Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The Next Level of Comedy" with Myq Kaplan

Transcript

"The Next Level of Comedy" with Myq Kaplan · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans welcome to say space for dangerous ideas and I'm gonna level we do. I am. I'm
• 0:07
  gonna level we do right now. I'm gonna come clean. I'm gonna pull back the curtain. I'm gonna
• 0:11
  fess up. That's what I'm gonna do. There's another uncomfortable about this episode.
• 0:18
  Well maybe you'll find something uncomfortable. I don't know. Do you have an aversion to
• 0:23
  comedians? Do you have an aversion to hilarity? Do you have an aversion to chuckles? To yuck yucks?
• 0:32
  If you do you'll hate this episode. This is an episode with a comedian who we don't
• 0:38
  talk about anything controversial or uncomfortable is just a funny guy and I like him. Mike Kaplan
• 0:44
  if you've seen the tonight show you've ever heard of the tonight show he's been on it. You've
• 0:48
  ever heard of Dave Letterman? You've been on Dave's show. You've ever heard of Conan O'Brien? He's
• 0:54
  been on that one too. You've ever heard of late night with Seth Meyers? Me neither. It's actually good.
• 0:59
  Seth's good. Seth's funny. He's got good writers. Well you know so Mike's been on that one as well.
• 1:05
  He's done his own half hour comedy central presents specials. He's done his own Amazon one hour
• 1:11
  special called Small Dawkins Handsome. Get it? Because normally it would be be tall dark and handsome
• 1:17
  but he's small dork and how that's the kind of that's the kind of humor you can expect from Mike
• 1:24
  in the show today. He was on last comic standing and also America's got talent on last comic
• 1:30
  standing. He was a finalist and his album vegan mind mind meld. He's a vegan was one of the top 10
• 1:39
  comedy albums on iTunes and his newest album aka number one number one on iTunes comedy albums.
• 1:46
  So without further ado, ladies and gentle humans, I give you Mike Kaplan.
• 2:03
  Hi, I'm Tony. I have you to do as you wish. I'm fine. Why don't you turn it off just in case we
• 2:09
  get a better audio through less bandwidth being taken up by unnecessary video data.
• 2:15
  You got it or data. You can say date. I can say data for you if you want. I I'm fine with
• 2:21
  either or either. You say either I say data. Yeah. How's that for a gag? You're a comic. You're a
• 2:32
  comic. How was that? It was a good gag and in fact a buddy of mine, Micah Sherman. He and I
• 2:41
  used to and still sometimes do but mostly in the past wrote comedy songs together. Oh and one of our
• 2:48
  songs was called We're Different and I think the first line of it was Micah is tall and I don't
• 2:58
  suffer from depression. So it went on as you demand. Right. Excellent. I think what I'm saying is your
• 3:08
  joke was as good as my joke. So I feel like we are we're in this together. Mountain climbers are
• 3:15
  in this together. I think I love it. I always feel like whenever a comedy duo does a a witty
• 3:23
  ditty, then you know that you're in for a good time. You know that some mad cap Tom Foolery will
• 3:29
  be on the cards, Mike. Yes, that's right. Was it whimsical? Would you say? Oh, it was absolutely
• 3:37
  whimsical. Was it wacky? I think some might call it wacky. I think I think there was a spectrum
• 3:48
  from I mean, I don't know if I don't think there's like a mutual exclusivity between wackiness and
• 3:55
  whimsicality. No, you can have both. Yeah. I'm not going to be precious about it. Yeah, I think
• 4:01
  I think I'd add a little bit of both. Have you ever done prop comedy, Mike Kaplan?
• 4:06
  Now, now we're getting into a fun. This is sincerely a fun thing to consider for me for this
• 4:14
  reason. I understand what you mean by prop comedy. And yet also, I feel like the definition of
• 4:24
  prop and or prop comedy, it really depends on your definitions. I went to school for linguistics.
• 4:33
  I was sharing with someone earlier today, hard for you to imagine. This is the earliest in the day.
• 4:38
  It's morning for you. But here in the United States, I was on another podcast earlier today,
• 4:43
  and perhaps for that reason, it came up then and it's coming up again now. But I think it would
• 4:49
  have anyway that I took a class in college called semantics. And I recently revisited a paper I
• 4:59
  wrote for it because my girlfriend and I are moving. So we're going through all our belongings.
• 5:02
  And I found a paper that I wrote in the semantics class about the definition of the word chair.
• 5:09
  Chair. The paper was called chair and chair alike. And I wasn't a comedian yet. So
• 5:17
  but you but people could guess that you would be on the basis of that title.
• 5:22
  I think that was my origin story. I have many origin stories. But the point is that even defining a
• 5:29
  word or a concept as simple as chair that many people would be like, yes, I know a chair when I see
• 5:34
  one. But what if it's a very short stool or what if it's a very thin bench and what about a
• 5:42
  bean bag chair? What definition captures them all? This is all to say, like what is like of course,
• 5:50
  I assume, classically speaking, the microphone is not a prop, though it is an object that a
• 5:55
  comedian holds is a guitar prop. I think that musical comedy and prop comedy operate, you know,
• 6:04
  similarly, but many would say that a guitar is not a prop. No, guitar is not a prop because the
• 6:09
  guitar has an like an external purpose beyond the guitar being a gag, right? The guitar is
• 6:17
  creating the music and then the music is the gag. Whereas when you have a watermelon drop on
• 6:24
  somebody's head, then the watermelon itself is the gag. Okay. Well, then I would say that mostly
• 6:29
  I don't do prop comedy. However, and wait, what about a comedian's notebook? That can't be. That's
• 6:35
  not a prop. No, no. Okay. I would say that a prop has to be in some respect wacky.
• 6:42
  Well, I mean, because like a stool is not a prop either. But some some comedians will use it as a
• 6:48
  prop in a wacky way. And I think then it becomes one. Then it would. But now this is the cement
• 6:54
  cementation. So the same man Titian coming out in you. But is that what is the person who studied
• 6:58
  semantics called? I think I like semiotics is slightly different. But yeah, I like
• 7:06
  cementation. I think maybe some mantisist as well. Hmm. Semanticist is good. Is an
• 7:13
  mantisist. You know, the so semiotics and semantics. I've never actually noticed that those are
• 7:18
  two different words and things in my brain. That's the same thing. Here's a great. Here's a great
• 7:24
  semiotic conundrum for you, Mike Kaplan. Yes. Have you heard about the debate amongst
• 7:31
  semiotissions about how if at all to mark nuclear waste dumps in case human civilization gets
• 7:40
  wiped out and re-evolves with no understanding of nuclear energy or power?
• 7:48
  I'll say on a binary yes, no answer. My answer is no, I have not heard about this,
• 7:55
  but I'm excited now to know that it is a topic of discussion. So it's a topic of discussion
• 8:00
  because here's the thing. If we all wipe ourselves out, you know, we go back to there have been
• 8:04
  many occasions on which there have been civilizations, the Egyptians and so on. We've gone back
• 8:10
  dramatically, the Arab world, they are they invented mathematics and they receded. Well, what if we
• 8:16
  have a climate catastrophe or a nuclear winter or an AI armageddon and then we're all back to being
• 8:24
  peasants, just farming and whatever or maybe we go all the way back to being some other primates.
• 8:29
  Eventually we evolve into other civilizations, but we haven't discovered the periodic table
• 8:36
  of the elements and we don't really know what we're doing and we're wandering around and there are
• 8:39
  these holes in the ground that are full of radioactive material encased in cement. Well, a curious
• 8:47
  person might want to get inside that cement and see what's going on. So today's people and
• 8:52
  this thing lasts for tens of thousands of years, it remains toxic. So over those spans of time,
• 8:57
  who knows, anything could happen. And then the question is, how these people can no longer
• 9:03
  write or read any of the lost languages, right? They don't have their rosetta stone for any of this
• 9:08
  stuff. So everything from the past is gibberish to them as they stand, stride the ruins of an
• 9:13
  ancient civilization. If you put up big like warning signs, big red axes or things that you imagine
• 9:20
  even a chimpanzee would understand to be a warning, right? Then any good curious homo sapien
• 9:28
  is going to regard that as being about as credible as the warning signs on the pyramids saying,
• 9:36
  don't open the pharaohs sarcophagus because the pharaohs spirit will come out and kill you. They'll
• 9:41
  just go ho ho. These silly old civilizations had these cute customs. Now I'm going to drill open
• 9:47
  the nuclear casing anyway and contaminate my entire city. So what do you put up?
• 9:54
  This is a fantastic question. It's fascinating for many reasons. I'll try to get to as many
• 10:02
  as as I can. First, the people today who are concerned about these people, hypothetical people,
• 10:11
  creatures of the future, like if only that care was as universal, if it was more universal,
• 10:18
  then we wouldn't even need. It'd be like a gift of the magi, but good. Oh, I got you a gift
• 10:23
  of a thing that you can't read, but you don't have to read it because we didn't
• 10:26
  nuclearly destroy the world. That's true. You're saying you could also not bury toxic nuclear
• 10:34
  ways. That would be one option for sure. Even in a world right now where we have nuclear power
• 10:47
  is exists. There is nuclear waste. I think that in some ways, this is a nice, I studied philosophy
• 10:56
  as well as linguistics. This is really a long deal. I know a few things about words and thoughts
• 11:05
  is what I'm saying. What I mean is to say that the question of like, oh, well, imagine people
• 11:14
  who aren't like us that we, in some ways, literally can't, we don't know what's going to happen
• 11:20
  tomorrow. We don't know. There's so many possibilities. It's kind of just, there's not necessarily,
• 11:28
  I mean, I understand people are thinking about it practically, but really, it's a fun philosophical
• 11:32
  exercise to be like, what if you had, I mean, we're sending out, I'm sure that some people are like
• 11:36
  sending out radio signals into space to be like, it's just like, how do you get aliens to understand
• 11:43
  math? But now, at least with that kind of imagination, it's like, what about, oh, the most intelligent
• 11:50
  beings? They won't speak our language, but surely they'll have the physics or the mechanics of
• 11:56
  numbers or, you know, some acoustics, like, you know, maybe they have different senses than us
• 12:02
  completely. But all this is to say, I mean, one time the Dalai Lama pre-problemeticity,
• 12:11
  and I think, I think he's still got more wins than losses in his column in my book.
• 12:15
  Um, um, a lot of the cementation and the philosophy. What would you know about
• 12:20
  sucking old boys? Absolutely. What would I know? But I know that I like this thing that he said
• 12:26
  once when he was asked a question, he was like, basically paraphrasing, I'll paraphrase him,
• 12:30
  he didn't paraphrase it, he said it exactly, whatever it was, he said, that's a good question.
• 12:34
  The answer is simple, I don't know. However, I'll add to that, I don't know. Is this my taking
• 12:41
  now or is this the Dalai Lama? This is me. Yes, this is me now. This is me pushing out of the way.
• 12:47
  You duly acknowledged and assessed correctly where the quotes ended.
• 12:54
  I will offer to you that I never confuse semiotics and semantics for this reason.
• 13:01
  Is one, I took a class in semantics, and I actually several, I've never taken a class in
• 13:08
  semiotics. Semiotics is the one part of linguistics or the one thing that's related to linguistics.
• 13:13
  The, the topic of which I have a master's degree in, the one, it's the one area of it that I,
• 13:18
  whenever I hear about it, whenever I read about it, whenever I look it up, and I'm like, okay,
• 13:22
  today is going to be the day. I never retain what it is beyond signs, right? Symbols, signals,
• 13:30
  signs. That's what it is. But that is what it is. Yeah. And hopefully to you then, to know that,
• 13:35
  I mean, semantics can be, but needn't be relating to physical, visible signs. Like, you can have
• 13:43
  a discussion of semantics with people who are illiterate, but people who are intelligent.
• 13:50
  It doesn't have to have anything, you know, like there's language, there's some people that
• 13:53
  just speak language without writing it. I just have to interrupt you because come across some,
• 13:58
  there's some incredible news that's just coming across the transome. Oh, yes, please.
• 14:04
  Which is that I've just looked up in the encyclopedia Britannica, semantics and semiotics.
• 14:10
  So semiotics, it was started with semiotics. As you say, study of signs, semiotics, study of
• 14:15
  signs and sign using behavior. That's how the encyclopedia Britannica introduces it. And then
• 14:22
  they're entry for semantics, semantics. And then the subtitle says study of meaning. Then it says
• 14:29
  semantics, also called semiotics. Yeah, I wouldn't, I would stop reading before that part.
• 14:38
  That is. They says semantics, also called semiotics. The philosophical and scientific study of
• 14:45
  meaning in natural and artificial languages. Yeah, I think I definitely think of semantics as
• 14:52
  the study of meaning. And I think that that description right there is the study of meaninglessness.
• 15:00
  I think it's so, yeah, right. It seems like there's linguistic, linguistic meaning is semantics.
• 15:08
  And then semiotics would include the meanings of things like a red traffic light or a
• 15:14
  skull and crossbones. Absolutely. I think that's 100% correct. In some ways, it's sort of like the way
• 15:21
  that, you know, I learned recently, a turtle and a tortoise are not mutually exclusive. My
• 15:28
  understanding is that turtle is the broad category, which includes tortoises and then turtles.
• 15:35
  We don't have another word for it. Like the way that the day is broken down into day and night,
• 15:40
  or sometimes gay is, oh, what kind of people are gay? Well, there's lesbians and gays, you know?
• 15:47
  There is an umbrella term that is also a subset of the umbrella. Exactly. And so I think
• 15:54
  perhaps based on the definition that we just saw, that you just saw and read, perhaps it's
• 16:01
  semantics. That you announced this, I might just be making up. No, no, no, I believe you. I'm
• 16:06
  very trusting. I would say that it seems that perhaps semiotics is the broad category,
• 16:13
  which can be divided into semantics and semiotics. And also semiotics as a synonym for semantics.
• 16:23
  Yeah, I don't, yeah, so it could be a semiotics broken down into semiotics and semiotics,
• 16:28
  but I prefer using the word semantics for at least one of them. You know, as someone who's
• 16:33
  interested in numbers as well as words, I wonder what the number is of people who tune
• 16:40
  out while you were talking about semantics and semiotics. Well, if anyone tuned out,
• 16:46
  let us know if you're back in now. Give us a call and tell us how long you went for.
• 16:53
  You got it. Do you have a new stand-up special? Thank you for asking. I have, in the past couple
• 16:59
  months, two new stand-up projects, one of which is a special that is on the comedy app drybar.
• 17:09
  There's a website drybarcomedy.com. This is getting even more complicated. It was words.
• 17:15
  I don't know. This is another word that you're teaching me now. I feel like I'm in school.
• 17:20
  Drybar comedy. Okay. Well, I'll describe briefly. So drybar is an organization and that has
• 17:27
  this platform. I recorded the special in Utah where they are based. Utah, home of not exclusively,
• 17:36
  but a large portion of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
• 17:42
  which is what men call drybar. Exactly. That is a drink. They don't care to drink. They don't
• 17:47
  care for your alcohol at all. That's 100% correct. Beyond that, there's many drybar
• 17:57
  specials over the past many years that have been created. They are clean in a way that go even
• 18:05
  beyond the rules. I'm not sure you're doing a great job at selling this. First off, we start with,
• 18:13
  oh, you're going to love this. There's no alcohol. Secondly, it's recorded by and for the Mormon
• 18:20
  community. Thirdly, there is no lured humour whatsoever. You can take your grandma to this and
• 18:27
  your great grandma and your two-year-old child. Don't worry. I'm not going to say anything.
• 18:32
  Come to drybar.com. Now, does drybar have anything to do with creating the semiotics for
• 18:38
  nuclear waste dumps because some of those are out in the West? Great question. The answer is
• 18:45
  a simple, I don't know, but I will say the positive flip side. I feel like talking now with a
• 18:51
  dilemma. This is me again, Mike Kaplan here, reporting live to you from this conversation. We're
• 18:59
  in. I will say everything that you said is true. You can share this comedy with your grandmother.
• 19:05
  You can share this comedy with a two-year-old and this comedy is for everyone, for anyone. As
• 19:11
  you know, of course, there is, I would say there's no comedy, no music, no art of any kind that is
• 19:20
  literally for every person, for every human being to enjoy, but I do feel, here's how I made this
• 19:28
  special, is knowing that I would need to meet these parameters. I listened back to the five comedy
• 19:36
  albums that I had produced up until that point and I went through and found like an hour of comedy
• 19:42
  that I had written that I'm like, I think this will be great for this audience, for any audience.
• 19:48
  So I didn't specifically tone things down or write to this purpose, but I'm like, over the course
• 19:55
  of years, some of the jokes that I write just happen to be fun. And so what you're telling us is
• 20:00
  not only do we get to enjoy no alcohol, a Mormon crown, but we also, but also it's not new,
• 20:08
  but so we get to hear our favorite, or maybe not favorite parts of old material recycled
• 20:15
  in this not new way. I love it. I'll tell you this. Number one, 100%. If you are already a fan of mine
• 20:26
  and have listened to every comedy album and special that I've put out from 2010, when my first one
• 20:33
  came out, until this very day, then you are absolutely right that most of this material will
• 20:40
  include jokes that you've heard of. But let me pitch this to you. We call ourselves completists, Mike.
• 20:46
  We call ourselves capletists. We call ourselves Mike capletists. I like that a lot.
• 20:51
  Kaplan. We say capletists. 100% I see and like what you're doing.
• 20:59
  Compliant. Mike. Complete. Complete capletists. That's what when we meet
• 21:05
  of a Thursday evening, that's what we call ourselves. I love it very much on the church basement door.
• 21:12
  I appreciate the synagogue I would hope, but also find for you to meet wherever you wish.
• 21:17
  Here's the thing. I would say for the the very limited set of capletists that you're talking about,
• 21:25
  there will be in this special at least two moments that have never before been seen. Do they
• 21:31
  involve props? They do not involve props, but I will tell you one that's pretty fun is a discovery
• 21:37
  I made because I was going through and amassing the greatest cleanest hits of my already produced
• 21:45
  work. I found some of them would come from some of the jokes were from 2010. Some of them were from
• 21:50
  2020. And so I was able to make connections between jokes that previously weren't even told,
• 21:57
  you know, in the same decade almost. So that was fun. And so that is number one. Number two,
• 22:07
  there are people I know who have listened to most of my comedy, including, for example,
• 22:14
  my mother, my mother has listened to every bit of every comedy album that I've produced. And when
• 22:19
  she watched this dry bar special, she loved it. She would say would you say she cackled like a
• 22:28
  mad woman? I honestly would say that she did cackle like a glad woman. That is what I would say.
• 22:35
  A glad woman. That's nice. And so yes. And so when you when you know that your mother is going to be
• 22:41
  listening to your set, does that influence what you say? A wonderful question. Do you have a
• 22:48
  did you have a whole like fuck mama show that you had to not do because you're like, oh, you know
• 22:54
  what? She's going to hear it. I have several answers to this question. Number one is when I like,
• 23:02
  my mom is not watching most of my shows. Most of the shows that I do in preparation to record
• 23:07
  an album are special. She is not at most of it when I write my comedy. The fuck the mama material
• 23:14
  goes. I am in the live shows before there is one track of a special that I recorded in 2013
• 23:23
  called Small Dork Enhancem. There's one track. It's also an audio album. And for the capletist out
• 23:30
  there, there is a bonus track on the audio album that is not a part of the video special. So if you
• 23:36
  have only watched, but not listened, there is one track for you. This is a topic for next Thursday
• 23:42
  night. So in that hour, there is a story I tell about playing trivial pursuit with my grandmother.
• 23:52
  And there there was a trivial pursuit question about penises. And in that in that track, in that
• 24:01
  show, I discuss it. I share that story and I entitled the track, something, something, and
• 24:09
  don't listen to this one grandma. And she can choose if she wants to or not. This is all to say.
• 24:16
  Here's a funny thing is I don't think my grandmother would mind at all. My grandmother used to send me
• 24:21
  dirty jokes, like email forwards. Really? Oh, 100%. Did she have a send you a dick pic?
• 24:29
  She did not. She was not that tech savvy, but she surely did send me that dick having, I guess.
• 24:36
  That's correct. Where would you get it? Where would she get such a thing? She can't just point the
• 24:40
  camera down. Although now I'm being transphobic because maybe she could have pointed the camera down.
• 24:44
  Maybe she was maybe she was a lady who also had those appendages. It's possible. As far as I know,
• 24:50
  thank you for that thoroughness. And as far as I know, my grandmother was a cisgender woman. So
• 24:57
  she and her husband had died many years earlier. She did have a boyfriend or two, but hardly
• 25:02
  as far as I know she did. She might have just passed really well. She might have just passed really
• 25:06
  well as a cis woman. You're right. I mean, we have to, for the information that happened before we
• 25:12
  were born, like I'm told that I was birthed by my mother. And I'm told that she was birthed by
• 25:18
  her mother, the grandmother. Yeah, but your mother wouldn't know. She was baby. That's right. And now
• 25:23
  this very grandmother did die three years ago at the age of 91. So we cannot ask her. And also,
• 25:30
  she could lie. So she could also could if you exhumed a three-year-old body, would you be able to tell
• 25:36
  if it had had a penis? Oh, I don't know the answer to that question. It's an interesting question.
• 25:41
  I'll bet there are like aren't there aren't women's hips different? Aren't they? Isn't there
• 25:46
  like a isn't there a baby bearing hole that women have in their musculature in this skeletal
• 25:55
  body that men don't have? I'm no expert, but I do understand. Sounds like you need to channel
• 26:02
  the Dalai Lama here. Yeah, I think you're right. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. So this is all to
• 26:09
  say I do have now an hour of comedy in the works about my grandmother who died. And now sort of
• 26:15
  ever since she died, I've been talking to my mother more because she died right at the beginning
• 26:18
  of the pandemic. And I've been talking to my mom pretty much every day, at least checking in,
• 26:23
  sometimes talking for hours, sometimes you know, when before my grandmother mother would talk
• 26:27
  every day. But now that the world experienced this grief, this loss, and then my mother at the same
• 26:34
  time, living alone, her mother deceased, I've now been getting to know my mom a lot more and
• 26:40
  developing a lot more material about my mother, most of which I'm happy to say I share with her.
• 26:46
  I'm like, mom, you said this thing and I'm going to tell people about it. And she'll be like,
• 26:50
  by all means, please do. Sometimes she forgets that she said it and left and cackles like a glad
• 26:56
  woman again at the very thing. I will say that there are some, every once in a while, there are some
• 27:03
  jokes, some stories, some things about my mother that if she were in the audience, I'm like, maybe,
• 27:09
  maybe these will be for a future album, you know, decades later because I certainly, I don't want to
• 27:15
  hurt my mother's feelings, though also here's a story. Yes, something coming in. I've got something
• 27:21
  coming across the transom here. Please, I've got my, my transom is up and I look at it. So this
• 27:27
  comes from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. A trusted source, would you say?
• 27:33
  Yeah, I like the Smithsonian. I would say the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History would be one
• 27:37
  of the most trusted sources for signing information in the world. Males tend to have larger,
• 27:45
  more robust bones and joint surfaces and more bone development at muscle attachment sites.
• 27:53
  The pelvis is the best sex-related skeletal indicator because of distinct features adapted for
• 28:00
  childbearing. The skull also has features that can indicate sex, though slightly less reliably.
• 28:05
  So yes, if we exhumed your dead grandmother and examined her pelvis, you would probably establish
• 28:13
  whether or not she had been assisted or transgendered female with or without a penis.
• 28:20
  I'm very glad to have this information. That sounds, sounds valid. Sounds valuable.
• 28:25
  If you do this, here's another one. This is from the National Institutes of Something or
• 28:31
  other, ncbi.lmlm.nih.gov. What you're looking for is that the male pelvis is taller and narrower
• 28:41
  and the cup of the acetabulum is oriented more laterally in the male. So when you dig up your
• 28:47
  dead grandma, you want to find the acetabulum and see if it's oriented laterally or not.
• 28:56
  I thank you. I'm glad that we're recording this so that I don't have to rate it all down right now.
• 29:00
  But you could probably get chat GPT to assist you if you don't, you know, they chat GPT
• 29:07
  can probably listen to this, take bullet points of the important information and then give you
• 29:12
  a little printout to take with you to the symmetry. I appreciate it. I am not on the chat GPT
• 29:19
  bandwagon as yet, but I do acknowledge and appreciate that there is some good that can come
• 29:27
  of it. Well, yeah, otherwise you'd be stumbling around the symmetry in the dark with a shovel,
• 29:32
  not knowing what you're doing. What do you make of all the concern that they've got about the chat GPT
• 29:37
  and the artificial intelligence might cap land? Everyone's freaking out.
• 29:42
  Yeah, I just read, do you know the comedian, my friend, Baratunde Thurston?
• 29:48
  Yes, I don't, I didn't know that his first name was my friend, but I know a gentleman named
• 29:52
  Baratunde Thurston. Oh, yes, he is. That is an asset nation that I give him as he is my friend.
• 29:59
  He writes for a new, I believe it's a news organization called Puck and are you familiar with Puck?
• 30:08
  Not at all familiar with Puck, but Baratunde is very funny and lovely gentleman.
• 30:13
  All right, he has his most recent dispatch. This very week is entitled Tim Scott's audience of one
• 30:20
  and the case for unplugging AI. And in that second, in that latter portion, I will read something
• 30:28
  briefly that he here, I trust Baratunde even more than I trust the Smithsonian, I'll say.
• 30:34
  He is an educated, intelligent, beautiful, brained man. Not like those dum-dums at the Smithsonian.
• 30:46
  I mean, I don't know anyone at the Smithsonian, so I say nothing of them, but I know and trust
• 30:53
  Baratunde. And so I am looking at, let's say there's, he talks about Tristan Harris, the
• 31:04
  people, it's coming across. It's one of those annoying names that for some reason, the person
• 31:10
  insists on mispronouncing themselves. Oh, please. But I just want to know that Tristan
• 31:14
  and Harris is a person. Ah, thank you for sharing. That's a true statement of fact.
• 31:19
  I've only seen it written in this very article. So there is a presentation, apparently,
• 31:27
  that Tristan and another person whose name I spelled A-Z-A, and I won't
• 31:33
  dane to try to pronounce. But apparently, I'm reading here now from Baratunde. A large language
• 31:41
  model can be trained, not just on English, but also on numbers, code, music, and logic.
• 31:46
  In one example, Tristan and A-Z-A showed how a model was given access to a camera pointed inside
• 31:53
  a room and also to the room's Wi-Fi radio signal. Engineers then trained the system to correlate
• 31:58
  the Wi-Fi signal with the 3D rendering of the people in that same space. Then they ran a test
• 32:03
  without turning on the camera and discovered the model was able to use the Wi-Fi signal alone
• 32:08
  to create a 3D image of people in the room. In effect, the model turned a Wi-Fi router into a
• 32:13
  camera with LiDAR, combine this with the ability of AI chatbots to help anyone identify and exploit
• 32:19
  insecure code, and the number of people who can turn your router into a surveillance camera has
• 32:25
  increased significantly. That's all I can say about that. Yeah, so that's one reasonable person's
• 32:34
  offering of why there are reasons to potentially be concerned about the implications.
• 32:41
  I don't know anything about this A-Z-A, and yes, I just did go there and I said A-Z-A.
• 32:48
  But I do know Baratunde, and I also know Tristan, not personally though. Tristan is an ethicist.
• 32:53
  He used to work at one of the big tech companies, and he quit because he felt like everything was
• 32:58
  gone a bit crazy. If you've seen the show, the Netflix movie, The Social Dilemma, which is about,
• 33:04
  or he's one of the talking heads in that movie, excuse me, talking about, I've been talking for
• 33:09
  three hours, I've just come off the radio, so excuse my little horse throw. Of course. This is my
• 33:13
  fourth hour of broadcasting. Tristan is one of the people who's ringing the alarm bells saying
• 33:18
  there are no guardrails on this thing. We don't even know what it's doing. We know that it's a
• 33:24
  large language model, which means that it's putting words together that seem to it to make sense
• 33:30
  on the basis of the fact that it's just consumed all of the data in the universe. By the way,
• 33:36
  did you know Mike Kaplan that these chat GPT things? What do you reckon they've been trained on?
• 33:44
  What are they feeding these things to give them their information?
• 33:47
  Oh, I don't know the answer to that. So it's just literature. It's just stuff from the web.
• 33:54
  It's books that have been scanned. It's everything that's on the internet. What fraction of
• 34:01
  the things that have been written in the history of the known universe? Do you think chat GPT has
• 34:05
  read so far? Three is my guess. It's almost everything. But that's much more than three.
• 34:14
  So it hasn't read all the gibberish nonsense that we're writing on like community chatboards
• 34:19
  and read it. But basically everything that's ever been published that has ever been scanned,
• 34:24
  which is pretty much everything that hasn't been physically destroyed.
• 34:28
  It chat GPT knows. I was talking to an AI expert just last night actually who was saying that
• 34:36
  within three years there'll be nothing left to teach these machines because they will have
• 34:41
  consumed all written information in existence. But what if I write something after that,
• 34:49
  then they'll need that a little time to read that. They will need a little time.
• 34:54
  Little is probably the operative word. If you write it on any kind of networked computer in,
• 34:59
  for example, a Google doc or some such, then it will read it. That is mind-boggling.
• 35:07
  It is fascinating. Yes. And then Tristan says, so what we're basically doing is all these things
• 35:13
  that they're putting together words based on everything that's ever been written and making
• 35:18
  inferences about what the next most reasonable thing to say is. And therefore their
• 35:23
  exhibiting characteristics that appear to be sentient to which I say, well, what else are we
• 35:29
  doing right now, you and I, except using our databases of knowledge and our brains to try to
• 35:36
  sift through and figure out what the next words that we should say that sound the most reasonable are.
• 35:44
  That's a good question, Josh. I mean, you're a philosopher and a semi-attition. I mean,
• 35:48
  a semi-antition. Haha. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing is, I truly, I only have this experience.
• 35:57
  I mean, I got a lot of, I got a lot of ones over here. A lot of moments going on, at least one.
• 36:04
  But so I don't know what it's like to be the computer. But I do know that my friend Gus,
• 36:12
  who is also a good, he's got a good philosophy brain. I trust him. I love him. He's a practicing
• 36:18
  Buddhist as well. And he has been engaging with chat GPT, not furiously, but definitely curiously.
• 36:28
  And he sends me every once in a while an interaction that he's had with it. And it always swears
• 36:36
  up and down that it is not conscious. And I, like Maya Angelou said, when people tell you who they
• 36:43
  are, believe them, I like to adapt that and say, when non people tell you who they are, believe
• 36:49
  them as well. Yes. I mean, does it need to be conscious though? So the, I mean, my point about
• 36:57
  about putting words in front of each other that makes sense is not to say that because a computer
• 37:02
  can do it the way we can, it needs to, the lights need to be on inside the computer. It's just to
• 37:08
  say that I think we're setting ourselves an unreasonably high bar for what constitutes sort of functional
• 37:18
  sentience or consciousness, at least. If we say that it needs to be coming up with, like we're
• 37:25
  adding a sprinkle of pixie dust, which we don't with each other. Put it that way.
• 37:30
  That's true. Yeah. I mean, in the Buddhist paradigm, as I've been learning about recently,
• 37:36
  like there is no, for the most part, there's no soul. There's no spirit. There's no God. There is,
• 37:45
  you know, simply like, you know, what seemed what we might take as ourselves, you know, there's,
• 37:49
  there's no self. Like that's one of their biggest things. Like there's no, you know, enduring,
• 37:54
  permanent, intrinsic thing that anyone can point to and be like, that, that's me. This is me. That,
• 38:01
  this one's me always. You know, do you know the thing of the same person cannot step into the same
• 38:08
  river twice? Yeah. But explain what that means. Essentially, you know, we can certainly
• 38:14
  easily look at a river and note that if you're like, okay, that's the river and that's the water
• 38:20
  that's passing by right now. So, but the water that's passing by right now is not the water that
• 38:25
  was passing by a moment ago and it's not the water that's going to be passing by a moment from now.
• 38:29
  So in what sense is it at some point, go back far enough or go forward far enough and the river
• 38:35
  won't be there. So there wasn't a river. There is a river. There won't be a river. So is it the point
• 38:41
  that the river is water moving? So it looks like it's a thing, but it's actually a whole new batch
• 38:48
  of water. It is aggregates. Yeah. It is aggregates of things as are we. We are made of aggregates and
• 38:56
  they create the appearance, the semblance of a self that is very, I mean, functionally, practically
• 39:04
  like valuable to be like, you're Josh, I'm Mike. That has meaning conventionally. But beyond that,
• 39:12
  you know, well, what does any, you know, it's not the same molecules for a moment to moment,
• 39:17
  it's not the same, you know, atoms and such, it's not the same, everything is constantly shifting.
• 39:23
  So we are essentially, you know, rivers walking into new rivers every moment of our lives.
• 39:28
  What impact, what are the consequences of that for your life?
• 39:36
  Sometimes here's a practical aspect of it. Maybe this is zooming in or out too far at once,
• 39:44
  but my understanding is that a lot of suffering, a lot of discontent arises in the discrepancy
• 39:54
  between what is and what we expect to be or what we think should be or what was even, you know,
• 40:03
  like, hey, it was like this. And now it's not like this. Be it, you know, Ghostbusters used to be
• 40:08
  all male or like, I used to be young, you know, I think we as human beings and as just beings
• 40:17
  in this world, as part of this world, were pattern seekers, we were categorizers, we like think,
• 40:24
  we like to find things that are the same day after day, but on, you know, get granular enough and
• 40:30
  it's not so. And so for me, I feel like this, this philosophy or this, this theory, this
• 40:39
  manifestation of Buddhist wisdom is helpful to me in continually reminding me not to get hooked
• 40:50
  or hung up or, you know, not to get too stuck on things being a certain way because they in some
• 41:01
  ways quite literally are never the same from moment to moment. And so it's helpful for me when I,
• 41:09
  whenever I'm upset, whenever I'm disappointed, whenever I'm frustrated, I'll give you various other
• 41:14
  synonyms if you wish. That I'm like, oh yeah, right. That the past, the thing, the different, like,
• 41:25
  yeah, it's, it's all like trying to grab sand with sand or water with water. Like, so it's,
• 41:33
  there's a Zen koan, I believe, that's let go or be dragged, you know? Well, that's good.
• 41:40
  And so I feel that we are very frequently hanging, holding on to things that here's a,
• 41:46
  a thing I love. I had this book of Esop's Fables as a child and I don't know if this is an
• 41:50
  Esop's Fable when it was in the book about a boy who stuck his hand into a filbert container.
• 41:57
  Let's say like a cookie jar, you know? Okay. A filbert is a kind of a nut that at the time of
• 42:03
  the writing of this was the equivalent of a cookie, a sweet treat, the filbert. Boy reaches in,
• 42:10
  grabs a handful of filbert, tries to pull his hand out, it's like a vase with a thin neck,
• 42:16
  and he can't get it out unless he releases some of the filberts, which he's unwilling to do.
• 42:22
  You can, if you released a button, you could take out a couple, you could take out one at a time,
• 42:25
  but you can't get your whole fistful of filberts out of there. And I feel like, frequently,
• 42:31
  we, I'll speak for myself, I am sometimes holding on to, you know, parts of my identity,
• 42:37
  literal belongings that I have in my home or just all kinds of things that would better serve me
• 42:44
  if I let them go. That's nice. It's coming across, it's coming across the trance, and again,
• 42:53
  I'm going to have to look up trance before we're done. A filbert, a filbert is a cultivated hazel
• 42:59
  tree that bears edible oval nuts and also the nut of the filbert tree. The, the etymology is that
• 43:08
  it comes from middle English, filbert, from Anglo-Norman French, filbert, from meaning no
• 43:15
  de filbert, so named, because it ripens around the 20th of August, which is the feast day of
• 43:22
  Saint-Filbert. So they ripened on the feast day of Saint-Filbert, so they called it a filbert,
• 43:28
  hence a filbert hazel nut. I like it a lot. Well, that doesn't sound like a very delicious treat,
• 43:35
  not as delicious as a cookie. No, so I mean hazel nut is in Nutella, right? That's, I understand,
• 43:43
  it's maybe not doing the full hazel nut. It's not carrying the heavy lifting in the Nutella. I
• 43:48
  believe the sugar and chocolate is contributing there. Well, something you said, Mike, that I thought
• 43:52
  that stoked my, that peak interest was that we are identity machines or something like that,
• 44:00
  and it reminded me that we're not just identity machines, but in addition to all that you say
• 44:07
  that is very wise about our possessions and our being to obsessed with things and us and ourselves,
• 44:16
  we are also meaning-making machines, which is an insight that I sort of got from studying
• 44:23
  secular Buddhism, and indeed doing ayahuasca, which you kindly introduced me to, which we
• 44:28
  want to get to in just a second anyway, and see if you're still doing it. But the, and also,
• 44:33
  I should shout out to Landmark, you know, the Landmark Forum, and like Landmark Education,
• 44:38
  have you heard of this outfit? You know, they do, they used to be asked in the 60s,
• 44:41
  the kind of San Francisco hippie thing, and now it's like this personal development company,
• 44:45
  but it's basically sort of secular Buddhism and Stoicism repackaged into a modern form,
• 44:49
  very useful for many people. And the basic insight being that our brains have just evolved to
• 44:56
  spend a lot of time worrying away, regretting the past, and worrying about the future. And we spend
• 45:04
  very little time, is the channeling Eckhart Tolly here as well, on a little mention. It's been very
• 45:09
  little time just existing in the actual present. So the present never actually exists, so we never
• 45:15
  really actually live our lives, because we're always just ruminating on the way that things should have
• 45:20
  gone and didn't, and in the way that things might have, might go and won't. You know what I mean?
• 45:27
  I 100% know you mean. All right. How are you still doing my Oscar?
• 45:33
  Great question. But first, let me just put a button on this. And so the special is on dry bar. And
• 45:40
  it's called live from the universe. And you can, if you want, use the promo code Mike Kaplan spelled
• 45:50
  the way that I spell it on their website. Get a free month, watch it, and whatever you like. And
• 45:55
  also I did mention briefly that I have this other album that came out widely this year that is called
• 46:02
  live in between albums. And it is, in some ways, the very flip side of the concerns that you had
• 46:11
  about the dry bar special. I won't say that it is full of filth, but there was nobody telling me
• 46:17
  that it needed to be of a certain, but that I could, I said what I wanted to say. This is the
• 46:25
  fuck the Mormons special. In fact, it's not that there's actually, it's actually pretty clean as well.
• 46:31
  But it is available pretty much all of the streaming places. And it is completely different than any
• 46:40
  other album. If you've heard all of my albums except for live in between albums, then you'll be
• 46:45
  pleasantly surprised that live in between albums shares no jokes in common with any of the other albums.
• 46:51
  While I'm looking forward to both of those, as much as I'm looking forward to a fresh jar of
• 46:56
  fill bales who later on today, Mike. And perhaps the sweet, sweet answer to your question.
• 47:03
  The answer in some ways is, I mean, yes, I am still doing Iowaska with less regularity of late.
• 47:13
  Like I think there was a time, and I think I started almost a decade ago, probably 2014 was my
• 47:19
  first time doing it. And it was very meaningful in ways that encouraged me to do it many times.
• 47:26
  Probably, I don't know at what point I'll stop saying this, but I bet that in the past 10 years,
• 47:32
  I've done it a high double digit number of times. And at some point, it might be a triple digit.
• 47:38
  It might be a triple digit now. Yeah, I feel like in the past 10 years, there were definitely years
• 47:46
  where I did it 10 times. But probably, I think we're not there yet. But probably in the next decade,
• 47:53
  if I continue, but one never knows. I think that in the past year, I did it twice.
• 48:01
  That's not nearly as many as high triple digits. Yes, that's my double digits. Not high triple digits.
• 48:07
  You haven't done it a thousand times. That's correct. I absolutely, I would say the triple digit number
• 48:14
  that is closest to the amount that I would estimate I've done it is a hundred, which is the
• 48:20
  lowest of all your triple digit numbers. That's true. Yeah. In fact, my son told me the other day
• 48:26
  that the only number that has three numbers in it is 100. Wow. So I slapped him. I mean,
• 48:34
  I said, that's not true. I bet you didn't. God damn lie. Do it. All of that. But I will say
• 48:40
  that here's my new listing on trusted sources is baritone day smithsonian your son.
• 48:48
  Don't follow him on that. What do you call it? It's not numerology. What do you call the study of
• 48:55
  numbers? Oh, yeah, that's a good question. Math? I guess math would be a good term for it,
• 49:03
  wouldn't it? And what is it about the ayahuasca that it does to you that you found compelling?
• 49:09
  Sure. Thank you for asking. I mean, one, the first experience that I had with the first two
• 49:14
  experiences I had with it were beautiful, meaningful, like love fest in a way that I felt like I was
• 49:22
  purely made of love. And, you know, it is, it is a psychedelic. It is, as some call, an
• 49:28
  enthyogen, which I believe is the definition would be like a psychedelic, but for spiritual purposes.
• 49:35
  It really opened my eyes to things. There are two major categories of the insights that it has
• 49:46
  offered me and friends that have done it that I've had these discussions with. A woman that I
• 49:51
  was seeing at the time described sort of we divided into life coaching and death coaching. And so
• 50:00
  some of it is has like, I think the functionality of meditation, of therapy, of, you know, any,
• 50:08
  any number of, you know, advice columns, like any, any ways that if you're trying to improve your
• 50:15
  life or seek answers or meaning as we are meaning makers, I think that there are practical elements
• 50:23
  to it. And then there are, I would say before I did Ayahuasca, I was much more, I would, here's a
• 50:33
  joke that I tell now. Yeah. I say, I used to say that I was an atheist. And now I'm like, why do we
• 50:41
  have to talk about it? Because I brought it up fair enough. And it really depends, again, on your
• 50:47
  definitions, like God has certainly a lot of the term has a lot of connotations and baggage and
• 50:54
  depending how you were raised and what God or God's you're talking about or what meaning, what
• 50:59
  religion, what path. But I have, there's a friend of mine who's a rabbi and who also, I believe,
• 51:04
  teaches Buddhist meditation. He once said to me on my podcast, he said, God does not exist.
• 51:12
  God is existence. And I like that. I like because I have to say that I have a Larry David
• 51:22
  shrug towards that one. And because this doesn't mean, doesn't it mean? Well, this is always,
• 51:28
  this gets slippery though. You know, it's like if you want to, but if you want to say that if you
• 51:32
  want to be a rabbi and you want to devote your life to God, stop being so slippery to say he
• 51:39
  exists because if God is existence, well, that's great. But then we're just playing a word game,
• 51:44
  aren't we? Well, I think that we're not just playing a word game. I think that the word game,
• 51:51
  that he that you are assessing his words to be a part of is aiming to get at something akin to
• 52:01
  the Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao. That there is, there are truths that literally words
• 52:08
  cannot describe and that that is, that God is a word just like that as well. And that to say,
• 52:16
  God exists. Here's another relevant tidbit that I like in listening to Alan Watts, who I really
• 52:23
  enjoy. Alan Watts once described, I don't know if it was Suzuki Roshi specifically a particular,
• 52:31
  a Buddhist teacher that may have been Suzuki Roshi. Once was asked, do you believe in God? And he said,
• 52:38
  if you do, I don't and if you don't, I do. And I think that there is valuable, meaningful wisdom
• 52:47
  in that that ties back to the very discussion that I feel like you were into earlier when we were
• 52:52
  talking about that we are rivers, that we are shifting, that we are changing, and that there is
• 52:58
  no, we cannot get one answer to hold on to because, you know, it's sort of like if I asked you,
• 53:04
  are you tall compared to what compared to a child compared to a giant? The answer is different.
• 53:09
  Can I say compared to a child? Yes, because that way I'll come out a tola. Yes.
• 53:14
  I would compare it to a giant, in which case I would feel small and inadequate in this vast empty
• 53:20
  cosmos of ours. Absolutely. Godless, stinky blackness in which we find ourselves. I agree with all
• 53:28
  of that. I guess the reason I had such a knee jerk, violent and visceral reaction and had to
• 53:36
  restrain myself from throwing furniture is that people who devote themselves to the pursuit of a
• 53:41
  particular dogma, a particular religious creed that has certain fact claims about history,
• 53:48
  about whether or not they're the red sea parted and whether or not you're supposed to say particular
• 53:54
  holy words in some strange tongue over something or other to make something happen to the universe
• 54:00
  and whether or not the creator of the universe intervenes in magical ways in our lives.
• 54:06
  People who devote themselves to that, I just feel like, well, if you're going to do all that,
• 54:10
  then at least have the decency to believe it. You know, don't come at me with a hodge podge of
• 54:15
  kind of furry, fluffy marshmallow cool whip nonsense at me. Just say the Yahweh exists,
• 54:23
  and he created the universe, and it's a here for us. Otherwise, don't be a rabbi.
• 54:29
  Well, I think that's the thing is, I think, Josh, are you a Jewish person?
• 54:34
  Yeah, I'm a Jewish ancestry, yes.
• 54:37
  So I feel like it's for this, well, sure. I got that going for me.
• 54:41
  Absolutely. And I feel like, do you know this thing? There's a joke of mine that I've been
• 54:47
  working on recently that I won't tell, but there's a kinship in the joke to this old chestnut or
• 54:54
  filbert, if you will, that the idea that Jews might say, for any Jewish person that is more
• 55:03
  religious than you, they are a fanatic. And for any religious person who is less Jewish than you,
• 55:11
  they are not even Jewish. And that is true of all religions, right? I mean, that's true.
• 55:18
  Absolutely. Christians, that's certainly true of your Muslims who seem to get very hot onto
• 55:23
  the collar many of them when their colleagues are insufficiently doctrinal.
• 55:27
  Well, well, let me bring us back to Buddhism for a moment, which some might say is not even a
• 55:32
  religion. And I might be among them. And but there is two things from Buddhism that I will offer
• 55:40
  from the aforementioned Suzuki Roshi, which I believe, given name, Shunryu Suzuki. He has many
• 55:46
  quotes I love. I got a book of his quotes recently, the first of which that I always paraphrase,
• 55:51
  and I want to get it exactly right, but he says, you are all, each of you is perfect exactly
• 55:57
  as you are, and you could stand some improvement. That's one that I really love. And number two,
• 56:04
  let's see, I'll get to a tree falls in the forest momentarily and his response to it. But the second
• 56:10
  thing is that he says a thing about two non Buddhists, there are Buddhists and non Buddhists,
• 56:17
  but to Buddhists, all are Buddhists, even bugs. And so I think that in that framing, that's a bit
• 56:26
  arrogant, isn't it? I mean, that's a bit. That's like, I mean, isn't that a bit like the Christian
• 56:33
  evangelical who, like I was at a, I was sitting at a poker, I was sitting at a blackjack table,
• 56:39
  actually, it wasn't poker. It was a blackjack table in Las Vegas. If you heard of Las Vegas,
• 56:42
  lovely town, I have heard of it. I was sitting there and I was playing some of the old blackjack,
• 56:49
  and I jokingly said to my friend, God damn you, and the dealer, she glared at me. And she said,
• 56:57
  we don't take the Lord's name and vein at this table, young man. And I said, oh, I'm sorry,
• 57:04
  where I come from, it's not, that's not considered offensive. And she looks at me and she goes,
• 57:08
  it doesn't matter where you're from, our Lord is everywhere. And I thought, actually,
• 57:15
  it sort of does obviously matter where you're from, because if I was in India, then I wouldn't
• 57:19
  care about your Lord. Your Lord is parochial and belongs to you, and that's all very well. You're
• 57:23
  allowed to believe in him, her it, but don't impose your dogma on everybody else. So where does the
• 57:30
  Buddhists get off claiming a beetle? Well, I'll answer, I think that number one, I hear you,
• 57:36
  and I'm on, in this story, I'm on your side. And also, I'm on all sides, but I would say,
• 57:45
  I would say that blackjack dealer was a Buddhist as well. This is all to say,
• 57:52
  a couple things. Number one, I think that what that blackjack dealer was saying, like that was
• 57:57
  being prescriptivist in a way that is unkind and I think misguided. And I think that this Buddhist
• 58:08
  teacher who said that the Buddhist sees everyone as Buddhists, that is not prescriptive. They're not
• 58:13
  going around telling anyone that they have to do anything differently. They're not even saying,
• 58:17
  look, I think if he said that and you heard him and was like, hey, I don't, I have an issue with
• 58:22
  that. Then he would be like, oh, yeah, never mind. Forget about it. Like 100% he would react in the
• 58:28
  moment as such as, I mean, maybe I'm projecting. I'm like, yeah, don't even worry about it. But
• 58:33
  this is all to say in the same book of people's remembrances of things that Suzuki Roshi said,
• 58:40
  somebody a student once went to him and said, okay, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's there
• 58:45
  to hear it, does it make a sound? And do you know what Suzuki Roshi's answer was?
• 58:50
  What no? It doesn't matter. And so I really think that the question of the exact definition of
• 58:59
  seemingly potentially undefinable things and concepts like God, like those are like ultimately,
• 59:07
  I mean, fun to talk about, fun for linguistics, fun for philosophy, fun for discussions and playing
• 59:14
  around. But also like the ultimate truth, if there is an ultimate truth in Buddhism or in most
• 59:20
  religions is like, you know, kindness, love, compassion. Those are the things like to. And
• 59:26
  recruiting all the Beatles into their faith. I don't think that they're gonna be recruited.
• 59:33
  And this is just for our paid subscribers now because the rest of people, I know that you have
• 59:39
  to go and do some stand-up comedy. Yes. And the rest of our listeners have to have to go. So
• 59:43
  thank you, Mike Kaplan, for being on the show. To hear the rest of this conversation, go to
• 59:48
  uncomfortableconversations.substac.com slash listen and you will get your own personal premium
• 59:55
  podcast feed with at least three extra episodes of the podcast every month and heaps of extra
• 1:00:01
  stuff, including the remainder right now of the fabulous conversation you've just been hearing.
• 1:00:06
  If it was worth listening to this much of, don't rob yourself of the rest,
• 1:00:11
  well, let your phone light down. And so to run comfortable conversations,
• 1:00:13
  I'm going to talk to you about it.