Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Cheryl Hines (2026) - Hollywood Culture, Political Warfare and Corruption

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Cheryl Hines (2026) - Hollywood Culture, Political Warfare and Corruption · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  Today we are cracking open Joe Rogan experience #2451, and
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  honestly, the guest alone tells you this is going to be a weird
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  one. It really is.
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  We've got Cheryl Hines now. If you're a comedy nerd like me,
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  you know her as the the incredibly patient,
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  long-suffering wife of Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
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  She's improv royalty, She can go toe to toe with pretty much
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  anyone. But for for this conversation,
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  her other title is, I mean, it's the one that really matters.
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  She is the actual wife of Robert F Kennedy Junior.
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  FK Junior which? Puts her in this like
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  fascinating and I got to imagine incredibly awkward intersection.
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  You have the absurd world of Hollywood comedy on one side,
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  and then the high stakes. Ruthless almost House of Cards
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  world of presidential politics on the.
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  Other Exactly. And that's the mission of this
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  deep dive, right? To explore that collision, we're
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  going to look at the erosion of trust in big institutions, which
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  is a huge theme. And because it is a Joe Rogan
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  experience, we are eventually going to have to talk about some
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  absolutely terrifying facts about nature.
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  I am still not over the monkey story.
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  I just want to put that out there early.
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  We will get to it, but I'm I'm legitimately traumatized.
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  It's total nightmare fuel. But before we get to the literal
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  jungle, let's start with the Washington DC 1.
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  What struck me right away was her analysis of the the
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  sociology of it all. Yeah, she opens up about this
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  massive culture shock, she says. And this is She wasn't built for
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  the cruelty of political campaigning.
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  Which is funny, right? Because I think most of us
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  assume Hollywood is a Shark Tank.
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  For sure you picture screaming agents, people backstabbing each
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  other for roles. And it is competitive.
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  She says that, but she draws a really sharp distinction.
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  In Hollywood, you're hustling, but people aren't usually trying
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  to, like, personally dismantle your life.
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  Right. You don't get the role, you
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  don't get the role, but in politics it's a blood sport, she
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  says. Opponents and even people in
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  your own party will just lie. They'll strip context from
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  things you've said to destroy you.
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  It's not about the job, it's about the person.
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  It's the difference between rivalry and like, total warfare.
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  And she brought up this idea of fake toughness.
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  Oh, this is the Kamala Harris and Joe Biden example.
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  Right. That's the one.
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  She talks about the primary debates on stage.
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  Kamala Harris is basically accusing Biden of some really,
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  really dark stuff. It was visceral.
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  And then what? Then they see each other in the
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  hallway like right after and it's all smiles.
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  Hey, how's it going? Good to see.
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  You that's the part that just broke her brain a little.
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  For a normal person, if someone attacks you like that on
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  national TV, you don't just, you know, high 5 them backstage.
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  But for them, it's just a performance, and that
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  performance that kind of leads directly into what Joe calls the
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  cult of ideologies, the whole psychology of tribalism.
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  This is such a huge topic right now.
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  The idea that we don't pick our opinions based on facts, we pick
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  them based on what keeps us safe in our group.
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  It's a survival mechanism. You know, if you get kicked out
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  of the tribe, historically you die.
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  So you have smart people agreeing with things they don't
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  actually believe, just to stay in the group.
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  And she had a perfect example from Hollywood the difference
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  between comedy clubs and dinner parties.
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  Yes, in comedy clubs or pool halls, the vibe is blunt.
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  It's jolly, she says. People roast each other.
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  They say wild things, but it's real.
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  But then you go to a Hollywood industry party, she describes.
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  People literally reading The Hollywood Reporter just so they
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  know what opinion to have before they walk.
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  In with Groupthink 101, you know if the magazine say a movie is a
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  masterpiece, you say it's a masterpiece.
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  Even if you hated it, you fake it to keep your status.
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  But the cost of that in Hollywood is maybe you don't get
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  invited to a party When it shifts to the RFK junior
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  campaign, the cost was way, way higher.
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  Much higher. She talks about friends just
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  turning away from her. She described A literal feeling
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  of doom. And it wasn't just social, it
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  was physical danger. I think people forget RFK junior
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  was denied Secret Service protection for a long time,
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  which is just wild considering his family.
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  So it forced her to become this kind of amateur bodyguard.
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  She talks about learning to scan crowds.
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  That image really stuck with me, the star of Curb Your
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  Enthusiasm, walking through an event not looking for fans, but
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  for people sweating too much or moving erratically.
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  She's doing her own counter surveillance, and I think that
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  experience is the key to the whole rest of the conversation.
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  If the system leaves you that vulnerable, you're going to
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  start questioning everything else it tells you.
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  Which is the red pill moment they talk.
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  About right from the Matrix the moment you wake up and you can't
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  go back to sleep. And Joe talks about his own
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  version of this. He says he used to be, and these
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  are his words, firmly on the side of science.
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  He trusted the university's the experts.
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  And for him, the turning point was the pandemic.
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  He felt experts were lying about certain treatments, even about
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  his own recovery. That personal experience broke
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  the trust for him. And we should be clear here,
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  we're just reporting on their conversation.
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  They go deep into medical skepticism, but they do try to
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  back it up with historical examples.
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  They do. They bring up thalidomide.
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  Yeah. You know, the drug from the 50s
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  and 60s for pregnant women. A.
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  Supposedly safe sleeping pill that resulted in thousands of
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  babies with severe birth defects.
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  A total tragedy A. Catastrophic failure of
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  regulation. And they use that to ask, you
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  know, if they were so wrong, then why don't we just assume
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  they're perfect now? The story that really got me,
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  though, was about X-rays. Oh, the wicked witch hands.
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  Yeah, in the early days they'd X-ray pregnant women all the
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  time, But the technicians who ran the machines?
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  They'd test the machine every single morning by X raying their
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  own hands. Joe describes seeing photos of
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  their hands years later. Just deformed.
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  Cancerous. It's such a powerful metaphor
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  for their whole argument. We didn't know we were melting
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  our hands then, So what are we doing now that we'll look back
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  on in 50 years and just cringe? And Cheryl adds a really
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  personal story. She talks about a friend whose
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  child became nonverbal and autistic after a vaccine.
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  Now obviously the broad scientific consensus doesn't
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  support that link, but I think her point was more social than
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  medical. Right.
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  It goes back to tribalism. Her friend wasn't even allowed
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  to talk about her own experience without being attacked.
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  You question the narrative. You're exiled.
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  That anxiety extends to travel too.
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  They get into this whole thing about TSA body scan.
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  We will Lemeter waves versus X-rays.
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  Yeah, and Joe points out this irony that I've definitely
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  thought about at the dentist. They put a lead vest on you that
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  weighs 40 lbs and hygienist literally runs into a concrete
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  bunker to push the button. Right.
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  And you can't move an inch. But at the airport, step right
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  in, Sir, Hands up and ZAP. No vest, no bunker, nothing.
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  And they? Actually looked up some data
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  suggesting pilots and flight attendants have much higher
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  rates of Melanoma and breast cancer Now.
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  Is that the scanners? Is it cosmic radiation?
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  Wrecked sleep schedules. We don't know, but it feeds that
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  suspicion that maybe things aren't as safe as they tell us.
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  It does. Which is the perfect pivot?
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  The Rogan interlude? The pivot.
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  I love it. We go from like heavy political
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  betrayal and medical ethics to hey, have you ever seen a
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  praying mantis eat a bird? It's jarring, but it serves a
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  purpose. His argument is basically You
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  think human politics is brutal? Let me show you real brutality.
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  He is obsessed with the praying mantis.
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  He calls it the scariest life form on Earth.
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  He says if they were the size of German Shepherds, humans would
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  be finished and he describes this video.
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  Cheryl clearly did not want to watch this of a mantis just
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  sitting on a bird feeder. And a Hummingbird flies up and
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  the mantis doesn't even move it just.
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  The stillness is what freaks Joe out.
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  It snatches the bird right out of the air and just starts
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  eating it. Alive.
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  And then they get ants. Leaf cutter ants.
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  I didn't know about the concrete thing.
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  The excavation, Yeah. Scientists pour cement into
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  these huge colonies to map them. When they dig it up, it looks
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  like a city. They have ventilation shafts,
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  fungus farms. It's a whole civilization.
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  But then Joe drops his fact about them being biological
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  robots. He talks about one species where
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  the female cuts off the males limbs just to drag him into the
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  colony for breeding. Just stripping him down to his
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  one essential function. It's so efficient and so brutal.
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  But nothing, and I mean nothing, beats the monkey story.
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  This is the one that's going to haunt me.
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  The Disney Princess delusion, as he calls.
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  It yes, this idea that we could, like, connect with a wild
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  animal. Joe talks about this video of a
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  guy in India just sitting there letting a small monkey pet him.
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  He thinks they're having a moment.
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  And then snap, the monkey just tears a piece of meat off his
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  scalp. Joe said football sized a
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  football sized piece of his. Head and Joe's point is that we
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  just don't get the power density of these animals.
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  We think bigger means we're in charge, but a monkey is all fast
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  twitch muscle. It will peel you like fruit.
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  It connects back to Cheryl's time on Fear Factor.
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  I totally forgot she was a host on that.
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  She's seen some things. She talked about eating a Roach
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  just to show a contested it was possible.
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  Said the taste wasn't the issue, it was the crunch.
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  I can hear that. But she also talked about when
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  it went wrong, the bull riding stunt.
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  She told the producers not to do it and sure enough, a tiny 98 LB
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  woman gets thrown and knocked out cold.
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  It's another example of underestimating nature.
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  A bull, a monkey. Reality doesn't care about your
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  TV show. So we have the brutality of
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  nature and the brutality of politics, which leads us to
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  maybe the darkest part of their talk systemic corruption.
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  Following the money. And in the US, that usually
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  leads to Congress. They brought up the Pelosi
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  tracker. Which is a real thing.
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  People track Nancy Pelosi's stock trades because she and
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  other politicians somehow consistently outperform Warren
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  Buffett. Joe just breaks down the math.
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  You make what, 170,000 a year, but after a few decades you're
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  worth hundreds of millions. It just it begs the question of
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  insider trading. Which is illegal for us, but
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  seems to be a perk of the job for them.
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  And it's not just stocks, it's the revolving door they get
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  into, the Sackler family and the Oxycontin crisis.
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  A. Classic case of what they call
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  regulatory capture. Exactly.
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  An FDA regulator is supposed to be the watchdog.
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  He approves Oxycontin despite the risks, and then he leaves
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  the FDA and takes a high paying job with the very company he was
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  supposed to be regulating. It's a payoff.
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  That's what Joe calls it, a delayed bribe.
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  And, you know, you can't really talk about corruption on that
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  level without talking about Jeffrey Epstein.
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  Yeah, that was a very somber turn.
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  They discussed how it wasn't just a sex ring.
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  That's almost a cover story. It was an intelligence and
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  blackmail operation. Involving science academia, they
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  mentioned Noam Chomsky, MIT, but the craziest part was the origin
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  story of how he got caught. Did you catch that?
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  I did it sounds like a movie plot.
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  The whole thing starts because 2 high school girls got into a
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  fight in 2005. One girl calls the other a
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  prostitute. The school gets involved.
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  They search a purse, find a stack of cash, and the girl
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  admits she got it from Epstein just.
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  Think about that. If those two teenagers hadn't
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  had that stupid fight, that entire House of Cards might have
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  stood for another decade. It's insane.
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  Joe and Cheryl, really news on that.
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  How fragile The truth is, It just hangs on these tiny random
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  events. And Speaking of the future, they
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  wrap up with this really philosophical look at artificial
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  intelligence. Yeah, the idea of universal high
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  income. If AI does all the work, maybe
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  the government just pays us all to exist.
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  But Joe really pushes back on that.
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  He asks, do we lose our purpose? He used this really funny but
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  profound analogy about a poncho. Right.
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  If you weave A poncho yourself, or you work hard to earn the
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  money to buy it, you value it. But if a machine just spits one
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  out and hands it to you, it's meaningless.
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  We like being good at things. We like earning our way.
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  What happens when a machine does it all?
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  And with that loss of purpose comes the fear of control.
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  They touched on 15 Minute Cities.
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  It's a controversial idea, Urban planning where everything you
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  need is a 15 minute walk away. Sounds great, right?
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  But they view it through that skeptical lens.
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  They look at place like Oxford or talk about congestion zones
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  in New York, and the fear is that the government could start
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  charging you to leave your designated area.
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  It's the slippery slope argument.
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  You give up autonomy for convenience, and you might wake
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  up in a prison you helped build. So let's try and unpack all
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  this. We've got monkeys, politicians,
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  leaf cutter ants. What's the big take away?
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  It feels like a lot, but I think there is a three line.
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  For me, if you synthesize it all, it's a study in the loss of
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  innocence. How so?
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  Well, look at the Ark. Cheryl goes from the fun stress
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  of Hollywood to the doom of politics.
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  Joe goes from trusting science to questioning everything.
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  They both realize the institutions they looked up to
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  are flawed, corrupt and sometimes just dangerous.
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  It's realizing your heroes are fake and the praying mantis is
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  waiting for you on the bird feeder.
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  Exactly. And that brings us to what Joe
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  calls the Gray pill. I like this concept.
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  You know, the red pill is waking up, the white pill is blind
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  optimism. The black pill is just total
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  doom. And Joe rejects the white in the
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  black. He takes the Gray pill, which
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  is, you know, acknowledging the world is full of corruption.
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  There are monsters both in DC and in the actual jungle, but we
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  might just pull through if we stay aware.
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  It's about being an honest fool, as he puts it, admitting you
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  don't know everything but refusing to be lied to.
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  And that leads to the final big idea they left us with.
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  Reality always resurfaces. I love that image.
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  The truth is like a beach ball you're trying to hold
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  underwater. You can use money media cover
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  ups like with Epstein, but you can't hold it down forever.
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  Eventually the physics of reality takes over and it just
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  pops back to the surface. So here's the question we want
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  to leave you with today. If reality always resurfaces,
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  what current conspiracy or fringe theory is actually just a
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  beach ball waiting to pop up? What's the thing we're all
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  ignoring today that will be obvious history tomorrow?
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  Something to think about while you're scanning the crowd for
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  sweaty people. Thanks for listening to the deep
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  dive. Stay curious and watch out for
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  the monkeys. See you next.
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  Time.