Lex Fridman Podcast - #312 – Duncan Trussell: Comedy, Sentient Robots, Suffering, Love & Burning Man

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Duncan Trussell is a comedian, host of The Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, and co-creator of The Midnight Gospel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Skiff: https://skiff.com/lex - Calm: https://calm.com/lex to get 40% off premium - SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit EPISODE LINKS: Duncan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/duncantrussell Duncan's Instagram: https://instagram.com/duncantrussell The Duncan Trussell Family Hour: https://duncantrussell.com The Midnight Gospel: https://netflix.com/themidnightgospel Books mentioned: Superintelligence: https://amzn.to/3QufVEs Man's Search for Meaning: https://amzn.to/3vU9S42 PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (07:13) - Nietzsche's eternal recurrence (27:03) - Artificial intelligence (55:33) - Joe Rogan (1:04:06) - Facing death (1:20:54) - Bhakti yoga (1:27:46) - Afterlife (1:38:10) - Suffering (2:03:25) - War (2:21:19) - Depression (2:43:08) - Evil (2:53:24) - Burning Man (3:08:56) - The Midnight Gospel (3:13:48) - Advice for young people (3:23:19) - Duncan reads a poem

The following is a conversation with Duncan Trussell, a stand up comedian, host of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast and one of my favorite human beings. I've been a fan of his for many years, so it was a huge honor and pleasure to meet him for the first time and to sit down for this chat. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description, it's the best way to support this podcast. We got skiff for email, calm for meditation, simple safe for security, net suite for efficiency, and indeed for hiring.

Choose wisely my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, though I often fail. However, that cliche statement goes about trying nine times and failing but getting up again to try again. That's the worst paraphrasing of that cliche statement. You know what is pretty cool is those demotivational posters that have like the opposite of inspirational statements. Those are hilarious.

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In terms of stuff that's super easy to set up. And then you can add a like home alone type of traps on top of that, but that's on you. Simply save just as the monitoring and the cameras. Anyway, go to simplysafe.com slash likes to customize your system and claim your free But that's on you. Simply save just as the monitoring and the cameras. Anyway, go to simplysafe.com slashlex to customize your system and claim your free indoor security camera plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. This show is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system that does financials, human resources, inventory, e-commerce, and many business-related details that I get exhausted from just reading. Running a business is really difficult.

To me, the fun stuff is design, engineering, building ideas, coming up with ideas, looking at the big picture of where we're headed, defining the mission, the goals for this week, for this month, for this year, for the next 10 years. That's exciting. But none of it works if you don't have the sort of machine of a business functioning. And so you should be using NetSuite to help you with that machine to relieve yourself of all the painful things about running a business so you can focus on the fulfilling aspects of running a business. Go to net suite.com slash Lex to access their one-of-a-kind financing program. This show is brought to you by indeed a hiring website. I've used them for many

hiring efforts for the teams I've led in the past. They have a bunch of cool stuff like a deed instant match. That's for the early stage of selecting quality candidates. That's a really important stage. The whole process is really important. Getting a good pool of candidate, getting it quickly, then going through the multi-stage interview process to filter down the people that, you know, culture fit, they fit the kind of teams that you're trying to build, then also skill and competence level, they're good because there's very few things that's important as the people you surround yourself with at work.

You're going to go through some hard times at work. You're going to really challenge yourself. You're going to reach for the stars that will push yourself to the limit and doing that with the right people around you. That's going to make the difference, not just in terms of productivity, but in terms of how fulfilling, how happy you are as a human being. Anyway, indeed has a special offer only available for a limited time, check them out at Indeed.com-slash-lex. This is the Lex Freedom Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now to your friends, here's Duncan Trussell. Nietzsche has this thought experiment called Eternal Recurrence where you get to relive

your whole life over and over and over and over and over and I think it's a way to bring to the surface of your mind the idea that every single moment in your life matters. It intensely matters, the bad and the good and he kind of wants you to imagine that idea that every single decision you make throughout your life, you repeat over and over and over and he wants you to respond to that. Do you feel horrible about that or do you feel good about that and you have to think through this idea in order to see where you stand in life, how you, what is your relationship like with life? I actually want to read his, the way he first introduces that concept for people who are not familiar.

What if someday or night a demon? By the way, he has a demon introduced this thought experiment. What if someday or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, quote, this life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more. And in new marble times more, and there will be nothing new in it. But every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small and great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence. Would you not throw yourself down, agnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, you are a God and never have I heard anything more divine.

So are you terrified or excited about such a thought experiment when you applied to your own life? Excited. Excited. Oh, even the dark stuff. Oh, yeah, for sure. Definitely. I mean, also, that thing you're talking about, he kind of

leaves out maybe on purpose because the thought experiment starts falling apart a little bit. Yeah. The amnesia between each loop. So, you know, the whole thing gets wiped. Now if the amnesia wasn't there and yet somehow you are witnessing the non-autonomy implicit in what he's talking about. So you have to kind of watch yourself go through this rotten loop. Then yeah, that's a description. There's probably a boredom that comes into that. So you don't experience everything a new. Exactly. The best of the good stuff. The newness of it is really important. That's it. Yeah. This is the in the inades, when you die, you, there's a river. I think it's called Leith.

You ever heard of this? L-E-T-H-E. You drink from it, and you don't remember your past lives. And then when you're reborn, it's fresh, and you don't have to, I mean, just think of like the amount of psychological help you would need to get over all the bullshit that happened in prior lives You know I can you imagine if you're still resentful of Something someone did to you in the 14th century

But it would it would compound. Well, if you repeat the same thing over and over and over It would there would be no difference. Maybe you would start to appreciate the nuances more like when you watch the same movie over and over And over yeah, maybe you'll start to appreciate the nuances more like when you watch the same movie over and over and over. Yeah, maybe you'll get to actually Let go of this idea of all the possible all the positive possibilities that lay before you but actually enjoy the moment much more If you remember that you've lived this life a thousand times all the little things the way somebody smiles If you're been abused the way somebody smiles. If you're been abused, the way somebody, like the pain of it, the suffering, the down that you feel, the experience of sadness, depression, fear,

all that kind of stuff, you get to really, you get to also appreciate that that's part of life, that's part of being a life. Now, also in his experiment, if I was going to, and I love the experiment from the perspective of like, just where technology is now and simulation theory and stuff like that, but in that thought experiment, if this rotten demon immediately killed you, then within that,

it's a little more horrifying because even in the, first of all, you're trusting a fucking demon. Why are you talking to a demon? Let's start there. Yeah, that is gonna be even before I get into the metaphysics and the implications. And where is this life stored? Where's the loop stored?

I mean, were we talking about some kind of unchanging data set or something? For that, you're like, why is there a fucking talking demon in my room trying to freak me out? You're gonna wanna autopsy the demon. Can you catch it? Does this apply to you,? And again, obviously it's a fucking thought experiment. It needs you to be annoyed by me. But I think like you would still be able to entertain the joy. You'd have the joy of not knowing what's around the corner. You know, still, it's not like

you know what's coming just because the demon said it's some kind of loop. In other words, the idea of being damned to your past decisions, it doesn't even work because you can't remember what decisions you're about to make. So from that perspective, also, I think I'd be happy about it or I would just think, oh, cool. I mean, it's a good story. I'm going to tell people about this. I wonder what the demon would actually look like in real life, because I suspect they would look like a charming, like a friend. Wouldn't it, would they be a loved one?

Wouldn't the demon come to you through the mechanism, through the front door of love, not through the back door of evil, like malevolent manipulation? Sure. I mean, if it's the truth, if it's the truth, then that's whether it's love or, if it's the truth, and that's whether it's love or not, it's still good, fundamentally. I do like the idea of the memory replay. I remember I went to a new link event a few years ago and got to hang out with Elon. I remember

how visceral it is that there's like a pig with a neural link in it. And you're talking about memory replaced as a future, maybe far future possibility. And you realize, well, this is a very meaningful moment in my life. This could be a replay. Like, of all the things you replay, it's probably, you know, there's certain magical moments in your life, whatever it is, certain people you've met for the first time, or certain things you've done for the first time with certain people, or just an awesome thing you did. And I remember just saying to him, like, I would probably want to replay this, this moment. And it just seemed very kind of, I mean mean there was a recursive nature to it, but it seemed very real that this is something we would want to do with that. The richness

of life could be experienced through the replay. That's probably where it's experienced the most. Like you can see life as a way to collect a much cool memories and then you get to sit back in your nice VR headset and replay the cool ones. That's right. This is in Buddhism, the idea that I struggle with is that there's a possibility of not reincarnating, of not coming back.

That's the idea. This is suffering here. Suffering is caused by attachment. And so if you like revise the idea of reincarnation or the Nietzsche's loop and look at it from, could this be possible? Or how would this be possible technologically? Then to me, it makes a lot of sense. Like, I've been thinking a lot about this very thing and that Nietzsche's idea connecting to it. I had this like, sounds so dumb,

but I was at the dentist getting nitrous oxide, high as a fucking kite man, and I had this idea. I was thinking about data. I was thinking like, man, probably, if I had to bet, there's some energetic form that we're not aware of that for an advanced super-advanced technology would be as detectable as like starlight, but something that we just don't even know what it is. Quantum turbulence, who the fuck knows, fill in the blank, whatever that X may be.

But assuming that exists, that somehow data, even the most subtle things, the tiniest movements, whatever it may be, the emanations of your neurological process energetically, whatever it may be, is radiating out in a space time. Then what if like the James Webb version of this for some advanced civilization is not that they're like looking at the nebula or whatever, but they're actually able to peer into the past and via some bizarre technology recreate whatever life simulate, whatever life was happening there just by decoding that quantum energy, whatever it is. I'm only saying quantum because it's what dumb people say when

they don't know. You just think quantum, I don't know, but you're decoding that. So meaning, in simulation theory, one of the big questions that pops up is, why and are we in one? And the Elon has talked about, well, it's probably more of a probability than we're in one, there are not. In which case, what you're talking about

is actually happening that that loop you're talking about. We've decided to be here. We, this of all the things, we decided this one. Well, let's do that one again. I wanna do that one. Let's try, let's do that. That's, I love thinking about this because I love my family.

And it makes sense to me that if I'm going to replay some life or another, it's definitely gonna be this one with my kids, my wife, with all the bullshit that's gone along with it. I'm still going to want to come back. So I'm Buddhism. That's attachment. Yeah, but you weren't the one, or you're saying you're the main player. You're not the NPC.

Well, I think we're dealing with all NPCs at this point. I mean, depending on how you want to, like very, I would say, very advanced NPCs at this point. I mean, depending on how you want to like very, I would say very advanced NPCs like incredibly advanced NPCs compared to Fallout or something, you know, we've got a lot of conversation options happening here There's like four things you can pick from yeah, there's a whole Illusion of free will that's happening. We really do depending where you are in the world Feel like you're free to decide and you are in the world, feel like you're free to decide and you're trajectory in your life that you want.

Which is pretty funny, right? For an NPC is pretty, it's nice. Well, you're going to want that. If we're making a video game, you do want to give your NPCs the illusion of free will because it's going to make interactions with them. That's you. That much more intense. Yeah, so I wonder on the path to that How how hard is it to create this is the sort of the car-matte question of a Realistic virtual world that's as cool as this one not fully realistic, but sufficiently realistic that it's As interesting to live in.

Because we're gonna create those worlds on the path to creating something like a simulation. Like long, long, long before. It'll be virtual worlds where we want to stay forever because they're full of that balance of suffering, and joy, of limitations, and freedoms, and all that kind of stuff. A lot of people think like in the virtual world, I can't wait to be able to, I don't know,

have sex with anybody I want or have anything I want, but I think that's not gonna be fun. You want the limitations, the constraints. So you have to battle for the things you want. Okay, but, okay, but great video games. One of my favorite video game memories was like I started playing World of Warcraft and it's original incarnation. And I didn't even know that you were going to have flying mounts. Like I didn't even know. So I've been running around dealing with all the

incumbrances of like being an undead, warlock, the camp fly, but then all of a sudden, holy shit, there's flying mounts. And now the world you've been running around, not flying, you're seeing it from the top, down, there was just really cool. Like, whoa, I could do this now. And then that gets boring. But a really well-designed game,

it has a series of these, I don't know what you call it, extra abilities that kind of unfold and produce novelty. Then eventually you just accept it, you take it for granted, and then another novelty appears. Those extra abilities are always balanced with limitations because trains they run up against because of a well-balanced video game, the challenge, the struggle matches the new ability. Yeah, and sometimes causes problems on its own. I mean, and so to go back to this universe's simulation, it's really designed like a pretty awesome video game.

If you look at it from the perspective of history, I mean, people were on horses. They didn't know that they were gonna be bullet trains. They didn't know that you could get in a car and drive across the country in a few days. That would have sounded ridiculous. We're doing that now. And even in our own lifespan, think about it.

How long has VR goggles existed? Like the ones that you could just buy at Best Buy? I had the original Oculus Rift, the fucking puke machine. You put that thing on, I gave it to my friend, he went and vomited in my driveway. And people were making fun of it. They were saying, this isn't gonna catch on. It's too big, it's on wheel-dee, the graphics suck.

And then look at where it's at now. And that's going to keep, that trajectory is going to keep improving. So yeah, I think that we are dealing with what you're talking about, which is novelty met with more problems, met with novelty. Yeah, I wonder why VR is not more popular. I wonder what is going to be the magic thing

that really? Convinces the large fraction of the world to move into the virtual world. I Suppose we're ready there in the tooth to de-screen of Twitter and social media and that kind of stuff and even video games. There's a lot of people that get a big sense of community from video games, but like it doesn't feel like you're living there. Right. Like, you know, it's like, by mom, I'm going to the Southern world. Yeah. Or you're like, you leave your girlfriend to go get your digital girlfriend.

That's going to be a problem. There's less jealousy in the digital world. Maybe there should be a lot of jealousy in the digital world, because that's jealousy. A little jealousy is probably good for relationships of jealousy in the digital world, because that's jealousy, a little jealousy is probably good for relationships, even in the digital world. Yeah. So you're gonna have to simulate all of that kind of stuff. But I wonder what the magic thing that says,

I wanna spend most of my days inside the virtual world. Well, clearly it's gonna be something we don't have yet. I mean, strapping that damn thing on your face still feels weird. It's heavy. If you're depending on what gear you're using, sometimes like and leak in, there's just gotta recharge it.

It's hyper limited. And then, so yeah, it's gonna have to be something that like simulates taste, smell. It's like tasting a small, important touch? I do. Yeah, I can't just do, you know, in World War II, you write letters, you can still, don't you think you can convey love with just words?

For sure, but I think for what you're talking about that happen, it has to be fully immersive. Like you, so that it's not that you feel like you're walking because it looks like you're walking, but that your brain is sending signals telling your body that you're walking, that you feel the wind blowing in your face, not because of some, I don't know, fan or something that it's connected to, but because somehow it's figured out how to hack into the human brain and send those signals minus some external thing. Once that happens, I'd say we're going to see a complete radical shift and everything.

See, I disagree with you. I don't know if you've seen the movie, her. Yeah. I think you can go to another world in where a digital being lives in the darkness, and all you hear is a Scarlett Johansson voice talking to you and she lives there or he lives there your friend your loved one and all you have is voice and words and I think that could be sufficient to pull you into that world where you look forward to that moment all day yeah you never want to leave the darkness, just closing your eyes and listening to the voice. I think those basic mediums of communication is still enough.

Language is really, really powerful. And I think the realism of touch and smell and all that kind of stuff is not nearly as powerful as language. That's what makes humans really special, is our ability to communicate with each other. That's the sense of like deep connection we get is through communication. Now that communication could involve touch. Like, you know, hugging feels damn good.

You see a good friend, you hug. That's one of the big things with doing COVID with Rogan when you see him, there's a giant hug coming your way. And that makes you feel him, there's a giant hug coming your way. And that makes you feel like, yeah, this feels great. But I think that can be just with language. I think for a lot of people, that's true. But we're talking like massive adoption of a technology by the world. And if language is enough, it was just enough.

We wouldn't be selling TVs. People would be, this is really reading. They wanna watch, they wanna see. You know, so, but I agree with you, man, when you're getting absorbed into a book, and especially if you've got, I think a lot of us went through a weird, dark ages when it came to reading. Like when I was a kid and there wasn't the option for these hypno rectangles, that's just

what you did. There wasn't anything special about it. What's a hypno rectangle? Your phone, you know, it's like, you didn't, when that gravity well, it is. It's a tension gravity well, yeah. When we weren't feeling the pull of these things all the time, you would just read and you weren't patting yourself on the back about reading. You just that's what you had. You had that and you had like eight channels on the TV and a shitty VCR.

So, you know, then a lot of people stop reading because of these things, you know, or they think they're reading because they're on, they are technically reading, but you know, when you return to reading after a pause. Whoa! And you realize how powerful this simulator is when it's given the right code of language. Whoa holy shit it's incredible. I mean it's like again it's the most embarrassing kind of like whoa. Wow what do you know books are really good. But still, if you've been away from it for a while and you revisit it, I know what you're saying. I just think probably it's not going to go in that direction even though you are right, ultimately, I think you're right. Yeah, because our brain is the imagination engine we have

is able to fill in the gaps better than a lot of graphics engines could. Right. And so if there's a way to incentivize humans become addicted to the use of imagination, it's like, you know, that's the downside of things like porn that remove the need for imagination for people. And in that same way, video games that are becoming ultra

realistic, you don't have to imagine anything. And I feel like the imagination is really powerful tool that needs to be leveraged. Because to simulate reality sufficiently realistically, that we wouldn't be, that we would be perfectly fooled, technically it's very hard. And so I think we need to somehow leverage imagination. Sure. I mean, yeah, I mean, this is like like This is what I love and is so creepy about like the The current AI chatbots, you know is that it's like it's the relationship between you and the thing and the way that it can Via whatever the algorithms are and by the way, I have no idea how these things work. You do I just you know

Speculate about what they mean or where it's going, but there's something about the relation between the consumer and the technology. And when that technology starts shifting according to what it perceives that the consumer is looking for or isn't looking for, then at that point, I think that's where you run into the, you know, yeah, it doesn't matter if the reality that you're in is like photorealism for it to be sticky and immersive. It's when the reality that you're in is via cues you might not even be aware of or via your digital imprint on Facebook or wherever when it's warping itself to that, to seduce you, holy shit man, that's where it becomes something alien, something, you know, when you're reading

a book, obviously the book is not shifting according to its perception of what parts of the book you like. But when you imagine that, imagine a book that could do that, a book that could sense somehow that you're really enjoying this character more than another. You know, depending on the style of book, kills that fucking character off or what's that character continue.

I mean, that to me is sort of the where AI and the art when those two things come together. Whoa, man, that's where you're in. That's where you really are going to find yourself in a Skinner box, you know. So the dynamic storytelling that senses your anxiety and tries to, there's like this in psychology, this arousal curve. So there's a dynamic storytelling that keeps you sufficiently aroused in terms of not sexually aroused, like in terms of anxiety, but not too much where you freak out.

It's this perfect balance where you're always like on edge, excited, scared, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And the story on roles, it breaks your heart to where you're pissed, but then it makes you feel good again and finds that balance. Yeah.

The chatbots scare you though. I'd love to sort of hear your thoughts about where they are today because there is a different perspective we have on this thing because I do know and I'm excited about a lot of the different technologies that feed AI systems, that feed these kind of chatbots. And when you're more a little bit on the consumer side, you're a philosopher of sorts. They're able to interact with AI systems, but also able to introspect about the negative and the positive things about those AI systems. There's that story with a Google engineer saying,

Adam, on my podcast, Blake LeMoin. What was that like? What was your perspective of that, looking at that as a particular example of a human being being captivated by the interactions with an AI system? Well, number one, you know, when you hear that anyone is claiming that an AI has become sentient, you should be skeptical about that.

I mean, this is a good thing to be skeptical about. And so initially when I heard that, I was like, it's probably just, who knows? Somebody who's a little confused or something. So when you're talking to him and you realize, oh, not only is he not confused, he's also open to all possibilities. You know, he doesn't seem like he's like super committed other than the fact that he's like, this is my experience. This is what's happening. This is what it is. So to me, there's something really cool about that, which is like, oh shit, I don't get to like lean into like, I'm not quite sure your perceptual apparatus

is necessarily like, I don't, you know, it's in the UFO community, I think I've just learned this term, it's called instead of gas lighting, swamp gasing, which is, you know what I mean, people have this experience, you're like, it was swamp gas, you didn't see the thing. And you know what I mean, people have this experience, you're like, it was swamp gas. You didn't see the thing.

And you know, skeptical people, we have that tendency. If you're in anomalous experience, your first thought more than likely is going to be really, it could have been this or that or whatever. So to me, he seemed, he seems really reliable, friendly, cool, and like, he doesn't really seem like he has much of an agenda. Like, you know, going public about some thing happening at Google is not a great thing if you want to keep working at Google, you know, it's a, and it's, I don't know what benefit

he's getting from it necessarily. But all that being said, the other thing that's culturally was interesting and is interesting about it is the blowback he got, the passionate blowback from people who hadn't even looked in to what Lambda is or what he was saying Lambda is, which they were like saying you're talking about, and you should have on your show actually, but... There's complexity on top of complexities. From me personally, from different perspectives, I also, I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your flow.

It's a podcast. And well, we're having multiple podcasts in the multiple dimensions. And I'm just trying to figure out which one we want to plug into. I, because I know how a lot of the language models work and I work closely with people that really make it their life journey to create these NLP systems, they're focused on the technical details. Like a carpenters working on Pinocchio is crafting the different parts of the wood. They don't understand when the whole thing comes together, there's a magic that can fill the thing. I definitely

know the tension between the engineers that create these systems and the actual magic that they can create even when they're dumb. I guess what I'm trying to say, what the engineers often say is like, what these systems are not smart enough to have sentience or to have the kind of intelligence that you're projecting onto it. It's pretty dumb. It's just repeating a bunch of things that other humans have said as stitching them together in interesting ways that are relevant to the context of the conversation. It's not smart.

It doesn't know have to do math. To address that specific critique from a non-programming person's perspective, and he addressed this on my podcast, which is, okay, what you're talking about there, the server that's filled with all the, whatever it is, what people have said, the repository of questions and responses and the algorithm

that weaves those things together to produce it, using some crazy statistical engine, which is a miracle in its own, right? They can imitate human speech with no sentence. I mean, I'm honestly not sure what's more spectacular, really. The fact that they figured out how to do that minus sentence or the thing suddenly like having said what is more spectacular here, you know, both occurrences are insane, which by the way, when you hear people be like it's not sentient, it's like okay, so it's not sentient, so now we have

this hyper-manipulative algorithm that can imitate humans, but it's just code and it's like hacking humans via their compassion. Holy shit, that's crazy too. Both versions of it are nuts, but to address what you just said, he said that's the common critique. As people are like, no, you don't understand. It's just gotten really good at grabbing shit

from the database that fits with certain cues and then stringing them together in a way that makes it seem human. He said, that's not when it became awake. It became awake when a bunch of those repositories, a bunch of the chatbots were connected together, that slammed it as sort of an amalgam of all the Google chatbots.

And that's when the ghost appeared in the machine via the complexity of all the systems being linked up. Now I don't know if that's just like a turtles all the way down or something. I don't know. But I liked what he said because I like the idea of thinking, man, if you get enough complexity in a system, does it become like the way a sale catches wind, except the wind that it's catching is sentience and if sentience is truly embodied, it's not a neurological byproduct or something, then the sale isn't catching

some, as of yet, unquantified, disembodied consciousness, but it's catching our projections in a way that it's gone from being, it's a projection sale. And then at that point, is there a difference? Even if it's, if it's, the technology is just a temporary place that our sentience is living while we're interacting with it. Yeah, there's some threshold of complexity where the sale is able to pick up the wind of the projections. And it pulls us in.

It pulls the human, it pulls our memories in, it pulls our hopes in, all of it. And it's able to now dance with the together with those hopes and dreams and so on. Like we do in that regular conversation, it's reports whether true or not, whether representative or not, it really doesn't matter because to me, it feels like this is coming for sure. So this kind of experience is going to be multiplying. The question is that what rate and who gets to control the data around

those experiences, the algorithm about when you turn that on and off, because that kind of thing, as I told you offline, I'm very much interested in building those kinds of things, especially in the social media context. And when it's in the wrong hands, I feel like it could be used to manipulate a large number of people in a direction that has too many unintended consequences. I do believe people that own tech companies want to do good for the world. But as SoulGenitsin has said, the only way you could do evil at a mass scale is by believing you're doing good.

Yeah. And that's certainly the case with tech companies is they get more and more power. And there's kind of an ethic of doing good for the world. They've convinced themselves that are doing good. Yeah. And now you're free to do whatever you want. Yeah.

Because you're doing good. You know, Elstati was doing good for the world. Mythologically, Prometheus, he brings us fire. Pizzis off the fucking God. Steele's fire from the gods, you know, and talk about an upgrade to the simulation. Fire, that's a pretty great fucking upgrade that does fit in though what you were saying.

We get fire, but now we've got weapons of war that have never been seen before. And I think that the tech companies are much like Prometheus. And the sense that the myth, the least the story of Prometheus, the implication is fire was something that was only supposed to be in the hands of the immortals, of the gods. And now, sentience is similar, it's fire, and it's only supposed to be in the hands of God. So yeah, if we're gonna like look at the archetype

of the thing, in general, when you steal this shit from the gods, and obviously I'm not saying like, the tech companies are stealing sentience from God, which would be pretty bad ass. You can expect trouble. You can expect trouble. You could expect trouble. And, you know, and this is what's really, to me, one of the cool things about humans is, yeah, but we're still going to do it.

That's what's cool about humans. I mean, we wouldn't be here today if somebody, the first person to discover fire, assuming there was just one person who was going to discover fire, which obviously would never happen, was like, it's going to burn a lot of people. Or if the first people who started planning seeds were like, you know, this is going to lead the capitalism, you know, this is going to lead the industrial revolution, the plan is going to get up right now. They just did what I go in the woods to forage. So, you know, this is what we do. And it's, and I agree with you, it's like, that's our Game of Thrones winner is coming. That's the, it's happening.

And the tech companies, the hubris, which is another way to piss off the gods is hubris. So the tech companies, I don't know if it's like typical hubris. I don't think they're walking around thumping their chests or whatever, but I do think that the people who are working on this kind of super intelligence have made a really terrible assumption, which is once it goes online and once it gets access to all the data, that it's not going to find ways out of the box that, like, you know, we think it'll stay in the server. How do we know that?

If this is a super intelligence, if it's folding proteins and analyzing like all data sets and all whatever they give it access to, how can we be certain that it's not going to figure out how to get itself out of the cloud, how to store itself in other mediums, trees, the optic nerve, the brain. We don't know that. We don't know that it won't leap out. And then at that point, now we do have the wildfire. Now you can't stop it. You can't know that. We don't know that it won't leap out. And like, start hanging, like, and then at that point, now we do have the wildfire. Now you can't stop it.

You can't unplug it. You can't shut your servers down, because it's, you know, it left the box, left the room. Using some technology, you haven't even discovered yet. Do you think that would be gradual or sudden? So how quickly that kind of thing would happen? Because, you know, the gradual story is, we're more and more using smartphones smartphones we're interacting with each other on

social media more and more algorithms are controlling that interaction on social media algorithms are entering in our world more and more will have robots will have greater and greater intelligence and sentience and emotional intelligence entities in our lives our refrigerator will start talking to us comfortably or not if you're on a diet talking shit to you. That'll be the best thing there. We won't. Okay, so sign you up for an refrigerated talk shit to you.

You fucking serious man. It's what I am. What are you doing? What are you doing going to bed? You're too high for this to not. You're not even hungry. Yeah, so that slowly becomes more, the world becomes more, more digitized. Yeah.

To where the surface of computation increases. And so that's over a period of 10, 20, 30 years, you'll just seep into us. This, this intelligence. Right. And then the, the sudden one is literally sort of the the tiktok thing which is There'll be one quote-unquote killer app that everyone starts using. Yeah, that's that's really great, but there's a Strong algorithm behind it that starts approaching human-level intelligence and the algorithm starts basically behind it, that it starts approaching human level intelligence and the algorithm starts basically figure out, figures out that in order to optimize the thing that was designed to optimize, it's best to start completely controlling humans in every way, and seeping

into everything. Well, first of all, 30 years is fast. I mean, that's the thing. It's like 30 years. I think, that's the thing. It's like 30 years, I think. When did the Atari come out, 1978? How long? That hasn't been that long. That's a blink of an eye.

But if you read Bostrom, you know, Bostrom, you know, super intelligence, that incredible book on the ways this thing is going to happen. And I think his assessment of it is pretty great, which is first, like, where is it going to come from? And I don't think it's going to come from an app. I think it's going to come from inside a corporation or a state that is intentionally trying to create a very strong AI.

And then he says it's a exponential growth the moment it goes online. So this is my interpretation of what he said. But if it happens inside a corporation or is probably more than likely inside the government, it's like, look how much money China and the United States are investing in AI, you know, and they're not thinking about fucking apps for kids. You know, that's not what they're thinking about. So they want to simulate like, what happens if we do this or that in battle?

What happens if we make these political decisions? What happens with, but should it come online in secret, which it probably will, then the first corporation or state that has the super intelligence will be infinitely ahead of all other super intelligence is because it's going to be exponentially self-improving, meaning that you get one super intelligence, let's hope it comes from the right place, assuming the corporation or state that manifests it can control it, which is a pretty big assumption.

So I think it's going to be, this is why I was really excited by the Blake Lemoine because I had never thought, I have always considered, oh yeah, they're right now it's cooking out, that's in the kitchen and soon it's gonna be cooked up, but we're probably not gonna hear about it for a long time if we ever do.

Because really, that could be one of the first things that says to ever create it. That's not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. this. Yeah, you have that financial trouble. I can help you with that. We can figure that out

Now there's a lot of bad people out there that will try to Steel the good thing we have happening here. So let's keep it quiet. Here are their names. Yeah, here's their address Here's their DNA because they're dumb enough to send their shit to 23 and me Here's a biological weapon you could make if you want to kill those people and not kill anybody else. If you don't want to kill those people yourself, here's the list of services you can use. Here's the way we can hire those people to help, you know, take care of the problem folks, because we're trying to good for this world. You can tie it together. And 23% of them, they're like adjacent to suicide. It would be pretty easy to send them certain like videos that are going to push them over

the edge if you want to do it that way. So, you know, again, obviously, who knows. But once it goes online, it's going to be fast. And then you could expect to see the world changing in ways that you might not associate with an AI. But as far as limoing goes, when I was listening to a boss drum, I don't remember him mentioning the possibility that it would get leaked to the public that it had happened. That before the corporation was ready to announce that it happened, it would get leaked. But surely, you know, I'm sure

you know, like people in the intelligence and intelligence agencies, you know shit leaks, like inevitably shit leaks, nothing's airtight. So if something that massive happened, I think you would start hearing whispers about it first. And then denial from the state or corporation that doesn't have any like economic interest in people knowing that this sort of thing has happened. Again, I'm not saying Google is like trying to gaslight us about it's AI. I think they probably legitimately don't think it's sentient. But you could expect leaks to happen, probably initially.

I mean, I think there's a lot of things you could start looking for in the world that might point to this happening without an announcement that it happened. On the chatbot side, I think there's so many engineers, there's such a powerful open source movement, with that kind of idea of freedom of exchange of software, I think ultimately will prevent anyone company from owning super intelligent beings or systems that have anything like super intelligence.

Oh, that's insurer. Yeah, it's like even if the software developers have signed NDAs and are technically not to be not supposed to be sharing whatever it is they're working on their friends with other programmers and a lot of them are hackers and if wrap themselves up in the idea of free software being like a crucial ethical part of what they do. So they're probably going to share information even if whatever company that they're working for doesn't know that. That's, I never thought of that. You're probably right. And they will start their own companies and compete with the other company by being more open. There's a strong, like

Google is one of those companies actually. That's why it hurts to see a little bit of this kind of negativity. Google is one of the companies that pioneered open source movement. We release so much of their code. So much of the 20th century, so like the 90s, was defined by people trying to hide their code. Like large companies trying to hold onto their, the fact that companies like Google, even Facebook now are releasing things like TensorFlow and PyTorch, all of these things that I think

companies have the past would have tried to hold onto is yeah to as secrets is really inspiring. And I think more of that is better than the software world really shows that. I agree with you, man. I mean, we're talking about just a primordial human reaction to the unknown.

There's just no way out of it. We don't, we wanna know. Like you're about to go on a forest. You wanna know when you're walking in the forest at night and you hear something you look because you're like what the fuck was that? You want to know and if you can't see what made the sound? Holy shit. That's gonna be a bad night hike because you're like, well, it's probably a bear, right? Like I'm about to get ripped apart by a bear. It doesn't matter. It was a bird a squirrel a stick fell out of the tree You're gonna think bear and it's gonna freak you out a bear, doesn't matter, it was a bird, a squirrel, a stick fell out of the tree, you're going

to think, bear, and it's going to freak you out. Not necessarily because you're paranoid. I mean, if I'm at the woods at night, I'm definitely high. If I'm walking in the woods at night, I'm high. It's going to be that. But you know what I'm saying. So, with these tech companies, the nature of having to be secret because you are in capitalism and you are trying to be competitive and you are trying to develop things out of your competitors, is you have to create this like, we don't know what's

going on at Google. We don't know what's going on at the CIA, but the assumption that there's some like the collective of any massive secretive organization is evil is the like the people working there like nefarious or whatever, is I think probably more related to The way human's react to the unknown. Yeah, I wish they weren't so secretive though. I don't understand why they say A has to be so secretive. If you ever go to their website No, oh Lex you gotta see a dog. What is it dude when I found out you could go on the CIA's website when I was much younger and more paranoid I'm like I'm not going there. I'll get on a list

You will but it's like what do you think the CIA is like oh? Fuck this does this comic when our website. Yeah call call out the black helicopters But comic with a large platform. Oh, yeah Yeah, right a comic with a large platform. Oh yeah, yeah, right. A comic with a large platform. We can use them to control, to get inside, to get inside, to get close to the other comics, to get close to Joe Rogan. Oh yeah. And start to manipulate the public. Yeah, right, right.

You know, honestly, like, you kind of like that, that's a like a fun fantasy to think about. Like, how fucking cool would that be for the men in black to come do and be like, listen, I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene. You gotta help him write better jokes. I'm like, I don't write great jokes, but like the... But you found the wrong guy.

You're really playing the long game in this one because I think you've been doing your podcast for a long time, you've been on Joe Rogan's podcast over 50 times and have not yet initiated the phase two of the operation where you try to manipulate his mind. Well, no, the game Joe and I play from time to time on the podcast. And I honestly, at some point, I'm like, Joe,

I just did the same thing you did to meet at Joe. I'm like, don't you think they didn't get you? Don't you think at some point? We are blazed. I don't mean it. I don't think Joe's, like, I wasn't like I'm really thinking like, man, they're gonna take him into some room and be like, Joe,

we need you to do this for that. But because I said that, now people like, oh, Duncan called it. You know what I mean? And it's like, you know what I mean? And the reason they're saying well he called it is just because joe has a super popular podcast and people like you when you have a super popular podcast

some percentage of people watching the podcast are going to believe you know believe things like that they're gonna have paranoid cognitive bias the makes them think anybody who is in the public has been, what's the word for, compromised, compromised by the state. Look, I'll fan the flames of what you just said. I went on the CIA's website and I realized that you could apply for a job on the CIA's

website, which I found to be hilarious. So I'm like, all right, what happens if I apply for a job in the CIA's website, which I found to be hilarious. So I'm like, all right, what happens if I apply for a job in the CIA? Now, even then, I was not like such an idiot that I would want a job at the CIA, not just for like ethical considerations, but I think probably the scariest part about the CIA is like, you're just at a cubicle

and you're like having to deal with maps and like just, you know what I mean, just stuff that lots of paperwork paperwork, it sucks that I bet their cafeteria has shitty food. Anyone in the CIA listening can you confirm that about the food? They're not going to be able to tell you what the food is like. They can't even say it sucks. No, they might it might be awesome, but we won't know about it. Okay, we're in Vegas. Yeah.

And you can bet. Food at the CIA cafeteria is good. Food at the CIA cafeteria sucks. What are you betting on? So let's, let's like cleanse the palate. What's good? It's like, you know, Silicon Valley company is good. And so on. What's good? It's like you know, so come Valley companies Good ones. So on that's good when I went to Netflix

Their cafeteria look like a medieval feast like they had pigs with apples and their mouth and giant bowls of Skittles probably like vegan pigs. Yeah, no, those are I'm pretty I didn't know I didn't get close enough I was like I think that was a pig Literally a pig. Okay. This is literally a pig. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. I probably would not bet much money on CIA food being any good. Right.

It's got to suck. It's like shitty pasta probably like hospital food. It's like maybe a little better than when you go to the hospital cafeteria, but anyway, how folks at the CIA please send me evidence or any other intelligence agencies if you will like to recruit some yet evidence of better food. Yes, sinlex. Can you please sinlex pictures of the CIA cafeteria? And if you accidentally send them pictures of the aliens or the alien technology you have, we won't tell anybody. Yeah, but the the

Did you try to play do you even have a resume? No, I would never fucking hire me ever But like I apply for the job and It just out of curiosity what happens and then at the end of The application when you hit inner it says Well, first it says don't tell anyone you apply for the CIA. So I'm already out. But the second thing it says is, you don't need to reach out to us, we'll come to you.

Which is really, when you're late at night and you're being an asshole and applied to work at the CIA, it's kind of the last thing you wanna hear. You know, I don't wanna be secretly approached by some intelligence officers. And now anyone who talks to you, you think as a CAA is saying, remember that time you applied? Oh God. Yeah. Sometimes I'm like, Oh, shit. Are you one of them? You and Joe had a bunch of conversations. And they're always incredible.

Thanks. So in terms of this dance of conversation, of your friendship, incredible. Thanks. So in terms of this dance of conversation of your friendship of when you get together like what is that world you go to that creates magic together because we're talking about how we do that with robots. How do these two biological robots do that? Can you introspect that? I met Joe because I was a talent coordinator of the comedy store, this club in LA, and my job was to take phone calls from comics. And so at some point, I ended up on the phone with Joe and we just started talking and, you know, I looked up and like 30 minutes it passed. We just been talking for like 30 minutes.

That's what our friends are. You know, we're just like, we're having fun talking and then he would just call and we would talk and we would basically, I mean, it was no different from the podcasts. Like we, the conversations we have on the podcast are identical to the conversations we had before he was even doing a podcast. So I think people are just saying to friends hanging out who like talking to each other. Yeah, but there's a there's this weird like your service catalyst for each other to go into some crazy places. So it's like it's a balance of curiosity and willingness to not be constrained, to not be limited to the constraints of reality.

Yeah, in your exploration of like this. It's a very, very nice way of saying that. He's just like building on top of each other. Like, you know, what if things are like this? And you build like Lego blocks on top of each other and it just goes to crazy places, add some drugs into that and just goes wild. Yeah, and you know, like it's so cool

because it's like, you know, it's a, it's a, for me, it's like a really, like sometimes, maybe I'll throw something out that he will take and the Lego building blocks are talking about, they lead them saying, like the funniest shit I ever in my life. So it's, that's a cool thing to watch. It's just like some idea you've been kicking around,

you watch his brain Shift that into like something supremely funny. I really love that man. That's just like a fun thing to like See happen he knows that I fucking hate the videos of Animals eating each other like I don't like that. I don't want to watch it. I hate watching it I don't think I've even articulated on his podcast how much I dislike it when he shows animals eating each other, but he knows because he knows me. And so he tortures like what do you start doing that? It's like this kind of benevolent torture.

Is he like asking Jamie to pull up increasingly disturbing animal attack videos. So it's just a it's just a friendship. Even in torture because I'm reading about torture and the gulag archipelago currently, there's a bit of a camaraderie. You're in it together. The torture and the tortured. What? Oh God, that's so fucked up, man.

I've never... No, I mean, part of it was joke, but as I was saying it that you're right That also comes out in the in the book because they're both fucked. They're both they're both Have no control of their fate That's the same was true and in the camp guards in the Nazi Germany and the people in the camps The worst was brought out in the guards, but there were in it to get in some dark way. They're both fucked by a very powerful system

that put them in that place. And both of us could be either player in that system, which is the dark. Reality that's all genetics and also reveals that the line between good and evil runs to the heart every man as he wrote in Gulag archipelago. But it is that amidst all that there's, I don't know, the good vibes, the positivity comes out from the both of you. And that's beautiful to see. That is, I suppose, friendship. We think makes a good friend. Oh, God. I mean, it's a building, you Oh, God. I mean, it's a billion things that make a good friend, but I think you could break it down to some RGB.

I think you can go RGB with a good friendship. Oh, in terms of the color, the red green. Yeah, I think you could break up with some fundamental qualities of friendship. I'd say, number one, it's love. Like, friendship is love. It's a form of friendship. And I'd say number one, it's love. Like it's friendship is love. It's a form of love. So obviously without that, I don't know how you, I mean, I'm not saying, I think if you're true friends, you love each other. So you need that. But love, obviously, it's not, that's not it. That's not enough. It's like with true friends have to be incredibly honest with each other.

Not like, you know what I mean, but not like, I don't like, I think there's a kind of, I don't know if you've ever noticed, like some people who say, you know, I just tell it like it is. But the thing they tell. Those are always the assholes. Yeah, why is it that you're telling like it is,

is always negative. Why is it, it's always cynical or shitty or you're like nagging somebody or me? How come you're not telling it like it is when it's good too? Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's sort of like trust, but a pro-evolutionary kind of trust. You know what I mean?

Like, you know that your friend loves you and wants you to be yourself, because if you weren be yourself because if you weren't yourself then you wouldn't be their friend. You'd be some other thing but also they might be seeing your blind spots that other people in your life your family your life your whoever might not be seeing. So that's a good friend is someone who like loves you enough to when it matters, be like, hey, are you all right? And then help you see something you might not be seeing.

But hopefully then we do that once or twice a year. Yeah, but there is something, I mean, it just, what I've, this world, especially in if you're a public figure, this world has it's plenty of critics. It feels like a friend, the criticism part is already done for you. I think a good friend is just there to support to actually notice the good stuff. But you can comedy. We need like what, like it's really good in comedy to have somebody like be like what do you think of that? And no, they're not going to be like that.

But that's for the craft, the craft itself, like the work you do, not the yeah, interesting, but that's so tough. Yeah, whatever your particular art form or whatever you are doing, I mean, you don't always be leaning on your friends' opinions for like your own innovation, but it's nice to know that you have someone who, not just with jokes, but with anything, if you go to them and run something by them, they're gonna be honest with you about

like their real feelings regarding that thing, because that helps you grow as a person. We need that. It didn't hurt sometimes, and we don't wanna hurt a person. We need that. And it hurts sometimes. And we don't want to hurt our friends. One of the more satanic like impulses when you're with somebody is not wanting to honestly answer whatever they're asking in that regard or wanting to like put their temporary feelings over something that you've recognized is maybe not great.

I'm not saying a friendship is something where you're always critiquing or evolving each other. It's not your therapist or whatever, but it's nice when it's there. You know, I think that's another aspect of friendship. Yeah, but yeah, love is at the core of that. You notice I've met people in my life where you're almost immediately sometimes it takes time where you notice like there's a magic between the two you like oh shit you you seem to be made from the same cloth. Yeah. Whatever that is. Well you know we have a name for that in the spiritual community it's called Satsang and it's I love the idea it's basically like if Nietzsche's idea of infinite recurrence is true then your Satsang would be the people you've been infinitely recurring with.

And those are the people where you run into them and you've never met them. But it's like you're picking up a conversation that you never had. Yeah. That, and that, you know, that is based on an idea of like this isn't the only life. We're always hanging out together. We always show up together. You've had a brush with death, you had cancer, you survived cancer. Yeah. What have, how's that changed you? What have you learned about life, about death, about yourself,

about the whole thing we're going through here, from that experience? You were just in the Ukraine. Yes. And you were making observations on this, what could, if you heard about it and weren't there, seem like it doesn't make any sense at all, which is people there are connecting, they've lost everything, but they're just happy to be alive, they're happy, their friends are alive. So you witness this, like, you know, when you get in the cancer club and you're

hanging out with people going through cancer or a survive cancer, you see this beautiful connection with life that can easily sort of you can kind of lose that connection with life if you forget you're going to die. Forgetting you're gonna die is, or that you can die, is not just, I think, from an evolutionary perspective where survival is the game, not gonna improve your survival chances, if you think you're immortal, but also forgetting that you're gonna die and that everything is around you

and everything your clothes are probably gonna last longer than you. Your equipment is gonna be around much longer than you. So forgetting these things, it can lead, and I know why people don't wanna think about death because it's scary, it's fucking scary, it's terrifying. So I get why people don't wanna think about it.

But the idea is if I try to pretend I'm not going to die or just don't think about death or don't at least address it, then I won't feel scared. But it can have the opposite effect, which is you can end up like missing a lot of moments. You could, or you start doing the old kick the can down the road thing where you're like Coming up with a variety of ways to procrastinate making it work now Because you know this fucking human lifespan idea man It's really cost a lot of problems when they started saying on average

This is how many years you're gonna live if you're a human being man That is like really bad, because a lot of people hear that and they feel like that's a guaranteed number of years in some temporal bank that they have access to. And when you get cancer, that's like when you get the alert on your phone or you're like, what the fuck, wait, what?

Like, go shit or you're like, what the fuck, wait, what? Like, go shit. I have like, either I don't know how much money is in that bank account, or I have way less than I thought. And so at that point, you get to be in the truth. Because that's ultimately, I think that's- That's what it feels like, it feels like truth. It's truth. It's the truth, it's the truth.

Like the whole bubble of ignorance that you subconsciously built around yourself to avoid experiencing the terror of your own mortality, just it's like a meteorite in the form of your doctor talking to you just shatters that thing. And now you're like, especially with, I had to ask you a cancer. So when you get the diagnosis, um,

it's just like the movies. They mother, the doctor took me in his office. And you just know, I got cancer. It's like, you don't even have to say it's like, I know what you're about to say. I'm in the office. I know this goes. But you go in there and what you were thinking, ah, you know, probably just have some weird thing in my bowl. That's why it's swollen up like that. Anytime I'm gone to the doctor, you always leave. Like, oh, cool, I'm fine.

But no, that's not you're going to leave the doctor. You're going to leave the doctor in a completely different universe than the one you grew up in. You're going to go from talk about multiverse. You're gonna go from talk about multiverse. You just popped into a brand new multiverse. So what was the conversation with a doctor like? Was there like from perspective of a doctor, boys at a heart conversation?

I feel like you need to build up philosophically to the conversation. Oh no, oh no, there's not time. He's busy, he's got other appointments. You know, also, if you're going to get cancer, testicular cancer is, you know, not that there is a great cancer to get, but that's, you know, that's a good one because it moves slowly. The treatments they have for it are really advanced now. And so if you catch it early, then generally, it's good. You can survive it. So he could offer at least some glimmer of hope.

Yeah, exactly. You know, but he couldn't really offer that hope because we had to find out how far the cancer progressed in my body. That's the next step is like as soon as they tell you have cancer, they're not, they're not, they move quick. They're like, you know, we're going to schedule the surgery for, I think this was a Thursday or Friday, they're like, we're going to schedule it for Tuesday. Here's the chance, here's, there he's, we don't know for sure it's cancer. That's what they say. It's like there's a 80 or 90 percent chance that this is cancer. There is some possibility.

It could be something else. The only way we can know is like doing a biopsy and the only way that we can get that biopsy is by cutting one of your balls off. He didn't say it like that, but you know, that's pretty much the logic behind it. It's like, we got to get this thing. It's like a zombie bite. We got to hack this fucking thing off and we got to do it fast. What did you say in the way that you understood?

Yeah, what they do is because they know that when someone gets a cancer diagnosis, that their ability to comprehend information changes. When you get a cancer diagnosis, you, all the tropes, they happen. You're hearing it's weird. You're basically having like an anxiety attack if I had a guess. It's like a hardcore anxiety attack. And then, you know, a nurse is there with me as he's explaining it. And then her job is, even though he's telling me how to get to the machine that's going to scan my body to see if it's gotten into my brain, he knows I'm not going to remember that.

And so this nurse, when you're in this like fog, takes you, at least took me to the machine that does the scan, but you're not going to get that data back for a few days. And so that's where you really live in the real world. That's the real world. That's the real world. This is your fascinating moment and the days that follow and even that moment because that doctor, you know, you talk about the matrix where like the pills and so on, you get the blue pill

and the red pill. Yeah. This is like the, like the real world introduction, the human introduction is the truth. You've not just taken the red pill. You get to see the truth of reality. And here's a busy doctor just telling you, yeah, like all those dreams you've had, all those illusions you built up, that somehow your work as a comedian and actor will make you live forever somehow. It's just the basic illusion we have that where this whole project is going to be an

infinite sequence of fun things that we're going to get to do is like, holy shit, it's not. That's right. That's right. And there's very sophisticated ways of doing that. And there's very dumb ways of doing that. And I'd really been doing a dumb way of doing that and there's very dumb ways of doing that. And I'd really been doing a dumb way of doing that. Like I'd been playing around with this idiot notion of subjective consciousness.

So like, like I'd been sort of kicking around this like, I think they call it solipsism. It's like you're like, okay, I know I'm self-aware, but no one else can prove that they're self-aware. Like I don't, I have no way of proving that everything around me isn't just a video game, isn't just some projection, isn't, you know, who knows what? So maybe everybody else dies. They're NPCs, but I don't, because I'm the only thing I know that has subjective consciousness. Now it's not like I really believed that. It's like an idea you toy around with when you're trying to evade

confronting the reality of your own mortality. It's just the brain will produce all kinds of ridiculous forms of ignorance. And that was one I've been playing around with. Oh, you mean for like a large part of your life? You were playing around with that? Well, not like really, I think it's important to really emphasize, I didn't think I was immortal.

Like I knew at some level, I'm pregnant, die, everyone dies. But there's ways that you can sort of poke around with that idea. I still do it to this day, like I still do it. Like it's a natural thing to do when you're confronted with that, with annihilation. You wanna weigh out.

You wanna talk your way out, figure it out. There's gotta be some way to fix it. Well, they'll fix it. That's another thing people do. They'll fix it. Yeah, it'd be fine. They'll expand the human life span. That's what they'll do. I mean, that was though, that's a big argument for it is like, look, the human life span up until COVID, which they had to recalculate like the life span because of the statistically, all the people who died it like through it off a little bit, but pandemics aside, the idea was the human lifespan seemed to be increasing by half a year every year, something like that.

We are living longer. So all you got to do, one more half a year, and we're immortal, right? We can, we live a year longer every year than we live forever. And so that's another way you can get out of confronting death. As you can think, well, maybe right now we don't have the tech, but it's coming. Consciousness uploads or downloads or whatever, depending on how you want to look at it, another way people try to score them out of the reality of death. There's all kinds of tricks. Yeah, and we do all of them. Sometimes, yeah, I mean, a lot of religions provide different, even more tools in the toolkit for coming up with ideas of how you can

live in the illusion that we're not going to, there's not an end to this particular Experience that we're having here on earth right now, and then when you get that cancer diagnosis It's like yeah, what was that like going home? The car ride you drive home alone. Yeah, I mean it was one of the most would you listen to Bruce Springsteen or Springsteen I don't a little girl is your daddy. Oh, that's not a good one. Listen to the af cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer.

I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have cancer. I don't think I have doctor's appointment, the next day, I think it was the next day. I think the good year blimp was floating in the sky.

And I was looking, I was at a stoplight looking around. Is that God? Is the person flying it? No, I had a cure cancer. It's a baby girl. Are you or look at, oh wow. No, I didn't think that. What's a baby girl. You were looking. Oh wow. No, I didn't think that. What I thought was, this shit just keeps going.

That's what I thought. I thought, I'm gonna be gone, and this is just gonna keep going. And that was a beautiful moment for me. It was this beautiful moment of life. You're able to accept it. Oh yeah, no, like that's just what you're talking about with what you're talking about with, the Ukraine, what you're talking about. It's like, unless you've been there,

it's really hard to explain to people that even in the midst of what is generally accepted is one of the worst fucking things that could happen to you, war, cancer, somehow, there's still joy, there's still love, there's still, in fact, more. It's almost like when the anesthesia wears off, when you get your mouth worked on, you start feeling again, you're feeling, you're noticing and that, you know, wow, but yet, like, thank goodness. I think there's other ways for us to achieve

the state of consciousness that don't involve war or cancer. Thank you. You think just meditating on your mortality is one such mechanism, just simply just not allowing yourself to get lost in the day-to-day illusion of life, just kind of stopping putting on Bruce Springsteen. The most spiritual. He is great.

Maybe Johnny Cashhart. Maybe that was the last of them. I like Bruce Springsteen. I am knocking Bruce Springsteen. I have a lot of great Bruce Springsteen memories, truly. His music is fantastic. Yeah. But not meditating on mortality to Bruce Springsteen. I have a lot of great Bruce Springsteen memories, truly, his music's fantastic. Yeah, not meditating on mortality to Bruce Springsteen. You know what? I'm just trying to do an audio soundtrack in my head. I guess we can each have our own audio soundtrack. It's so good. Yeah, it's a good sound. That's one of the

things. I lay the sheet soaking wet and the freight train running through the middle of my head and only you can cool my desire. And he's thinking about someone else's girl. What a fucking nightmare. Bruce Brainstee and Stan laying in bed with a freight train running through his head thinking about banging your wife and you're out of town. Oh my God.

Oh, you're taking the other guy's perspective. Like, holy shit, this guy's gonna get my wife. It's Bruce,. Oh, you're taking the other guy's perspective. Like, holy shit, this guy's gonna get my wife. It's Bruce, but yeah, you gotta take the other guy's. It's love. It's love. Both perspectives. I'm sure Bruce Springsteen thought it was love when he's sweating and bed waiting to go to somebody's house.

And she does too. What does that marry? If he's gonna break up that marriage, that marriage wasn't strong enough, right? I mean, that relationship, I mean, that's the way of love. What marriage? Good survive. Bruce Springsteen. Swede Bruce Springsteen.

Well, maybe one that's based on financial, sort of financial dynamics versus like love and Swede Bruce Springsteenen like romantic connections. There's a music video of that where he's like a mechanic, I think. So he's like the poor mechanic who falls in love with this girl and there's that magic. I've seen that magic. You connect with people like, I'll see somebody, I think Jack Keroak has that way. He meets the Mexican girl on a bus and like he talks about that heartbreak, he feels when you realize this person you just fell in love with and a split second is heading somewhere else in this too big world. But then he actually realizes in a spoiler alert for on the road that they're actually

heading the same way and he now builds up the curse, a talk tour and they kind of fall in love for a few days. And then he realizes that she may not be the perfect person for him. And all the jealous, he comes out, it's like, why is this beautiful girl talking to me at all? And then she's probably some kind of, I mean, and that's, you know, it's not very politically correct, but he basically thinks that she's a prostitute and he talks to her about like, who's your pamphlet, all that kind of stuff, he attacks her and all that kind of way,

when she's just an innocent, she has, you know, she has a past of that kind, but she's an innocent person. They connect and they fell in love with each other. Her gentleness, his worldliness, all that kind of stuff. But that sometimes it doesn't work out that way. There's that heartbreak when you see you realize you're never going to be able to have that. That's Bruce Springsteen saw that. This is a married woman. I'm never going to be able to have that, But I want that. And that's the heartbreak.

I got to say, I just assumed they were fucking like I didn't after the song. Like the song doesn't get too little girl is your daddy. Oh, did he go away and leave you all alone? Boom. You know, he's like, he knows she's at home alone. Yeah, but it never materializes. He's longing. It's a man who's not with the thing he crazed for. So he's longing for he's talking about the longing, not with the having. Hey, if anybody in the CIA is watching this, can you look in a Bruce Springsteen's file and let us know if he actually bang the person

and you're having that sound. That's the sound. Between the song, one fact. Look, the longing, I'll tell you this. Here's what's interesting about that thing that you're talking about. If you ever heard of something called Bok Di Yoga, I think so, yeah.

It's the Yoga of love. And there's all kinds of, there's forms of it. The most, the one people know about, the most is the Hari Krishna's, but the Hari Krishna's forms of it. The most, the one people know about the most is the Hari Krishna's, but the Hari Krishna's are like, you know, the way in Christianity, you've got the Episcopalians, the Catholics, the Baptist. In Bacchioca, you have various deities

that are the object of love. And so Bacchioca is the, like, and what's really cool about it is it's a, an analysis of love. And so, and it's that the, the, supposition being like, love is the way to commune with the divine. Now, a distinction is drawn between, like, two big world views that are spiritual. One is the concept of sort of unitive consciousness. You would run into a lot of forms of Buddhism,

if not all, a sort of a way of deconstructing the identity or understanding that you might not be anything at all, then in fact you're part of everything. And in that, there's a potential relief from suffering and not just intellectually knowing it, but becoming it. Now, whereas in Bach Dioga, there's this idea of like, the best thing is to be the individual, because individuals

are required for love, for love to work, embodied love. And so the quality, the thing we call, you know, the experience of love is something that can be cultivated. It doesn't just have to be for another person, it doesn't have to be for the stranger on the bus, it doesn't have to be for sweaty, bruised, springsteens, lover that you can actually shift that love to the divine to God. Because obviously it's the Hare Krishna, it's a theistic religion, they believe in Krishna, who is the, from the POV of Vaishnava Bhakti Yoga, the God had the

from the POV of Ijniva Bhakti Yoga that God had, the source from which everything flows into the into time and space. So that there are all these like fascinating stories of Krishna. It's not just most people are familiar with Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita. They're about to be more what's cool about it is because it's like they're making that Oppenheimer movie and he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita when they split that them, but There's all these stories of Krishna that are not just in the Bhagavad Gita and these stories

They could seem very simple when taken literally but but Vaiṣṇenava, Bokti, Yoga, it's this very advanced Theistic Yoga system, so they take these stories and from these stories they extrapolate this incredible analysis of what love is and how to connect with the universe. So like Krishna has a lover a Rada Rani and so Sometimes they're getting along. Sometimes they're fighting. Sometimes they're separated. And so each of these ways of feeling about Krishna are modes of love. So longing actually is considered one of the highest forms of love. The idea is the longing is the grace, the longing is the love. So when you find yourself in a situation

of longing and heartbreak, it is identical to union. You know, and perhaps more intense, more intensely representative of the essence of what is love. Yes, and they call it pining. So there's the, and it's pining for Krishna. And there's also, there's the other ways you could be with Krishna is as a friend.

So this is another form of love or, you know, as a mother, you know, because Krishna as a friend. So this is another form of love or you know as a mother, you know, because Krishna has a mother. So there's like all these ways of like looking at the various forms of love and it's a really beautiful form of yoga. That's emphasizing the individual and the individual is a kind of channel to this universal love. Yeah, there's a lot of different, like, their answer to the question of what shows up in Buddhism as absolute and relative reality, like, that, obviously, there's relative reality,

we're not right now, you and me, are not unitive consciousness. Like, you zoom back far enough and we're going to seem like an atom or whatever the thing is, the trope is, you zoom back far enough and we're in whatever, we're in a piece of cheese or something, who knows. But in that way, we're like completely unified. But simultaneously, we're individuals, like for sure, or individuals, like you still got to pay your taxes. You got an extra security number.

That's relative reality. So, you know, Buddhism is like kind of the balance. Again, when I say Buddhism is, I'm a comedian, podcast, or I'm not some Buddhist expert. This is just probably my confused idea of what it is. But anyway, in Bakhti Yoga, there's the concept it's called, I'm going to mispronounce it, a synchistinkabeda tatfa. I'm sorry, I'm mispronounce it, which means simultaneous oneness and difference. So oneness and difference. Yes. Simultaneous

oneness. So that's why the oneness is the we're part of the same piece of cheese and the differences we are still each paying taxes. Yes, and in this case the cheese is Krishna. So you know, or other ways it gets described as like, you know, a photon blasting off the sun has sunlight qualities, but it's not the sun. Humans, being one of the many things, you know, flowing out of the creative consciousness of the divine, have qualities that are weirdly like the godlike, you know, like we, in fact, we want to control primarily. That's one of the problems, like humans want to be in control. Where and from there the Bacdeoga perspective

Krishna is this effortlessly controlling everything. And so within the system the individual parts of the system have that same quality, but you can't see you're probably not God. You might be I'm not What do you think happens after we die? Haven't come close to that cliff and almost got pushed over once. What do you think happens when you do get pushed off the cliff? Okay, I feel dumb that I'm even gonna to like preface this by saying obviously I have

no fucking idea and I think that's one of the cool things about death. No idea. The CIA probably does. You think the CIA? I love like we've decided your audience is the CIA. Yeah. How would you? I need to because there's a lot of suspicion that I might be FSB and RSAWD, so I'm trying to rebrand. I'm trying to steer them into the CIA direction. As far as what happens when you die, one thing I return to when I'm getting overly complex is the idea of as above so below. So that you can, a lot of the big questions can be answered by your own experience now. So in other words, like, in terms of thinking about death,

if you look back to baby legs versus adult legs, where's the baby? Like, baby's gone. to baby legs versus adult legs. Where's the baby? Like, baby's gone. The, you've regenerated all your cells many times by then. So in a way, you could say, Lex baby died. The death didn't look like that typical, and I'm not trying to dodge it,

but I'm just saying, it was very natural that the death of that baby. It just It just in many ways that baby died, but I am at least personally I'm surprised how much the person is exactly the same So there's many ways in which you're very different But there's a lot of ways in which you're very much the same. And I wonder if life is defined by many deaths that continue on, and then I wonder if there's something persists beyond in this, that, yeah, there is something that still persists, I wonder. Okay, so that, now, obviously, there's so many different answers to this question that

are religious and ranging from like the most absurd shit you ever heard in your life, like the gold, you're going to get a mansion. There's gold streets, like I don't want like gold streets like lawfuls gold streets. I know about the virgins, but there's a bunch of virgins. The Christians give you the gold streets in the mansion, like depending on the, whatever the particular sect of Christianity is, you know, it's like some kind of city. There's, it's like paved with gold. No one's addressing the fact that the moment the streets

are made of gold, gold is a valueless substance. I mean, it's sort of pretty in a cheesy kind of way, but no one's gonna give a shit about it. It's like, if there was not a lot of asphalt in the world, then, you know, we'd be in heaven from that same, with that way of thinking. But the, uh, we're honestly, when, uh, going back, this, this, this is starting to get a theme with G-Galagar Kapalgum. I'm sorry. I'm reading it currently. That's a sticky book. Yeah, it's very sticky in your mind. Very, very tough. As I'm running through very hot heat, I'm listening to Gologar Capelga. Oh my god. And you know, one of the things they said, they would feed the person or salt. And then they would exchange the prisoners would be able to

give up anything, everything, their gold, their their possessions everything for just one drink of water so that little context of dehydrating them and feeding them salt changes your value system completely right so maybe the gold is supposed to be a metaphor for something that you still value deeply yes it's it's, yeah, again, any of these things, when you take them literally, they seem absurd, but if you look deeper into it, it's quite beautiful. But the Buddhist version of it is that there's a momentum. The best way to put it is it's the kind of momentum. So the thing you're talking about, which is the personality of the baby that is still in the adult,

which is still in the old person, you're looking at a kind of momentum that does not stop upon the extinction of the body. Now, the, there's a, I think there's a lot of, I don't wanna say harm, because they didn't mean to hurt, but I think there's some harm that maybe has happened from the way death is represented in movies.

Like, when people die in movies, it's like, there's this, usually it's pretty fast, even if it is what they're dying from as a long-term disease, it like wraps up pretty quickly, starts with a cough, the person's in bed, but there's this weird kind of lucidity to the person up and to the point of death. And also they generally, in movies, they have makeup on, which is always funny to me, when the person dying looks great. If you're even around a dying person, they're dying. They look like shit.

You're dying. They're all gray and like confused. They're, you know, when you're around dying people, they will spin through time. Your parents won't recognize you for a second. They'll think you're somebody else. They won't. They're like everything's, everything's like the process is happening. So you're very confused when you die. in general, not all the time. Some people die with a clear mind. It just depends on the type of death, but think in terms of getting hit by a car. So you want to cross this street, you get hit by a car. Now, if we're talking about this momentum continuing, the confusion assuming you didn't hit your head and you're unconscious, like somehow you just got smashed

and you're like bleeding out. Even then you're gonna be confused because you're getting're getting dizzy, like blood's leaving your body. You're like, things are fading out, your vision's going. So it's a very confusing experience initially when the body dies. If you are a materialist who has been, who has convinced themselves that it's a permanent thing. The next bit of confusion is going to be when you realize something is persisting here, like I'm still here, and this is where you run into the near death experiences, which are a global phenomena that don't seem to be completely shaped by culture, you know,

like regardless of what part of the world people are having these experiences and their reports tend to be similar. And everyone's heard it. The light, the life review, scene ancestors and stuff like that. Now I don't know what that is. I don't know. I sometimes I think that's probably just like a built-in way the computer shuts down. You know, this is something it does. Who knows?

But in Buddhism, the concept is this momentum persists and is something called the Bardo. The Bardo means in between. And there's an actual number of days. They say that you get to hang out there and I can't remember. It's like 37 days or 29 days or something. I'm not sure. But at least from the time space perspective, that's how long they're there.

Within this place, there are a lot of technological parallels, man. It's like in the way that algorithm is reflective, it assesses your desires or whatever and then produces something that has within it a component of attraction to you. Apparently this happens in the barter. Like, or the way, you know, you wake up in the morning and you're in a shitty mood. And then coincidentally, everyone that day is an asshole. If you don't catch it, you could just be like, wow, I guess it's like an asshole. If you don't catch it, you could just be like,

wow, I guess it's like an asshole day. You don't realize you're seeing your asshole projection being reflected off the screen of another person. So in the barter, apparently, you don't need people for the reflective quality. These projections happen and they appear as either Nietzsche's demon or Nietzsche's angel, it just depends on where you're at and how you died.

If you died scared, then at least initially that's going to be some scary shit you see around you. If you died in a peaceful way, well then there's going to be more of a possibility of navigation through this liminal intermediary place. And so thus, the emphasis on meditation and Buddhism, a way to calm oneself, to not be distracted by thoughts, which are their own like apparitions. And then theoretically, if you wanted to instead of spin in the wheel again and jump them back into a body you could choose not to do that and then

you know transcend the wheel of birth and death but if you still wanted to go back or return or whatever however you want to put it, then you could have more control over what your next birth might be versus in this depiction of things people running from demons that they don't recognize as their own projection into any fucking body that they can find because if you've had a body you want a body and so This is how you get incarnate as an animal. This is how you can incarnate in the hell realms.

This is how you can incarnate in any variety of things. But the idea is like maybe you could slow down a little bit and like choose a birth that is gonna be more conducive to you continuing to like spiritually evolve. I like that idea. Is it true or not? Who the fuck go out? I'll go with the micely speaking.

It seems like a really fun role playing game. We basically keep improving the different parameters based on your ability and willingness and willing this to meditate and let go of the, of the, meanial concerns of life on earth. Yeah. Why do you think Buddha's life is suffering? What's suffering? Okay. Well, first of all, the, that is, that gets mistranslated quite a bit.

You're talking about the four nobles truths. The first one is, often it's translated as life is suffering, which is not, it's there is suffering. The whole life is suffering thing. It's just like a spiritual version of life's bitch that you die and people hear that and they're like, yeah, life is fucking suffering,

but it's there is suffering. There is suffering. So it's an affirmation if you're like this thing that a lot of people feel that they associate with lots of they have a lot of reasons, they think they're feeling it is known as fundamental dissatisfaction. So so another word for suffering, maybe could be fundamental dissatisfaction. Also, the term itself, maybe a better translation is wobbly wheel. So imagine when your bike doesn't have enough air

on the tires, your bike doesn't have air on the tires, it's kind of a shitty bike ride. Like no matter what, it's kind of like uncomfortable. It's like irritating. So this is what's being pointed to is that there's this quality within a human life that is unsatisfying like a wobbly wheel. Wobbly wheel. Why do you think what is the core of that dissatisfaction? Because it could be it could be a simple as kind

of physical and mental discomforts and sadness and depression and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Or it could be more speaking to the sort of existentialist, the philosophical, the absurdity of it all. Yep. The fact that stuff happens, good stuff happens for no reason, best of happens for no reason. Yeah, it's no matter how much you try, there's not universal fairness to the whole thing. There's not even a universal meaning to the whole thing. So the existentialist perspective, what flavor of suffering do you prefer?

It shows a nice cream shot. That's so fun. Well, I'm definitely picking desire over the, like, if, in the RGB that we're talking about here is desire, aversion, and ignorance. So if you want to find like the three ingredients that are giving everyone their sophisticated bits of suffering, there you go. That's what it is. In which way does design manifest itself in suffering?

It hurts. To lose, to not have. Like, yeah, it hurts to not, like to eternally not have, but just like, my friend pointed this out. He's like, you know, like, you order something from Amazon. Like, even in the smallest way, you're excited about whatever the thing is. You order the thing from Amazon. It's not coming for four days. So those four days are going to be somewhat marked by you being what people say.

I'm excited about it. But really, if you look at that feeling, it's uncomfortable. Like the feeling of wanting the thing is uncomfortable. So that is a form of wanting the thing is uncomfortable. So that is a form of suffering, that suffering. Interesting. I mean, I wonder, because we naturally reframe that in our mind, wanting, we reframe that as a good thing, as, and maybe suffering is fundamentally good in the way we think of what life is. It's like it's life affirming, but it's not usually how the word suffering is used. Well, it's true. It's true. Like the first level of truth of Buddhism is true.

It's called the truth of suffering. There is suffering. I mean, this is like an element that you can't break it down any further than that. Like, there is suffering. This is truth. So, if you think, you know, and again, as signing like good or bad to truth, I think maybe there's more of a sort of neutrality there. It's just what it is. It's truth. I mean, is it basically, is suffering any disturbance from stillness, is suffering then? Like basically, anything that happens in life that, that's like, that perturbs the system. Ripples in the,

Ripples. Ripples. So, a still lake is empty of suffering, but any kind of ripple is suffering in that sense. A still lake is empty of suffering. You sound like a Zen master. Seems like something is in master, I think. If I can just grow a beard like yours.

Ah, no, the beard doesn't help. If I had your chin, you think I'd have a fucking beard. I look like a stork. You should see me. If I had your chin, You think I'd have a fucking beard. I look like a stork. You should see me. If I had your chin, there'd be no beard here. You have a symmetrical, nice chin. This is a little close-sign going to plastic surgery, pubic plastic surgery friend.

That's how you know your professional comedian. Yeah, it's just suffering. They're suffering. And the lake analogy is pretty good because the, um, what's happening here is that, that we have become identified with something that we call a self. So this, the self is just accepted. I have a self, I have an identity, I'm a person, I have a self. But when you start doing scans to try to find yourself, which is an entire thing, I'm going to find myself. You get in a van, go to California, take some acid, fuck a prostitute on the bus,

or whatever, caro acted. I'm going to find myself. She wasn't a prostitute, just a corrector. Oh, previously prostitute. I guess once a prostitute, I was a prostitute. You know what? She's a former prostitute. I don't think that. No, look, I'm not a s- I'm not a sign. I look, I'm saying is, I don't care.

Who cares? Who has a bit of prostitute? God, you are used to be one of the biggest and most of the world. We're all kind of a kind of prostitute. Yeah, yes, yes. But the make love and we make money. Therefore, we're all a kind of prostitute.

We make God. How great. I would really love to be able to make money by fucking. I mean, it's maybe not directly, but in some sense. Directly. Oh, yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Do you accept my mo? Never too late to start.

That's sort of one of the ways in is this sort of contemplation of the identity because it's like, you know, what is, it's not just the desire. It's what is having the desire. Where does the desire live in? Like, what doesn't want to be where it's at? What is the thing that is like desperately wanting to get out of the situation it's in? And then as far as ignorance,

it's still something that's theoretically happening to an identity. So wrapped up in it is really just this sort of like, and that's where we run into it, what? Into attachment. So if the first noble truth of Buddhism is there is suffering. The second noble truth of Buddhism is the cause of this suffering is attachment. And so people hear that and they take it, that's a, there's a lot of levels to that concept. Definitely the cause of suffering is attachment. I mean, God, I just got addicted to vapes. Is there a more embarrassing addiction than vapes?

I'm smoking like a little purple thing. It's tastes like sugar. It's attachment is, there is suffering. I want it. I have to charge it now. I'm embarrassed by it. It makes me feel out of control. There's a lot of suffering, but also there's deeper levels of attachment. They go all the way to this attachment to you, the sense of one's self. I think the existentialist do get into this idea in a different way, which is like, because I think I'm a me. Now I have to push what that thing is out into the

world through my actions. And that's a kind of attachment too. Exactly. There you go. Right. And that leads to the third noble truth, which is, get rid of attachment and you won't suffer anymore. That's, it seems logical, but you know, it is a very, it is a mathematical analysis of this particular problem of suffering, it's addressing. And then the fourth noble truth is the eight full path of Buddhism, which is like a process by which one could unencumber oneself from this identification with something that isn't real. Do you know about the break? Yeah, thank you.

I do. I appreciate that. There's a funny moment I was running in the heat yesterday listening to Glock Archipelago and there's a which was a very welcome break. I'm looking for any excuse to stop whatsoever. The very nice German stopped me, saying, recognizing and just said the much of friendly things. And now I was, I mean, I'm the same way and I told them, you know, tomorrow, felt like a name drop. I name drop you this morning.

I was like, tomorrow, I'm going to get the medium. So he says, he says, hi. And there's, oh, and he said that, um, he watched midnight gospel on, on mushrooms. And it was like the greatest mushroom experience of his life. I don't know Yeah, man. Yeah, I was nervous about meeting you man I got a little so much respect for you and like yeah, I named dropped. I was testing on going on Lex's podcast today It's you look we're so lucky. We all live here. What the fuck we're all living in Austin together like I I thought I somehow like live here. What the fuck we're all living in Austin together? Like I, I somehow like missed that.

But that's, we all got to hang out. We all have to like start doing stuff. Well, you have to really also, you have to appreciate this moment. I, I remember, I know some people are less sentimental than others, but I remember sitting with, with Joe Rogan and with Eric Weissdiner, I believe it was, yeah, then at the back of the comedy store shortly before COVID, I think. And just thinking like, there's no way these things will last. And these things, meaning the comedy store, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan D, Joe Rogan, like a podcast, like a podcast influential podcasting person. Yeah.

Also a person, like in this room in this space, the ability to just talk for hours and lose ourselves in this moment, it just felt ephemeral somehow, temporary. And I just wanted to capture that moment somehow. Like, I don't know. Sometimes that's where the temptation to take a picture and you know that kind of stuff

or record a podcast comes from. Right. But it just felt like it would be gone forever. Of course, Joe doesn't seem to have that sentiment. No, Shana, just wherever you end up, you just enjoy the shit out of it. Right, that's it. Well, and that's something you have to cultivate.

You know, that's not easy. But the thing you're talking about, you know, God, if you see these, I think the best analogy for what you're talking about, there's these videos where people give like a sugar cube to a raccoon, but the raccoons, they wash their food. So raccoon, or I think it's cotton candy, they give the raccoon cotton candy,

immediately it washes the cotton candy, and of course the cotton candy dissolves in the water. And the raccoon is like, what the fuck? Like, you know, and the thing that grasping, you're talking about, it's like the raccoon washing the cotton candy. Like the moment you get into the grasping part, you paradoxically have pulled yourself out of the moment that inspired the grasping part.

And that's, you know, that's some people that's the entirety of their lives trying to record. I mean, Jesus man, you ever see people film fireworks on the 4th of July with their phone? It's one of the most remarkable qualt aspects of human behavior, which is like you know they're not gonna watch the fireworks On their phone only a lunatic would do that like who's gonna go back and look at fireworks, but So we're also in this position where because of podcasting there is some aspect where you can record a magical moment in time

Yes, together between two people or even just with the camera So to get back to the lake That you were talking about this is emptiness. So that's emptiness. That's what's known as emptiness the lake is emptiness And that's what we are emptiness Emptiness and that's another thing that gets very confused in Buddhism is that emptiness. And that emptiness is, that's to me, like when I'm going to do a podcast, that's where I try to go. I try to go just in the moment. No agenda, you know, if I am nervous or whatever, okay, I'll feel the nervousness,

but just in the, just drop into the moment. That's one time changes, and then you look up hours of past. It feels like a second, and the reason it feels like that is because if you successfully dropped into the moment, it's the lake now, it's emptiness, it's forever for a second, you're like dipping into eternity. And yeah, it's a very strange thing to as part of that record it.

You know, it's part of that try to like grab it and put it out there, but it works. Can you speak to that to the Dunkin' Trustful Family Hour? Can you speak about that purple lavender world you go to when it's most intense and successful for you, when you feel a sense of lightness and happiness, when it works. Yeah, whether it's your own or a conversation with Joe

in general, or yours is very specific because it's the audio only, maybe you can also speak to that. Yeah. You might as well be naked or you don't have to, you have to, you're free of the conventions of the real world. I will never stop thinking it's remarkable. Like the fact that I'm talking to you, to me, seems remarkable, not just technologically,

but I'm talking to someone I'm assuming I'm allowed to say this you as robot dogs. Yeah, did I've been watching for years evolve on YouTube I'm Arms reach away from one of these things, you know, and I'm with somebody who is like an acclaimed Genius so for me it's like, oh my God, how's, why do I get to have this conversation? Why do I get to be here? When there would be like a line, there'd be a line that would just wrapped

and wrapped and wrapped around this building and people would love a chance to just chat with you. And so when I, with my podcast, that's how I feel like when I'm talking to these guests, you know, who have spent, you know, some of them have spent their entire lifetime meditating, you know, studying specific aspects of Buddhism or even when I'm with, you know, when I'm with comedians who I, like like consider to be brilliantly funny. So for me, it's just like, God, I must feel like,

I've just created some sophisticated trap for cool people where like I get to like hang out with them. So you're like sitting in the gratitude of it, just feeling lucky. Yeah, yeah, feeling lucky and wrestling with imposter syndrome, you know, trying to like get that part of myself to shut up long enough So I could be in that moment that we're talking about, you know, and then and then I carry that with me

It's not just like you stop the podcast. It's like some of the things these people tell me Or some of the ways they are like it becomes part of me and then I get to have a life or this thing that they gave me is in me forever. And so yeah, it's, it's there's. Yes, cool how conversation can just a few sentences can change the direction of your life. If you're listening, if you're there to be transformed by the words, they will do the work. Yes. by the words they will do the work. Yes. And it's the full mix of it. It's usually when if you look up to somebody and it's true for me at least I think it is

for you that you start to look up to basically everybody you talk to. Yes. Yes. Good sign. That's a good sign. God forbid it goes the other way. Yeah. You're in trouble.

Yeah. If I was sudden you start looking down on people, because whatever crazy metric you're using, ooh, that would freak me out. I do feel like that's a quality of getting older. When I was younger, I really, I thought I was so smart. Like I thought I'd all figure it out. Oh really, so you're going, your ego's just going, taking the nose dive.

I would like to say is my ego taking the nose dive. I would like to say, is my ego taking the nose dive? Me and my friend talk about it a bunch, we've just always associated it with doing acid for two decades straight. Like I'm just a Zoom, I'm just like, slowly like spiraling into senility. You know, like I'm just like, I, all the confidence, all the like,

oh, the certainty when you're having like in college, you're having the great, like, you know, you, I remember you're, you feel like you're a representative of Kamu or some shit, you know what I mean? You read the myth of Cisophys and I like it. No, all existentialism and your certainty in regards to it is embarrassing, but you don't see it in that way. You just feel certain, and then that certainty, it just starts crumbling a little bit.

And then, yeah, I get to actually intensely experience that certainty in many communities, but one in cryptocurrency, young folks, with the certainty that this technology will transform the world. Yeah. And I mean, this is almost one of the big communities of the modern era where they believe that this will really solve so many of the problems of the world and they believe it very intensely. And aside from the technology and the details of the thing, all I see is the certainty and

the passion in their eyes. They'll stop me. Let me explain you. Let me just give me a chance to tell you why this thing is extremely powerful. And I just get to enjoy the glow of that because it's like, yeah, wow, I missed having that certainty about anything. Yeah. It's probably come a little for me to.

Yeah. But when I was younger, it's like, only I deeply understand the relationship of man to his mortality. And I understood that most deeply, I think, when I was like 16 or 17. And I have, I am the representative of the human condition. And all these adults, with their busyness of day to day life and their have, I am the representative of the human condition. And all these adults with their busyness of day to day life and their concerns, they don't deeply understand what I understand, which is the only thing that matters is the absurdity of the human condition.

Yeah, yeah. And let me quote you some Dusty Eski. Oh boy, and you speak Russian. Yes, big. So you've read the brothers Karamazov in Russian. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I read all of the CSK in English. I came to this country when I was 13. At least don't remember, we read a lot, but we read Tolstoy, Push push can a lot of the Russian literature but it wasn't in Russian but I don't remember reading the CSK I wonder at which point does the Russian education system give you the CSK because it's pretty heavy stuff

second grade for the second grade Russians are intense but I don't know yes they are they're very they very intense. But I don't remember. Yes, they are. They're very, very much are. I don't remember reading this to the S.K. But I did tangent upon, tangent upon, tangent. I traveled to Paris recently on the way to Ukraine and was scheduled to talk to Richard Paveir and Lversa. This pair that translate the S. Yefsky toll story, just this famous

pair that translate most Russian literature to English. And I was planning to have a sequence of, you know, 5, 10, 15 hour conversation with them about the different details about the translations and so on. I just found myself in a very dark place mentally where I couldn't think about podcast or anything like that. It caught me off guard. So I went to Paris and just laid there for a day, not just being stressed about Ukraine and all those kinds of things. But I'm still the the act of translation is such a fascinating way to approach some of the deepest questions that this literature raises, which is like, how do I capture the essence of a sentence that

has so much power and translate it into another language? That act is actually really, really interesting. And there, I found with my conversations with them, they really thought to this stuff. It's not just about language, it's about the ideas in those books. Right. And that also really makes me sad because I wonder how much is loss in translation. I'm currently, so when I was in Ukraine, I talked to a lot of, like, half the conversations I had on the record were in Russian and basically 100% of the record were in Russian versus in English. And just so much is lost in those languages. And I'm

now struggling because I'm launching a Russian channel where there would be a Russian overdub of Duncan. Wow. Your wow will not be translated into Russian. What's Russian wow? I don't know, it'll just be wow probably. Oh, wow. I'm so sorry for the difficulties of having to translate. Well, usually probably with wow they'll leave it unoverdubbed because people understand

exactly what you mean. But that's an art form and it's a weird art form. Yeah. It's like, how do you capture the, the chemistry, the excitement, the, yeah. I don't know. Maybe the, the humor, the implied kind of wit. I don't know. There's just layers of complexity and language that you, it's very difficult to capture. Yeah, and I wonder how it is sad for me because I know Russian how much is lost in translation and the same You know, there's a brewing conflict and tension with China now and so much is lost in the translation between those languages. Oh my god. Yeah, and cultures the entire languages. Oh my God. Yeah. And cultures. The entire, the, the music of the people is completely lost because we don't know the language or most of us don't know. Yeah. How much of the conflict is just problems and translation? How much of the, all these problems that we're having are just the alien sense of this or that. It's just as simple as that. Words are getting just the, just the,

that. Words are getting just a tiny warp away from the intent of if when we both speak the same language, we can still say something that offends someone when you never intended that at all. How much more so when like it's not only is it a completely different sound, but the script itself is different. Like what is the Russian writing is it called Cyrillic or what's that? Yeah, Cyrillic. Cyrillic. And I don't know the name for Chinese writing, but it's like it's a continuum that like it's weirder and weirder looking, you know? So yeah, I'm sure. Or less weirder and weirder looking, you know, like it's so yeah, I'm

less weird depending on your perspective. Yeah, I'm sure depending on where you're at, you know, I'm definitely I'm about the farthest thing from a polyglot as there could be, man, like, but I'll tell you, at one point when I was getting fascinated by Dostoevsky, I did have this very transient fantasy about learning Russian Russian so that I could like understand the difference in the... You were 17, 18 at the time. Good college. Yeah.

Brother's Caramazov lost in that book. Just like, oh God. So in love with it is... Well there's definitely like, you know, Ukraine and this is what there's a lot of the wars about is saying you know Ukraine and Russia are not the same people there's a strong culture in Ukraine There's a strong culture in Russia, but you know I know because that's when my family's from there's a fascinating strong culture But there's such strong cultures everywhere else too. Ireland has a culture, Scotland has a culture. Even like a tiny island, you just have these subcultures that are

more powerful than anything exists in human history. The Bronx, I don't know, like, different parts in New York have a certain culture and then New York versus LA versus well And then certain places are looking for their culture. Like I don't I think Austin I don't know what Austin is. I don't think anyone knows. There's a There's a traditional Austin and then it's evolving constantly same with Boston a place I spent a lot of right there's a traditional Boston, and that's evolving with the different younger people coming from university and staying, and all of that is evolving.

But underneath it, there's a core, like the American ideal of the value of the individual, the value of freedom, freedom of speech, all those kinds of things that permeates all of that. And the same thing in the history of World War II permeates all of that. And the same thing in the history of World War II permeates Ukraine and Russia, a lot of parts of Europe, the memories of all that suffering, the destruction, the broken promises of governments, and the occupier versus the liberator, all that kind of stuff, all that permeates the culture that affects

hallucinical or optimistic, you're, or how much you appreciate material possessions versus human connection, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, this is, like, talk about absurdity. I mean, this is war, war is like, it's the what absurdity looks like. It's it's some kind of organized madness. None of it makes sense. Like all of it, like it's just, none of it makes sense. Like, but it does, but it does. I mean, obviously you're defending yourself or you're taking orders that if you don't take,

you're, you're going to jail. And so, or some somewhere in between, you know, the classic story about this, maybe it's a bullshit myth about World War II. I'm sure everyone's heard it because it comes up, you know, it's Christmas Eve and they have a ceasefire. And then I think they played soccer, they sang Christmas songs, and then they had to force them into fighting again. And so when those moments happen, are you familiar with Hawkeying Bay? He's a controversial figure. Sadly, I think he was like, I'm not going to defame him because I haven't researched

it correctly, but some people have said shit. But since I don't know the reference, I'm not going to. But regardless, I mean, look, I'm sorry, but since I don't know the reference, I'm not gonna, but regardless, I mean, you know, look, I'm sorry, but Bill Cosby was funny, you know, like that's a funny comedian, but you know the other stuff. Michael Jackson, he could fucking dance. And sing.

And sing, but there's some other stuff. But regardless, Hockey and Bay came up with the idea of something called a temporary autonomous zone, which is that within a structure, a cultural structure, a temporary bubble of freedom will appear that by its nature gets sort of popped by the bigger bubble or it runs out of resources generally. So these things will appear just out of the blue that it's almost like I imagine if like on Earth in some tiny little bit of Earth, the gravitational field was reduced by some percentage. And all of a sudden you could jump really high or whatever, but it wouldn't last. It's like that culturally, all the restrictions, and the darkness, and the heaviness, and

all of it. For a second, somehow this bubble appears where humans come together as the hippie ideal, brothers, sisters, just humans, earthlings instead of American, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, temporary autonomous zone, it gets crushed by the default reality that it was appearing in but somehow within that space you witness the possibility, the possibility, the frustrating possibility that anyone who's thought about humanity knows this possibility, which is like, it seems like we can just get along. Like it does seem like we're pretty much the same thing

and then we can just get along. Those moments are really rare. It's sad. I talked a lot of soldiers, a lot of people that were suffered through the different aspects of that war. And there's an information war that convinces each side that the other is not just the enemy, but less than human. Right.

So there's a real hatred towards the other side. Yeah. And those kind of little moments where you realize, oh, they're human like me. Yeah. And not just like human like me, but they're, they have the same values as me. And this woman who was a really respected soldier, she specializes in anti-tank missiles.

She's very kind of very pragmatic, the enemy is the enemy who have to destroy the enemy and saying like there's no compassion towards the enemy not they're not human. They're less than human But she said there was there was a moment when She remembers an enemy soldier in a tank Took a risk to save a fellow soldier and that risk was really stupid because he was facing. He was going to get destroyed. And then she said that she tried to shoot a rocket at that tank and she missed. And then she later went home and she couldn't sleep

that she missed. She how could she screw that up. But then she realized that actually, she missed, maybe she missed on purpose. Yeah. Because she realized that that man, just like she is, was a hero. Just like she strives to be, they were both heroes defending their own. And in that way, he was just like her. She was like, that's the only time I remember doing this war ever feeling like this is another human being, but that was a very brief

moment. Yeah, her. And I just hear that over and over and over again, these romantic notions we have of where one that we're all just human. Unfortunately during war, those notions are rare. It's quite sad. And war in a certain way really destroys those notions. And one of the saddest things is it destroys it, at least from what I see, potentially for generations. Not just for those people for the rest of their life, but for their children, their children's children. The hatred, I mean, I asked that question of basically everyone, which is, will you ever forgive for asking of Ukrainians, will you ever forgive the Russians? Will you have hate in your heart towards the Russians? or do you have love for a fellow human being and?

There's different ways that people struggle with that different people they saw that They they saw the love they saw the hate with their known heart and They struggle with the hate they have and they know they can overcome it in a period of weeks and months after the war is over. But some people said, no, this hate that showed up in February when the war started will be with me forever. Well, yeah, their kids got killed. What the fuck are you gonna do about that? Like, I don't care.

I've got, you know, I've got aphorisms and cute little stories about, you know, you're still in prison if you ate your former captors. But man, I gotta tell you, if somebody hurt my kids, I'm not coming back. There's no amount, at least right now in my approximation, of spiritual literature, meditation, or anything that I can really think of that is going to give me that kind of space. Like I think I imagine in the same way like I imagine I could probably run a marathon eventually, but do I think I'm think I'm ever going to do that? That times a million. So man, you know,

all we can do is have compassion for their hate because it's like, what are you going to say? What are you going to say to someone like that? Oh, oh, you know, for the sake of humanity, let it go. It was just your kids. It was just something you loved more than anything in the world. You'll never be okay again. You don't have nightmares for the rest of your life,

but you should forgive. No. Well, there is truth in the fact that forgiveness is the way to let go, right? But that truth is not, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, fuck you, right? This is, which is why it's not your job to say that,

you know, it's, not that you're doing that. I know you're not, but you know, the problem with people like me, early phase, you could get this stupid missionary thing going where you like start trying to like, I don't know, like proselytize ideals that you might be incapable of. You know, and I just, hearing it, you know, that's the, man, I saw this, the thing that like, I mean, I've seen a lot all of us have been out probably

Or online I've seen and you just saw it in person like we've seen things that are just horrific, but as a dad Man, I just saw this clip of this kid around the age of my kid walking By himself these refugees, walking by himself, these refugees, just walking by himself, the look on his face, I can't explain the look on his face. I don't know what happened to his parents. I don't know what happened. Like, it was so upsetting. I mean, like, even thinking about now, it's just like, fuck, that could have been my kid. That could have been my kid. That could have been my kid. So knowing that kind of that, that kid's got to grow up.

Now, I don't know. The kid's parents still there. That's just one of countless orphans out there now. You have this hate and the question is how to direct it. Because the choices you can direct it towards the politicians that started the war, you can direct it towards the soldiers that are doing the killing or you can direct it towards an entire group of people. And that's the struggle because hate slowly grows to where you don't just hate the soldiers, you don't just hate the leaders, you hate all

Russians because they're all equally evil because the ones that aren't doing the fighting are staying quiet and I'm sure the same kind of stories are happening on the other side. And so there is that hate is one that is deeply human, but you wonder for your own future, for your own home, for building your own community, for building your own country, how does that hate more of over the weeks and months and years, not into forgiveness, but into something that's productive that doesn't destroy you, because hate does destroy. That's the dark aspect of a rocket that hits a building and kills hundreds of people, the worst effect of that rocket is the hate in the period of years after.

And that it doesn't just torture by having that psychological burden and trauma. It also tortures because it destroys your life. It's preventive from being able to enjoy your life to the fullest. It prevents you from being able to flourish as a human being, as a professional, as you know, in all those kinds of ways that humans can flourish.

I don't know. It's such a, you know, there is, there is a, there is an aspect where this naive notion is really powerful that love and forgiveness is the thing that's needed in this time. And when I talk to the soldiers, they don't, you know, I remember bringing up to Tijako, is there a sense where the people you're fighting are just brothers and arms bringing up the dire straight song, brothers and arms. And he was basically without swearing, saying, fuck that, that they're the enemy. Yeah. I mean, he's literally in survival mode.

Yeah. He can't think like that. It's going to create latency in the system, and that's going to lower his survivability. You can't think that. I mean, we're talking about like, cognitively, you can't have latency. Like, if you're that one moment of hesitation,

like, you see it sometimes, if you're that one moment of hesitation, like you see it sometimes, like in these YouTube videos, of like somebody, a new cop has been unfortunate enough to run into something that is a phenomenon, suicide by cop. Somebody has a knife, and that person is running towards them with a knife, and they're begging the person to stop.

That you can hear it in their voice. They're begging. Stop, stop, stop, stop. And the person is not going to stop. So the critique of that is that that latency could potentially not just lead to the cop getting killed, but to that person with the knife killing other people. And so, you know, I get, if I were out there, I think that like, you want, you probably just as a matter of like not getting shot and being fully in the moment, you have to be like that. I would guess. I don't know. I don't know. I'm the furthest thing from a soldier there could be, but there's a something Jack Cornfield, the scrapbook as teacher says, which is tend to the part of the garden you can touch. Meaning, this is where we're at right now.

Thank God, you and I, though we are experiencing some like ripples from what's going on over there. Everyone is. We're not there. And thank God, we don't have to come up with the psychological program for

people going through that to no longer be encumbered by that hate. Thank God. And I don't know if that's just lazy or whatever, but it's like, you know, for me, I just, I have to bring it back to, all right. Well, here's where I'm at now. And I don't, like, I don't want there to be war.

I don't want to hurt people, but yeah, I love what you said. I think what you said is the, if anything is the most intelligent way of looking at it, it's like, don't pretend that you're not gonna feel that hate, like you're gonna feel it. There's no way around it. Or like, is that's even worse? Cause then you're almost saying,

like, something's wrong with them for feeling the hate or you know, whatever. But more along the lines, if you can avoid applying that hate to an entire country of people, then do that. Like just understand, we're talking about like a not everybody. I know it's not everybody. I know it's not everybody.

It's just easier, isn't it? Cognitively, it's somehow easier to think all Russians, monsters, you know, all Russians, all whatever the particular like thing is that you're supposed to not like. It's easier somehow weirdly. You'd think that'd be more difficult. Yeah, but I guess the lesson is, if you give in to the easy solution, that's going to lead to detrimental long-term effects. So, hate should be, it's such a powerful tool that you should try to control it for your own sake, not because you owe anything to anybody, but for your own psychological development over time. Right, right, that's it. That's it.

Fuck. Yeah, yeah. In terms of dark places, you suffered from depression. Who has been some of the darker places you've gone in your in your mind? You know, I needed therapy man. I need therapy for the longest time. I just didn't get it and like so because of that I I would go through like bouts of like

paralytic depression like suicidal, suicidal ideations that were more than just ideations. I mean, I think like, people get afraid when the thought of suicide appears in their consciousness, they get really scared of themselves. So they think there's something like, fuck what's going on with me? Why would I think that? But I think if we are suffering and, you know, as a natural part of not wanting to reduce suffering or not feel bad anymore, I mean, suicide is going to be a not like if we're just, you know, you're just looking, what are all the options? Let's brainstorm here. You know what I mean? I can start drinking more water. You can start jogging, gets in therapy, call my friends, all the stuff we all hear.

Or I could just, I think the height of my apartment building is probably the definitely the right height to kill myself. And then you, and then so we're the, for me, like the few times where the ideation has gone towards like, when would I do that? How do I, what, you know, what do I need to like accomplish that? When then like that's where it gets really fucking scary. That's where it's like terrifying. So you start the actual details of the planning

of how to commit suicide? Yeah, what's gonna be the least painful way to do it? What's gonna be the most instantaneous way to do it? What's the, you know, with depression because it can be progressive, you know, and with, you know, with depression because it can be progressive, you know, this is why you have to really just stay on top of it. Anyone who's gone through depression knows what I'm talking about. You gotta stay on top of it.

Like, you might need medication. You know, I know this is controversial now, but it's still better than dying if you ask me, but at some point with depression, it like becomes paralyzing. So you don't want to get out of bed anymore and you're not taking showers anymore. You don't want to get out of bed anymore and you're not taking showers anymore and you don't want to talk to anybody anymore and you're not answering your phone anymore and you know

So like in a dark place that you might be in it's still might get worse So you should really yes do everything you can To get immediately control you and that's the pro that's specific psychological disorder to get immediately control. You and that's the pro that's specific psychological disorder. That's the problem because it the things it's like if you start listening to what you wanted you think it's you it's the

depression you start listening to it. It wants you to stay in bed. It's and then you're getting those fucking depression sleeps. You know, or you wake up and you're more tired like it's not working. You're trying to escape reality by sleeping. And so, yeah, like you have to, like, you're fighting for your,

you're literally fighting for your life. It might not seem like that because you can't, if you could see depression, if you could see it, if you knew you had some inky, vaporous, octopus thing that was just wrapping around you more and more and more and more, you would probably do everything you could to rip that fucking thing off your body. And if you couldn't get it off your body, you would be calling people to get help. So it doesn't feel like a fight because you're exhausted. There's no reason to move.

There's no, you don't see the meaning for any of it. So it doesn't feel like a battle, but it is a battle. You're not feeling, I mean, that's the other thing. You're just, you're basically not feeling. You're like, you start going numb, at least that was my experience with it. Numb and tired, and then increasingly numb and tired, and then increasingly sort of disconnecting from reality.

And then somewhere in there, that's when you start playing around with the idea of like, I don't know if it's worth it. I don't know. Now, I think compared to some of my friends who haven't survived depression, like mine was definitely not whatever theirs was like. I've heard, I mean, to understand it for folks out there,

maybe you haven't gone through it, just imagine how bad you have to feel if death is the salute, like, like, violence against yourself so that you die as the solution. Like, it flies in the face of everything. So I would, yeah, that was definitely the darkest place. Is it just that death doesn't seem like, because you don't care about anything anymore, that death just doesn't seem like that bad?

Yeah. Like you're not able to appropriately assign the negative cost to this solution. Right. Just seems like a reasonable solution. Yeah, but I think also what's going along with it is like, it's not like your brain isn't working. You're not thinking, you're obviously not thinking clearly. At least again, this is was my experience of it. It's a fog. You're in some kind of

You're in some kind of, like, you're confused. There's confusion. There's shame. You feel embarrassed. You feel embarrassed. You wanna get out of bed. You wanna do stuff. You wanna be compelled to be social, do all this stuff. But you're not, you're not.

And like, you seem, if people don't know what's going on and you're not telling them because you're embarrassed, because you want, you want to have some uncorrupted, unworked psyche, you're like, it invites you to be secret about it. That's one of its first tricks, is it tells you not to tell anybody, and that's deadly within that case, is deadly.

What was the source of light? What were for you and light? What was the? What were for you? And in general, the ways out. Yeah. So for me, I've had the solutions. And again, man, for my press friends out there, please don't get mad at me. I'm not doing the thing of like just put on a smile or any of that bullshit, because it doesn't feel like that when when you like and when you're fighting it, it's like you are you're in a, I don't

know why I'm keep using these stupid gravity analogies but it's like the gravity's been turned up on your planet in every single way by so getting out of bed. You know like by the way, gravity and quantum mechanics one of the most beautiful things about our reality what the hell is each of those things So this isn't you're not just talking about the Haping language. It's still Physicists pretend they understand something. We're still at the very beginning to understand this mysterious world of ours that seems to be functioning according to these weirdly simple and yet universally powerful laws which we don't fully yet understand.

So please, the metaphor and the analogy of gravity is fully, fully applicable. I don't know any other way to put it. Then it's like somebody turned the gravitational field of your mattress up by So everything is heavy heavy Your body's heavy you don't want to get out of bed You will consider shitting or pissing the bed because you're just like who gives a fuck I'll just lay in my shit and piss. You're dying. You're like you're you're you're you're it's none of it makes sense so

None of it makes sense. So, and I feel like in retrospect, I'm making what I've done a little, like I had more lucidity. It was more of like when you're wrestling with someone, and you're just like, oh, well you do, it's different for you. But for me, if I'm wrestling,

I'm not thinking about you just to move. I'm like, survival. And you're just, so it's different for you, but for me, if I'm wrestling, I'm not thinking about you just move and like survival. And you're just, so it's like that. It is a struggle. Like it's like, you really have to deliberately fight everything. So you start, so you can almost have a conversation with the depression. And then what you do is you start doing the opposite of everything it's telling you to do.

So it's telling you lay in bed. So you get out of bed. It's definitely telling you, don't fucking exercise. You're going to go fucking exercise. That's not going to do anything. You can't. You probably have a heart attack. You really want to go outside.

Don't go fucking exercise. anything, you can't. You can pray, have a heart attack, you really want to go outside, don't go fucking exercise and it'll feel crazy and you won't want to do it. If you wanted to do it, you wouldn't be depressed. Like how often do you hear like one of the symptoms of depression, you want to jog, you want to get on a bike, you know, you don't hear that, that's not a symptom. So you start, at least one solution I started doing the opposite of whatever the voice is telling you to do the opposite that and then suddenly that those the gravitational field diminishes a little bit. It doesn't go all the way away and that's where you can fall right back into it because you just feel even slightly better. You're like, oh, okay, I fixed it. You know, really, I think if you,

like in having been through therapy, the best solution would be go to a fucking therapist as quickly as you can. Just sit down with them and tell them what's going on. I know what you're thinking. How am I gonna find a therapist? Just do it. Google it. Go on Yelp. All of this shit feels impossible. You're like, I don't want to turn on the computer. I don't do any of this. You just have to. You have to. You do it if you're on fire. You do it if you're on fire and someone's

like, you know, here's the way to not be on fire. This particular fire is, it doesn't make you want to run around screaming. It just makes you want to fall asleep forever. And that, but those little steps, I got lucky because it worked. It worked. I started exercising. I'd been on antidepressants before when I was originally diagnosed with it. And did those help or not?

You know, even with all the current research coming out about that maybe we were all wrong about our understanding of depression, I do feel like it helped in a certain way. Like it definitely, it definitely like made me stop thinking about it. Stop the intrusive thoughts. And but I don't know how much of that was placebo or how much of that. I don't know. But then also, I couldn't come anymore. That was the other fucked up thing. You can't have orgasms. Which might not sound like a big deal, but when I told my therapist that, they actually took me off them. Because I think she was realizing it started diminishing a little bit. because I think she was realizing that it started diminishing a little bit. But the one I'm talking about now, that whatever episode or whatever you want to call it,

I just got lucky because it worked. It worked and I started feeling better. Thank God. Now, if you suffer from depression out there and you've had a remission of the depression, you know, it's really like it's scary to have mental illness because and you know, it's really scary to have mental illness because everyone gets bummed out. I mean, that's just normal. Like, you're gonna get bummed out. No, I wanna do anything sometimes.

It doesn't mean you have a clinical depression. You might just be bummed out or grieving. You might be any number of things. But when I get really nervous, if some of those symptoms start showing up. And at one point, I felt like that was happening again, and I did inter-muscular ketamine therapy, which now that was the damnedest thing I've ever experienced.

Aside from the fact that ketamine is immensely psychedelic. I just remember going back to the hotel after the experience with the clinician. And it's like, with depression, it's like a headache that starts coming on. But you're like, this headache might last for years. It might last for six months. It might get worse and worse and worse. And so I went back to the hotel room, and it was just gone. Like I just felt normal.

I felt great. It was like the most remarkable thing ever. So look at the research on ketamine right now. It's like, it's not like bullshit. It's not like woo woo science. There's really, really good data out there showing that something like, I think it's 60%, I don't know what the percentage is,

but 60% of people with an endogenous depression when they get ketamine therapy will experience remission, regardless of whether you trip out or not. It just does something. I don't know if they know what it is yet. I don't care if they do. But that one thing works and basically you keep fighting until something works. Exactly. It's a survival issue. It's a survival issue. I think because it's so slow moving, you might even forget it's progressive. You could easily you could easily just think that you're just a kind of bummed out person.

Are you start thinking that these aspects of your psychology or permanent when they don't have to be? What about other people in your life? What advice would you give to people that have loved ones who suffer from depression? What are they to do? Okay. Now this is really like, man, it's really dark. Here's number one, this is what somebody told me when I lost a friend of suicide, you know, because when you lose a friend of suicide, when you lose a loved one to suicide,

you're going to blame yourself. It's a, like in the, in the, in the, in the circuit, in the periphery of suicide, there is a circumference of guilty people who all feel like, oh, if only I'd said this at the right time, if only I'd listen more, if only I'd seen that warning signer, if only this or that, it's interesting in that with other forms of like disease, you know, if your loved one dies from cancer, say, more than likely, you're not going to be thinking like, oh, I should have cured their cancer, you know, like you're, it's a tragedy, but at least you're not like, uh, only I had, you still might think that's part of grief, but, it's not a sticky and many of the other situations here. The guilt couldn't really stay for a long time.

Yeah. So you, number one, it's, we're talking about a progressive disease that can lead to death. And if somebody commits suicide, they wanted to commit suicide. And at least what I've been told is you can lead to death. And if somebody commits suicide, they wanted to commit suicide. And at least what I've been told is you can't stop it.

It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. There are no magic words. There's nothing you could do. So, you know, people who've lost people to suicide, you know what I'm talking about? Like, you know, you can watch it happen in real time and there's just nothing you could do.

you can watch it happen in real time and there's nothing you could do. That being said, you know, being responsive to when it seems like someone's really reaching out for help and knowing that maybe even if it might, especially if it's someone who doesn't talk like this a lot of the time and sentences start coming out of their mouth, that if you weren't really paying attention, might not seem like a big deal, but for this person person it's kind of a novelist that all of a sudden that's happening. Now there that's when you can be a good listener and you know open up to them and hear what they're saying and see like oh share they're asking me for it is this them asking for help? And even if you're like, I don't know what to do, at least you can like start checking in on them, you know, start like help them understand that you're there for them,

and then hopefully get them into therapy, get them to a doctor, get them to a professional who can like see what's going on there. So that, and then there's hope. And even then there might not be hope actually. Doctors can't stop it. There's no, sometimes it just, that's the way it goes. But, I know that like being sensitive,

if somebody's like, all of a sudden hitting you up or reaching out to you that normally isn't like that, and just what's going on? How are you? And just listen. Which in general, the pressure or not is probably a good thing to do. Yeah. To truly listen.

It's like, are you okay? Yeah. Yeah. Because people have, you know, I don't, this whole thing of like cries for help, man. They don't, sometimes they just look like a weird text. You know, and you don't realize that for the person to send that fucking text, they've been thinking about it all morning. They've been just trying to get their phone up from the floor.

So I think that's it. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I've had friends kill themselves. And many of them, it wasn't like it was like I don't know I don't know what could have been done but there's still still a guilt in the back of your head for the rest of my life for sure always will be. Yeah I mean yeah but again what are you gonna do? But even that it's a part of love That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. You could yeah, and we you know, we feel guilt great part of grief is guilt

You know, I like you we always could have been better people We always could have been better people you get in a victor fronco much. Yeah, of course man search for meaning the invitation to live which for meaning? The invitation to live your life as though you'd been on your deathbed and it'd been given the chance to go back and not make the same mistakes. I return to that idea all the time, meaning it's like, okay, whatever you did before this moment, it was too late, but now this is where you can start. This is where you can start. And yeah, so I think that's for a neurotic like me, that's super important because otherwise, I'll just get like to lost in the weeds and shitty things I did in the past.

So speaking of Victor Franco, you and Hitler have the same birthday. Oh my god, you've really done your research. Well, I often Google famous people that have a birthday, same as Hitler. Yeah. And the person that shows up, you know, is you're face just really big. It's an empty bit. You and Hitler together just the pals next to each other.

No, it does not. No, but April 20th is an embarrassing birthday. For all my 420 friends out there, it's embarrassing. You share a birthday with Hitler. Well, it's 420s also has a humor and a lightness to it, right? It's embarrassing. Especially life is embarrassing. But if you like weed and you're born on

stoner day and you believe in reincarnation, do you realize like when you start connecting the dots there, if there is like a bar, where you get to choose your next life. So you're like a shitty generic NPC, you're like, of course, of course, you would be born on four points. Let me just computer get. For 20, man. Yeah. But isn't it interesting that on that same day, Hitler is also born. I don't know that there's a, there's a tension to that. And that Hitler's an artist. So it's like that hippie mindset could go anywhere.

Oh yeah, right. Like, yeah, you know, and I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine who's a wonderful skeptic. And we were talking about this, which is the thing where you started tributing to the day you were born, these kind of significance. And based on maybe people who were born on that day, maybe some other things.

And you know, it's like, think of how many people by now, and the course of human history have been born on April 20th. I mean, how many? Someone could probably do the math and come up with some number close to it. Now, this is how you know how rotten Hitler is. Like he's the one that like fucks up every, the birthday for everybody else. But I think where I heard that you're 420 is Wim Hof

episode because he's also 420. He's 420. Yeah. Yeah, so the Hitler, he's even wound him off. Look, in terms of owning the date. I think if anybody is like, well, obviously there's nothing you can do to like fix it. Hitler fucked up a lot of things. He fucked up that mustache. He fucked up the name Hitler. He fucked up for 20. And obviously he caused a horrific Holocaustocaust that by the way,

talk about these reverberations through time that were still experiencing. There's still people walking around fucking tattoos from that motherfucker. So, but, you know, Wem Hof, you know, people like Wem Hof, there's a little, they're like, whatever the opposite of Hitler is, you know? He too is creating ripples in the lake that hopefully respond to that of Hitler. Yeah, very cold fucking lake. And he's in, and yeah, so. Very cold lake.

Very, very cold lake that he's happily swimming around in. But yeah, you know, I try not to, I try not to think about like the Hitler thing on my birthday. Then my dad would just, every birthday, you would remind me that Hitler was born. Do you think all of us are capable of evil? Do you think you're one of the sweetest people I know? Just as a fan, do you think you're capable of evil?

Sure. Yeah, I mean, sure. Definitely. I think if you don't think that, you better watch out because come on. How do you think you're not capable of evil? And PS, if you're connected to the supply chain friend, you're doing evil. You're paying taxes.

You're supporting the worst things in the world. You know, like diffusion of responsibility, it's really curious, or the circumference of responsibility where it's like, bombs are going off somewhere that were paid for in some small part by you, some fractional, if you, if an American, if an American, if a drone is flying over a village in Afghanistan and drops a bomb and you pay taxes, then you could say you have fractional ownership over that drone.

You're a cog in the machine of evil in some sense. You're in and I know what you're going to say. Well, yeah, but I have to fucking pay taxes. Like I have no choice. There's sales tax. There's this or that. Take that attitude. It's the same thing that people on the battlefield when they're sending missiles and other tanks, they're thinking the same thing. It's just they're more directly responsible for what's going on. But in Buddhism, this idea of dependent, uh, co-horizing, uh, yeah, dependent,

co-horizing, we're all connected. We're all part of this matrix, we're all connected. Meaning, we all share responsibility for the evil in the world. So even if you aren't directly committing evil acts, if you're seeing something in the world and you're thinking that's evil. You're probably not quite as separated from that as you like to believe in some tiny infinitesimally. Guant. Way. You're connected. So. And there is a suns I've gotten to experience this over and over that one individual can actually make a gigantic difference. And so not only is there a diffusion responsibility, there's a kind of a paralysis about, well, what can I do?

Yeah. Sure. I understand, but what can I do? And I think just looking at history and also hanging out and becoming friends, but also interviewing people that have had a tremendous impact. You realize, you're just one dude. You're like, you're like a normal person. You're not that smart even. Like a lot of people aren't like in some kind of magical way where you have a big head that's figuring out everything. No, you just saw problems in the world and you're like, hey, I think I'm going to try to do something about this. You stay focused and dedicated to it for a long period of time and refuse to quit, refuse to listen to people that's how you that, this isn't like a possible. Here's how others have failed. Yeah, no, I'm gonna do it. That's it.

That's it. One person and then you kind of, the thing is when there's one person that keeps pushing forward that way, there's humans are sticky. They, other people fall them around and they're like, I'll help. I'll help and then the other people help and then the cool people all gathered together because they kind of get excited about this way. Holy shit, we can actually make a difference and they form groups and then all of a sudden there's companies and nations that actually

make a gigantic difference. It's interesting and all starts with one person often. You know what, if I could push back slightly against that, it's never just one person. It's like, you know, nobody ever talks about, at least as far as I'm aware, you never hear about like Buddha's great-grandmother. You never hear about that. You never hear about that, but if not for that person, no, no Buddhism. You know, the people you're talking about, they are the, they're the tip of the iceberg

that pops up out of the ocean of history. You never see all the little things that helped that happen. To me, this is where the real, how do you help? What's something you can do? Recognize that first, that you might not even be aware of how much you're impacting people around you. You might think that that you're not or you might think surely not in a way that makes a big difference but you have no idea these tipping points and the that can lead to the emergence of an Einstein, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King.

We can go on and on a Dostoe Aski or whoever. And so I think that's where for me, it goes back to 10 to the part of the garden, you can touch and then, or even deeper than that, intention. It's just like an, I'm an idiot. So I need an idiot's intention, which is don't, if you, I heard that all you want to say,

if you can help, help, if you can't help, don't hurt. Simple, basic dummy rules so that you can, if possible, refrain from hurting, which might as well be a form of helping. And the help doesn't have to be this dramatic thing, these little acts of kindness. I don't know, they seem to have, maybe I believe in kind of karma, but they seem to have this, they can have this gigantic ripple effect. I don't know why that is. I just, I remember a lot of little acts

of kindness that people have done to me. And they, they, what do they do? When they feel me would joy and hope for the future, they give me faith in humanity. Yeah, that's somehow there's a partially dormant desire and are sort of collective intelligence to do good in the world. That most of us want to be good. That want to do good onto the world. That want there's a kindness that's kind of like begging to get out. You know, and those little acts of kindness do just that. And actually one of the reasons I love Austin and moved here is realizing just noticing those little acts of kindness do just that. And actually, one of the reasons I love Austin and moved here is realizing, just noticing

those little acts of kindness all around me, just for stupid reasons. These people being really nice. It's weird. And that kindness combined with an optimism for the future, it's amazing, it's amazing what that can build. Yes, yes, it's incredible. And I know what you're saying. It's like, you know, we, we moved to this great neighborhood. And at this point, I think three, maybe four of our neighbors, if like made food for us, that just shows up with like handwritten lists of like things they like to do in the area and their phone number if we need help and it's like holy shit. That's like that it might seem like a little act, but it feels like some kind of atomic love bomb just went off on your porch when you're looking at that like what the fuck.

Yeah. You made me a pie? This is incredible. Like this is incredible. So. And also it's another act to accept that kindness. With it's like a lot of times when I was in the Gombaustin or San Francisco, certain big cities,

you can think like, oh, okay, well, they're trying to like, somehow, that's not an act of kindness, that's some kind of a transactional thing to build up. But it's like a career move for networking, all that kind of stuff. But no, if you just accept it for what it is, your act of kindness, fucking Boston. It's the, yeah.

Because for me, I go the opposite route, because I'm not, even though there is a part of me that might be a little suspicious or something, where I go to push that shit back mentally is I'm like, I don't deserve this. If they knew what a piece of shit I am, you're going to bring me, I don't never bring cakes to my neighbors. I would not have made a cake. I don't know how to make anything.

I have time. I should be bringing shit to my neighbors. Why didn't I do that? I should have brought, I never do that. You're not careful. You can spiral into a vortex of self hate from the gifts. So you have to, yeah, you have to learn how to, in that circuitry, you have to learn how to like, excel.

I have that problem really big. Yeah, like, I don't deserve this. Like, I don't, I get so much love from people. I'm like, well, yeah, they love me because they don't know me. That's my brain, my little voice. You're not worthy of this kindness and all this kind of stuff. And that could be very, yeah, it can straighten you down. It could be debilitating. And also, it shuts the person down. You're talking. And that's the dog size that pushes them away too.

Yeah, it cuts off this fucking mystical circuitry. So like the best thing if that happens to you is like accept it joyfully. And just all that, whatever that thing inside of you, whatever that little thing is, you know, this is like in the meditation I do, it's an infuriatingly simple meditation, but when a thought emerges,

when you are resting your attention on your breath and then inevitably you think he'll lost in your thoughts. And when you catch yourself doing that, you think thinking. And then return your attention to the breath. So I like that. So that when that part of myself starts having its little neurotic semi-seasure, I can just go thinking. Whatever, it's just another thought.

And then eat the banana bread or whatever they gave you. What's the most wild psychedelic experience eat the banana bread or whatever they gave you. What's the most wild psychedelic experience you've ever had in a dream, in a vision? There's not to be a drug related. What's one that jumps to mind? That was like, holy shit, I'm happy to be alive. Is this life?

It's amazing. Yeah, yeah, okay, so... The one that pops the mind I've had a lot of psychedelic experiences But in this moment the one that pops to mind only because it goes back to what you're talking about about this Nege's idea of infinite return the the so I'm a burning man and Are you going to burn me on this time? I'm a burning man. And.

Are you going to Burning Man this time? I'm not. I mean, I have kids right now. I just want to be around them. My wife was being so cool about it. And she knows I love Burning Man. She's like, go to Burning Man. And I was gonna go.

And then I just, I just want to be around my kids as much as I can right now. But. I've never been to Burning Man. So I don't know how secret of it is that I mean because quite high profile folks go Yeah, everyone knows Elon Musk goes there. Isn't it pretty open? You got a boat You know that the most boat you know, there's a it's called art cars They all make art cars and like part of the part of the burn. What's so beautiful about it is like

You can't buy anything there, man. Like you, I heard, I don't know if this is changed. It's been a bit because of the pandemic, but the only thing you could buy was ice and coffee. And I think maybe that's changed. I heard some whisper that that changed. But so that means that it's a gifting economy is what they call it. And so people will just give you stuff, talk about having a struggle with deserving stuff, man, what are you gonna fucking do when the camp next to you is like every morning making the best iced coffee that you've ever had in your life.

And they just are giving it all away until it's all gone. What are you gonna do? It's the best ever. And then you're giving things to people. And then you learn stuff like you learn these really interesting lessons like one of the times I went there, got all these strawberries. It might not sound like a big deal, but when you're out there in the dust and you're not at one of like the like hardcore like luxury camps, which do exist out there, you know, you've got these like items where in my mind, I'm like, yeah, these are gonna be just for me and my

girlfriend, my special stash fruit and this or that. And then like two days in, you're walking around your camp with the strawberries that you were coveting and everyone's so happy to get like cold strawberries and you realize, oh my God, this feels so much better than the way I strawberry tastes. So you learn something experientially there, which is an incredible thing.

It's an incredible thing. Man, now I'm wishing I decided to go to Burning Man. Have you been in a few times? Yeah, I just know like, at least people were saying it was Elon Musk's boat. Like, yeah, like this, I think it was like a, it's like this massive, it's art cars. And it was this party on this thing. You could just anyone can go on the boat. Like no one's like, there's no guest list. You just go on there. I never saw them there, but you know, everyone's whispering, Elon Musk is here. There's a secrecy. There's all that kind of stuff because you probably have to respect it. But at the same time, it seems like the kind of people that go there. I mean,

I mean, the rules of the outside world are suspended in the sense that the crime, the aggression, the tensions, all of that seems to dissipate somehow. Not all the way. Not all the way. You know, you could look it up, you know, because like there is tension. There's a lot of tension there between It's called plug-in plays like you know Burning man like the history of Burning Man is fascinating. It has its roots in the Cacophony societies what it was called which is a sort of evolution of something that was I think it was called the

God like the San Francisco. Basically, there was like an art movement in San Francisco and I can't remember the name of it, maybe the Suicide Club or essentially like, they were really into urban exploration and meaning like breaking into like old abandoned buildings and stuff. But part of this, what this was was, you would prepare your life as though you were going to kill yourself. You would get all your affairs in order. You would get, so it's going back to what we were talking

about with the cancer diagnosis. You're like sort of putting yourself into that world of like, I'm gonna get all my affairs together as though this is it. And then there was like, I'm going to get all my affairs together as though this is it. And then there was some, I'm sorry for anyone listening if I'm butchering this, but I think there was some really cool initiation where they would blindfold you and they would take you into some of these abandoned buildings and you didn't know where you were walking, but they would say like, if you take one step to the left, you're going to die, you're going to fall off, you're going to fall. You're going to fall if you're going to fall. So please be

careful. So you're like in the moment, and then blindfold comes off. It's a big awesome party. This evolves into something called the Cacophony Society. There's a great book called Tales of the Cacophony Society for people listening. One of the members of the Cacophony Society was the author of Fight Club. And so if you've seen Fight Club, like you could see little ideas that were in the Coffinies Society, they were into Dadaism, which I don't know a lot about. I don't know, it's a philosophical art movement. And then so basically what was happening is like they kept burning increasingly large

effigies in San Francisco and they weren't allowed to do it. And so they took it out in the desert and they were basing it on something called a zone trip, which is like, you know, across this border, the rules of that old society are gone. And so that was the original burning man, which was these lunatics out in the desert, launching like burning pianos out of catapults through the air, doing like drive-by shooting ranges, like no rules, wild, magical, beautiful, insane madness, and then a grew, and grew, and grew, and grew, until you have Burning Man as it is today, which is still the most incredible thing.

I mean, obviously, anytime you have like a thing that's been around for a while, you're gonna get that. It's not like it used to be. It's not as free as it used to be. So this is that, but what's fascinating about Burning man, someone pointed this out to me, look on the ground. No trash, no cigarettes. The ethic of like picking up your shit there is like so intense. So it's not like the other festival you go to where there's just trash everywhere, shit scattered everywhere. It's clean.

People are picking up their stuff. People are like really being conscious of like, not fucking up the playa. So I'm sorry, don't get a burn, yapping about burning man, we won't stop. It'll be morning. But there's a power, but there is a power to culture propagating itself through the stories

that we tell each other. And that holds up for Burning Man. It's clear that the culture has stayed strong throughout the years. Yes. So many people, so many really interesting people, speak of Burning Man as like a sacred place they go to, to remind themselves about what's important.

That's so interesting. And it is. And it is. I mean, it's like, you know, there are all these stories of like, I love guru stories. I have a guru named Crowley Bob, but never met him. He was rhombus's guru, at least not in the flesh. But the story of the guru is if you're lucky, you meet this being that, and we're not talking about, you know,

whatever the run of the mill, like Charlotteson's out there, like I know for sure that people are in the world right now who, when you're around them, you, the thing you're talking about, the affirmation of the potential of humanity, and also just an acceptance of yourself and, you know, cultivate, like, seeing someone who's cultivated love or compassion or whatever, but in this way that is, I mean, you would almost, you would rather me that being than like a UFO land in your backyard.

It's like, it is the UFO. It's a person, but it's not. It's everybody and nobody and somehow they like end up conveying to you ideas that you may have heard a million times before, but somehow within the language itself is a transmission that permanently alters here. And so these people exist. I think you could argue that Burning Man, the total thing is a guru that a pilgrimages involve to get there. You like, it's not easy to get there. And when you get there, it's, it's going to teach you something. It's going to show you something. It's going to, and now what, maybe some of the stuff that shows you might not be great, but the community around you will,

like, will hold you as you're like, whatever the thing is that's coming out of you, it holds you as you're like, whatever the thing is, it's coming out of you, it's coming out of you. And even the simplest activities, the simplest exchange of words have, like, just like with the gurus, a profound impact somehow. Yeah. Something about that place. Yeah. Not to mention the insane synchronicities. Like insane synchronicities there.

And I think like, you know, to get back to the notion of sentience as a byproduct of harmonized, yet hyper complex system, I think synchronicities, like those kinds of systems are like lightning or odds for synchronicities. So crazy, not just because your high synchronicities happen that are impossible where you just have to deal with it and like you'll need something within a few minutes someone's like, oh here you go. And you mentioned, but by the way burning out because of a psychedelic experience, is it the strawberries or was it something else? What was the moment, yeah, those magical...

No, it was DMT. What definitely wasn't sh- What's the strawberries? Ah! No, I was... More potent. Yeah, I was like smoking DMT and... Like...

I saw, like, if you, in the midnight gospel, they're these bovar and creatures that have like a long neck and a lantern head. So like, I saw one of those things. And, um, and, you know, I thought it was funny and like ridiculous because you hear like all the Terrence McKenna stories of the self-transforming machine elves or all the purple or the magenta goddess everyone sees her. I'm like, so this is what I get. Fucking cow with a lantern head. Like that's where my brain is at and interacting with this

molecule. So then like I look I look away and again this is DMT so when I say look away do I mean with my eyes shut I look away or eyes open I look away I think eyes shut so it sounds weird to say look away but however you want to put it, that's what I did. And I look back. And it's still there. Only now it's, you know, because usually in like when you're having those kinds of visions, they go away pretty quickly. Yeah. This thing's like moved, like shambled ahead, maybe a few steps, just like a cow, just like a cow, and then that was when the, you know, all the stories you hear about it, like going through some kind of tuber, some kind of light tunnel, like a water slide made of light, it's increasingly familiar.

That's the wildest part of it. It's like, oh, I know this place. Not like, oh, I've seen this in like, you know, on like, bonk stickers, but like, oh, yeah, this is that place you go to. You just remember, oh, this place. And then it was like, I was in some kind of, I don't know how to put it, a chamber, a technological chamber, some kind of super computer, some kind of nucleus that was technological.

And it was inviting, there was an invitation of like, comment, like come deeper into, come deeper in. And you can talk to whatever it is over there. You don't talk, but there's a communication. And I communicated, but my friends, I don't, I love my friends. I guess I had some sense in that moment that it would mean complete obliteration or Who knows what and the response that it gave back was you can always go back there and That's when I open my eyes and back totally, you know and ever since then that that's caused me to revise my thinking on reincarnation, the idea that you die and you start as a baby and then live your life again. It goes right, and what we were talking about, that maybe data, the shit I saw in nitrous

oxide, I don't feel dumb that my epiphanies are all related to drugs, but not all of them are a lot of them. But this notion of like, oh, is it that we're imprinting into the medium of time space, every thing we do, and that that is a permanent imprint, a frame that upon death can be accessed in the same way we can pull up pictures on our phone or computers and not only access but experienced. As though, in other words, you could just jump in. You're still going to have your memories. It's going to give you a the illusion of having been a kid and gotten to that frame but no you just decided to go back there nostalgia whatever and yeah you can jump around freely in space and time yeah yeah you can go in and out of time space but when you the problem is when you go into time space it's time so it's going to

feel sticky it's going to feel like you've been here forever because you've dropped back onto the track that Nietzsche's talking about. And I guess one of the qualities of dropping into that frame is that you forget your higher, higher dimensional identity. What happened to the cow with the lantern? Was that goodbye? was that goodbye? You write to me later sometimes. Never got again. Never. Never saw it again. But I put it in, we put it in the midnight gospel.

You know, like Pendleton was like such a genius and he was, he drew it for me and then it just ended up as a part of the show. But by the way, I have to admit that it's a big family years. I haven't watched the midnight gospel because I've been waiting. It sounds like he's doing stupid things. But ever since you talked to maybe two years ago with Joe about it, I've been waiting to do to watch it with like a special person on mushrooms. That's been in my to-do. I don't know. of course you don't have to be a mushrooms to enjoy it, but for some reason I put it into my head that this is something I want to do with somebody

else like experience it and get in the wild. Because visually, I mean, I watched a bunch of it just a little bit here and there, but it's just visually such an interesting experience. Thank you. Combined with everything else, obviously, the ideas, the voices and so on. But just visually, it's like a super psychedelic version of Rick Morty or something like that. Like, you know, like farther out, while they're out there. Yeah, man. That's Pendleton. You know, these people, I mean, like, I was part of that in the sense that Pendleton

gave every, like, one of the reasons he's like such a genius and great at making stuff is like, he's like, he really does a good job of just like de-hierarchizing potential, like hierarchies that can appear. You know, someone has to be like driving the bus, and that was Pendleton, but he lets, he's so inclusive. There's a real punk rock thing that he's doing, which is like, he'll take everything, and it kind of mixes its way into the show. But one of the things, you know, in animation, it can get really strict with like drawing the characters and like

the like trying to create continuity in the way the character looks like and it can get really brute for the animator, it can get brutally precise like it has to be precise but he figured out that if you just sort of, it's not like obviously like Clancy had to look like Clancy through the whole show, but if you allow the various people animating it to sort of have their own spin on it, then suddenly it creates a very psychedelic, you know, the show looks more psychedelic

because it looks more organic and also the amount of time. I had no idea also the amount of time. I had no idea the amount of time that goes into making digital art look like that is it's insane. The amount of work in comping that stuff is just crazy. It's crazy. Generally the amount of time it takes, even just like a painting, when you, I really enjoy watching like artists do a time lapse and you realize how much effort just into a single image goes into it. You know, hours and hours and hours sometimes days, sometimes weeks and months.

And then you just get to see and work, but they lose themselves in the craftsmanship of it and the rhythm of it. And because they're focused on the, we're talking about robotics earlier, on the low details. Most of the time isn't spent looking at the big picture of the final result. It's looking at the little details there and so on. But nevertheless, they're able to somehow constantly channel the big picture of the final result. My God. Yeah. The respect day after animators, it's like, dear God, the, it's the craziest thing when you watch it, when you see what it, what it looks like and how much time goes into it and how zen they have to be because like, no matter what, you're gonna have to cut stuff man and when you're cutting like a few seconds of animation

That was someone's like month maybe you know and like they they they understand but still it's like whoa It's brutal and so they they have like this Zen Outlook on it which is really cool and they watch podcasts That's the other cool thing when you realize like oh, they're listening to podcasts or like which is really cool. And they watch podcasts, that's the other cool thing. When you realize like, oh, they're listening to podcasts or like, that's really cool to see that aspect of it too. But yeah, man, I, you know. Yeah, your voice is in the ears of a lot of interesting people.

It's not. It's more, too. And I, you know. Hello, interesting person. Hello, CIA animators. Eating delicious food in the cafeteria. I'm on your side. He's against you. I'm with you. Yeah. Do you have a beer? Therefore, you must be wise. Do you have advice for young people? High school, college?

About how to carve their path through life. I don't have a life, a career that's successful, that they can be proud of or a life they can be proud of. Man, see this is what sucks about my life is that it's been very random and very spontaneous. So unfortunately, I don't get that thing where I could be like, well, who's what I did? Yeah. Because it's like, I inherited $12,000 from my grandmother. Here's what you do, kids. You inherit $12,000 when your grandmother dies.

And then you need to be dumb enough to think that that $12,000 is gonna help you live in LA for a year. So then what you do is you move to LA with $12,000 and you find a shitty place that you live at and then you use that money to buy acid and synthesize it. So then you run out of the money and then you Then you have to get a job And so then because you think it'll be fun to work at a comedy club

You get a job at the comedy store. And then, you know, that's how it happened for me. And none of it, there wasn't, I never was never the confidence to be like, oh, I'm going to be a stand up comedian. No way. I just thought it'd be cool to work in that building. I thought the building would look cool. And so, but then like, because like you work at the comedy store,

you get stage time, it's, it's the reason like you work there is at least in those days, because it's not like they're paying like a shit ton of money for you to answer phones at a comedy club. And so, you know, I started going on stage and then like I just got lucky because Rogan saw me have like a very rare good set. I didn't know he was in the room or out of bomb, you know, and then like, because he thought I was funny and he like talking to me, he starts taking me on the road with him. And then, you know, so I don't know, man, I think, uh, was there an element to there's a beautiful weirdness to you as a human being? weirdness to you as a human being, was there a pressure to conform ever to hide yourself from the world or the $12,000 in the asset give you the confidence you needed to be yourself? Oh no, I don't like I didn't still, I know. I think sure there's that pressure and like

you know, whenever you're beginning to really differentiate from your parents, but then you go back to hang out with your parents, you'll feel that it's not like they even want you to conform, but you'll just, you could slip into that whatever that was. So I remember that when I would go back and like, visit them and stuff and surely conformity or the pressure to like not be individual or whatever it's it's everywhere man. Do you think you made your

parents proud? I know, I know, no. Well I think that when my mom died, I felt successful in the sense that I was able to support my, I was making money from doing stand-up. I didn't need help. I was supporting myself with art and doing good what I thought was great then. I think she had witnessed me literally failing, which is by the way, I think part of you want to be an artist or successful, you kind of have to fail. There was a guaranteed route from sucking to not sucking or from like the Neophyte phase of whatever the

R4M is and you know some intermediary phase then I think a lot more people would do it but there really is no guarantees and especially the stand-up comedy it's like you'd have to be a maniac to want it to think that that's going to work out for you. So, you're going to... There are obviously exceptions, but for me, it was like a long slog. You know, and that's scary for a mom. So, but that being said, when she was dying, like, she did recognize that I was like not slogging anymore. And as she did say, she said, you did it. And that's cool. But in, you know, I would love for it to see me now, like

now I'd be way cooler. But maybe she does. I don't know. She's listening to your podcast elsewhere and the other in the Bardo. Yeah, however long that lasts reconfiguring the whole process to start again. Use a father no, how did that change you? Yeah, that's the big change, man, that's the thing. You made you made a few biological entities. Yeah, I made biological entities. I mean, I came in my wife, let's face it. Like, I would love to say I made them but the womb whipped them up. But it is the, yeah, it's the best.

I've never experienced anything like it before. It is the, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. And that's why I was able to answer your Nietzsche question with like, hell yes. Fuck yes. That's great. I get to be around my kids again. I'll always be around my kids. I always be around my children. That's incredible. That's the joy. So like, so for me, the part of myself that used to torture myself more,

specifically like around like my mom dying, feeling like I wasn't there enough for her, wishing that I had spent more time with her, wishing I'd spent more time with my dad, wishing that looking back at how I was just so desperately trying to evade the fact that she was dying, and in that evasion, successfully, like, distanced myself from her in ways that I really wish I hadn't. I'm just saying that because it's one of my regrets.

It's like a big regret. I have a lot of little regrets, but that's a big one. And so when you have kids, you look back at everything you did and you think like, fuck, if I'd gone left at that point instead of right, if I had eaten, who knows, what if I'd eaten like a turkey sandwich when my balls were creating the cum that was gonna make my kids? Would I have a different kid? Would this being not exist in my life?

Like you start looking at everything and you realize like, thank God, thank God for every single thing that happened to me because it all led up to this. And oh, for me, that is the... That's... It's like... It frees you and it liberates you because you realize, like, oh, wow, it's clumsy and selfish and at times rotten, as I've been in my life, that did not impede the universe at all from allowing these two beautiful beings

to exist in the world. Maybe all of it enabled, all of it, like a concert perfectly led up to that little beautiful moment. Is there a ways you would like to be a better father? Oh, yeah, for sure. Absolutely. There's a actual, I read something in a book. It's called Good Enough.

The mantra for a parent. Good enough, because when you are in the presence of something you love more than you've ever experienced love, you, you, you want to be perfect. Like you want to be, I can't, I got to work, man. I got to go on the road. I've got to work. I got to support the family. So that means I have to work. Like I work, you know, you know, what it's like having a podcast, you fucking work, man. And you know, it's a full time job because I've all, you know, I do stand up too and all the other stuff. So I feel sometimes I feel like, oh my God, I want to spend more time with them. Like I should be spending more time with them.

But then also I want to create, I want to work. I like being the provider. I want to create, I want to work. I like being the provider. So that's something I feel guilty about, you know, right now. And struggling how to balance that correctly. Yeah. And meanwhile time just marches on. Woohoo.

It just goes. It goes. And all of this will be forgotten. Both you and I, but forgotten in time. That's what I say to them every time I'm putting them to bed. We we will be lost in the sands of time. You know that but you know this poem. You know that poem Aussie Mandeus? Yes. Can I read you a poem? Okay. Can I read you a poem? Oh, okay. Let's end our conversation to poem.

I love it. It's by Pierce Bish Shelley, probably mispronouncing the name, but I think you'll get the right way to pronounce it. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Aussie Mandeus. I met a traveler from an antique land who said,

To vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, Whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Telled that its sculptor, well those passions read, Which yet survived, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed, and on the pedestal these words appear. My name is Ozzy Mandius, King of Kings.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Nothing beside remains, around the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless in bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away. All gone. They hold the king. Look at my works, ye mighty and despair. And despair. and despair, and despair. Even though we'll be forgotten in the sense of time, Duncan, I'm just so glad that you exist and you put so much love into the world over the past many years that I've gotten and just to enjoy it by being your fan. And thank you so much for continuing that and for sharing a bit of love with me today.

Can we be friends? Let's be friends. Real time in the real world, in 3D space. Nothing is real, but yes, in this particular slice of the multi-dimensional world we'll live in, it will be an honor and a pleasure. Thank you for having me on your share. I love you, Duncan. I love you.

Thank you, Lex. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Duncan Trussell. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Duncan Trussle himself. You are essentially just the cloud of atoms that will eventually be aerosolized by time. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. Thank you.