Cal And Jamie Explain The Internet

00:00:00.000 | I love old weird internet where you have these hand coded sites and your angel fire GeoCities

00:00:06.540 | blog and you didn't have this worry that, okay, this thing I post on here could be amplified

00:00:12.760 | to 100 million people in nine minutes.

00:00:15.560 | All right.

00:00:16.560 | Welcome to Cal and Jamie explain the internet.

00:00:18.480 | This is the show where two guys who by choice spend very little time online attempt to explain

00:00:23.840 | some of the biggest trends from the last week of internet culture.

00:00:28.280 | We will once again show you that the internet is not real life.

00:00:30.840 | We will sum up insane trending stories so you don't have to read about it or feel forced

00:00:34.820 | to tweet your political opinion about Kevin McCarthy and immediately be fired from your

00:00:38.800 | job.

00:00:39.800 | Hello everybody.

00:00:40.800 | My name is Jamie Kielstein and I am Cal Newport.

00:00:43.040 | We have today five stories that were trending in internet culture over the last week or

00:00:49.140 | so we will give you our completely uninformed take on them.

00:00:53.200 | This I think is a particularly, I don't know, poignant wink to be doing this because from

00:00:59.400 | what I understand you are in the middle of a social media fast.

00:01:03.000 | Do I have that right?

00:01:04.000 | Yeah.

00:01:05.000 | My church, which is something I never thought I would say, my church is doing like a 21

00:01:10.920 | day fast and most people are fasting from food and doing stuff like that.

00:01:18.880 | My pastor hit me with the last option which he calls a soul fast and he's like, "Just

00:01:24.680 | ask God what do you really need to fast from?"

00:01:27.480 | And dude, I would have rather fasted from food not because that would make my life better.

00:01:34.920 | Getting off social media would make my life better but I just kept convincing myself that

00:01:39.160 | I'm like, "Oh, I need it for work.

00:01:41.640 | I need it for what a lot of the listeners probably do."

00:01:43.680 | Like, yeah, of course I'd like to get off it.

00:01:45.680 | We're not all Cal Newport.

00:01:47.400 | I literally convinced myself that you would get mad at me.

00:01:50.480 | You Cal Newport, who writes about social media and not being on it, would get mad at me because

00:01:56.240 | you would be like, "Well, who's going to get our stories if you're off social media?

00:02:00.080 | That's like your one job."

00:02:01.400 | I was your excuse?

00:02:02.400 | Yeah.

00:02:03.400 | Okay.

00:02:04.400 | It's like the alcoholic that's like, "Yeah, but what if I need to be drinking to close

00:02:09.640 | the deal with the Nakamoto merger or whatever?"

00:02:12.840 | Like, okay, I definitely.

00:02:15.360 | I got to keep Moe's Tavern in business.

00:02:17.480 | Exactly.

00:02:18.480 | What's Moe going to do?

00:02:20.520 | What's Barney going to do?

00:02:21.520 | Come on.

00:02:22.520 | Then I realized that was insane and I texted you and you were like, "Oh, that's a great

00:02:27.600 | idea."

00:02:28.600 | I was like, "Fucking cow."

00:02:29.600 | Does that mean it's doing the show?

00:02:34.440 | There's two options.

00:02:35.440 | It's doing the show today.

00:02:36.440 | Either it's this really positive thing.

00:02:38.080 | It's like when you're in recovery for alcohol, like going to whatever it is, 6th Street in

00:02:43.200 | Austin at 3 a.m. and be like, "Man, I'm glad that's not me.

00:02:45.840 | I feel really good about my decision."

00:02:47.240 | Or is this like taking the guys from the A meeting to a bourbon tasting?

00:02:53.920 | Is this giving you a touch or is it giving you confidence in your decision?

00:02:57.200 | We'll see, man.

00:02:58.200 | I mean, you could read the first story and I could be like, "Joe Biden said what?

00:03:02.040 | Oh, that's the good stuff."

00:03:03.200 | I don't know.

00:03:05.520 | But I think that this will probably keep me off.

00:03:10.600 | I did the thing.

00:03:12.760 | This is how I quit things often.

00:03:14.200 | I don't think it's healthy, but when I quit things, I have to announce to everybody that

00:03:18.640 | I'm doing it so that I will look dumb.

00:03:22.000 | I could smoke cigarettes for 15 years and then on day one of year 15, just be like,

00:03:28.960 | "Oh, you idiot smoke.

00:03:30.680 | Gross.

00:03:31.680 | I quit."

00:03:32.680 | So then if I do start smoking again, they will beat me to death.

00:03:36.800 | So we'll see.

00:03:37.800 | I think this is a great way to remind me that social media is bad.

00:03:44.160 | Right.

00:03:45.160 | Okay.

00:03:46.160 | So I was worthless finding stories and helping you this week.

00:03:47.720 | I should give you props.

00:03:49.040 | Yeah, that's true.

00:03:50.680 | But it's for a better cause and let's hope this goes well and not like my...

00:03:54.840 | I think it might be my top five unnecessary Simpsons quotes would be Barney winning the

00:04:02.760 | film festival for his movie about alcoholism and sobriety.

00:04:07.220 | And they're like, "And your prize is a year supply of Duff beer."

00:04:11.440 | And he says, "Put it in my veins."

00:04:12.960 | And then the guy just comes out, the tech just comes out so matter of fact and just

00:04:15.920 | hooks IV up in the Barney from the...

00:04:18.640 | All right, let's get rolling.

00:04:20.640 | Nope.

00:04:21.640 | I was going to...

00:04:22.640 | My Barney quote, I was going to quote the one where he gets sober and joins NASA because

00:04:27.080 | he's really smart.

00:04:28.360 | And then he beats Homer and they go to congratulate him and he takes a sip of champagne and just

00:04:34.000 | goes, "Epic."

00:04:35.000 | And like freaks out.

00:04:36.720 | And then they all go, "That was non-alcoholic wine," or whatever it was.

00:04:39.920 | But anyway.

00:04:40.920 | It was non-alcoholic.

00:04:41.920 | Yeah.

00:04:42.920 | And of course, again, it's matter of factly just walks over and takes a jet pack and puts

00:04:45.240 | it on and it's just a matter of factness.

00:04:48.800 | This is what...

00:04:49.800 | See, all internet culture issues would be solved if we just use the internet for what

00:04:52.880 | it was meant for, which was essentially like sharing Simpsons quotes.

00:04:57.040 | That's all.

00:04:58.040 | I have a group...

00:04:59.440 | The group chat with me and two of my brothers on Instagram is only Simpsons clips.

00:05:04.720 | And it's just us being like, "Ah, the good old days."

00:05:09.000 | That actually is what it is.

00:05:10.000 | But we can just move that shit to text.

00:05:11.000 | Okay.

00:05:12.000 | All right, here we go.

00:05:13.000 | I'm going to click my share screen button here.

00:05:16.560 | We're going to be discussing these for the first time.

00:05:18.840 | All right.

00:05:19.840 | Number one.

00:05:20.840 | All right.

00:05:21.840 | This, I found this one.

00:05:23.280 | All right.

00:05:24.840 | Let's see.

00:05:25.840 | Do you see this on your screen now?

00:05:28.080 | What is this?

00:05:29.620 | This was...

00:05:30.620 | Oh my goodness.

00:05:34.420 | Okay.

00:05:36.480 | I don't know what it is, but I'll tell you where it's from.

00:05:40.280 | So where it's from is...

00:05:41.760 | Oh, I see.

00:05:43.640 | This is what's trending on Tumblr.

00:05:47.000 | So number one, I didn't realize Tumblr still existed.

00:05:50.080 | I went to what's trending on Tumblr and just grabbed something from the top five.

00:05:54.720 | So this was like two or three when I was going through here.

00:05:57.680 | So if you were on Tumblr, there's a good chance you saw this.

00:06:00.560 | My Simpsons reference for you in that moment was when Bart was working at the burlesque

00:06:05.120 | house and Principal Skinner saunters in and immediate...

00:06:09.560 | Oh no, actually you're more of the grandpa where he just looks at Bart, grabs his hat

00:06:13.920 | and just goes, "Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo," and turns around and leaves.

00:06:16.920 | Like, "Hi, Grandpa," and he just puts it on.

00:06:18.920 | Yeah.

00:06:19.920 | You just clicking on Tumblr and being like, "I got to get out of here," and taking a fast

00:06:22.800 | screenshot and then just bailing.

00:06:25.120 | So this is...

00:06:26.120 | All right.

00:06:27.120 | For those who are listening and not watching, these are my little ponies.

00:06:32.240 | And there's something like an insect.

00:06:35.440 | And one of them is saying, "Oh my goodness, Applejack, look.

00:06:39.280 | It's an anemore locust, one of the most recognizable creatures of the Cambrian explosion."

00:06:45.600 | And the other one says, "What's in God's name?"

00:06:48.360 | Shared 6,925 times.

00:06:50.560 | That's a lot.

00:06:51.560 | My main issue is this is a weird sex thing.

00:06:55.120 | That's my number one concern.

00:06:56.680 | So we're just wandering into this is just clear signaling for...

00:07:02.880 | Yeah.

00:07:03.880 | And any time I've been confused by something on the internet and I just go, "I'm just going

00:07:08.360 | to Google that.

00:07:09.500 | Always a weird sex thing."

00:07:10.500 | Always a weird sex thing.

00:07:11.500 | Always a weird sex thing.

00:07:12.500 | And Tumblr was really interesting because...

00:07:15.500 | I think Tumblr was before MySpace.

00:07:19.240 | Tumblr started off, correct me if I'm wrong, as a journaling site.

00:07:22.960 | And you would just journal and it was kind of angsty teenagers.

00:07:26.120 | And then it definitely was far more left-wing than right-wing.

00:07:32.360 | There weren't a lot of right-wing emo journal entries from William M. Buckley's granddaughter.

00:07:39.160 | So I'm learning from you here, just basics.

00:07:42.100 | It's like a blog style interface.

00:07:46.200 | You're posting a blog style text and image post.

00:07:49.720 | Well, and then there was a phase where it was just like hard sex.

00:07:55.040 | It went from the journal entries to that was the place where just erotica and fan fiction

00:08:01.120 | and just straight clips of just sex became a thing.

00:08:05.120 | And then I literally thought it closed.

00:08:08.760 | I thought it was just done.

00:08:11.080 | And now it kind of would make sense to me that kind of like the sex fetish people just

00:08:18.520 | stuck around after closing.

00:08:20.840 | And it has a very sort of abandoned carnival feel where there's just like a Ferris wheel

00:08:28.680 | that's broken and just hasn't been used in 20 years.

00:08:32.320 | But under the boardwalk, it's a bunch of dudes dressed as My Little Ponies.

00:08:37.160 | That's just the vibe I'm getting from this where they can just be free in the wreckage

00:08:43.480 | of Tumblr.

00:08:44.480 | That's interesting.

00:08:45.480 | Okay.

00:08:46.480 | So it's like a digital post-apocalyptic landscape that allows sort of like interesting.

00:08:52.680 | You know what, though?

00:08:53.680 | I mean, A, that's based on nothing factual.

00:08:56.560 | That's just what I'm getting from looking at this.

00:08:59.760 | Deeply researched history of Tumblr from Dr. Jamie Kilstein.

00:09:03.280 | Two points.

00:09:04.280 | One, that trajectory of going from like one thing to hardcore sex.

00:09:09.520 | Little known fact, same fate for pbskids.com.

00:09:12.920 | Correct.

00:09:13.920 | Yeah.

00:09:14.920 | It was a weird angle, a really weird turn that took.

00:09:17.520 | But you know, I think that was, I believe it was Jim Blair's idea.

00:09:21.760 | Jim Blair.

00:09:22.760 | Jim Blair, yeah.

00:09:24.160 | The news anchor from PBS.

00:09:26.560 | Good poll.

00:09:27.560 | I appreciate that.

00:09:28.560 | Thank you.

00:09:29.560 | All right.

00:09:30.560 | Well, listen, but I'll tell you what, here's the interesting thing I'm taking away from

00:09:31.840 | this.

00:09:32.840 | I'm not going to say a lot of little pony stuff.

00:09:33.840 | I know it's a thing, but I don't know much about it.

00:09:37.160 | But I do sort of like this idea that in the wreckage of once big sites, you're actually

00:09:42.700 | getting a return to old school internet.

00:09:45.280 | So I actually, so I have a, you know me, this is my thing on the show is I always have a

00:09:48.760 | positive spin on a lot of things.

00:09:50.840 | This is great.

00:09:51.840 | I love old weird internet where, you know, you have these hand coded sites and your angel

00:09:56.720 | fire GeoCities blog.

00:09:59.240 | And you didn't have this worry that, okay, this thing I post on here could be amplified

00:10:04.120 | to a hundred million people in nine minutes.

00:10:06.760 | And so like, you could just have this and it's anonymous.

00:10:09.040 | Like who's this name?

00:10:10.560 | Punkett is here.

00:10:11.560 | Punkett Dash is here.

00:10:12.560 | Right.

00:10:13.560 | And what is it probably funny if you're like Jamie Kielstie.

00:10:14.560 | Jamie Kielstie, wait a second.

00:10:15.560 | And then that's what I noticed, like a little bit of like a pony head in the background

00:10:20.640 | of right here.

00:10:24.600 | You know, I have a positive take.

00:10:26.640 | I feel like this story has made me sort of like a 1990s libertarian leaning conservative

00:10:33.840 | dad where I'm just like, you know, I'm fine with they do as long as they don't do it in

00:10:38.000 | front of me.

00:10:39.000 | Like I would rather go to Tumblr with the weird stuff I don't get instead of it just

00:10:43.320 | like constantly popping up on my Twitter feed.

00:10:46.040 | If that's where, if that's your guys little safe space for whatever this is, um, you know,

00:10:51.760 | have at it, man.

00:10:52.760 | If it makes you happy, that's cool.

00:10:54.320 | Yeah.

00:10:55.320 | I mean, I'm asking you because you spent much more time on Twitter, but Twitter is not a

00:10:59.880 | safe space for any sort of exploration.

00:11:02.000 | Right.

00:11:03.000 | Because it's associated with you and it's so scrutinized.

00:11:08.000 | And so it's become a lot more conformist.

00:11:09.680 | So I'm glad there's places out there like I don't mess around with stuff, you know,

00:11:13.120 | like, uh, not, not taking a big swing.

00:11:15.600 | All right.

00:11:16.600 | Very good.

00:11:17.600 | So we found something positive there.

00:11:18.600 | All right.

00:11:19.600 | So let me, uh, let's move on.

00:11:20.600 | All right.

00:11:21.600 | God, I hope one of your listeners doesn't like write in to tell us like that.

00:11:24.040 | It's really some just horrific sex thing.

00:11:27.280 | And we're just like, good on them.

00:11:29.340 | It is horrific.

00:11:30.340 | It's like, uh, puppy murdering and not just like quick and painless puppy murdering, but

00:11:36.400 | like it's a whole culture of we find and kidnap puppies and, and, and who are the sweet, only

00:11:42.160 | golden retrievers, only golden retrievers.

00:11:45.240 | Yeah.

00:11:46.240 | Woodchipper.

00:11:47.240 | It's like a terrible thing and they all, but the code word for it is something about the

00:11:51.240 | Cambridge explosion.

00:11:52.760 | If you can't bring explosion, it's like, we're going to use the like contractor bag to collect

00:11:58.600 | the bloody chunks of puppies to come through.

00:12:00.960 | And there's like other references for other ways you do it.

00:12:03.520 | Oh, I love that you're out of the two of us, the academic and uh, yeah, that's where that

00:12:08.080 | goes.

00:12:09.080 | Good work.

00:12:10.080 | All right, here we go.

00:12:11.080 | Tab number two.

00:12:12.080 | Oh my goodness.

00:12:13.080 | These are in reverse order.

00:12:14.080 | All right, here we go.

00:12:17.720 | All right.

00:12:18.720 | Okay.

00:12:19.720 | So this is a tweet from Lex Fridman.

00:12:22.960 | So if you just see this tweet, you might be wondering why is this trending?

00:12:27.200 | It just says, I'm reading a book a week in 2023.

00:12:30.700 | This is Lex in his tweet.

00:12:32.200 | Um, blah, blah, blah.

00:12:34.920 | I'll adjust the list, but I'm going to start on Monday and be done by Sunday.

00:12:38.360 | So he's gonna read one book each week and he might do, he's announcing, might do low

00:12:42.040 | key videos of like, Hey, what did I learn each week from the books?

00:12:45.120 | And it's a list of like classic books.

00:12:47.720 | Uh, right now this is an exception.

00:12:51.280 | I know about this story because Jamie sent it to me.

00:12:53.520 | So Jamie wrote something about this, right?

00:12:55.680 | You know, so what, why are we talking about this?

00:12:57.480 | Seems nice to me.

00:12:58.640 | I texted you furiously and I wrote about it at, uh, Jamie Kilstein dot sub stack.com.

00:13:05.800 | Um, if you guys want to follow my writing, I read a lot about mental health, but because

00:13:12.520 | I was very online when stuff like this happens, I write about it as well.

00:13:17.800 | So people saw this list and lost their minds.

00:13:23.000 | They absolutely lost their minds.

00:13:25.040 | Um, baffles me.

00:13:26.840 | And well, it is because of tribalism where even though, and you know, Lex, um, you know,

00:13:34.000 | you can't, you're not going to speak for him, but like I would have never considered Lex

00:13:39.200 | even in like, I mean, maybe in my super very online days, like, and he's, he's in the group

00:13:46.560 | of podcasters that will talk to anyone despite their political leanings.

00:13:54.480 | Right.

00:13:55.480 | So he'll interview, uh, you, but he'll also interview John Danaher, a famous jujitsu coach,

00:14:01.320 | but he'll interview Kanye and then he'll interview, uh, someone from fucking AIPAC to cat.

00:14:08.320 | Like he will, he'll go both sides.

00:14:11.000 | And if you go both sides, people on the left just call you a right wing.

00:14:17.040 | If you've, if you've interviewed Jordan Peterson before, then anything you say will be scrutinized.

00:14:23.440 | So, you know, not to get political on the show, but a lot of the people attacking him

00:14:29.260 | would have to, because again, the books were innocuous.

00:14:31.900 | If it was like, I'm going to read a book a week and every week it was a different translation

00:14:35.920 | of mind comp, then I'd be like, buddy, what's happening.

00:14:40.880 | But it was, you know, a lot of just classic books and people were like, Oh, right wing

00:14:48.840 | apologist Lex Fridman is an idiot.

00:14:51.960 | What are you going to read next?

00:14:52.960 | James and the giant peach.

00:14:54.620 | And it was just mocking him.

00:14:56.240 | Mock.

00:14:57.240 | Okay.

00:14:58.240 | So, so the pushback was in the form of mockery.

00:14:59.680 | Like these, these books aren't like, why haven't you read these books?

00:15:03.680 | When I heard he was getting canceled and he even tweeted, I did not think that by the

00:15:07.680 | way, this was on new year's.

00:15:09.080 | This was like, welcome to 2023.

00:15:11.640 | Lex was like, we should read more.

00:15:12.840 | And everyone was like, fuck you Lex and lost their minds.

00:15:16.840 | There was one guy, I don't know if I sent you the tweet, but he's a pretty famous dude.

00:15:21.560 | I haven't heard of him, but he was like, this is why I won't go on this idiots podcast,

00:15:25.280 | even though he keeps asking me to.

00:15:27.680 | And then Jordan Peterson like chimed in.

00:15:29.920 | This is why we should all be off Twitter.

00:15:31.720 | Jordan Peterson chimed in and was like, it was like, I don't even remember what he said.

00:15:37.920 | And then that guy was like, shut up, Peterson, you're an idiot.

00:15:40.040 | And it just erupted from Lex being like, Hey, I want to go revisit, you know, 1984 or whatever

00:15:47.000 | you want it to read.

00:15:48.640 | And so what I wrote about, you know, I wrote about one that this is probably something

00:15:56.120 | that I would have jumped on, you know, um, back in the day.

00:16:01.360 | But you would have put your finger up first, right into the wind.

00:16:04.240 | Are we happy about this?

00:16:05.240 | Are we just like, that's, that's the way that goes, right?

00:16:07.400 | You're like, you gotta, you have to get the parameters of why we're mad at someone and

00:16:12.280 | then you take your swing.

00:16:13.280 | Yeah.

00:16:14.280 | I mean, honestly, I assumed that when I saw Lex Friedman as being canceled over books,

00:16:18.880 | I assumed that it was, Oh, they were all like white guy authors or whatever, but it really

00:16:24.040 | wasn't that it was so much lamer than that, where it was just, Hey, this guy's trying

00:16:29.280 | to do something good.

00:16:30.280 | And you know, a lot of people, um, yeah, I, I, I think I wrote, um, that my days used

00:16:39.320 | to go like this.

00:16:40.320 | Number one, see what's trending on Twitter.

00:16:41.760 | Number two, see the name of someone I'm not supposed to like.

00:16:43.800 | Number three, see what the people, this is the, the, the finger in the air I'm supposed

00:16:47.200 | to agree with her saying number four, find a funnier way to say it.

00:16:50.200 | Um, which by the way is easy.

00:16:52.040 | Um, and then number five, basking retweets while my personal life falls apart.

00:16:55.640 | And yeah, I mean, this was essentially, this was my life.

00:16:59.080 | Why don't we try it?

00:17:00.080 | Okay.

00:17:01.080 | Let's, let's put on, you know, very online, Jamie hats, like go back to the time machine.

00:17:03.960 | Sure.

00:17:04.960 | Take your, take your swing.

00:17:05.960 | All right.

00:17:06.960 | It's like, what's, what would be on the spot?

00:17:09.120 | Yeah.

00:17:10.120 | What's your, what's your tweet?

00:17:11.120 | Very online.

00:17:12.120 | Jamie would have sent three years ago.

00:17:13.120 | If this had happened, it's a pretty able list of Lexford men to list that he can read a

00:17:17.720 | bunch of books a week while we're all struggling at minimum wage jobs.

00:17:20.760 | And some of us can't even read.

00:17:22.240 | There you go.

00:17:23.240 | It's pretty good.

00:17:24.240 | All right.

00:17:25.240 | That's funny.

00:17:26.240 | Uh, no, I dude, I mean, it would have just, it would have been jumping on board.

00:17:29.120 | And here's the thing that upset me the most.

00:17:30.840 | Here's why I actually wrote about this is because a lot of people who are trashing Lex

00:17:36.600 | and chime in if you want from what you know about him personally or don't, but they were

00:17:40.640 | like, he's like that fake lovey bro type.

00:17:44.920 | And essentially they are mad at him.

00:17:47.760 | And some dare I say would consider him privileged for he's doing what I'm trying to do in my

00:17:52.640 | social media career, which is he is trying to bring people together, trying to tweet

00:17:58.520 | about, Hey man, things are really hard, but let's look for love.

00:18:01.840 | Let's see how we can help people.

00:18:03.880 | And to me, to me, when I see him, it seems very authentic, but people, social media has

00:18:11.560 | trained us to be so antagonistic that when someone just tweets like, Hey, we should all

00:18:16.440 | love each other.

00:18:17.440 | I mean, every time I tweet something like that, I'll, I'll get at least three or four

00:18:21.240 | tweets that are like, Oh, what's your angle or easy for you to say, or, Oh, this fake

00:18:26.480 | love thing.

00:18:27.600 | Like, like saying to be nice to each other is somehow a grift.

00:18:31.160 | That's another very online word.

00:18:33.480 | If you change your mind, if you become more conservative or more liberal, if you're trying

00:18:37.280 | to bring people together, it's just a grift.

00:18:39.200 | I see what you're doing.

00:18:40.420 | And it's like, wow, we have become that nihilistic that trying to be nice or trying to read a

00:18:45.280 | book a week or telling people they should meditate or go to the gym.

00:18:49.040 | Somehow there has to be some political angle.

00:18:51.120 | Hey, we should go to the gym more.

00:18:52.280 | Oh, so you don't think COVID is real.

00:18:54.000 | But somehow it has to become political or, uh, we have to find a way to discredit them.

00:19:00.160 | And that's what I just think is, I mean, honestly, like it's, it's evil when it comes to social

00:19:05.120 | media where it's like, we're attacking people for trying to do good.

00:19:08.680 | That's so, I mean, here's having met Lex, I don't know him well, but I've met him before

00:19:15.360 | as far as I can tell, this is, he's just a nice guy.

00:19:18.560 | And the reason why that's not, it's not surprising to me.

00:19:23.600 | Because there's the shared bit of background that I can have with Lex.

00:19:27.280 | He's also a computer science PhD.

00:19:29.520 | He's a research scientist at MIT.

00:19:32.640 | He came to my attention because he has on his show, all of these big name professors

00:19:37.780 | from the CS department I knew at MIT.

00:19:39.960 | And to me, when I first encountered Lex, like this is great that there's probably like a

00:19:44.080 | big audience of Joe Rogan fans who are now hearing Silvio Macaulay, the cryptographer,

00:19:49.920 | talk about Oblivion zero knowledge proofs.

00:19:52.000 | Like this is great.

00:19:53.000 | He's like, you know, he's like, I'm not even on famous computer scientists.

00:19:54.680 | It's an interesting guy.

00:19:56.480 | But those of us who come out of academia, you know, we're probably too busy doing math

00:20:00.400 | equations to really be plugged in the culture.

00:20:02.520 | So there's a sort of, and also he's not American, right?

00:20:05.080 | He comes from a Russian background.

00:20:07.640 | So there's more of a, you know, Tocqueville in America type relationship, I think, going

00:20:12.800 | on to our culture of like, I was doing math and CS, I'm not even from the US.

00:20:16.840 | So I'm not, I'm not plugged into or placed into these existing cultural streams.

00:20:22.960 | Like where, where do you sit and what team are you on, especially online?

00:20:25.960 | I just don't think that comes naturally to him.

00:20:27.440 | And I think that breaks people's brains like that.

00:20:30.760 | It can't be because you have a bit, you have to be, well, whose team are you on, man?

00:20:36.360 | What's the grip?

00:20:37.360 | Like what's going on?

00:20:38.360 | I don't know.

00:20:39.360 | Every time I've talked to him, he's honestly seemed like a really curious, nice guy who

00:20:42.720 | really wants people to love each other.

00:20:45.160 | And also like, man, if you start the less I'm on social media, the more I can appreciate

00:20:51.760 | certain things from some people.

00:20:53.640 | I don't care how Jordan Peterson feels about pronouns or some of the stuff he said, that's

00:20:58.400 | been like very silly and stuff.

00:21:00.040 | But when I first discovered Jordan Peterson, it was just like a strong male personality

00:21:06.700 | being like, Hey man, take responsibility for your stuff, make your bed, like fix your problems.

00:21:11.360 | And that was really helpful for me at that time in my life.

00:21:14.500 | And so I don't have to agree with everything he says politically or where he works to.

00:21:21.400 | I don't suddenly have to like disown the good he did in my life.

00:21:25.400 | And I would sort of implore your audience.

00:21:27.040 | I mean, I'm sure your audience is pretty good with that, but it's like you can separate

00:21:31.660 | these things, man.

00:21:32.660 | You can have relationships with people where you don't agree with everything.

00:21:35.620 | You can see someone tweet, Hey, I'm going to try to read a book.

00:21:39.160 | He must've been so proud before he hit send.

00:21:41.600 | What a cool little thing I'm doing for myself.

00:21:44.140 | And now he's had to respond to it.

00:21:46.440 | He literally, it's like he got canceled.

00:21:48.120 | Like he just posted a YouTube video, which I haven't watched, like in response to it.

00:21:51.560 | And, you know, he seems like he's taking it in good.

00:21:54.040 | I mean, God, if anything, it just, it, it, it proved his point that we should be reading

00:21:58.480 | more and offline.

00:22:00.120 | Well, if you had a friend come up to you at like a guy from work, I mean, like a good

00:22:05.520 | friend, like, Hey Jamie, like I'm, I thought you'd be interested.

00:22:08.600 | Maybe you want to join me.

00:22:09.800 | Like I found these old books.

00:22:10.800 | I've read a bunch of these before, but I really want to just like read them from scratch.

00:22:14.000 | And I want to spend more time reading.

00:22:15.780 | You fucking idiot.

00:22:16.780 | You idiot.

00:22:17.780 | What?

00:22:18.780 | Those books are so stupid.

00:22:21.780 | Just knock them out of his hand.

00:22:24.000 | Get your stupid books.

00:22:25.280 | I read all the books.

00:22:27.400 | I smart.

00:22:29.080 | Get on the ground.

00:22:30.080 | Pick up the books in front of me.

00:22:32.300 | You stupid.

00:22:33.300 | You know, like it would be, it would be weird.

00:22:35.880 | Right?

00:22:36.880 | And by the way, man, this ties into a mental health thing I've been talking about on my

00:22:41.880 | podcast, but like I do this now as an adult and I was actually just listening to an old

00:22:47.560 | Conan podcast and he was saying, Conan was saying how his neighbors, old neighbors thought

00:22:55.240 | that he was just really mean to his wife.

00:22:59.320 | And in reality, no, it was him being mean to himself.

00:23:03.720 | I'm like, Oh you idiot.

00:23:05.760 | Like blah, blah, blah.

00:23:06.760 | So like this is a real problem.

00:23:08.840 | And you know, I, I was helping this like eight year old girl that I kind of mentor.

00:23:14.680 | She was, she was struggling with it.

00:23:18.120 | She was struggling with that as well.

00:23:19.760 | I was like, do you say nice things about yourself to yourself?

00:23:22.960 | And she just goes, no.

00:23:24.880 | And I was like, that's kind of like me too.

00:23:28.160 | And it's, it's internet makes this worse.

00:23:32.520 | Internet makes this worse.

00:23:33.520 | This is internet makes this worse.

00:23:35.080 | Internet makes this so much worse.

00:23:37.800 | You don't want to put out good stuff.

00:23:39.960 | Do you think that I get excited every time I'm going to post something just like, Hey

00:23:44.160 | man, just went for a walk in nature and like, I know life's hard, but if you just breathe

00:23:48.840 | in and look at the beauty around you, it's like the idea that while typing that in my

00:23:53.080 | head is Rolodexing all of the things that people hate me could say.

00:23:58.120 | And then it just gets solidified with stories like this.

00:24:02.000 | It might be a must be nice to have functioning lungs.

00:24:07.960 | Why don't you go tell the coal miners recovering down in West Virginia about your fresh air

00:24:12.800 | walk?

00:24:13.800 | Exactly.

00:24:14.800 | Exactly.

00:24:15.800 | Neoliberal elitist shill.

00:24:16.800 | And you're like, okay, okay, okay.

00:24:17.800 | I support the coal miners.

00:24:18.800 | Oh, so you support coal and you, uh, you hate Greta Thunberg.

00:24:22.800 | It's like, no, no, no.

00:24:24.200 | Greta's fine.

00:24:25.200 | Oh, so you love Andrew Tate.

00:24:26.200 | What are you doing?

00:24:27.400 | And like, I, but you know, I know if I were to call, you know, Trump a Nazi or Biden senile,

00:24:36.920 | it's like, Oh, bring me that.

00:24:38.920 | Bring me that respect.

00:24:39.920 | Bring me that love.

00:24:41.260 | And so we are training ourself.

00:24:42.720 | And so then what do you think happens when you go outside?

00:24:45.160 | Is your brain trained to look for negative or is your brain trained to look for the good?

00:24:49.920 | And it's like, yeah, man, it's going to be trained to look for the negative in the less

00:24:53.160 | I'm on social media.

00:24:54.160 | The more I actually do read books and the more I get out into nature and I meditate

00:24:57.600 | and I just write to write, um, off social media.

00:25:01.560 | Um, the more I'm like, yeah, man, there's a lot, even when I'm struggling, there's a

00:25:05.360 | lot of good in the world.

00:25:07.000 | And that gratitude helps me with my mental health.

00:25:10.000 | Yeah.

00:25:11.000 | So much.

00:25:12.000 | And that comes back to the key point, the number of people who are very online and giving

00:25:17.640 | this negative feedback, it's so small.

00:25:20.400 | And the vast majority of the people do not think in their lives about, am I going to

00:25:26.360 | get pushed back about talking about a book?

00:25:28.160 | Am I going to get pushed back about talking about taking fresh air?

00:25:30.600 | Like it's so narrow.

00:25:31.760 | I think that's, that's, that's what's so critical is how narrow, how narrow this is.

00:25:36.160 | It, and you know, if you feel that same concern, it's just Twitter.

00:25:40.680 | I mean, Lex should leave Twitter.

00:25:41.680 | I'm going to tell him that.

00:25:42.680 | No, I don't think he needs to be on Twitter.

00:25:44.200 | He doesn't need to be on Twitter.

00:25:45.400 | You should follow Sam Harris's example.

00:25:47.120 | Like Sam doesn't need, he didn't need to be on Twitter.

00:25:49.040 | Like he has his podcast, he loves it and he left.

00:25:51.880 | I think he's fine.

00:25:52.880 | I think he's happier for it.

00:25:53.880 | I'd like to need to be on Twitter.

00:25:54.880 | He barely uses it.

00:25:55.880 | I don't think so.

00:25:56.880 | It's so narrow.

00:25:57.880 | I, I, once again, my computer is dying.

00:25:58.880 | I apologize to you, but now I'm in the cool standing spot.

00:26:04.560 | You know, it must be nice to stand with your, tell those pirates that lost their legs and

00:26:10.080 | cannonball accidents about all of your standing.

00:26:12.160 | Oh, that's right.

00:26:13.160 | But you're probably pro pirate.

00:26:16.840 | So again, cow and I, we don't, we talk about culture, we talk about what's being talked

00:26:23.320 | about, but we don't need to make this a political show, but it's super interesting that you

00:26:29.680 | brought up Sam Harris because I was on Twitter when Sam was canceled the most recently.

00:26:40.920 | Sam's always talked about controversial things, but people on the right have actually really

00:26:46.280 | been going after him for his Trump stuff.

00:26:48.320 | And so he had this clip that went viral on a guy's show that I know that people are still

00:26:52.960 | talking about.

00:26:54.480 | I know about this one because I, I saw Sam get interviewed, um, on Bill Mars podcast.

00:27:01.120 | So I actually know about it.

00:27:02.440 | What happened on Twitter?

00:27:03.440 | Yeah.

00:27:04.440 | This is the Hunter Hunter Biden.

00:27:06.480 | Our politically like fraught internet bingo card starting to fill up because we have Sam

00:27:11.320 | Harris, Hunter Biden.

00:27:13.920 | These are all entering into, you've mentioned Jordan Peterson.

00:27:16.480 | We're doing it.

00:27:18.840 | We are, we are culture warriors.

00:27:21.240 | That should be the episode of this title or the title of today's episode.

00:27:25.840 | Definitely culture warriors.

00:27:27.160 | But it's so fascinating what you just said, because I feel like me and you are reversed

00:27:32.040 | a little bit.

00:27:33.040 | So Sam gets off Twitter and every time I see Sam come up, it's, here's another one for

00:27:39.360 | the bingo card.

00:27:40.360 | Like Glenn Greenwald just posted about him the other day being like, this is one of the

00:27:42.960 | worst things that happened in 2022.

00:27:44.360 | And it was that stupid clip again.

00:27:46.400 | And again, doesn't matter how I feel about that.

00:27:48.640 | Doesn't matter how Cal feels about that.

00:27:50.320 | But what's interesting is when Sam got off Twitter and I haven't seen Sam on Twitter,

00:27:55.520 | um, and I've actually had nothing but lovely interactions, uh, with Sam, um, recently.

00:28:03.080 | And that reminded me to tell you off air, cause I actually emailed him after this happened

00:28:06.040 | and he was great.

00:28:08.400 | Um, in my head, I'm like, Sam's done.

00:28:11.400 | No one respects Sam anymore because I'm just looking at my Twitter feed.

00:28:14.760 | Oh, interesting.

00:28:15.760 | And then the other day.

00:28:17.920 | So in your mind, in your mind, he's like, he gave away his public status.

00:28:21.720 | Interesting.

00:28:22.720 | That's it.

00:28:23.720 | Exactly.

00:28:24.720 | And he's done.

00:28:25.720 | And.

00:28:26.960 | Which is completely bonkers.

00:28:29.400 | I mean, Andrew Huberman just popped up on my feed, the other, my podcast feed the other

00:28:34.240 | day, Andrew Huberman, one of the biggest podcasts in the world.

00:28:37.000 | And he has had Sam Harrison.

00:28:38.520 | And the topic isn't like disgraced neuro, whatever the topic is like meditation.

00:28:46.320 | And they're probably just going to talk about his meditation app.

00:28:49.360 | And then podcast is killing it.

00:28:51.640 | Sam's podcast is killing it.

00:28:52.720 | His app is killing it in my head.

00:28:56.120 | It's over.

00:28:57.240 | So interesting that happened on Twitter and he's not on it.

00:28:59.920 | And in fact, he's probably going to be more successful, certainly going to be happier,

00:29:04.160 | not being on Twitter and not, you know, it seems like he knew that was bad for him.

00:29:08.960 | Yeah.

00:29:09.960 | You know, and like good for fucking him.

00:29:12.560 | But literally until this, even when he popped up on Huberman's, my thought was, oh, Huberman's

00:29:18.960 | taking a real risk.

00:29:19.960 | No, he's not.

00:29:21.320 | Because Huberman's audience isn't political.

00:29:23.320 | They're just trying to better themself.

00:29:24.720 | Yeah.

00:29:25.720 | Yeah.

00:29:26.720 | So anyway, so that to me is really good news for me.

00:29:29.800 | Yeah.

00:29:30.800 | That's great news to hear.

00:29:31.800 | Yeah.

00:29:32.800 | That's interesting.

00:29:33.800 | And I think that's what keeps people on is exactly how you felt about Sam.

00:29:37.440 | Because you think that about yourself.

00:29:38.440 | You know, if I'm not on here, I don't exist.

00:29:41.160 | And it's you don't.

00:29:42.640 | I imagine like the first day after Sam left Twitter is like the scene at the end of the

00:29:48.280 | 40 year old virgin, you know, where he has sex for the first time.

00:29:51.240 | And it's just like they're riding unicorns under like rainbows.

00:29:54.640 | Like that's how I imagine his life is like him just like high fiving people and playing

00:29:57.520 | ultimate Frisbee.

00:29:58.520 | That's it, dude.

00:29:59.800 | And and also like it's so great because I mean, I've told you this.

00:30:05.160 | I've gotten not bitter, but like there have been times where you've tried to help me,

00:30:13.640 | whether it's with, you know, a project I'm working on or my podcast or whatever.

00:30:19.180 | But it's always tied to I'm not happy on social media and please help me, Cal.

00:30:23.800 | And you've tried to come up with ways like, hey, here's how you can promote your stuff,

00:30:27.360 | but not experience the toxic parts of social media.

00:30:30.320 | We talked about this on your podcast if you guys want to check that out.

00:30:34.280 | And then there's always part of me that I'm like, cool, Cal, I'll be successful.

00:30:37.800 | Get off social media if you can get me booked on Tim Ferriss's if you you know what I mean?

00:30:42.240 | Because I'm like, well, it's easy for Cal because Cal did a fucking stupid TED talk

00:30:45.720 | on it.

00:30:46.720 | That's incredibly popular.

00:30:48.480 | And so to hear this with Sam, because even now I was like before this 21 day fast, I

00:30:53.760 | was like, man, but I have all these like really cool like coals in the fire and like these

00:31:00.000 | projects that are about to take off and like, oh, if that big agent saw that I'm like off

00:31:04.040 | social media for 21 days, what's he going to think?

00:31:06.760 | And it doesn't matter.

00:31:09.040 | And in fact, being off social media, this writing deadline I was on yesterday that I

00:31:13.400 | thought was going to take me like a week or two, like I sent in in two days because I'm

00:31:18.240 | just not aimlessly looking at my social media feed.

00:31:21.640 | And I was writing and like, yeah, am I going to have to like promote?

00:31:25.520 | Sure.

00:31:26.720 | But that doesn't mean that I need to be on social media all day.

00:31:30.520 | And then Sam is like, what an awesome example, because, again, my Twitter feed, he's like

00:31:34.720 | the most hated right now.

00:31:36.520 | And I like him.

00:31:37.520 | I don't I don't agree with everything he says, but it's like I like most of what he does.

00:31:42.000 | Yeah, there we go.

00:31:43.920 | And the fact that, look, I'm not on Twitter.

00:31:46.440 | I have no idea why he's hated or not hated.

00:31:49.820 | I think just emphasizes if you're someone like in his position, most of the world has

00:31:53.820 | no idea what's going on on Twitter.

00:31:55.320 | They're like, you wrote that book about, you know, you do meditation and you were like

00:31:59.560 | the Christian, you let our Christian nation.

00:32:01.840 | Yeah, you were an atheist guy and then you were a meditation guy.

00:32:04.840 | That's what it should be.

00:32:05.840 | And at the end, that's like nine percent of the world.

00:32:08.000 | So I think use me, everyone use me as your barometer.

00:32:10.840 | If I don't know about something, that means ninety nine percent of people because I'm

00:32:14.000 | plugged into the news.

00:32:15.360 | Like I know what's going on.

00:32:16.960 | I'm a semi-cultural figure.

00:32:18.760 | I'm like, yeah, like I know what's going on.

00:32:21.480 | I just don't know what's happening on Twitter.

00:32:23.320 | So I should be the barometer.

00:32:24.520 | All right, let's do let's get another story here.

00:32:27.560 | Clicking my share button.

00:32:29.160 | Do do do do.

00:32:30.880 | All right.

00:32:31.880 | This is another story that was spreading a lot on the Internet this last week.

00:32:35.440 | All right.

00:32:37.080 | TMZ.

00:32:38.280 | Leonardo DiCaprio living it up in a yacht in St. Bart dot dot dot with tons of chicks.

00:32:47.200 | There is a picture of Leo living his best life.

00:32:51.160 | Yeah, man.

00:32:52.520 | Yeah.

00:32:53.520 | With a there's a woman in a bikini, I suppose.

00:32:55.560 | So this is a skinny Leo's kind of like chubby jacked, which I think they pick to be like,

00:33:00.240 | he's not all there that but like he still looks jacked.

00:33:02.840 | But if you look close, it's like, OK, he's getting older.

00:33:05.720 | It's chubby jacked.

00:33:06.720 | You know more about it.

00:33:07.720 | It's just like you were in shape for a role.

00:33:09.760 | It's a muscular.

00:33:11.320 | Yeah.

00:33:12.320 | Like your gut will come back before you lose all your muscles.

00:33:14.120 | Is that a thing?

00:33:15.120 | Yeah.

00:33:16.120 | I mean, I guess there's definition there, but it's being kind of like overrun.

00:33:19.400 | But look at this.

00:33:20.400 | This is just old school tabloid.

00:33:23.000 | Yeah.

00:33:24.000 | Here's like a picture of him on a seat, a picture of the yacht he's on.

00:33:28.600 | And TMZ is trying to figure out who some of the people are.

00:33:33.400 | I love that.

00:33:35.080 | That's what you got out of this so much because you're right.

00:33:37.560 | I would have never thought about it.

00:33:40.800 | It's, you know, nowadays you go on Twitter and it's like there's a whistleblower at Twitter

00:33:47.320 | and they're trying to blow up Elon.

00:33:50.080 | We know Elon's on the side of the whistleblower and he took over Twitter and OK, somehow Matt

00:33:54.280 | Taibbi and Barry Weiss are involved and old school paparazzi.

00:33:58.840 | It was like, hey, there's a half naked chick on a boat.

00:34:01.880 | You want to look at that and all with the fame and with a celebrity, with a celebrity.

00:34:05.800 | And then we go, yes, I do want to look at that.

00:34:08.000 | That kind of makes us feel like we're on a boat with a naked chick.

00:34:11.640 | And I wish I was like Leonardo DiCaprio.

00:34:13.680 | Yeah.

00:34:14.680 | So it makes us feel good.

00:34:16.000 | This story.

00:34:17.000 | Well, this it's simple.

00:34:21.240 | That still exists.

00:34:22.240 | Yeah.

00:34:23.240 | It's a celebrity on a big boat.

00:34:25.520 | Once again, Cal, this no takes a sweetness that you have in your soul makes me happy.

00:34:33.560 | And I wish it could just be like good for that guy.

00:34:37.240 | Just just on a boat.

00:34:38.960 | Like you remember being a kid, I wish I could get on a boat.

00:34:41.640 | And then you remember being a teenager and being like, I wish I could get a hot chick.

00:34:44.400 | And he's doing both in the same picture.

00:34:46.800 | But also when we were teenagers, you know, it'd be typical tablet.

00:34:49.280 | It serves a few audiences.

00:34:50.280 | Right.

00:34:51.280 | So it's like the young guys like, that's cool.

00:34:53.080 | I hope that's me.

00:34:54.080 | And then like our moms would be like, those women are too young.

00:34:58.000 | And you know, but it would just be like, but it's it's an abstraction.

00:35:02.120 | It's a celebrity is like an abstraction.

00:35:04.040 | Like this guy from the movies.

00:35:05.440 | Yeah, sure.

00:35:06.440 | We can be sex positive on the show.

00:35:07.640 | Our moms would be like, my wish I was on that boat with Leo.

00:35:10.040 | Like we're, we're all allowed to be.

00:35:11.920 | Yeah.

00:35:12.920 | But like, um, the, the problem is Leo in the last couple of years, if we're looking at

00:35:17.440 | Twitter has been despised by the left or by there, I should say by very online people

00:35:24.000 | for there he's dating younger women.

00:35:28.240 | And again, if you're a creep, if you're dating 18 year olds or whatever, like that's not

00:35:35.720 | good, but also like, I don't know, man, 25 year olds are adults who are making that decision.

00:35:42.640 | If it was like Leonardo DiCaprio is on a boat with five 25 year olds, he has chained to

00:35:47.240 | the boat.

00:35:48.240 | I'm like, well, that's not good.

00:35:49.240 | And you can also talk about like, okay, there are a bunch of like older dudes who like,

00:35:56.380 | you know, they're dating young chicks to feel whatever.

00:35:58.840 | And like, that's not good either.

00:36:00.200 | Right.

00:36:01.200 | So you want to ideally be a good partner and you're not, you know, swapping out hot chicks

00:36:08.080 | or cheating or we, we want to advocate you being a good person on the show.

00:36:13.120 | But, uh, is that a cancelable offense?

00:36:16.400 | Is that just a bunch of jealous dudes?

00:36:18.640 | Like I don't, I don't know.

00:36:21.040 | Um, but I didn't even know that reaction was going on.

00:36:24.200 | So you're saying the very online have, but that Leo 10 years ago was beloved by environmental

00:36:30.720 | stuff and an environmentalist.

00:36:32.680 | And then like a couple months ago he was trending for like a week where there was some story

00:36:38.040 | that came out that like he broke up with a 25 year old and started dating another 25

00:36:43.600 | year old.

00:36:44.600 | So everyone was just like, fuck you.

00:36:47.320 | And you know, I don't know, man, but, but, okay.

00:36:51.480 | But here's an interesting thing here.

00:36:52.680 | Or is this why this, why this is interesting to me because it's, it's two worlds and there's

00:36:55.680 | a scrim between them and it's permeable.

00:36:58.040 | Right.

00:36:59.040 | Like there's, there's the world that's been around forever of old school celebrity and

00:37:02.880 | tabloid like this person's famous.

00:37:04.960 | It's not a real person in TMZ.

00:37:07.840 | It's an abstraction.

00:37:09.000 | It's like Leo as a one word thing and they're on a boat and whatever.

00:37:13.280 | And we have paparazzi pictures and oh, we kind of care.

00:37:16.000 | Right.

00:37:17.000 | And then on the other side we have the very online world where everything seems to be,

00:37:19.720 | you know, it's, it's very personal engagement.

00:37:22.860 | It's very much like we are, we are all, uh, it's like a homogenized, we're all on the

00:37:28.600 | same level.

00:37:29.600 | We all have the same Twitter.

00:37:30.600 | It looks the same and we're all trying to like fight with each other.

00:37:34.560 | We're all, you're, you're in it, right?

00:37:36.280 | Like you're not involved when you're reading TMZ.

00:37:38.640 | You're like, this is so far from my reality.

00:37:40.840 | But on Twitter it's like, yeah, you're in this world and me and my friends are coming

00:37:44.120 | after you for the, and it's like a, you're in it.

00:37:46.800 | Like how, if you were to see a trailer for a new Quentin Tarantino movie with Leonardo

00:37:51.280 | DiCaprio, I assume you would be nothing but delighted.

00:37:56.520 | Because you would go on Twitter and it's just like, oh, racist Quentin Tarantino.

00:38:01.640 | Of course he gets, you know, womanizing Leonardo DiCaprio and you know, who's the lady in it?

00:38:07.720 | Well, she had a problematic tweet from eight years ago.

00:38:10.640 | I was listening to a podcast.

00:38:12.520 | Um, oh, who was it?

00:38:14.800 | I was listening to, oh, it was Bill Burr on Conan.

00:38:17.200 | I listened to that podcast yesterday.

00:38:18.840 | And Bill Burr made such a good point about Twitter where he said, you know, they'll find

00:38:25.040 | someone's tweet from eight years ago where they go, oh, you're being a bad person eight

00:38:30.600 | years ago.

00:38:31.600 | And it's like, yeah, but he had seven years of just being a good person.

00:38:37.000 | He's like, that's like a Lou Gehrig type record of being a good person.

00:38:42.000 | And you're going to dig back.

00:38:43.080 | And this goes back to the Lex thing, which goes back to the whole premise of this show.

00:38:47.840 | Social media trains you to hate essentially.

00:38:53.120 | That's what you are told to do.

00:38:55.640 | And if some good news comes out there every time and a new SNL cast there gets announced,

00:39:02.520 | instead of people being like, oh, good for him.

00:39:04.160 | Oh, we're going to see some new comedic voices.

00:39:05.960 | Oh, I hope she's good.

00:39:07.080 | I heard she was a great comic.

00:39:09.160 | There's just these slimy journalists just digging through 15 years of tweets to find

00:39:14.520 | something problematic instead of what we should all be doing is like applauding people.

00:39:20.540 | If we disagree with people, don't follow them.

00:39:23.960 | And then trying to make ourself the best person we can be.

00:39:28.600 | And we're just not incentivized to do that on social media.

00:39:30.520 | We should all be on a boat with hot chicks and Leonardo DiCaprio is what I'm saying.

00:39:35.280 | Right.

00:39:36.280 | But in this scenario, I would be talking to him about the cinematography from The Revenant,

00:39:41.360 | which is, which by the way, miraculous.

00:39:45.400 | Real thing, natural light filmed with wide angle prime lenses that are put in.

00:39:52.340 | I mean, it's a miracle of cinematography.

00:39:54.580 | It won the Oscar.

00:39:55.580 | That's what's interesting to me.

00:39:56.580 | But let me give a hot take here, though.

00:39:57.580 | I'm going to let me just be like looking back at the girls being like, cool.

00:40:00.940 | Can we go talk to that?

00:40:01.940 | He's like, no, no, no, no, no.

00:40:03.700 | Masterful.

00:40:04.700 | Leo makes a masterful cinematography.

00:40:05.700 | It's like, let's talk about let's talk about the five millimeter fix that you were using

00:40:10.100 | for the whatever.

00:40:11.100 | You'd be like, all right, Carl, get on this boat.

00:40:13.100 | How'd you get on here?

00:40:15.560 | First of all, you're soaking wet.

00:40:18.560 | I have questions about cinematography.

00:40:25.000 | I want to talk about the use of CGI in the Buffalo scene.

00:40:32.240 | The girls are all being like shuffled onto the emergency escape.

00:40:36.440 | They just hold on to a helicopter.

00:40:38.960 | It's like an apocalypse now.

00:40:41.240 | But look, here's a reverse.

00:40:42.240 | Here's a reverse hot take, though, is OK, but we're looking at TMZ.

00:40:45.920 | I'm looking at that.

00:40:46.920 | That's old school, right?

00:40:47.920 | That's basically unchanged from when we were kids.

00:40:50.080 | Right.

00:40:51.080 | Yeah, sure.

00:40:52.080 | Celebrity boat, like maybe, you know, with girlfriends or something like that.

00:40:55.600 | Twitter is more interesting.

00:40:57.640 | I mean, like we have.

00:40:58.840 | So there's like this.

00:41:00.040 | This helps emphasize why this culture, which we have all these issues with, but why it

00:41:04.960 | persists is because TMZ, that's also boring, right?

00:41:08.840 | I mean, it's pretty boring.

00:41:10.200 | It's like, OK, like this guy's fat, like that kind of makes me know he's a star.

00:41:14.040 | He looks fat.

00:41:15.040 | You're not involved.

00:41:16.040 | Back to Lex's list, buddy.

00:41:17.840 | Maybe simple is good.

00:41:19.240 | Maybe we don't need these overcomplicated books.

00:41:21.600 | Maybe we just need to read some simple stuff that makes us happy, because look what we

00:41:24.920 | have done with this knowledge.

00:41:26.160 | We have turned into bad people.

00:41:27.600 | I see what you're saying.

00:41:29.560 | Where, yeah, when you compare to like the Twitter files and you do like a TMZ, it is

00:41:33.760 | very funny just to be like, there's a girl on a boat and I could see her belly button

00:41:38.360 | like, all right, sure.

00:41:40.760 | Is that dumbing us down?

00:41:42.640 | Perhaps should we be going on TMZ every day?

00:41:46.520 | No.

00:41:47.800 | What makes us worse?

00:41:49.320 | I don't know, buddy.

00:41:52.080 | And I'm just talking pure viral dynamics here.

00:41:54.080 | So even putting aside any sort of value judgment, it's like an interesting insight into why

00:41:58.560 | this is such an effective attention capturing machine for the people who get captured to

00:42:03.040 | it.

00:42:04.040 | Like in the early 90s, there's a version of TMZ where like they called you up, you

00:42:08.600 | know, like, hey, like, Cal, we got this footage, like, here's Leo, like, what's your take

00:42:12.360 | on it?

00:42:13.360 | Like you're in that room from the old syndicated TMZ TV show.

00:42:15.400 | Remember that?

00:42:16.400 | Where the guy had like the big cup of soda, like the giant cup.

00:42:20.640 | Yeah.

00:42:21.640 | And they're all like in there, like, what stories do you have?

00:42:23.120 | And like, you are in there, you'd be like, this is awesome.

00:42:24.720 | Like, this is so interesting.

00:42:25.720 | Like, I can give my take.

00:42:27.640 | And you'd be like, I think those women look too young.

00:42:29.720 | And like someone else high fives you would be great.

00:42:31.560 | Right.

00:42:32.560 | So it simulates that for hundreds of thousands of people.

00:42:34.840 | You all feel like you're in the proverbial TMZ room.

00:42:37.880 | I'm just saying to give some insight into why for the people who fall into the Twitter

00:42:42.360 | culture, it is so magnetic because it was better from just a pure stripped of any actual

00:42:50.900 | value evaluation, stripped of any judgment on whether this makes your life better or

00:42:54.400 | not, because spoiler alert, it makes your life worse, much worse stripped of all of

00:42:58.520 | that.

00:42:59.520 | So it's like an engagement engine like we haven't seen since what the Coliseum where

00:43:05.040 | it's like they're going to release these tigers on the Christians now.

00:43:08.400 | Like, all right, like I'm all in.

00:43:09.800 | Like, this is awesome.

00:43:10.800 | He was like looking around, you know, I get to like give a thumbs up down.

00:43:13.520 | This is awesome.

00:43:14.520 | Like it's I see why it's so this is a perfect to me.

00:43:17.600 | It's a perfect example of why, you know, this company was worth $40 billion when Musk bought

00:43:22.520 | it.

00:43:23.520 | That's it's a perfect engagement machine.

00:43:25.600 | I don't know if it's too early to go into our new idea for a closing segment.

00:43:30.520 | I think it probably is too early.

00:43:32.220 | But so you know, I for the first time, and we've recorded a couple of these completely

00:43:38.320 | spaced out during your last speech, and just without realizing I'm doing our last segment,

00:43:44.080 | I just started fantasizing about living in the woods.

00:43:46.920 | Like I literally just as you were talking about, like comparing TMZ to Twitter, I was

00:43:52.320 | just in my head like, this is so bad.

00:43:54.920 | How do I escape all of this?

00:43:56.200 | And I just went the woods.

00:43:57.520 | That's how I escape all of it.

00:43:59.000 | I go to the woods, and that's where I live forever.

00:44:01.720 | And that's you live in the woods.

00:44:02.760 | You have a ranch.

00:44:04.280 | You don't know.

00:44:05.280 | I have I teach my daughters how to go get eggs from the chickens that we raise.

00:44:10.680 | Yeah, that's it, dude.

00:44:12.320 | They got to be careful.

00:44:13.320 | I have a my dad's cousin.

00:44:16.000 | So let me call that he's long lived in West Texas.

00:44:18.760 | You got to be careful down there what you call a ranch.

00:44:22.040 | You cannot call I mean, he has hundreds of acres with cattle on it.

00:44:27.100 | He would never call it a ranch.

00:44:29.180 | You're going to get run over by a Ford F-150.

00:44:32.960 | For it to be a ranch, it has to be.

00:44:35.800 | So you call it he has some term for it.

00:44:38.020 | But anyways, I'm just saying, get your ranch.

00:44:39.920 | Don't call it a ranch.

00:44:40.920 | To be fair, if Ryan Holiday walks into West Texas and talks about his 10 acre ranch, stoicism

00:44:48.080 | or not, there's going to be like a six shooter.

00:44:51.180 | My ranch of a bookstore, the front porch, that's like a ranchers.

00:44:54.360 | Wouldn't it?

00:44:55.360 | No, I was going to call mine a compound of refuge.

00:44:58.040 | I was not going to call it a ranch.

00:45:00.040 | Definitely does not sound like a militia group type of situation.

00:45:02.480 | So it will be.

00:45:03.840 | Yeah, yeah, that is that's definitely the show.

00:45:08.040 | But you know, Tucker Max has a new podcast about he went that route where he's just like

00:45:13.400 | teaching himself how to like live off the land with his family.

00:45:17.040 | And he's like, yeah, man, all that stuff I thought I needed before.

00:45:20.720 | I don't need it.

00:45:21.720 | And it is very interesting that I believe social media is a huge part in it.

00:45:27.000 | It's pushing a lot of us back to what would be seen as like very old school traditional.

00:45:32.320 | Oh, yeah, I'm just like, yeah, I want to farm in a family and God, Mike, fuck, just said

00:45:39.360 | that.

00:45:40.360 | And it's like, oh, it's me.

00:45:41.360 | That's where this is all push me.

00:45:42.360 | Yeah.

00:45:43.360 | Yeah.

00:45:44.360 | No, if there's no Twitter, it'd be like, I don't know, like I'm into some punk bands

00:45:46.360 | and in the art, like it's probably actually bad.

00:45:49.560 | Just get around another take and make music.

00:45:52.480 | And like, you know, but but because it causes like a reactionary immune response of of I

00:45:58.280 | need to get away from purified cultures represented online.

00:46:03.000 | I wonder if it's created an issue where it's just bringing people out of other types of

00:46:05.880 | culture to be interesting.

00:46:06.880 | Like I'm into this like interesting art or new music movement because it causes a reactionary

00:46:12.700 | immune response.

00:46:13.700 | It's like, I'm just going to go whittle like I don't want to have anything to do with like

00:46:16.320 | anything modern.

00:46:17.560 | So like stuff that's actually not online, but modern and interesting, you know, new

00:46:20.680 | types of theater, this or that maybe brings us back to Tumblr and the ponies, Tumblr and

00:46:25.120 | the ponies.

00:46:26.120 | All right.

00:46:27.120 | Let's do a couple let's do a couple happier ones here.

00:46:28.440 | Let's see what we got.

00:46:29.440 | There's some.

00:46:30.440 | All right.

00:46:31.440 | Quick hits.

00:46:32.440 | Oh, dear.

00:46:33.440 | OK, I know what this is.

00:46:34.440 | All right.

00:46:35.440 | Good trial.

00:46:36.440 | All right.

00:46:37.440 | So this is this is a this is one of the most watched videos on YouTube.

00:46:46.400 | I just glanced at that and I literally thought you were like, let's do some happier stories.

00:46:49.960 | And I thought it was like a cross burning on like a front lawn.

00:46:52.640 | And I was like, hey, bud, you're trying to get canceled here.

00:46:55.880 | What's your idea of a happy story?

00:46:57.500 | This is where I reveal my true.

00:46:59.040 | Yeah.

00:47:00.040 | OK, so this is it's hard to see, but this had eighty eight million views in just a few

00:47:05.760 | weeks.

00:47:06.760 | OK, it's Mr. Beast.

00:47:07.760 | Do I have to because I want to find like what's popular on YouTube.

00:47:11.520 | He is the most subscribed YouTuber.

00:47:14.200 | So he has the most subscribers of anyone on YouTube.

00:47:16.680 | This one of his recent videos.

00:47:17.680 | It's one of the most popular videos on YouTube.

00:47:19.400 | The title here is Hydraulic Press versus Lamborghini.

00:47:25.320 | I don't think there's a lot here.

00:47:26.560 | I'll just skip ahead.

00:47:27.560 | I won't play.

00:47:28.560 | I'll just skip the scene, man.

00:47:29.560 | Look at this.

00:47:30.560 | We got an ad.

00:47:31.560 | Isn't that just this is emblematic, by the way, of the whole.

00:47:36.240 | I think they're literally just crushing a car.

00:47:41.740 | We have to do a whole episode, by the way, on on YouTube ads because they're so good

00:47:46.000 | and they're so bad.

00:47:47.000 | I know my favorite ones.

00:47:50.160 | My podcast producer always gets on my.

00:47:53.280 | Oh, here we go.

00:47:54.280 | They're crushing it.

00:47:55.280 | He always gets on my act about this because we have a YouTube channel for our podcast

00:47:58.360 | and he's like, you're not paying the like two dollars a month to not have to watch ads.

00:48:02.400 | You're on because every time like, hey, let me show you something, you know, in the clip.

00:48:06.040 | Let's change this.

00:48:07.040 | We sit there and watch ads.

00:48:08.040 | But if you're if you're watching, there's a two hundred thousand dollar car being crushed

00:48:13.820 | in a hydraulic press.

00:48:14.820 | Eighty million views.

00:48:15.820 | Wow.

00:48:16.820 | That's what's popular, man.

00:48:20.620 | But doesn't this.

00:48:21.620 | But look, my heart rate's not up like there's nothing about this that's like, OK, who's

00:48:26.540 | getting screwed with rage?

00:48:28.540 | Also, how how long is it?

00:48:30.740 | It's ten minutes.

00:48:31.740 | Because, again, the YouTube algorithm, it it prioritizes and incentivizes you to have

00:48:38.900 | things over ten minutes.

00:48:40.180 | So now we are at nine minutes and forty one.

00:48:43.800 | Everyone watches to watch the Lamborghini gets crashed.

00:48:45.620 | So there's ten minutes or nine minutes and 40 seconds of not that of just like total

00:48:51.660 | garbage blah, blah, blah.

00:48:53.120 | And by the way, I don't want to say anything about Mr. B. Someone told me recently that

00:48:56.100 | he does like charity stuff, which like that would be cool.

00:48:59.440 | I've never heard of Mr. B.

00:49:01.480 | That's how out of the loop I am.

00:49:04.860 | I hadn't either until my podcast producer told me about him because he's the I guess

00:49:09.960 | he's been doing the interview rounds.

00:49:11.900 | So it's kind of emerged.

00:49:12.900 | Yeah.

00:49:13.900 | All I know is from what I understand is he's much more popular than us.

00:49:18.220 | He's a little bit more popular, a little bit more.

00:49:20.500 | But yeah, it's a I like I like to think of us as peers.

00:49:24.460 | So our our friend, Mr. B's, our fellow YouTuber.

00:49:27.780 | Yeah.

00:49:28.780 | I love what people do, though, like, you know, maybe I should I should have called him, you

00:49:33.820 | know, like maybe had him on the show next time.

00:49:35.780 | You know, that move where you act like you really could do that.

00:49:38.380 | Like, yeah, like maybe we should next time we'll have the beast master.

00:49:42.860 | But what I understand is he took like a formula that was working on like, hey, this works

00:49:48.000 | well for YouTube and just pushed it times one hundred.

00:49:50.980 | Well, and I'll see stuff like that where I'm like, it's like guy does a flip or like car

00:49:57.260 | thing does it and I'm just like, who watches this?

00:50:00.100 | And then you look at 88 million people do.

00:50:02.500 | That's who does.

00:50:03.500 | And yeah.

00:50:04.500 | And they all have like matching wacky thumbnails and all these things.

00:50:08.340 | And what's so frustrating for me is to be vulnerable that I'll have these moments where

00:50:14.900 | people are big producers are talking to me about thumbnails and you just got to do this.

00:50:19.700 | And I'm just like, no, that's fucking stupid.

00:50:22.800 | And then I don't do it.

00:50:23.860 | And then I stay at the exact same place I'm at.

00:50:25.900 | And you just go, damn it.

00:50:27.820 | Do Cal and I have to crush a fucking Lamborghini to get this show bigger?

00:50:31.420 | I don't know.

00:50:32.420 | I would like to not.

00:50:34.700 | We might have to.

00:50:35.700 | We might have to.

00:50:36.700 | But look, I don't know.

00:50:37.940 | This makes me happy because it's does it.

00:50:40.660 | He looks nice.

00:50:41.660 | I don't know.

00:50:42.660 | Oh, he's nice.

00:50:43.660 | Like no one's being this is not like I crush a Lamborghini because it's racist.

00:50:48.540 | You know, he's just like crushing a Lamborghini.

00:50:49.860 | Right.

00:50:50.860 | I mean, this is like, well, what happened if we crush?

00:50:52.100 | I don't know.

00:50:53.100 | It's innocent.

00:50:54.100 | I'm trying to look him up right now.

00:50:55.100 | I just wrote Dr. Beast by accident.

00:50:57.420 | Mr. Beast.

00:50:58.420 | Geez, I'm so old.

00:50:59.420 | Yeah, he does look nice.

00:51:02.740 | He is that Lamborghini full of immigrants.

00:51:05.740 | We're about to figure out now that I was actually a terrible person.

00:51:08.660 | The old lefty in me.

00:51:10.020 | Oh, my goodness.

00:51:11.220 | He's twenty four.

00:51:12.220 | All right.

00:51:13.220 | Now, are you mad?

00:51:15.500 | He's credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centers around expensive stunts.

00:51:20.540 | Look, there's part of me.

00:51:23.620 | And maybe this is self-righteous.

00:51:25.660 | But if I have that much money, like.

00:51:30.180 | Eighty percent of that money is going to charity, not fucking.

00:51:34.900 | I don't know, man.

00:51:35.900 | I think he get I.

00:51:37.460 | I think I don't know a lot.

00:51:39.420 | I think he gives it all away.

00:51:40.620 | I think I think what I've heard is he spins out like he has.

00:51:43.380 | He doesn't do cars or houses.

00:51:44.940 | Yeah, I don't think I think he's he's weird.

00:51:48.180 | Like from what I understand, like he's of YouTube.

00:51:51.060 | He's like he's in the he's like an agent of his whole existence, I think, has merged with

00:51:55.620 | YouTube like there is no other.

00:51:58.340 | I don't think he has houses and jets.

00:52:00.140 | I think he just does this like his whole life.

00:52:03.060 | All right.

00:52:04.060 | Now, the scoreboard.

00:52:05.060 | I'm I think he's an interesting guy.

00:52:06.740 | I'm going to look.

00:52:07.740 | I want to listen to at least he was probably on at least one of our friends podcasts.

00:52:12.020 | Well, here's what I saw when I was finding when I was looking to find a tweet about Lex

00:52:16.300 | and his books.

00:52:17.980 | The more recent tweet from like yesterday from Lex was a picture of Lex and Mr. Beast.

00:52:23.140 | Interesting.

00:52:24.140 | And he was saying, I just had a mom.

00:52:25.540 | Let's see.

00:52:26.540 | Let me see if I can.

00:52:27.540 | It's still showing.

00:52:28.540 | Yeah.

00:52:29.540 | Let me see if I can.

00:52:30.540 | How to do this.

00:52:31.540 | I don't know how this is.

00:52:32.540 | Can we change the name of the podcast?

00:52:34.860 | The two old men try to figure out the Internet.

00:52:37.540 | We have to yell to like our like a ten or my ten year old son, Max, the thing is doing

00:52:41.980 | the thing again, doing the thing again.

00:52:44.140 | Look, here we go.

00:52:45.140 | Lex Fridman.

00:52:46.140 | I got to hang out with Mr. Beast yesterday and discuss some fascinating ideas about the

00:52:49.020 | future YouTube and Twitter.

00:52:50.020 | You know, steamer, brilliant, inspiring.

00:52:51.540 | We did a podcast about a few days.

00:52:53.280 | So like all of you would say like now I have to dislike Mr. Beast or how's that work?

00:52:58.240 | Is it if you're the interviewer or you have on old me already disliked Mr. Beast and I'm

00:53:04.460 | like talking myself out of it live on this show.

00:53:06.980 | Old me already dislike Mr. Beast because of just assumptions from like thumbnails, success

00:53:11.420 | and jealousy, smashing expensive things.

00:53:14.240 | And I'm just like, well, we could have fed the homeless if we sold that Lamborghini or

00:53:17.180 | whatever.

00:53:18.180 | And and then I would see that Lex had him on that would confirm that he's a bad person.

00:53:23.160 | And then I would have to two weeks late go.

00:53:26.480 | Lex Fridman's book list book is stupid.

00:53:29.540 | His book of his list of books is dumb and I hate him.

00:53:32.800 | So how does it go?

00:53:34.500 | Like what's worse or is it the same?

00:53:36.460 | So like let's say me going on Joe Rogan's podcast versus having Joe Rogan as a guest

00:53:42.240 | on my podcast.

00:53:43.240 | So are you more culpable for interviewing someone versus being interviewed or does it

00:53:47.820 | go?

00:53:48.820 | It doesn't really matter.

00:53:49.820 | So what?

00:53:50.820 | So for me, the old version of me, I would probably be more mad at you for going on his

00:53:56.300 | show because if you are interviewing him, you can like try to hold him accountable or

00:54:01.620 | whatever.

00:54:02.620 | But modern day people got really mad at Joe for having Alex Jones on and people got really

00:54:06.940 | mad at Lex for having.

00:54:07.940 | Did he actually he did have Kanye on, right?

00:54:08.940 | Yeah.

00:54:09.940 | Oh yeah.

00:54:10.940 | So now I think it's kind of like equally both, but before it was like if you went on Rogan's

00:54:19.820 | and this is, I feel like a year ago, but it's also like Rogan had like Bernie Sanders on.

00:54:23.940 | So come on guys, what are you doing?

00:54:27.260 | And to me now it's like I go on, I go on platforms that are more right wing than me.

00:54:32.860 | Like I go on Glen Beck's a lot and the bottom line is like, well, I get my message out to

00:54:36.620 | a bunch of people who wouldn't have listened to me otherwise.

00:54:39.460 | And I get to learn a bunch of things that I wouldn't have learned because I'm talking

00:54:42.820 | to someone sort of like outside of my network.

00:54:45.220 | And most importantly, you find out you actually have more in common with most people you think

00:54:50.260 | you disagree with the not.

00:54:51.980 | And then you get to go, Oh, hooray.

00:54:54.060 | Like that's actually really good news.

00:54:55.300 | Like when I have people who get mad at me for going on a show they disagree with, I

00:54:58.540 | go, Hey man, aren't you happy?

00:55:00.580 | Aren't you happy that this person you like supposedly me gets to go on in front of these

00:55:04.300 | millions of people.

00:55:05.760 | Or also like I bring back good news.

00:55:07.780 | I bring back the like, he's a good dude.

00:55:09.620 | Isn't that great?

00:55:10.620 | And then they're like, no, because we were already given our commands.

00:55:13.460 | Interesting.

00:55:14.460 | Right.

00:55:15.460 | Right.

00:55:16.460 | Because you could say it'd be positive.

00:55:17.460 | I'm bringing a message you would like to a new audience and maybe that would change.

00:55:21.420 | No, because it's not actually about the message.

00:55:23.700 | It's just about like people turning humanity into a video game.

00:55:29.060 | Yeah.

00:55:30.060 | Okay.

00:55:31.060 | But also that like long segment you did on Glenn show where you got out the chalkboard

00:55:33.700 | and began sketching out the great reset or whatever.

00:55:36.660 | I sketched out specifically the January six attacks.

00:55:40.180 | That's the type of thing.

00:55:42.020 | And look, I'm not, I don't want to judge just based on what show you go on, but when you

00:55:46.460 | were showing like the, the barrier, you know, that whole plan with the barriers over here

00:55:50.140 | are weaker and, and you know, it's a bad look.

00:55:53.500 | Drawing the costumes.

00:55:54.500 | You drew the horns.

00:55:55.500 | Yeah.

00:55:56.500 | It's about, that was a bad look.

00:55:59.060 | I want our show to get so popular Cal that like we have, you know, and like people will

00:56:04.220 | send like fan art in.

00:56:05.220 | I'm like, I desperately want someone to draw the chalkboard.

00:56:10.460 | You do my goodness.

00:56:11.460 | Okay.

00:56:12.460 | I mean, you'll be on a list, but here's how I've learned.

00:56:14.860 | Here's what I've learned just now looking at Mr. B's very popular channel.

00:56:18.100 | Our show is not going to be very popular.

00:56:24.220 | Lesson learned.

00:56:25.220 | Thanks, Mr. Beast.

00:56:26.220 | Well, now we get to know it's just, it's a passion project.

00:56:30.900 | That's fine.

00:56:31.900 | It's a passion project.

00:56:32.900 | It's me, you, my producer, and like a few people who are yelling at us.

00:56:36.820 | I'll take it.

00:56:37.820 | All right.

00:56:38.820 | All right.

00:56:39.820 | One more.

00:56:40.820 | Our new thing for the, I want the very last thing when possible just to be, I'm interested,

00:56:42.900 | a meme and my, my motto for a meme being popular is that it was if it came over like my family's

00:56:50.860 | text chest text thread, then, so here we go.

00:56:54.620 | This one was going around the internet.

00:56:56.660 | It's a little out of date now, but there we go.

00:56:59.260 | All right.

00:57:00.260 | This is just old school internet humor.

00:57:03.820 | If you're watching, it's one of those captures where you have to select all the speakers

00:57:07.180 | in a picture and there's a bunch of stairs speakers and two pictures of Kevin McCarthy

00:57:11.500 | and he's not selected.

00:57:14.020 | Everyone's happy.

00:57:15.020 | It's a meme.

00:57:16.020 | It's funny.

00:57:17.940 | I was on Twitter during the Kevin McCarthy thing and I made one joke about it and it

00:57:23.620 | seemed to have brought both parties together.

00:57:25.620 | Once in a while you've got a politician that will unite people just from their hatred.

00:57:30.300 | You know, I feel like a Beto a little bit now, Kevin McCarthy, everyone's just like,

00:57:36.180 | yeah, you know what?

00:57:37.180 | You're right, bud.

00:57:38.180 | Fuck that guy.

00:57:39.180 | And then we go.

00:57:40.180 | Yeah.

00:57:41.180 | Let's.

00:57:42.180 | So let's pass budget reconciliation as long as we're together on that.

00:57:44.980 | Let's just fix healthcare.

00:57:46.020 | Come on.

00:57:47.020 | Like as long as we're.

00:57:48.020 | Yeah.

00:57:49.020 | That's the key.

00:57:50.020 | Yeah.

00:57:51.020 | Well, I do like, I do like the idea of a meme, an episode bringing us together.

00:57:54.660 | I was going to say someone sent me something via email that was going around on the Internet

00:58:01.420 | and it really may.

00:58:02.420 | I don't, I don't have it here, but I'd love to me.

00:58:04.460 | What makes the meme funny is just, I love just a straight.

00:58:08.540 | You have a straight lay straight face picture in an absurd thing.

00:58:11.660 | Someone sent me a cover of a magazine from Rachel.

00:58:16.580 | Rachel Ray's on the cover.

00:58:17.580 | I think this is from like decades ago.

00:58:19.020 | It's the simple things.

00:58:20.140 | But the, the, the message on the meme was like, why commas are important.

00:58:24.740 | And it's like a real headline where it said like Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking

00:58:29.940 | her family and her dog.

00:58:31.180 | And it's a picture of her holding her dog.

00:58:33.460 | And they didn't have the, they didn't have the a comma.

00:58:36.020 | No boy.

00:58:37.020 | It just kind of looked like she was going to eat her dog.

00:58:39.500 | Sure.

00:58:40.500 | That's what I want.

00:58:41.500 | That's what I want.

00:58:42.500 | That's what I'm.

00:58:43.500 | And you have to go out for.

00:58:44.500 | Well, because you have to go, ah, silly internet.

00:58:46.420 | And then, you know, that dog's not getting eaten.

00:58:48.700 | And so everyone kind of wins.

00:58:49.900 | We all go.

00:58:50.900 | Yeah.

00:58:51.900 | Dog's fine.

00:58:52.900 | You're fine.

00:58:53.900 | Okay.

00:58:54.900 | She didn't eat her family.

00:58:55.900 | As far as I know, didn't eat her family.

00:58:56.900 | Everyone's happy.

00:58:57.900 | It was funny.

00:58:58.900 | It's great.

00:58:59.900 | Internet more of that internet as email cow memes about being eaten.

00:59:03.340 | Yeah.

00:59:04.340 | Like memes from 20 years ago.

00:59:05.500 | Oh, actually.

00:59:06.500 | Yeah.

00:59:07.500 | And we'll, we'll, maybe we'll feature your meme on the show.

00:59:09.580 | Oh, you can also send us now that I'm on this fast.

00:59:12.260 | You can also send us articles you want us to talk about or leave it in the comments in

00:59:16.020 | the YouTube section.

00:59:17.420 | Because, uh, again, I think that's why the show is funny, but we're the two worst people

00:59:22.420 | to be hosting the show.

00:59:23.420 | So we need your help.

00:59:24.420 | So if you like the show, spread the word about the show.

00:59:26.860 | Um, I usually say to follow me on social media, but don't subscribe to my sub stack.

00:59:31.620 | You can do it for free.

00:59:32.620 | Read my writing, Jamie kilstein.substack.com and my mental health comedy podcast advice

00:59:36.780 | not taken.

00:59:37.780 | You can go to Jamie kilstein.com or you can go over to youtube.com/Jamie kilstein.

00:59:41.060 | We're starting to put videos up.

00:59:43.060 | Um, and that's it.

00:59:45.460 | And let me just, let me just briefly plug Jamie's sub stack.

00:59:48.660 | He had a piece that was actually why good internet, because it was widely spread on

00:59:52.300 | the internet.

00:59:53.300 | Um, a really good piece about depression and suicidality and, and, you know, uh, how things

01:00:01.060 | can really change and really get better.

01:00:02.920 | So, uh, and I think it's important to emphasize like you really are coming at this from a

01:00:07.700 | strong mental health perspective.

01:00:09.140 | I mean, you're a comedian, but also you've, you help a lot of people with mental health.

01:00:14.700 | And so, you know, you see it through that perspective where I see it more through the

01:00:17.460 | perspective of I'm just baffled in an old man.

01:00:20.020 | And I just don't understand.

01:00:21.020 | I just don't understand.

01:00:22.020 | Give me the memes, give Cal memes about mental health.

01:00:24.020 | I want an animated gif, uh, yeah, an animated gif that I can download from an FTP server.

01:00:30.500 | Jamie just trying to jump off a bridge.

01:00:32.500 | I mean, yeah.

01:00:33.500 | Um, for real guys, like I think with the mental health stuff, I try to talk about it in a

01:00:37.620 | way that, um, a lot of people can relate to.

01:00:40.900 | I didn't know I was helping as many people as I was.

01:00:43.540 | Um, but it's, it's because I'm, I'm not an expert and I'm going through it with you guys.

01:00:49.460 | Um, and I, I, I'm making sure not to like talk down, you know, you read some self help

01:00:54.300 | stuff that's like, Oh, I just, I go on my cold plunge every morning and then I, and

01:00:59.140 | you're just like, wow, what?

01:01:00.180 | This is very unrelatable.

01:01:01.380 | Um, whereas I'm like, I'm fucking, I need health insurance.

01:01:05.060 | And they're like that guy, he's my guy.

01:01:06.940 | If he, if he can survive, I can survive.

01:01:08.900 | So, uh, expand.

01:01:09.900 | That means a lot.

01:01:10.900 | Yep.

01:01:11.900 | And I've been in a cold plunge this entire episode.

01:01:12.900 | I'm very ill.

01:01:16.540 | You weak loser.

01:01:18.540 | I have been in a cold plunge and I've been holding a kettlebell in my right arm this

01:01:22.580 | whole, this whole time because that's my bow pulling arm.

01:01:26.100 | That's good.

01:01:27.100 | That's good.

01:01:28.100 | L-cunting.

01:01:29.100 | We're about to get famous now.

01:01:30.340 | I am on top of things.

01:01:31.540 | All right.

01:01:32.540 | So anyways, we're going to crush the Lamborghini and then we're out of here.

01:01:34.180 | Uh, yep.

01:01:35.180 | Thank you everyone for watching.

01:01:36.180 | We'll be back.

01:01:37.180 | Yep.

01:01:38.180 | We'll be back soon.

01:01:39.180 | We'll be back with some more internet culture and until then stay offline.

01:01:40.180 | Yep.

01:01:41.180 | [inaudible]

01:01:42.180 | [inaudible]

01:01:47.180 | [inaudible]

01:01:52.180 | [inaudible]

Cal And Jamie Explain The Internet | Old, Weird Internet

Chapters