Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
Speaker 1: It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
Speaker 1: it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
Speaker 1: on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
Speaker 1: buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
Speaker 1: see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
Speaker 1: I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
Speaker 1: you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
Speaker 1: The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
Speaker 1: end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
Speaker 1: the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They're available
Speaker 1: at the Craig Ferguson show dot Com slash tour or
Speaker 1: at your local outlet in your region. My name is
Speaker 1: Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I
Speaker 1: talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness
Speaker 1: on the podcast today, for my money, the most interesting
Speaker 1: and different and talented American performers to emerge in the
Speaker 1: last twenty years. She's really thoughtful, clever, interesting, talented. Well
Speaker 1: you're going to find all of this out. It's Rachel Bloom.
Speaker 1: May I compliment you first of all on your backcrack,
Speaker 1: which is amazing, and also the fact that you are
Speaker 1: dealing with a young child right now and you look
Speaker 1: fresh and young and upbeat and lovely, and I'm jealous.
Speaker 2: Well, I've slapped on some makeup just before I came
Speaker 2: on here, so and I had a glass of wine
Speaker 2: last night, which to me is six glasses of wine
Speaker 2: because I have no tolerance, so that means a lot
Speaker 2: that I look fresh now.
Speaker 1: You look great, and listen, I know what it's like
Speaker 1: to have a little kid. It's myke every time I
Speaker 1: see people and I'm in a hotel right now. When
Speaker 1: I see people in hotels with little kids, I always say,
Speaker 1: you get is anybody getting any sleep? And everybody I
Speaker 1: was like, no.
Speaker 2: It's all encompassing. She wasn't asleepover last night. So it
Speaker 2: was nice to go out and come home and to
Speaker 2: be like, oh my god, there's no one. I don't
Speaker 2: have to care for anyone in this house. I mean,
Speaker 2: that sounds very mean because I still have a husband
Speaker 2: and a dog.
Speaker 1: But to.
Speaker 2: Not be responsible for someone's life for one night because
Speaker 2: even when you're off the clock, you're on the clock.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you probably woke up panicked
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: It was weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I know. I've done it myself. Hey,
Speaker 1: here's what I have to tell you. I'm a little angry.
Speaker 1: I'm a little angry at you.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: Because because I'm watching death, let me do my spash.
Speaker 1: And you shouldn't make people cry and be scared in
Speaker 1: stand up comedy. That's I was scared. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Like when the death thing stopped, I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: fucking with me. Man, I don't like, did the audience
Speaker 1: know that was going to happen?
Speaker 3: No, no, it really. It really fucked with people.
Speaker 2: When the show, when we started trying it out, it
Speaker 2: was called like Rachel try some new stuff out and
Speaker 2: sees what happened.
Speaker 3: So people really had no idea.
Speaker 2: And then, of course, you know the country we live in,
Speaker 2: we kept cutting down the time that we revealed it
Speaker 2: was a plant so that people wouldn't be worried for
Speaker 2: their lives because the.
Speaker 3: Second someone say I'm death, you're like, well.
Speaker 2: What so that was everything Like yeah, so that was
Speaker 2: also like, Okay, the second we're going to hear him heckel,
Speaker 2: but the second he says I'm deaf, let's get him
Speaker 2: on Mike, so you know something's up.
Speaker 3: So that was something we worked on. But yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it fucked with people.
Speaker 2: And then when we called the show death, let Me
Speaker 2: do My people still thought it was real, but they
Speaker 2: knew something would be off about the show, but they
Speaker 2: thought it was They thought it was real, and then
Speaker 2: they grew to not trust anything in the show to
Speaker 2: the point where I had actual weird things happened in
Speaker 2: the show and a couple of actual hecklers.
Speaker 3: People assumed it was built in.
Speaker 1: That's kind of great, though, isn't that. I mean, even
Speaker 1: I first became aware of your work with crazy ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend like most people, I think, and I always thought,
Speaker 1: like I remember first the first episode of that show,
Speaker 1: going the fuck is happening? Why? And then it took
Speaker 1: me on and I love that. It reminded me of
Speaker 1: you ever seen the movie Train Spoton? No, all right,
Speaker 1: well you should see it. You really like it. It's about
Speaker 1: It's an upbeat tale of heroin addiction in Edinburgh in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I saw it a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a scene in that movie where you and
Speaker 1: McGregor as a drug addict drops.
Speaker 4: A a vial of heroin, a kind of anal heroine and
Speaker 4: put thing down a public bathroom and it's disgusting, but
Speaker 4: he knows the only way he can get the heroin.
Speaker 1: Is put his hand into the horrible toilet to get
Speaker 1: the heroin. And then when he goes into the toilet,
Speaker 1: he goes all the way into the toilet and he's
Speaker 1: swimming in this beautiful ocean in this toilet, and they
Speaker 1: play Brian ENO's Deep Blue Sea and and it's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: And when I saw crazy ex Girlfriend, I thought, whatever
Speaker 1: mcguffin in the head of Irvin Welsh that created that story.
Speaker 1: You have that too, You know that that?
Speaker 3: Oh well, thank you?
Speaker 2: And I didn't and I didn't even need heroin.
Speaker 1: Well, what I'm saying to you is maybe it's time,
Speaker 1: as your daughter gets a little older, maybe you start
Speaker 1: thinking about heroin, especially when she's on a sleepover. That
Speaker 1: would be that would be the time.
Speaker 3: That's the one.
Speaker 2: That's the thing.
Speaker 1: But it's an interesting thing because I was very taken
Speaker 1: with the special. I I don't know.
Speaker 2: That means a lot that I really obviously love you
Speaker 2: and respect you. That that means a lot to me.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, no, it was. It's fantastic anyone who
Speaker 1: fucks with a genre that is tired anyway, and stand
Speaker 1: up comedy, there's too many people doing it. It's like
Speaker 1: it's everybody's playing CF and G on the guitar. It's
Speaker 1: it's like, it's stop it, stop it, stop it. And
Speaker 1: then somebody comes along and throws in a huge minor
Speaker 1: chord and a five eight drum thing, and suddenly the
Speaker 1: whole world opens up again, and I'm now enthusiastic again
Speaker 1: about stand up comedy. And you have no idea how
Speaker 1: jaded I am that suddenly you see somebody doing it,
Speaker 1: you go, fuck, there's more room again. There's somebody's breaking
Speaker 1: it again. It's great.
Speaker 3: Oh well that really means a lot to me. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Well, it's the truth. And why was you paid a
Speaker 1: high price for it? Though? Like, yeah, when you talk
Speaker 1: about the death of Adam and the show, that to
Speaker 1: me is it's such a weird, a weird twist on
Speaker 1: the I don't mean, is it stand up comedy? Is
Speaker 1: that what it is?
Speaker 3: It's like stand up.
Speaker 2: I always say it's it's a stand up show wrapped
Speaker 2: in a storytelling show wrapped in a one act play
Speaker 2: kind of. So it's kind of kind of veers more
Speaker 2: into storytelling as it get, especially when I get into
Speaker 2: just like, all right, my character is talking about this
Speaker 2: for the first time, right, so it's like, okay, let's
Speaker 2: just go day by day what happened. And then you're
Speaker 2: in real storytelling where it's like, all right, I'll just
Speaker 2: tell you about this terrible week where I gave birth,
Speaker 2: my friend died, and so like that's where it gets
Speaker 2: like it gets very storytelling in that granularness.
Speaker 1: It's also it's a very kind of horrible, uh convenient
Speaker 1: for story thing to event. I mean, it's a cataclysmic
Speaker 1: kind of because I've been you know, I've had friends
Speaker 1: that I obviously everyone hasn't, and I've been at two
Speaker 1: live births, both of my children. My god, they're so weird.
Speaker 3: They're so weird.
Speaker 1: It's like that weird kind of energy, like somebody's coming.
Speaker 2: It's definitely and it's bloody, and it's there's nothing else
Speaker 2: in life that's a central life event where it's also
Speaker 2: going to be gory. Yeah, unless you have really good
Speaker 2: birthday parties, I guess, but it's like gruesomeness is part
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: And so you're already in this.
Speaker 2: Very fleshy, bloody place that feels very primal.
Speaker 1: And there's poop too. Let's be honest, there's poop.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 3: I'm astounded with me there wasn't.
Speaker 1: Poop, but oh stop, stop, you're amongst friends.
Speaker 2: Of course, there was no one told me the nice
Speaker 2: to you, but maybe I would have been fine if
Speaker 2: there were. But you know, there's everything I mean, And
Speaker 2: there was a my husband was trying not to look,
Speaker 2: but there was a mirror on the other side of
Speaker 2: the room where you could see everything. And I didn't
Speaker 2: really see the birth because everyone was blocking it. But
Speaker 2: after she was born and they took her to the
Speaker 2: NICU and the placenta was still in, I caught a
Speaker 2: glimpse of open wound placenta umbilical court.
Speaker 1: It was its unbelievable. Isn't that crazy? And everything I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly for a mother is physically astonishing for you know, change,
Speaker 1: But everything in my life changed, everything that my entire
Speaker 1: perspective the world changed when I became a father, and
Speaker 1: I you know, and I hear people say, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: like not having kids, and I'm like, funne, that's your choice.
Speaker 1: It's it's okay. But I always say, you know that
Speaker 1: all the great philosophers in history, none of them had children.
Speaker 1: That's actually no, it's not true. But I say it
Speaker 1: to people because I want to shame them. But it really,
Speaker 1: what I think it is is everything you know that
Speaker 1: people say that. There's lazy assumptions that I think people
Speaker 1: I made before I had kids. One of them was,
Speaker 1: you know, people say that thing, well, we were born
Speaker 1: alone and we die alone. And I've been at two
Speaker 1: live births, and as far as I can tell, nobody
Speaker 1: is born alone. There's at least two people in the room.
Speaker 1: There's nobody's born alone. It's utter bullshit. And I I
Speaker 1: just everything about my perspective in life started to change
Speaker 1: law after my first son was born. It is weird?
Speaker 1: Is that? What's happening to you?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent?
Speaker 2: I mean I say a little in the special where
Speaker 2: you know, ever since I given birth, a story of
Speaker 2: a child being hurt anywhere messes with me. I got
Speaker 2: into it a little bit basically, yeah, like it kind
Speaker 2: of makes sense. I know, it's not technically true that
Speaker 2: like philosophers, all the great philosophers didn't have kids, because
Speaker 2: before you have kids, there is an impartiality that you
Speaker 2: can have on the world. There's a moral impartiality that
Speaker 2: you can have. There's this scene in the HBO show
Speaker 2: The Last of Us. Did you watch it?
Speaker 1: I did? I loved that show.
Speaker 2: So remember when it's like someone basically turns in the
Speaker 2: head of this rebel alliance in exchange for cancer medication
Speaker 2: for his brother, and he's like, I wanted to prevent
Speaker 2: a child from dying. And Melanie Lynsky's character goes, children die,
Speaker 2: children die literally all the time, this wasn't worth it.
Speaker 2: And before you have a kid, you can say that, right,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a certain amount you can zoom out
Speaker 2: from the world and look at history and say, yeah,
Speaker 2: well life is gruesome. Life is horrible. And I had
Speaker 2: such a strong stomach for I don't true crime.
Speaker 1: For I went to the Museum of Death, and I.
Speaker 2: Was the Museum of Death in la where it's the
Speaker 2: most gruesome crime scene photo and it's just you're You're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that is what it is.
Speaker 3: And then I had a kid and it just blew
Speaker 3: that wide open.
Speaker 2: There's no, there's no, it's it's so much harder to
Speaker 2: be impartial because you would do anything for this kid,
Speaker 2: and you would would Would I turn in the founder
Speaker 2: of a rebel alliance to get my child cancer treatment?
Speaker 1: Fuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, in an absolute second. So you're led by your
Speaker 2: heart and emotion. And now the media that I can
Speaker 2: consume has come completely not completely, but it's really really
Speaker 2: done in almost one eighty where that's much. I'm just
Speaker 2: so much more sensitive and empathetic, but like in a
Speaker 2: in a painful way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I can't watch I used to watch
Speaker 1: British detective shows about you know, Crumbly Detectives, and they
Speaker 1: have this thing going on with the Brittige a Law
Speaker 1: of Bridge detective shows that's the murder of a child.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I can't do it. I'm no,
Speaker 1: I'm no. Or a child is even missing, maybe the
Speaker 1: child's going to be okay, but you don't know, but
Speaker 1: the child missing, that's enough. I don't want to see it.
Speaker 1: And it is a it is an odd thing, and
Speaker 1: it's not because it's not because I don't know what happens.
Speaker 1: I was able to consume that media before you, like
Speaker 1: you say, but it's because I can't stand it. It's
Speaker 1: no entertainment, it's not it doesn't. All it does is
Speaker 1: make me feel awful all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that's what. It's not even And it's not
Speaker 2: even making me think in the way that dark that
Speaker 2: darker shit used to make me like okay, this is dark,
Speaker 2: but like, okay, it's teaching me a lesson. I'm so
Speaker 2: consumed by the emotion. I'm like, I'm not learning a
Speaker 2: lesson from this right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny that as well. I think even when
Speaker 1: I when I have dark thoughts about my own mortality,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, par no die now, because I
Speaker 1: would really upsett the kids. It's like, I'll be fine,
Speaker 1: but whatever happens to me happens to me.
Speaker 2: But I would be Oh, you start to have this
Speaker 2: narrative of like, oh, yes, sometimes when I get on
Speaker 2: a plane alone and I'm like, oh, this is the
Speaker 2: movie in my daughter's life where it's the last time
Speaker 2: she saw her mom.
Speaker 1: Oh I do right, because they do that in.
Speaker 2: So many where it's like, oh, this is the last
Speaker 2: time and this is the story she's going to tell
Speaker 2: herself now where it's like, goodbye, I'm going to Vegas.
Speaker 2: And then it's like and I never saw her again.
Speaker 1: So you're telling me you left your daughter to go
Speaker 1: to Vegas. What Vega?
Speaker 3: I did go to Vegas alone a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: That is true, Navy.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 2: There was a skeptic There was a convention of skeptics,
Speaker 2: and my friend was speaking at it, and I and
Speaker 2: I went for literally a night.
Speaker 1: First of all, I have to take you back because
Speaker 1: I need to know what happens at a convention of
Speaker 1: skeptics and why they would meet in Las Vegas to gamble.
Speaker 1: That seems like a contradiction.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the Vegas, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: Vegas is just where you meet because they have good
Speaker 2: convention centers and it's well, it's not even somewhat central.
Speaker 2: It's still West Coast.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But it was a convention for the Center for Inquiry,
Speaker 2: held at the Horseshoe, Las Vegas, and it was just
Speaker 2: a bunch of panels.
Speaker 3: And speeches about science.
Speaker 2: And skepticism and I'm I'm really really into this and
Speaker 2: I'm I'm a I'm a big old skeptical atheist. And
Speaker 2: it was like absolutely, my jam and my friend Rena
Speaker 2: was there speaking about she's really really good. She's actually
Speaker 2: a book called The Gospel of Wellness that's awesome about
Speaker 2: the pseudoscience of the wellness industry and why we and
Speaker 2: why we turned to pseudoscience and why even now with
Speaker 2: all the information on the Internet, people are still so
Speaker 2: mired in false truths.
Speaker 1: And also, yeah, have you ever read The Demon Haunted World? Yes?
Speaker 2: I have. It's fantastic because it's it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World for those who haven't
Speaker 1: read it.
Speaker 2: And I still think about I still think about the
Speaker 2: thing he says, which is, you know when people talk
Speaker 2: about and this is more about paranormal phenomena. But he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, so imagine your.
Speaker 3: You're in a house.
Speaker 2: You're looking at a glass sliding door, and there's a
Speaker 2: fireplace behind you. During the day, you would see the backyard.
Speaker 2: During the day, the sun starts to set. Suddenly what
Speaker 2: you see is the reflection in the glass of the
Speaker 2: fireplace behind you. But you've been looking out the window
Speaker 2: all day, so it just looks like suddenly there's a
Speaker 2: fire outside. And he compares that to the ways our
Speaker 2: brain tricks us into thinking we might be seeing things
Speaker 2: that aren't there and hearing things that aren't there.
Speaker 3: I still use that as an example.
Speaker 1: There's a quote that he does at the start of
Speaker 1: the book which I think is fantastic. He's talking about
Speaker 1: a taxi driver that he gets who's asking him about, so,
Speaker 1: where is Atlantis? You're Carl Sagan, where's Atlantis? And he's like, dude,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about, you know, the
Speaker 1: city under the sea. And he's like, I'm you know.
Speaker 1: But he then he goes into a quote from Leon Trotsky, who,
Speaker 1: to be honest, not my favorite guy in the world.
Speaker 1: But Leon Trotsky is talking about the rise of the
Speaker 1: Nazis in Germany, and he's talking about you know, I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing it until the end, I only remember them. But
Speaker 1: the paraphrase in that Trotsky says, you know, they have
Speaker 1: pilots who wear amulets to give them good luck while
Speaker 1: they have, you know, while they pilot these magnificent machines
Speaker 1: of engineering. And he talks about all these different people
Speaker 1: who do superstitious things while doing very scientifically advanced things.
Speaker 1: And then this is the thing that he zeros In
Speaker 1: to make it about the rise of the Nazis. He
Speaker 1: says this quote, which I still find chilling. He says
Speaker 1: about human beings, what remarkable reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance,
Speaker 1: and savagery. And I was like, whoa, And I feel
Speaker 1: like that's accurate. Even now, we have remarkable amounts of darkness, ignorance,
Speaker 1: and savage y. People are very on fire right now.
Speaker 2: Oh it's all I mean to put it bluntly, to
Speaker 2: make me sound like I'm ninety. We weren't ready for
Speaker 2: the Internet.
Speaker 1: Anyone's I'm not ready for it.
Speaker 2: Not I'm not ready because it's takes advantage of tribalism,
Speaker 2: which is which is in us. Like, I think I
Speaker 2: might be wrong, but I feel like I read somewhere
Speaker 2: the reason Homo sapiens is the dominant, you know, the
Speaker 2: only dominant kind of species of our kind, is because
Speaker 2: we just killed everyone else because it was you know,
Speaker 2: the Neanderthals were wiped out, we.
Speaker 1: Killed I think that I also heard that same study,
Speaker 1: though I also heard that we actually just shagged the
Speaker 1: Neanderthals and we're all like their genes stopped coming through
Speaker 1: and everybody got their sex on and the humans came
Speaker 1: through more. You almost sapiens came through more than Neanderthals.
Speaker 1: But I might have just been looking at completely erroneous
Speaker 1: report or amazing.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a beautiful mix.
Speaker 1: I think it might be a little bit of both,
Speaker 1: a little call them be. But let me take you
Speaker 1: back to Las Vegas, because it's to to me because
Speaker 1: I don't think I know enough about skeptics modern skepticism,
Speaker 1: and I would like you to take me through it.
Speaker 2: Well. I think it's still finding of what is it
Speaker 2: general generationally now because I would say it was overwhelmingly
Speaker 2: a lot of people who are Gen X or boomers,
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of skepticism that's still about UFO
Speaker 2: paranormal debunking because because it's very much in it's very
Speaker 2: much in conversation with with like New Age stuff that
Speaker 2: came about in like the sixties the seventies, right, So
Speaker 2: UFOs are less of a thing now, But if you
Speaker 2: were born in the fifties, you know Roswell like, there's
Speaker 2: so there's so much about that aspect of the paranormal
Speaker 2: that that they're still debunking, which is which is very interesting.
Speaker 2: But I think what was really cool about this is
Speaker 2: My friend Rena and some other people spoke more about
Speaker 2: taking a skeptic lens into health trend and into There
Speaker 2: was this really really interesting speech I forget who it was,
Speaker 2: of this journalist comparing Gwyneth Paltrow Goop culture of that
Speaker 2: kind of pseudoscience like put this jade egg up up
Speaker 2: your vagina to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of parallel with that with what's
Speaker 2: going on with now the Manisphere. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've heard about the manisphere, which is like it's it's
Speaker 2: like I feel like Joe Rogans like kind of a
Speaker 2: part of this whe where it's just like all of
Speaker 2: these things you can do to make yourself as manly
Speaker 2: as you can.
Speaker 3: Like people are drinking their piss.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There's this one guy who's like people are fully drink
Speaker 2: people are fully drinking their own fermented piss because they're like,
Speaker 2: this will make you man this will make you like manly,
Speaker 2: and it's also why people are It kind of goes
Speaker 2: into people are chewing really tough gum to get a
Speaker 2: chiseled jaw, Like that's a big thing now to like
Speaker 2: look as manly as possible and it's just the kind
Speaker 2: of flip of the Gwyneth Paltrow stuff where it's like
Speaker 2: pseudosciencey stuff to be the best that you can be
Speaker 2: and be the most of your I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: all about like primal right, like go, let's go back
Speaker 2: to being a man. Like there's this there are these
Speaker 2: influencers who are like I only eat raw me and
Speaker 2: look at me.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm fucking shredded.
Speaker 2: And then it turns out he's doing a lot of steroids.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: But it's the same thing where it's on the female
Speaker 2: pseudo science and where it's like, you know, I only
Speaker 2: eat grass and spring water. Also I can afford a
Speaker 2: trainer six times a week, So that's the bigger that's
Speaker 2: the probably the bigger thing.
Speaker 1: But that does not plato archetypes. Those things plea into
Speaker 1: archetypes ofticsthatics as well, like the you know, like if
Speaker 1: a square jaw makes you more mad. But you know,
Speaker 1: David boy was a man, Andy Warhol is a man,
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man. You know, there are there
Speaker 1: are men who look different. I mean, I guess it's
Speaker 1: like to look like a cartoon man.
Speaker 2: Maybe to me, I think it well, it all looks.
Speaker 2: It also relates to a lot of the cultural thing
Speaker 2: of like men need to serve themselves, men need to
Speaker 2: be masculine. It's a thing that's I think more on
Speaker 2: more on the what you would call the right, although
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that means anymore, but the
Speaker 2: idea of like men need to be men and women
Speaker 2: need to be women, and the world will be more
Speaker 2: organized once men are empowered again to embrace their true power,
Speaker 2: uh and potential. As opposed to the journalist was like,
Speaker 2: as opposed to me, he's like, I'm a I'm a
Speaker 2: soy boy beta cook. He's like, I'm their nightmare. Uh
Speaker 2: So it's it's like whatever, Like I guess they would
Speaker 2: consider David Bowie a soy boy beta cook.
Speaker 1: See that's interesting because I my definition of masculinity is
Speaker 1: like aspirational masculinity for me as a man is individualism
Speaker 1: is fuck you, you know. This is how we all have
Speaker 1: to be. Fuck you, It's how we have to beat
Speaker 1: This is how I am. You know. So if I'm
Speaker 1: like and your label beat a coup, fuck your beat
Speaker 1: a cup label, I'm a man, you know, and I
Speaker 1: kind of I don't like to allow people who have
Speaker 1: a different view of the world than me to give
Speaker 1: me a name that I then have to adopt.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, that's all the internet is. Yeah, No,
Speaker 2: all the Internet is people giving other people.
Speaker 1: Names that you have that you have to take. And
Speaker 1: I think if you have if you have a name,
Speaker 1: no matter what part of the spectrum you're on the
Speaker 1: political sphere, you and if you have a name for
Speaker 1: a group of other people, you need to take a
Speaker 1: fucking look yourself, because people are people. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's what fascinates me is that I always thought
Speaker 1: the Internet was a bit like show business, that it's
Speaker 1: it's only dangerous if you take it seriously, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you take it seriously, it can kill you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I really love and crazy ex girlfriend.
Speaker 2: We did a whole story about a character getting sober,
Speaker 2: and we actually watched some of your work in the room.
Speaker 2: You did a great monologue. It was when Britney Spears
Speaker 2: was your melt down, and because we were talking about
Speaker 2: what you learn in AA and and and to be
Speaker 2: non judgmental and how and that you were saying, like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say she's not cool.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't judge, I don't I don't want to say
Speaker 2: what she is, and I just love I don't know,
Speaker 2: I really see that that kind of non judgmental space
Speaker 2: and what you're saying right now, and and uh, it's
Speaker 2: just really cool. It's really cool to see like evolved
Speaker 2: recovery and how it continues to clearly like affect your
Speaker 2: worldview in all sorts of awesome ways.
Speaker 1: I think that it's the idea of it, thank you.
Speaker 1: But I think the idea of it is that the
Speaker 1: idea of evolution, I think has It's interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: people say that the evolution and I think this is
Speaker 1: part of this masculine thing right now that you know,
Speaker 1: the strongest survive, and that's not true. The strongest don't survive.
Speaker 1: Mammoths are plenty strong. Sabertooth tiger's strong. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not about strong, it's those who adapt survive. If you
Speaker 1: can adapt to the changing environment, you survive. And so
Speaker 1: I think that by if you extrapolate those that adapt survive,
Speaker 1: then the intelligence survive. That's an optimistic worldview, I know,
Speaker 1: but I think that I feel, like you know, Hannah
Speaker 1: was Hannah Rent said, if eovele had triumphed, even good
Speaker 1: wouldn't exist or something like that. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that was hard it was someone else. I mean, she
Speaker 1: said a lot of very clever things, and but so
Speaker 1: of a lot of other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: but you know better than better than me if that
Speaker 2: was her, but but that, but yeah, that's a really
Speaker 2: good Has anyone.
Speaker 3: Else made that point?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure you're not the first.
Speaker 2: Person to point out that adaptation is actually a better
Speaker 2: quality than just brute strength, because yeah, like the reason
Speaker 2: that mammals uh became superior and that there was like
Speaker 2: mammalian supremacy in the first place is because when the
Speaker 2: asteroid hit and killed off the dinosaurs, all these little
Speaker 2: moles were living underground, right, And so that's why now
Speaker 2: we're here, and that's why mammals rose to the top.
Speaker 2: Without that, who the fuck knows where we'd be. We'd
Speaker 2: all be you know, feathered bird lizard people.
Speaker 1: You know, I've had a few nights. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was also going to say, if you asked certain
Speaker 2: corners of the internet, they'll say, well, okay, a lot
Speaker 2: of people I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's quite interesting because it also
Speaker 1: depends on your idea of what success is like, is
Speaker 1: your success as a species? Is it numbers? Is it
Speaker 1: sheer numbers because of it as ants when you know?
Speaker 1: Or is it? Is it? Uh? Is it intelligence? Is
Speaker 1: Is it a soul? Is there a soul? I mean,
Speaker 1: what did the skeptics say about the soul? Is there
Speaker 1: is there a soul?
Speaker 2: I mean I think that the skeptics are it's all
Speaker 2: about kind of always searching. That's the get that's the
Speaker 2: That's the thing that I always take from the skeptic
Speaker 2: community is it's always searching for the truth. So soul, No,
Speaker 2: I mean, there's never been any It's all evidence based, right,
Speaker 2: So there's no there never really been any evidence of
Speaker 2: a soul.
Speaker 3: A lot of what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Also, the keynote speaker of the night I was there
Speaker 2: was Neil de grasse Tyson, and a lot of what
Speaker 2: you're saying is exactly what he was saying. He's like,
Speaker 2: all right, so if aliens came and they wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to to, uh, you know, the smartest animal, how
Speaker 2: would they gauge that we don't have the biggest.
Speaker 3: Brains of any animal? On Earth.
Speaker 2: He started to go through, what are the animals with
Speaker 2: the biggest brains? And he's like, okay, well let's say
Speaker 2: we're looking at brain to body ratio. We're not the
Speaker 2: animals even with the you know, biggest brain to body ratio.
Speaker 2: And so he's really started breaking it down about how
Speaker 2: objectively unspecial human beings are. If you were, if you
Speaker 2: were an alien species looking down, it doesn't That was his.
Speaker 1: Whole agree that luisy k has a great counter to that,
Speaker 1: which is humans removed themselves from the food chain. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty impressive, like for most of history humans died Like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. That doesn't happen really anymore. It's we're parefully
Speaker 1: capable destroying ourselves. But it's you know, and then actually,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, maybe he didn't. I mean
Speaker 1: look at COVID for example with Adam. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like fucking plague comes, it comes, So.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's nothing, there's nothing you can do. It's why
Speaker 2: what is it?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 2: The movie The Storm, The Sword and the Stone, there's
Speaker 2: a there's a it's you know, it's animated movie. It's
Speaker 2: King Arthur and Merlin. There's a wizard fight and the
Speaker 2: way the wizard fight culminates, I want to say, is
Speaker 2: they're like turning into one's a dragon, the other turns
Speaker 2: into a bear. And finally Merlin disappears and he's become
Speaker 2: a virus. Oh, and he just gets the other wizard
Speaker 2: very sick because he's like, this is actually the most
Speaker 2: powerful thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah it maybe that was like the Last of Us
Speaker 1: when they do that at the beginning of it, when
Speaker 1: they're doing that show. But Fungus in the nineteen.
Speaker 2: Seventies, that was such a good cold open to acknowledge, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know we're in a pandemic, but there's actually something
Speaker 2: there's actually something worse.
Speaker 1: That was a.
Speaker 2: Chilling way to open a shew, How do you deal
Speaker 2: with that?
Speaker 1: Now that I'll tell you what I'm leading up to.
Speaker 1: I had to adapt my entire Velt Arm show. My
Speaker 1: entire worldview had to change when I became a parent,
Speaker 1: because now there was someone who marred more than my
Speaker 1: feelings on Earth. And it continued with my second child,
Speaker 1: and I think that it led me in a very
Speaker 1: different path that I've been to before. I was very
Speaker 1: evidence based right up until I became a parent, and
Speaker 1: that I'm on a deep dive right now with the
Speaker 1: early Christian mystics and the Moses and his gang, and
Speaker 1: I mean it's like I'm off on all sorts of
Speaker 1: adventures with those people now. And then pythagora Is, who
Speaker 1: is like a real uh you know, and Gorvi Dahal's
Speaker 1: historical novels, which if you haven't read them, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: have you have you done any of those?
Speaker 2: No? No, oh you have to put Oh my.
Speaker 1: God, it is amazing, amazing. But all I became much
Speaker 1: more interested in in the un evidence, in the in
Speaker 1: the lack of evidence, than in the evidence. And I
Speaker 1: think it came from that moment of being at my
Speaker 1: first live birth apart from my own, which I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but that weird moment where it all there's there's no
Speaker 1: words for it. I don't even think. There's just some
Speaker 1: kind of weird gap in the universe. And then somebody
Speaker 1: news there and it freaked me out. I had a
Speaker 1: profound effect on me, and I am no longer evidence based.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting, Yeah, so I'm not there. I think
Speaker 2: that I see it more as my emotions, in my
Speaker 2: empathy have been just cracked open in a way that
Speaker 2: makes it very hard for me to be totally objective
Speaker 2: and totally impartial. But for me, I guess the thing
Speaker 2: with looking for evidence based stuff and this might just
Speaker 2: be really personal to me is the part of the
Speaker 2: reason I'm interested in all of it In skepticism, and
Speaker 2: you know, the search for the truth is I want
Speaker 2: someone to find the proof of the mystic and I'm
Speaker 2: that's what I'm That's what I'm looking for. But that's
Speaker 2: what I'm looking for, right I'm looking for what is it?
Speaker 2: I read? This woman named Mary wrote wh writes amazing books.
Speaker 2: I read was It Stiff or Spooks? She's written two
Speaker 2: books about death and the search for the afterlife. I
Speaker 2: read that stuff because I'm like, maybe this will be
Speaker 2: the thing that proves it, which is very I think
Speaker 2: not everyone. But it's why I like the skeptic areas.
Speaker 2: From a very young age, I knew that I kind
Speaker 2: of like this area, but also I didn't want to
Speaker 2: believe in things that weren't true. So this is the
Speaker 2: way I split the difference. Because it's funny, my own therapist,
Speaker 2: I was talking to her about my interest in this
Speaker 2: and she goes, you know, she's She's like, I don't
Speaker 2: really believe in this stuff. She's like, I'm an atheist.
Speaker 2: She's like, I just don't think about this stuff. You
Speaker 2: really have a thing where you're you want to immerse
Speaker 2: yourself in this skepticism paranormal uh investigation where she's like,
Speaker 2: I just don't. I just don't think about it. I
Speaker 2: just think ghosts aren't real, and that's it. And so
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, but there is something
Speaker 2: in me that I love reading studies of things that
Speaker 2: can't be studied because maybe this will be the thing
Speaker 2: that proves it.
Speaker 1: But that's a beautiful mind to have. That's a that
Speaker 1: I think is is is a spiritual hunger, which is
Speaker 1: was my own particular brand. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: was ever an atheist. I think I probably was at
Speaker 1: one point. And I'm certainly not you know, a flagwave
Speaker 1: and drum beaten organized religion person. I can. I'm not
Speaker 1: good at joining groups of people. I couldn't even join
Speaker 1: in a group of late night hosts and there was
Speaker 1: only like seven of us, so I like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be part of your fucking gang. It's like
Speaker 1: there's only enough for a dinner party. Like I don't care.
Speaker 1: It's funny I was talking to a friend of mine
Speaker 1: today about that very thing. Atheism is too fundamental a
Speaker 1: stance for me. I can't do it. I can't do it.
Speaker 1: It believes in itself too much, and fundamentalism. I can't
Speaker 1: do fundamentalism. It doesn't seem hungry enough.
Speaker 2: This is where you get into, like the idea of
Speaker 2: atheism being a form of spirituality is controversial. But when
Speaker 2: I really kind of became an atheist, what it what
Speaker 2: it actually meant for me was really what I would
Speaker 2: say is, I'm a practical atheist, theoretical agnostic. I live
Speaker 2: my life as if there's nothing, as if no one's
Speaker 2: looking out. If I fuck up, it's not the universe
Speaker 2: teaching me a lesson. It's like, no, maybe I just
Speaker 2: fucked up and I have to apologize to someone. But
Speaker 2: I'm practically agnostic in that I think it's something like
Speaker 2: ninety eight percent of the universe is dark matter, and
Speaker 2: we don't know what dark matter is, So no, you
Speaker 2: can't be like there's nothing when there's so much we
Speaker 2: don't know. It's just the way I live my life
Speaker 2: on a practical level is as if there's nothing and
Speaker 2: very evidence based, but there's a part of me that
Speaker 2: is very open to wonder and wants to remain open
Speaker 2: to wonder. So whatever that means, I don't know if that's,
Speaker 2: you know, pure atheist. You know, I'm sure there are
Speaker 2: some people who are like, well, that's then you're not
Speaker 2: an atheist. I don't know what that means, but that's
Speaker 2: how my brain. This is what I think makes me
Speaker 2: the best version of myself whatever you call this.
Speaker 1: What I'm doing. And we talked earlier about lessons of
Speaker 1: sobriety or recovery. And if there's one thing I learned
Speaker 1: that I think has been pivotal for me and this,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like you are capable, not capable. You
Speaker 1: do this too at at a far younger age than
Speaker 1: I ever got hold of. It was it seems to
Speaker 1: me that too many people, most people are not willing
Speaker 1: to make themselves the villain of their own story everyone,
Speaker 1: and I am willing to do that. I want to go, look,
Speaker 1: this person may have fucked up, but I fucked up too,
Speaker 1: you know, and I I really try to live my
Speaker 1: life like that, like, Okay, whatever they did, that's not important.
Speaker 1: What did I do? You know that? Because that's the
Speaker 1: only thing I can do anything about I can't do
Speaker 1: anything about what they did, but I can do something
Speaker 1: about what I did. And if it means I have
Speaker 1: to try and you know, make amends or or not
Speaker 1: do it again or whatever it was, then I do that.
Speaker 1: But I think accountability is something that can be lost
Speaker 1: if you're not worried about the accounts being settled in
Speaker 1: some way, you know, And I'm not worried about that.
Speaker 1: But you see what I'm kind of like.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 2: I don't have I have so many other parts of
Speaker 2: me that want to be a good person that have
Speaker 2: nothing to do with heaven.
Speaker 1: Oh well, agree, I don't mean that. I don't mean
Speaker 1: like getting the books right so you get into heaven
Speaker 1: I get. I mean getting the idea that there is
Speaker 1: a that there is a I don't want to get
Speaker 1: to one of these. I'm not saying, oh well, if
Speaker 1: you don't believe in God, you're going to run around
Speaker 1: killing people. That's nonsense. But what I mean is it
Speaker 1: helps I don't know, it helps me imagine that there
Speaker 1: may be something. Yeah, but I absolutely reject the didactic
Speaker 1: nature of stand up, sit down to and around, eat this,
Speaker 1: don't eat this, where this, don't where there's tell these
Speaker 1: other people they've got it wrong. I reject all of that,
Speaker 1: the organized part of religion, the feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question of and
Speaker 2: one that I'm sure is still trying to figure out
Speaker 2: for my own family. Of Okay, if you live your
Speaker 2: life not religiously, where does a moral compass come from?
Speaker 2: Where do you get a sense of right and wrong?
Speaker 2: And do you need God for a sense of right
Speaker 2: and wrong? For me?
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you do. I think that we
Speaker 2: just have so many societal structures that are set up
Speaker 2: you thousands of years of people philosophizing and thinking of
Speaker 2: morality in the context of different spiritualities, and a lot
Speaker 2: of it is not and very little moral compass that
Speaker 2: we're kind of taught that isn't based in some sort
Speaker 2: of spirituality. So I'm still navigating, Okay, how do you
Speaker 2: how do you teach someone a sense of right and wrong?
Speaker 2: And maybe spirituality isn't involved, But at the same time,
Speaker 2: like just from an objective perspective, like it's not like
Speaker 2: religion is useless to maybe religion is is people for
Speaker 2: thousands of years ideating on the human condition. That's that
Speaker 2: in itself is so incredibly profound it to throw.
Speaker 1: Out in one in one and I don't want to
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to do that, but I think that that's
Speaker 2: a real debate, and it's it's what a lot of
Speaker 2: religious people would say, well, we're you know, when you
Speaker 2: take religion out of society, you miss some moral companies.
Speaker 2: And I don't think that's necessarily the I don't think
Speaker 2: that's the case. But that is a debate of what
Speaker 2: we'll ground yourself in.
Speaker 1: I guess there are people who if they you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not one of them. I don't think you're one
Speaker 1: of them. But maybe there are people who, if they
Speaker 1: didn't have their you know, their accounts to settle in heaven,
Speaker 1: they would run around killing people. And that's the reason
Speaker 1: why they don't.
Speaker 2: So which may be scary, which is just so, which
Speaker 2: soide I am so less scared of the idea of
Speaker 2: someone going around who doesn't murder people, who who if
Speaker 2: you really press them, they'd be like, no, I could
Speaker 2: murder someone to get away with it. I I just
Speaker 2: don't want to murder people. That scares me a lot
Speaker 2: less than someone who's like, oh boy, if they're if
Speaker 2: they there weren't God, I would be killing everyone. That's horrifying.
Speaker 1: There's a horrifying thing.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's not many of those though, there's
Speaker 2: not many, but all you need is a few to
Speaker 2: be you know, serial killers.
Speaker 1: Well there's that, but then you get the people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: well I got to kill these people because God wants
Speaker 1: me too. There's there's those speaking too.
Speaker 2: Well and they're taking that and they're taking out whatever
Speaker 2: is messed up in their head, you know, but it's
Speaker 2: it's uh, it's righteousness. Yeah, I mean, this is stuff
Speaker 2: that I'm actively thinking about and going through, especially since
Speaker 2: having a kid. But for me, I guess, like, what, guys,
Speaker 2: my moral compass is, how do you spread joy not pain?
Speaker 2: How How do I not cause pain even though at
Speaker 2: the center of life is.
Speaker 1: Pain.
Speaker 2: I Mean, something that I've been really thinking about lately
Speaker 2: is the way that living being survives to consume other
Speaker 2: living beings. Even if you're a vegetarian, you're eating plants.
Speaker 2: Plants are alive. So that's weird that in a if
Speaker 2: this were a moral just world, the fact that not
Speaker 2: only are we supposed to eat things that are alive
Speaker 2: to survive, but that then everything alive has pain receptors,
Speaker 2: and even plants, even plants have like plants have a
Speaker 2: way of sending out distress pulses.
Speaker 3: Right, So, even though that fundamental of life.
Speaker 2: To me seems really morally contradictory, I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: cause people the least amount of pain is possible. And
Speaker 2: Patton Oswald is a great special I don't know if
Speaker 2: you saw it shortly after his wife died.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And she says, and she was I think very much
Speaker 2: what sounds like an atheist or agnostic, And she just
Speaker 2: always said, it's chaos, be kind, And I like, I
Speaker 2: think I still think about that sometimes. I think that's
Speaker 2: such a beautiful way to view the world and kind
Speaker 2: of how I see the world, where it's like it's
Speaker 2: it's just chaos.
Speaker 1: Just be kind, you know. I feel like that that
Speaker 1: is it. That's the only way too. It's hard to
Speaker 1: be kind when you know it's I think it's easy.
Speaker 1: It's for me. I find it easy to be kind
Speaker 1: when people are worthy of petty, but when they're worthy
Speaker 1: of anger, it's harder for me to be kind to
Speaker 1: people I feel angry with. Oh yes, it's much more
Speaker 1: of a challenge, and people I don't necessarily love or
Speaker 1: love how they they love. It's tricky.
Speaker 2: I am so I'm not an aggressive driver, but I'm
Speaker 2: a judgmental driver where if someone doesn't signal or cuts
Speaker 2: me off, all just what do you do? You know,
Speaker 2: to the point where my four year old has heard
Speaker 2: me criticize people enough that she's like, Mama, you should
Speaker 2: have your own driving school where people can learn how
Speaker 2: to drive like you.
Speaker 3: And I was like, you know what they should?
Speaker 2: So I I was like, that's really and so now
Speaker 2: and but now it's gone. It's become kind of in
Speaker 2: our family a running joke of my kind of Soviet
Speaker 2: re education camp where I force people to learn about
Speaker 2: all sorts of different polite things that we've forgotten in society,
Speaker 2: like no cutseas is really important to me. Very so
Speaker 2: I'm as much as I want to spread kindness, I'm
Speaker 2: also very petty.
Speaker 1: I think maybe you're just human and we're all a duality.
Speaker 1: What I always circle right back around. I seem to
Speaker 1: always come back around to Carl Jung. Every time I
Speaker 1: wander off and Nanny directs and any other directions, I
Speaker 1: come back to Carl Jung, who seemed to kind of
Speaker 1: grab it all for you know, all into one place,
Speaker 1: mysticism and science and you know, and the human experience.
Speaker 1: I really kind of get that. Do you ever you
Speaker 1: ever read any or or have you ever come across
Speaker 1: the Red Book or anything like that.
Speaker 3: No, it's been a minute.
Speaker 2: Actually I did a lot of where we read a
Speaker 2: lot of Freud in school, and so I'm behind on
Speaker 2: my young.
Speaker 1: It's funny Freud. I mean, obviously, you know, an innovator.
Speaker 2: Oh so many no, no, so many holes to poke.
Speaker 2: I took a class in Freudian Freudian psychoanalysis for some
Speaker 2: reason in school, and I really and then I had
Speaker 2: my first therapist was was a therapist who was then
Speaker 2: training in psychoanalysis. So I know a lot more about
Speaker 2: the kind of almost simplistic Freudian view of things than
Speaker 2: I do about the Youngian view. Uh it's on my
Speaker 2: to do list.
Speaker 1: Well, they I mean, they famously uh kind of split up.
Speaker 1: It was a h John Lennon Paul McCartney moment with
Speaker 1: those two. But I kind of I veered towards Young.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't make Freud work for me much.
Speaker 1: But the discovery of things is important. And you know
Speaker 1: he did, he did discover a law of techniques. He
Speaker 1: moved things forward. He wasn't really it wasn't the be
Speaker 1: all and and all.
Speaker 3: But no, and he didn't believe in clits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's a real.
Speaker 2: No, it's a whole there's a really fucked up story.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: Oh, this story from like the twenties. There's this princess.
Speaker 2: She was a great she was like a grandniece of
Speaker 2: Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very rich, and she got in
Speaker 2: with Freud and she was obsessed her whole life that
Speaker 2: she never had a vaginal orgasm. And Freud was like agreed,
Speaker 2: like because he basically believed that clittoral orgasms, which is
Speaker 2: scientifically where all orgasms come from.
Speaker 3: By and the woman, we're immature.
Speaker 2: And so this woman had numerous this is in like
Speaker 2: the twenties, surgeries to try to make her vagina closer
Speaker 2: to her clitterists. And this was all urged on by
Speaker 2: Sigmund Freud. It's nonsense, it's absolutely n So there was
Speaker 2: there was a lot of of bullshit.
Speaker 1: You've talked a little bit in your life about mental
Speaker 1: health and and kind of dealing with your own struggles.
Speaker 1: I mean, as I have myself, I've talked a lot,
Speaker 1: but like when I go sober, I thought everyone's going
Speaker 1: to be great, it doesn't really work out that way.
Speaker 1: I mean that there's it's kind of an ongoing struggles
Speaker 1: to It requires vigilance. Do you still find yourself in
Speaker 1: that place today? Do you still kind of Oh, it's
Speaker 1: a journey.
Speaker 3: It's a journey.
Speaker 2: I'll never be I'll never be over because there's two things.
Speaker 2: There's my own mental health and then you know, the
Speaker 2: mental health of others. And I've dealt with people close
Speaker 2: to me going through mental health health issues, and Okay,
Speaker 2: how much do you help or do you put up boundaries?
Speaker 3: That's hard and that's you.
Speaker 2: Know, you can only control what you can control. But no,
Speaker 2: it's an ongoing thing, especially as just the world continues
Speaker 2: to get more complicated, not only becoming a parent, but
Speaker 2: as frankly the Internet gets scarier.
Speaker 3: And weirder and weirder.
Speaker 2: Like I'm never going to be like, yeah, I got
Speaker 2: nothing else to solve with my mental health.
Speaker 1: This is why when you said that thing about the
Speaker 1: Internet and the world getting weirder and stuff, I feel
Speaker 1: this is why. I mean, people that listen to this podcast,
Speaker 1: probably sick of me here and as sick of me
Speaker 1: saying it. But that's why I get so obsessed with
Speaker 1: these gour Vidal historical novels, Julian the Aposta creation, the
Speaker 1: Seven Narratives of Empire that you wrote about the United
Speaker 1: States from the Revolution till the nineteen fifties. It's fascinating
Speaker 1: because it's always been a shit show, rachel A. It's
Speaker 1: always been a shit show, and he made it. He
Speaker 1: makes it personal so that you believe it's not distant.
Speaker 1: It's like real people five hundred years BC. You believe it.
Speaker 1: It's like someone's got an iPhone and showing you around.
Speaker 2: Oh, I got to Oh, I've got to get into these.
Speaker 1: You have to because it's it's face timing your way
Speaker 1: into the past. He was a fucking genius, Vidal. I
Speaker 1: met him towards the end of his life and I
Speaker 1: hadn't read a thing he had read at that point,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I really missed an opportunity to
Speaker 1: I don't know, grovel or something. I don't know that
Speaker 1: it would have made any difference to him, but his
Speaker 1: work is is unbelievable. He's an unsung American genius. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people are into him, but he
Speaker 1: should be far more to the forward of thinking.
Speaker 2: Now, that's very calming to me, just hearing you say
Speaker 2: it's always been a shit show, is really it's fucked up?
Speaker 2: I find that really calming, that this is just.
Speaker 3: This is life.
Speaker 2: I think coming up during the nineties, which people called
Speaker 2: the end of history, right, there was something about like, well,
Speaker 2: we're finished, nothing else to see here, nothing else to
Speaker 2: do here, which was kind of the narrative of I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think that maybe a child's perceived narrative
Speaker 2: of the late nineties and then being launched into this
Speaker 2: century with anything but calm, just to remember, like, no,
Speaker 2: it's actually chaos is the norm.
Speaker 1: Totally comic the United States, you know, Aaron Burr shoots
Speaker 1: and kills Alexander Hamilton and goes on trial while he
Speaker 1: still the vice president, goes to New Orleans, tries to
Speaker 1: raise an army to become the Emperor of fucking Mexico. Right,
Speaker 1: this is all going on. What we've got right now
Speaker 1: is kind of mid range crazy. Wow, you know.
Speaker 3: About the Emperor of Mexico thing.
Speaker 1: Oh girl, it was fucking nuts. And then you know,
Speaker 1: don't get me started on Thomas Jefferson, how crazy that
Speaker 1: fucking shit was, and then the and Burr was Jefferson's
Speaker 1: vice president of Oh my God, and then McKinley getting
Speaker 1: shot at the start of the twentieth century, and Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: who was his vice president coming in all that crazy
Speaker 1: shit that was going on, William Randolph Hurst getting blamed
Speaker 1: for inciting the assassination of McKinley and losing his chance
Speaker 1: of ever becoming president, which is what he really wanted.
Speaker 1: And when you read about these people, you go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's the lun musk, that's Donald Trump, that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's Hillary, that's I mean, they're all over the place.
Speaker 1: I mean it's Mark Twain gets the credit for saying this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he said it or not, which
Speaker 1: is kind of ironic because it makes sense with the quote.
Speaker 1: Apparently he said history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Yes.
Speaker 3: I love that quote.
Speaker 1: I think that that's the way I find it. Very
Speaker 1: comforting and well, meticulously recepched, genius written historical fiction but
Speaker 1: based in real fact.
Speaker 2: Well, I gotta, I got, I gotta get into that,
Speaker 2: because I even though I'm not a mental health professional.
Speaker 2: I can't help but see people's unresolved issues and personality
Speaker 2: disorders everywhere, right, and it's just like, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the brain chemistry that's been fucking people up and causing
Speaker 2: dictators and wars for the past ten thousand years. Totally, totally,
Speaker 2: and not to blame mental illness on people being bad,
Speaker 2: which is a whole other debate.
Speaker 3: I just want to say it's complicated.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but you know there are things like let's
Speaker 1: take Henry the Eighth, right, Henry the Eighth, who for
Speaker 1: a long time is like a fairly stayed nothing much
Speaker 1: going on monarch in England. Everything's pretty state, has a
Speaker 1: jousting accident. It won't heal. He starts getting a little
Speaker 1: he starts getting a little crazy, he's putting on way
Speaker 1: decides that you know, his wife of twenty years, it's
Speaker 1: her fall, and that whole period of his six wives
Speaker 1: of Henry, that's a ten year period. That's it. That
Speaker 1: was the last ten years ago.
Speaker 2: So it was like maybe concussion from a jousting accent
Speaker 2: or something. I think it was really interesting.
Speaker 1: They reckon he was probably type two diabetes and he
Speaker 1: had all sorts of I mean, for a while they
Speaker 1: thought it was syphilis, they thought it was something else.
Speaker 1: But a lot of his behavior was brought on by
Speaker 1: the physicality of his changing body, you know, through the
Speaker 1: course of his life. And I think that that, you know,
Speaker 1: to come back to the skeptics confidence a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think that's what people are looking for sometimes when
Speaker 1: they put the jade egg in the vagina or the
Speaker 1: fucking rub myself with cat feces in order to or
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the thing is to please don't do
Speaker 1: any of those. But the I think they're looking for
Speaker 1: a way to physically change how they feel. I did
Speaker 1: that with alcohol. I want to physically change how I feel.
Speaker 1: And some of it's beneficial if you run, or you swim,
Speaker 1: or you do push ups or something, and it's all right.
Speaker 1: But as I have to go myself. So do you now?
Speaker 2: This is amazing. I'm honestly gonna read that might be
Speaker 2: next on my reading list.
Speaker 1: Oh, I can't recommend it highly enough. Start with either Julian,
Speaker 1: the Apostate, Burr or Creation.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, great.
Speaker 1: They're all fabulous. It was great to talk to you that,
Speaker 1: especially yours is a fucking masterpiece. How dare you?
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 1: But other than that, I remain a fan.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you're the best. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: God bless you. Talk to it for to paper for
Speaker 1: two