Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #152: Brian Malow / The Science Comedian / Moon Landing / Stand Up & Science / SciFi

Transcript

#152: Brian Malow / The Science Comedian / Moon Landing / Stand Up & Science / SciFi · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together,
• 0:15
  Brian Mallow. As if as if there was 2L's in
• 0:18
  your last name, but there is one.
• 0:20
  Great to have you here. Science communicator, comedian
• 0:25
  obviously overflowing with enthusiasm and charisma already.
• 0:29
  Obviously. How are you?
• 0:31
  How are you today? Good, thanks for having me.
• 0:34
  Yeah, you know, I have how? Did you find me?
• 0:38
  Oh, I was trying to avoid you. How did you find me?
• 0:40
  I found you with assistance of grok where I.
• 0:46
  Oh no, I don't know if that's good or bad.
• 0:48
  I'm known to the AIS already. You are, by the way, I got, I
• 0:52
  got my first call. Someone reached out to me.
• 0:54
  I found you using AI and I'm like, oh, that's what it feels
• 0:57
  like. I see I had done an interview
• 1:01
  about a month ago with a a nuclear physicist and stand up
• 1:04
  comic named Kevin Hickerson. And and he was, I think he, oh,
• 1:10
  he didn't as much try to focus on blending the two arts as much
• 1:14
  as pursuing them as, you know, two different careers and
• 1:17
  ultimately chose to focus more on the nuclear physics and felt
• 1:20
  like he had more to, you know, offer than.
• 1:25
  Jekyll and Hyde 1 is a comedian by day.
• 1:28
  You know, probably nuclear physicist by day, comedian by
• 1:32
  night. But why couldn't it be the other
• 1:33
  way around? I, I honestly, I don't know.
• 1:37
  I don't know. I kind of do the I kind of live
• 1:39
  my business life like that because most of my podcasting
• 1:41
  ends up being during the day. I do, I do sales.
• 1:43
  Otherwise with I work with my dad.
• 1:45
  You know what? So when I was growing up, way
• 1:48
  before comedy was an idea as a career, like I liked comedy, but
• 1:54
  like when I growing up, I did have early comedy influences.
• 1:59
  Like I had George Carlin albums, Richard Pryor, Monty Python
• 2:03
  album, the original crew of Saturday Night Live had an album
• 2:09
  that was very popular at some point there in the late 70s and
• 2:15
  Steve Martin, you know, like, but I, I, I hadn't what, but I
• 2:22
  wasn't thinking of comedy as a career.
• 2:24
  I did like it and those influences were there as well as
• 2:27
  like science and science fiction influences.
• 2:30
  But I had a friend that we started writing songs together
• 2:34
  and he was a great composer and mostly I wrote lyrics to his
• 2:38
  music. And we we're torn because we
• 2:42
  wanted to be rock stars. We also wanted to be scientists.
• 2:47
  We loved physics, especially, and astronomy, astrophysics.
• 2:50
  So we always thought about that like scientists by day.
• 2:53
  Rockstar. By night.
• 2:55
  And yeah. Totally in the end.
• 2:57
  We became neither. It's wonderful.
• 3:03
  Well, I mean, you find a different way to blend it.
• 3:04
  And actually, I, you know, I, I spoke with, I had another guest
• 3:08
  recently who was a musician first and then ended up ends up
• 3:12
  studying music in the brain and, you know, music with cochlear
• 3:16
  implants and perception of music.
• 3:18
  The Yeah. And really, really.
• 3:19
  Cool stuff. Her name was Karen Barrett,
• 3:23
  Doctor Karen Barrett. And she's a, she's a a trained
• 3:28
  classical pianist and has been studying dementia and
• 3:32
  neurogenesis and creativity. And one thing that she recently
• 3:35
  did was creativity with kids, where she'd put kids in the FM
• 3:39
  RIMRI scanner, I guess have a background music loop play, give
• 3:44
  them a keyboard and have them improvise and let them play
• 3:47
  music in the FM RI scanner and see which parts of their brain
• 3:51
  would light up and which circuits were being activated
• 3:53
  while they were improvising to see, to study creativity.
• 3:57
  Yeah. Like in a tangible way, it was
• 4:00
  really, really cool. But she said the same thing.
• 4:01
  She goes, I didn't know where, where, where my research was
• 4:04
  going to take me. I just knew what I loved.
• 4:05
  And I just had to figure out one, you know how to put 11 foot
• 4:08
  in front of the next and then and then you get there.
• 4:10
  I've had I've given talks to students, especially older
• 4:15
  students, high school or college and where I discussed my path
• 4:20
  because it was very non linear. It wasn't like this is what I
• 4:25
  always wanted to be. And then I became it.
• 4:27
  I I was always good at science, but I was also good at writing.
• 4:33
  I liked both the science and the art and.
• 4:36
  The performing I bet, and the performing I imagine, right?
• 4:41
  You know, that actually came later.
• 4:44
  I was kind of a shy kid. Like I would get nervous if I
• 4:48
  had to stand up in front of the class and speak.
• 4:50
  So although I had dreams of being a rock star with my
• 4:54
  friend, that was a dream very fantasy based because I didn't
• 4:59
  really I didn't have much stage experience.
• 5:02
  I did a couple like little plays or something, but but I didn't
• 5:05
  have much stage experience until much later.
• 5:07
  So that's something I actually had to overcome later and get
• 5:11
  get used to. But I didn't head straight into
• 5:14
  any of this. I, I went, I was a great student
• 5:19
  and when I went to college, I went to the, I grew up in
• 5:21
  Houston mostly actually. So I was born.
• 5:26
  I like saying I was born in Chicago.
• 5:29
  We moved down to Texas and I went to California and then to
• 5:36
  North Carolina. So I don't even know what that
• 5:38
  means. But as a Jew, what is this?
• 5:42
  But that's the path I took. I, I, I hit the four corners of
• 5:45
  the country kind of. But what I'm trying to say there
• 5:50
  is that I was at at the University of Texas, I was in
• 5:55
  this liberal arts honors program called Plan 2, Roman numeral 2.
• 5:59
  And I I was pre Med at the urging of my Jewish parents
• 6:05
  mother. One of my jokes is that that's
• 6:09
  very truthful is like I I'm very often open with this.
• 6:14
  My name is Brian Mallow and I'm not a doctor, but I play one in
• 6:18
  the broken dreams of my parents. There you go.
• 6:20
  And then? When they laugh, I I thank them
• 6:22
  for laughing. But it wasn't, it wasn't even a
• 6:24
  joke. It's a pretty honest statement,
• 6:28
  but I was pre Med and I started, I graduated with a high GPAI
• 6:35
  started to study for the MCAT, the test you take to get into
• 6:38
  medical school. But I knew this isn't what I
• 6:41
  want. That's not even the science that
• 6:43
  I like best. I prefer physics and astronomy
• 6:45
  and and then I was out of school for a year and then I went to
• 6:49
  Graduate School in TV production in a way, and I learned video
• 6:54
  skills. Wait a minute while.
• 6:57
  I was doing that I tried stand up for the first time.
• 7:01
  There was a funniest person in Austin contest that I was ready
• 7:04
  to try it. And so then I left that and I
• 7:08
  became a comedian and then it became science comedian.
• 7:11
  And so this path like but the whole time kind of like what
• 7:15
  what she said that previous guest.
• 7:17
  Yeah. Karen Dr. Karen.
• 7:21
  The I just sort of was following.
• 7:24
  Maybe I was just following the path of least resistance, but if
• 7:27
  I want to I a more positive take would be I was just following
• 7:32
  like what felt right. It's like, I'm glad I learned
• 7:35
  this, but I'm going to do this now.
• 7:38
  Now I'm going to do this. And where I've come to now, I
• 7:43
  basically use all those things, all of those things, irrelevant.
• 7:47
  Now, I do, you know, I have a nicer video set up here than
• 7:51
  most people because I'm bringing my video background to it.
• 7:54
  I'm using a DSLR and a nice microphone and lights and what
• 7:58
  The lights aren't really set up but it looks OK.
• 8:01
  Good to me. Yeah.
• 8:03
  So in the end, you know, I don't know if you've, there's a
• 8:07
  comment, there's a video on YouTube from Stanford University
• 8:11
  and it's Steve Jobs giving a commencement speech.
• 8:14
  I show it to all my high school students every.
• 8:16
  Year it's only about 20 minutes long and it's and he's like has
• 8:20
  like 3 main things he wants to talk about and one of them is
• 8:24
  what I just said. It's that like looking back at
• 8:27
  my career, you never knew when you were doing it.
• 8:31
  But when I look back, it's almost like all those pieces
• 8:34
  were stepping stones to hear. Like it makes sense when you
• 8:37
  look back at it, but it wasn't planned that way.
• 8:40
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he says you can't connect
• 8:42
  the dots looking forward, only looking back.
• 8:44
  And you have that faith in something going forward, you
• 8:48
  know, and that's passion, the universe, God, whatever it might
• 8:50
  be, and. And then mostly it was following
• 8:53
  what felt right. It's like, oh, like following
• 8:57
  the passion the whole time. I guess it could lead you
• 9:00
  astray, but it worked out. When I get to be and there's a
• 9:05
  little bit of the teacher in me, so I get to give science first
• 9:10
  of all. Some of my comedy might be a
• 9:12
  little educational, where I make science subjects kind of fun or
• 9:16
  funny. I also give talks to help
• 9:21
  scientists be better communicators.
• 9:24
  Which is really important. Yeah, so some gigs that I have,
• 9:26
  like I love just performing comedy, but like in the summer
• 9:32
  I'll have this gig in Germany and then I'm going to go to the
• 9:35
  University of Mines, Maine. It looks like Maine's but.
• 9:38
  And as part of a speaker series, it's like the physics
• 9:41
  department. And they'll have like this
• 9:43
  colloquium and. And most of their speakers are
• 9:46
  physicists. Yeah, but I will be giving a
• 9:50
  talk on science communication and my path maybe.
• 9:53
  And so it's like, so I get to use my video skills.
• 9:58
  What I do is both art and science and education.
• 10:04
  And it's just like it involves all these, like the skills I've
• 10:08
  picked up along the way or developed.
• 10:11
  I, I, I think I have AI, have AI have a couple of thoughts and a
• 10:15
  couple of questions. Follow up questions.
• 10:18
  First of all, I, the entire, I, I, you know, the entire old, old
• 10:23
  school of Hollywood was founded on Jews in the similar
• 10:26
  situations to you whose parents wanted them to be doctors and
• 10:29
  lawyers and they said, screw this, I want to do something
• 10:32
  fun. And they ran off to to
• 10:33
  California and just build. I can make movies about doctors.
• 10:38
  And, and the other observation that I actually, that I, that I
• 10:42
  had recently, and it's so cool to see this actually apply to
• 10:45
  you is I think that creativity comes out best in people when
• 10:49
  they feel like they're being stifled.
• 10:53
  I think that that is whether you and that could happen like a
• 10:56
  cultural level, you know, like with the counterculture, the
• 10:58
  whole counterculture world, the Sixties, 70's rock jam bands,
• 11:02
  you know, like the psychedelic and hippie era.
• 11:04
  That was all born from a group of people feeling like
• 11:08
  disillusioned with the world, suppressed by the world around
• 11:11
  them. And like they like they were
• 11:12
  just trying to figure out a way to like be themselves And like,
• 11:15
  it's loaded into like this incredible, you know, culture,
• 11:19
  you know, pros and cons, of course, but but that happens to
• 11:22
  people on individual levels too. And you know, and to go from
• 11:25
  being pre Med, getting ready to go to Med school, being a
• 11:28
  science oriented person, like, I mean, I could even imagine old
• 11:32
  school Jewish family, if you if, if their son came back to them
• 11:35
  and be like, guys, I hate to break it to you, I'm not going
• 11:37
  to Med school. I'm going to be a physicist.
• 11:40
  You know, like they'll be disappointed on one end.
• 11:42
  Like they come back and go, I'm taking a year off and I'm going
• 11:45
  to movie to to to to, to design to, you know, to, to, to the
• 11:47
  film school. What was what was that react?
• 11:50
  What was their reaction? You know what?
• 11:53
  You just reminded me of several different things.
• 11:55
  The last thing you just reminded me of was many years ago, I saw
• 11:59
  there is a remake of film The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond.
• 12:03
  And he was supposed to probably, like his father, become a
• 12:06
  Cantor, but he wanted to be a rock star.
• 12:10
  And so, you know, he had to break the family's heart.
• 12:13
  You know, my father was an accountant.
• 12:17
  And I think things like, I think in a way I had more like 100%
• 12:23
  support from my mother than my father because my father is
• 12:26
  like, if you instantly became rich and successful at it, then
• 12:30
  he's all on board. So that was his concern.
• 12:34
  And I think my mom was more concerned that you do what you
• 12:36
  like. And so I know that was tough to,
• 12:43
  it's like such a tease to begin to study for the MCAT and, and
• 12:48
  all this and then go, I'm not doing this.
• 12:50
  This isn't, this is what you want, but it's not really what I
• 12:54
  want. And that's a hard thing to do
• 12:56
  sometimes. We people in general, in all
• 12:59
  parts of your life, like to not be bent by other people's
• 13:04
  expectations and to to realize this is your dream.
• 13:09
  For me, it's not my dream exactly.
• 13:14
  And I hate to break your heart, but the other but two other
• 13:17
  little things you reminded me of, I remember.
• 13:19
  I don't know whatever came of this, but I remember there was a
• 13:22
  guy in a filmmaker in the Bay Area and he was making a
• 13:26
  documentary about why there are so many Jews in comedy way out
• 13:31
  of proportion to their numbers in the population.
• 13:36
  Why do Jews dominate in Hollywood and in and in comedy
• 13:40
  in particular is what he was interested in.
• 13:42
  And, and then, you know, that was always true.
• 13:46
  And in the recent several decades, other groups that are
• 13:52
  minorities that have been held down and persecuted also rose
• 13:57
  up. You started to see way more
• 13:59
  black comics and Asian comics and and just people of.
• 14:04
  Comics. And other politically.
• 14:06
  In America politically libertarian and right leaning
• 14:08
  comics now. Which like you could.
• 14:10
  Hey everyone, real quick, if you're enjoying the show, click
• 14:13
  subscribe and rate the show 5 stars helps a ton.
• 14:16
  Thanks so much. Definitely say we're definitely
• 14:19
  considered a minority, especially in the corporate
• 14:21
  world or the, you know, whatever kind of world that like they
• 14:24
  definitely like for sure. And you see the same kind of
• 14:26
  rise now. So is there something there
• 14:28
  because you hear up and been during the Holocaust or
• 14:30
  something like like that. Sometimes some humor is born out
• 14:33
  of being repressed or being torn, you know, like art in
• 14:37
  general. There's this idea that art in
• 14:42
  general, any, any art form is that like, it comes out of
• 14:48
  suffering and pain and torture and that if you had a really
• 14:51
  messed up childhood. And in fact, like I wrote a
• 14:54
  little joke about how I, my parent, I was never abused or
• 14:59
  even neglected. Like, I feel like I could have
• 15:02
  been a much better artist, but I was never abused.
• 15:05
  And I blame my parents because I could have been.
• 15:09
  Why didn't you know, you took too good care of me.
• 15:12
  I could have been a greater artist.
• 15:16
  Andrew Schultz has a very similar joke where he says all I
• 15:18
  have to do to make he goes, I I'm happy I had a girl, he goes,
• 15:21
  but it requires a lot more work because if I had a boy to make
• 15:23
  him great, all I had to do was just ignore him or beat him up
• 15:25
  every now and then. He's like then he would have
• 15:27
  been great and I wouldn't end of it, but and then.
• 15:30
  So the but the thing that you said was about like where, like
• 15:34
  like part of the I don't remember your exact words, but
• 15:38
  about where what gives birth? The feeling of being suppressed,
• 15:41
  the feeling of depression leads to like this kind of what?
• 15:44
  Needing to break out and need to start to explode?
• 15:47
  Really. Well, I I've had the opportunity
• 15:52
  to do these a couple really interesting events with Brian
• 15:57
  May, the guitarist from Queen, who also has a PhD in
• 16:00
  astrophysics. He he complete, he was working
• 16:04
  on it before Queen. That's what he was studying.
• 16:08
  Was that in the film? Was that in the movie Bohemian
• 16:11
  Rhapsody? Yeah, I.
• 16:12
  Think he may have? Mentioned on it because all of
• 16:14
  them were pretty good students in in in different fields and he
• 16:20
  but he was studying astrophysics and he was really pursuing it.
• 16:25
  He had papers published. He had a co-authored paper in
• 16:28
  Nature. Like wow.
• 16:31
  Then. Like by 1970 or something, he
• 16:35
  was pretty getting pretty busy with Queen and he put it aside.
• 16:38
  But when he was like 59 years old, he, that's the kind of guy
• 16:42
  he is. He completed his PhD and so he's
• 16:46
  Doctor Brian May and then he was knighted.
• 16:49
  So he's Sir Doctor and he's an animal rights activist and an
• 16:54
  evangelist and publisher of 3D photography, which is how I.
• 16:59
  What's 3D photography? What's that?
• 17:01
  What is 3D photography? Well, you know, like 3D movies
• 17:05
  and so and and three DI wish I had one handy.
• 17:10
  I almost do. But before 3D movies, there were
• 17:15
  the these classic like the stereoscope where it's this like
• 17:20
  maybe a wooden device and you put your eyes up to it.
• 17:24
  And all it is, is a simple way of there's two images and one
• 17:30
  represents the view from your left eye and one from your right
• 17:33
  eye. And the reason we have depth
• 17:36
  perception is because of having two eyes.
• 17:39
  And our brain builds this 3D World out of these two different
• 17:43
  views. And if you close one eye, you'd,
• 17:46
  or if you lose one eye, you might lose your driver's license
• 17:49
  because you don't have true depth perception.
• 17:52
  Yeah, Now, you know, like I close one eye, I still know that
• 17:57
  those shelves are behind this camera.
• 18:00
  You know what I mean? Like there are.
• 18:02
  Other people protect the focus and they close one eye when
• 18:05
  they're aiming for something. They're really just making it
• 18:07
  harder for themselves. Yeah, that's an interesting
• 18:10
  thought. I don't know, but the 3D
• 18:13
  photography, what involves is taking 2 pictures from slightly
• 18:17
  different angles. And then when you see like a
• 18:19
  stereo card that you would place in one of these stereoscopes,
• 18:24
  all it is you would look at a glance, it looks like the same
• 18:27
  image twice, but they are. But just like our two eyes, it's
• 18:31
  2 slightly different angles. And then when you the
• 18:35
  stereoscope, just make sure that your left eye sees one and your
• 18:38
  right eye sees the other. When you go to a 3D movie, they
• 18:42
  might be projecting the two different images with polarized
• 18:47
  light. And light can be polarized in
• 18:50
  different ways. So like 1 image is being
• 18:55
  polarized One Direction and the other is the other direction.
• 18:58
  And then you wear these glasses, and that means this lens only
• 19:03
  lets you see one. Set of.
• 19:05
  Images and the other lens only lets you see the other images.
• 19:09
  And so that's a clever way. And it used to be the green,
• 19:12
  blue, you know, same thing. And those different lenses.
• 19:16
  It's these are all just ways of serving up one image to the left
• 19:20
  eye and a different, slightly different image to your right
• 19:23
  eye. And then you can have 3D,
• 19:26
  whether it's film or like a little stereo card.
• 19:29
  And anyway, so this was all to say, Brian May and this
• 19:34
  astrophysics physicist friend of his started an event called
• 19:39
  Starmus. It's like star and music, our
• 19:44
  mus music, and every year or two they'll have one of these events
• 19:52
  and they have astronauts and scientists and musicians and
• 19:56
  artists. It's a great.
• 19:57
  It's all about art and science and.
• 20:00
  Where is it? It moves around the I did it
• 20:04
  once in Zurich and I did it once in Bratislava, Slovakia, and
• 20:09
  there's one coming up later this year in Spain.
• 20:12
  Or in. Tenerife it's so this was a lot
• 20:18
  to get to the point relevant to what you said, because one of
• 20:23
  his friends that's, that's involved on the, on the board of
• 20:26
  Starmiss is Brian Eno, great musician, producer.
• 20:31
  And I, I overheard I, I was sitting in and, and listening to
• 20:38
  a conversation between Brian and it was the year this Apollo 11
• 20:44
  documentary came out and it was in 20/19.
• 20:47
  It was the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon.
• 20:52
  And so the guy that did the music for the documentary was
• 20:55
  talking to Brian Eno. They're talking about music.
• 20:58
  And Brian Eno said something really interesting.
• 21:01
  He said that sometimes when he like, downloads some music app
• 21:06
  and plays with it and there's a premium, but there's a free
• 21:10
  version that's hobbled and then there's a premium version that
• 21:14
  has all the bells and whistles. He likes to start with the free
• 21:19
  hobbled version because it forces you to work within
• 21:25
  limitations. It doesn't do all the things the
• 21:28
  fancy version does. Let's see what you can do when
• 21:32
  we force these limitations on you before he goes and he plays
• 21:35
  with the full 1 and it's like it's just you see the connection
• 21:38
  there. It's like, oh, like, how is how
• 21:42
  can it force you to be creative by really limit?
• 21:45
  Like if you were told you're great artist, but you can only
• 21:49
  use a pencil instead of all your paints or you can only use
• 21:54
  charcoal or you know, like all of a sudden, well, what can you
• 21:57
  do with this limitation? And you see what people do with
• 22:00
  all sorts of crazy limitations. It's incredible.
• 22:03
  It's really yeah. And it's and that's how you get
• 22:07
  some of the coolest inventions and, you know, but you need.
• 22:09
  And this is actually something that I actually, I also wanted
• 22:12
  to talk to you about because I, I was running through some of
• 22:14
  the YouTube videos that that you have.
• 22:16
  And one common theme I saw a lot was about the repeating the
• 22:19
  expression, you know, about not growing up and, and.
• 22:23
  I haven't noticed this. I, I saw that a bunch, it came
• 22:27
  up a bunch. And one of the things, but, but
• 22:29
  I think that, and, you know, and, and a lot of the great
• 22:32
  creatives, the great communicators, the real, you
• 22:34
  know, they always say, you know, they're always saying things
• 22:36
  like getting older, but don't grow up.
• 22:37
  And like, you know, and, and, and I think what they generally
• 22:40
  tend to try to say or imply is that growing up is more of a
• 22:44
  mindset of like, I get how things work.
• 22:47
  And like I've taken, I, I've understood the world and now I'm
• 22:50
  going to navigate within the world that I understand.
• 22:52
  And not growing up is still looking at everything like it
• 22:55
  could kind of be broken and put back together again.
• 22:57
  And it gives you a lot more room for play and for playful kind of
• 23:03
  whether it's, it's, whether it's learning or science or, you
• 23:07
  know, different, different experimental forms of comedy or
• 23:10
  whatever it is that you're going to be doing.
• 23:12
  You talk about some of the values of of that kind of
• 23:16
  mentality and how we can why it's necessary to adopt it.
• 23:20
  Well, so interestingly, I when I give science communication
• 23:24
  talks, I usually call my talk A Science Comedian's Guide to
• 23:29
  Communicating Science. And I draw from a little bit
• 23:34
  from my experiences as a comedian, but then also now
• 23:38
  years of being a science communicator.
• 23:40
  So it's not just that, but I started seeing all sorts of
• 23:44
  connections between comedy and science and comedians and
• 23:48
  scientists. So obviously when you talk about
• 23:51
  not growing up, comedians are an obvious group of so immature and
• 23:58
  not and always being silly and light hearted and but you know
• 24:06
  that that's so a slightly negative.
• 24:08
  That's all like almost like, you know, critical take on it.
• 24:12
  But there's also the the not growing up and not losing your
• 24:15
  childlike wonder with the world, and scientists are very much
• 24:20
  like that. A scientist might dedicate not
• 24:23
  only their career, but their life to like understanding.
• 24:27
  Why does that bug do that? Why you're look at that weird,
• 24:30
  like noticing something that most people you know when you
• 24:34
  grow up, you start paying attention to more important
• 24:37
  things like your mortgage and your children and your and and
• 24:41
  you, and you might lose that childlike wonder.
• 24:46
  You get hardened by life and all, but anyone that can hang on
• 24:51
  to that, you can have a little of both.
• 24:52
  You can, you can mature a little bit, but still look at the world
• 24:56
  through these fresh eyes and the joy and the wonder of child,
• 25:00
  that childlike wonder. And so scientists and, you know,
• 25:05
  there's this other connection that I feel like both scientists
• 25:10
  and comedians see, see patterns and connections.
• 25:15
  Like sometimes you hear a comedian, there are different
• 25:18
  kinds of comedy. Like sometimes a comedian says
• 25:21
  stuff that you're just like, that's crazy.
• 25:22
  I've never heard anything like that.
• 25:24
  And other times it's that sort of, Oh my God, like it's like, I
• 25:28
  have noticed this before or, but a lot of times comedians notice
• 25:31
  things that we haven't noticed before.
• 25:33
  It's like, Oh my God, I never connected that.
• 25:36
  And you might and you might make an analogy and and if I
• 25:39
  connected to this and you go, wow.
• 25:41
  So I saw a connection that no one saw before.
• 25:44
  And scientists also many science discoveries are that same thing.
• 25:50
  It's everyone has looked at this for thousands of years and
• 25:54
  you're the first person to notice this strange little thing
• 25:57
  and make a connection that's towards understanding.
• 26:01
  So I think that that's kind of that says there's that it's
• 26:05
  important to not grow up in a way that it's important to to
• 26:09
  sometimes see the world with that child, those childlike eyes
• 26:14
  and don't let that get beaten out of you by some kind of
• 26:18
  formal education or some kind of experiences and the need to deal
• 26:23
  with life, life. Yeah, it's important to be a
• 26:25
  little heretical every, every now and then, especially as an
• 26:28
  Orthodox Jew, right? Yeah.
• 26:29
  Yeah, I get myself in a little bit.
• 26:32
  Of trouble are you? You're an Orthodox Jew.
• 26:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you.
• 26:35
  Know what's funny? Yeah, I have some.
• 26:37
  You know, I've done a lot of Jewish shows over the years and
• 26:39
  I've always had some Jewish material.
• 26:41
  And one, one of the things that must be is like, well, is that
• 26:47
  people like that there are different degrees of Judaism,
• 26:50
  like murder, like so there's Orthodox Jews and I go, they
• 26:55
  follow like 714 commandments now.
• 26:58
  I'm sorry, that's how many home runs Babe Ruth hit.
• 27:00
  And then there's like Conservative Jews that are like
• 27:04
  the porridge in the middle, right?
• 27:07
  And we were Reformed Jews, like the criminals.
• 27:11
  And what that meant is like, we would take off school for the
• 27:14
  Jewish holidays, but we wouldn't go to temple.
• 27:16
  We'd go to Galveston, the beach, you know, right.
• 27:19
  So we observed the holidays from a distance.
• 27:22
  Sure, from a distance from the beach.
• 27:27
  Yeah, Excellent. It's too funny, by the way,
• 27:30
  because, you know. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 27:32
  I love I all the flavors have been.
• 27:34
  You know what, one of my simplest jokes that I can't
• 27:36
  believe I've never like 2 one is not being very religious.
• 27:41
  I'm just sort of Jewish. Right.
• 27:43
  Which many other comedians have come up with that joke, it turns
• 27:47
  out, but one that's almost as simple as that.
• 27:51
  And as far as I know, I've never heard anyone else.
• 27:54
  I tried to research, like, sometimes you go see if anyone
• 27:57
  else wrote this joke before, and it's that two Jews walk into a
• 28:02
  bar mitzvah. OK there.
• 28:04
  You go. It's so silly.
• 28:06
  It's so obvious. It's just two Jews walk into a
• 28:09
  bar. Has been said a billion times.
• 28:12
  And like mitzvah, I just like that one word that changes it.
• 28:18
  Yeah. It's fun, It's fun.
• 28:19
  It's fun, by the way. That's the type of comedy that
• 28:21
  speaks to that speaks to me the most, is I like to be LED down
• 28:24
  one path expecting something and then and then I love to have the
• 28:28
  rug pulled out from under me and like, you know.
• 28:31
  That's just good writing. That's just like surprise.
• 28:34
  A lot of comedy is about surprise.
• 28:37
  Sure, sure. Yeah.
• 28:38
  And and just, you know, just. One word, yeah.
• 28:41
  There's a there's a great, there's the comedian Sam Morrell
• 28:44
  had a great line where he goes, you know, this content's not
• 28:47
  going to go well with this crowd.
• 28:48
  He's like, but structurally it's a great joke.
• 28:50
  Trust me. He's like, you know, like they
• 28:52
  might not like the material, but like, I've worked on this, you
• 28:55
  know, like you've done. We, we, we put the work into it.
• 28:57
  It's it's important. You know, there was this most
• 29:01
  people nowadays only know Woody Allen now for other stuff, but
• 29:08
  for his film career. But he was an amazing stand up
• 29:12
  comic in his early days. And his stand up was mostly just
• 29:16
  squeaky clean and brilliantly funny.
• 29:19
  And one of his simple little jokes that is like perfect
• 29:23
  example of this is that he, he pulls out this pocket watch and
• 29:26
  he goes, there's a great watch. My grandfather on his deathbed
• 29:32
  sold me this water. And you're like, what's great
• 29:36
  about it is like, you hear what he's saying and then you're
• 29:38
  like, you know what he's going to say.
• 29:41
  He's going to say my grand, his grandfather gave him.
• 29:44
  So you, you totally know what he's going to say.
• 29:46
  And then one word switches the whole thing.
• 29:50
  And that's very that's brilliant writing.
• 29:52
  And and one other example is there was she was, she's still
• 29:56
  around. I think it's, ah, crap.
• 29:59
  Is it Elaine Boozler or Oh, I might be confused.
• 30:04
  I think it was Elaine Boozler. Brilliant joke where she said I
• 30:09
  have no kids. Well, at least none that I know
• 30:12
  about. And what's great about that is
• 30:16
  that is a thing that men have said forever.
• 30:18
  And it's kind of funny, mildly amusing.
• 30:21
  And she realized that if a woman is so much.
• 30:25
  Funnier and. You don't even change one word.
• 30:28
  You don't even change a syllable.
• 30:30
  You say the exact same thing, but put it in the mouth of a
• 30:32
  woman and it becomes a much funnier joke.
• 30:35
  Yeah, for sure. I did.
• 30:36
  I was, I did a podcast. It's.
• 30:37
  Either Carol Leafer or I think it was Carol Leafer or Elaine
• 30:42
  Boozler. I'm confused now.
• 30:44
  One of those great female comics.
• 30:46
  Yeah. I I was, I was saying I did a
• 30:48
  podcast with a gentleman that's a Bob Dylan scholar last week.
• 30:53
  Yeah, really cool. We had a lot of fun.
• 30:55
  I never did an hour and a half talk of judged about Bob Dylan,
• 30:58
  but it turned out to be more fun than I thought it would be.
• 31:01
  And one thing that we talked about was the, and, and he
• 31:05
  writes about this actually in a book that he wrote, but that the
• 31:08
  voice and the way that it's said has everything to do.
• 31:14
  Like basically was discussing delivery, you know, and
• 31:16
  obviously to stand up comics, it's, you know, it's one thing
• 31:19
  into musicians. It's, it's almost the same
• 31:21
  thing, but in a, in a very similar tone, you know, you can
• 31:24
  say the same sentence 5 different ways.
• 31:26
  And, and that's, I, I learned about that in Shakespeare class
• 31:29
  because you know, I, I, you know, we, we in, in college, you
• 31:31
  know, I, I was a creative writing literature major and I,
• 31:35
  you know, I'm in my Shakespeare class.
• 31:36
  I'm dreading, I'm, I'm not looking forward to it because I,
• 31:39
  you know, it was like, I was in the degree for the writing, not
• 31:41
  for the literature. And and then I, and then, and
• 31:46
  then the teacher made like 5 or 7 different guy people get up
• 31:50
  and deliver the same line in their own way.
• 31:54
  And that's when like my, that's my whole perception of writing
• 31:58
  and you know, and, and performing just immediately
• 32:00
  shattered. And I was like this.
• 32:03
  And, and then I have AI have a uncle that used to work for ABC.
• 32:07
  And so he, he used to get screenplays sent in to, to vote
• 32:10
  for best for best script. And he'd give them to me.
• 32:13
  And I'm reading these screenplays and I'm watching the
• 32:15
  movies after I read them and like this screenplay was so much
• 32:18
  better. What are you talking about over
• 32:20
  here? You know, but like, it's all
• 32:21
  it's all about, it's all about the delivery and it's all about
• 32:24
  the way that you that you embody.
• 32:27
  And not only are you embodying the idea, but you're also
• 32:31
  turning it into your own thing. And then you're sharing that
• 32:34
  with everyone else as well. You know, the way that you're
• 32:36
  going to deliver these jokes is coming through your like who
• 32:39
  Brian is, you know, like it's like flowing through you and and
• 32:42
  I'll say the same line, but you know, and I'll and I'll try to
• 32:45
  embody you, but end up doing it my own way and like that'll hit
• 32:48
  totally differently, you know, and that's what makes things
• 32:50
  fun. There was this great independent
• 32:53
  film called Passion Fish. I think John Sayles might be the
• 32:58
  director, but Passion Fish and that McConnell, what's her first
• 33:05
  name? I don't know.
• 33:07
  If you ever watched Battlestar Galactica, she was the
• 33:09
  president. I can't think of her first name,
• 33:14
  but in this, there's this scene where someone is describing an
• 33:18
  actor is describing an audition and it was just one line.
• 33:22
  And they were like really obsessing over how to say this
• 33:28
  one line, all the different reads the line.
• 33:31
  It must have been a UFO thing they were auditioning for.
• 33:34
  And and it's like I think the line is I didn't expect the anal
• 33:39
  probe and they're going, I didn't expect the anal probe.
• 33:44
  I didn't expect the anal probe you.
• 33:47
  Know I didn't. Expect the anal probe, you know,
• 33:49
  I didn't expect, you know, like they're just obsessing.
• 33:53
  Like what's the perfect read of this one line?
• 33:56
  You know I didn't and expect the anal probe, you know, you know.
• 34:02
  Yeah, but there's so. Much you can do with it, Yeah.
• 34:06
  And I've actually seen, you know, other like I've seen
• 34:09
  videos talk about like actors, like directors talking about
• 34:12
  actors and just doing surprising reads.
• 34:16
  I think there was a, a, some video I saw a director talking,
• 34:20
  I think about Christopher Walken and how each time each take he
• 34:28
  did like like a shockingly different take.
• 34:32
  And you're like, Oh my God, that was perfect.
• 34:34
  And then let's do it again. And he gives this completely,
• 34:37
  where he brings something else to the scene, but the words are
• 34:41
  exactly the same. Incredible.
• 34:43
  Yeah, Incredible what? So, you know, Speaking of
• 34:48
  heresy, which is how we even got here.
• 34:52
  Finally, a subject I. Know.
• 34:55
  Well, I mean, you know, I think, I think it's I think I think
• 34:57
  most creative people have a healthy dose of heresy to them.
• 35:01
  And like, why can't I do it this way?
• 35:03
  A little bit of defiance in that kind of way.
• 35:05
  And that and, and, and, and I think that what you said is
• 35:08
  extremely true that scientists and stand up comics have to both
• 35:13
  have, you know, this real different way of looking at
• 35:16
  things, but it's but they're in common then stepping in line
• 35:18
  with one another. And there's something about, you
• 35:22
  know, I want, and maybe you could speak to this the content
• 35:25
  when you're delivering a joke, you can say things that you
• 35:30
  cannot, that you cannot get away with and any other context.
• 35:34
  And it can be something that everyone was thinking that no
• 35:38
  one is willing to say. And there's something about the
• 35:41
  fact that you're protected by this like moment where you're
• 35:45
  like, hey, I'm on the stage with a microphone.
• 35:47
  And the purpose here is to laugh.
• 35:49
  So, like, if you don't laugh, I'm sorry.
• 35:50
  But like, it's all in this spirit, you know?
• 35:53
  But you can really, really effectively teach, you know,
• 35:57
  like, get different things, different points across that
• 36:00
  people would not be able to hear in any other context.
• 36:03
  Do you agree with that? Or can you give me some
• 36:05
  examples, you know, some of some ideas of that?
• 36:07
  Absolutely. On stage and off.
• 36:09
  I've always known that that I could get away with saying some
• 36:14
  stuff and some of it it has to do with your personality and on
• 36:19
  stage this goes on stage and off that that I can say something
• 36:26
  that might sound mean, but like the way I say it and the smile
• 36:31
  that I flash, like, you know, I'm not serious.
• 36:35
  And I, I had a line where I was talking about like about just
• 36:43
  getting really frustrated with beautiful people.
• 36:45
  It was talking about a, an old VH1 on scene on VH1, a video
• 36:48
  with Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera and how we over the top
• 36:53
  beautiful both of them are. But and that, and I would start
• 36:55
  the thing by saying to the audience, I've started getting
• 37:00
  really frustrated with beautiful people.
• 37:02
  I don't mean anyone here and then and so like I would say
• 37:05
  that kind of under my breath, which is like insulting the
• 37:08
  entire audience. But you know that that's just
• 37:12
  it's an absurd. Of course, I'm not insulting the
• 37:15
  audience. That's just a joke.
• 37:17
  And yeah, this applies all the time.
• 37:23
  We can get away with stuff, although you can also it can
• 37:28
  also backfire in in comedy. It's like there is this thing
• 37:32
  where comedians have caught some Flack for things they've said on
• 37:35
  stage, where it's almost as if, well, you're quoting him Like
• 37:41
  that's just something he said off stage and not, you know,
• 37:45
  even in an interview, a comedian might be being funny, but but
• 37:48
  you can't always quote a comedian and go look what he
• 37:52
  said. It's like he was on stage in the
• 37:55
  middle of a comedy routine when he said that.
• 37:58
  And so maybe there's some non verb, maybe there's some
• 38:01
  contacts and stuff that you go. It wasn't a horrible thing he
• 38:05
  said. He was just being funny and and
• 38:07
  sarcastic like that. Like when I dismiss the whole
• 38:11
  audience is not don't worry, I'm talking about beautiful people.
• 38:14
  It doesn't this doesn't apply to any of y'all.
• 38:17
  You know, that's like obviously I'm, I'm not being that big of a
• 38:21
  Dick. I'm being I'm, I'm, I'm just
• 38:24
  kidding. I'm teasing pulling your pigtail
• 38:27
  and then and, and it's OK to bring it over to science,
• 38:33
  though, as far as heresy, because, Oh yeah, you can get
• 38:36
  away with a lot. I think there's more to say on
• 38:38
  comedy. But the first thing I thought of
• 38:41
  was I have a relationship. I've been working with this
• 38:46
  meeting in Germany called the Lindao Lindao is a town.
• 38:51
  It's like Linda with AU at the end, the Lindao Nobel laureate
• 38:54
  meeting. And every year, this is their
• 38:56
  75th year, they bring in a couple dozen Nobel laureates.
• 39:03
  But this year for their 75th anniversary, it's going to be 75
• 39:07
  Nobel warriors, I think, and 600 young scientists carefully
• 39:13
  curated from all around the world, maybe 90 countries.
• 39:17
  And it's all about mentorship. It's really an amazing
• 39:20
  organization and meeting, and I've been privileged to be a
• 39:23
  part of it for 10 years. I, they hired me to perform 10
• 39:28
  years ago, but for fun, I was walking around interviewing
• 39:33
  scientists and that that led to conversations.
• 39:37
  So I've never performed at the meeting a second time, but I
• 39:40
  come in, they hire me to do good interviews and I'm not even
• 39:44
  being a comedian. I'm just giving good interviews.
• 39:47
  I might be funny, but I'm not there to be a comedian.
• 39:50
  I'm there to be a good interviewer, which I love to do.
• 39:54
  Talk to these young scientists, talk to Nobel laureate.
• 39:56
  So I've had the opportunity. So in the course of. 30 years or
• 40:01
  so, I've interviewed a lot of scientists and authors and other
• 40:05
  interesting people. There's a guy, a Nobel laureate
• 40:09
  out of Israel, his name is Danny Scheckman, and he came up with
• 40:18
  something, he discovered something called quasi crystals
• 40:22
  and what he's, his words were this is something that shouldn't
• 40:26
  exist. It was forbidden by the
• 40:28
  literature. Like there are forms of matter
• 40:31
  that like crystals are a kind of matter and you know, we got gas,
• 40:35
  liquid solids, we have crystals and but this idea of quasi
• 40:41
  crystals, he said, was forbidden by the literature.
• 40:45
  So it would be heretical to say that this is like and like often
• 40:51
  happens when a comedian or filmmaker or musician is ahead
• 40:56
  of their time and isn't appreciated till later some
• 41:00
  scientific discoveries. It was like there was so much
• 41:04
  resistance. And at the time, the most famous
• 41:07
  chemist in the world was Linus Pauling.
• 41:10
  And he was a he was like a double Nobel Prize.
• 41:13
  He because he had won a Peace Prize and a chemistry prize, I
• 41:17
  think. And he was very opposed to this.
• 41:23
  It was like no. And he even said there are no
• 41:26
  quasi crystals, only quasi scientists.
• 41:30
  He was rude about it. And and then, and then he had
• 41:35
  the nerve to die before Danny Scheckman was validated and won
• 41:40
  the Nobel Prize. He he did.
• 41:44
  But unfortunately, Pauline wasn't there to have it rubbed
• 41:47
  in his face, you know, like, but he's like, how rude to, to, to
• 41:51
  say of some young scientist. And he was wrong and he was
• 41:55
  wrong. And so, yeah, so he had this
• 41:57
  heretical idea and it turned out to be true against all this
• 42:03
  resistance that he had to keep pursuing the research when I'm
• 42:06
  sure he was told, stop this line of research, you're wasting your
• 42:10
  time. Yeah.
• 42:12
  So that brings me to, I think a really important and relevant
• 42:18
  question in today's world, which is that institutions are like
• 42:22
  objectively pretty much have collapsed as far as public, you
• 42:26
  know, trust of them have go. You know, whether it's
• 42:28
  universities, whether it's public health, whether it's
• 42:31
  government, it does it like no one seems to take banks for
• 42:34
  sure. Obviously, you know, like no one
• 42:36
  trusts like anyone or anything anymore.
• 42:41
  Yeah, it's a dangerous place to be a dangerous place to be
• 42:43
  nowadays, you know, from a patient's perspective or from a
• 42:47
  management perspective. And and, you know, there's and I
• 42:53
  think one of the reasons why is because the institutions had
• 42:57
  overplayed their position of authority and the people that
• 43:02
  were quoted as heretics for a lot of things, you know, are
• 43:06
  turning out to have turned out to be correct.
• 43:08
  You know, and like, you know, there's these great memes going
• 43:11
  on the Internet of like the 2016 conspiracy theorists and like
• 43:14
  2024 news or 2025 news trying to catch up with them and, you
• 43:18
  know, all these cute little stick, but.
• 43:21
  How do we? How do you think you could be be
• 43:24
  your people can be discerning about like an idea that's really
• 43:28
  interesting, even though it's a radical or idea that's a radical
• 43:31
  because it's lunacy and craziness, because that's really
• 43:34
  going to be the real issue that I think that everyone's coming
• 43:37
  up with AI and you know, and, and, and social media and like
• 43:41
  this collapse of, of faith in any kind of objective
• 43:44
  institution. Like what do you, what do you
• 43:46
  got to do? You think it seems crazy,
• 43:48
  doesn't it? Yeah.
• 43:49
  You know, this is a terrible challenge these days.
• 43:53
  There is so much misinformation out there.
• 43:56
  And, you know, with the rise of social media and all these
• 44:00
  platforms, you know, it's this. It's incredible.
• 44:04
  It's this thing that each new technology, we think about the
• 44:08
  promise what how television, oh, my God, it's going to
• 44:11
  revolutionize education and the world and all of this.
• 44:15
  And in some ways it does. But then there was this I, I
• 44:19
  have a line I wrote that is like unforeseen consequences are very
• 44:23
  hard to predict. And, and The thing is, they come
• 44:29
  with that. They're like, you go social
• 44:30
  media right at the beginning. It's like, oh wow, some of these
• 44:33
  platforms, it's like you can connect with people, you know,
• 44:38
  maybe you're into some little niche thing and in your town
• 44:42
  there aren't many people into it.
• 44:43
  And all of a sudden you found your people spread around the
• 44:47
  world thanks to this platform, whether it was e-mail or, or a
• 44:50
  social media platform and a group.
• 44:54
  So there are all these positive aspects, but holy crap, we've
• 44:57
  seen from previous elections all the, the, the way it could be
• 45:03
  abused for spreading for, you know, we have, we live in a
• 45:07
  world where there's really bad actors spreading bad information
• 45:10
  on purpose. Yeah, everywhere, everywhere.
• 45:13
  By the way, I want to make both spectrum literally everywhere.
• 45:16
  It's crazy and. Then even short of the really
• 45:19
  evil bad actors, we have other people in like Health Science,
• 45:25
  so much misinformation and anti vax stuff and and and flat
• 45:31
  earthers and moon landing deniers and where somebody with
• 45:36
  a microphone starts speaking authoritatively on this subject
• 45:41
  filled with misinformation. And yeah, it's very problematic
• 45:47
  because so often something I noticed about conspiracy
• 45:50
  theories is that so often when you hear when you don't know
• 45:56
  better and you hear one of these conspiracies, you're like, oh,
• 46:02
  wow. Oh, it sounds very compelling
• 46:04
  and it could be true. But then when you hear someone
• 46:08
  explain like like the moon landing ones are very
• 46:14
  frustrating. It's just so part of it is like
• 46:17
  most older people, like it's a newer phenomenon because an
• 46:21
  older generation that's my age or a little older, they we were
• 46:26
  all there for it and experienced it.
• 46:29
  And now you have young kids who think we didn't, we couldn't
• 46:33
  possibly have had the technology to do that.
• 46:35
  And it's like, yeah, we we did. I know it seems like it was
• 46:38
  ancient times to you, but it really wasn't.
• 46:42
  And we could do things like this, like some of the, you
• 46:45
  know, but like, like one of the dumbest moon landing ones is,
• 46:50
  I'm sorry, if you're a moon landing denier, they'll go.
• 46:54
  How come in all these photos on the moon, you don't see the
• 46:58
  stars? And then some people go, right,
• 47:01
  it's because it's in a studio. It's like these things never
• 47:05
  make sense for multiple reasons. Because if NASA wanted to, don't
• 47:10
  you think they could have added stars to the image if they had
• 47:12
  to fake it? You know what I mean?
• 47:13
  Like they would but the but, but it's just like, it's like, yeah,
• 47:18
  how come you can't see any stars?
• 47:20
  There's the black sky. Why don't you see any stars?
• 47:23
  And, but, and it sounds compelling if you don't know a
• 47:27
  single thing about photography. But if you know anything about
• 47:30
  photography, you go, Oh, well, that's 'cause the surface of the
• 47:33
  moon is really bright. So if you want, if you, what
• 47:36
  I've been saying is about the flag, the flag, the the flag.
• 47:39
  Yeah, that's a tougher 1 that is like, so some of these sound
• 47:43
  compelling, like this one is just photography.
• 47:45
  If you if you shut the lens down to it so that the bright surface
• 47:50
  is exposed, it's just like when you walk outside at night and
• 47:53
  your eyes haven't adjusted. You can't see the stars yet.
• 47:55
  And if there's a light in your eye, you will not see the stars
• 47:58
  if it's. Interesting.
• 47:59
  We don't. See the cars in the daytime
• 48:01
  here? Because it's too bright and
• 48:03
  they're not. I never heard the star.
• 48:05
  I never heard the star. This star argument, the one I
• 48:07
  the the main one that I heard was.
• 48:09
  This is. It's one of the most.
• 48:11
  Common. The.
• 48:12
  Flag one and do you know OK, so that's like how come the flag
• 48:16
  moved if there's no air and it's like it's vibrating they stuck
• 48:19
  it in the ground and there's no air to slow it down.
• 48:22
  Even so, it. Did.
• 48:24
  This and it's just flopping a little because the thing it's
• 48:28
  really. Cool by the way.
• 48:29
  But how come that answer I I never heard that answer.
• 48:31
  You know everyone ever said that.
• 48:33
  Here's another one. Where's the information we're
• 48:35
  talking about this off camera. You know, we're we're saying
• 48:37
  that that that, that there's information vacuums with with a
• 48:40
  lot of this stuff and yeah and and I've.
• 48:42
  It's so hard and I don't know the answer because to your basic
• 48:45
  question, it's like what do we do?
• 48:49
  Because it's a matter of who you trust for information.
• 48:53
  This is a political thing and it's also could be anything if.
• 48:57
  You. If you decide Anthony Fauci is
• 49:00
  evil and a liar, and then it's like, whereas the entire
• 49:05
  scientific and medical establishment think he's this,
• 49:08
  he's done a, he's an amazing guy that's done all this good and
• 49:12
  these other people think he's supposed to be in prison.
• 49:14
  It's like somebody's wrong. Yeah, but there's, but there's
• 49:18
  objective ways that you can measure that, right?
• 49:20
  Like you can you can match up the words of the record.
• 49:22
  You can match, you can match like there are ways that you can
• 49:25
  that you can like do basic fact checking.
• 49:27
  And I, I think what you're saying is correct that people
• 49:29
  tend to jump to political conclusions before they even
• 49:32
  bother doing that type of homework.
• 49:33
  And so you just say you kind of hop on a band bandwagon.
• 49:36
  Fauci's good. Fauci's bad, but.
• 49:38
  Who do you choose? If I choose to trust this
• 49:41
  YouTube, then I just. It's like it's saying.
• 49:44
  So but that goes back to my state.
• 49:45
  People decide who they're going to trust.
• 49:48
  But that goes back to the original question, which is that
• 49:50
  with institute with with the collapse of institutional faith,
• 49:53
  right? Because people have been feeling
• 49:55
  let down then like, how do you, and then, and then how do you
• 49:58
  know which institutions are BS ING?
• 50:02
  Because certain ones certainly do.
• 50:04
  And you know, and there's certainly no question about
• 50:05
  that. How do you, you know, like then
• 50:08
  conspiracy theories, the best things that conspiracy theorists
• 50:11
  can possibly have is evidence, because then it makes it, it
• 50:16
  validates their case. I say this, you know, drives me
• 50:18
  crazy about Candace Owens's show in particular, because I think
• 50:22
  that she, I don't have patience to listen.
• 50:25
  The one, the two or three times I've tried, the thing I've
• 50:27
  noticed that really struck me was she dissects information
• 50:33
  remarkably well and puts it back together incredibly poorly.
• 50:36
  So she's really, really good at like poking holes, examining
• 50:40
  things from different perspectives.
• 50:41
  That inquisitive mind is very, very valuable.
• 50:44
  The question is, how do you put the pieces back together?
• 50:46
  I listened, you know, and especially now because Israel
• 50:48
  and Judaism and everything has been in the, in the limelight of
• 50:51
  society really, really in the last couple of years.
• 50:54
  You know, I listen to people go on different podcasts, Julian
• 50:56
  Dory or Joe Rogan or, you know, whoever it is Lux Freeman and,
• 51:00
  and, and, and you hear people say things.
• 51:03
  And as an Orthodox Jew that has experience with Orthodox
• 51:07
  community, I'm like, again, the premise of what you like there,
• 51:10
  there, there is like grains of truth in what you're saying, but
• 51:13
  like, I don't know where you're, I don't know where you're
• 51:15
  getting this information from and who's teaching you this.
• 51:18
  And so, and, and, and, and only when I noticed how, how strongly
• 51:23
  the reality deviated as far as like Judaism goes from like what
• 51:27
  the, the way with information being presented in the public
• 51:29
  was the first time that I really said, I could really see how
• 51:32
  people are really fooled by conspiracy theories because
• 51:35
  they're and dressed up and even presented with some with, with,
• 51:39
  with truth. There, there is some truth in
• 51:42
  some of the information, but it's just, it's, it's just not,
• 51:45
  it's just not true, you know, and, and, and there's shards,
• 51:48
  there's shards of evidence doesn't put it all together
• 51:50
  necessarily. You know, there's a a good point
• 51:53
  in there is that the the best conspiracy theories, they start
• 51:59
  with this little nugget of truth, but then they veer off.
• 52:03
  But but there's this little bit of truth at the beginning and
• 52:07
  like one of the other. The flag you said, that's a good
• 52:10
  question. When you said the flag, that's a
• 52:11
  good question. That's a little bit of truth.
• 52:12
  Good question, right? Like good stand, there isn't.
• 52:15
  There, when you hear them, you go, oh, you know another one.
• 52:18
  Is that the shadows on the moon? Yes, that's as good.
• 52:21
  As they're not all parallel and and you go, if there's only one
• 52:26
  light source, the sun, then they should all be parallel.
• 52:29
  And but this is in a studio and that's why.
• 52:32
  But you know what, there's this that sounds so compelling, but
• 52:37
  you apparently haven't looked very carefully at shadows on
• 52:39
  Earth. They're not all parallel, but
• 52:42
  first of all, topography has an effect, but more importantly,
• 52:47
  it's perspective. You know, when you look at a
• 52:49
  highway and the two sides of the highway seem to get closer and
• 52:53
  closer in the distance, those lines don't look parallel.
• 52:56
  Like, you know they are parallel.
• 52:59
  And the same is true. Like I've seen someone
• 53:01
  demonstrate this with with the lines in a parking lot that that
• 53:06
  if you look at them and from here, they all look like they
• 53:10
  converge in that perspective. And then if you take a drone and
• 53:14
  fly up and look directly down, you'll see those those lines are
• 53:18
  parallel, but from the angle you're looking, they're not.
• 53:21
  But when you hear this, you go, Oh my God, you're right.
• 53:24
  All those shadows, there must be more than one light source.
• 53:27
  No, it's like it sounds so compelling, but you didn't
• 53:32
  realize. No, no.
• 53:33
  Look carefully at Earth and you'll see the same thing.
• 53:36
  So, so our conversation, Brian, I think this is so great and I
• 53:40
  think this is so important, right?
• 53:41
  Because there was 2 we both we just had between in the last 10
• 53:46
  minutes or 5 minutes, the 2 two of the same conversations, but
• 53:50
  one is going to win people and 1 is going to lose people, right?
• 53:53
  One of them is saying one of them was your argument, for
• 53:57
  example, with Fauci was like all this entire scientific Community
• 54:00
  Trust this guy and like a bunch of Youtubers don't trust him.
• 54:03
  That argument for what I've seen in the last couple of years will
• 54:07
  not win people over changing with conspiracy minds, right,
• 54:09
  because that is depending on the reputation and institutions.
• 54:13
  Like we said that the trust has dropped.
• 54:14
  So until that trust is re earned, but the way it is re
• 54:18
  earned is by the second-half of our conversation where you say,
• 54:21
  I understand why you would think that you know, because the
• 54:24
  because matters are this way that this is what it is.
• 54:27
  Let me explain in detail with examples of how that's not
• 54:30
  necessarily always the case. And then now you can put the
• 54:32
  information together and you can understand yourself how that's
• 54:35
  not true. Rather than having to rely on
• 54:38
  the good word of people that you might not trust, or a crowd you
• 54:42
  might be left out from or or anything like that.
• 54:44
  Like it gives you much more to work with.
• 54:46
  You know, two things about that. One is that, yeah, it's a shame
• 54:52
  that we've lost faith in in the institution or let's let's not
• 54:56
  say institution, but expertise. It's like, yes, so OK, some of
• 55:02
  these flat earthers, you're telling me that you think you're
• 55:06
  smarter than Einstein and Stephen Hawking and Isaac
• 55:09
  Newton. You think that your knowledge of
• 55:12
  the universe and physics. And on top of that, I love
• 55:16
  thinking this. It's like most of these people,
• 55:19
  I'm not being mean when I say, you know, you weren't good at
• 55:23
  science in school. That's obvious from what you've
• 55:26
  written here. It's very obvious that you
• 55:29
  weren't good at science. You didn't like science.
• 55:31
  And yet here you are thinking, you know, the science better
• 55:35
  than Einstein and Newton and NASA and everything.
• 55:37
  And it's like, what is it that? And it's that you've heard of
• 55:41
  the Dunning Kruger effect where you like what you, oh, it's this
• 55:47
  famous thing in psychology where people who have a little
• 55:51
  knowledge of something sometimes overestimate how much they know
• 55:56
  about a subject. And, and there's a weird, the
• 55:58
  corollary is like a lot of times, people with a lot of
• 56:01
  knowledge, you know, what comes with that is knowledge of your
• 56:04
  ignorance. And so like, sometimes, so
• 56:07
  scientists are always pretty careful about how they say
• 56:10
  things. They go, you know, in all
• 56:12
  likelihood they, they, they are always qualifying things because
• 56:16
  that's how science is. It's like, you know, we go to
• 56:20
  the highest percentile. This is true, but we admit that
• 56:24
  that some things change over to that we learned.
• 56:26
  But and so there's this thing where people think why?
• 56:31
  How do you think you know more than it's like, where did you
• 56:33
  get this idea? And I know you know you were bad
• 56:36
  at science. Here, here's a good let me tell
• 56:38
  you one other moon like space denier one, please, because it's
• 56:43
  so funny to me, but not fun. I don't really mean funny.
• 56:47
  It's frustrating. There's this thing.
• 56:49
  Have you ever noticed that every almost any rocket launch that's
• 56:53
  going into orbit, the rocket takes off and then it's going up
• 56:59
  and then at some point it starts curving?
• 57:02
  Well, the flat earthers and science and moon landing deniers
• 57:07
  and space deniers, they all say that's proof.
• 57:11
  It's like, look, it's curving and it's going to land way over
• 57:14
  there. It's it's going to go land.
• 57:17
  And. Here's the irony is oh, you're
• 57:24
  not understanding a very basic, fundamental thing about orbits
• 57:30
  and rocketry. If you go straight up and then
• 57:34
  cut your engines, you'll fall straight down what an orbit is.
• 57:38
  And we've known this since Isaac Newton hundreds of years.
• 57:42
  Like if you shoot a bullet at a certain speed, it'll travel
• 57:46
  pretty far and then fall and and it's falling the whole time.
• 57:49
  If you shoot it faster, it'll fall farther away from you.
• 57:54
  And Newton realized if you shoot it fast enough that the rate
• 57:59
  that it's falling, the Earth is curving or under it.
• 58:02
  If you shoot it fast enough, you'll hit yourself in the back
• 58:04
  of your head. It'll keep going.
• 58:06
  And that's what an orbit is. An orbit is about the sideways
• 58:11
  motion. The reason every rocket does
• 58:13
  that is because you have to achieve a certain like 17,500
• 58:19
  miles an hour sideways. That's why they turn sideways,
• 58:23
  because that's what an orbit is. So when you maintain, when
• 58:27
  somebody says that's so stupid, you people that understand go,
• 58:33
  Oh my God. But why don't people?
• 58:35
  This is fun. This is this.
• 58:37
  Is hundreds of years old science?
• 58:39
  This is basic if this is what an orbit is and you're
• 58:43
  misunderstanding it and it's frustrating.
• 58:46
  So why is that not just the answer every time?
• 58:48
  Like I think that it because it is.
• 58:50
  But they never learned. But also, here's the other thing
• 58:52
  I wanted to say that that you point out is like for science
• 58:58
  and for communicators in general, science, health,
• 59:01
  medicine, anything. You know, sometimes when people
• 59:05
  are against GMO's or people are against this or any new
• 59:08
  technology, you have this, there's a tendency to berate
• 59:13
  them and go you're stupid for thinking that and that's not
• 59:17
  going to win over. Anyone.
• 59:20
  But what you were saying is like, you go, oh, like I would
• 59:23
  say, oh, I tried this. I went into some Facebook groups
• 59:29
  that are flatter. And.
• 59:32
  I went in optimistically, thinking that I could.
• 59:36
  And so here's what happens. Yes, every time that happens,
• 59:39
  you have people you can't. Do it on the Internet.
• 59:40
  I don't mean the Internet. What happens is it ends up
• 59:46
  degrading into, well, you're just stupid.
• 59:48
  No, you're stupid people. You're stupid for believing
• 59:51
  this, but but I was, I would get excited and go, oh, you don't
• 59:58
  understand what an orbit it is and what an interesting,
• 1:00:00
  beautiful thing because like the moon is orbiting the Earth and
• 1:00:04
  and and and or the space station is orbiting the Earth.
• 1:00:07
  And, and it's like they're falling the whole time.
• 1:00:10
  You know how some people think when you're up, up in the space
• 1:00:13
  station, you're beyond Earth's gravity.
• 1:00:16
  You're not beyond Earth's gravity.
• 1:00:17
  Earth's gravity holds the moon, The sun's gravity holds Pluto.
• 1:00:21
  You know, it's like you're not beyond gravity.
• 1:00:25
  You're in free fall. The moon is falling towards the
• 1:00:28
  Earth, but it's also moving sideways.
• 1:00:31
  So it's always missing. And then it's so so it's this
• 1:00:34
  beautiful thing, the space station or the moon is endlessly
• 1:00:38
  falling around the Earth. So it's always in a state of
• 1:00:41
  free fall because it's falling. It gets closer to moving.
• 1:00:45
  Well, no, because. For every only get back out.
• 1:00:50
  What? I'm sorry, I want to just make
• 1:00:52
  sure I'm understanding what how things work for a second, right?
• 1:00:55
  So far what you're saying, so you're in Earth's orbit and
• 1:00:57
  Earth is the is the huge mass that is keeping you kind of
• 1:01:00
  sucked in from getting from drifting out to space forever,
• 1:01:03
  right? Maybe.
• 1:01:06
  Well, yeah, I don't understand. I'm just, I'm asking.
• 1:01:08
  Make sure I understand correctly.
• 1:01:09
  I'm. I'm asking, yeah.
• 1:01:10
  Well, yeah. Well, here's what would happen
• 1:01:12
  if if all of a sudden you turned off the gravity.
• 1:01:14
  Gravity, yeah. What the moon or the space
• 1:01:17
  station would do this is this is Isaac Newton's laws of motion
• 1:01:20
  that that an object, if it's not acted on by any force, it'll
• 1:01:27
  just can, it'll either stay motionless or in motion, uniform
• 1:01:30
  motion. So if you turned off the
• 1:01:32
  gravity, what they would do is here they are orbiting as soon
• 1:01:35
  as you turn it off, they would just shoot off in the direction
• 1:01:38
  in a straight line. But what's happening is they
• 1:01:42
  want to move in a straight line that way.
• 1:01:44
  But the Earth is pulling them down, so they're moving really
• 1:01:49
  fast and bending, and they're constantly.
• 1:01:52
  Being towards the Earth. So it's falling, but it's
• 1:01:56
  missing because of that 17,000 for the for the space station
• 1:02:00
  because it's different at various heights.
• 1:02:02
  Gotcha. So at the stations level about
• 1:02:07
  17,500 miles an hour sideways perfectly matches the speed
• 1:02:12
  you're falling at. So, so you're already always
• 1:02:15
  falling, but never getting closer because you're always
• 1:02:18
  just skirting around. And so an orbit is really this
• 1:02:21
  beautiful thing. It's this balance and and you
• 1:02:25
  are and and you think so that's why they like.
• 1:02:28
  How do you escape orbit? How do you get out of orbit
• 1:02:30
  unless you have an? Artificial.
• 1:02:32
  Rust. Yes, a little faster.
• 1:02:34
  But how do objects? How do other objects unless
• 1:02:38
  Unless for example stuff collects in orbit and then it
• 1:02:42
  becomes heavy enough that they could break off on their own or
• 1:02:45
  that doesn't happen like how do? You wait.
• 1:02:47
  What do you mean by that? Let's say hypothetically we're
• 1:02:49
  going, you know, you have garbage, you know, massive junk
• 1:02:52
  floating around Earth, right, N orbit.
• 1:02:55
  If over time it kind of got got built up right, became heavier
• 1:03:00
  than the individual parts that were orbiting, could that new
• 1:03:04
  weight, that new mass be collect enough speed or inertia I guess
• 1:03:09
  to to break out of the orbit? The only way see but The thing
• 1:03:13
  is something would have to affect its speed.
• 1:03:16
  You would have to add a force, so something would have to push
• 1:03:19
  it. Or the weight.
• 1:03:19
  The new weight would be the force, no?
• 1:03:21
  Yeah, no, not enough. It that's it's all moving at the
• 1:03:25
  same speed and yes it's more massive but but it's not adding
• 1:03:30
  to its velocity. I see, I see, I see.
• 1:03:34
  And so how do you, so how do things end up traveling through
• 1:03:37
  space that's through explosions and stuff like that?
• 1:03:39
  Oh yeah, there. There could be many things, but
• 1:03:44
  like, like so the Artemis 2 mission that just went to the
• 1:03:46
  moon first, it went up into Earth orbit and, and it, it did
• 1:03:52
  a couple orbits around the Earth and they tested some stuff out.
• 1:03:55
  And then when they wanted to leave Earth orbit, they, they
• 1:04:00
  burn the Rockets again. And then that gave them enough
• 1:04:04
  speed that now they still weren't completely detached from
• 1:04:08
  the Earth, just like the moon isn't but, but it put them in a
• 1:04:12
  different path where this path could go all the way out to the
• 1:04:17
  moon and around it and then back to the Earth.
• 1:04:21
  You know, here's another one of the conspiracy things.
• 1:04:24
  They're like, how could that rocket be carrying enough fuel
• 1:04:29
  to go all the way to the moon? Yeah, that.
• 1:04:31
  Was a question that people asked.
• 1:04:33
  But you know what? But it's a very simple answer.
• 1:04:35
  They're not burning fuel the whole way.
• 1:04:37
  They burn it at the beginning and then they get on a certain,
• 1:04:40
  they hit a certain speed and they're headed in a certain
• 1:04:43
  direction. And then they then they just
• 1:04:45
  coast the whole thing. And then at a certain point the
• 1:04:48
  moon's gravity was pulling it in.
• 1:04:50
  And then when they came back around and they started heading
• 1:04:53
  towards, and then they, they did a little burn to break away from
• 1:04:57
  the moon and then they're basically headed to the Earth.
• 1:05:00
  And the closer they get, the stronger the gravity is.
• 1:05:04
  So the closer, so almost the whole time they're coasting, the
• 1:05:09
  the size of the rocket. The reason the rocket is this
• 1:05:12
  big and they're in a little capsule at the top, that's how
• 1:05:15
  much fuel it took to get up to that speed.
• 1:05:19
  Once you hit that speed, you turn off the engines and you
• 1:05:22
  just coast. And every once in a while, they
• 1:05:24
  correct their course with a little.
• 1:05:27
  Yeah, like seriously. Just Wally.
• 1:05:29
  Like Wally with his fire extinguisher.
• 1:05:32
  Yeah, totally. It's the same thing and there
• 1:05:35
  are all sorts of conspiracies. But The thing is, it always
• 1:05:37
  comes back. To that's.
• 1:05:38
  Great, but I never don't know the basic science.
• 1:05:40
  No one, ever. Sits down and says that and
• 1:05:42
  that, and that's really, really great information.
• 1:05:44
  And like I said, and you know what?
• 1:05:46
  I think it's insane that I have to be 30 years old on a podcast
• 1:05:50
  with the, with the, with the, with the, with the comedian
• 1:05:52
  e-mail, with a code call e-mail to you, to, to, to, to, to, to,
• 1:05:55
  to, to, to hear the answers to this question instead of just
• 1:05:59
  having a textbook and just being like, this is what the answer is
• 1:06:01
  like. I don't.
• 1:06:02
  I don't know well, but The thing is, if you take a physics class,
• 1:06:05
  you do learn this. That's the.
• 1:06:07
  Place. That's a good answer, people.
• 1:06:08
  That are doing this. That's why I say you were never
• 1:06:11
  good, and I don't mean to insult.
• 1:06:12
  No, I'm not. I was not, by the way.
• 1:06:14
  That's why I'm revisiting this now, because I, because I was
• 1:06:17
  not. And I and I, and I think to
• 1:06:18
  myself, I've got to be a, and I've say this about everyone
• 1:06:21
  else in different contexts. If I'm bad at something when I'm
• 1:06:23
  15, I have to be a moron not to look at again when I'm 25 or 30.
• 1:06:27
  Like you have to be like to write it off for the rest of
• 1:06:29
  your life because you weren't good at it while you were in the
• 1:06:31
  middle of developing. And like you have no idea where
• 1:06:33
  your brain development was at that point.
• 1:06:35
  Like, I know. So revisiting this stuff and I'm
• 1:06:36
  loving it. I'm loving every minute of
• 1:06:38
  everything that I've been. Learning.
• 1:06:39
  Well, let me tell you another thing they'll say like sometimes
• 1:06:41
  they're like, you're telling me this craft is going 17,000 miles
• 1:06:47
  an hour or 25,000 miles an hour and it's not crushing the people
• 1:06:52
  inside. There's another thing about
• 1:06:54
  physics. When you're coasting, you feel
• 1:06:58
  nothing. It's only when you're
• 1:06:59
  accelerating. Like if when you're on an
• 1:07:01
  airplane, when you start to take off and you're only going 70
• 1:07:07
  miles an hour, you're pressed back into your seat, right?
• 1:07:10
  Or when you're up in the sky. See, here's the thing.
• 1:07:12
  It's like people don't think like when you're up in the sky
• 1:07:15
  going 600 miles an hour, you don't feel anything.
• 1:07:19
  You can walk down the aisle and you feel nothing because you're
• 1:07:23
  not accelerating. You're just maintaining like a
• 1:07:25
  600. And it's like, you realize like
• 1:07:29
  you feel nothing at 600. You felt something at 60 in a
• 1:07:33
  car. You force, you feel
• 1:07:37
  acceleration. And that's the thing when a
• 1:07:39
  force is acting, as soon as you turn it off, you're just
• 1:07:42
  coasting. And that's how rounded.
• 1:07:46
  Part of it, right? Yes, Oh, at that first part of
• 1:07:50
  it, they feel like several times the Earth's gravity, like
• 1:07:53
  several GS and they were pressed, but at a certain point
• 1:07:56
  they cut the engines and now they're just floating and
• 1:08:00
  they're going like 17,000 miles an hour or whatever.
• 1:08:02
  When they were coming back, you know, they got up to this speed
• 1:08:07
  and they headed to the moon. The whole and and they cut their
• 1:08:10
  engines the whole time they're headed to the moon, they're
• 1:08:13
  slowing down because the Earth is still pulling on them.
• 1:08:16
  So their speed was gradually decreasing because the Earth is
• 1:08:20
  still pulling. And then they got into this.
• 1:08:23
  They went around the moon, and then when they started heading
• 1:08:27
  back, they slowed down to like 900 miles an hour, at least I
• 1:08:32
  saw the thing. And then they were heading back
• 1:08:35
  to Earth, starting at about 900 miles an hour.
• 1:08:38
  And basically they're coasting and they're getting closer and
• 1:08:42
  closer to Earth. And the closer you get, the
• 1:08:44
  stronger the gravity is and they're accelerating.
• 1:08:47
  So by the time they hit the atmosphere, they were going
• 1:08:50
  25,000 miles an hour, which is insane.
• 1:08:54
  But it was, it was, but it was virtue.
• 1:08:56
  They're just falling. The whole time they're.
• 1:08:59
  Falling towards the Earth, and when they got really close, it's
• 1:09:02
  really pulling them in. But then they hit the atmosphere
• 1:09:05
  and the the that this was in the frictionless vacuum of space.
• 1:09:11
  But when you hit the atmosphere, yeah.
• 1:09:13
  You now. You start slowing down
• 1:09:15
  incredibly and it all this heat and the heat Shields.
• 1:09:20
  So then they, I mean, by the way, all this makes Elon's like
• 1:09:23
  reusable rockets like all the more incredible, right?
• 1:09:26
  Because I mean, you think about everything that he's got, that
• 1:09:28
  he's got a combat and fight while, you know, in order to do
• 1:09:32
  that. And you're like, like, on one
• 1:09:34
  hand, OK, that's cool. On the other hand, we like when
• 1:09:37
  we even judge this conversation, it the way I like to look, the
• 1:09:41
  way I like to think about this. Or the example I like to give
• 1:09:43
  is, you know, my dad's been a car junkie.
• 1:09:45
  My, you know, my whole life. And like, you know, he used to
• 1:09:48
  pull, you know, come home with these vintage cars you find on
• 1:09:50
  eBay, you know, and like you and, and I would look at it and
• 1:09:54
  I would see one thing and he look at the exact same thing and
• 1:09:57
  see a lot more than you know. And like we're looking at the
• 1:10:00
  same object, but our understanding, our perception of
• 1:10:03
  it is so fundamentally different.
• 1:10:06
  I think that one of the one of the incredible.
• 1:10:07
  That's why education and learning.
• 1:10:10
  And with any piece of art, what a piece of art means to you, you
• 1:10:14
  might focus on, oh, wow, I'm focusing on the relationship of
• 1:10:18
  the guy with his father, but you're focusing on, you know,
• 1:10:21
  some other aspect of the film. Yeah, yeah, Incredible,
• 1:10:25
  incredible. And so I think I so that, yeah,
• 1:10:28
  I think that there's tremendous value in even having these
• 1:10:30
  conversations because it's it's it it gives me a whole new depth
• 1:10:34
  of understanding and appreciation for stuff like
• 1:10:36
  this. I got to.
• 1:10:38
  I have two questions I want to, I want to ask you because I'm
• 1:10:41
  having so much fun with this. Number one is we know, oh man,
• 1:10:46
  there's so many ways to go. We know that there's we know
• 1:10:50
  that it takes a long time. Technology, our technology, what
• 1:10:53
  we're capable of is far greater than what we've implemented into
• 1:10:56
  society, right. What do you think the process is
• 1:11:02
  like to implement new science into into society?
• 1:11:05
  Because again, people kind of almost have, it's a little bit
• 1:11:08
  of an inherent pushback or, you know, there is pushback to new
• 1:11:12
  things, new technologies in particular, especially if old
• 1:11:14
  ways are threatened. And two youth, I have a
• 1:11:17
  three-year old and a one year old.
• 1:11:20
  What do you think the odds are that they, that they'll be in
• 1:11:22
  space throughout their, you know, throughout their lives
• 1:11:24
  based on where we are and where our potential is?
• 1:11:27
  Because and the two questions are bridged by the fact that I'm
• 1:11:29
  sure we could get there, you know, and I'm sure that, you
• 1:11:32
  know, we have, you know, between nuclear energy, robotics, AI,
• 1:11:37
  like the way that the, the, the, the pace that we're growing and
• 1:11:39
  developing. It's really just going to be a
• 1:11:42
  question of are we implementing it in time for this generation
• 1:11:46
  to really be able to kind of explore beyond where any of us
• 1:11:49
  have ever been before? Yeah, You know, I hate like we
• 1:11:54
  should move beyond the Flat Earth moon denying thing, but
• 1:11:57
  everything connects a little bit to it.
• 1:11:59
  And one of the things is people are always like, oh, right, we
• 1:12:02
  went to the moon in the 60s and we never went back.
• 1:12:05
  Why? And all these things.
• 1:12:07
  And it's like, because it's insanely expensive, like the
• 1:12:11
  science. Well, not with alternative
• 1:12:13
  energies. Maybe.
• 1:12:16
  But, well, right now we don't have anything that compares to
• 1:12:19
  burning rocket fuel like like maybe nuclear power, you know,
• 1:12:23
  the, the, there might be some new technology.
• 1:12:25
  Magnetics. Nuclear.
• 1:12:26
  Now to get up into space now now private enterprise, SpaceX and
• 1:12:34
  others have helped bring down the cost of just getting to
• 1:12:38
  orbit. But going to the moon, it's The
• 1:12:41
  funny thing is like the science and math was worked out a long
• 1:12:46
  time ago. It's an engineering, you know,
• 1:12:48
  like sometimes we're like, Oh no, it's like where they think
• 1:12:51
  that's what the why it's so funny that it's like this isn't
• 1:12:54
  hard. You'd like you can just do the
• 1:12:56
  math. If we burn this much fuel for
• 1:12:58
  this long, we'll hit this velocity and then we coast to
• 1:13:02
  the moon. It's like the actual ideas were
• 1:13:04
  worked out, but the engineering and cutting it off, that's hard
• 1:13:10
  and it's expensive. And the reason we did it in the
• 1:13:12
  60s because we were in a space race with Russia, we were trying
• 1:13:16
  to outdo each other. So the problem with so many
• 1:13:18
  things is this isn't a science problem.
• 1:13:22
  As far as the science goes, we could go to Mars and the moon
• 1:13:24
  all the time. It's a political problem.
• 1:13:27
  It's what are we willing to spend money on?
• 1:13:30
  And it's the same thing with income inequality.
• 1:13:33
  Sometimes people are like. Why are you wasting?
• 1:13:35
  Money on NASA when you could. It's like, you know what, if
• 1:13:39
  they cut NASA's entire budget tomorrow, it's not going to help
• 1:13:44
  our healthcare because that's a political thing.
• 1:13:46
  The money isn't being allocated that way, but it's not because
• 1:13:51
  of NASA or the environment. It's a political decision.
• 1:13:55
  It's interesting. That's the.
• 1:13:57
  Problem. It's like it's like, wow, our
• 1:13:59
  future could be astounding. Your kids could.
• 1:14:02
  Yeah, you. Have to remove the shackles we
• 1:14:04
  have. We have our shackles on but.
• 1:14:07
  It has to be do we have the will and the political the political
• 1:14:11
  will to like, hey, let's spend the money on that instead of if
• 1:14:15
  just think if we took that military budget and we put it
• 1:14:18
  towards going to. Mars.
• 1:14:19
  We'd be at Mars tomorrow. I would be thrilled.
• 1:14:22
  I'd be thrilled being, you know, the way that the example that
• 1:14:24
  came to my head while you're describing this is, you know,
• 1:14:28
  the amount of time it takes to come up with a great song,
• 1:14:31
  right, to be creative with the song.
• 1:14:32
  And then the next day it turns out that it's really easy for
• 1:14:34
  every other kid to play right. But you still got to learn how
• 1:14:37
  to play an instrument in order to play the song.
• 1:14:39
  So you can have the song, the song can exist, the riff can
• 1:14:42
  exist, the the tabs or the notes can all be there, but someone's
• 1:14:46
  got to learn how to play the instrument in order to actually
• 1:14:48
  bring it back to life again. Yeah, that's an interesting
• 1:14:51
  analogy. I like it.
• 1:14:52
  Thank you. I just thought of it while you
• 1:14:54
  were saying that because I think it's really what it is, you
• 1:14:55
  know, because one of the things I learned was like, I'm
• 1:14:57
  watching, you know, I, I picked up guitar out and I was like 24,
• 1:15:00
  I think. And I'm going back.
• 1:15:03
  I'm going to actually, I'm switching to piano.
• 1:15:05
  I hope I've always felt more of a connection to it.
• 1:15:08
  But keep the guitar but. One thing I learned was like
• 1:15:12
  these riffs, you know, Norwegian Wood by The Beatles, right?
• 1:15:15
  And I'm like, that's, I love that riff.
• 1:15:16
  And I'm like, oh, that's pretty easy to play.
• 1:15:18
  And I'm like, but imagine coming up with that riff and then like,
• 1:15:22
  I had to learn guitar for three years before I could even think
• 1:15:25
  about trying to replicate it. So I think that like everything,
• 1:15:28
  like everything, there's no, there's no, there's no shortcut
• 1:15:31
  to, to greatness. There's no shortcut to success.
• 1:15:34
  Just because it's been done doesn't mean that it doesn't
• 1:15:39
  require more effort to be replicated, right?
• 1:15:42
  Like the same way that it takes to learn something like that.
• 1:15:46
  Before I let you go, because I know we're we're almost there.
• 1:15:49
  Can you give me a couple of your favorite or most accurate?
• 1:15:52
  I, I love this question. Accurate and least accurate
• 1:15:56
  sci-fi movies as far as this kind of stuff concerned, Because
• 1:16:00
  while you were describing I, I thought of while you're
• 1:16:03
  describing the orbiting Interstellar, that scene with
• 1:16:07
  Matt Damon where they were orbiting and he was trying to
• 1:16:09
  also make that connection with the space station before it
• 1:16:12
  explodes. You know, you know, you see what
• 1:16:14
  I'm talking about. Give me more I I I saw it, but
• 1:16:16
  it's been a long time. So they were.
• 1:16:18
  They were visiting the water planet, they find that Damon in
• 1:16:21
  space and he was like this abandoned.
• 1:16:22
  He he was this abandoned astronaut trying to find a
• 1:16:25
  viable home for people. And, and one of the ways that
• 1:16:29
  and they only had a certain amount of fuel.
• 1:16:30
  And so they had to basically time their release, you know,
• 1:16:34
  that they whatever fuel they had left at the exact right time in
• 1:16:37
  their orbit to be able to break off to head towards the safe
• 1:16:42
  base where they had to go. But it was all a matter of exact
• 1:16:45
  timing. And you had you had very limited
• 1:16:47
  fuel. But whatever that what what your
• 1:16:51
  opinion anyway, your favorites and least favorites as far as
• 1:16:54
  accuracy and least accuracy? Well, there's a lot to this
• 1:17:00
  because I've been a science fiction fan forever.
• 1:17:04
  I don't know if that's technically a true statement.
• 1:17:06
  Maybe not forever, but but since very young and growing up, the
• 1:17:13
  the science fiction that I gravitated towards the most was
• 1:17:17
  where it's. It's often called hard SF, hard
• 1:17:21
  science fiction, but not because it's hard.
• 1:17:24
  It specifically means that's the genre of science fiction where
• 1:17:27
  the science really matters, where the author cares about
• 1:17:31
  scientific accuracy, and also where the science is an
• 1:17:37
  essential part of the story. Like it like, like this, it's,
• 1:17:42
  it's a kind of science fiction where the science matters and
• 1:17:45
  it's central to the story and everything.
• 1:17:47
  And so I was reading people like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke
• 1:17:52
  and Robert Heinlein and, and, and I liked this science fiction
• 1:17:56
  and I wasn't really into fantasy and, and this other stuff.
• 1:18:00
  But then as I got older, I started discovering some other
• 1:18:04
  writers who it's not about the scientific accuracy, but it's
• 1:18:08
  like, Oh my God, what an amazing book.
• 1:18:11
  Philip K Dick and a guy named Rodger Zelazny who wrote a kind
• 1:18:15
  of fantasy in science fiction. Philip K Dick was this amazing
• 1:18:22
  writer with the weirdest mind and what made his stuff great.
• 1:18:26
  It wasn't the scientific actor like these guys.
• 1:18:29
  And there's newer people like a guy named Joe Haldeman and
• 1:18:32
  Robert J Sawyer are some guys I know that are great modern
• 1:18:36
  science fiction writers who they care about the science and
• 1:18:42
  fantastic stuff. And then but I discovered Philip
• 1:18:46
  K Dick and you go, oh, it's weird.
• 1:18:49
  Like, do you remember, Like a lot of Movies Now have been
• 1:18:53
  based on his stuff like Total Recall, Blade Runner, Minority
• 1:18:58
  Report. And I love Minority Report.
• 1:19:01
  And like, so you know, like in in total recall, like where
• 1:19:04
  maybe there's a taxi now some of this is starting to be where it
• 1:19:07
  could be pretty realistic. But were you have like the taxi
• 1:19:12
  is having a conversation with you.
• 1:19:14
  It's it's like basically robotic or there's a guy who he's behind
• 1:19:19
  on his rent. So his front door refuses to
• 1:19:23
  open unless he puts not either. And and and yeah, some of this
• 1:19:28
  stuff is starting to be like you're like everything is.
• 1:19:30
  We are moving into a Philip K Dick, a Phil Dickian world is is
• 1:19:34
  a word. Here's the thing.
• 1:19:38
  What his stuff, his stuff. It wasn't essentially about the
• 1:19:43
  science accuracy. It was more about exploring
• 1:19:46
  philosophical ideas. He was really interested in what
• 1:19:49
  it means to be human. What happens if you have an
• 1:19:51
  alien or a robot who is way nicer than this human who's an
• 1:19:56
  asshole? And like a woman's short story,
• 1:20:00
  a woman the the government comes to this woman and you know her
• 1:20:04
  husband came back from a. Being an astronaut and going to
• 1:20:08
  Mars or something. And they're pretty sure he's
• 1:20:11
  not. She notices he's not the same.
• 1:20:14
  He was kind of an asshole. And now ever since he's come
• 1:20:17
  back, he's really nice and he's nice to the kid and he's all
• 1:20:20
  this and the government is like, we think he's been replaced by a
• 1:20:23
  Martian and she's going to testify against him.
• 1:20:27
  But at the last minute she realizes, well, I don't care if
• 1:20:30
  he's an alien or not, he's much nicer.
• 1:20:32
  And she's so she's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
• 1:20:34
  He's the same and and there's stuff like that that's really
• 1:20:37
  interesting. Mate Runner where where Rachel
• 1:20:41
  doesn't realize she's a robot, a replica.
• 1:20:44
  She has implanted memory. So he's always exploring these
• 1:20:47
  ideas. It wasn't about the scientific
• 1:20:49
  accuracy. So just to say that I still love
• 1:20:54
  science that like sci-fi, that that takes an idea and exactly
• 1:20:58
  like you go, Oh my God, you're right.
• 1:21:00
  Like what if and let's? Treat this.
• 1:21:03
  Super scientifically like the Martian tries to do that and I
• 1:21:06
  haven't seen the Hail Mary. Oh, by the way, I I wanted to
• 1:21:13
  like it. It was Everybody used to love
• 1:21:16
  it. I know it was like 45 minutes
• 1:21:18
  longer than it needed to be. I think like it was almost 3
• 1:21:21
  hours. I went with my wife, my dad, and
• 1:21:24
  my 15 year old brother and all three got mad at me because the
• 1:21:27
  movie was too long. And I was like, but Ryan Gosling
• 1:21:30
  was amazing. The the science was really,
• 1:21:33
  really good. The story was really great.
• 1:21:35
  It just felt like the director or the editors or something with
• 1:21:37
  the pacing or whatever, they just felt a little too long.
• 1:21:40
  I like an hour too long, but an hour is a long time.
• 1:21:43
  For you, that's good to know. I, I, I, I want to see it.
• 1:21:45
  You should. See it and you should see it.
• 1:21:47
  It's really I, I, I, I really applaud Amazon because they
• 1:21:50
  really they, they did a good job with it.
• 1:21:52
  So. Given that one of my very my
• 1:21:54
  like my favorite like sci-fi movies, probably Blade Runner
• 1:21:59
  again, not because of I don't even I'm not even looking at it
• 1:22:03
  through the lens of is it scientifically accurate?
• 1:22:06
  I'm just, you're just immersed in a world that is so amazing,
• 1:22:12
  visually stunning, and then you have these artificial people
• 1:22:17
  that are indistinguishable or even better than humans.
• 1:22:22
  And, and it's just like the, the script is beautiful and it's
• 1:22:25
  just like, so it's not about the scientific accuracy.
• 1:22:28
  Another one of my favorites is Galaxy Quest, which I think is
• 1:22:30
  the funniest science fiction film.
• 1:22:33
  I don't think I've ever seen it. You've never seen Galaxy Quest?
• 1:22:36
  I don't think I have. Put it on your list.
• 1:22:39
  It's for the whole family. It's.
• 1:22:42
  Funny. It's the funniest science
• 1:22:44
  fiction film and everyone. It's got to be Tim Allen's best
• 1:22:47
  performance. And Tony Shalhoub is hilarious
• 1:22:51
  and I love him and and and Sigourney Weaver's in it and,
• 1:22:55
  and Alan Rickman and. Oh, it's a great cast.
• 1:22:58
  It's a. Great cast and it's hilarious.
• 1:23:01
  I'll check it out. I have to check it out.
• 1:23:03
  So funny and it's for everyone, but you know, 2001 people always
• 1:23:10
  hold up as the as maybe the greatest and the most scientific
• 1:23:14
  that that's a great film. It's a great film and
• 1:23:18
  painstaking attention to detail like.
• 1:23:22
  But then we. Also for this AI that that goes
• 1:23:25
  kind of nut crazy. Yeah, that's a little scary, but
• 1:23:27
  that's a, that's a, that's a little bit more I, I prefer
• 1:23:30
  space stories to, to, to rogue AI stories.
• 1:23:32
  What are some of yours like? Do you have an answer to that
• 1:23:35
  question or is that just a question for me?
• 1:23:38
  I, I loved interstellar. I really like, I really like the
• 1:23:42
  way that you described that you appreciate the world building
• 1:23:45
  and how like, like science catches up with the science
• 1:23:49
  fiction, you know, part of life. And like the thing that always
• 1:23:52
  jumps out to me was like brave new world where like the
• 1:23:54
  genetically modified humans of like like separating classes
• 1:23:59
  before they're even born. And you mean you think about the
• 1:24:02
  world today and it really, really, really is, you know,
• 1:24:06
  it's not far off from being. And all the talks he wrote that
• 1:24:10
  before they were computers, you know, like, I mean, I don't even
• 1:24:12
  know when he wrote that, but he wrote that like in the 30s or
• 1:24:16
  the 40s, I think something like that.
• 1:24:19
  But. You know, Interstellar, they had
• 1:24:21
  really good science consultants, including the Nobel Prize winner
• 1:24:26
  Kip Thorne. And so the, the visualization
• 1:24:29
  and the company that did the visualization and stuff of the
• 1:24:32
  black hole, they were painstaking and trying to be
• 1:24:35
  accurate there. And the fact that relativity
• 1:24:39
  time passes at a different rate when you're really close to a
• 1:24:43
  black hole and that stuff. As crazy as it seems, they they
• 1:24:49
  strove for scientific accuracy and incredible world building
• 1:24:52
  too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:54
  And you know, you know what? I and I'm more interested.
• 1:24:58
  It's so funny. I've never been.
• 1:25:00
  I think the movies have always scared me, but I am really
• 1:25:03
  interested in extraterrestrial or ultra, you know, some kind of
• 1:25:06
  form of that that that type of that type of life.
• 1:25:08
  I'm really excited for Spielberg's new movie.
• 1:25:11
  I'm really, really looking forward to it.
• 1:25:13
  Which movie? Spielberg has a new movie coming
• 1:25:15
  out called The Age of Disclosure about.
• 1:25:18
  Yeah. And my actually my last question
• 1:25:21
  I wanted to ask you was do. You can I say, but right before
• 1:25:25
  is that I left out a sci-fi guy that I loved so much in the 70s
• 1:25:30
  and 80s Larry Niven, his stuff, he was a mathematician and he
• 1:25:34
  had amazed. There's always black holes and
• 1:25:36
  neutron stars and all this astrophysics stuff.
• 1:25:39
  But then you know what IA couple little Nuggets that have stuck
• 1:25:42
  with me. They have more to do with this
• 1:25:43
  other aspect of science fiction where you extrapolate.
• 1:25:47
  So we're like, this isn't part of the main story, but in this
• 1:25:50
  novel, there's a guy in prison. What happens is on Earth is we
• 1:25:56
  have really good organ transplants at this point.
• 1:25:59
  So what they start doing is when they take prisoners, if you're
• 1:26:03
  in prison, you could get the death penalty and they would
• 1:26:07
  harvest your organs. And so imagine I'm a good
• 1:26:11
  citizen. I'm not going to get arrested
• 1:26:13
  for anything. So why not vote the death
• 1:26:16
  penalty for armed robbery or any other crime?
• 1:26:21
  And because then there will be more organs available to keep me
• 1:26:26
  immortal. And so there's a part where a
• 1:26:28
  guy is on a colony world and he's reading the back on Earth.
• 1:26:31
  They've instituted the death penalty for too many traffic
• 1:26:35
  violations. So it's like science fiction,
• 1:26:38
  like extrapolates like that. What would happen if we had
• 1:26:42
  really good organ transplants? Then you would be like, well,
• 1:26:45
  I'm not going to commit a crime. Let's harvest all those
• 1:26:47
  criminals organs. Let's make it OK.
• 1:26:49
  And one other one is he had this other novel and there's this
• 1:26:54
  tiny little thing I think about when I take a shower.
• 1:26:58
  He has someone on the moon. The moon has 1/6 the Earth's
• 1:27:02
  gravity. OK.
• 1:27:04
  Right. So, you know, and in the, so
• 1:27:07
  when the guy gets out of the shower, because of, you know,
• 1:27:10
  how water tension, like water collects and like on the, on the
• 1:27:17
  ISS, like water won't just disperse everywhere.
• 1:27:20
  It has a tendency to collect. And you know how water forms
• 1:27:24
  like like shapes like that, It's because it's attracted.
• 1:27:28
  It's adhesion or cohesion, I forget.
• 1:27:31
  And then it collects together, yeah.
• 1:27:34
  So when the guy gets out of the shower, there's like 1/4 inch
• 1:27:37
  sheath of water stuck to him. Like like, you know, when you
• 1:27:40
  get out of the water, there's a shower, there's a little water
• 1:27:43
  on you. You might brush it off.
• 1:27:44
  Well, then on the moon with 1/6 of gravity, there's way more
• 1:27:48
  water. And so he's like, and like all
• 1:27:51
  this water falls off. And I was like, that is I love
• 1:27:55
  little things like that, that you go, Oh my God, you really
• 1:27:59
  thought this through to this little to a level of like that
• 1:28:04
  goes from the physics that something so much that was like
• 1:28:08
  taking a shower and wiping the water off.
• 1:28:10
  Totally. There's, there's an amazing book
• 1:28:12
  called The Anxious Generation and the Introductory and
• 1:28:15
  Introduction to the by Jonathan Haidt and he talks and he talks
• 1:28:18
  about social media and mental health with kids and stuff.
• 1:28:21
  But the first thing that he's the first example he gives is
• 1:28:24
  your kid has an opportunity to grow up in Mars and he goes
• 1:28:27
  through all the potential thing goes.
• 1:28:29
  But growing up in Mars, gravity is going to be different.
• 1:28:32
  The way that they're, you know, the, the, the reason why our
• 1:28:34
  legs are shaped, you know, our bodies are shaped the way they
• 1:28:36
  are is because our legs are strong for any pull down
• 1:28:38
  constant to keep ourselves up. He goes and our eyes are going
• 1:28:41
  to be different and like the, the, the, the structure of our
• 1:28:43
  face is going to be different. He goes.
• 1:28:45
  So do you want your kid growing up in a plant and it you know,
• 1:28:48
  and like, and I'm like, I didn't even think about any of.
• 1:28:50
  This. Oh yeah, you know.
• 1:28:52
  Yeah. Larry Niven also had like people
• 1:28:54
  working out in the asteroid belt.
• 1:28:56
  Let's say they're miners. They're they're mining the
• 1:28:58
  asteroids. Well, after generations of that,
• 1:29:03
  those people are getting tall and thin because they're not
• 1:29:07
  living in much. Gravity.
• 1:29:09
  And then you really probably after a while, like if you're a
• 1:29:13
  few generations down and you've you probably you might not be
• 1:29:17
  able to visit Earth because the gravity, you wouldn't be able to
• 1:29:20
  handle the gravity. Wow.
• 1:29:24
  Oh man, it's so much fun all this.
• 1:29:26
  But you know what? That's why I think like you hear
• 1:29:29
  such, you know, I mean you hear there are really compelling
• 1:29:33
  extraterrestrial stories. You know, there's an amazing
• 1:29:36
  documentary called Moment of Contact and it was and the the
• 1:29:42
  head neurosurgeon of this hospital in Brazil, I believe,
• 1:29:46
  who is totally sober minded, totally sane, spoken from the
• 1:29:51
  spoken from the Congress a couple of months ago, like a
• 1:29:53
  month or two ago. And he and part of his
• 1:29:56
  presentation was all his associates for the last 25
• 1:29:58
  years, basically speaking to his character and his and his
• 1:30:01
  well-being. He's like, I had eyes on the
• 1:30:03
  extraterrestrial for 4 minutes and like 1995 or something like
• 1:30:07
  that when there was and there was a crash and like, and he
• 1:30:10
  describes it and like they look humanoid and like they look
• 1:30:13
  humanoid and like, and, and The funny thing about, and I've
• 1:30:16
  heard this from, there's some really fun UFO podcasts.
• 1:30:20
  American Alchemy with Jesse Michaels is incredible and Danny
• 1:30:23
  Jones is always entertaining. His guests are always I, I, I go
• 1:30:28
  back and forth and like what I think, but they're always
• 1:30:30
  entertaining. I did not like the episode where
• 1:30:33
  I've only seen a little of him and where I teed into him was he
• 1:30:36
  had Charlie Duke and he had the main values of.
• 1:30:39
  The planning, he said that he was very upset with how that he
• 1:30:43
  was not happy with how that went.
• 1:30:44
  He said. The whole thing was it was was a
• 1:30:46
  nightmare. And that guy was, he's always
• 1:30:48
  been disrespectful. He got punched by.
• 1:30:50
  Bird side. Bird side.
• 1:30:51
  Bell got everything for hounding him and called calling them a
• 1:30:56
  liar and all this. And The thing is, it's like you
• 1:30:59
  don't understand the science. You know what the thing you said
• 1:31:02
  about music and how once somebody writes it, it might be
• 1:31:08
  very easy to play. If you've.
• 1:31:11
  Spend 10 years learning to play. And it's the same thing with the
• 1:31:14
  science stuff. It's like, oh, wow, you seem
• 1:31:18
  interested in the subject. Why don't you actually try to
• 1:31:21
  learn some science and then you'll know which stuff, oh,
• 1:31:25
  that I was wrong about. But here I'm still wondering
• 1:31:29
  about this, you know, learn the science because when when we're
• 1:31:32
  in these Flat Earth groups, some of the time you're like, it's so
• 1:31:35
  frustrating because you go, oh, oh, I don't even know how to
• 1:31:39
  talk to you because clear. It's as if you're talking to
• 1:31:42
  someone and you're talking about baseball and they keep talking
• 1:31:45
  about the quarterback or what quarter of the game is this?
• 1:31:50
  And you go, this person doesn't know the first thing about
• 1:31:53
  baseball. And he's like, he's like
• 1:31:57
  absolute like. And you go, oh, I don't know how
• 1:31:59
  to handle this even because. You're.
• 1:32:03
  Acting like you're an expert, but you don't know what you're
• 1:32:05
  talking about. Yeah, he.
• 1:32:06
  Does not defend that debate. He, he was like that debate.
• 1:32:08
  He goes, I, I love the idea. He goes in theory, it would have
• 1:32:11
  been so much fun. He was like, it was not a
• 1:32:13
  performance that, that, that I was happy with.
• 1:32:15
  But I, I, I think I, I want, there are, there's a website
• 1:32:22
  called Calci and Polymarket. Now these are live betting based
• 1:32:27
  on different events that people think are going to happen,
• 1:32:30
  right? So what do you know, like 70%
• 1:32:33
  chance that, you know, the war that ran is over, you know,
• 1:32:35
  within the month or not. You know, I just made a bad
• 1:32:37
  number. I'm not sure if it's true or
• 1:32:38
  not, right? But I, I think it got, I think
• 1:32:41
  according to Kaushi, a bunch of months ago, it was up to, I
• 1:32:45
  think 70% or I don't know if I'm making up a number.
• 1:32:49
  It was a high number, higher number than I, than I would have
• 1:32:50
  expected. That Trump that that Trump makes
• 1:32:53
  an announcement basically acknowledging and recognizing
• 1:32:57
  that extraterrestrials and UFOs are real.
• 1:33:00
  What are the odds you think that happens?
• 1:33:01
  You think it's going to happen before 2027?
• 1:33:03
  Yes or no? I don't think so.
• 1:33:07
  Would you be surprised if it did happen?
• 1:33:10
  Oh yeah, my, my here's. Because of the politics or
• 1:33:14
  because of reality, Do you think in reality they're not here?
• 1:33:19
  You think that politically, the president of the United States
• 1:33:22
  is not going to get up and say, hey, there's there, There's
• 1:33:24
  extraterrestrials, you know, hanging out in society among us.
• 1:33:27
  Well, here's the thing, I've been interested in the subject
• 1:33:31
  of UFO since I was a little kid. OK.
• 1:33:35
  So we're talking like 5 decades. OK.
• 1:33:40
  Well, so sometimes I've seen people recently like younger,
• 1:33:45
  but like journalists, like popular people talking on
• 1:33:48
  YouTube and stuff. And I want to say that a lot of
• 1:33:50
  them are younger and they're very optimistic that because you
• 1:33:53
  keep hearing people coming out that it's like we're on the
• 1:33:56
  edge. There's the document the age of
• 1:33:57
  disclosure document the documentary.
• 1:33:59
  Logic. You haven't seen it by the way.
• 1:34:00
  It's really I haven't. Seen it yet?
• 1:34:03
  So The thing is, some of them, Bill Maher is convinced 100%,
• 1:34:09
  absolutely. There's no question that they're
• 1:34:11
  real at this point. And it's like that's overstating
• 1:34:14
  the case. And here's the thing.
• 1:34:18
  My opinion is tempered by the fact that I've been hearing the
• 1:34:22
  same stuff for 50 years and the real evidence has it's always
• 1:34:27
  been. I know it's.
• 1:34:28
  Great story. What about this story and this
• 1:34:32
  story? And these people seem credible,
• 1:34:34
  but there's never a hunk of metal from a spaceship that
• 1:34:39
  absolutely couldn't have been made on Earth.
• 1:34:41
  You know, like where's the extraordinary claims require
• 1:34:45
  extraordinary evidence? This is so.
• 1:34:48
  And, and one thing I hate is when people on the other side of
• 1:34:52
  it say they tend to do this. It's a very disingenuous
• 1:34:56
  argument. Go.
• 1:34:58
  So you don't think there's life in the universe given the size
• 1:35:01
  of the universe? And I was like, that's not at
• 1:35:03
  all what we're talking about. That's a completely different
• 1:35:06
  topic. Yeah, the question is whether I
• 1:35:07
  think most landed on Earth and hope you are not.
• 1:35:10
  Right. Most physicists and
• 1:35:11
  astrophysicists think the universe is vast and there's
• 1:35:14
  probably life out there. That's not what we're talking
• 1:35:17
  about. We're talking about whether
• 1:35:19
  aliens have come to Earth. I.
• 1:35:20
  Know right, so that's my. Completely different subject.
• 1:35:23
  You don't. You, you, you.
• 1:35:24
  You're skeptical. I'm maintaining a healthy
• 1:35:28
  skepticism. I want to believe.
• 1:35:30
  I want to believe so. Many of these other people that
• 1:35:32
  don't believe they want to, of course we want contact, we want
• 1:35:37
  confirmation. Would you believe it would you
• 1:35:40
  believe it if Trump gets up would you and says that or do
• 1:35:42
  you think this is a political stick and you know when I forgot
• 1:35:45
  about it because the government announcement right has lied a
• 1:35:48
  lot, you know exactly forever. So if they just.
• 1:35:52
  Say it if they just say it and they don't provide any new
• 1:35:56
  evidence. Forget about it.
• 1:35:58
  Then I'm extremely skeptical because at this point, show us
• 1:36:02
  the evidence. Not a video, not a black and
• 1:36:06
  white tic tac video that people have debunked pretty reasonably.
• 1:36:13
  Where yeah, it looks like it's moving fast.
• 1:36:15
  That's parallax. Just like you know what?
• 1:36:18
  I mean, like, I think there are, I believe there are and not even
• 1:36:21
  just American, but all over the world there are military, there
• 1:36:23
  are like military records and, you know, documentation that are
• 1:36:26
  keeping up with these things moving very fast.
• 1:36:28
  We have no evidence to say that it's necessarily
• 1:36:30
  extraterrestrial as opposed to some kind of, you know, maybe
• 1:36:33
  weapon development or whatever. But you know, like the.
• 1:36:36
  The Tic Tac one, for instance, that looks like and they're
• 1:36:39
  like, whoa, look at it go. There's a guy named Mitch
• 1:36:45
  Hedberg. What's this?
• 1:36:46
  What? No education.
• 1:36:49
  You know what? By the way, Hedberg was a good
• 1:36:51
  friend of mine. That's no he.
• 1:36:52
  Wasn't really. That's a whole other subject.
• 1:36:55
  Oh, you can't do that to me an hour and 35 minutes in.
• 1:36:58
  Really. He.
• 1:36:59
  Was like can you tell me? A little bit about him.
• 1:37:01
  Yeah. I love him.
• 1:37:03
  I loved his work. Man, oh man, How'd you know him?
• 1:37:09
  So I first met him, we were working at a comedy club in
• 1:37:13
  Wichita, KS called Slapsticks with an XSTIX Slapsticks funny
• 1:37:20
  comedy club names. He was the opening act, I was
• 1:37:25
  the middle act, and then there was a headliner and we worked a
• 1:37:28
  week together. And so comedy clubs typically,
• 1:37:33
  let's say it's a show, like a three act show and everyone came
• 1:37:36
  from out of town, typically either give you each a hotel
• 1:37:39
  room or they keep an apartment. Like sometimes it's better for
• 1:37:42
  them if they just keep an apartment and you share an
• 1:37:45
  apartment. So I lived with them for a week
• 1:37:47
  while we worked this club. We really hit it off.
• 1:37:50
  We were both living in LA and we just became, he was one of my
• 1:37:55
  best friends for for years. We we had a little bit of a
• 1:37:59
  falling out and we got a little of strange as he got into drugs
• 1:38:03
  that were a little beyond the drugs that I was interested in.
• 1:38:09
  He separated himself from people he had been close with.
• 1:38:12
  You know that's that's common behavior.
• 1:38:14
  Which makes sense. You know, it's like, why are you
• 1:38:17
  doing heroin, my friend? Yeah, I'm making.
• 1:38:21
  So I just, we just hit it off. We liked a lot of the same
• 1:38:25
  stuff. We were both into music and and
• 1:38:27
  comedy and. Was his personality similar to
• 1:38:31
  his stage performance? Was he like, was he like kind of
• 1:38:34
  that like deadpan, you know, like deadpan but like twinkle in
• 1:38:38
  his eye goofy kind of style? Or was he that was just the way
• 1:38:41
  he performed, do you think? Yeah.
• 1:38:43
  You know, like a lot of people, I would say, and especially it
• 1:38:46
  evolved because I met him early enough in his career where he
• 1:38:51
  didn't command the stage as much.
• 1:38:53
  Like, he was a little shyer and not his own.
• 1:38:55
  But over those next years, you know, the writing was always
• 1:38:58
  really funny. And then he got better and
• 1:39:00
  better at commanding an audience, and so he became
• 1:39:04
  stronger. But when I met him, here's one
• 1:39:07
  of the reasons we became friends too, is that he was easy to
• 1:39:11
  follow because he was very low energy and subtle and clean.
• 1:39:18
  So I got gigs where I was headlining and I could bring
• 1:39:21
  some. So I would bring him, you know,
• 1:39:23
  he became more famous than me. But for a while there I brought
• 1:39:27
  him on gigs. So cool then.
• 1:39:28
  Later I middled for him as he. Had.
• 1:39:32
  But that's why we, we, we travelled.
• 1:39:35
  We, I was in so many places with him and had so many adventures.
• 1:39:39
  So I would say that, you know, like maybe this is true of a lot
• 1:39:45
  of us, like what we are on stage.
• 1:39:49
  You know, some people are a total character on stage, Other
• 1:39:53
  people, we we strive to be ourselves on stage, but it might
• 1:39:56
  not be exactly how you are off stage, like a distillation of
• 1:40:01
  your best self or something. So like the way he was on say,
• 1:40:04
  you know, there's a little bit about his delivery and
• 1:40:08
  everything that's maybe it's a little exaggerated, but I think
• 1:40:14
  that. The essence is there.
• 1:40:17
  Yeah, the essence is there and that, you know, that's his sense
• 1:40:20
  of humor. And and, you know, here's
• 1:40:22
  something about him. He might say the F word like he
• 1:40:25
  might have cussed on stage sometimes.
• 1:40:27
  But one thing you might notice is he never had any bodily
• 1:40:31
  function humor like no fart jokes, nothing like that.
• 1:40:35
  And this is very unlike most men.
• 1:40:39
  He didn't like that off stage, like he wouldn't make you know,
• 1:40:42
  I, I know plenty of people that would make guys that would make
• 1:40:45
  fart jokes off stage, but maybe they don't in their act or maybe
• 1:40:48
  they do. But Mitch, it's like, Nah, he
• 1:40:51
  just didn't like that kind of humor.
• 1:40:53
  And so like he might cuss, but he didn't tell fart jokes off
• 1:40:57
  stage or on stage. He.
• 1:40:59
  Didn't. That's good.
• 1:40:59
  I'm happy to hear that. Function humor.
• 1:41:02
  He liked his weird, weird thoughts and a lot of times
• 1:41:06
  about just minutiae. Kit Kat bars and M&M's and Koala
• 1:41:12
  bears. And my neighbor knocked on the
• 1:41:14
  wall because the music was too loud.
• 1:41:16
  He said, go around, you know, I don't know what's on your side.
• 1:41:19
  It's only a wall here. I know you know, you know one of
• 1:41:23
  his classics that I just think is an amazing joke structurally
• 1:41:28
  because out of nowhere it doesn't just have a regular
• 1:41:33
  setup and then a punchline. It just starts with yeah.
• 1:41:36
  I love that. I think Bigfoot is blurry.
• 1:41:39
  Five word. No set up like.
• 1:41:42
  Hey, you know when you see those videos of Bigfoot and like, a
• 1:41:46
  comic might write a joke this way and go, well, what if it's
• 1:41:49
  because he's blurry? But instead those 5 words, boom,
• 1:41:55
  hilarious punch line. And then everything he says is
• 1:41:58
  funnier and funnier and funnier. Maybe.
• 1:42:01
  You know, that's the problem. It's not what photographers
• 1:42:03
  fall. Bigfoot is blurry and that's
• 1:42:06
  extra scary. Yeah.
• 1:42:08
  And it's just like that joke structurally is so funny to me.
• 1:42:12
  So as as you're performing something like that, because
• 1:42:15
  that joke especially is. Aside from being brilliant and
• 1:42:19
  funny, we'll take the audience a second to understand that that
• 1:42:23
  is the joke, right? Like there's always the
• 1:42:24
  delivery. And then it's like everyone,
• 1:42:26
  like you could see it hit them. You see it like dawn across
• 1:42:30
  their faces and dawn across their eyes.
• 1:42:31
  Like, oh, that's the joke. What is it?
• 1:42:34
  What do you do to deliver that joke in that like pause time?
• 1:42:38
  Do you do you, Is it like a performance like you hold?
• 1:42:41
  Is it like, is it do you have a do you have like a like, what do
• 1:42:44
  you do when you know that a joke is going to take a second for
• 1:42:47
  the audience to get? You know, I don't know that
• 1:42:50
  there's a single answer. I think like each joke might be
• 1:42:52
  a little different but. That's just, you know, that's
• 1:42:57
  part of writing and performance. They're two different ways you.
• 1:43:00
  Know because. Sometimes when a joke isn't
• 1:43:02
  working, when you have a so you know you have a funny idea.
• 1:43:06
  And sometimes you go to the stage and it's like you can't
• 1:43:08
  make it work. Well, OK, first of all, is the
• 1:43:12
  idea actually funny? Is there a funny idea there?
• 1:43:14
  But let's say that you actually have a funny idea, but you're
• 1:43:18
  not sure how to get it across. So that's like, how do I write
• 1:43:21
  this to communicate what I find so funny here?
• 1:43:25
  How do I make the audience see what I and it's an art thing.
• 1:43:28
  It's like I want you to see the world the way I see it.
• 1:43:31
  I'm looking at this and I'm finding it very funny.
• 1:43:34
  You don't yet, but so I got to find the right words and then
• 1:43:38
  also delivery can make a huge difference.
• 1:43:39
  It's like, what can I also do to communicate this idea?
• 1:43:44
  I watched Mark Norman's new special recently on Netflix and
• 1:43:47
  one thing that I noticed and he always did.
• 1:43:49
  This but you could see he's kind of taking it to new level as he,
• 1:43:52
  you know, matures as a comic is he holds poses for punch lines
• 1:43:58
  and like, and he does it really well with like a lot of body
• 1:44:01
  language. And so like, if he's saying like
• 1:44:02
  a a line that he know he's going to get resistance to, like he
• 1:44:05
  has like he almost like plants himself and like, you know,
• 1:44:08
  like, I'm going to stand up for this joke kind of way or like,
• 1:44:11
  whoa, didn't mean to take you down.
• 1:44:12
  Like he'll do these things that bring you in with him to like.
• 1:44:17
  So it's not just the content. It's the you're you're you're
• 1:44:20
  literally drawing people in. And one thing I noticed, my wife
• 1:44:22
  and I went to see Tom Segura in the Hard Rock and, and every
• 1:44:27
  motion, every time he rolled one of his eyes or both his eyes,
• 1:44:32
  they all 5000 people or 7000 people, wherever it was, every
• 1:44:37
  single eyeball was watching that eye roll and you felt it in the
• 1:44:40
  room. And you're like, this guy is,
• 1:44:42
  this guy is not only a writer, this guy is like the most
• 1:44:45
  skilled performer. Like, he is like, it's
• 1:44:48
  incredible to watch. So yeah.
• 1:44:51
  So I think Mitch has both of those, too, because a lot of his
• 1:44:53
  jokes, they're just so funny. You can just read.
• 1:44:56
  Them on paper and they are funny others maybe they're not as
• 1:45:01
  funny, but his delivery helps make it funny.
• 1:45:03
  I don't know like but I really love so many like the simple
• 1:45:08
  ones of like when someone hands me a flyer, it's like they're
• 1:45:12
  saying here, you throw this away.
• 1:45:14
  It's so simple. And I was just listening to, he
• 1:45:19
  had a really old one about I think he had a paper route or
• 1:45:23
  something. And he goes, I was supposed to
• 1:45:24
  go to 2000 houses or two dumpsters almost related to that
• 1:45:29
  other one. Or you know, the I like to play
• 1:45:32
  tennis. The depressing thing about
• 1:45:33
  tennis is I know I'll never be as good as a wall.
• 1:45:37
  It's it's like some of them are just so.
• 1:45:45
  Yeah, some of them they just. Some of them seem jokier.
• 1:45:48
  Than others. Some just seem like.
• 1:45:50
  It's just a sentence, but it always plays very funny.
• 1:45:53
  Yeah, definitely, definitely. He was he's he's definitely a a
• 1:45:56
  great for sure. And it was, it was, it was a.
• 1:45:58
  Tragedy that he that he died. So yeah, he died.
• 1:46:00
  Well, you'll be happy to know there a guy who's, well, now
• 1:46:05
  he's a friend of mine. Jeff Siegel, There's a
• 1:46:07
  documentary that's almost finished.
• 1:46:09
  Oh sweet. So exciting sometime maybe in
• 1:46:12
  the next year or. Something.
• 1:46:14
  We'll see it somewhere a major. Mitch Hedberg documentary.
• 1:46:18
  OK, that's what I'm saying as well as an unbelievable.
• 1:46:24
  He interviewed. Everyone.
• 1:46:26
  So he interviewed everyone. So it'll be a fascinating.
• 1:46:31
  I'm looking forward to it. That's going to be awesome,
• 1:46:33
  Brian. This is so much fun.
• 1:46:36
  I would love to have you back sometime in the future because I
• 1:46:38
  really had such a no. I think we ran out.
• 1:46:40
  Yeah, we ran out of time. There's so much more to talk
• 1:46:42
  about. I was about to say we ran.
• 1:46:44
  Out of time we went overtime, but I, I, I I this is what these
• 1:46:47
  are the. Conversations that I love
• 1:46:49
  having. These are the podcasts that make
• 1:46:51
  me want to keep on going and excellent.
• 1:46:53
  I really appreciate your time. This is this is a ton of fun.
• 1:46:55
  Thank you so much. OK.