit of information up from Tyler Cowen on his podcast. Gamblers are betting on shark migration patterns right now. They want the juice so bad that they found something worth betting on. And what they found was shark migration patterns. I don't know who's betting the over, who's betting the under, who's betting the Indian Ocean, who's betting the Atlantic Ocean. I just love that they're putting action on it. Do you know what I mean? That's awesome. I just picture two hustler guys in Vegas and they're like, I'll give in the Atlantic Ocean. I just love that they're putting action on it. You know what I mean? That's awesome. I just picture two, like, you know, hustler guys in Vegas, and they're like, I'll give you two to one. I'll give you two to one that the Mako makes at Takabo by the end of July.
Starting point is 01:28:33 And he's like, two to one? Are you out of your fucking mind? And he's, like, studying it up on the, you know. These guys are learning about shark migration patterns so they can bet on it. They're bettering themselves while putting their house on the line, some of them. No, they're good. They're winning houses.
Starting point is 01:28:46 These guys are killers. Dude, I love that. And you know that those aren't rigged because the sharks can't be swayed by money or influence unless the scientists are putting weird trackers on them. Dude, that's a fire call. Or they pay a guy in a fishing boat to just chum, put chum in the ocean and lead it like a breadcrumb trail all the way up to alaska yeah yeah dude i would love to bet on sharks they pay one of the
Starting point is 01:29:13 sharks off with a fat satchel of tuna yeah he's like dude just why don't you go north for this one he's like it's like dude but my whole squad is going south we're all going to cabo he's like just go to alaska dude i got a bag of yellowfin with your name on it if you go up to Alaska. It's too rich a deal to resist. I got to do it. Yeah, dude. So, yeah, big ups to the gamblers for making it happen. We're actually at ATC.
Starting point is 01:29:38 We're partnered with Sports Gambling Podcast. That's literally the title of it. sports gambling podcast. That's literally the title of it. And they're on our YouTube channel. They're doing, sorry, my dog's barking, but they're doing
Starting point is 01:29:53 like Madden simulated games betting on that. Like recreating the playoffs of last year and letting the simulator run it. They commentate and call it live like it's really happening. It's crazy. Interesting. And it's all AI.
Starting point is 01:30:09 There's no human element to it? Yeah. All AI. Nobody playing. I wouldn't trust a comp on that, dude. Well, it's all happening live, so hopefully no one's manipulating it. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:30:27 You never know. You never know you never know dude somebody does same person who knows what epstein was up to i might be coming around on epstein not that i think he's cool now i never thought he was cool you know you might want to re-record that because that soundbite is pretty bad. Yeah, I didn't mean it like that at all. I meant that I wasn't as engrossed or interested in the vastness of the conspiracy around him or the vastness of his network of fellow perverts. And now I'm starting to be like, no, maybe I should be more interested in it. Yeah, the documentary is pretty good.
Starting point is 01:31:09 I got interested in it because our buddy Luke Casey, he turned on a podcast talking about it. And I was like, and I love conspiracies. And I was like, ooh, this is getting my juices flowing. And this one's also like, you know, there's a lot of like, it is a real conspiracy. Like, you know, this one's also like, you know, there's a lot of like, it is a real conspiracy. Like, you know, this one's for real. So it's, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, it's a terrible story.
Starting point is 01:31:38 I can feel that you want to say something. Yeah. I don't know, dude. There's a lot of powerful people who are, you know, up to some shenanigans and, and they protected him. And now Ghislaine Maxwell is in the slammer and she's probably going to talk. 2020, like, I can't even picture 2020 getting any bigger, but this will make it bigger. Yeah. This is taking it next level yeah just when
Starting point is 01:32:06 you thought 2020 couldn't have any more twists and turns we're about to find out every rich person who's a molester dad i'm gonna say every rich person in molester i'm like dude seems to be that way i might be it too it's like i'm like god damn dude um all right chat who's your legend of the week uh my legend of the week is your mom's house dude fire thank you man dude i i woke up at your mom's house and i was like i'm in like mexico right now like san clemente you got the pool you got the view you know you're just looking out over like the hills and you see the o, and there's just sun coming in, and there's grass, and there's kettlebells, where you can just shred your quads, blow up your traps, you know,
Starting point is 01:32:54 just tone up your delts. And it's just, like, I was, like, smiling from ear to ear. I was like, dude, I am so stoked right now. Thank you, Monica. It's just a, it's just, it's paradise. Dude, thank you. I'm going to play this clip for my mom. She's going to be so thrilled to hear you say that. I mean, I think that's one of the things that my mom takes a huge amount of pride in. And I think she succeeds in it so well is that like, she loves having a house that people love to come to. Like the house I grew up in as a kid,
Starting point is 01:33:27 we had every time I came home, there was 10 people over. Like my mom loves to host and entertain. Yeah. So for you to say that, man, that really means a lot. Oh,
Starting point is 01:33:35 thank you, man. Yeah. I was driving out with Luke Casey. I was like, dude, I need a house like that. That's why I'm living here,
Starting point is 01:33:41 dude. It's so awesome. Yeah, it is nice, dude. And it's not like, it's not, and it's not awesome it's not and it's not awesome in the sense that it's like kind of like it's like you know kind of like garish or ostentatious or something exactly yeah it's it's like you know it's just like a nice feeling there's a lot of thought put into it right yeah and the backyard is just i mean dude talk about nirvana
Starting point is 01:34:06 yeah we were watching we watched she's got a tv outside we watched gladiator and rounders on fourth of july yeah gladiator to get you fired up and then rounders just a nice movie to settle into yeah it's good times then our buddy got, started boking that night. And I was convinced he had the Rona. And I was like, oh, fuck, we're fucked. Yeah, we got too close to the sun. I've been texting him every day. How are you feeling today? He's like, I'm good, dude.
Starting point is 01:34:34 Just I think I had some bad hot dogs. I'm like, all right, well, keep me posted, baby. Yeah, dude, you're freaking him out. You're like, oh, and you're like, what's going on, dude? What other symptoms do you have? And he's like oh oh and you're like what's going on dude what other symptoms do you have and he's like dude i think i was just peaking like i feel fine and you're like stay away from me i know i felt like such a scumbag luke casey's like is is chicas okay i was like i didn't even ask him if he was okay i just made sure he was staying away from me like i went up i was like do you have coronavirus he's like i
Starting point is 01:35:05 don't think so i was like stay away from me bro and then i walked downstairs and i was like i probably could have been nicer about that yeah i wasn't that bad but i was no no subtext yeah yeah um thank you for saying all that nice stuff about my mom's crib though oh yeah of course aaron who's your legend of the week? My legend of the week, ironically, is my mom. Nice, dude. I hadn't seen her since about Christmas time, and I was staying away because of COVID, and she's immunocompromised. She's beaten cancer a couple different times. But then I got tested, and I wasn't around anybody after that, anybody from outside our house
Starting point is 01:35:47 so we drove down and spent some time and that was good, just a nice little recharge just being around my mom, it's awesome that's awesome dude, I'm going to have to dap you up then as a legend of the week too for just keeping it safe and
Starting point is 01:36:05 setting the tone for for for you know because i'm sure you felt squarely at times but you've managed to be safe and consistent so big ups yeah yeah yeah yeah it's tough you want to be i mean i'm kind of fine being inside. I don't mind, but, but when you do go out, you want to be safe. Yeah. My, my other legend of the week is, uh, is just working out with your bros. Um, I think it's, you know, you gotta be careful about it now. Uh, but I've managed to get some lifts in with some of my dogs and it's, uh,
Starting point is 01:36:44 it might be the most soul nourishing thing in the universe. And it pushes you always to work out harder. When you see your dogs firing it out, you just, you can't even help it. The testosterone gets going and you're like, you know what? I'm doing extra sets. I'm doing more work than I thought I was going to do today. And then pretty soon you're doing, you know, pistol squats and you're hitting some upside down pushups and you're, you're that tweak in pistol squats and you're you're hitting some upside down
Starting point is 01:37:05 push-ups and you're you're that tweak in your neck you're really thinking about it like is it ever really going to go away or should i just push through it and you know you got to listen to your body you know that toxicity um therapeutic threshold but sometimes you got to push it you got to push it a little bit and uh yeah it's the best i just love jack dudes i love seeing buff dudes move their bodies it's it's glorious and the fact that some of my friends have kept it tight you know when a lot of people are letting it slide i just i fucking admire the fuck out of it you know ferrar today was doing handstand walks he's walking on his hands upside down the guy's like 210.
Starting point is 01:37:47 For our hope you hear this. Someone wants to know when I was watching you, I was happier than I've ever been in a long time. It made me really happy. Yeah. So fellas, you know, stay hot.
Starting point is 01:38:01 Dude. Yeah. I mean, you got some hot dudes in that squad and I love watching those stories like i watch them over and i'm like dude ferraro's pecs dude freaking yeah wash your dishes on those or what do you what do you do on nice pecs you just i think they call it dinner plate pecs you know what I wanted to do when I saw his pecs? I wanted to skate his pecs. Yeah. Like a half pipe.
Starting point is 01:38:28 Yeah, you got that new board too. Yeah, he's got like a half pipe. You know, there's so much mass that the crevice would make a nice half pipe. So, Ferrero, if you're listening, I want to skate your pecs. Yeah. Thank you, Ferrero. It was tough being friends with that many hot dudes. It was like challenging. You had to like accept things about yourself but it made me better yeah give me something to strive
Starting point is 01:38:52 for now if i see a hot dude i just get jacked up i'm like i know that guy's cool chad well that's also why you tried you're very hot guy oh dude very hot guy i don't think i'm for our standards but thank you yeah i'm not hot guy no hey and walking there's all kinds of different hot guys you guys are hot guys all right i don't hang out with non-hot guys oh thank my friend john daniels used to be like he'd be like dude you're gay you only hang out with hot guys i was like i don't do it intentionally it works out that way i'd be like complaining to him about life i'd be like dude i feel all mixed up and like i don't really know what i'm doing and like i don't know i kind of feel repressed and he'd just go dude you're gay
Starting point is 01:39:31 and i was like dude i'm not gay not that there's anything wrong with that but i was like i'm not gay he's like dude you're gay you're only friends with the hot guys i was like all right man i don't think you're getting it but i appreciate your perspective. He's a really hot guy too. He's so hot. Yeah, he's a hot dude. All right, Chad, what's your quote of the week? My quote of the week is from – dude, I was reading some stoicism this morning. I got fired up. Nice, dude.
Starting point is 01:39:58 This is from my dog, Epictetus. What up, Epictetus? If you wish to improve, be content to... Let me start that again. If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters. Don't wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself. And it's a good quote for the times now when there's so much media to consume.
Starting point is 01:40:25 Like the guy explained it and he's like, he's like, oftentimes, you know, we, we always want to seem like up to date on what's gone in the news, like all the cool TV shows, like just to know everything about what's going on. So we don't seem silly at dinner parties, for example. And he's like, but I challenge you to just say straight up i don't care because how much you know if you if you don't if you take all that effort into like consuming all the media that's like all the news that's going on and just getting upset over all the news that's going on upset over like you know potential crises that probably won't ever happen how much more time and energy could
Starting point is 01:41:10 you use for things that are actually like tangible and relevant to your life and improving on them that's sort of what it's about i mean i definitely feel like how people will mistake information for understanding i mean i'm guilty of that too like oh if i can name enough things and reference I mean, I definitely feel like how people will mistake information for understanding. I mean, I'm guilty of that too. Like, oh, if I can name enough things and reference enough things, like people will think I'm smart. But that's not really what intelligence is, right? Intelligence is like, is something danker than that. No, yeah.
Starting point is 01:41:38 I think a lot of it, what I got is like to, you know, it's so easy for like the news to like upset us we're like you know like i guess 2020 is the end of the world like and just to be upset about it and it's like you know i don't know i kind of feel like there's always something to be upset about but you can't control you can't control it you can't control your own life though and what you do and how you respond to things or if you have a klondike bar maybe it's also the 2020s making me appreciate shit more you know yeah like maybe lifting with my dogs wouldn't have been as impactful if there wasn't the stakes that we're surrounded by right their urgency we're surrounded by like now when I eat a Klondike bar,
Starting point is 01:42:25 I'm like, how fucking special is a Klondike bar? Yeah. Yeah. But eight months ago, you know, it wouldn't have tasted the same. Or like,
Starting point is 01:42:38 dude, when you hook up with a girl, or a woman, or a guy, or whoever you hook up with or a child if you're jeffrey epstein you know oh i don't need to say that that's stupid sorry i was trying to be inclusive um but when you hook up with someone you're saying i trust you you know i trust you enough i trust that you're safe i trust that you're living your life in a certain way that
Starting point is 01:43:02 you're going to keep me safe or you're the other way you're saying hey i don't give a shit and i know you don't give a shit we're both wild it's it's a lot more you know there's a lot more to it yeah dude yeah i uh i think boning now is sort of like jude law boning in behind her enemy at the gates yeah remember that scene yeah oh do i remember dude yeah dude i remember that scene like dude that was some boning that was a hot scene dude yeah i think it's just like his bare ass too just like going up and down but yeah i still thought it was pretty hot well it was like you know they're stuck in the barracks they're surrounded by like you know the soldiers are all living pretty rough lives everyone's pretty dirty and stuff and then they're like you know the soldiers are all living pretty rough lives everyone's pretty dirty and
Starting point is 01:43:45 stuff and then they're like you know what i'm i'm too horny not to do this right now we got to get it on yeah that in the eight mile sex scene oh oh dude yes yeah it's so good yeah rest in peace be murphs um yeah that was a good ones yeah those times where Yeah. Those times where you're like, I don't even care what's going on around me. I got to lay it down. Yeah. Alive with the power of love. Alive with the glory of love. That's the song I like.
Starting point is 01:44:15 About that. Yeah. It's about that. About that boning when the world's burning. Yeah. Aaron, what's your quote of the week? Well, aside from JT a few minutes ago saying, I love Jack Dudes.
Starting point is 01:44:35 We lost another legend this week. Carl Reiner passed away at 98, lived a great life, long life. Gave birth to Rob, who's an amazing director uh and worked with mel brooks for fucking decades and just amazing uh the jerk is one of my favorite movies of all time yes um and so i could i could pick a million quotes from the jerk he didn't carl didn't write it but he directed it and so I'm sure he had a lot of input on set about all these different bits and how they're, how they're,
Starting point is 01:45:09 how they played out on scene on camera. And I just found a scene. It's when, it's when Steve Martin as Navin and Bernadette Peters as Marie are on their first date.
Starting point is 01:45:29 And it's clearly, it's gone really well and they're just hanging out back at Navin's place. And he says, Navin says, can I ask you a personal question? Marie says, what is it? I didn't,
Starting point is 01:45:42 she said it much better than I did. Now, to be totally honest, you do have a boyfriend, don't you? And she says, kind of. He says, I know this is our first date, but do you think the next time you make love to your boyfriend, you could think of me? And she says, well, I haven't made love to him yet. And Navin says, that's too bad.
Starting point is 01:46:07 Do you think it's possible that someday you could make love with me and think of him? And she goes, who knows? Maybe you and he could make love and you could think of me. And Navin says to end the scene, I'd just be happy to be in there somewhere that's just beautiful absurd nonsense yeah that I love about that movie so much yeah
Starting point is 01:46:35 the stacking of it is so good yeah that's killer yeah and there's a million of those in that movie the quotes are endless so R.I.P. Carl Reiner definitely Yeah, and there's a million of those in that movie. The quotes are endless. So R.I.P. Carl Reiner. Definitely. My quote of the week is from the band One Direction,
Starting point is 01:46:56 the now disbanded band One Direction. They've all gone their separate ways. Most of them are having pretty successful solo careers, but I think they were kind of at their best when they were together. And it's from their song, Drag Me Down, which was after Zayn had already left the group. But I really relate to the lyrics of this song. I've got fire for a heart. I'm not scared of the dark. Just a little side note. That's one of the lines that really connects to me. I'm not scared of the dark because I am scared of the dark. So it's important to me to not be, to fight it. You've never seen it look so easy. I got a river for a soul and baby, you're a boat. Baby, you're my only reason. If I didn't have you,
Starting point is 01:47:34 there would be nothing left. The shell of a man that could never be his best. If I didn't have never see the sun you taught me how to be someone is that it i'll keep going uh well you had a face like you were gonna keep going i couldn't make up my mind dude you're very intuitive i was like do i do the chorus or do i leave it there how's it more powerful i think it needs the chorus it needs the chorus all my life you stood by me when no one else was ever behind me all these lights they can't blind me with your love nobody can drag me down it's a good song dude i gotta listen to that i've never heard one direction dude there's a moment in the music video where harry styles is walking down the tarmac of like a air uh of like an airport and like his charisma and his star
Starting point is 01:48:28 power it's like a two second shot i think it's at a minute 12 where he's just stomping down the runway and you're like dude that is a fucking star really megawatt yeah just a jizz banger um chad what's your phrase of the week for getting after it my phrase of the week for getting after it is like is I'm gonna take off my pants nice dude I like how you thought about it a lot yeah I was trying to be profound. Well, profanity is where you live, bro. Thanks.
Starting point is 01:49:13 Aaron, do you want to join Chad in profanity? I think I'm going to go a slightly different route and just do another quote from the jerk. Nice. It's just, I have a special purpose, which in the movie is what his mom called his dick. I love the scene where he writes the letter.
Starting point is 01:49:39 He's like, I'm getting lots of work. Next week, Patty says she's's gonna give me a blow job um my phrase of the week for getting after it is from joe list from uh the tuesdays with stories podcast him and mark norman do it together they're both tremendous stand-up comics and and some of the quickest banterers around um and Mark Norman was quoting Joe List saying it but he said a reason is edgy now and I thought that was a good summarization of where we're at it does feel like that sometimes you're like wait people aren't allowed to say this or or people are disagreeing with this and
Starting point is 01:50:23 like getting pissed off about it you're like really and it just feels like yeah like sometimes reason can be edgy now and yeah so good call joe yeah mr list who's actually kind of shredded too and norman is super shredded yeah i saw a shirtless photo of the both of them like joe list has a six-pack it's so funny too because on their podcast they're like we're a couple you know they're talking It's so funny too. Cause on their podcast, they're like, we're a couple of, you know, they talking to that kind of like a old timey banter. And they're like, we're a couple of,
Starting point is 01:50:49 you know, knobs with no muscle who don't know how to use our dicks. And then you look at them and you're like, uh, I've seen Joe list in person. He's kind of a stud. He's like six, two or something.
Starting point is 01:50:57 Really? Yeah. I'm like, dude, move out of the nerd block where you pretend in like you, you know, we're like, like that's your community, dude. We all know like you, you know, we're like, like that's your community,
Starting point is 01:51:06 dude. We all know you're, you know, belong in John Elway street. Yeah. Did too many pretend nerds in the comedy community? I do it sometimes too. I don't know what it is.
Starting point is 01:51:15 There's something like, and you think if you do comedy, you gotta be, you gotta be, I understand why you need to be self deprecating, but sometimes it does feel disingenuous. Like Judd Apatow. He's supposed to be an animal.
Starting point is 01:51:26 I heard when that guy's like fighting on set or fighting with producers and stuff, he's like Alec Baldwin and Glenn, Gary Glenn Ross. But then you see him do standup and he's like, Oh, I peed my pants in front of my daughter and she threw pudding in my face. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:51:40 You're like, you really, I took my daughters to a Taylor Swift concert and they called me a nerd. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're like, you really, I took my daughters to a Taylor Swift concert. They called me a nerd. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Then they punched me in the balls.
Starting point is 01:51:52 Yeah. Fuck off. Judd Apatow. That feels nice. I don't know why that feels so nice. I hear you. Yeah. Something cathartic about it.
Starting point is 01:52:07 It's always good to orient. If you have discomfort, orient it around someone you're upset at, who's out of your world. Yeah. Who can I say it to? She's like, man, everything sucks. I don't know what to do with anything.
Starting point is 01:52:19 The world's fucking burning. You know what? Fuck this one person, and then you'll feel better. I know that's not stoke inducing, but it's a, it'll, it'll,
Starting point is 01:52:28 it's like a shot of stoke. That'll get you to the more higher purpose stoke down the road. Totally. Yeah. I don't know, dude. Sorry. Is that,
Starting point is 01:52:36 do we bang it out? Yeah. I think that's the pot.

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