Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Action Bronson (2026) - Ancient Relics and the Rise of the Machines

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Action Bronson (2026) - Ancient Relics and the Rise of the Machines · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap, and before we get going, please
• 0:03
  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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  So I want you to just imagine this for a second.
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  You walk into a smoky, dimly lit pool hall, right?
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  OK, yeah, I'm picturing it. You rack up the balls, you chalk
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  your cue and you break. But the cue in your hands?
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  It's not made of wood. It's not fiberglass.
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  It is crafted entirely out of the tooth of a 10,000 year old
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  extinct woolly mammoth. Which just sounds completely
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  absurd, like like something out of a fantasy novel.
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  Exactly, but it's actually happening right now.
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  It really is. And, you know, that perfectly
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  captures the essence of what we're doing today.
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  In this deep dive, we're exploring just completely
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  untamed landscape of human history, science, culture, all
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  kind of sparked by this wildly unstructured conversation
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  featuring the rapper and personality Action Bronson.
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  Yeah, we are going everywhere today, from those 10,000 year
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  old mammoth teeth and massive hidden pyramids to the
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  existential dread of modern artificial intelligence.
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  Oh, and the brutal physical reality of UFC fighters, too.
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  Right, all the way out to supermassive black holes that
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  quite literally break the mathematical timeline of our
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  universe. So if you're listening to this
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  right now, buckle up. Seriously.
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  Because by the time we finish this conversation, your
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  perspective on human history and your physical place in the
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  universe is going to be completely challenged.
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  It really is. And you know, let's start with
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  that mammoth tooth pool cue because it highlights something
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  really profound about our tactile relationship with
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  history. We have this expectation that
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  ancient artifacts belong strictly, you know, behind the
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  glass in climate controlled museum exhibits with little
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  bronze plaque. Sure, guarded by security.
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  Right, but the reality is that the permafrost in places like
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  Siberia is yielding such an overwhelming abundance of frozen
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  woolly mammoth remains that while they are all treated as
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  priceless relics, people are turning 10,000 year old ivory
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  into everyday functional items. Like you see grips for 1911
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  pistols, handles for folding pocket knives, I even saw piano
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  keys. It's wild.
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  It's crazy to think you could be walking around with a remnants
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  of an Ice Age behemoth in your front pocket just to open Amazon
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  packages. I mean, it ties directly into
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  this human compulsion for male accessories, or what you might
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  playfully call tchotchkes. Just ornamental trinkets.
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  Oh yeah, like ankle jewelry on vacation, Custom watches,
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  Elaborate knives. Exactly.
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  Humans have always possessed this deep seated psychological
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  need to craft and carry items of status.
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  We leave these physical markers of intention behind everywhere
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  we go. And that compulsion?
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  It scales up dramatically. We go from carrying history in
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  our pockets to literally walking right over it without even
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  realizing. Like, look at Tuta walking in
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  Mexico City. You have this ancient,
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  sprawling, just mysterious city sitting at an elevation of
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  10,000 feet. And today, they're around 10
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  million people living in the surrounding metropolitan area,
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  just going about their modern lives, breathing that thin air,
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  buying groceries, commuting. Just normal everyday stuff.
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  Yeah, and sitting right in the middle of all that are these
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  massive ancient stone heads carvings depicting warriors
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  wearing helmets that look almost Polynesian or African.
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  And the mystery is that we don't know exactly who carved them, or
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  what they called themselves, or even what language they spoke.
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  We just inherited their architecture.
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  It's so strange. It perfectly illustrates the
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  phenomenon of cities built on top of cities.
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  Like there is this famous 1800s church in Italy that features a
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  glass floor. Oh, I've heard of this.
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  Yeah, when you stand on it and look down, you are staring
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  directly into the ruins of another thousand year old church
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  built right underneath it. I love that concept because it's
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  actually so relatable. How so?
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  Well, think about a modern homeowner who buys a house,
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  pulls up the carpet, finds an incredibly ugly hardwood floor,
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  and instead of taking the time to RIP it out, they just tile
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  right over it because you know it has good bones.
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  That is a perfect analogy. Ancient civilizations operated
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  on the exact same logic. They found a site with good
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  geography or spiritual significance, and they just
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  slapped their new society right on top of the old one.
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  Exactly, and the artifacts buried in those layers tell us
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  exactly how those societies function and maintained order
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  like ancient tchotchkes weren't just decorative.
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  What were they used for? They were functional tools for
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  social engineering. You find these voluptuous
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  fertility statues that biologically dictated the
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  cultural ideal of the nurturing, life giving woman.
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  Or you unearth terrifying figurines of witch doctors
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  holding severed skulls. Which is terrifying.
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  Right, but they were designed specifically to instill fear and
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  establish absolute religious authority.
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  And sometimes those ancient sacred spaces violently collide
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  with our modern world in bizarre ways.
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  Look at their recent shooting incident at the Sun Temple in
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  Mexico. Oh, man, yeah, you have this
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  ancient archaeological site, a place of immense historical
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  reverence, and suddenly this unhinged individual hopping on
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  one leg opens fire. Yeah, and shoots a Taurus right
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  in the Achilles tendon. It's entirely surreal.
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  It's just a completely random act of modern violence bleeding
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  directly in the ancient dirt. Which brings up a massive
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  question for me. What's?
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  That. If we are just living on top of
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  old ruins tiling over the past, how far back does the human
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  story actually go? Because the timeline seems to be
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  stretching further back every day.
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  It really is. It's stretching back by hundreds
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  of thousands of years. Like there is compelling new
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  evidence suggesting that archaic hominids were actually using
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  seafaring boats up to 450,000 years ago.
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  Wait. Really.
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  Yeah, that is vastly earlier than Homo sapiens even appeared
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  in the fossil record. That number is staggering
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  450,000 years ago and the biological mechanism for how
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  they figured this out is fascinating.
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  The polar bear thing, right? Exactly.
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  The working theory is that early hominids might have watched the
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  behavior of polar bears because a polar bear will break off a
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  chunk of ice, hop on it to float across open water, and literally
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  use its massive paws as biological rudders to steer.
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  That's incredible. Right.
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  If a bear can reverse engineer the mechanics of a raft, it
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  makes total sense that our ancestors could look at a
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  floating tree trunk and make the exact same cognitive leap.
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  But the timeline of our ancestors gets even more
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  complicated and honestly controversial when we look at
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  our genetics. OK, lay it on me.
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  So there is a radical theory circulating that completely
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  flips the traditional evolutionary tree on its head.
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  Usually we're taught that early humans interacted with
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  Neanderthals and eventually out competed or bred them out of
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  existence. Yeah, that's what we learned in
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  school. Right.
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  But some genetic researchers suggest that modern humans might
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  have actually created Neanderthals.
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  OK, wait, I have to push back on that.
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  How does a species mathematically create another
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  species that we historically view as our primitive
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  predecessors? Well, the theory posits that
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  early Homo sapiens bred with an even older, currently unknown
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  hominid species, and the Neanderthal was the resulting
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  hybrid offspring. And it's important to reframe
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  how we view Neanderthals. They weren't just lumbering
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  stupid brutes. Mechanically they were
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  incredibly advanced. They stood about 5 foot 7, but
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  they possessed incredibly dense bone structures, immense
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  chimpanzee like muscle density, and brains that were
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  volumetrically larger than ours. That is wild.
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  It just shows how many missing puzzle pieces there are in the
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  fossil record. And Speaking of massive missing
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  pieces, let's talk about the scans of Mount Ararat in Turkey.
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  Yes, the Noah's Ark connection. Exactly this is where the story
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  of Noah's Ark comes into play. So using deep ground penetrating
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  radar on Mount Ararat at an elevation of 6500 feet,
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  researchers have detected a massive rock formation and it
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  perfectly mirrors the dimensions and whole shape of an enormous
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  seafaring vessel. A giant boat on a mountain.
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  Yeah, the radar even shows what appeared to be structural
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  symmetrical hallmarks inside the formation that just don't occur
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  naturally in geology. And to make the biblical
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  connection even stranger, it's purportedly tied to Acacia wood.
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  Now, supposedly the Ark was constructed from Acacia wood,
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  but Acacia is also the exact same species of wood associated
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  with the burning Bush that Moses interacted with.
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  And here's the kicker. Acacia wood is naturally
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  incredibly rich in DMT. Oh wow.
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  Yeah. For those who might be
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  unfamiliar, DMT or NN dimethyltryptamine is a
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  profoundly potent psychedelic compound that occurs naturally
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  in many plants and animals. The spirit molecule.
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  Exactly when consumed or inhaled, it induces intense
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  reality altering hallucinations. Are you seriously telling me
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  that Moses talking to the burning Bush and receiving the
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  foundational laws of human morality was just the result of
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  a guy inhaling DMT smoke and having a massive psychedelic
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  trip? It challenges our literal
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  interpretations, absolutely, but historically speaking, the
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  ingestion of psychoactive compounds has been the
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  foundational mechanism for visionary religious experiences
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  in countless cultures. So it makes sense.
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  Yeah, it's entirely biologically plausible that an altered state
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  of consciousness catalyzed those texts.
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  I don't know man, a boat perfectly fossilized 6500 feet
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  up a Turkish mountain. The 10 commandments being a DMT
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  trip. It legitimately makes me think
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  of the simulation theory. You think so?
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  Yeah, Are we just living in an incredibly advanced AI
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  simulation that deliberately glitches to see what ridiculous
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  things will believe? Well, whether or not the
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  universe is a simulation, we are currently being forced to
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  confront the actual artificial intelligence reshaping our
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  physical reality right now. And this is where things get
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  intensely practical. So Action Bronson, who by the
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  way, is a talented artist who meticulously draws his own album
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  covers, he decided to use an AI image generator to make a
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  picture of a frog holding popsicles purely for a laugh.
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  And people freaked out. The Internet absolutely lost its
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  mind. People were furious, immediately
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  accusing him of stealing jobs from real artists.
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  But that intense backlash isn't really about a frog with
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  popsicles. No, it reveals a deep
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  existential societal anxiety. AI is currently operating like a
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  2000 foot tidal wave moving at 100 mph hour toward the shore.
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  It cannot be negotiated with and it cannot be stopped.
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  That's a terrifying image. The terror stems from the
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  realization that AI isn't just automating physical labor, it's
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  automating creativity. People are terrified of being
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  reduced to nothing more than biological time cards in a world
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  where machines can dream better than we can.
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  So if you are standing on the beach watching a 2000 foot
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  digital wave crash down, what is the survival mechanism?
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  What did Bronson do? Well, for Bronson, the answer
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  was radical physical grounding. He didn't retreat into the
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  digital space, He went the opposite direction.
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  He dropped his way down to 265 lbs by forcing his body through
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  the most grueling, awkward physical movement possible.
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  He essentially used pain and physical resistance as an anchor
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  to reality. You can generate a picture of a
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  frog in three seconds, but you cannot artificially simulate the
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  friction of carrying 100 LB sandbag up a hill.
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  Exactly. He's out there swinging heavy
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  maces and doing these. Bizarre Figure 8 movements
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  around his head with kettle bells just to rebuild the core
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  stabilizers in his spine. But the most brutal mechanism he
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  uses is the Zercher squat. Oh yeah, the bio mechanics of
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  the Zercher squat are fascinating.
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  They look off. They do, because instead of
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  resting a heavy barbell comfortably across the meaty
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  part of your upper back, you hold the barbell right in the
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  crooks of your elbows. You just cradle it against your
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  chest and then you squat down. It looks insanely painful.
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  Why on earth would someone choose to hold weight like that?
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  Because of how it forces the central nervous system to react
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  by front loading the weight so awkwardly, your core and upper
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  back have to engage in a state of sheer panic just to keep you
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  from collapsing forward. Oh, so it's a survival response?
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  Exactly. It perfectly mimics the
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  mechanical demands of MMA grappling, where you are trying
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  to physically manipulate another human being's dead weight, and
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  that sheer primal examination triggers a massive boost in
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  natural testosterone. And he paired that physical
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  torture with a complete dietary overhaul.
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  He went from consuming endless mountains of pasta, joking that
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  he had already eaten enough for 45 lifetimes, to treating food
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  strictly as mechanical fuel just.
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  Sweet potatoes and dense game meat.
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  It's a complete reclamation of biological control in an era
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  where we feel entirely out of control.
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  But here is the paradox. No matter how many Zercher
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  squats you do, or how perfectly you calibrate your game meat
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  diet, the human physical form remains terrifyingly fragile.
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  And I want to ask you, the listener, a serious question
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  about this. Think about your daily routine.
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  How much of your life is quietly dictated by trying not to
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  accidentally ruin it? Yeah, just avoiding catastrophe.
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  You watch your step on the ice. You look both ways.
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  You lift with your knees. The cardinal rule of human
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  existence is just trying not to shoot yourself in the foot for
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  absolutely no reason. And nowhere is that paradox of
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  extreme physical preparation meeting random devastating
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  fragility more parent than inside the UFC Octagon.
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  Let's look at the bio mechanics of the Carlos Olberg fight.
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  That was an unbelievable moment of human ferocity.
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  Olberg is in the middle of a wild scramble.
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  He plants his foot of a slightly wrong angle and you can
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  literally see his ACL completely blow out.
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  The structural integrity of his knee just vanishes.
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  Completely gone. 99% of humans would hit the canvas screaming
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  in agony. Olberg doesn't even blink.
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  He just powers through it. He keeps his composure, shifts
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  his entire weight to balance on his one good leg, and as his
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  opponent rushes in for the bill, Olberg throws a mechanically
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  perfect left check hook and knocks him out cold.
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  He won a championship level fight while standing on a
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  destroyed joint. It's the absolute zenith of
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  human capability. But then you contrast that peak
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  ferocity with the absurdity of Johnnie Walker.
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  Oh man, this one is rough. It really is.
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  Johnnie Walker wins a massive fight.
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  The adrenaline is pumping and he decides to celebrate by doing
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  the worm dance move in the middle of the Octagon.
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  He throws his chest toward the mat and completely blows out his
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  own shoulder. Just.
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  Awful A career altering, devastating surgical injury
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  caused by a celebratory dance move.
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  It perfectly illustrates the razor thin line between the body
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  as a weapon and the body as a liability.
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  You have Khalil Roundtree utilizing a brutal Muay Thai
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  sidekick to intentionally hyperextend and destroy an
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  opponent's knee. Vicious.
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  And in the same breath you have Alex Pereira stepping into a
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  championship fight wing 263 lbs, looking like an indestructible
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  Amazonian warrior, yet he is privately battling a severe
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  invisible neurovirus that is absolutely destroying his immune
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  system from the inside out. And it's not just elite fighters
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  who have to worry about this. A casual Sunday walk in the
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  woods can permanently alter your life because of microscopic
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  biology, Specifically ticks. Ticks.
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  The mechanics of tick borne illnesses are a perfect example
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  of our biological vulnerability. Take alpha gall syndrome, which
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  is transmitted by the bite of the Lone Star tick.
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  This one is terrifying. How exactly does a bug the size
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  of a sesame seed make you allergic to a steak?
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  Well, when the tick bites you, it transmits a specific sugar
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  molecule called alpha gal into your bloodstream.
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  Your immune system recognizes this foreign sugar and produces
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  a massive army of antibodies to fight it.
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  Seems normal so far. Right.
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  The problem is that exact same sugar molecule naturally exists
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  in the meat of all mammals, Beef, pork, lamb.
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  So the next time you eat a burger, you're hyper sensitized,
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  immune system flags it as a lethal threat, and you go into
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  severe anaphylactic shock. That is insane.
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  One tiny bite and you can never eat red meat again.
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  You spend your life trying to build muscle and ground yourself
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  in reality and a pinhead sized bug completely rewrites your
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  immune system. Or look at Lyme disease or
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  Guillain Barre syndrome. Oh.
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  Guillain Barre is awful. It's an autoimmune disorder
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  where your body's immune system actually attacks your own
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  nerves, causing muscle weakness and paralysis.
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  It recently paralyzed half of comedian Andrew Dice Clay's
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  face, making it look exactly like Ball's palsy.
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  We are entirely at the mercy of our microscopic biology.
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  But the illusion of human control doesn't end at the
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  microscopic level. We also have to zoom out because
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  we are equally at the mercy of massive urban ecosystems in
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  cosmic structures that we barely comprehend.
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  Yeah, let's look at the urban ecosystem first.
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  And just a quick reminder, we are reporting these details
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  exactly as they appear in the source material, stating the
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  facts neutrally without taking any political sides.
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  Right, totally neutral. But during a recent sanitation
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  strike in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams initiated a severe
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  crackdown on trash, implementing A mandate that requires
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  residents to purchase specific $100 garbage cans to combat the
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  rat infestation. But the rats aren't just an
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  infestation. They are a highly evolved,
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  deeply entrenched ecosystem. They have adapted over centuries
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  to live entirely symbiotically with human waste.
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  They depend on us. Absolutely.
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  If you want to see how fragile our urban environment is, look
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  at what happened during the pandemic lockdowns.
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  When the restaurants closed and the dumpsters went empty, The
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  rat population's food source vanished overnight.
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  What do they do? Driven by starvation, the rats
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  immediately turned on each other, engaging in brutal turf
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  wars and cannibalism just beneath the empty streets.
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  It's a sobering reminder that we don't actually run the world, we
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  just provide the garbage for the creatures that do.
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  If you want proof, look at the biomass statistics.
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  Oh, the. Statistics is crazy.
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  Biomass is the total weight of a given species on Earth.
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  If you put every single human being on one side of a giant
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  scale, and all the insects on Earth on the other side, the
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  insects would launch us into the stratosphere.
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  Yeah, ants alone make up approximately 20% of the human
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  biomass equivalent. The biological reality is that
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  Earth is and always has been an insect planet.
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  We are simply a highly destructive guest species.
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  And that sense of being completely overwhelmed by things
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  larger than ourselves extends to human secrecy too, the
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  phenomenon of top tier scientists and UFO researchers
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  just vanishing into thin air. Again, remaining totally neutral
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  regarding the politics, the source material points to hacked
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  emails from John Podesta that mention an Air Force general
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  named Casland. OK, who is he?
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  This was a man who supposedly ran the Wright Patterson Lab,
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  which is historically the exact facility tied to the analysis of
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  the Roswell crash materials. The details of his disappearance
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  are chilling. One day, this highly decorated,
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  brilliant military mind leaves his house.
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  He doesn't take his phone. He doesn't take his wallet.
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  He takes nothing but a .38 caliber revolver and a red
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  backpack, walks out the door, and vanishes entirely.
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  Despite massive FBI manhunts and advanced drone searches, he was
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  never found. And he isn't an isolated case.
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  Look at Monica Rez, she was a brilliant scientist and the Co
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  inventor of Mandaloy. What's Mandaloy?
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  It's a highly advanced classified metal alloy currently
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  utilized in the extreme temperatures of rocket engines.
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  She was out for a hike, turned a corner on a trail and simply
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  ceased to exist. It really creates this intense
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  friction. What happens when the human mind
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  discovers A mechanism or a secret that it simply isn't
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  supposed to know? Especially when you consider how
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  many massive physical structures are still hiding in plain sight
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  right under our noses. Right, because we think we have
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  the globe perfectly mapped. But satellite imaging utilizing
• 19:49
  lidar recently uncovered the geometric perfection of a
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  massive, ancient pyramid hidden deep beneath the canopy of the
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  Amazon jungle. Just sitting there.
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  Yeah, sitting directly inside territory controlled by
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  uncontacted tribes. Or look at the Giza Plateau in
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  Egypt. Ground penetrating radar has
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  detected an enormous anomaly hiding beneath a 108 foot sand
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  dune sitting perfectly opposite the Great Sphinx.
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  Which makes sense historically. Exactly.
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  Many ancient cultures built their monuments and symmetrical
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  pairs to guard spiritual entrances, and researchers
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  heavily suspect this buried anomaly is a second sphinx,
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  potentially carved with the face of a lion.
• 20:27
  We are barely scratching the surface of our own terrestrial
• 20:30
  home. But when you apply that same
• 20:32
  lack of understanding to the cosmos, the scale becomes
• 20:35
  genuinely terrifying. We have to talk about the
• 20:38
  Phoenix, a black hole. OK, I want you to really try to
• 20:41
  visualize this. Think about the distance from
• 20:43
  our Sun all the way to the former planet Pluto.
• 20:47
  That is roughly 3.6 billion miles a.
• 20:49
  Huge distance. Now multiply that vast coal
• 20:52
  distance by 100. That resulting measurement is
• 20:55
  the diameter of the phoenix and black.
• 20:56
  Hole. The sheer physics of it break
• 20:58
  our understanding of reality. Phoenix A is classified as a
• 21:01
  supermassive black hole, and it is actively consuming matter at
• 21:05
  a staggering rate of 60 solar masses every single year. 60
• 21:09
  Suns. It is gobbling up the equivalent
• 21:11
  of 60 of our Suns annually. But the craziest part isn't just
• 21:15
  its size, it's the math behind its existence.
• 21:18
  Exactly if the timeline of the universe since The Big Bang is a
• 21:21
  bathtub filling with water, Phoenix A is an ocean that
• 21:25
  somehow appeared before the faucet was even turned on.
• 21:29
  Wait, how is that possible? Based on our current models of
• 21:31
  astrophysics, there simply hasn't been enough time since
• 21:34
  the dawn of the universe for a black hole to physically consume
• 21:37
  enough matter to grow that gargantuan.
• 21:40
  It completely breaks the mathematical timeline of
• 21:43
  reality. And as if that isn't enough to
• 21:45
  make you feel incredibly small, astrophysicists have also
• 21:48
  realized that our entire Milky Way Galaxy is apparently sitting
• 21:51
  dead center in the middle of a massive cosmic void that is 2
• 21:55
  billion light years across. To empty space.
• 21:58
  We aren't in a bustling cosmic neighborhood.
• 22:00
  We are floating utterly alone in an incredibly vast empty room.
• 22:04
  If we tie all these conceptual threads together, from the
• 22:07
  hidden pyramids in the Amazon and the bio mechanics of a blown
• 22:10
  out knee all the way to a black hole that breaks the laws of
• 22:13
  time, the ultimate take away is absolute humility.
• 22:17
  We really know nothing. Humanity is relentlessly
• 22:20
  confronted by the fragility of our own bodies and the
• 22:23
  terrifying reality of how incredibly little we actually
• 22:27
  understand about the universe we inhabit.
• 22:29
  It is the ultimate reality check.
• 22:31
  We have journeyed from the tactile physical reality of
• 22:34
  carving pool cues out of the ivory of an extinct woolly
• 22:39
  mammoth, navigated the unstoppable, soul crushing
• 22:43
  digital wave of artificial intelligence.
• 22:46
  Explored the microscopic terror of tick bites.
• 22:48
  Yeah, and end up staring into the abyss of a black hole larger
• 22:52
  than our entire solar system. It.
• 22:53
  Forces us to constantly actively re evaluate our place in the
• 22:57
  timeline of the universe. It really does.
• 22:59
  Which leaves me with one final thought for you to chew on
• 23:01
  today. Earlier we talked about ancient
• 23:03
  peoples constructing massive stone heads in Teo to Walken and
• 23:06
  how modern homeowners just casually tile over old floors
• 23:09
  that have good bones. I want you to imagine a
• 23:12
  completely new human civilization 10,000 years from
• 23:15
  right now if they were to dig up the ruins of our current world.
• 23:20
  What they view are glowing fiber optic cables and our massive,
• 23:23
  humming subterranean server farms, the exact same way we
• 23:28
  look at the hidden pyramids in the Amazon or the towering
• 23:30
  stones of Mexico. It makes you wonder.
• 23:32
  Would they see our Internet infrastructure as a series of
• 23:35
  magical, unexplainable, mystical structures built by an ancient
• 23:39
  society that they can barely comprehend?
• 23:41
  It's highly probable the mundane tchotchkes and server racks of
• 23:44
  today are absolutely destined to become the mystical, revered
• 23:48
  artifacts of tomorrow. So as you go about your day,
• 23:51
  keep your eyes open, keep your feet firmly grounded in physical
• 23:54
  reality, and never, ever stop questioning the mechanics of the
• 23:57
  world around you. Thanks for joining us on this
• 23:59
  deep dive. We'll catch you on the next one.