The Skeptics Guide #1070 - Jan 10 2026

You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Friday, May 16th, and we are live at Nauticon. We have a lot of people joining us up on stage for the show. This is going to be a little bit of an unusual episode. We're going to have just some interesting conversations. Big change, big change. We've done this before. We've done this for many episodes. Not like our typical boring show. So, joining me for this episode, as usual, we have the Rogue, starting with Bob. Hey, everybody. Kara. Howdy. Jay. Hey, guys. And Evan. Hello, everyone. And then we have our frequent special rogues, George Robb. Andrea Jones-Roy. Hello. Andrea. Brian Wecht. Hi, everybody. Brian. And this is the first time recording the SGU, but this is going to be the second time airing an episode with Adam Russell. So Adam is a big Star Wars fan and a musician. And is there anything else they need to know about you? Nothing to cover soon. All right, good. So we're going to start off. Well, you'll get to know everybody a little bit more. We're going to start. We have a few interesting discussion topics lined up. We're going to start with a positive and hopefully an easy one. We want everyone to say something that they are especially proud of, something in your life that makes you feel good about yourself, you think is a real accomplishment or just something you like about yourself or just something you're happy about. We're going to start all the way at my right side with George. I get to go first. Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I was thinking about this. And like as someone that creates stuff, you try to be proud of the stuff you create. So like, you know, I look at an album or like I recently restocked all my CDs and DVDs and stuff. And it was like that made me feel really good. I was really proud. But and I know this is going to sound like I'm just buttering your buns there, Stephen. But I was really proud when I was asked to write that essay about your thousandth episode. And the skeptical inquirer reached out and said, would you write like a 3000 word essay about the, you know, the SGU? about what they mean to you and what their thousandth episode means. And it was like incredibly challenging. And it was like a ton of work and a lot of edits and a lot of back and forth. And I think it ended up really cool. I think it's going to be published next month in like the July. I just saw the cover. Oh, really? Oh, you saw the cover? Oh, I haven't seen the cover yet. So, yeah. What's the cover? It's just me. Headshot. Headshot of George. I'm good with that. I'm good with that. It's George with a pipe writing the article about it. That's right. But I just – I remember reading it in – where were we? Chicago? Where was that? Chicago, yeah. Reading it to you in Chicago and then sort of seeing the video online and then sort of seeing it posted online. And like I was so happy with how that came out and that it represented just like one portion of how much I appreciate all of you and appreciate where my life has gone because I've got to know all of you. So it's a very, very – I felt good to feel good about it because it was like – you guys are awesome. And, and I hit the mark. I'd like, I nailed it. So that felt really prideful. Awesome. Thank you, George. Thanks, George. Yeah. Yeah. Mine is, so I'm also very proud to be able to do things with you all. This is starting to sound like a Trump secretary. Oh, tell us all how much you love us. I just want to say our fearless leaders. um well where i was going was uh you didn't ask me to write an essay so i now redact the pride so we'll see who's proud of what but um this this might be boring but i i've been reflecting about this and i i do think that one of the things that i'm most proud of in my life is finishing my phd i was i didn't know what i was signing up for when i went to grad school i didn't know what i was doing i had a lot of undiagnosed adhd and mental illness and it's in my program at the university of Michigan, it was like the dissertation years were very, very isolated, and you're really, really alone. I was terrified of my advisors, so it was just like alone feeling bad, and then I'd go see them, and they'd say, you're even worse than you thought. You're like, oh my God. And you go, and every day I thought about quitting, and I, to this day, feel very proud that I stuck it out. And whenever I'm doing something now that's like hard, it's not going well, I'm like, well, I know that I've done it once, so I can get through it. Yeah. Yeah. Good answer. Good answer. Yeah, this was a tough one because there's so many great things about me. But I went to a birthday party recently for a friend, not like a super close friend, but a friend. And we were just chatting, and he's like, dude, I'm really glad you're here. I think of you as the guy who shows up. And I was like, oh, my God, that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. You're like, when I invite you to something, you're going to go out of your way to be there. and it was the kind of thing where when he said that I was like that's how I want to be thought of like I want to be thought of as a good friend who shows up and it was just a very simple just an offhand remark on his case but it has really stuck with me as a nice as a nice compliment so I am proud that this guy and hopefully other people think of me as the person who shows up for stuff which shows how nice it is to also say that kind of stuff to people like if you have people in your life that do show up or they always get you a cool gift. You can call them. Let them know. Because it can totally make an impression like that. I'm like, oh, yay, thanks. It's kind of a cliche. I live in LA and it's like a cliche in LA that people say they're going to be somewhere and then they just never come. You know Kara. They'll be like, yeah, traffic was bad. I didn't feel like it. It's believable. Especially in Los Angeles, it's like a notable thing to make plans and stick to them. I like that, Brian, because I think celebrating those small virtues is so important. Yeah. Because it's easy to overlook little things like that. Because we have friends, too, that some friends, they notoriously don't show up. That's right. Or when they do, they're late. And it's like, you know, it really does suck. It does. And it's very annoying. And how much would it really – it's a systematic problem with how they live their life. Yeah, totally. And it's nothing personal. Maybe a little bit. Some people are just chronic procrastinators because they are mentally underestimating how long it takes to do stuff or whatever. They just need to update your behavioral algorithms. Sometimes it's a lack of conscientiousness. Brian comes to I have a poker table and Brian comes and plays poker at my tournaments at home and you're always there and you're always on time. And I do have people who at the last minute are like, oh I'm not coming. and I'm like, well, you know you just ruined poker for everybody. You need to come. There are certain times that people don't show up and they don't realize the impact that it has on other people. But showing up also means that we need to recognize the impact we have on other people. You showing up has an impact, which is a big deal. Sometimes doing little things can really have a huge impression and impact on other people's lives. I think we're always cataloging those things and it shapes the opinion of the person. we have. Like, Brian, another thing you do is you call me and you literally go, hey, dude, what's up? No agenda, no questions. What is the agenda? I'm just very good at it. Never mind. No, but I like that because it's like you had a moment. I can always take a 10-minute break. I work from home or whatever. You never call me, Brian. What's up with that? I'll call you all the time. You're going to live to regret that. I promise you that. And you keep your promises. All right, go ahead, Jay. Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things. Of course I'm proud of the SGU 20-year marker. and since I worked full-time for the company and all that, but you've heard all that. So I wanted to think of something else. And I'm starting to think about things like, I have been through a series of utterly disgustingly failed relationships my whole life. I'm right here. It's common. It's common, though. We all do. Most relationships fail. If you're lucky, really lucky, you find the right person and things shape up into a place where it is a permanent thing. But you never even know if it is. But I want to say this. I feel so lucky that I grew up enough to actually become attracted to an adult. Think about that. Because I've been attracted to broken people my whole life. I think what happened was in D&D terms, I finally, whatever level I needed to get to, I got to. And I was able to be attracted to an adult. And then she helped me. You might want to amend that there. The language is not good. You know what I'm talking about? I was a mature. A mature. A mental adult. A mental adult. Oh, holy shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We gave you the first one. The first one we gave you. He doesn't hear you guys. He doesn't hear. You've ended after 20 years. And I'm pushing hard on that adult button because to me it means something very specific. Okay, so a mature, older woman. Courtney's going to love this. Too far. Pull it back. There's a name for that. Keep digging, Jay. Keep digging. I'm very attracted to elderly women now. My elderly wife. She's so mature. My wife is so fucking old. All right, so I finally developed this thing. You know what I'm talking about? Emotionally mature. Emotionally mature. What did you develop? Mutual. But then the other half of it was that my wife actually loved me enough. She wasn't my wife at the time, but she loved me enough where she decided that she was going to help me grow up more to actually be able to really flourish in this relationship. and I'm like I look back and I always say I know this is so cliche but I'm like how did she fall in love with me like I don't deserve this person we're still trying to figure that out but somehow it happened thank you, you proved my point and I just feel incredibly fortunate because up until the moment where I really realized what our relationship was it never occurred to me that I wasn't ever in the relationship I always thought oh yeah I love this person blah blah blah but this relationship was like oh okay this was what I've been looking for my whole life And a lot of the looking had to happen internally for me, which was too dumb to realize. But when that happens, and if you're lucky enough to have that happen, and that marker, you pass that marker, oh my God, it feels so good. And I just want to thank everybody and Brian. You're welcome. That's true. Some relationships make us a better version of ourselves, and some make us a worse version of ourselves. But also you should be thinking how you could be affecting the other person in your relationship too, right? It's like that being thoughtful thing. I think I have imposter syndrome. George and I had a long talk about this one day, and I really was thinking about it. And I'm like, yeah, I think I have. I think a lot of people have it. Inside your head, if you're being honest with yourself, as a trained skeptic, there's a lot of like, I'm not really good enough to do that. I don't have the skills for that. And we kind of fake it until you make it. And that's kind of how I felt in the beginning of that relationship. But now I actually feel like, no, I'm here. I achieved it. You made it. Yeah. so yeah i've thought about this a lot as well obviously there's a lot of different things that i could point to but if i'm just i know this sound this will sound cheesy but this is my honest feeling the thing that i am most emotionally proud of i'm gonna cry i didn't do anything by the way i didn't do anything it's my two daughters oh damn it i should have gone No, seriously, because they are both awesome people. Now, I know I don't get full credit for that. My wife and I talk about it, because we know we both don't get full credit for it. It's partly luck of the draw. But we really worked hard to be good parents. You absolutely did, Steve. It was so obvious. We did. And very thoughtfully. My wife is a counselor, so we're all very thoughtfully raising our kids. And they're both such awesome people. I think just objectively awesome people. And my wife and I are just so proud of them in so many different ways. I just can't help but feel that's the greatest accomplishment of my life. Steve, do you think it was the science fiction that did it, though? It was everything. I raised them to be nerds, which I stand by that decision. They're birders, too. And birders, yeah. And lots of things. D&D players, don't forget that. And just good people. They're both really, really good people. Yeah, for sure. And that's the most important thing. They're just really class people. I just love that. And anyone who's had kids, that is not easy. And it's also every parent's greatest fear is that you're going to raise assholes. And you know you don't have total control over that. Especially when you see other people's kids being assholes. They're like, oh, my God. Yeah, totally. All right. Oh, what am I most proud of? I'm so bad at not preparing answers. I was thinking about it too, and I feel like there are things I could point to. Like, you know, I've these recent accomplishments, finishing my PhD, getting my license, all that kind of stuff. But when I really think about where my pride is in myself, I guess, and that's what this is. It's like digging deep and saying, like, what is something that I have to show for the person I am or the life that I've lived? I think it's sort of a tie between not like the accolades that allow me to do my work, but the actual work that I do. I think I'm proud of being there for people at the end of their lives. It's a big part of my job. I've attended medical deaths and I've done therapy with people as they're deciding to stop treatment or as they're facing, you know, the end. And I think that that's something that's been important to my identity and to my sense of self. And then the other thing, I think it's going to sound kind of materialistic, but I actually think it goes deeper than its superficial sheen. And that's like prouder than I am of being Dr. Santa Maria. It's that I own my own home, which was, as a woman, I think making a decision to live for me, to not live somebody else's dream, and to not adapt or quiet myself, and to build my own space that feels safe and that feels like mine. I don't know if I can express to the people in the audience who aren't women, especially when you're raised in homes that aren't very safe and that aren't really yours, what it feels like to accomplish something like that when everything you're told from the time that you're born is that as silly as it sounds, there's that like interview with Cher where she's talking to Diane Sawyer, I think, or Barbara Walters or somebody. And she's like, when I was young, my mom used to say, you know, when you grow up, you need to meet a rich man. And she's like, Mom, I am a rich man. And like that always really resonated with me. And so I think that that's my pride. It's like seeing what my mother went through during her divorce, seeing so many women in my lives being utterly destroyed by being under the thumbs of men. and deciding early on that like that was never going to be me. It doesn't mean that I haven't loved. And I think looking back to, to Jay, a counterpoint to something that you said, not to minimize because yours is beautiful, but I don't see all of my relationships in my life as failures. I see them all as successes, even if I'm not still with the person. Like I think that I've had a series of successful relationships in my life and those contributed to where I am. But I think the thing that I'm most proud of is that I am where I am because I chose to be this way. And, yes, it was a combination of luck and privilege and hard work. But I am in a place that I set out to be, and I don't have, like, regrets. And I think that's something to be proud of. Yeah, not having regrets is huge. That's huge. A negative result is still data. A negative result is still data in your relationship life. But just to clarify, Jay's relationships were failures. And they're all here now. But I hear what you're saying. You could look at it as, but Jay, it helped you become the person you are now. I get all that. It was all a very, very useful experience. But I mean, yeah, one of the people I dated, we were together for seven years, and the first five years were amazing. We had a great five-year relationship, and then it took a couple of years for it to undo itself. I don't regret that. I don't regret it. But, you know, when I look back on it, I'm more commenting on myself. Like, I was so devastatingly immature that there never could have been a long-term success. Jay, you know, but Jay, we tried to help. I mean, we told you. Dude. Oh. Seriously? And I think my commentary is less about maturity and failure. It's more about the fact that what's normative in our culture is dating for marriage. And so a lot of people think if it doesn't last forever, then you're failing on your way to the success. Yeah, that's a good point. But for me, just a relationship in and of itself is the reason for the relationship. And so they're all successes so long as they were consensual and we came out better people and caring for one another. Kara, do you feel like a special kind of safety in your own house that you don't feel other places? 100%. Right? 100%. You must. be like pudding. I mean, it's got to be like the delicious... It's mine. Yeah. And everything is exactly the way I want it. And it's the best. Yeah, it's the best. So when's the house party? Yeah. Don't have kids. Or roommates. My house is not child-friendly. I'll tell you, there's a lot of sharp corners in there. Yeah, Bob. I'm not proud of you. All right. And you're proud of me. Yeah. I wish... Sorry. proud that i'm not proud of me i wish i was uh to the right of steve damn it the hell man oh did i steal your thunder poker position yeah i'm proud in terms of relationships i'm proud of my second marriage it's like holy crap this is like this is what marriage can be wow um so another example of who you're in a relationship with making you a worse person or a better person oh boy big example of that. I have to say, the second thing that occurred to me was, of course, the SGU. What a crazy journey we've been on. Who could have predicted anything about this? Nobody could have. That. But one of the first things that occurred to me is my daughter, Ashley. And... She's also awesome. Yeah. Oh, my God. But I'm lucky, though. Steve had to work hard. I didn't have to work that hard. I did, but I didn't have to because I don't know what happened. All right, it's genetic and environment, and I'm part of that environment thing. And I'm not sure what... And the genetics, Bob. Yeah, you're about 50% of that, too. Hopefully you're positive. Unless you're telling us something we didn't know. Aren't you a twin? That would explain a lot, I'd probably ask you. Wait, I've got to think about this. All right, so, yeah, but I had... I mean, I can't control the genetics, but I can control her environment. And I'm just trying to think, what the hell did I do so special to get this kid that's just like... Every time I talk to her, it's like, holy crap, how did I have any part in this? It just amazes me. Yeah, she's just incredible. I'm so proud of her. I tell her all the time. It's ridiculous. And I'm proud, but I'm also so lucky because, I mean, I just rolled 30 20s in a row for that because, like, wow, she was just such an easy kid. And I've seen other kids growing up. There's so much variation in terms of how much work that needs to be done. and I'm just happy that she was that easy but so proud of her that she's an amazing kid so that's all I got I'm curious in the audience with one clap how many parents do we have one clap and are your kids assholes honesty one honest parent one honest person one didn't even hesitate alright Evan can't say your daughter So we'll take that as a given. She's in the room. Right here. Speak your truth, Evan, whatever it is. All right. I'm going to say what I was going to say anyway. All right. Go ahead. Pride's a sin, first of all. And I only bring – thank you. And I only bring that up because I don't know that I've ever really sat and reflected on what I'm proud of about myself. I don't know. I detect for myself it's a little uncomfortable for me to do so. I'm still living this life, and I still have hopefully many, many, many years to continue to prove myself that, you know, I'm doing all right and treating other people as I want to be treated as well. So I think the jury is still out on that. I'll make an assessment when I'm towards the end of my life. But with that all said, two things that definitely were mentioned before that have to come up. When you're a parent, and especially a father to daughters, like Steve, Bob, Jay, Brian is as well, Well, that is just such a special relationship like no other relationship a man can have in his life. So it's totally normal for that to be the number one source of pride in a father's life, especially to a daughter. So in a sense, yes, it does go without saying and everything that comes with it. But to that point, my father, I have two sisters. I'm an only brother. Novellas are my real brothers, but I consider them my brothers. But I have two sisters. Grew up, you know, my father was very old-fashioned, if I can use the term, you know, very much non-politically correct in a lot of ways. Definitely, you know, a product of the 40s and the 50s growing up in that lifestyle. And that translated to how he parented us. You know, nobody's perfect, but there were a lot of faults there. There were a lot of problems he had in raising daughters specifically. He treated me differently, not better, just different. I seem to have the coping skills to deal with his, you know, issues being, you know, the father. But my sisters didn't. And very, very toxic relationships with both the daughters. And as I'm growing up, I'm a boy. I'm 10, 11 years old thinking about this. And two things. I want to be a parent someday myself, number one. And number two, if I ever had a daughter, I don't want to be my father to the way they were my daughters. I was very conscious of that very early in life and carried that with me until I was eventually my young 30s and finally did become a father to a daughter. And I've done that. And I'm extremely proud of myself that I was able to fulfill that promise I made to myself all those years ago. Yeah, so that's my number one thing. And the second thing I'm also proud of is probably also my education because I had to basically pay for it entirely myself. I put myself through my bachelor's degree. My parents couldn't afford to really send me to school, so I had to just do it myself. And while everyone else was off taking their summer breaks and doing their vacations and spring break and all that stuff, I spent every minute working so I could earn money, so I could pay for it, and got through my bachelor's degree with no student loans. I paid it all. So I was very proud of that, too. Nice. Awesome. All right, Adam? Well, without getting too deep into my personal life, to the points that you other folks have made about relationships, there's something really to take pride in about being in a relationship, realizing it's not right, and having the courage to move on and then find someone else, and then also discover that no matter what, nothing's perfect, and there's always work to be done, and there are all these things to learn about yourself and to learn about your relationship. And on both sides, as you develop as adults and become real adults, to not accidentally say words that could be interpreted different ways like Jay. But so I'm proud of myself, I'm proud of my wife, and the two of us together, that we've, all the things that we've been through, that we continue to try and care to try. to continue being better people for ourselves and for each other. But beyond that sort of like personal part of my life, it's easy to say my band because we've been very successful. We're 20 years in now, and we're in this whole second wave, and it feels amazing. But I also, the further I get from the young, you know, adolescent stage of that journey where I just felt like, fuck everyone, we're going to do it no matter what, thinking that we had the power to do it all, I realized there was so much luck involved, so I can't speak about it in as much of a prideful way. You know, it just feels like, to your point about pride being kind of a sin kind of thing. So I look at my podcast, Thank the Maker, it's a Star Wars podcast. The thing that we realized early on, I would say like a dozen episodes in, is that even taking the time, even giving the space to complain about this thing that we loved so much that we would make a podcast about it was a waste of time. So we went from having a segment called Disturbances in the Forest about things that bothered us to having a segment called From a Certain Point of View, where we would take complaints that may be out in the fandom and kind of think about it from a certain point of view and try to understand maybe where the creator was coming from, whether it was George Lucas back in the day or J.J. Abrams now or whoever else. And in doing that, we pushed further and further away, as far as we can possibly get from the toxicity that is inherent in any big fandom, especially something like Star Wars. And in doing that, we've created this great community with our Patreon where people feel like they're completely safe from all that toxicity. And not in a way where we're feigning any kind of love for something that rubs us wrong about a movie or a show, but we just don't waste the air to even talk about it. because sometimes you think, well, I just have to get this opinion out there, but what if that opinion is just going to talk someone else out of something that they like? What am I doing for them as a podcaster by complaining about something that they maybe didn't bother them or maybe they loved? So in doing that, we've created this great community, and there's so much love and support among them. And whether we see them at cons or at events that we put on, it's palpable, like just how positive the whole thing is. And I'm proud as shit that we were able to do that for people. I'm just curious. I don't know if you started. Sorry. I don't know if you talked about it on your cast or not. The, the actor that played Jar Jar. Oh, I'm at best. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sort of the one 80 that the fandom has taken in terms of his, you know, the, the absolute loathing to where he literally was suicidal. Literally on a bridge, on a bridge, ready, ready to end his life. Yeah. To now kind of being embraced by the community. Was that something that sort of happened in conjunction with your views, or did that influence you at all? I hadn't heard his full story because that didn't come out until the past couple years. But yes, that specifically finding out that he was near suicidal and then literally suicidal because of all the hate, yeah, that flipped a switch in my head. And he's such a talented dude, too. The role that he played... It wasn't his fault. Right, George said, here's the character, here's the role, take the voice wherever you want. and he did a thing that turned out a lot of people didn't like. But he's an extremely talented dude. There's a quote from Liam Neeson on the set. Everyone loved the dude. Everyone loved him. He was just the most fun to hang out with, just the sweetest guy, super talented, super funny. And Liam Neeson said, I thought this guy was going to be the next Eddie Murphy or something. He was one of the funniest people I'd ever met, so talented. And then all the hate came down and there that went. so has Jar Jar been reappraised do people love Jar Jar now? people do, especially people in their 30s that grew up with the prequels being their Star Wars they can look back at him like George kind of intended he was like Goofy, the character Goofy that was kind of what he was going for and if you think about it that way it makes sense even the look, the ears and knowing that George made those films for children even though, what do children know about trade routes and shit if you look at it that way, look at it like more of a cartoon than a live action thing yeah, I think people have started to embrace it in that way and they just also support a medbest as a person first and foremost it's kind of like Scrappy Doo you mentioned the role of luck but the thing is you have to prepare the way for luck be ready to take advantage you put the hard work in and the time in and the consistency in and the quality in, which made it possible to get lucky. Otherwise, nothing could have happened. But I also feel lucky to have been, you know, have hit the cosmic lottery of living in a household where I didn't have some kind of abusive situation. I did have enough middle financial stability to just go for it and feel like well if this doesn work I just go live in my parents house again So there that luck There a lot of it The best description of luck I ever heard was like your car breaks down and the lucky person says, I'm only a mile away from a gas station. And the unlucky person says, I'm a fucking mile away from the gas station. And it has nothing to do with what's happened but how it's perceived. Now, you know those guys, Steve, I can't remember the name of the band, and they sing that song, ooh, ooh, ooh, I love you, right? No talent. Milli Vanilli. Milli Vanilli. No talent. Those guys had no business getting to where they did. They didn't do anything. They just looked good. I heard they were actually pretty good singers. They don't fit that. Yeah, baby. Sing it up there, huh? The surviving member is actually, he's sort of redefined himself, and he's a fantastic singer and a really good performer. We don't need your toxicity, Jay. I'm just saying, some people get really lucky and don't contribute anything other than having a look. But even the people that are really, really lucky, I do think it's important. I mean, to George's point and to your point, when you have a certain amount of privilege or you have a certain amount of luck, you can choose to use it. Or you can choose to squander it or to, yeah, to walk away from it. And so, yes, I think it's important that we all remain humble and recognize that all of us are where we are because of a confluence of a lot of factors and that there are people who are equally talented. Like, what did Stephen Jay Gould say? That he's, like, less interested in all the convolutions of Einstein's brain than all of the, this is a bad quote, but than all of the people working in sweatshops and fields that would have had similar ideas. Like, we do have to remember that we are very, very lucky. But I don't think understanding that we're lucky should make us ashamed of our accomplishments. I think that's an important thing to remember, too. We've chosen to keep going. There's the idea that skill and talent will not get you work, but skill and talent will let you keep the work you get. Yes, yes. That's that thing. The doors might be open for you, but you have to walk through them. It's a random roll of the dice that you meet the guy who happens to be the thing, and he knew the brother with the cousin. and that's how you get the gig, whatever the gig is. But if you stink, you're not going to keep it. Sofia Coppola acted in one movie. She acted in one movie and she was terrible. She found that she's a director. So yeah, she happened to be the daughter of the director. But if she had been an amazing actress, she probably would have had a very different kind of career. So it's that weird thing. You can keep what you get by luck. It's skill, talent, and being someone people want to work with. Yeah, that's a huge part of it. That's a part of skill. I think that's a part of skill. Yeah. And just being like a nice, generous person who is a valued collaborator. When we audition people for the band, it's always you'd rather work with a person who's like 70%, but nice and cool and you want to sit in a van for eight hours with, as opposed to the 99%-er who knows they're a 99%-er and is just going to make your life miserable. So, yeah. And that's not just about having an enjoyable time collaborating. You're going to have a better product. You're going to make better music. You're going to have better performances. It'll be more fun to make it. Yeah. Investment, you know, that 70% is going to be like, I'm all in. Like, even though I don't have the chops or whatever, as someone at a different level, they're all in. 100%. All right, let's move on. To keep things positive, we're going to move on to another segment. Everyone's going to talk about a quirky pet peeve that they have. I'm asking for, does anyone want to go first to talk about their pet peeve? I have one. Any quirky pet peeve that you think? I don't know if it's quirky. Does it have to be quirky? That was the instruction. Whatever you got, man. We'll be evaluating the quirkiness. But there's not one that everyone shares like it's obvious. I don't know. How am I supposed to know if it's obvious or not until I say it? A lot of people drive cars. A lot of people took it. Yeah, fuck those people. Thank you, George. Disgusting cars. These people, I assume, have driver's licenses. I assume they took some kind of course explaining the rules of how to drive and when to be in a certain lane and what speed to go and how turn signals work and how braking properly in a car is supposed to work. When you're driving, okay, you're not supposed to be doing things like looking at your phone, flipping around your radio stations, putting on your makeup, eating three hamburgers, talking with the people in the back. Steering with your legs. 55 other things. You have a job. You have a job, and that is a job is to drive that car, keep yourself and your passengers safe, and keep the other people on the road safe as well. And I cannot abide by people who absolutely, clearly have no idea what the hell they're doing on the road. They are absolute menaces and terrors on these highways. They just don't know. They do know, and they don't care. It's one of the two. And, Evan, this has nothing to do with our age. We're keeping it light. Light now. We're keeping it light. I'm generally a patient person. Rachel will attest to that with me. But when it comes to needing to get from point A to point B in a motor vehicle, I don't screw around. I want to get there, and I want to get there correctly. And if everybody else kind of obeyed the rules of the road like they're supposed to, maybe there wouldn't be as many F-ups on the road. Pick one thing that they do. Thank you very much. Yes, Connecticut driver right there. He knows exactly what I'm talking about. Evan, pick one thing that they do that really makes you the most pissed. They'll drive in the left lane and allow cars on their right lane to pass them on a two-layer. And they will never, you can beep your horn, you can flash your lights, you can do anything you want. They will stay in that spot. Yeah. And just what? Why? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. They should have their licenses taken. If they even have a license, that's my pet peeve. Thank you very much, Evan. I would agree that that's not a quirk. I think most people feel it. I also think that most people think that they're really good drivers and everybody else is a bad driver. This is my pushback on that. I think you had, your choices were too narrow. They don't know what they're doing or they don't care. The other possibility is that we're all bad drivers sometime. We're all good drivers sometime. Right, they're not paying attention. There are so many people on the road. We all have our bad days. Part of it is, it's like the Dunning-Kruger thing. Everyone thinks that, oh, I'm smart but everyone else thinks they're smarter than they are. It's like, no, we're all on the Dunning-Kruger curve on some topics at some time. I think there, to some extent, you think about how many people you're sharing the road with, if even a tiny percentage of them are having a bad day, it's going to seem like there's always some asshole driver on the road with you. You have to just consider that as well. It doesn't mean that there's always a bad driver. It's the example I use with my patients when we talk about the principle of charity. I think it's a great illustration of the principle of charity. Like, did that guy cut you off because he doesn't care or because, like, whatever, he's bleeding and he's trying to get to the ER or whatever. Like, can we use that? Well, isn't that a bias, the fundamental attribution error? Yeah, that's true. It's like ill intentions when it's just something random happens. Something external versus internal. Because I've had, you know, I've obviously been driving for a long time. I've had moments where, like, I'm not paying attention or whatever. Something happened and I'm the asshole. and they're like, oh shit, I'm the asshole driver that I always get annoyed at in this moment, you know? And of course you try to minimize that. I think generally I think I'm a very good driver. But yeah, even I, you have your moments. I gotta chime in. There seems to be an area of the highway near my house. I gotta say this, Liz, you know where I'm going with this. I don't know what it is. They are not, they are not how Evan characterized them. They might be decent drivers. I'm sure they think they are really good drivers. Well, here's a scenario that happens all the time. I'm driving. Car's in front of me. And out of the blue, a car comes quite fast and cuts in front of me and goes to the next lane. And I swear there's a foot in front of me and the car and a foot. I mean, he squeezes in. It looks like a space that I would never change a lane with that little space. And they fly away. They're going probably 10 or 15 miles an hour faster. and that probably gets me more pissed more often than anything in life it's like oh my god it's like you're rolling the dice every time every time you drive i could do that i could drive that way but i would think one out of 50 times it's just not going to go well right because there was one time where i was about to speed up and then boom like holy crap if he if i was just a few seconds further ahead i would have been closing that gap as he tried to that would have been an accident right there. What are you thinking that you could do that all the time and it's got to go wrong, you know. And it does. It does go wrong. In the biz, we call it error minimization. You have to do behaviors so that it's like if it goes wrong 1% of the time, that's too many. If life and death is on the line, one in a thousand may be too many. You need to get to the one in a million range. So I think driving, we need to think of it like that. You need to be driving in such a way that your chances are good that you'll go your life without a fatal accident. That's the goal. And you're not going to do that driving that way. It's not like I've got to roll above a five. I've got to roll above a five. You can do that a lot, but eventually it's not going to roll your way. So my pet peeve, to move things along, point, counterpoint, counterpoint, is that yes, some people are just whatever. And yes, some people are having a moment. But there is a personality type, which is a conscientious personality type, and then there is a not conscientious personality. And I think American society actually really fosters and curates the not conscientious type because it's all every person for themselves and manifest destiny and rugged individualism. But when I think about the manifestation of people not being conscientious, that's my biggest pet peeve, is there's a walking style that people have where they stop at pinch points. Yes, they do. And it's like... At the bottom of the escalator, it's like in the doorway, it's like at Trader Joe's, they put the car in the middle, pull it to the side. Like, what do you do? Spatial awareness. It's so true, it's like driving only walking. Like, I'm the only person, and nobody else, you know? Like, I deserve... I experience that every day going to work. It's infuriating. In a hallway, in a hallway. I have to go around the corner, and everyone is standing in front of the elevator perfectly positioned to block any through traffic. Like with no awareness of what's going on. As if everyone is going to be waiting for the elevator versus going down the hallway. Those bastards. Constant. Sons of bitches. Constant. We are now going to spend the rest of Nauticon standing in the way of Kara. And it's the short stop too. It's the walk, walk, walk. Wait, I need to stop and think about this. Turn around and start, what? Not realizing there might be someone behind you? Here's an interesting angle. Here's an interesting angle. Drivers who are trying to be conscientious. It's like, it seems like, oh, you're trying to be nice, but no. Holding up traffic. I'm at a stop sign, and then here's the main road. And they stop for me so I can get out. They're trying to be nice, and I guess that's nice. But no, you're changing expected behavior. Exactly. That's going to cause an accident. No, sometimes when it happens, I'm like, no, you go. You have the right of way. Don't give me the right of way because no one's going to be expecting that. It happens that pedestrian crosses a lot, where you're trying to cross and somebody stops and they're like, go. And you're like, you might be stopped, but the lane next to you that I can't see isn't stopped. And then they're getting mad at you. I have a question. When you're in the stop in the car and there's a bunch of cars stopped or there's like this one other car. So I usually always let the other person go first. This happens to me all the time. Stop, whatever. I don't care who stopped first. I'll just go ahead. No, right? You're the problem, Jay. You're the problem. No, but the point is sometimes you don't know who's not first. Then it's the person to the right. There are laws about this. I was the first person to do this, and then they go. I was polite first. Don't be over polite on my polite. Because now I'm pissed. You just want to win the polite contest. Then you don't know if you should go. Then I'm just sitting there like, this guy is going to kill me. Just follow the rules. I have a pet peeve. This thing is in probably every single room of your house. It's in this room with us right now. Air? It's in your hotel room. It's in your car. It's in your refrigerator. No. Did you say Jesus? And it is something that after I tell you what I'm about to tell you, if you do anything other than completely reject it, you're dead to me. Okay. Jesus. Tell us how you really feel. No, it's not Jesus. And I'm going to tell you what it is, but then you've got to let me talk for a minute. All right, gotcha. It's called glitter. glitter is freaking everywhere it's evil and i'm going to tell you a few things about it first and foremost why are we manufacturing micro plastics that you can't help but drop into the environment i mean there was literally i was watching a youtube video of this new thing was for mother's day we're like you open the card and the card won't stop making the weird noise and and then the idea is the person will get so frustrated that they'll rip the card open to break the thing and glitter explodes into the room that's funny what's happening so i like that so glitter leeches poison into our environment because the chemicals that they color it with are literally poisonous and they it's okay because there's no glitter regulation so we're creating it's true they just because of big glitter it's never from the top down man so we're we're making super small pieces of plastic that are poisonous and we're giving them to people we love the shit stays in the house and what's the end game guys? Tell me. What's the anti-glitter movement? How are we getting rid of glitter? This sounds like someone that got caught after a lap dance. Yeah. But seriously though, it freaks me out. We have a plastic problem now. Okay, 20 years ago, fine. 30 years ago. It's plastic. They have biodegradables right now. Yeah, don't they? Sure. That is probably like 1.2% of all the freaking glitter. Jay, we're getting rid of it by absorbing it into our bodies. Right. We all shine on, Jay. We all shine on. It's the exact thing we shouldn't be manufacturing. And I'll tell you when it first hit me. I was looking at a collection of pictures of really bad work environments in China. And I saw a guy who was in charge of spray decorating Christmas stuff. And he had the red shit all over his body. And you could see this line around his mouth where he had this mask on and he had red stuff on his lips. And I'm like, wait, that's glitter he's spraying. That's what his lungs look like. It's glitter glue. And I'm like, why is this happening? And nobody seems to care. I just told all of you, nobody's freaking out. You're probably just going to buy that stupid card. I told everybody in my family knows you cannot bring glitter in my house. You can't, I don't know. Am I alone here? Please raise your hand. Thank you. I'm with you. Oh my God. It's great people. Jay, they're all members of the Glitterati. Good. Jay, you got the... Very good. I missed it. Glitterati, he said. Yes. Yes. Jay, I was a circus performer in China for many years, and I wore a lot of glitter. And I would come home, and I'd have to shower it off, like, body painted on me. And I think I single-handedly ruined one plumber's marriage. Because I had showered, and it was everywhere. And then the building sent someone over to, like, check the water project, whatever. and he left and I was just like, that man is covered in glitter. And I don't know how to explain to your wife. So you might have killed him. I think. Poisoned. Yeah. And it all started. My hatred for glitter preexisted, the picture, and I'll just tell you this. Steve and Bob, you know this story. Our mother told us. It's a strong feeling. That there was this woman who was using glitter powder to put on like a makeup that's a little sticky to decorate her, and she dumped it in her eye. Oh, no. And this is her eye doctor. my mom's eye doctor told her this she had to go to the eye doctor and he had to pick each piece out with a freaking eye tweezers and I'm like wait a second vanity ended up with this woman being at the eye doctor getting glitter plucked out of her eye to save her eye right what are we doing guys what's happening have you heard last thing on glitter I'll attribute this to Adam Savage but I think he got it from someone else what they call glitter yeah what have you heard it something it's herpes it's the herpes of the craft world yeah yeah yeah one more quick one then we're gonna have to end i got a quick one this is the one that started this segment so i'm gonna say all right so let me ask you a question if you come to a public single-use bathroom you understand single bathroom that locks and it's in a but it's in a public location, and the door's closed, what do you do? You check to see if the thing is locked. So if there's a vacant, not vacant, that's perfect. But let's say that doesn't exist. You check the handle. You check the lock to see if it's locked. You check the handle. You go wiggle, wiggle, and if it doesn't... You look under the door. You squat down really low. You bust open and say, FBI, freeze. You fire a gun. What happened to you? Knocking is the last thing you do. How many people knock? I try not to. That's very uncomfortable for the person in the dark. It's awful to be in the bathroom. But here's my peeve. So I get you have to do something to evaluate whether or not somebody's in that bathroom. You have your choice. You could look for light. Assuming there's no vacancy sign. You can check the lock or you could knock. Knocking should be the last choice. I've got to pee. But. I've got to pee. Just wait. What I hate is people who check the lock. It's locked. And then they knock. what other information are you trying to obtain well i i will say there is a situation in which the supplies which is when it auto locks and there's a key to get a key right so it can be possible there that the door is locked but there's nobody but it's but you still it's still a schrodinger but knocking doesn't always evoke an answer so that doesn't really give you any more yeah No, because I'm here at a Chili's 2. The odds that some kind of automated door is not going to be happening. It's like, yeah, just don't knock. What are you doing? Just don't knock. I'm sitting there. It's locked. It's a see-through door. I'll fix everything. Because then you have to say occupied. Great. You have to say something like, I'm in here. Occupied. One second. But then you're on a clock. Then you're on a clock. And if you're doing number two, that sucks. Yeah. Because you need to relax. Or it blows. Depending on you or that. Or blow? Is that what you said? Well, Jay said it sucks. So I was just clarifying, it probably blows. I thought you said, poor blow, like during cocaine. Well, no, you're doing blow in the bathroom. Just a minute. Yeah, yeah. But seriously, the corollary to this is, now, if there's an automatic door closer, you can't do anything about this, but if there isn't, when you leave a public, single-use, lockable bathroom, what state do you leave it in? My contention is it should be door open, lights off. so it's obvious to everyone that it's unoccupied. Don't close the door if there's nobody in there. You don't leave it all the way open, though, because at my comedy club, people leave the door way open, and you don't want to just look at a bathroom. No, it's cracked. It's cracked with light off. George just taught me. There's a word in Ukrainian for having the door almost closed. What's the word? Pramknit. You want the door pramknit? Yes, that's correct. Pramknit vady. How do you say that in Mandarin? Pre-closed, yeah, what's it, Mandarin. Is there a Mandarin version? No. Put two words together. Ancestor shame portal. Yeah. All right. But the lock and then the knock kills me every time. Can I just say a really quick one? Fucking lock. Go, George. We don't have to discuss it, but this is one thing. I am preternaturally punctual. I'm on time. I'm an on-time person. And I don't mind people being late. however if you choose the time we're getting together be there at the time that you chose you say if i go what time i get together and i go i don't know i'm like what pick a time anytime and you go seven and i go great and it's seven ten die in a fire i will never invite you to hang out yeah we're screwed all right so the the next thing we're going to do is we are going to fix the world right so easy easy what we're going to do thank you what we're going to do is collectively we're going to come up with our top three suggestions for what we would do if here's the idea if we if we could go back in time to any point in human history and make one change that we think would set human civilization on a better trajectory what would that be? We can't change the laws of physics. It has to be something that could have happened but whatever we decide we will assume that we could do it. We don't have to get into the weeds about is it plausible that that change could be made. If we said I want Rome to have not fallen, it will not have fallen when it did. We'll just assume that we could make happen whatever we want to happen. Okay, everyone get that? So does anyone want to open up with a suggestion about what we should change about human history? George Washington should not have cut down the cherry tree. Yeah. Because if he didn't, there would be cherry trees all over this country, and I love cherries. But not artificial cherries. I will put that on the list. I have a medium one. I have a medium one to start if you want me to start. So this is – I think originally we talked about just going back 100 years or something, and that kind of got me thinking about the 1920s. And I think if prohibition had never happened, it would have been a very, very net positive thing. Because first off, there was the excess of crime that kind of was built up and a lot of organized crime. The networks for that was kind of established at that point, which never quite went away, even though after the repeal. Tax revenue was lost on all the booze that was being taxed. And that was kind of the time when income tax and state tax started becoming much more prevalent, which, of course, once you tax, it never goes away kind of thing, which would have been sort of interesting. There was also this sort of fundamental distrust of government that happened during and after, where you had agents kind of like doing raids and stuff like that. And the role of the government started to be seen as questionable, which then means you question expertise, which means then you start questioning everything, which can lead to sort of where we are today. So I wonder if prohibition had been never passed, plus the fact that once prohibition started, more people started drinking in excess, and it got worse, and more illness, and more alcoholism, and things like that. And people were making booze in their bathtubs, going blind and dying as a result. And also just if only for the sort of that myth of prohibition just usually doesn't work, you know, to kind of to be able to reinforce. If the issue was let's try to get less people to drink or to have alcohol be less influential, if they had done it in a much more even-handed way, it might have set up a sort of a system of like how do we approach problem solving without using a hatchet? Yeah, but it would have been an early step towards like thoughtful policymaking. Exactly. But it wasn't a thoughtful time. And I think that it was important that we learned from prohibition. If we look at the roots of prohibition, yes, there was like a kind of puritanical moral majority thing. But it was a lot of women who were getting like violently beaten by their husbands who were like, I don't want to live like this anymore. And there was like the huge movement was a lot of women who were like, I don't like that culturally we're okay with this. And so they were like, we've got to do something. And they tried to do something. but you know the time they didn't have a lot of rights so i think at the time it was it just didn't work but i'm not sure if like an iterative process would have been accepted at that time either i mean cara you raise a one that i've been thinking about a little bit which is like you know in in your case i would say oh well in that case it's not prohibition let's just make it so the men weren't beating up the women and right well in that particular instance maybe they weren't but they would be elsewhere because mine steve when you brought this up was i was like well slavery. And I think as an American, I think of the slavery from Africa to the United States. And say, well, if I get rid of that, like if whoever decided to do that, didn't do it or whatever it started, A, would someone else have thought of it two days later? Like, is that even something you could have changed? Right. And there were slaves all over the world in all other cultures. And so I almost like more of a logic thing. I was like, could we have made slavery not happen or like going all the way back if we had just never occurred to us? Like, I think you actually can't change it. Yeah, I thought about the same thing. How do we change the roots of the patriarchy or the roots of white supremacy? There is no inflection. Even if we hadn't shipped people from Africa, we would have figured something else. With slavery, though, if we want to make it into a more concrete statement, because in England, slavery ended a lot earlier than it did in the United States. It would have ended at some point in time. So we could say, what if at the founding of the United States... The government would have to do that. Because they did talk about it. That's right. Actually, that's a very plausible suggestion. You could say they decided to end slavery at the beginning rather than punting it until the Civil War, basically, which is what happened. Because that already was a movement. There already was precedent. There already were countries which were banning the slave trade versus slave ownership, et cetera, whatever. They could have been more progressive rather than regressive at that time. That's a plausible scenario. Maybe save Lincoln. so that his policies could have carried through into the next administration. Yeah, if Reconstruction had happened the way he wanted it to. If Reconstruction was supposed to go down the way it was supposed to go down, that would have been a fundamental different change. We lost 100 years of civil rights. Completely. Here's another thing to consider, to Andrew's point about our American perspective being very much about the African slave trade. If slavery is an inevitable thing with humans, which it seems to be, until we learn that we're all the same, we decided to own each other, right? So if that was going to happen regardless, just changing the dynamic of the American slave trade so it's not this black-white cultural divide that has had a much bigger fallout, I think, here, like a unique racial division in America compared to other places, this would be a very different place. If we had slaves from all over the world, if we couldn't stop it, right, it just came from everywhere, I think culturally we would be in a much different... DEI for slavery. Yeah. You're on to something. Well, and it's funny because the premise of the idea is if we could go back and change one thing, and when we talk about changing one thing, I think it's implied that we're talking about a behavior. But if we could go back and change a mentality, then I think there would be – if we could go back to the beginning of culture and change a mentality of egalitarianism or change a mentality of capitalism or change a mentality of empathy, then I think a lot of things would be really different. Because so much of the American experiment is just founded in certain principled thinking. And then all the behaviors follow that type of principled thinking. But if we were not a manifest destiny country, and we were a country where we didn't have the three-fifths rule, and we didn't have suppression of voting for women, and it just started with these different mentalities, I mean, it would be wildly different now. Yeah, I mean, I think we should focus on changing an inflection. I think we have to be able to say, you can't just change, I want to change humanity. Rather than saying, there was a debate among the founding fathers about whether or not slavery should be legal. And it went one way, and it could have gone the other way. And if we're just saying, let's say it went the other way, or Lincoln wasn't shot. That's a very discreet event, and therefore Reconstruction was successful, rather than failing and essentially giving rise to the dynamic that followed the Civil War and setting back civil rights for 100 years. Well, yeah, I would go back before Lincoln. I would do what you said, like in the founding, because then there wouldn't have been a Civil War. Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, like none of that would have happened. Let's go back a little bit further. It's interesting to think, but there's the absolute opposite of this too. Like lots of good decisions were made that would have totaled us if it went the other way. The big one that I was thinking about, Steve, is I don't even know how to phrase this. I just wanted nobody to think of social media. But is that inevitable? I don't know. It just seems like so many people would have thought of it. The idea is, the thought experiment here is, what would it be like right now without social media? And I think a lot of things jump to mind that are pretty damn obvious. I don't think in the United States we would be polarized like we are right now. I certainly don't think that there would be as much hate on the Internet. I mean, it was great. When Facebook first came out, and that was like the big first one, and we were all in and everything, it was like connecting with people and fun and everything, and it just slowly turned into a cesspool. So maybe it's whoever, I don't know if it was Facebook that did it first or if it was Twitter X, but whoever developed the algorithm that moved from chronological posts to rewarding high engagement posts because that is what gets the inflammatory material. So that engineer who made that algorithm, they turned out to be an artist in this alternate history. I feel like you have to go back even further, though, because the way it operates, talking about the algorithms, it's because of the way it has to be monetized because at the very beginning, sort of the foundational decision of the Internet was whether to make it free and rely on advertising or whatever the other option was going to be. A handful of folks who developed it, I've heard them talk in interviews about how that was a heated debate in the beginning and they went with the advertising model and there it is. And we know what that did to television first. So it's not like we didn't have a blueprint for that. Did you guys ever read the book Broadband by Claire Evans It about basically women in early internet days and how there were a number of different options other than the World Wide Web as we think of it today And some were spaces that were created more for women. And it's a really fascinating kind of alternate history of what the internet could have been. So, you know, there was some version, I can't remember what it was right now, someone had something where, you know, there was no equivalent of links that could break or go dead. It was a much more engaged thing. It's a fascinating look at what some other options were, and he really does the internet. And on top of that, it also, I think, was a big component to privacy being zero. Because they're collecting data on us. I mean, there's lots of other companies that do it now, like Amazon is another one that is just collecting data, hearing what we're saying, because people have Amazon products in their house. That collection and selling of data, just think about how profound that is. Alexa, if you have an Amazon device in your house, it could be FireCube, it could be just an Alexa device. It's hearing everything that you say. We honestly don't know what's happening with any of that stuff. So privacy is really, because of what we're dealing with right now, we're dealing with a situation where I don't think any of us really know what's happening to that. There's no way to facilitate removing yourself from that ecosystem. And it's only going to get worse with AI because AI is going to be able to infer information about us. You know, you give it a thousand data points. So what would you change? Let me make it concrete. Okay. So I'm getting the vibe here that there's a broad agreement that we should fix the internet. But it's hard to point to one inflection point or one decision or one path that we could alter. It's because we're starting with the answer and then we're going back to the problem. Jay, you want some kind of privacy law that prevents this from that kind of data harvesting. Well, more than that, I don't know how much my life has been directly impacted from the data breach, from all that information out there. I've done a lot with your personal information. I can't put my finger on it, but I can put my finger on what social media has done. I've seen what it's done to me psychologically I've seen what it's done to everybody in my life and I've seen what it's done to our society and I think it's very obvious, it's bad as it gets. So what if, and I don't know if this would do it because you raise a good point about monetization but someone like Zuckerberg what if someone who was a little bit nicer found in Facebook? Well I think Zuckerberg did ultimate power corrupt him or was he already corrupted? He was already corrupted to the extent that it was originally part of this like hot or not yeah right wasn't that myspace though didn't that come out before myspace came up before but it wasn't quite so yeah and that's the thing facebook one sure the guy was nicer but that's a fundamental problem of like capitalism and i was thinking too like what if we never had evangelical religion but then i was like then somebody else would do it because they wanted to be a prophet and that's the problem with the system that we're in is that there's always a way to be like oh if i do the thing that's immoral i get all the power and so then i'm gonna do the thing. So we can't keep saying if that guy had never done the immoral thing because somebody else would have done it. I think someone doing it who is more moral has that power and then says, hey, this is going to get out of hand if we start having these algorithms and we start having ads and we do this. And someone who's in the room with these other tech bros who can actually speak. Setting a cultural precedent. But maybe that was MySpace and then it just died. Well, yeah. And Kara, but the thing is there's a handful of these social media platforms that I think if they changed, it would change a lot. thousands of different companies and everything. They're the big ones and there's not a lot of them. Yeah, but you're talking about what it is now. What we're talking about is changing the past. And if we change the guy who did the thing, somebody else would have done the thing. That's what keeps happening. That's a fundamental question of the whole premise that we're talking about. Will these things just collapse back in on themselves or they will fundamentally change? We talk about this a lot in our book. Is the present unavoidable? Or was it inevitable? Or could it really be fundamentally different? I think both of those things are true at the same time and we just don't know. But I believe that in a capitalist system greed is... But we don't have a pure capitalist system. I know, it doesn't matter. But in a system that has a lot of capitalist influences greed is not a bug, it's a feature. And so it's just going to keep happening. But my point is that we have a regulated capitalism. So perhaps the real answer is that we needed somebody in government in the 80s and 90s who was computer literate and saw what was happening and was able to advocate for regulations at the beginning for security and privacy and whatever else would be necessary to keep the bad shit from happening. What if social media, if it was regulated as a not-for-profit? Like if you had the internet The internet had to be not-for-profit. It's a public utility. He has an important point. The common inescapable element here is us. So I recommend going back 45,000 years when Neanderthals and Homo sapiens coexisted and we made it, and so we have a few genes of Neanderthals. Let's flip that. Neanderthals have a few genes of Homo sapiens, and let's see what they can do. That's what I want to see. But Neanderthals could have been assholes. They could have been awesome. They could have. Yeah, they could have. Well, I think, Steve, when you were asking this question originally, talking about single things, and especially the capitalist thing, I think Supreme Court decisions are interesting. Like, what if this 5-4 went 4-5? So the one I thought of right away was Citizens United. Oh, Citizens United, yeah. It's just a 5-4 decision, and suddenly corporations can start dumping all this money into politics. And that is, I mean, pretty unambiguously completely fucked politics since then. I will go back further than that, because I was also thinking of a Supreme Court decision. I agree, because that's an inflection point. The decision could have gone the other way. I'm so close. So there was one decision that actually I even agree with but had a massive unintended consequence, and that was Roe v. Wade. Right. Because Roe v. Wade gave rise to the religious right, which ultimately destroyed the right – the conservative party in this country. It was the government that we have today. The religious right was already in existence before Roe v. Wade. It was jet fuel to that. But that's always going to happen. No, but I disagree. I disagree that if we don't do liberal things, then there won't be conservative backlash. That's not the premise. The point is – No, but Steve, they would have picked something else. They so randomly chose abortion to be their issue. But it was not an issue for these people right really before that. They used it as a – It was a legit issue. What can we use? Let's use this. They would have found something else. I agree. I agree too. It would have been homosexuality or it would have been like something. And it was. They did do that. They did do that, but not to the extent of the focus of the courts of overturning Roe v. Wade. But that's because of Roe v. Wade. If gay marriage had been federally passed at the time Roe v. Wade was passed, we would have seen the exact same thing happen with gay marriage. Yeah, or you had some kind of citizenship or some kind of like, you know, can't be a citizen thing. Not a Supreme Court decision, some kind of law passed by Congress, right, to enshrine abortion rights. What about this one, somewhere in between historically with you two, which is the one in the 90s. I believe it was a legislative, and again, very U.S.-centric, but I believe it was a legislative decision that no longer required news outlets on TV to carry all the fairness doctrine. And obviously there's some problems with the fairness doctrine because you don't want to give climate deniers and the skeptics the same amount of power. But that could have probably helped with a lot of the social media stuff, could have helped with the right wing or the religious backlash. I agree. That's right. So I would say – As soon as news becomes profit-driven, then you have a message because you want to have viewers because you want to have more commercials. When all those news divisions in ABC and NBC and CBS were not for profit, their point wasn't to make money for the station. It was to relay information to the public because they were using the public airwaves, which is something that's not owned by any individual. Like you could do the same thing for the internet. The idea that there is a quote-unquote airwave of the internet and it has to be a fairness doctrine. Except it's too much of a volume problem. But volume comes later. Initially, you need to set it up, and it takes a tremendous amount of foresight. But that's the difference. When you have four major networks, and there's a massive barrier to entry, the Internet, by definition, is democratized. And so that flies in the face of another really important core democratic principle. And I think that's where we have the problem. I might have a solution for the whole thing, for the whole American problem. Let's go back to the beginning. No more founding fathers. Founding mothers. Family, half and half. 50% women, I think we'd be in a drastically better situation. Or all women. Till there were nine, yeah. Minimum 50% women. All right, I'm going to change gears a little bit and give you a technological inflection point. Okay. What if we go back to the 1900s when the auto industry was being created? Oh. Right? Twice. Oh, yeah, I know what you're going to say. You know where I'm going with this because I wrote about this, but there was one guy who made one decision. Let him guess. And they have influenced the automobile industry for the next century, and this was Ford, who said, all right, I'm going to make an internal combustion engine car, and I'm going to make an electric car. Because they were both equally viable in terms of the way to go. And he decided to make the internal combustion car first and the electric vehicle second. and that was a that he could have easily had gone the other way but in addition to that so he did that he made the the model a right and that was a huge success and he's like all right here comes the electric car and he just had a personal problem with the company making the batteries no and it killed the deal and he never did it he never mass produced an electric vehicle and how How viable was that as an actual vehicle over 100 years ago? It was extremely viable. What were the materials made? Edison had made one. Edison had made a pretty viable electric car. There were cars at the time. There were cars at the time. You had steam. You had gas. You had electric. It was a whole bunch of different kinds of engines. How did it have like a hand crank? The steam ones were cool because they actually get very, very fast in the steam ones. The term a doozy is a Duesenberg, and those are original steam-driven Duesenberg. It's like a piston. Yeah, so you literally build up a boiler. You build up a head of steam. Those things were crazy. Well, yeah, at this time a steam engine was like, whoa. Why not put it in a car? What killed the steam-powered car was just the lack of infrastructure. They needed a steady supply of water along the trip. But there was no infrastructure for gas either. They built the infrastructure. and the infrastructure for electricity was just a little behind where it needed to be. If we were 10 or 20 years ahead in terms of electrifying the country, the EVs would have won out almost. But that would have pushed us to get ahead. That's the thing that's so interesting. You make the decision, everything follows. The gas cars winning out over electric 120 years ago was not inevitable. It was a complete coin flip. It could have easily had gone the other way. The world would be different. The world would be massively different. We have examples of that in developing countries where the infrastructure is starting with more green or more viable. It's like, well, that's going to be the baseline now. Where were we buying gasoline back then? Where was it being manufactured? We weren't getting oil from other countries, right? Well, remember, it was discovered in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania rather. And it was a petrochemical. Well, you have to watch there will be blood, Jay. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, it was discovered later, like in the sands in Saudi Arabia or whatever, in Canada and Mexico. But it actually started in the U.S. And it very quickly, you know, the thing is there was a whole industry of getting oil from trees and other, you know, living sources. And this was a oil from rocks. You know, it was a petrochemical. And it was just tons of it sitting under the ground. It completely changed the entire economics of it, changed the whole picture. So anyway, that could have been delayed, right? So discovering gasoline could have been delayed. And then Ford's decision could have gone the other way, and we could all be driving EVs for the last hundred years. I mean, I don't know the history well enough, but there could have presumably been a set of decisions before that that built more of a train system around the United States so that we weren't so dependent on cars in the first place. Well, you know what killed the train system? Lincoln? Pipes. the railroads were built to move shit around more passengers were an afterthought trains were mainly about getting liquid from one place to another and some guy said hey why don't we just build a pipe and bypass it was all political that pipe guy sucks they were trying to deliberately bypass the train industry because they were monopolizing everything Or trains used more for cargo or for passengers? They were used way more for cargo. It was for the oil industry. The train industry was for the oil industry. The oil industry said, screw you, we're going to build pipes. Do you think, Steve, is there a single nuclear power plant disaster that if it hadn't happened, nuclear power would be in a better place? Well, three miles. That's the first one that occurs to me. And Chernobyl. And Chernobyl, right? And maybe Fukushima. Fukushima. But that was so late that it probably doesn't matter, right? Those two, I think. It was just stupid. Having the movie, The China Syndrome, released, I think, like two or three weeks before Three Mile Island, that weird coincidence. I think they were very close. I don't know if it was one was after the other, one was right before. And that reinforced this, like, worst-case scenario. So what happened at Three Mile Island was really, I mean, it was bad. But it wasn't anywhere close to a Chernobyl level or anything. But the movie that was released called The China Syndrome, like, sort of fostered all these fears about what might happen. and then that was all the nuclear fallout. But if we didn't have these meltdowns, we wouldn't have the chupacabra. And I don't want to be in a world without a chupacabra. That would be bad. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, we can leave it. We leave the meltdowns. Too many cabras. We could be living in a world where we're driving electric vehicles powered by nuclear power plants. Yeah, right. Maybe wind turbines and solar coming in. Do you think if Three Mile Island had half air? Like the Jetsons, man. It could be tiny. Right, that's what I'm saying. And we wouldn't have global warming. We wouldn't have global warming. Good, we solved it. Yeah. Hang on, I have one that goes further back. What if everyone agreed with and accepted Copernicus's model? Yeah, that's interesting. Do you think we would get to a world where we're all... Like he goes to testify and they're like, oh yeah, that's cool. We check the math, that makes sense. It's like obviously you don't want blind agreement with whatever the purport, whatever. You're right, you're so right. A couple of years of rigorous debate and they say, I think the spotlight, And would that have set the course for a much more science-focused society from that moment forward? I don't think so, to be honest with you. I mean, I don't think that, I don't see that as an lecture point. Partly because, we were just talking about this before that, the scientific and technological development was actually pretty steady throughout the last couple thousand years. The Dark Ages is basically a myth. and so this notion that oh we were like wallowing in ignorance for so long where we could have been advancing that was actually pretty much steady advancement that whole time. And that's also like a very from a western perspective too because there's plenty of eastern. But I guess another question is and maybe this feels a little doomsday but like from an eschatological perspective would we want to accelerate science and technology that quickly or would we be closer to some sort of horrible end of humanity right now. You were thinking that it would make society more scientific, not just more technological. In order for everyone to have said, yeah, that makes sense, it would usher in an era of real revere and acceptance of scientific ideas as opposed to, I don't know, I'm trying to go back to what Kara's brought up. Can we change human nature? Because we've had those. Things cycle. I think we can't set something on a trajectory to just progress, progress, progress endlessly. Everything's going to keep cycling back and forth and you're going to have forces that push and pull. I'm more of like a mindset shift. You can go further back though with like – We've had that mindset. When the caliphate – I forget what century that was, but you had all this like – you had tremendous technological and mathematical and algebraic advances in the Islamic world. And then when the caliphate took over and they got rid of all that stuff, this is like whatever it was, 800 years – Again, I don't know the history exactly, but there is an inflection point, and they get rid of all their sciences. And you have like a billion people over whatever amount of time that could have been more scientists. Will we be 500 years advanced? But is that a good thing? Right. Well, yeah. Maybe. Are we just slowing down the inevitable self-destruction? They were way ahead of the game. Yeah, they were way ahead of the game. It was crazy where they went, and then it just kind of like, oh. Remember, this was a long time ago. Remember when they got rid of the Department of Education, how bad that was? If they didn't do that, then there would actually be more critical thinking in schools. They only go back in time four months or five months. But they're going to say that. Whoever we are 100 years from now are going to be saying, holy Christ, they got rid of the Department of Education and a lot of other stuff. But anyway. And we often talk about that like, oh, it's a loss of critical thinking. It's a loss of critical thinking. But I can't help but go back to the great dictator, to Charlie Chaplin, and this idea of you can't just have technology without humanity. You cannot have these critical thinking and scientific thinking without philosophy. And maybe some of these massive religious influences that we look at and we say these were like big dark ages and big steps backward actually made people pause and think. Maybe these things are necessary for the type of progress that we're talking about. You need pushes in order to pull. So here's one that I've been thinking about. what if COVID had never happened? We have mRNA vaccines. We have a lot of important advancements and a lot of people died. And a lot of people are now maybe more vaccine skeptic than we think. There are arguments, not substantiated yet, but there are arguments that Gen Z is the first, especially male Gen Z is more conservative. It's the first time in the history of US politics, basically, that younger people are more conservative than older people. And some are imagining that it's because of the government overreach air quotes during covid that maybe what push taking people out of school for that long shutting the world down i mean maybe that's one but the same thing i'm not the same but and i guess congruent thing happened during the spanish flu a lot of people died but a lot of great science came out of it a lot of great technology there was a big anti-mask movement there was a big conservative push and things sort of leveled out you know again there was a push and then there was a pull so if covid hadn't happened the next one's going to happen we'll have another spillover event and really it's about if covid hadn't happened with the reaction or with the type of it what if covid had been managed better what if you know whatever right um what if there hadn't been so much political turmoil at the time across the the time that covid happened um but i mean covid was inevitable and another one is going to happen. Like, we know that. I think so much of this American-centric stuff that we're talking about comes down to cultural problems. Like you said at the beginning, we talked about yesterday, manifest destiny and everything else. Just who we are as a culture, I think, makes us inherently bound to fuck up things like this. What if the New World were not first settled by Puritans? What if they were settled by scientists? They were scientists. But they were Puritans. But they were Puritan scientists. They were explorers. I mean, that's the thing. A lot of these values they had. They were not enlightened, though. They came here for religious purposes. I hear you. But at the time, that is a big part of what science was. I'm going to go into a new place and collect up all the shit and catalog it all and take it back home and be like, look how cool this is. That's not what Puritans came to the new world. Yeah, Columbus wasn't doing that. Right, but what I'm saying is that was the nature of exploration at the time. They weren't explorers. They were settlers. They came here to get away from persecution in Europe, to establish a society based on their religious values. And that's what they did. But that wasn't the only reason that there was settlement. There was settlement all over the New World. And very often that settlement happened from explorers. But the ones that survived, the ones that remained and survived and turned into Boston are the ones that were initially put there by them. I'm just saying it wasn't an either or. It was both. I want the donut, though, the cream donut. So that's probably worth it. It would just be like a Worcester cream. Okay. So what do you think? Did we solve it? Yeah. So do you want to pick three? I think we already did. And then Neanderthals, right? Electric cars. I think we agree on electric cars. I think we all agree on electric cars. Electric cars are a good one. I still vote for founding mothers. And founding mothers. And founding mothers. It's all good. We got it. Does that include no slavery at the founding of the country? Well, that's just implied with the founding mothers. And the other one is we can't let androids create social media platforms. Because Mark Zuckerberg is a freaking android. You ever see him trying to humanize himself? He's doing the MMA fighting. You ever see him involved with that? It's so weird. It's like you took a three-year-old and put him in that arena. When he fights? No, I mean all I see him do is he moves around over here. No, he doesn't fight. He's in the background. And he moves around over here and the adults are doing stuff. And he's just kind of like, I'm involved. I'm involved. It's like a poorly programmed Boston Dynamics. Yeah, yeah. You get Zuck and Musk together, and it's like you're watching weird AI. It's so weird. Yeah. All right. We just need a time machine now. We're good. Now we just need a time machine. All right. What's next? We fixed civilization for our next trick. So this is another kind of weird new segment we're going to try out. The idea is, does anyone have any really radical suggestions that sounds nuts when you first hear it, but you can actually defend it? It's the devil's advocate. Hear me out. Andrea, hear me out. It's like, all right, this is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. What if, whatever. Andrea, you want to go first? All right. So mine, I'm not the first to say it, and then people will be upset. I'm a little bit afraid to even say it out loud, but I think for sure we should all be vegans. I think that... That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, there we go. A couple of claps, a couple of glares. That's good. That's good. So it's, you know, we're at a point where... Okay, so from a climate perspective, raising animals, not great. From a caring... I thought you said deacons. We should all be deacons. Let the Lord enjoy it. Deacons, cardinals. That's a religious thing. Like, oh, no, no. That means we go to Wake Forest. Vows of chastity for everybody. That's so funny. Yeah, vegans, vegans. And I debated whether I would allow vegetarians in my regime. And I think not because dairy cows are going through hell. And they're doing wonderful things with nut cheese. And I'm sorry that we don't have a better term for it than nut cheese. I think we optimized that term actually. Andrea, don't they have a cream for that? There's a cream for that, right? There is a cream for that. Yeah, but it's vegan. It's vegan cream, yeah. But I think from a climate perspective, I think from an institutionalized violence perspective, and I think from a care for animals and a recognition that we share the earth with animals and they're not there to be our subjects and serve us, I think would actually do a lot to better just the way that humans live on earth and maybe tap into some of these deeper cultural horrible things. And look, if you're dying for the taste of meat, they're doing pretty weird stuff. I won't eat it, but they're doing the fake meats that taste like it. The only downside I can think of, and this is because I've been vegan for a thousand years, I can't think of any other way of living, is that I know people really like barbecues. People like to stand around with meat on a stick and a fire and, like, poke stuff. So we'd have to come up with something else that you can cook. And so maybe s'mores, the vegan marshmallow. Corn, you can barbecue corn. Corn could work. So that's the only little hiccup. That's the only downside I can see with making everyone vegan. Andrew. I think it would resolve so many of our food scarcity issues. What about manure? It's, you know, pretty important stuff. that we need a lot of it. Why do we need it? Well, that's where we need Steve. Like, we all just shit into boxes and shit somewhere. Yeah, but it's because we're using what we have. We wouldn't have developed a different... Yeah, I'm not resetting history. Like, from tomorrow forward. Andrew, do you remember when... It's not going to be abrupt. When Luke defeated the Emperor and he... I remember. Vader's suit got damaged from the electricity and the suit was no longer keeping him alive. Oh, are you talking about Star Wars? Just follow me on that. I don't think it's Star Wars. And Luke... Who's Luke? Luke dragged Vader to that ship and he took his helmet off. You know, remember all that? I haven't seen that. Well, that was his transformation to becoming a Jedi again. Before that happened, Darth Vader said something very important to Luke. He said, it's too late for me, son. I cannot give up meatballs. I can't. That is my absolute holdout of holdouts. I love having a good steak, all that. I can give it up. I can't. To me, it's a part of my family culture. it's so freaking important to me in so many ways. Couldn't we very quickly, we have the technology to develop, the incentives to develop really, really, really good meatballs. What about lab-grown meat, though? Wait, wait, wait, I have an idea. What about the vegan ground beef there, J.B.? Have you ever tried? I've tried, I've done it all. I've tried everything. J., J. What if there was an alternative? Yes, I would do it. Of course I would. What if no new children could eat meat? What if just all children were vegan? That's great. I feel selfish about it. Then it would phase out in one generation. I'm selfish because, I mean, what's so special about me? So I'm saying let's lean into lab-grown meat because it's going to get rid of the problem. It's not viable. It's not viable. According to who? It's just – it's a massive waste of money. If we could just not eat meat, it would be way cheaper. I mean that's the thing is like we're really just asking you to stop being – like, you know, I could give up coffee probably if I had to, right? You can give up meatballs. He's so mad right now. Jay, here's his face. Jay. I threw out – These are impossible. I put out the olive branch. Lab-grown meat. We can still have meat. It's not horrible, horrible for the environment. I'll pay more money for it. I'm okay with lab-grown meat. I would pay a tax on that to help undo damage and stuff like that. And I'm saying I'm a generation where it's kind of like, holy shit. Like my whole life is, oh, God. It really freaks me out to think like, yeah, I mean, I already only eat it. I only eat meatballs now like three times a year. I used to eat it like once a week. I cut my shit way back. but it's a hard thing to pull away from people who culturally have such a strong identity with it and I think I'm open, I'm totally open and again I've tried all the other meat, the alternate meats and everything We're not there yet but I think this would incentivize I think there's some responses at this side of the table So my wife and I have been vegan for almost 20 years vegan, vegetarian, close and we've done some fun experiments because there is like an undeniable psychological component, as long as you're not a super taster like Steve. So at our wedding, for example, we had a taco bar, and we had vegan meat, and we had real meat. It was all vegan. Everything was vegan. The cheese, it was all vegan. But you eliminate the expectations, the psychological component, and no one knows. They might not think, oh, this is the best meat I've ever had, or this tastes just like so-and-so, But you eliminate that and everything changes. I mean, my wife, when she was in high school, did a science fair project. It was an experiment where she took vanilla pudding and put three or four different kinds of colors of food coloring in it and had people describe what their experience was like. And lo and behold, they described the pink as strawberry, the brown as chocolate, and so on. So there's a psychological component that is such a big factor. And, Jay, I swear, if you had no idea in an Italian restaurant somebody served you impossible meatballs done really well, you wouldn't know the difference. I mean, look, my response is I do not believe there's a chance that you could pass that. I'm like I'm so particular. I can tell if it's frozen. I can go to a restaurant and tell you, yep, that's a frozen meatball versus a fresh meatball. Hands down, I'm 100% correct. But I'll put it to you. Make me the meatball. There we go. I'll do it. I'll try. I'm not going to say no. I mean, and if I love it, it's fantastic. I think this is a non-con segment next year. Yeah. That's the point of this segment, right? Convince me. All right, Adam, you're coming next year, and you're making Jay the meatball. And it's, I mean, I realize that it's an idea that is radical, and it's difficult, but I think that the, and I do realize that people are giving up cherished family traditions, things that are really important to them. There's obviously a lot of nutrients in meat, and it's very difficult to replicate some of those, I think especially for children, but I think the net gain as a planet would be greater than the sacrifices that we make. And ultimately, there are some practical aspects that do need to be brought up. Bob brought up the fact that we grow half of our food from cow manure, and that is not easily replaced. No, but that's the construct that we made because we eat meat. Right, but it exists. And there's no obvious solution. Is cow manure good because there's a lot of plant materials? It's recycling nitrogen back into... So we can't use people poop. You can't grow food with people poop. No, because pathogens can go poop. What about the Martian? He would have died if he didn't eat. Well, he had to, but no, you shouldn't. It's pharmaceuticals, it's pathogens. You can't compost with people poop. But we would lean off of it because all the cows that we have would still be here. So we would have a period of time by which we could start to come up with alternative technologies and other ways Well again so you going to feed these cows and take their poop and not use them in any way Yeah they just get to have a nice life They learn to play Scrabble But that not the way it works It a slow transition It's a slow transition. Very quickly. You know what I mean? If it wasn't part of the industry, they wouldn't be maintained. Right. And then you have to ramp up, essentially double our ability to make fake nitrogen. And we'd have to re... Because we haven't had a wild cow for like 200 years. We'd have to rewild the cows, I think, as part of this. I think also the nutrition thing, we shouldn't gloss over that as well because animal protein provides very high-quality protein and very high-quality nutrition. Again, we're a little bit privileged here because we can talk about going vegan. There are parts of the world where it's just not viable. It is just not viable. Also, a lot of calories are generated by animals like cows grazing on land that is not suitable for growing food as well. So if you talk about just the system of how are we getting food to the table and how are we getting nitrogen into that food, et cetera, et cetera, it's a non-trivial task. And it's not just because of this is the way we've always been doing it. It is a non-trivial task to just eliminate meat from the equation. Especially not meat and all animal products, like vegan, not just vegetarian. But it's not impossible. It's not impossible. You know what else is non-trivial? It's not impossible. You know what else is non-trivial? It's non-trivial. is getting rid of fossil fuels. It's not impossible. You have to change the system. I agree with that as well. Do we have to move on to science fiction? We have time for another one. I have one that's very personal. It's like a big difference. Everybody should be vegan. So the premise of this is convince me. It's a thing that I say. I have a friend who every time somebody new comes to my house or they meet me for the first time and they meet my dog for the first time he has to tell them this thing about me and then they go, Jesus Christ, you're a horrible person and then I have to defend myself. So I'm going to try and do it with you guys. I cannot believe I'm saying this live on air. When my dog dies, no, I don't want to stuff him. I'm going to put that out there. I'm going to copy it. I don't want to stuff him. I don't want to freeze dry him. I think that's weird. No offense, but I think it's really weird and I wouldn't be okay with it. I have a taxidermist friend. She won't do pets for a good reason. This is a fraud. I do want his pelt. And a lot of people think I'm a monster when I say that. I think that's fine. Okay, so you get it. Seems fine to me. That's so, you guys have no idea how long I've spent defending this position. What's the big deal? And all of you are totally fighting with it. I don't want to cut it off myself. As long as you make some kind of like caveman dress or save cave person dress. It's not like killer is going to mind. So here's my defense. My defense is that the relationship, the symbiotic relationship we have with our pets, I love him. He's like my son. But there is also like a servitude component, which I know is like weird to say. but dogs live to please their person. When I go to the bathroom, he sits outside the bathroom and protects me. You know what I mean? They have those behaviors. My dog, if you've met Killer, you know that he has the softest fur. Everybody's like, oh my God, he's like a puppy. He has the softest fur. How is it so soft? He's 15. And I think about, he keeps me warm. And I think in death, he would want to continue that. I think it's fine. It doesn't feel weird to me at all. Right. So I don't want to just have his pelt and be like, hello. but I figured one day I would line a pair of gloves with it or something. Is that weird? Oh, no. Yeah. But is that weird to line gloves with your dead dog's pelt? No, I don't think so. I don't think so either. Okay, audience? Would you have said that before I convinced you? Okay. All right. I got to hang out with you people more. It wouldn't be a throw rug that you would walk over? No, no, no, no, no, no. It would be something close to my skin. Carrie, you know what? Every now and then I'm going through my stuff, my old stuff, and I find a bag with fur from one of my two favorite dogs. I was brushing them and I saved it. And I take it out, I smell it, I smell it, and it's... Yeah, I have a book that teaches you how to... I've never done it, but when you brush your animal and you collect the fur to spin it so you can knit with dog fur or cat fur. I was going to say, what if you just took all of his fur and knitted it rather than literally having skin. Because you can't line, like if I was going to line gloves or something with it, you need a pelt. I wouldn't want to have my dad's scalp in my backpack. I don't want it to look like him. That's why I said pelt. How much of the skin or hide are we talking about? So the pelt usually starts at the neck and then ends before the tail. So you wouldn't have the back and the legs. It's not like a bear rug with the face? No, no, no. Imagine making, Back to your vegan thing, making furniture or clothing out of leather. You take the leather pelt. Would you have a square of this? It's kind of dog-shaped, but I would use it. That sounds right. Exactly. You would use it, though, and then it's the shape of the thing you use it for. The glove, the sock, the whatever. You want to make gloves? I want to line a pair of gloves. You want to line a pair of gloves. With my dog's fur. After he dies. Then he's close to me. Couldn't you do that with just like if you shaved him right now? Like just shaved a portion of him? No, no, no, no. You need the fur to be attached to the skin. That's the only way you can. Wouldn't that be itchy inside out? No. What? You are a vegan through and through. No, it's lovely. The only way this makes sense to me is if you also make a pair of boots out of one of your family members. Well, but that's probably not legal. I actually don't think that's legal. What if you sign off on it before you die? Like, yes, make me into some boots. Doesn't matter. There's a lot of things you can't do with a corpse even if they sign off. Kara, if you die first, your dog gets to wear your skin as a collar. Here's the thing. If I die first, my dog will eat my corpse. Like, I know he will. So I think it's fair. Starts with the soft areas of the body. Can we get an audience vote on this? So single clap if you are okay. If you are okay with Kara's thing, single clap. If you're not, I don't want to say not okay, but if you go, eh, let's hear. All right. Okay. Kind of convinced. One quick thing. My daughter's pet cat died and got it cremated. This is what they do now. You go to the vets to get your animal cremated when they die or have them put to sleep, and they give you the ashes. You can ask for the ashes back. She makes her own stuffed animal. She's going to make a stuffed animal replica of the cat and then fill it with the ashes. That's way less weird than actually taking the cat's pelt and stuffing it. There's a problem with that because it's not hermetically sealed. You're going to be dropping at the dog. No, wrapping plastic. Thank God you said that. It'll be properly contained. You see her walking around with it. I'll tell you one of the scariest emails I got in recent years was an email from my vet that said your invoice is attached and it was just a bill for pet cremation. and I have two dogs and I was like uh what and it turned out they sent it to the wrong person there was a moment where I was like I was like in a meeting and I was like I have to go there's a weird there's a weird thing about I mean I I you know I was in the room when my when my my dog when we had to put him down you know and there was this weird moment of like it's not him it's like it's like the rational part of my brain sort of the rational part of me that knows that There's no soul. There's no, there's no, none of that stuff. I, I, I literally breathed in his last, last breath and it was like, now it's just, it's like the Klingon thing. He's just a shell. You know, they do that. They scream up into the sky. I forget what the Ponfar or whatever it's called. No, that's, that's, that's Vulcan. Anyway, they scream up into the sky to give the warning, like warning to the thing in here. And now it's like, do with the body, whatever you want. Like, it's not there anymore. I feel the same way. Like donating body. So I've been around death a lot. I mean, and granted it's different. It's not my dog. It's a person. Right. But it's a corpse. Like a person becomes a corpse. In medical school, one of the things that kind of surprised me, but it makes sense, but it was when you have a patient in the hospital, they are a patient, they're a human being, and they are treated a certain way, and the moment they're dead, they're a corpse. And it transitions instantly to a completely different thing, and now they're treated like a corpse. But there are also laws about what you can and can't do with a human dead body, because we assigned some kind of special... Well, but also some of it is hygiene. Like you can't just bury somebody in your backyard. You can't. It's illegal in most places to bury somebody in the ground. But to respond to George talking about how, you know, because there's no so on and so on, that the body is just, you know, I guess the person isn't the body. I used to think that for a long time, but then I realized after my dad died that the body of the person, kind of if you don't believe in anything metaphysical, really is the person it's the only thing so much yeah it's the only thing so like when when our oldest dog died we you know we put him down in the house had somebody come do it it was like literally the hardest day of my life my dad died when i was 26 and still that was the hardest day of my life and we took him to the cremation place we held him the whole time we sat there in the car and just bawled our eyes out because even though he wasn't alive it was still him yeah it was still our dogs. It's a line. It's a really interesting line of like, again, the rational versus the emotional versus the representational too. Like I have pictures of my dog that destroy me. You know, and it's just, it's photochemistry. It's like there's nothing there, but it's all there. Let me quickly, because we have to get to science and fiction, but I will transition off of the sadness of what we were just saying to a very cool thing I found out about dogs. Dogs can't tell time. They don't really even have a sense of time. What they can tell as you're gone is that the powerfulness of your scent is on a decline. And they loop that in with the lighting that's in there, certain noises that happen, any cue, because dogs pick up on all of that stuff on a remarkable level. So it's really cool. So your dog will seek out places that you have a stronger scent in the house, which if your way you don't even know but they're they because their sense of smell is so exquisite and so profound that like they're living in a totally different reality than we're in it's fantastic it's time for you to come home because your smell has declined to that level yeah did you know that they also kind of circular breathe in a way like going back to your didgeridoo the slits the slits on the side of their nose is that when they breathe in through their nostrils they blow out to the side so they don't really just spoil the scent trail huh so they sniff forward and they blow outside wise. Ditchery dog. Ditchery dog. Ditchery dog. Yeah. Can I pet that dog? All right, so let's move on with science or fiction. It's time for science or fiction. Now there's a theme to the science or fiction. The theme is inspired because we're recording this at Nauticon and the theme of this noticon is the Beatles. So I'm doing a Beatles-themed science or fiction. Oh, bring it. Those Beatles. That's awesome. That's awesome. I feel like he might know one or two of these. Please explain the photo you just showed. I'm so disappointed. Other Beatles. The other Beatles. The other Beatles. E-E-E, not E-A. You got us, Steve. You bastard. I got so excited. All right. So these are three items about the insects. Okay. All right. And here they are. Item number one. One in every four animals is a beetle. Number two. Beetles occupy every continent and many islands around the world, including all but the most extreme land and freshwater habitats. So obviously not oceans. And three, the large goliath beetle can lift up to 850 times its own weight, 94 pounds or 42 kilograms. Are we allowed to do math on that? Can I, like, calculate that? Oh, okay. I can't do it in my head. Anyone here who's 94 pounds? 42 kilograms in your head, yes. Kara, 42 kilograms is 94 pounds. What I'm saying is that what do they weigh is what I'm asking. Thank you. So that's why I want the absolute number. That's PhD in the crowd. All right. George, since you're the beetle expert, you can go straight. Right? I would say, almost without hesitation, that number two is the fiction. Because I think one in four animals is a beetle. I know there's millions of kinds of beetles. Thousands of types of beetles, and there's just millions of beetles. I would say that's true. Two beetles occupy every continent. I don't think there's beetles in Antarctica. I just don't think that's the thing. And the large goliath beetle. I have seen demonstrations of Goliath beetles. Maybe it's one of these Steve things that's actually 848 times one of those nonsense things, or it's 100 times. I'm going to say that's true as well. So number two to me is the fiction. Beetles are not on every continent. All right, Andrea? I'm going to say number one is the fiction. I think one in four feels like too many. I know that I think biomass-wise that might be true, but I'm not true by discrete numbers. I think there are a lot of other insects that would make that not one in four. The other two I think are true. Okay, Brian? I had the same reaction as George. I was like, Antarctica? Really? So I'm going to say number two. Okay. Jay? I mean, did you guys read number three? A beetle lifting 90... I am the powerful beetle. What? No. Beetles don't lift 94 pounds. That means a whole bunch of them can lift a car, guys. No. They're not organized like that. 94 pounds. Yeah, they're scared of cars. That's heavier than Bob's wife. Jesus, Jay. No. No. There's no beetle. There's no beetle that a human can ride on. That has got to be the fiction. If I'm wrong, I'm going to lose my mind. Okay, Kara? So I have a Goliath beetle, like, carapace, I guess. Does it pick up your desk? Well, it's not a lot. Are you going to wear its pelt? A pelt, yes. It's not alive, but it's like this big. I don't care if it's your foot size. A hundred pounds? Well, here's the problem. It's not very heavy, but that's probably because it's dead. Like, I don't know what they feel like in life. And so it might actually be like two pounds or something. I don't know. Because I can't do the freaking math in my head. So for me, I guess it's between the one and four or the Antarctica. Now, I know that there are no large animals in Antarctica, but Antarctica is not barren. So there are some insects there. And I would assume if there are insects, there would be beetles because where there are insects, there are beetles. I think that the one that's bothering me the most is the one in four because I know the number is obscene, but I have a question that you probably can't answer. You mean non-human animals, right? No, animals. You're including all human beings on the planet. Yeah. And from a biomass perspective, it's nowhere close because of large animals. This is individual creatures. Yeah, this is individual creatures. But I bet you it's more like one in ten. I think it's still like obscenely large, but I don't think it's one in four, so I'm going to go with Andrea. Okay, Bob. I think the I have a visceral reaction like Jay with his 94 pounds I mean I've lifted dumbbells that are 50 pound dumbbells are heavy and to think that they could do double that is blowing my mind but I think that's the trick when you say lift what exactly do you mean how is that it's a bicep curl like what does that mean how is it lifting it's like you're not going to put 94 pounds on the back of a beetle and have it lift up. But it's something funky. Steve, you're in a bad position because if there's a tricky thing in there, I'm going to be pissed. Are they going to give me the George treatment? Yes, George, thank you. I mean, they're going to boo me like they booed George at BBC last night? Yeah. No one's going to boo me like they booed George. Just in case, Ian, get ready with that little thing you had with the boo. Can I get that on a t-shirt? Just do it with me. you know that they can't lift 94 pounds. Come on. Don't let him influence you, Bob. Jay, I'll do it in solidarity to you. My percentage is fuck this year anyway. The novellas seem very defensive about Beatles lifting more than them. What's going on here? Do you ever pick up 50 pounds in your hand? Jay and I can lift more than 94 pounds. At least 98. Alright, Evan. I'll take swords for 400. Thanks, Alex. I thought it was a trick question. I'm with Kara and Andrea. Did you give me an answer there? I absolutely gave you two answers, actually. One and four. One and four. Yes. Adam? Okay, anything with beetles seems somehow more plausible than a lot of other weird shit I've heard in my life. But I'm with Jay and Bob. The third one, just 94 pounds. like no matter how hard their their exoskeletons are the legs those little legs, 94 pounds how big is that beetle? but they really want it the beetles don't know they can't do it so because Steve before you reveal I just want to say something when a beetle child is trapped in a car and a beetle mother that's what I'm saying what's the motivation? I want to land this better okay so I work out my wife and I work out we do a lot of free weights Bob said the 50 pound free weight he's totally right I can pick up a 50 pound dumbbell on each hand and I can squat it and I need 100% of my body's power I'm using my butt and my legs like unbelievable and it's a struggle no way a beetle's lifting 94 pounds I think we're about to find it I think I'm wrong We have a good spread out. We're all three, which is awesome. I love it when they're all spread out. And one third of us are angry. Which third, Jake? Me, Adam, and Bob. Two thirds are you going to be angry. Adam was talking shit about Steve even before we went into science fiction. We have to embarrass the audience now, too. So if you think that the one in four, Beatles one in four animals, is the fiction, clap. If you think that the Beatles are everywhere is the fiction, clap. And if you think that the beetles can lift 94 pounds, clap. All right. So it's pretty much split between one and three as far as the audience is concerned. So I guess we could take these in order. That doesn't mean anything. One in every four animals is a beetle. So yeah, there's a lot of beetles. There's 350,000 official beetle species. He's just priming us. He's giving us all that. raising the drama. There's 350,000 different species, but there's probably millions. Those are the ones that have been named. You can't count those. Remember J.B.S. Haldane? You guys all know J.B.S. Haldane, right? J.B.S. Haldane famously said, somebody asked him, what can we tell about the mind of God from looking at nature? And he said that he has an inordinate fondness for beetles. Beetles are the most common order of all orders of life. But is the one in four over-calling it? Did I play into that by exaggerating it, or is it really one in four creatures? Well, this one is science. Wow, that's cool. One in four. If you include plants, it's one in five. Wow. Whoa. That's amazing. That rules. Yeah. It's amazing. There's a lot of freaking beetles. All right, let's go to number two. Beetles occupy every continent and many islands around the world, including all but the most extreme land and freshwater habitats. So the controversy seems to be swirling around whether or not beetles occupy Antarctica. Now, I will tell you there are insects in Antarctica. Kara is right. There are insects in Antarctica. There are parts of Antarctica which are not completely barren. But the question is, are there beetles in Antarctica? That is the question. They definitely are everywhere else. He's delaying right now. This one is, who voted for this one? It's George and Brian. And me. Just George and Brian. So are George and Brian correct? Almost nobody, like two people in the audience voted for this one. This one is the fiction. Yeah, good job, guys. So we're saying nobody's ever brought a beetle to Randar. All right, Steve, let's get to it. Sorry, Jack, I just have one thing to do real quick. Boom. Fucking face. Show me a video of a fucking beetle lifting 94 pounds right now. All right, right now. I'll bring my freaking weights in and let's see that bastard lift him up. We've lost Jay, folks. We've lost the tricks. You do have video of this, right? The male ego on display right now. Here we go. Here we go. This better be so spectacular. My mind is blown. I feel great right now. This is the insect that lives in Antarctica. It's a midge. Oh, midge. Belgica, Antarctica. Where was that from, Steve? Oh, midge. but there's no beetles in Antarctica. That's the only thing. They pretty much are everywhere else. Do we know why? They don't like the cold. Are we not counting the scientific base on Antarctica? You're talking about just natural habitats? I don't know if there's any in captivity on Antarctica. They wouldn't count. Or they just came over on a ship. No, but even if they did come over, they clearly haven't established a population. I'm changing my answer. That means that the large goliath beetle can lift up to 850 times its own weight or 94 pounds, 42 kilograms is science. The largest Goliath beetles weigh about 100 grams. How long have they been working out? Actually, it's... Millions of years, Bob. Before I settled on this as the third one, I was going to say that the Goliath beetle is the largest beetle but it was so hard to confirm that because I found so many different references that that said other beetles were larger, because it's all, like, do you go by length or volume or weight or whatever? So some references said it was the Goliath beetle. Other ones said it was the giant Weta. Wow, that's fascinating. Show me the video of the beetle that was 94 pounds. Now, it's interesting that you say that, because there are no videos. Just a lot of testimonies. So what was this hearsay? Not an anecdotal evidence over here. There's a sign up in the jet. Give me the signs. Here is the beetle. Okay, it's big. Yep. Holy crap. Right. There's so much muscle. Think of it. The hand that's holding it is bigger than it is, and that hand has a good amount of muscle in it, and that hand alone can't lift 50 pounds, let alone 94. There must be a mechanical advantage, some wicked mechanical advantage. That is the heaviest insect in the larval stage. I guess the larval stage counts. Megasoma Action. High in protein. The larva weighs 100 grams. The adult weighs 67, 70 grams. If you go 850 times that, that's how you get to the pound that I quoted. There's the giant Weta. You couldn't pay me $1,000 to put that there. Am I tripping out here? You're not answering the question. He's getting there, dude. Let him cook. Listen, I verified this from multiple sources. It's reported in the scientific literature. This is the observations by scientists. It's hard to produce videos of things like this. So they specifically says there's no videos of this happening, which is funny that you asked for the one thing they say this doesn't exist. But this is the accepted conventional wisdom among the scientists who say, yes, we see them doing this. How? Is it their mandibles? Do they grab it with their mouth? I mean, I imagine what Bob said is actually what actually happens. Like if they have to move something out of the way, they can get underneath it and lift it up. It's because of their construction. It's not like they're picking it up with a leg. They're not dead lifting it. They're not dead lifting it, you know, but they can, they can like wedge themselves under something and push it up. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what's happening. Yeah. But that's also lifting. Yeah. It's lifting. Yeah. Yeah. It's lifting. So you're saying that the people who said that it happens, they saw it, right? Yeah. So light was leaving the event and hitting their eyes. and there are devices that can collect that light and then you can literally digitize it and show it to freaking everybody because I want to see an insect lift 94 pounds. It may exist. I was not able to find it. So I say this is bullshit and I will dedicate the next week of my life before I go to Disney World to prove that is bullshit. Did they say in any of the studies or maybe you didn't come across this what they were lifting? I know it weighed 94 pounds, but what it was? No. So you don't know. So you don't know. You don't know. Jay. Your denial of Jay is totally fine with extending the time of this, by the way. Really, guys, you think a beetle can lift 94 pounds? I think it can because then George and I were right. That's why he voted that way. Jay's about to start like a Beatles truther movement. Oh, my God. I hear what you're saying. There are no birds, right? But this is what is the conventional wisdom among the experts. There's nothing in your head that thinks this is a little weird. Jay, of course I did. First of all, that's why it's there. Because it does sound extraordinary. All right, okay. And I vetted it as much as I could. And notice he didn't say 95. He said 94. He put a limit on it. Oh, wait, wait. That's another interesting point. He didn't say almost 100 pounds. Not only that, that was the lowest number that I found. Really? What were the other numbers? Well, some people, I think, made the mistake of calculating from the larval weight and not the adult weight, which gives you a higher number. I see. So I made sure I used the lowest estimate of what they could look like. But that would be the multiplier, not the absolute limit. No, the multiplier. Everyone says the multiplier is 850. Interesting. The Goliath beetle weighs 60 grams or whatever, 70 grams. Multiply that by 850. But you would think it would be the thing that would be, they would see it move X amount of weight, right? So that seems to me they're not just multiplying. Well, they might be looking at a theoretical limit based on their biomechanics, but you could do the same thing with humans, And it would blow your mind, Jay, what one really extremely skilled human could do. You know what I mean? Like most humans can't lift cars. I'm happy to do a deeper dive into this. If we debunk it, then you can get credit for today. However, this information is based on anecdotal reports rather than direct experimental evidence. In controlled studies, such as one conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, rhinosaurus beetles rhinoceros beetles were observed to carry loads up to 30 times their body mass while walking steadily another study noted that while these beetles could carry up to 100 times their body weight they could not sustain any steady speed under such a load it says specifically here they could not move or lift Bob's wife this doesn't say carry it says lift I think we need to follow this up you're so mad it's a lot of How could I struggle with two 50-pound weights in my hand, but that thing can lift? It all comes down to you. That's why you're so offended by that. I have never seen a sore loser than you right now. Jay, Jay, Jay, think of it this way. Stop taking it personally, Jay. Could you move a sled that had 400 pounds on it? Of course you could. Right? You could, right? Because the mechanics of it, whatever. We're not talking about pushing. We're talking about lifting. It's an example. But it's an example of, like, there might be some mechanized way where this thing... Yeah, if you put a wedge under it and you push it, you might be able to. Underneath the thing and just moves it a centimeter. Maybe it paid some guy to lift it four. Yeah. Guys, the exoskeleton, it doesn't have muscle. It's got, like, pressure, right? There's pressure, right? So there might be something bizarre about the amount of pressure. But I would think even that exoskeleton would blow apart with 94 pounds of pressure being, you know, inside. I don't know. So I would like to see what the scientists say specifically about how they derived this. Well, why don't we get a bunch of beetles and a couple hundred pound weights and drop the weights on the beetles and see what happens. And if they stop them, then it's fine. That's an easy experiment. How many pounds of pressure do you think it takes to stomp your foot? It's a lot, right? It's a lot, yeah. And I think if you tried to step on one of these beetles, you would not kill it right away. I don't like the idea of that at all. I know, but I do think it would probably take a lot of pressure before it actually does. That's a good point. Stop looking this up, dude. I'm watching you. Look this up. All right. I can't stop. Jay, let's buy one of these beetles, and we'll take a 94-pound dumbbell and put it on it and see what happens. You can't buy 94-pound dumbbells, Bob. Where'd you get your information from? The internet. Yeah. Take it outside, boys. Let's get fishier as we go, guys. All right. All I'm excited to do is get in touch with my high school's alumni newsletter and say that Brian and I both want science. That's right. All right. I mean, alumni of the year, George? Hello. Evan, take us out with a quote. A mistake is only an error. It becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it. John Lennon. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me for this special episode of the SGU. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Steve. Thank you all for joining us. And until next week, this is your Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info at theskepticsguide.org. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com slash skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.