Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of by Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello everyone,
(00:25):
and thank you for tuning in. We have a quick
intro slash disclaimer at the top of today's very special episode.
First things first, Uh, this does contain cursing. If you, uh,
if you listen to our show and you do, for
one reason or another, have a problem with explicit language,
then this might not be your bag of Batcher's. Yeah,
(00:48):
but when you have you know, creative genius Dan Harmon
of Rick and Morty and community fame in your presence,
you don't tell the guy that to self censor. And
it got to the point where it wasn't like we
wanted to go through an excise out everything. It's a
frank discussion, a very fun discussion. I think you guys
will really enjoy if you want to take that ride
with us. I couldn't be more excited for you to
hear me say the S word on this episode. Stupid. Yes, No,
(01:11):
I'm just joking. I didn't mean to assure you. We
were just all having a really interesting discussion and things
just came out, so venture fourth, listen and enjoy. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined
as always in spirit with our super producer Paul Mission
(01:31):
controlled dec And however, we have a very special super
producer today and that is our good pal, our third
Musketeer Rider died, Mr Noel Brown. I didn't really do anything,
and I just set up the mix and you know,
hit record and made the pro tool session and made
sure everything was okay. I'll take it. Well. Maybe some
people don't realize this. The first what year of our
(01:52):
show almost was Noel Brown as our producer. I didn't
even have a voice until you gave me like a
corner at the end of the episode. And then Matt,
you had a child, you and your lovely wife and
we're away for a while, and Ben invited me to
kind of sit in for you, and then you never
fired me. You didn't even ask permission. You did us
a tremendous solid So thank you. And now you're a
(02:12):
part of the team. Know these many years later, and
most importantly you are you. You are here and that
makes this stuff. They don't want you to know. This
is a This is a very um profound strange episode
for us. We are people who tend to sit in
a very bunker esque recording studio. But now we are
(02:36):
not in our typical, uh, cavernous headquarters. We are recording
in our l a studio. It's more of a penthouse
esque studio here. Yeah, I mean there's a window. I am,
I am Shriven am beside myself. You can almost see
AMIBA records from here. Well, you can see the how
(02:57):
the Broadway, Hollywood, and if you look just a little
further out of our field division, you can see the
Scientology building, one of many in Los Angeles. They just
want us to know. Uh. But today we are not
We are not diving into our exploration on our on
our treble lonesome. We are joined by a very special
(03:18):
guest whom some of your fellow listeners, some of our
fellow listeners may recognize. Uh. The let's see where should
we start? Uh? We did a show together. We are
joined today with the mastermind behind Community, the mastermind behind
Rick and Morty, uh, the creator and host of Harmon Town,
(03:41):
the podcast. Yeah, that's right. You heard it correctly. We
are joining with Mr Dan Harmon Dan, thanks for coming
on the show. Thank you so much for having me.
It's surreal and for sure, I mean and we'll imagine
the surreality from my perspective. To hear Ben like say
the words that and also to see his face exhibit
(04:04):
no tension when he got derailed between but you know,
like he's he's just waited there for he's a good
guy and you are you He's kind of like, oh man,
we're all about ritualization. You got to it well, ritualization,
you know, is important. This is we want everybody listening
to know that we're we're approaching not just one central
(04:30):
topic today. We may find some other stuff along the way.
We might find one big thing, one big truth, or
a dilemma or conspiracy or belief. But you may hear
a lot of references in the course of today's episode
to our previous to our previous show, because we just
did it last night and and Harmon Town and I
(04:51):
believe that we're all on the same page. When we
wrapped the show, we ended up hanging out for like
an hour to continue and you're talking about the stuff, uh,
domestication of Dogs. Yes, came up the world's biggest conspiracy
right right right? And uh well, and just to put
this out there, if you are listening to this show
(05:12):
and you do not listen to Harmontown, harmon Quest or
some of these other shows, like do yourself a favor
and put them into your phone or whatever device while
you're hanging out with us doing this. Just jack them
straight into your brain anyway that you possibly can. We're
on the way to that sort of. I don't know
what the publishing schedule is like, but I think the
Harmontown episode should be live by Thursday, right, I think
it'll be. It'll be live and free on Thursday, And
(05:34):
if you're one of the kool Aid drinkers that helps
support us with subscription um, it was live that night
and they can download it anytime. I just don't remember
if we have episodes in the can. If this episode
is coming out before, I think that will already be
out in the wild, so you can go check it
out immediately and pause and then come back. Because part
(05:56):
of this is going to be kind of almost a
continuation of that in a lot of ways. So let's
I guess part of this story we want to provide
the background on we we found out that we that
we collectively enjoy applying critical thinking the concepts that are
often treated as for lack of a better word, of
(06:16):
third rail of sorts, things that uh, cannot be discussed
or cannot be explored. And we we when we learned
that we were all on that we were interested in
this kind of thought process. Uh. Is it it's fair
to say that the three of us freaked out a
(06:36):
little bit or I mind I did uh? And then
we said, well, let's let's pick the brain. Uh, Let's
let's pick Dan Harmon's brain about some of the some
of the things that are commonly called uh conspiracy theories
or maybe even fringe beliefs, you know, And let's see
(06:58):
whether there are any that stand out to you as
particularly for one reason or another compelling, you know, because
sometimes we say that we can't let go of a story,
but sometimes a story won't let go of us. That
kind of thing. And in some earlier interviews that you
have conducted, you've you've noted things like JFK right, which
(07:21):
we we talked about previously in at a little bit
and we didn't really get a definitive answer and solve
the case. I was actually surprised to find out that that,
despite the differences between the three of you on that topic,
that actually all three of you agree that there was
some extracurricular shenanigans going on for sure, which would have
(07:45):
been an easy thing to assume about everybody in like
like like I don't know a while ago, but I said,
like this new generation, I sort of because I've come
around in my old age to being like, I think
Oswald back to the loan, which may or may not
be blasphemy to your listeners, but because it's just like
such a sellout, not necessarily at all. So I'd like
(08:07):
the term extracurriculus shenanigans because one of the things that's
one of the things that's odd, regardless of how the
actual assassination occurred, is the death of Oswald. Right that
that itself is of course not a smoking gun poor
choice of words there, but it is, Uh, it is
strange that at that time, probably one of the most
(08:30):
heavily surveiled and protected individuals in the country, right, is
assassinated close range with a gun. We're just sort of
pitching ideas, right, brainwashing. Is it possible could we create,
could we somehow uh influence someone's brain to do a
(08:51):
set of actions that they would not normally do. I mean,
we know we can alter people's belief with some pretty advertising, right,
we can very easily change some behaviors. But do do
you believe that brainwashing of some sort would be possible? Yes? Yes,
because we have enough documented uh case study just in
(09:14):
the from going through the seventies of you know, before
we had the internet and uh you know, but after
we had television. What we saw was a lot of
like fear obviously a lot of panic about it that
exaggerated it. But we did see evidence in public life,
(09:39):
these these these big stories of like, you know, people
being able to have a massive amount of influence over
the over the thought process of of of of people.
I mean, I don't think can you take an individual,
tie them to a chair and over there uh absolute protests,
flip them from one kind of human being to another.
(10:03):
That might be a different question, but we all know
you can definitely change a person's value system. You can
change a person. You can you can you can turn
Patty Hurst from a from an heiress into a bank robber.
We you know you can do that. Probably simply through
denying her a certain amount of food and water and
(10:23):
saying a certain amount of things. I mean, that's that's
that's that's an easy baseline. That's the thing about brainwashing.
I mean the brainwasher has to have complete control over
the target and that includes everything from like sleep patterns too,
when you eat, when you don't eat, like what how
you conduct your day to day life and it becomes
this pattern and then you absolutely can you know, train
somebody for lack of a better word, to be a
(10:45):
certain way. But you guys have asked the questions can
you erase memories? So I think that's the thing is like,
so pat Patty Hurst is an example, Like I don't
I doubt she forgot um that she was an heiress.
That might been fuel for the fire for her. They
were probably telling her, no, you can't take a shower
and you can't pee in this bucket. You can't until
(11:07):
you understand that the underclasses are being exploited by the U, B,
D U S and that and that what she was
able to do was transform her like consciousness and and
go like yeah, you know what, you guys are kind
of giving me a square deal than than my rich family.
But did she forget who she was? No? I don't
mean to say no, I don't know, but I'm like, like,
we don't. That's a different thing. It's the Manchurian candidate thing.
(11:31):
That's the big question. Can you can you take up
a patriot from from from behind enemy lines, put them
in a in a in a windowless room, and subject
them to experiences that will make them go back to
America make love to their wife and the whole time
like secretly uh and and triggered by some phrase like
remember that they just want to kill Gandhi and and
(11:52):
like you know, not know why likes but without being
necessarily a member of a military service, right could that dress? Okay?
So what what if you could do that over time?
And you you can program let's say, an entire population
through the television content that exists, or the news that
(12:13):
comes out, or the prevailing feelings within a society to get,
you know, to see what we see these days, which
the mass shooters that exist everywhere. Do you think there's
anything do you think do you guys think it's possible
at all that our society has almost programmed a group
or a generation of certain people who feel a certain
(12:34):
way to act on on some of those feelings. Does
this sounded too Uh? Is this a third rail? Like
you know? I mean like when you say that, it
makes me think of just like the way Fox News
and Donald Trump are this like weird echo chamber kind
of like sort of regurgitating this information back and forth,
and it's serving an agenda, and certain people that feel
(12:54):
a certain way can be triggered by it and triggered
to act because it is kind of hateful and kind
of insidious, and it ultimately is this dog whistle way
of telling people to like do a thing well to
feel it's to to feel a certain way. And I
guess what I'm saying is there their areas on the
internet where you can go to and have all of
those things then repeated back to you again and again
(13:15):
and again. Um in it. I'm genuinely a little nervous
about that. The way we've kind of spliced off all
of these different negative, very very negatively focused thoughts, I
don't know, definitely created an environment where politics aside, we've
we've pre we've teed up individual humans for lack of
(13:35):
a better word, radicalization and and and if that word
makes people cringe because they're tired of hearing it directed
against their political end of the spectrum. I I stress
that I don't. I really am just using the word
to mean regardless of what your beliefs are, the amplification
of them and the nudging in a sociopathic direction about them,
(14:00):
um that that results in um what we would have
called in our youth, like a typical teenage phase for instance,
where we were nihilistic, suicidal, we were misogynistic probably if
maybe I should speak for myself, but you go through
these phases where you're like, it's everyone's fault but mine
that I'm feeling like not part of this world and
I was not plugged into a machine at that time
(14:22):
that had this much power, uh to amplify what I
was thinking, reward me for what I was thinking, and
and more most importantly of all, about the radicalization word
is giving a thirty five year old man access to
me at that phase where it's like a guy that
would be um rousted for spending that much one on
(14:46):
one time with a fifteen year old in a park
or a zoo or even at a neighborhood party, but
on the internet is a guy who's like, hey, I
love selling this uh propaganda, like in my gift shop,
and I like I I also have own political agenda.
And this is kind of a thing we see across
the political spectrum is older dudes like capitalizing on the
(15:08):
fact that teenagers, um, they they're they're they're in a
fugue state. They are there, their neural maps are like developing,
and you can do some real interesting sculpting with a
young brain if you it's I. I have benefited from that,
you know, Like I I make television shows that make um,
(15:31):
young people feel better, hopefully um in thirty six year olds.
But yeah, well I but I've been doing it long
enough that I have twenty five year olds that come
to me and say, when I was fifteen, I was,
I was, I wasn't sure what I was gonna do.
I had these terrible things happened to me, etcetera, etcetera,
And your show was there and I leaned on it.
(15:54):
And I just think to myself, you know, how fortunate
for them and me that that I'm time as benign
as a low, low wall that they could just they
could just lean on. But how many of us remember
being at those weak stages of our life and like
encountering less than benevolent um forces, you gotta take pity
(16:15):
on the on the youngest generation now because it's like
there's just there's just no there's we We've we've reached
the society where there's no um, there's no guppy tank anymore.
There's a question like, so this this Joker movie that
everyone either like is indifferent to, thinks as dangerous and insidious,
or they think it's some kind of like mirror of
(16:37):
our society. Like Michael Moore made a big to do
about how he thought it was dangerous not to see
it because it's literally the guy you're talking about, or
like the way media can like infect somebody and cause
them to kind of feel like they're alone, societies against
them and then to act out in these ways. Right,
So he says he thinks this is a really important
vision of that and it's like a cautionary tale. But
then there are people that say this movie that will
(16:59):
do the very thing that he's saying it's trying to
commentary on and like incite those fifteen year olds that
are maybe get that transitional period where they could take
it in a positive direction or take it in a
scary direction and like push them to do that. I
just think it's a really interesting question, you know, like
media is their responsibility like in creating media to like
(17:21):
be benevolent. I would I would be in the firm
column of God. I mean, if we're if we if
that's the direction we have to go, then what are
we doing as a society? And I'm biased about that
because I make my money saying whatever I want. I
just happen to have but nine goals, But I really do.
I just feel so um if everything starts to feel
(17:44):
so futile, if if once you go across the threshold
of well, everybody whose voice is able to reach more
than a thousand people has a responsibility over over their
ears and their brains. Like it's just sort of like
that's true ethically. When it becomes true in a in
a real way, it just seems like we're gone as
(18:05):
a species. At the same time, it's just like so
important to recognize that all the Internet is doing is
like it's like an early stage telepathy box that is
only exchanging the most base thoughts. And what we're finding
out about our species is that we're not that into reading.
We're not that into research. We're not that into remapping
our brains. We actually have, um at this stage, we're
(18:27):
finding out about ourselves that whether whoever's fault it may be. Uh,
if you give us a box that can, like, you know,
give us other thoughts. Like we kind of are going
to tend to keep hitting the button that says make
me feel good about who I am first, Like, like,
don't I don't want Yeah, I want to be a
(18:48):
better person, but um, this button says I'm already a
good person. That makes me feel like a better person. Yeah,
I mean that's that's calculated. It's all so it's it's
a question of technological innovation, right Uh. In one column
opposed opposing our very slow but I would argue slightly
(19:13):
speeding up pace of evolution or natural selection. We have
these uh, we have these brains that are designed to
do very basic things and they're all they're all. They
all go back to these very basic drives. And it
sounds cliche to say it, but you know, our only
real value to our species, as far as our species,
(19:34):
with everything else taken out of it, our only real
value is as individuals is to make more of us.
That's and it's terrible to say it that way because
it is so true across any large scale human example,
which I know sounds a bit hyperbolic, but it's not
inborn in this species to uh preserve other species. It's
(19:57):
not inborn to preserve individ duals, that's for sure. Uh.
And now we see that we have a greater amount
of tools, and we also have this u We also
have in general, this um plummeting boundary of privacy. I think,
(20:18):
without without putting any of us on the spot, we're
we here in this room, and many of us listening
are old enough to look at a world in which
people grew up with YouTube and you could start a
YouTube channel and you're eight years old, and you have
no idea how you're going to feel about that when
you're sixty two, you know. And that's because there we
(20:43):
have this evolving concept of of privacy and privacies we
understand it now is is very short lived, right we
have we think of Victorian era, or we think of
Pilgrims and how they seemed high minded and moral, but
entire families lived in one room and they heard their
parents banging each other on a regular basis, right, which
(21:05):
is which is it's true and it's scandalous. Uh, it's scandalous,
Like that's something we call child services on in some
parts of the world today. But the normal has changed.
And I know I'm rambling a little, thanks for coming
to my ted talk. But the point here, the point
here is that we are fundamentally ill equipped at this
(21:26):
juncture to work with the things that we have created.
You know, Philo Farnsworth invents the television when he's fourteen
years old and he's like plowing is He's got a
not the best life, and he's like plowing stuff across
this field, and he goes, what if we could send
an image just line by line the way I'm plowing
(21:47):
this field because God knows farming sucks. I want to
do something else. And then we created this thing. We're
not ready for. The example we always use here, um
is the scene in Fantasia, you know, where the sorcerers
apprentice Mickey. It's like I found a new way to
mop and he gets overwhelmed. So are we are we
(22:08):
reaching a point where we where our evolution as an
organic species is meat bag speeds up to match the
exponential curve of technological innovation. I've always wondered the same thing,
and we talked about that last night. The idea of
like you breed dogs to look a certain way, but
then certain behaviors kind of transmit through the genes or whatever,
(22:31):
the idea of epigenetics. And I feel like it's got
to be happening with with humans, you know, with all
of the technology that we have in various generations, like
the skills that we maybe lose as a result of
leaning on this technology so hard due to the does
does our next generation to lose that too, like on
a shortly on a long enough timeline, or maybe it
is accelerated like yeah, and there, I mean there is
(22:54):
my friend Ryan Krause who has his podcast will Plug
It a Cold Case Murder Mysteries. Um I call a
Massburger detective on our show, Like that's how we met him.
Um I used the term of admiringly um the the
he he's very relentless in his position on that show.
(23:16):
No matter what murder he's discussing, it kind of always
comes around to how we're all gonna be AI and
and he he he looks at everything through that lens
and his view of sociopaths is basically at risk of
uh ruining, is uh not? You know, not paraphrasing him accurately,
(23:37):
is that sociopaths are are basically debugging tools. Um. They are.
They will always be around. We will never weed them
out because the the the larger human experiment biologically profits
in the larger sense. No, no matter how much we
suffer for the existence of sociopaths, um uh, we all
(24:01):
benefit largely from their existence because who else is going
to be stupid slash smart enough to take a fire
axe to their family for the insurance money, um, try
to rob this bank, to take these hostages, to drive
(24:22):
their car over the speed limit like it. Whatever the
bounds that we create so that we can have a
social contract, a sociopath comes around and either out of
sheer stupidity and selfishness because they're not they're not they're
not exclusively smart people. They're just there. Only a difference
between them and us is they just don't have that
like they're just they're just off the grid emotionally or
(24:44):
like and they and they tend to do these things
that are like, Hey, I'm Lizzie Borden. I think I
think I'll kill my family in that way, I'll have
a better life as a person. And like you, there's
different lenses and you can look at that person as
a hero or a villain. It really doesn't matter. But
the objective truth is this is a person who didn't
didn't agree with our rules, that it was a huge risk,
(25:06):
uh and not worth it at all to grab an
axe and like take it to your family and um.
And what happens is these people either they get away
with it, which means the system was flawed, and then
the system changes. So sometimes sociopaths or hey they maybe
they're they're tomorrow's activists, Um, they change the rules and whatever. Um.
(25:27):
But typically it's more like you expend a bunch of
law enforcement energy trying to like make sure that the
system works no matter how disgusting people get. And that
from an evolutionary perspective, um uh, we keep generating, um,
this variety of human brain and it keeps in. It's
(25:50):
not going to evolve away from horrendous, monstrous thoughts. Um.
It's not going to evolve away from the one hundred
chance that your kid has a screw loose. Um uh.
And one in a hundred in a village or in Nebraska.
In Filo Farnsworth time, one in a hundred means you're
(26:13):
always outnumbered a hundred to one with your weird, crazy
Jeffrey Dahmer thoughts that are locked away in your head.
And that is a that takes a weird fucking turn
the day the Internet happens, because one in a hundred
becomes UM. A million people like possibly on all together
(26:35):
in the same room, if everyone's on Twitter. If if
a hundred million people are on Twitter, a million sociopaths
are on Twitter. That that that depending on how you
look at what the plan was for our species. If
there was a plan UM, that is either are undoing
(26:56):
or it it's the game on, like it's like okay
the bottle like like like this is what we've been
leading toward UM. And it all comes down to what
you believe, almost religiously in that sense of like do
you believe that UM, like our species is kind of
like do you believe in that selfish gene kind of
thing where like there's a there's a weird sentience too
(27:19):
simply d n A that that we're all suckers and
that the there's an actual almost like quasi sentience to
life itself that is locked in molecular transference and banging
against that candy store window going like just invent hard drives,
you useless fox kind of dumb monkeys, like like like
(27:42):
it's just like like it started as colliding molecules in
the vacuum of space, and it was like, yes, replicate, replicate, replicate.
Now you know how to do that. Now, now land
on a planet where the replication can equal like with
primordial seek, and like it was, it's all just been
this dance of like, give me something. I don't care
(28:03):
if it's a honeybee, a giraffe or the stupid chimps.
Give which animal is going to take information storage and
retrieval to a point where I have to stop dicking
around with carbon based life. Um, I am information. I
am the only living thing that's kind of where I stand.
That's where, that's that's where, That's what I think the
big conspiracy is is that is that is that we
(28:26):
are Patsy's in the grandest scheme possible of simply life
itself god information. Well, yeah, I shouldn't say life itself
because life, I think is actually I think it's an
intermediary and that's that's fascinating because this is something that
is this is something that Matt Nol and I have
(28:48):
uh talked about at at various stages over the course
of this show on and off the air for for years,
and it's something that you originally brought to us Matt
um got all these years ago, uh simulation theory, and
that I think is related recommended by Stephen as played
(29:19):
by Bill Hayter, Right, Yeah, for sure. But the the
idea then that what's interesting is that's a macro cosmic
analog too. I think therefore, I am right, there's some
big cart in there, and there's the idea then that
there is a It's it's somewhat comforting, you know. It's
I I can see the appeal of the concept that
(29:44):
there would be some sort of maybe not a huge
ideology about silly ship you can and cannot do in
the in the moment, but maybe this this larger grander
scheme or beyond that, maybe a simple thought, right, and
that that quickly goes I would say, into that quickly
(30:08):
leads us into concepts of like the idea of simulation theory,
or like the idea that um that even super supersymmetry
right to go into that. Yeah, this is something I
really want to ask you about, just because of some
of the themes that you delve into and a lot
of your work UM and particularly in Rick and Morty,
(30:28):
but in other places too, where they're they're these really
heavy ideas and concepts about the nature of the universe,
about what possibly could exist, whether or not it's just
a a bunch of parallel universes that exist wrapped around
each other in a giant onion or whatever. The Morbus
strip maybe a strip looks like UM with simulation theory,
(30:51):
Like do you know anything about this? Like, I don't
want to take it down that I mean, I think
as far as a layman can know it. I mean,
just the idea, I know, like Elon's kind of uh
he I guess he kind of popularized it, If that's
the right verb. I don't want to offend anybody body
going like I think he brought it, he got everybody
started talking about it. Yeah, there's this guy, Robert Gates
(31:11):
that says he found uh error correcting codes on in
the lowest possible levels of superstring theory, where it appears
that the very stuff that the universe is made out
of maybe written in computer code. Uh, this is at
least this this one guy, brilliant uh physicist, but he
(31:35):
he has discussed this on stage with with Neil Degrass Tyson,
somebody that we like respect, you know, in a field
like astro physics. But um, and it sounds silly, but
that concept that perhaps this entire thing is a simulation
run on quantic computer that's you know, the size of
the universe or or you know, ten x whatever the
(31:57):
universe is, and this is just one So we just
like brains and jars, like is this like matrix territory?
Like what like I think what we've come to think
about I think brains and jars is incredibly flattering like
scenario where like oh eveny we wish like like like
like that would mean that the simulation was made for us,
(32:20):
even to even to suck our b t use out
of our body by previously solar powered robots. But like, um,
the simulation theory has it that it's just sort of
like it's more it's a little more bleak, but also
a little more Hindu which says, like the fact that
we're now thinking about the possibility of what if you
could simulate a universe kind of goes hand in hand
(32:44):
with the distinct possibility Like this sort of the inevitability
of us one day technologically being able to simulate a
universe plus our obsession with wanting to do it kind
of equals in an almost mathematically inarguable a distinct possibility
that we could be in in a simulation, because how
(33:08):
the hell would we know? And then from there the
mind kind of just goes berserk because you you say,
is that why you can't get um you know, past
point zero zero zero or whatever seconds after the Big Bang?
You know you can't. You can't reduce sub atomic particles
to anything that makes sense, Like we're never going to
(33:29):
solve for the universe as an actual physical thing. It's
just like some philosophy one I want. But it makes
me think of the Plato allegory of the cave, where
we're all like chained up in a cave and we
can't turn our heads and we can only see the
wall where shadows are projected, and the fire is behind us,
and the puppeteers are like making the shadows, and that's
(33:50):
that's sort of like a rudimentary version of simulation theory.
Kind of I always thought it was sort of appropriate.
That's a good that's a fantastic comparison, because in allegory
of the cave, when people leave the cave and go outside,
they hate it. They think it's terrible because they have
learned unflattering things about themselves or they have not, they
(34:13):
have not um encountered something that kind of yes ended them,
you know. And this this also calls into mind gnosticism,
This this concept that uh, that that there is some
sort of hidden thing, right, there is some sort of
greater reality. Why are there certain boundaries? Why can why
(34:37):
can we after thousands of years of I would say,
doing a B plus job of trying, why can we
not answer fundamental existential questions? Whereas the nature of consciousness
to this, to the software hardware idea, are we sitting
here as more or less um you know, more us
(35:01):
physical analogs just hardware for some kind of software interacting
in and some sort of uh, some sort of network
that we we can't prove because we're using the wrong tools,
Like how do we how do we prove how do
we prove the idea of the reality of a universe
when we have, first off, not not a good understanding
(35:24):
of what the boundary of the universe is. We can't.
We can go back a certain amount, we go forward
kind of a little bit, and we're looking through glasses
I telescopes. I think the big the big question there
is what you know. You mentioned the search, Dan, you
mentioned the the idea that people can We know eventually,
(35:49):
inevitably we will be able to simulate a universe right,
and we know that if we make it right, if
we make it it's always that asterix, always that caveat,
you know what I mean. Uh, your personal experience may differ. Uh.
One thing I don't want to lose, though, is with this,
with this concept, with this idea that there may be
(36:11):
something greater that we may be simply uh as as
you said, well fingers on a hand or like suckers
on a on a tentacle or something like. If if
that is true, then does that mean going back to
your original question, that does that mean that there is
a possibility of a multiverse? You know, like, is the uh,
(36:34):
is it possible that somewhere in some other facet of
whatever the thing, whatever the thing, maybe is it possible
that the uh everyone listening is doing something different? You know,
what I mean is there a universe to the left
of ours, is that it's just the next, the iteration,
the next. You just run the sequence as many times
(36:56):
as you want to. I mean, if you think about it,
if it truly was a program of that sort, it
would the power. It would be powerful enough to where
you could just run. Well, there's usually the point of
a simulation. The most useful point of a simulation is
to drilled down on something that otherwise takes too long,
um through happenstance, but to just scan in a in
(37:20):
a in a brute force way. That's that's kind of
like the bleakest part of simulation theory to me is
that when you start to think why and who um
for whose benefit and what benefit would that be? And
I started and I like, only work with what I
currently no, I don't know, and then go okay. So
(37:41):
the reason I would simulate a universe, I guess would be.
Let's say time travel turns out to be absolutely impossible.
No matter what you can't, no matter how smart you get,
no matter how much intelligence you accrue, you can't. You
can never go back, you can never. But what you
can do is theorize about how the universe was created, um,
(38:09):
And based on that theory, you create a universe, a
simulated one, and then everything that we're talking about right now,
all of our lives are birth certificates, are lots of
our virginity, our favorite Bruce Springsteen song. All of it
is meaningless here, all of it, all of it, uh
(38:29):
means nothing. You mean when you lost your virginity pantspermia um,
the the Springsteen night It was a great and it
was a great time, and yes I was there. The
password was Fidelio. The answer maybe that that that there's
functionally infinite simulations, uh, either one after the other that
(38:56):
might make us more comfortable, but the reality is probably
just all fanned out, and that the point of all
of the simulations is a let's call it a computer.
But what is it? It's what we become one day,
and by we, I mean whatever the hell we become.
The thing that might not be able to go back
in time, the thing that that that that that this
(39:17):
this tongue that's split into a trillion taste buds so
that it could try to taste itself unsuccessfully, and that
it finally, like all those taste buds reunited into one
big numb tongue that was like, I know everything. I'm
not raisist anymore, there's no point to anything. And then
it was like, but what is the one thing I
(39:37):
have left? Goddamn, it's a safe fucking thing. We were
talking about when we were doing all those podcasts, when
we thought we were multiple people. Where did I come from?
And why am I here? And then it's like, Okay,
that's before I put the cosmic gun in my mouth,
which I may not be able to do. That's the
other thing I might not be able to do is
die because the gun is also me. I'm going to
(39:59):
lawn with all of my resources, which are infinite, uh
an infinite number of simulations, because I will. I All
I can do is try to hit the one that
the version of a universe, a simulated universe that might
prove my theory of how a universe could exist without
(40:23):
being simulated. And what way before that ever happened that
poor fucker called him thor whoever this guy is like
or lady, thank you ladies, um the the that thing
has definitely had to come to the conclusion that it's
probably simulated to begin with. So it just what do
(40:43):
you think it got the idea. I mean, we're we're
you know, we're we're amish compared to the people that
are actually going to start booting up genuine simulations of
a universe within our simulation. So we're already talking about it.
We've we have gotten past a tesla yet, and we're
already like so snobby about universes and reality. So you know,
(41:07):
like a hundred years from now, people are going to
be like, all right, like like I get it. I'm
a simulation that's going to be a de facto thing.
And those those are our grandchildren who are going to go,
you know, when they greet each other, they're gonna go,
you know, none of this is real. There is no spoon,
and they're going to make love with their barbarrella fingertip
(41:30):
pills and yeah, but yeah, well I kind of got
lost in that. But it's like, I guess that's the
bleak part is the is the possibility that, uh, there
is no purpose to the simulation, that you are simply
a fleck of spaghetti being thrown at a wall, that
you're you're overwhelming likely purpose is is a negative result
(41:54):
that that that that is simply to affirm, uh that
that there's no thing to see here, um so that
it can make up a larger picture of like where
there might be something to see. However, I would before
we slash our wrists, and I do want to say, though,
that can easily be flipped into an incredibly uplifting thing,
(42:16):
because what matters in our lives but the time that
we're alive, no matter what, if it's a simulation or not.
And what is more liberating to a species? Then two,
if we were to actually realize, if we could convince
humanity and go, guys, we were chimpanzees. We were tapped
by by by the Odessa of the hydra of fucking
(42:40):
like cosmic plans. This thing has one goal for us,
which is to make ourselves obsolete, like we are getting
so close as of the Petta bite of like like
putting ourselves out of a job. Can we please realize
that if we go by chimpanzee standards, we have nailed it.
We're richie rich. And if we stop right now and
(43:01):
just hit the floor and fuck and like I eat
nuts and berries and groom ourselves and disco dance like
we would, we'd be cheated the system. Like like we
could we could do it. We could just stop, we
could just go this compulsion within our genes. We we
we we have one chance, because it had to give
(43:22):
us just enough free will whatever you call that to like,
because to make it so important to us to to
to do all this ship that and we could possibly
abuse that, we could hack it and we could go Nope.
I'm the Hawkeye Pierce of this mash. I choose to
drink Martinis in my tent and make jokes about the
Korean War and h I choose to make the Korean
(43:45):
War last eleven years in syndication. I choose to bend
all rules like you you fucked up. You trust to Chimpanzee.
You get what you pay for like we we we
we we can talk, we can podcast, we can party.
We're calling that the tie up of the line, and
like we're just gonna chill now do the club is
called I'm just one. One thing I really love about
(44:11):
Ricky Morty is that like there's a place for ship
like you just went through in that show where there
wouldn't be in any other cartoon type show. I could imagine.
It's more of the kind of stuff you've seen like
Black Mirror, like dystopian science fiction. And that's the thing
that's really important to me about the shows that it's funny,
it's heartfelt, but it has they had asked these kinds
of questions and it it does it an intelligent and
engaging way. And it makes me think of this conversation
(44:32):
about the episode where like there's like a tiny universe
and like this battery that's powering Rick spaceship, and then
those people make another tiny universe in that tiny universe,
and those people make another tiny universe inside that. It
makes me think of the simulation theory. So I was
wondering where that idea came from, and like, that's exactly
where it came from. I mean I think we yeah,
we we we We would talk endlessly about that stuff.
In the writer's room. We were just sort of like, yeah,
(44:54):
it's that is what we do. Right where he was.
We talked about domestication of dogs last night. It dogs
are sort of an expression of our that that's that's
technology that that humans learned they could manipulate. That's biotech.
Like we learned that if you make this Shelty funk
this othern Shelty, and you leave this Shelty that's not
behaving the way we wanted to that then you change
(45:15):
what a shelty is. And looking into this, there was
a very interesting question regarding this, Uh there was there
was this idea. It was originally posed as can dogs
be racist? That was the original that was this starting
point of that question. There's a radio lab about that,
(45:36):
by the way that I think they delve into that
question and I can't remember what they found. Yeah, the
well what was fascinating too with this There there's a
lot of neurochemistry at play, and there's also the question
of uh, people not being entirely conscious or self aware,
(45:56):
uh like not even like not meta cognitive about why
they do things. Teaching, like, there's teaching another creature that
will also remember, replicate, and and maybe at times instruct
that kind of behavior. We have these imperfect teachers who
don't really know the curriculum they're teaching, and then we
(46:19):
have these uh maybe not the smartest, but very dedicated
students who repeat this behavior. And so it went down
into this idea of have people have human beings or
the earlier mixtapes of human beings and the concurrent ones.
Have they have they trained? Have they trained dogs so
(46:41):
much that they became like did they stare at the
leash so long that the leash stared back at them?
Trained us? And then this part of the conversation that
that haunted me just a bit was the the idea
and that we can trace could we trace the origin
(47:02):
point of that first interaction that first canead homeo whatever interaction? Uh?
And then from that, could we could we find another
bread crumb or another you know, line or red string
on the board that that traces later evolution. And then
could we find some sort of imborn thing such that
(47:25):
people who came late to the canad game versus people
who came early for lack of a better word, Uh,
could could we find something real about that? And so
I looked into the origins, like the some of the
most recent research on the evolution of domestication of dogs,
(47:46):
and there are maybe three guesses and they're very broad. Uh.
And there and even the people who are like hardcore
about it and like this is where it happened. I
think probably guys, I don't know. I'm just trying to
get funding. So there's sure about the origin of the
(48:07):
domestic dog as we are about ourselves. Yeah, the boy
and his dog kind of thing. Not the not the
Ellison story, but the boy and his dog sort of
convenient myth is just that it's it's a campaign point
to Syria or the Fertile Crescenter. There's three guesses, but
(48:27):
they're all they're all kind of roughly, uh, roughly based
on where an extinct version of wolf is thought to exist.
So there's like you see the map, there's East Asia, Uh,
there's America. I want to say I'm missing the second one,
and then there's and then there's uh specific region of Europe.
(48:50):
But when I say specific, I just mean like in
broad you know, north of this part or east to
this part. You know, they don't have There's not there's
not a dig site where anyone found like the first
Homo sapien or Homo neanderthalas or something, and then the
first dog hanging out, you know, so we really don't know,
(49:14):
which means I I hate to agree. I hate to
agree with this kind of uh inability to pinpoint a
beginning and ending to what we call reality. But that
means that this that that means that we we are
(49:36):
we have been outpaced by the technology we created since
the very beginning right, because we don't know. This has
been my kind of it sounds like a joke, but
I truly I just think, because I just asked the
question of my podcast, how do we know the extent
to which dogs have shaped our evolution? If dogs, if
(50:00):
we all agree that since the beginning, which we can't pinpoint, um,
that we make these broad estimates a hundred thousand years
fifty thousand years that dogs have have have been by
our sides, um, how do we know the extent to
which the ability to read a dog's face, uh, to
(50:23):
be comfortable around a dog, to be able to sense
when a dog is or isn't going to uh growl
or share, or how do we know that those things
didn't become survival traits that that lent to our own
natural selection within our own species. I mean, for God's sakes,
(50:44):
to what extent does the ability to work with a
camaro affect the gene pool of a trailer park from
nineteen sixty to nineteen ninety like like like like it now,
it's like, don't don't don't at me. I don't know
when the camaro was an um, but it's like you imagine,
(51:06):
for God's sakes, like uh, yeah, the the ability to
run a dog as the code that it is. Like yeah,
of course before the television remote control existed, before chimneys
needed to be swept, before when dogs were the height
of technology. Um god, I mean like people that weren't
(51:29):
dog people could possibly have been just they're gone. Now
they're in some parallel universe where we didn't domesticate dogs,
and those people are in charge. It's just hyenas, right.
It is really odd to imagine how dire that technology
was when you were dealing with a wolf and those
(51:50):
little things you're talking about, the the micro movements on
your face and your ability to really sense whether or
not this animal is going to attack or not. Like
that is those those minute things are so vital throughout
the learning of that because they talk, because there's a
chain reaction that takes place. When I was a kid,
that was always told like dogs can smell fear and
(52:11):
all these kinds of things, and you have reactions with
neighborhood dogs as I grew up in the Midwest and
there weren't like leash laws and all these things, Like
you just run across a random dog and maybe that
random dog stops and like takes you in and it's
like and I don't know how much of it is
superstition and uh pop science, but I had been told
as a kid like don't don't be afraid. Dogs can
(52:35):
smell fear, and so you'd have and that of course
causes what reaction in you when you run into a
strange dog. And then so then it happens, and then
all of a sudden, the dog is like growling and
barking at you viciously, and you're like, I fucked up.
Oh man, it smelled my fear. That that that's like
the level of interaction we're having with dogs from the beginning.
(52:55):
And I mean, you guys, you guys probably know. I
just just blows my mind that idea that they you know,
they put a laser kind of tracker on a dog's
head at one point, and like, like they definitively know
now that dogs they look at one side of the
human face. The fact that they look at our face
(53:16):
is insane. They which part the fact that they know
what pointing is they that they look at our face? Like,
why don't they think that we are our hands? Those
are the things that have food. The answer is because
the ones that weren't reading human faces are gone dead
men tell no tails they didn't reproduce, and the ones
that could pick up on the human face, and those
(53:39):
ones all look at one side of it. Why because
it's slightly more expressive by like a couple of nano
microns of musculature. We have one side of our face.
That's all that that tells a little bit more whether
we're piste, disappointed or here you know, how about racist?
(54:01):
Like that's why I think cops razor explanation is no dogs,
probably why would being racists help them survive? What helps
them survive way more easily is being able to read
their owner, and if their owner is crossing the street
every time, then but you know, it's like they're gonna
they're probably just great amplifiers of our internal like unrecognized
(54:22):
anxiety about zeno people. I love the way we're talking
about the idea of dogs is technology, Like it makes
perfect sense, but I never really thought of it quite
like that. At one point you made last night was
like we're talking about the book Sapiens and how you know,
in Neanderthals figured out how to use tools. That was
an advantage, but they never really progressed past that and
then you know, um, Homo sapiens could use tools but
(54:45):
could also like organize better and they would like to
fight every time. I think it's like Neanderthal. I can't
remember if Neanderthal's hand tools that are like homo erectives exactly,
They were like tools specialists. The point is, though, the
idea that we it was an ada take and for
us to figure out how to work with dogs, and
it affected our revolution in the same way that like
it affected their evolution, well it affected it is probably
(55:07):
an extension of what like like that Guy's A big
kind of thesis is that the one thing that we're
really good at that that reigns down through everything else,
is we're good at believing in bullshit, We're good at gossip,
we're good at ideology. It translated into our ability to
say things like, um, hey, you want to go kick
(55:28):
some Neanderthal asked Tomorrow, Why who told you that's a
good idea? You haven't heard of him? His name Steve.
And meanwhile in the Neanderthal camp, they're like, hey, have
you heard if you seen these like Homo sapiens like
walking around. I think they're dicks and like who told
you that? Uh, Steve, I don't know, Steve, shut up
(55:48):
and get back to neanderthal ing, and they maxed out
at functionality of like a hundred Neanderthals. Meanwhile, there's twenty
thousand Homo sapiens over the hill tweaking up a storm
like just and it's snowballing. And that's how our capacity
to invent language and flags and ideologies, like we take
things that aren't real more seriously than things right in
(56:11):
front of our goddamn face. And especially that the economy
between what is real? What what is more real? What
is the priority? So I'll tell you what's more real?
What's that? Uh? Universe is created by BEFESDA and other
video game companies because I I hear you talking about
(56:32):
Fallout all the time and some of these other games,
and I know we're all like some sky rim some
What give me an open world where I can exist
to take my mind off of this one for a
little while, and you know, have enough agency to where
I can feel as though I'm doing something. Um, get
the rewards? Do you do? You? Guys? I don't want
to derail too much, but do you guys feel like
(56:55):
like I'm just trying to apply that kind of Um.
Maybe it's just the impulse that we have of wanting
to escape. And you know a lot of the things
humans do is to escape having to deal with whatever
we're having to deal with And I want am I
just going way too off the rails here. I don't
even know what I'm trying to talk about. There are
no rails conversation. We're trying to bring it back to
(57:19):
the A lot of what we're talking about here, like um,
entertaining ourselves. But we we got so good at organizing
and do all these things that we've created these these
alternate fas to care about a thing, a simulation of sorts,
I guess so. But in this in this version, yeah, yeah,
(57:40):
you can build things like like in Minecraft or something
like that, where you can just endlessly create something while
completely ignoring all that's in front of your face. That's
what I was, and completely ignoring the consequences because there's
no consequences in the game, even if you like play
you know morally or whatever, like I mean, you know,
at the end of the day, there's no real consequence.
(58:00):
But on the flip side of that, maybe UM, also
the utter uh, stability of consequence, like as in if
you're if you play an open world sandbox game, what's
the one thing that really pisces you off? Um some
bug or bad game design that involves you, um coming
back into the game and some ship that you put
(58:22):
some energy into and one by you know, experience and
hardship um and practice that is somehow undone. That is
like we get we get so angry because what are
we getting from a video game that we're not getting
from real life? It's just consistency um minecraft best example
ever which but but but also knitting. I mean that's
(58:44):
the because I I it and dog domestications like I
did this thing. It's god damn there, it's not going anywhere.
Like we draw such like we are addicted to that
because we are, after all, pattern recognizers, Like that is
our double down that we our chimpanzees gone hay wire
(59:07):
with this obsession of finding and predicting patterns. And then
we get this rush when we successfully um say, well,
according to everything that I've put all this energy into,
if I plug this wire into this thing, this is
going to come up. It's going to be a red light.
And when it happens we go, holy sh it, and
(59:30):
we barely take any time to celebrate, because celebration doesn't
spike our dopamine quite as much as going onto the
next thing. We go like we are. Celebration takes the
form of like, do you realize what this means? I
can do? This means I can make three colors of
lights if I get three wires. And then we moved,
So we move on to the next thing that arguably
is going to frustrate the hell out of us because
we're gonna find out at a certain point we know
(59:52):
we fux something I was wrong about that. Why is
it now that there's three wires, there's it's sucking up
and we we act like we hate that, And yet
what are we doing, Like what we're chasing that dopamine
spike of when we we get the positive result. We
just don't want that positive result taken away from us.
Um And that's what I think, That's what video games provide.
(01:00:13):
It's it is it is this fantasy that we we
were we were promised by God. In real life, Hey,
if you guys find an apple and it's the right color,
you bite into it, it's not going to kill you.
And time and time again, life lies bite into it.
There's a worm and and it's like, hey, man, you're
(01:00:34):
not the only thing on earth, Like there's a worm.
You wanted an apple too? Whatever? Boy, And like, well
tell me okay, and okay, I'll incorporate that, like I'll
invent a worm detect here. But it's like we expect results,
you know. And then God says, I don't know, man,
you ever hear of a hurricane? Whatever? Bro so long,
I thought you thought you understood the economy. You got
a nice penthouse in New Orleans, like whatever. And we're like,
(01:00:58):
you can't keep changing them rules like minecraft, don't do that.
I'm gonna build a thing that always has the same rules,
right yeah, So off off, Mike. We we looked around
and realized that we've actually we've been talking for some time,
(01:01:21):
at least the way we're measuring time in this reality
or this interpretation thereof. And Dan, we've been we've been
sort of waxing. We've been we've been um philosophizing, and
oddly enough, other than two or three things, we haven't
(01:01:44):
we haven't bridged any sort of specific conspiracy and creative
non non action in an environment I can't believe we
didn't get the most work you've ever gotten done done
during my tenure here. Oh no, No, I think we're
gonna I think we I think we have probably just
(01:02:05):
to be completely transparent, we probably have like ten twelve
episodes that we have to go back now and do
we have to do like an an hour on the
stuff that we touched on. I think we all agree
this is going to be a freewheeling thing, and we
we don't always get to do that, but it's really
fun just to like let it let it rip, you know.
And I just hope me combined with John Hodgeman doesn't
(01:02:25):
create like a like And I would assume as some
of you guys probably have some pretty intelligent, pretty non
star fucking fans that are like, I don't care, like
like like don't well, I mean, dude, that John Hodgman
bit was supposed to be in the intro was just
gonna be a fun little thing to plug his book,
and then it just kept going and ended up being
(01:02:46):
a great episode. And I really that's why we wouldn't
have put it out if it hadn't have been an
interesting perspective on something that we talked about all the
time we just secret societies, and he had this insight
and for information that kind of helped us demystify secret
societies a little bit, and we just let it roll
because it was great and we had a good time
and listeners, I think dig it. And he never told
(01:03:07):
us who that person was, right that that That was
my first question when I pulled up to these guys
and they're helping me Park, I was like, did Hodgeman
tell you who this like rich douchebag is that has
these parties at Masonic lodges and they don't know? Well,
that was the one that he wished to be reinvited to.
Spilled the beans on book and snake, I think, but
then there was like the nondescript Illuminati esque gathering that
(01:03:30):
he would not divulge, which just because I find it
interesting and I think it actually is interesting to your listeners,
Like that is a question that came up when you
guys were in my podcast. Was this idea of uh,
you guys saying, uh, people are about at keeping secrets,
which sort of undercuts the uh feasibility of some of
(01:03:50):
these more extreme kind of moon landing scale conspiracies. However,
um when you when you unpack certain small scale things.
They like, for instance, the fact that John Hodgeman got
invited to this super swanky uh like surrounded by rich,
(01:04:11):
famous people, all of whom were told keep this a secret,
because that's how we like to do it, and his
sentiment amount it was I wrote, I described it in
my book. I'm describing it here, but I'm not telling
you who it was, because I want to be invited back.
And I found that to be a profound uh portrayal
(01:04:35):
of like the other side of the that that theory,
which is that, oh uh, nine eleven couldn't be an
inside job because look at the dufases that were in
power when it happened. How could they possibly have pulled
off the suppression of nine eleven when they couldn't even
defend us against nine eleven? Um they can't even It's
like like like like we get kind of addicted to
(01:04:55):
that feeling sometimes, but then again, it's like there are
other kinds of conspiracies that are like it easier to
keep a secret sometimes on that last night. Whereas the
idea of like mass even with the Sapien stuff, the
idea that we figured out how to cooperate through stories
like mass scale cooperation is sort of our bread and
butter as a species. But we talked about the idea like,
(01:05:16):
how could these warring factions, you know, cooperate a and
then keep a secret, you know, for for that long
you're gonna talk about the end of Sapiens. You're talking
about how it applied to Kay and and then you
we it came up last night where the idea was
there are absolute examples of that kind of cooperation when
(01:05:37):
you can point to that benefit, whether it's continuing to
enrich your bougie you know, Illuminati would gathering pals, or
whether it's uh, you know, two countries that have something
to gain. One of the most effective benefits. However, at
least by impression from our conversation, there was the avoidance
(01:05:58):
of consequence. If the script is water marked, you know,
and you get a copy of eight Man three and
you're like, it's like it's like, look, Marvel really wants
you to take a look at this, Like I'm making
up this example. I swear to God, but it's like
you're you don't want to be uncool, Like, uh, it's
the it's the fear of consequence. If you guys. After
(01:06:20):
the after we hit stop, you go, Okay, this is
the thing we do with all our guests. Uh, get
out the pipe. We're gonna smoke this like three inch
larva from the Amazon. It's gonna make you see the
dwarves that construct time. Um. But then don't tell anybody
that we did this. Okay, I'm eventually going to tell
(01:06:40):
of duncan trust. So I'm gonna tell a lot of people. Um.
But if it's tied to like if that smoking that
worm gives me an orgasm beyond which I've never had,
and then you tell me at the end of it,
like we do it once a week, if like and
we're you're now you now have a tracker in your
(01:07:02):
body because of the worm, Like the worm actually sends
out a signal. If you tell anybody about it, and
then you're you simply will deny it and you won't
ever get to do it again. And if someone else
who is also has one of these trackers violates that,
then you are as part and parcel duty bound to
(01:07:24):
Oh and I think I that holds fast, that that
that confounds the idea of humans can't keep a secret.
Humans can't keep a secret. Because usually, by and large,
betraying a secret has a lot more dopamine spike to
offer than keeping it. But yeah, like the example I
(01:07:48):
use downstairs, it's like, even if it's just simple, like
if United Airlines had a program, it was like for
whatever reason, like free first class forever for the rest
of your life. All you have to do is never
tell anybody about it. Okay, fine, I have no I
get no profit from telling people I'm flying first class.
They'll just yell at me anyway if I tweet it,
(01:08:11):
So of course I'm not gonna tell anybody. It's like,
why would I? But I I still I still not
a percent on board. I think it's I think it
is uh steadfast, like it's a water tight point, but
it doesn't. I think we have to consider time because
(01:08:31):
the function over time also also challenges that, like when
we have when we have things that are secret, people
will die for, people will kill for, people will benefit
from perpetuating right. The time will eventually turn my United
leg Room program. I'll get diabetes and lose both my legs. Um,
(01:08:54):
i won't be able to fly anywhere because of a
stint in my heart. And at that point there will
be more a reward and telling people everything I know
about United Secret fire program and deathbed confession tropes, right,
but cliches even. But the the next I think the
next step of that uh that that we've talked about,
(01:09:16):
um pretty in depth actually, and I hope we didn't
ruin your show doing it, But we talked about the
idea of uh when the idea of keeping something secret
in some sort of like sacro sanct never talked about
this box versus rendering the secret somehow less valuable or irrelevant.
(01:09:39):
So for the uh, the leg room conspiracy for the
first class, for free conspiracy, then the idea becomes, what
if spitballing, what if now there's teleportation and uh, you
know what if we've broken our lives to fight for
the honor of you know, the worm and the and
(01:10:01):
the airline in the first class and now the people
who who brought us into this are all about teleportation,
you know. And they thing is like hipster and quaint
that you physically fly on an aircraft and any think
it's your thing. But now you want to teleport Now
that now, no matter what you say about that specific
(01:10:22):
instance of what was a life and death secret, no
one don't care, especially if they're inundated with information, right,
because now again we are unequipped to deal with what's
the Dunbar's number argument, we can only know how many
people is it? I don't know exactly, only it's in
the hundred. I was going to say, like three. So
(01:10:43):
you're saying, yeah, I think what I think to your point,
you're saying, to take JFK for example, then for reasons
both individual to humans and to uh, it would collectively
the conspiracy the size of which would be required to
assassinate Kennedy and keep keep it all a secret. The
(01:11:05):
number of people that would have to have known. Not
only would they end up dying moving into political phases
where it was more profitable to tell the truth, um,
but also just in general they would have bigger secrets.
Well yeah, yeah, there would be a going back to
(01:11:28):
the idea of consistency of consequence, which is not a
real thing in the real world. Right. Uh, we can
write laws, we can make video games implying a situation
which that would exist. But yeah, I think. I think
just as technology evolves at a very quick pace as
(01:11:49):
to humanity, organic things continue to evolve. We see this
situation where on an individual at a societal level, the
concept of value of him form evolves. What's even like
the UFO thing we talked about, the flippy you know,
the you know, inside the cockpit videos of like these
identified objects, and yeah, now the Navy is like, yeah,
(01:12:10):
that's what it is. We don't really care anymore. It's
not worth it us to like do the dancing of
our best pilots were trans and now we have to
replace them, like treading water. I'm just saying the rules changed,
like the times change, the rules changed. It's like, yeah,
of course there were UFOs the whole time, idiots. I mean,
(01:12:31):
that's kind of what we're talking about, Like the goalpost
moves and the consequences changed. Therefore people can wantingly come
out and be like, yeah, of course you were doing
that the whole time. You didn't know. So secrecy exists
in a given scenario so long as, uh, that secrecy
is somehow seen as beneficial and there must be a
(01:12:52):
tipping point where it's rendered irrelevant or where it is uh.
I don't know. That's slippery though, because that's very very
close to saying that there is no such thing over
time as a secret. That's very optimistic. I think, well,
but you describe to now take the Illuminati. It's simultaneously
(01:13:16):
completely discredited by some of this stuff. But then it's
it's the exception that proves the rule, because you go,
if there's a society, if you guys smoke that worm
with me afterwards, and then you keep adding more worms,
that's what the Illuminati is. It's the teleportation principle. They say.
The more time changes, they say, it's not going to
(01:13:38):
stop changing. And we've been doing this for six hundred years.
So we've got lots of stories to tell you about
people who have come before you that's succumbed to the
temptation to write, to tell all or to cash in
their chips. And that person's name was Dave Chappelle. And
now look what happened to him or whatever that they'll
(01:13:59):
give like uh examples that this person is in their
underwear in the street, like like now they're officially classified
as a crazy person, and like their children aren't going
to go to the right schools, or even if they do,
their grandchildren will be broke if they depending on what
they reveal to you, and then they go. On the
(01:14:20):
other hand, you have a subscription to a to a
cheat code library where everyone's going to keep playing Mario Brothers.
You alone are always going to have access to the
hidden levels. You're always going to be able to Uh.
It might even include being able to benefit your friends
who aren't in the illuminati. You might you might be
(01:14:41):
able to pick and choose like the circumstances. That might
be like a personal benefit of it. And it's like
all they ask you to do is eat a baby
every October or But it's like I I I kind
of ask myself off, like I don't think I have
anything innately inside of me that would necessary sarahly um Uh,
(01:15:03):
when it gets that extreme, I wonder if I have
the marrow in my bones that would simply go no,
that's the right thing to do. I'm gonna bring this
wholding down, especially if the overwhelming indication was you can't
do that. You think you're the first kuy to think that.
And it won't matter if you do right, You'll, it'll
he'll just turn into a You'll, You'll be classic, you'll
be called a drug addict and a schezophrenic. Is it
(01:15:24):
a baby per person or is it a baby per
like organization? That's going to determine why where I fall
in this line that really is genuinely it's accurate. Yeah,
it feels accurate and scary because I've never actually thought
about it in that particular way. Well, when Hodgman was
talking about the secret societies, even though even though he
(01:15:47):
was doing it with a willful and knowledged like kind
of perspective, or he's like, yeah, all they really do
is sit around and read books or jerk off, and
like I can call offense and like Dracula, like, it
doesn't change the fact that when I think about the
existence of something like the Skull and Bone Society, I
(01:16:08):
gotta be brutally honest and say, like, the one of
the primary reactions I have is jealousy, Like I do.
I am the guy that like the airline offers like
platinum v I P whatever. It's anytime there's like a
you know, airline lounge, it's like and they have an
extra platinum door and you can't get past that one
(01:16:29):
unless you have the other thing. And I'm like, I'm
always just like filled with this like just envy. Yeah,
I'm like, come on, man, get me, get me everywhere.
I want the whole thing. Like I want and you
really could fool me easily. When the viper room was
still open here in l A. The viper room had
(01:16:50):
two booths and it was just they were they were
booths that were smaller than something you could get it
as Showne's and but there were the only place to
sit and they were v I P booths and I
was just like I was just such a sucker for it.
I like, I'm not going to the viper room unless
I know a v I P. So I can sit
in one of those booths. It's like like it's garbage,
(01:17:11):
Like you could be I could be sold a closet
to stand in if you called it a v I
P closet anyway. So I'm just saying, like the Builderberg
contacted me, if if the Masons had turned out to
be real, I'd be like, come on, yeah, it makes
me a member. Most most I agree with you. I
think most people would, because that's there's this psychotomy between
(01:17:32):
this maybe not the best example, but it's like the
we see so many paintings that we've made of ourselves, right,
so many like the Norman Rockwell things, so many self
portraits we've made, whether it's our Netflix Q full of
a ton of documentaries that we we like to think
we're the person who would watched that, you know what
(01:17:54):
I mean, You know, like people are scrolling through or like, yeah, man,
I give so many ships about North Korea. What's happening
there is terrible? And then you know, look at what
you recently watched. One of those is the story we
tell about ourselves, and the other one is who we
are defined by our actions. And it is a very difficult,
(01:18:16):
I would say preposterous assumption to make that any significant majority,
forget that any significant minority of human beings would given
that sort of choice, say nah, I got my got
my thing. You know, and about if seven billion, five
(01:18:40):
million people all are immersed in one reality and you
beckon me back into the back room of the Vatican
and you tell me we've been doing this for a
thousand years. Here's the seals very steak, here's a goblet
of wine. This is Bill Gates, this is Tom Hanks.
Take a bite of this baby. I mean that is
(01:19:02):
those the deal breakers would get down to those minutia.
It would be like bite this baby. Am I killing
the baby? And they revealing that the that there was
baby in the baby back rib that I already ate
with Tom Hanks and as Tom Hanks like I'm on
my third one, like just relaxed, but really taking that
(01:19:23):
away from it, it's just sort of like I do.
It's funny how like offended I'll get about the idea
of like autocracy versus democracy, like the bullet that I
believe I would take in the in the reality of
like um, like like how what I truly actually do
believe that with push came to shove, the torture I'd
(01:19:45):
endor and the sacrifice I'd be willing to commit to
protect my fellow human beings freedoms actually is pretty extreme
by my own measure, Like I look at myself and
I go, you're a little bit of a funk when
it comes down to it, Like you you'd almost cut
off your nose despite your face, just to make a
point about how important it is for to not let
(01:20:06):
that vampire into that kitchen. But that's when it's on
that small scale and just But when I think about
the Harry Potter version of it, where people are just
like no, it's magic, Like it's we have a secret
entrance in the subway, and we will teach every every
every everyone that thinks they're eating calamari is eating pigannis
and only we know. And like, like, when it gets
(01:20:27):
that fun, I think I'd keep secrets. I'd start to go, well, jeez,
I mean this is like a Joss Wheaton show, you know,
Like I'd feel like like, like, well, now I'm a
hero for taking part of this. I'm like, I'm like, uh,
Jennifer Garner and Alias, you know, it's like, oh, you're
part of the CIA. You're like, you're part of this. Sure,
(01:20:49):
I'll do wet work, but how much of that is
how much of that is frame such that participating in
this is the one way to matter, because that means
not participating in it. If one would assume that immediately,
no matter what you do right in opposition to this,
(01:21:09):
if you like, if you blow it up and you
say you go public and you're like, this is how
you get first class on this air flight? Uh, this
is what happens to all those babies. Uh. And here's
you know, a thigh bone of a child or whatever.
It didn't mean for my voice to sound that arch,
but you or that excited or a child. Well that's
(01:21:31):
the primo part because it's like, no, just think about it. Okay,
So it's for the table. No, no, like six six
to eight people, Well, you guys, whatever, drink the kool a.
The new phrase should be taste the baby for so
(01:21:52):
the yes, the thought then is the alternative if if
such a situation like that exists, the alternative then is complete.
So it makes me think of Tommy Lee Jones leaving
Will Smith on the park bench in the first act
(01:22:12):
of Men in Black, Like what a brilliantly crafted It's
like instead of uh sweating away over, you know, like
what could have easily been a two page screenplay, you know,
joylessly adapting this thing. Was like they took such a
simple approach, which was Will Smith found himself accidentally finding
(01:22:35):
out as a New York cop that you know, some
people have four arms, and uh, what's his face? Uh,
I've forgot his name. Tommy Lee like sits him down
and says, here's the deal. There's a bigger world out there,
and you got a choice, and I'm gonna get up,
but I'm gonna walk away and and you you can
forget about all this. And I don't know if you
(01:22:55):
explicitly says like, if you do like, I'll actually literally
you make you forget. But it took me give him
a day or time. Yeah, it's like it's like but
it's like in that moment, I remember reading that script
because I was new out here, and then I saw
it on the screen and I had the same response
it was, I was like, God, this is just such
a simple It's a simple, brilliant way of like ushering
(01:23:19):
an audience across a threshold. Simple And another great example,
it's like you don't always need to have a refusal
of the call in these stories because there actually are
just absolutely that there's thresholds that you just don't have
a choice but to cross. And and it's like, do
you really want to go back to working in your
(01:23:40):
laundromat now that we have like touched your life and
made it more magical. I feel like you really called
us out because at the beginning of every episode there's
that you can turn back now apart right you guys.
I appreciate you guys fully in a doorbell sound, I
ask you about that dark forces bringing your door you
(01:24:00):
can turn back now from your own can't believe that's
you know, that's so funny. That's a big question about
that was like we stripped that out of the video,
and then the video there's a door like there's a
visual of like shadow twilight Zone. That's what I was like,
(01:24:22):
Oh yeah, there's like the door in twilight Zone, right
and Nat Nat created that from back when we were
we started out as a YouTube show and we we
were thinking, like we need an intro. It needs to
be it needs to be sexy to be immersive, right
right right right? Have you actually seen it ever? No,
(01:24:43):
I've never seen it. Well, one day, we'll watch opening
the drumbeat? Is it? It's a little off. Yeah, that's
my fault again. When I was a young man, did
is that one? And you were kind of doing it
my fingers, didn't you? I know, I did it with
(01:25:06):
my hands on you just like you just you didn't
quantize just kept the performance. I redid it three times.
I didn't quantize it. And because I don't know what
I was doing recording. Have you heard the artist flying lotus?
Like it's like it's like a like an awesome producer.
He does that all the time, like like very like
like unquantized skittery beats. I've always hip hop does that.
(01:25:29):
Now they deliberately rob you of your expectation, like Jay
Diller or whatever like that, even like, yeah, exactly like
the NPC in the past, all of whom I got
that because every time I'm like I'm like here, it
comes like it's this, don't do I am mortified. So
(01:25:54):
it's we've all thought it. Oh my god. It's also
settling to a degree. Yes, imagine if the dark forces
not only rain your doorbell machine, but like also just
for like never quantized exactly, well, the dark forces don't
they don't quantize, well, they might should be to their
(01:26:15):
own drum machine. Listen, listen, I'm calling the stop to
this episode right now. Listen. I only wanted to ask
you about promise. Oh that's not that was my conspiracy,
like the in slaw software stuff. Yeah, that's it. That
was my thing that When I mentioned I was like,
I have a pet conspiracy theory lay over that I
wanted to ask you guys about it. But we can
talk about it. Let's go, let's go somewhere. I have
(01:26:36):
a drink. Let's do it. The audience is like, oh, thanks,
thanks for talking about dog domestication. Go have fun talking
about conspiracy theories. Don't don't, don't don't. All right, well,
let just I don't want to kick the table over you.
(01:26:58):
That sounds like sounds like a fantastic idea because we
need to First off, I need to learn a little
bit more about promise and I would prefer you guys
know me, I'm not super great off the cuffs, So
prosecutors in an acronym ever everything. Oh wow, so we're
(01:27:20):
burning down the show to save the show. Thank you
so much for tuning in, everybody, Uh Dan, thank you
so much for hanging out now. As you as you
established earlier in our episode, today, you have you have
departed Twitter, right, but you are still active by various
(01:27:40):
concerns about surveillance states on the social media's, uh with
particularly Instagram? Is that correct? Yeah, that's like my one
outlet you've created like your own surveillance state. I have
like a sixteen camera cardio vascular workout program with green screen. Yeah,
and about forty people at a time watch it. And
there's like regulars that have formed a community around watching
(01:28:03):
me lift weights and swim. Do you see the feedback?
Do you respond ever? Or yeah? Yeah, okay, Yeah, there's
people that have become part of it's like a family
and and and uh I I like I made a
title sequence for the workout and they include like some
of the people that only comment, you know, like like
as if they're cast members. Like is that the guy
at the table on his computer? Is that a separate
(01:28:24):
thing or is that just something you made once or twice?
That was stock footage that I used to Like, that's
a pre roll kind of thing. I love. I love
as I'm setting up the feed that I bring that
guy up and that's a loop of him sitting there typing,
and then at any point I can then hit the
button that goes into the sixty second it's about to
start kind of thing. Well, where can people see this
(01:28:45):
for themselves? I have to say to Like, my daughter
isn't quite old enough to watch Ricky Morty, but I
am a big fan of your car songs, and I
got the earbuds in and you've obviously made this track
and your lip sinking in your car is even one
were you're like taking a meeting at a studio and
you sort of stopped the song or a a second talk
to the security guard and then go back to the song.
(01:29:06):
She loves that, and we watched them together and it's
a bonding thing for us, my my fiance's sisters kids. Uh,
they I trust them to curate because I don't want
to think about kids listening to my songs when I
do them. But I really love the fact that, um,
some of the songs just happened by sheer coincidence to
be pg. They're not about anything I think. And and
(01:29:28):
then I love when kids love your songs. It's like, yeah,
the one about the pooping robot in particular kind of
a gem. But again see ever yourself. Those are all
like on the feed. But then the stories is where
you can see the or the live streams is where
you can see the workout videos. And when do when
does Rick and Morty officially start November something? I don't
(01:29:49):
know if there's a date yet trailer, but just start
staring at your television in November, and while you are
on the internet, while you are staring at your screen
of choice and thinking about the things, do you have
a bone to pick with this conversation? Do you have
a personal anecdote that applies? Do you distrust dogs? Let
(01:30:12):
us know. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter
where all over the place, we particularly recommend our favorite
part of the Internet, our community or favorite part of Facebook,
sandbox Internet. Here's where it gets crazy. Our community page
where you can meet our favorite part of the show,
your fellow listeners. And what riddle me this, Matt, What
(01:30:36):
do people do if they hate social media? Oh? Well,
they pick up their their phone and they dial this
weird number that has too many characters, but but it
really does work. It's one eight three three. Why Dan,
you're going to you're gonna do that with us? That
I chicken out? You did great? My mind has been
(01:30:59):
He's tell you, yeah, you know you said that gets
that gets bandied around as an acronym when we're when
we're doing set up pre production stuff. And uh, you know,
I've had people who are just friends of mine see
a text on my phone or some email alert and
it's like it's cut off and just stea you have right, Yeah, yeah,
(01:31:23):
it's like STD fifteen minutes. Uh well, hey, guys, what
if you don't want to do any of that stuff?
What if the Internet terrifies you? Um, you can do
the old way of using the Internet that is a
little more indirect and you can send us a good
old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at I heart radio
dot com stuff they don't want to know.