Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Shane Gillis (2025) - Combat Sports, The American Civil War and Crisis Actors

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Shane Gillis (2025) - Combat Sports, The American Civil War and Crisis Actors · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  And welcome to the deep dive because the source material you
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  sent over this time JREER tag 2431 it.
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  Well, it needs a serious unpacking.
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  It really does. I mean, it's less a single
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  conversation and more a Sprint across, like everything, health,
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  comedy, global politics. Right.
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  And even weird physics. Our mission today is to take
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  that sprawling, super fast-paced discussion and pull out the key
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  takeaways for you. Exactly.
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  We're going to organize the chaos so you can walk away
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  knowing you know what the big ideas were and how they all
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  somehow connect. OK, so we've got a few major
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  threads to pull on. 1st. There's this intense focus on
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  health and aging. Yeah.
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  Than the unwritten rules of the comedy world.
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  And the insane money behind combat sports, which connects to
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  a really serious, impartial look at like, institutional
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  breakdown. So let's start with that first
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  one. The personal stuff, the
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  biological clock, you can really hear it in the source material.
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  It's a huge deal for Rogan. Now he's looking at age 78, the
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  average, and saying that's not that far.
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  Right. And that gap, that 20 years he
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  has left before he's, and I think this was his quote, a dead
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  guy. Yeah, that's the motivator.
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  He's realizing the price you pay for, you know, drinking or
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  living unhealthy. It's not theoretical.
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  It's real. And what's interesting is how
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  quickly the conversation shifts from that feeling, that urgency,
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  to actual examples of people turning it around.
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  Like Jelly Roll? Exactly.
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  Jelly Roll's transformation, losing a massive amount of
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  weight. It frames health not as like a
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  sacrifice, but a serious investment in your future.
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  And that investment idea leads right into something that people
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  of an ignore sleep. Specifically, sleep apnea.
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  Which is terrifying. I mean, if you're overweight,
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  your airway can just close up in the middle of the night and as
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  they put it, you can just slip Into Darkness.
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  It's a totally preventable thing that contributes to people dying
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  early, but they did get into some really practical stuff,
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  like actual solutions. Yeah, first they mentioned the C
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  PAP machine, the continuous positive airway pressure
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  machine. But they also pointed out how
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  hard they are to keep clean. There was that story, that awful
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  story about a relative getting pink eye in both eyes from a
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  filthy machine. Yeah, but the real take away the
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  thing they called a game changer, was much simpler.
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  The mouthpiece. Just a simple mouthpiece.
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  It holds your jaw in place, presses your tongue down and
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  keeps your airway open. He called that little device
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  life altering. And that focus on airflow, on
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  just breathing. It continues into the daytime
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  stuff too. With a deviated septum story.
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  Right, Rogan finally got his fixed in his 40s after breaking
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  his nose what, a bunch of times? Multiple times, yeah, and the
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  result of just being able to breathe through his nose
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  properly. An immediate 10% cardio gain.
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  A 10% gain just from fixing a structural problem you didn't
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  even know was holding you back that much.
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  It really proves the point, you know?
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  For sure you can't out train a fundamental flaw on how your
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  body works. Breathing, sleeping, it all
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  compounds. OK, so moving from the internal
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  structure of the body to the, let's say, the social structure
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  of comedy, let's get into the lore they were talking about.
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  Yeah, let's unpack that because they spent a good chunk of time
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  on that. That universally awkward moment
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  when a fan meets their idol. Oh yeah, the cringing
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  encounters. Totally.
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  There was that story about asking Jon Stewart about his
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  great view. And then immediately knocking
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  over a statue. Yeah, classic.
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  Or that other one asking Sodors if he should even tell people he
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  opened for him. It just shows that huge gap
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  between the legend and the, you know, the actual person.
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  But that dynamic completely flips when you're dealing with
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  the true icons like Dave Chappelle.
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  Right. They described him as being
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  alive through pure laughter, but his whole way of interacting
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  with younger comics is intense. He.
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  Loves to bring them on stage just to shit on them.
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  Yeah, it's like a high stakes training ground.
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  That moment where the host was asked what sex toys he's into on
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  stage in front of everyone. Yeah.
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  That's not just a joke, it's a test.
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  You have to be quick, you have to be funny or you're done.
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  It's a real baptism by fire. The source was also great at
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  painting these little portraits of other characters in that
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  world. Kurt Metzger, for instance.
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  Oh, the encyclopedia of conspiracies.
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  Yeah, who just shows up with two white Claws?
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  And when someone asks him about his next special, he just goes.
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  I don't know, dude. It's perfect.
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  Even the little details like Stanhope going from drinking
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  like White Russians back to just light beer.
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  It shows that constant search for a persona.
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  And you know, if you think about that high pressure, high stakes
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  world of comedy, it actually connects pretty well to the next
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  topic. The physical, high stakes world
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  of combat sport. Exactly, and they did a deep
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  dive on the Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua fight.
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  Everyone's talking about it. Not just cause of the fighters,
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  no. It's the money.
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  The financial side of it is staggering.
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  Right, because the power gap is historic.
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  Joshua is a two time heavyweight champ.
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  He's way bigger, 5 inches taller, faster.
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  Paul is a serious boxer, He's underrated.
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  But this jumping competition is, I mean, crazy is the right word.
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  But that's where the physics stops and the finance takes
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  over. Paul was the huge underdog,
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  right? Plus 650 odds.
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  And he still pulled in 82% of the bets and 90% of the total
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  money wagered on DraftKings. Which means if Paul somehow won,
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  the sports book could lose nearly $100 million. 100
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  million, that kind of money just warps everything, the source
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  said. The only reason the odds weren't
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  like 40 to 1 was the suspicion of shenanigans.
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  Right. It's the market saying the
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  financial incentive for something weird to happen is so
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  big that it's now part of the equation.
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  And from there, the discussion shifted to a more fundamental
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  power difference, specifically between men and women in
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  fighting. Yeah, they brought up someone
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  like Amanda Nunes, who is incredibly powerful but still
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  said the power gap between elite male and female athletes is
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  delusional. And it LED to this weirdly
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  sentimental moment talking about the Iraq video of a man boxing a
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  woman. And the host admitting he has a
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  hard time watching women fighters get badly cut.
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  Yeah, it's like even in a world of sanctioned violence, some
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  physical realities are just visceral.
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  OK, let's pivot from that into the really complex,
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  destabilizing stuff, the geopolitics and information
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  warfare part of the talk. This is where it gets heavy.
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  The running theme here is the deliberate attack on
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  institutional trust. And we have to start with that
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  story about the altered presidential photo plaques, the
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  ones allegedly put up in the White House.
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  Yeah, the text they reported from those plaques is.
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  I mean, it's not subtle. It's pure political messaging in
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  a space that's supposed to be historical and neutral.
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  So the plaque was under Biden's photo, and it called him Sleepy
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  Joe Biden blamed him for unprecedented disasters and the
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  highest inflation ever recorded. And it ends in all caps right?
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  Something like President Trump would get re elected in the
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  landslide and save America. Yeah, and the point isn't just
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  the message itself, it's weaponizing the White House to
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  deliver it. And that kind of distrust feeds
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  right into the next topic, the 2020 Georgia election and the
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  Fulton County dispute. Right in the specific claim they
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  detailed was about 315,000 early vote ballots in Fulton County A.
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  Heavily Democratic area, and the claim is that those ballots were
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  missing the required poll worker signatures on the tabulator
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  tape. Which is a crucial detail
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  because Georgia election law requires those signatures to
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  certify the chain of custody. So the argument isn't
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  necessarily about fraud, but about a flawed legal process.
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  Exactly. It's a claim of an institutional
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  procedure violation, a failure to follow the letter of the law
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  for a huge number of votes. And you see how when that
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  institutional trust breaks down, so does just basic human
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  empathy. You mean with the Rob Reiner
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  family tragedy? Yeah, the lack of compassion
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  from some public figures was shocking, especially when you
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  think about who he is. The director of The Princess
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  Bride? Misery.
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  A few good men. It's like political hate is just
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  overriding common decency. And this idea of replacing truth
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  with a convenient story? That's an old.
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  Pattern like with Benghazi in 2012.
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  Right. The initial narrative was that
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  the attack was a spontaneous protest over that dumb anti
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  Muslim film innocence of Muslim. But intelligence pretty quickly
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  debunked that and confirmed it was an organized terror attack.
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  It just shows how easily a politically useful scapegoat can
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  take hold, you know? For sure.
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  And finally, on this topic, they touched on content control, the
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  Australian ban on social media for kids under 16.
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  So all the big ones are on the restricted list, Facebook,
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  Instagram X TikTok, YouTube. But the interesting thing is
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  what was left off the list. Blue Sky was specifically
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  excluded. Which immediately makes you ask
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  about political bias, right? Why ban all the mainstream
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  platforms but leave a niche, politically charged one open?
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  It suggests the rules might not just be about child safety.
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  OK, let's wrap this up by going down the really bizarre rabbit
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  holes, the stuff about history, technology and dolphins.
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  We have to start with the Dolphin House, right?
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  The John C Lilly Research from the 60s.
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  I mean, the premise alone is wild.
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  You have scientists on ketamine trying to teach dolphins how to
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  talk in a house that's half flooded with water.
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  But the reason the project got shut down is it's beyond absurd.
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  It turned out the researcher, the woman living with the
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  dolphin, she had to, well, she had to sexually stimulate the
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  dolphin to keep it focused on the lesson.
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  She had to Jack the dolphin off. I mean, it's a level of weird
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  that makes you question everything about science funding
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  in the 1960s. And that bizarre detail leads to
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  an even darker truth about dolphins they discussed.
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  Infanticide. Yeah.
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  Male dolphins will kill the babies of females they haven't
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  mated with, which in turn forces the females to be super
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  promiscuous to confuse the paternity and protect their
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  young. Nature is just brutal.
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  And Speaking of bizarre human behavior, they talked about the
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  Civil War swabs. Oh right, the Union soldiers,
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  mostly from New York and Chicago, who dressed in these
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  flashy North African inspired uniforms.
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  It was basically military high fashion and the stories about
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  them were just as flamboyant. The descriptions of their
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  physical skills were insane. They were supposed able to jump
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  17 feet high and shoot a playing card while doing a somersault.
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  It's just total spectacle, pure recruitment propaganda.
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  Which brings us to maybe the biggest paradox of all, Fritz
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  Haber. The Jewish chemist who invented
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  the Haber method. It pulls nitrogen from the air,
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  revolutionizes fertilizer. And is credited with feeding
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  half the world's population a life saving invention.
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  But at the same time, he was inventing chemical weapons for
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  World War One, including Cyclone B, used with fans against Allied
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  troops. So he was wanted for war crimes
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  while also being nominated for a Nobel Prize, which he won.
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  The creator and the Destroyer all in one person.
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  It's staggering. And that theme, that convergence
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  of creation and destruction, it leads to the final terrifying
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  tech idea from the discussion. The UFO back engineering stuff,
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  yeah. The premise being that this
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  reverse engineering led to the concept of an instantaneous
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  nuclear payload delivery system. A system that uses gravity
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  propulsion to put a nuke anywhere on earth instantly.
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  And they link the timing of these tech leaps fiber optics
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  transistors back to Roswell in 19, 47.
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  So what does all this mean for you?
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  We've gone from, you know, fixing your nose to get better
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  cardio to dolphin sex research to a total breakdown in
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  political trust. This source material is just
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  it's a snapshot of our weird modern information landscape,
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  where the deeply personal sits right next to the globally
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  catastrophic. And that brings us to our final
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  provocative thought for you to chew on.
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  If this conversation is right, and the intelligence community's
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  first instinct on seeing advanced alien tech was to
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  figure out how to weaponize it, how to turn it into an
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  instantaneous nuclear payload delivery system.
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  Then what does that really say about our priorities as a
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  civilization? It makes you wonder if our
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  capacity for war will always, you know, outpace our capacity
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  for discovery. Think about that.
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  Thank you for sharing your sources and taking this deep
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  dive with us. We'll see you next time.