Paul Scheer

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer and director. You might know me from The League, Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Greece to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

something you should know fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carruthers and happy thanksgiving if you're listening to this on the day this episode publishes which is thanksgiving day 2024

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

It is.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of like Ganja and Hess.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

From Greece to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Christian Bale was preparing for his role in American Psycho, dressing the part, hitting the gym for the first time in his life, even getting his teeth redone. There was just one problem. He didn't actually have the part. Leonardo DiCaprio did. Listen to our podcast, What Went Wrong, every other week as we unearth the chaos behind Hollywood's biggest movie flops and most shocking successes.

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Greece to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

It is.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of like Ganja and Hess.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

It is.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of like Ganja and Hess.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

It is.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of like Ganja and Hess.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

We come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

It is.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of like Ganja and Hess.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

So the next thing I wanted to ask you about is in my conversations with people about creativity, I think you said earlier on in our conversation that that one thing you need to do is maybe slow down a little bit. And and yet I find that if you're stuck. You need to move. You need to build some momentum.

And often creative experts will say that the way to be creative is not to try to think of a big idea, but start coming up with lots of ideas. Creative people come up with lots of ideas. They're always firing on new ideas. But it sounded like what you said in the beginning was, no, no, wait, slow down.

MitoPure is a precise dose of something called Urolithin A that supports your health by encouraging cellular renewal. Since I started taking it... I can tell I have more energy and I notice I recover faster after I exercise. I did some research on this too. There's some real science here that supports what I'm saying. And so does my experience.

I also wonder, my observation anyway, is that it's kind of human nature to get stuck, that we're kind of wired that way. Because if we always feel like we're not stuck, then you're probably not going to get ahead. I may say I'm stuck in my job. There are a lot of people who would love to be stuck like I'm stuck. It's just that things haven't maybe changed a lot, but things are fine.

It's human nature to want to do something else.

And I wonder if because it's inevitable that you feel stuck, that a lot of people might sabotage or ruin a good thing because just because they feel stuck, even though things are fine, objectively speaking, you have this internal stuckness that makes you do things maybe you shouldn't that screw everything up.

MitoPure is the only urolithin A supplement on the market that is clinically proven to target the effects of age-related cellular decline. And Mito Pure is shown to deliver double-digit increases in muscle strength and endurance without a change in exercise. From my own experience, I have more energy and strength and just overall feel better every day. And who doesn't want that?

It seems as if a lot of this has to do with how you look at being stuck, that, you know, life is not just this free-flowing river that everything goes your way every day. You will come upon times when you're stuck and then you'll get unstuck and move on and get unstuck and then get stuck again. I mean, it's just kind of the way life goes.

Well, this is some great insight to file away for the next time I or anybody is feeling stuck. And what I really like is the fact that that feeling, that sense of stuckness that is so isolating is actually universal and everybody feels it. Comfort in numbers. I've been talking to Adam Alter.

He's a professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, and he is author of a book called Anatomy of a Breakthrough, How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Adam. Thanks for being here. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

And I'm not just recommending it to you on this podcast. I tell friends and other people I know about it because of how it makes me feel. Now, Timeline is the company behind MitoPure, and Timeline is offering 10% off your order of MitoPure. Go to Timeline.com slash something. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E dot com slash something.

Generally, I think people hope to live a long and healthy life. And the advice to do that has typically been to eat right, get enough sleep, stay active and exercise and see your doctor. All of which is probably great advice, but it's a little vague and it's pretty old advice. It's been around for a long time.

And it turns out there are other things we can do and other technologies we can use to see how we're doing beyond just eating right and exercising. Here to discuss this next level of health and longevity is Peter Attia. He is a medical doctor who serves on the editorial board for the journal Aging and

He is host of a podcast called The Drive, one of the most popular podcasts covering the topics of health, medicine, and longevity. And he is the author of a monster bestselling book called Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity. Hey, Dr. Atia, welcome. Thanks for coming on Something You Should Know. Thank you so much for having me. You bet.

So I think most people know that, you know, if you're going to live a long and happy life, your best bet is to eat right, exercise, get some sleep, cut out your stress. So how is what you're talking about different than that pretty generic advice?

And so what are those things? If my doctor asked me, I wouldn't know what he was talking about. Can you explain those?

Right. But most people aren't going to get down to that level of specificity because how would it change anything? I mean, you exercise, you exercise. If you don't, you don't. I mean...

So how does that work? If you have the test and then you take that number and say it's too low and you want it to be higher, how do you get it higher?

But this sounds very like this is for real high-end athletes. I mean, we're in a culture where it's difficult to get people to walk around the block after dinner. I mean, what you're talking about is way beyond what most people would even think of doing.

And maybe it's a good idea because there are some things that dehydrate you that you may not be aware of. For example, there is some pretty solid evidence that oversleeping and undersleeping cause dehydration. So more than nine hours of sleep or less than six hours of sleep and you may need to have some water.

Probably, but there also seems to be this kind of fatalistic, when your number's up, your number's up, and, you know, I do the best I can, and, you know, all this, you know, I'd rather be happy and not, you know, be in the gym 20 hours a week. I'd rather live my life. So I guess it really depends on what's important to you.

So if you do what you're talking about and really get very specific about what's optimum for you, how much better are you going to live? I mean, it sounds like a lot of effort, so what's the payoff for all that effort, generally speaking?

Flying in a plane causes dehydration because the air in the plane is typically low in humidity. Sugar intake can cause dehydration, particularly drinking soda, which may sound counterintuitive since soda is a liquid, but excessive sugar intake can cause the cells in your body to flush their water to help the body restore balance.

I've always thought that people, if you tell them you need to exercise more and eat better and sleep better and all this, no one goes, oh, really? I didn't know that. Everybody knows that. They choose not to do it. And I wonder why. Why, knowing how important it is, is this apathy to do what's necessary to lead a long and healthy life?

Yeah. I think you're right on there. I think that's exactly it. That, that it's just like saving for the future. It's like, I can do that later. I don't need to do it now because I don't feel anything that needs fixing. So why should I bother?

That in turn sends you to the bathroom and leaves your body dehydrated. And of course there's alcohol. Alcohol can suppress a hormone called vasopressin, which acts to hold on to water in the body. And so you go to the bathroom and there goes your hydration right down the drain. And that is something you should know.

So talk about diet because there's been so much contradictory information, what you should, shouldn't eat. And, and so what, when the dust all settles, what say you?

I don't know how you get younger people to appreciate what the benefits will be in doing what you're talking about or what the problems will be if you don't exercise, if you don't eat right. Those things show up later in life, but boy, they do show up.

I really like your perspective on all of this. It's a different way of looking at the whole issue of diet and exercise. It's probably why your book has sold a zillion copies and your podcast doing so well because of your insight into this. I've been speaking with Peter Attia. He is a medical doctor. He's host of the podcast called The Drive.

I'm sure there have been times in your life when you have felt stuck in a job, in a relationship, or anything else. And it stirs up a lot of feelings of frustration and anxiety, uncertainty, maybe a little fear that you'll be stuck there forever. Being stuck just doesn't feel good. Still, it happens to everyone.

And the name of his big monster bestselling book is Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming by, Peter. Thank you very much. Appreciate sitting down with you. If someone in your car has motion sickness, there are a few important things to remember.

First of all, it's a good idea to have some ginger handy. Ginger tea or ginger chews can be as effective as over-the-counter remedies for motion sickness. And peppermint helps too. And there are some things you can do to lessen the severity of motion sickness. For example, look off into the distance and focus on a steady point. That can really help. Keep your head as still as possible.

Sudden head movements can make things worse. And if the front seats are taken, the middle seat in the back of the car is best, because the more you can see in front of you, the better. Those motion sickness wristbands can really help people too, and if you don't have one handy, applying pressure with your thumb on the inner arm, just above the wrist crease, seems to help.

And that is something you should know. More than anything, we rely on word of mouth to get the word out about this podcast and to grow our audience, and we would really appreciate your help. So please tell someone you know about this podcast and recommend they listen. I'm Mike Kerr Brothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Fortunately, for the past two decades, Adam Alter has been studying how people become stuck and how they get unstuck. and he is about to explain what he's discovered. Adam Alter is a professor of marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business and has an affiliated professorship in social psychology at NYU's psychology department.

He's the author of a book called Anatomy of a Breakthrough, How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most. Hi, Adam. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Mike. So what is that feeling of being stuck? I mean, everybody's felt it, but what actually is it?

When I think about somebody being stuck or when I'm stuck, it's like stuck in a job or... Stuck on a project like you're writing something and you get like a writer's block or you can't think of what to say next. I guess there's a lot of ways to get stuck.

Then how do you get unstuck? What is the process of becoming unstuck from whatever you're stuck in?

And so how would, give me an example of doing that.

Also, some simple preventions and treatments for motion sickness you should remember. And longevity. What are the things that will help you live longer?

And do you think it's deliberate? They're actually thinking what you're saying?

If it's not deliberate, but it's not accidental, what is it?

We're talking about stuckness, getting stuck and getting unstuck. And I'm speaking with Adam Alter. He's a professor of marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business and author of the book, Anatomy of a Breakthrough, How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most.

So Adam, I'd like to talk to you about some principles of stuckness that I think a lot of people believe, I also believe, and that when you're stuck, this would be number one, when you're stuck, one of the best things to do is talk to other people because when you're stuck inside your own head and can't think of any new ideas, go get some from somebody else, right?

We talk a lot about health on Something You Should Know, and I guess it motivates me. I mean, I'm not a nut about it, but I try to take care of my health. I want to preserve my mobility and strength as I get older. And I recently started taking this supplement. Maybe you've heard about it. It's called MitoPure.

Christian Bale was preparing for his role in American Psycho, dressing the part, hitting the gym for the first time in his life, even getting his teeth redone. There was just one problem. He didn't actually have the part. Leonardo DiCaprio did. Listen to our podcast, What Went Wrong, every other week as we unearth the chaos behind Hollywood's biggest movie flops and most shocking successes.

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

From Grease to The Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada.

We're talking Parasite to Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite, The Home Alone. From Grease to The Dark Knight.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

If they're introverted, they're going to stay introverted and so on. It may be more difficult, but I think change is possible at any point in the lifespan.

Studies of why people turn out differently, which is one of the big and most exciting areas of psychology where it connects with behavioral genetics and other fields, find that there's really the two big factors that shape our personalities. One is genetics, and in which case you and your genetic sibling, a child and his genetic sibling would have the same 50% of the same genes.

A child and his adopted sibling would have none of the same genes in particular. So that's one of the genes. Say that counts for 50%. So you might think the other 50%, that must come from parenting. But it appears not. It appears that a lot of the other 50% comes from experiences, life experiences. You get bullied in school. You fall in love. You win a prize.

You try something and you're really good at it. You know, these life experiences that different kids in the same family experience pull their personalities apart. As you can have identical twins, right, raised in the same family.

Same, there's no first born, there's no second born, they share 100% of the genes, they have the same parents, same family environment, yet their lives will pull them in different ways and they can end up quite different in all sorts of interesting ways.

The more genes you share, the more likely you are to be similar. And so identical twins are on average going to be a lot more similar than any two siblings who aren't twins, and certainly than any two strangers. But the very fact that they don't come out exactly the same. I know twins where one's very liberal and one's very conservative, for instance. And I think that's interesting.

That shows that factors of life can shape you in different ways.

I think for all of this. Let's focus on the good side. On Einstein's. Put the Dahmer's aside for a bit. Part of his genetic gifts. So everyone's noticed for a long time. These things run in families. These families of geniuses. even if they're raised very differently, certain genius abilities, mathematical abilities, say, or musical abilities crop up. They get a very lucky throw of the genes.

But that can't be enough because you need the opportunity, right, to have the genes flourish. I bet there's a thousand Einsteins raised in parts of Africa and parts of Asia where they never get a mathematical education. They never learn physics. Nobody supports them. They don't go to school. They're not nurtured.

For a long time, roughly half the world, women, whatever abilities they have would not be given environments to flourish. And so you need both, right? You need the genetic gifts. Without the genetic gifts, you're not going to be an Einstein. But without the environment, you're not going to be it either. You know, take your favorite athlete.

You could have somebody born with exactly the same skills of that athlete, but if they never meet a coach and never see the inside of a gym, they're just gonna die and I've never known.

You know, there's a story going around. Everyone knows about post-traumatic stress disorder, when trauma damages you. But there's a story going around about what sometimes people call post-traumatic growth, where they argue that certain sorts of trauma, you come out of it on the other side better than you were. And I've always been very skeptical about that.

And it turns out that when the big studies are done, it turns out not to be true. Trauma is very rarely good for you. And so again, more common sense advice from a psychologist, try to avoid bad things from happening to you. So you're not going to get tremendous benefits from trauma. But now here's the good news. The good news is we are far more resilient than we thought we were.

The typical effects of even the very worst experiences are they mess you up for a while and then you get over them and you're back to normal. Post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological harm and so on are the exceptions and not the rule.

Total nonsense. Wishful thinking. Wishful thinking, which by the way can lead, I think is often cruel. Someone whose child dies and you say, well, you're going to come at it as a better person. You know, stronger, wiser. Who would say that? How could you say that?

Well, I know people who believe it. And there was an article in the New York Times recently that somebody said, I went through some terrible trauma, yet I don't seem to be a better person. What's wrong with me? And I wanted to scream, no, you're not supposed to be a better person. Something bad happened to you. Work to recover. And again, the good news is we're good at recovering.

But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I guess one of Nietzsche's aphorisms has to be the dumbest thing a philosopher has ever said.

Oh, we are often deluding ourselves. People's perception of how others see them is often deeply distorted. And sometimes it's distorted in that people, psychologically healthy people, often see themselves as better than other people see them. People overrate their own intelligence, their own attractiveness, their own sense of humor, their own kindness.

It's sort of a psych 101 finding, the better than average effect. But there's another way in which we get things wrong, which I always found very reassuring to hear, and it's called the spotlight effect. The spotlight effect, it's right in the title, where the spotlight effect is we each feel as if we're more the focus of attention of other people than we really are.

So the experiments often get people to put on a funny t-shirt and walk into a room and then later ask people, how many people noticed you? Oh, everybody noticed me. No one talking about me. But what we miss is that people, everyone else isn't focused on you. Everyone else is focused on themselves. We're all focused on ourselves.

And it's kind of good to know that what you do and how you act matters a lot less to other people than you think it does. People's big regrets in life later on when they're asked are, tell me what they don't do. They didn't talk to this person. They didn't make this decision. And then when you ask them, why didn't you do it? They said, I didn't want to look foolish.

What you find is as people age, their personalities on average get a little bit better. They become less belligerent, more understanding, more agreeable. They're more conscientious. You can trust them more. We seem to kind of mellow out maybe once we pass 30 or 40.

And, you know, nobody wants to look foolish, but it is a bit liberating to realize that people don't notice us as much as we worry they do.

I'll tell you two obvious things, then I'll tell you two less obvious things. Money makes people happy. For a long time, psychologists were saying the opposite. And of course, I don't mean everybody who has money is happy and everybody who's poor is unhappy, but there's a definite relationship in how much money you make and how happy you are, both for individuals and also within countries.

So richer countries have happier citizens than poorer countries. And Like I say, that's kind of obvious. Money buys things like health care and luxuries and freedom and protection from various harms, lets you pay for luxuries, lets you travel, lets you take time off work. That's obvious fact number one. Obvious fact number two is the tremendous value of social connections.

I mean, your grandmother could have told you this, but it's good to have friends. It's good to have families. We have people who love and respect you. Yes, there are happy loners, but on average, being alone is not good for your soul. So that's some obvious things. I'll tell you two non-obvious ones that you may not have known. One is happiness changes in the lifespan, and

I'll ask you again, let's see, maybe you'll, you'll prove me wrong. When are people the happiest in their lives? I would think in childhood. It's a good guess. And they are not unhappy in childhood. They get, they're, they're pretty happy as children. Childhood depression is, is rare, but that's not the answer. People are happiest on average in their seventies and their eighties.

In fact, what, uh, what happiness shows if you graph it over time is a perfect you. where you start off pretty happy, you've got childhood, you dip, dip, dip, until you're about your mid-50s. And honestly, for a lot of people, that's the worst time of their lives.

And then it creeps back up again until when you get to your 70s and 80s, until the very last period when maybe bad health really takes over. You are typically happier when you were an adolescent, happier than as a child, happier than in midlife. And this finding's been replicated all around the world.

It brings us back to memory. Where if I think about my childhood, sometimes I just dredge up some happy pictures, happy events, and forget about all of the times where I was miserable. And if you have young kids, young kids are very sad a lot of the time. They're bored, they're lonely.

You wouldn't think old age is the time for happiness because your health is declining, your power is declining, maybe your social status is declining. But the mindset changes. Your personality shifts in various ways. you're less neurotic, you're more conscientious, and you could become satisfied and attain a sort of wisdom.

And I think a lot of talk of wisdom is often nonsense, but the happiness data is just clear. People who are much older will tell you that they're much happier.

Honestly, you would think that. And certainly, no matter how old you are, death, you know, if your life is going well, is an ugly and horrible prospect. And there's a certain point, it's not that they welcome it, but there's an acquaintance to it, at least to a point where it doesn't interfere with their happiness.

The second mystery of happiness is a genuine mystery, and it goes back to what we don't know, which is there's a lot of debate over whether having children makes you happy. Some initial studies found it doesn't. Some later studies find that in some countries, parents are happier than non-parents. There's a difference between men and women, mothers and fathers. But the data is complicated.

I've written about this before. And the response I get by parents is often like, yeah, it's complicated.

I think that's exactly right. And I actually think that asking about happiness is sometimes the wrong question. We want to maximize different things in our lives. We want to be happy, like a pleasure, but we also want to be good and we want to live meaningful lives. And I think that, Having children is an extraordinarily, for many of us, deep and meaningful and important decision.

It means a lot, it matters a lot. My children are now off in the world, but I define myself as a parent. And that's different from saying, oh, it made me happy. Like a hot foot Sunday would make me happy.

do good for the world and feel compelled to and feel rewarded by doing that and other people take the other path there's even the broader question before that which is why do we do good at all why is an animal that evolved through natural selection capable of kindness and love and caring not just to its kin because there's evolution explanation why you take care of your kin

But to friends, to strangers, we care a lot about things like natural disasters across the world. We give money to save people we had never met. I think that's extraordinary and beautiful. And studying moral psychology is my day job as a researcher. And I find it extremely interesting and really important. But your question about differences also weighs heavily.

And I guess you have to say two things about that. One is there's natural variation in every aspect of a person, every physical aspect. We're taller or shorter. We burn in the sun or we don't. Our knees ache when we walk or they don't. There's all these variations. And the same holds true once you go above the neck. Some of us are extroverted, others aren't. Some of us are timid. Some are fearful.

Some like to joke around, others more serious. And the variation extends through morality. Some people are more aggressive than other people. Some people care more, are more sympathetic, are more empathetic. And there's natural variance you see. Some of it's that genetic that you will see even in a kid. Some two-year-olds are not all the same when it comes to how they treat others.

So that's part of it. The other part is I think we're too quick to see the behavior of others that we see as evil. I don't know, take an example from a while ago, the bombing of the Twin Towers on 9-11. We see this as evil, I think correctly so. But what we forget is that the perpetrators don't see themselves as evil. The perpetrators often see themselves as good.

And some of the very terrible acts in our lives are done not through a sort of psychopathy or some perverse desire for evil, but instead through a genuine desire to do good just in a different way.

It's an interesting question. Um, a lot of my research involves, I said, I studied moral psychology, often studying children. So there's a profound difference between a five year old and a 10 year old. and a 10-year-old and a 15-year-old.

And this is in part could be explained because the brain's a physical organ and grows and ages and atrophies, just like our knees and our bellies and our spines do. And it could be part explained in terms of experience. As you get more and more experience, you change. But we know even in adulthood there are profound changes. Some of them are bad. Your mental speed gets slower after a certain point.

You might know a lot, you might have what they call crystallized intelligence, but you're just not as quick. The quickness fades. That's one part of it. On the positive side, there's been these studies, not just in America, but of dozens of different countries, finding regular personality changes in aging. And what you find is as people age, their personalities on average get a little bit better.

They become less belligerent, more understanding, more agreeable. They're more conscientious. You could trust them more. They're less neurotic about things. We seem to kind of, to some extent, mellow out maybe once we pass 30 or 40. Oh, thank God.

It's sort of in between. There's some truth to the fact that Both events and interventions that happen early are more powerful, have more in effect than those that happen later in life. Something as simple as brain damage, the brain recovers from it quicker if you're two years old than if you're 22 years old.

Some capacities, like learning a language and some social skills, are best learned early in life. The brain seems to shut down a bit, maybe after adolescence or after 18. But the story's been so oversold. So in a strong way, you're putting it, no, it's not true. It's not true. Oh, once somebody's four, you can't do anything with them. Once somebody's eight, they're a goner.

Yes. And, you know, that's another way in which that sort of brain is computer metaphor falls down because a computer does its job just the same way, whether it's next to a window or in a dark basement or whether it's, you know, outside on a park bench or inside on your kitchen table. But the human brain isn't like that. You know, we are exquisitely context sensitive.

We really are affected by where we are at a given moment. And so it's, that really tells us that we need to pay very close attention to the place where we're doing our thinking. You know, one of my favorite ways to improve the place where we do our thinking involves what researchers call evocative objects.

And that just means filling your space, the space where you work or think or create with objects that are inspiring to you, you know, that remind you of your aspirations, that remind you of, you know, the groups that you belong to that you feel a kinship with and having those objects, those material things around you can really shape and prime your thinking.

Absolutely, Mike. And this is a really common phenomenon that you're mentioning. I tell a story in the book about a researcher who said that when he met with his graduate advisor in psychology, his psychology PhD program, this advisor was a very intimidating, very kind of scary figure. And He felt that this researcher felt that his IQ dropped by 20 points whenever this guy entered the room.

He started calling it conditional stupidity because he wasn't stupid. He was a very bright guy, but under certain conditions, as you say, he felt really stupid. I think that has a lot to do with the sense of psychological safety that we feel with certain people, but also Their openness, their curiosity, their ability to ask good questions.

You know, some people are just going to bring out the best in your own thinking and other people are going to shut it down.

Sure. And it's nice to think, too, about whether we can be that kind of resource for other people as well. You know, whether we are a good conversational partner and are asking them questions or being open or being curious about what they have to say, because that's sort of the essence of being a good colleague or even a good friend or a good parent.

No, this is a really dynamic area of research. And one of the sort of most exciting areas of research is pinning down exactly how we use our technological devices to extend our minds. And as we all know, you know, Our devices don't always make our thinking better. There's lots of opportunities to make our thinking worse when we're engaging with our devices.

But again, if we're intentional and thoughtful about how we use our technological devices, they really can expand and extend our thinking. And so that's sort of the latest frontier of extended mind research is thinking. how our devices either extend or contract our thinking and how we can make sure they do the former and not the latter.

Yeah, well, it's somewhat inevitable at this point. So again, the key is to be intentional about it. I mean, there is the danger that some of our native abilities will atrophy if we become too dependent on our devices. For example, there's research showing that people's ability to navigate through space really does decline if they become too dependent on GPS and those kinds of

those kinds of technological solutions. On the other hand, there's so much that we're able to do because we delegate, you know, routine mental tasks to our devices. Like you don't have to remember phone numbers anymore. And so you have more space in your mind to do things the higher level things that only Mike's brain can do.

So we need to think of our devices as helpers, but not as replacing the mental activity that is really best suited to human intelligence.

Well, it definitely is the case. Sometimes you'll hear in education people saying, well, kids don't need to learn facts anymore because they can just Google that. But that is absolutely wrong. As you're saying, we need a foundation of knowledge and skill that is stored in our minds to become masters of any kind of domains. But

The fact is that the human brain isn't really that good at remembering basic information like phone numbers. We forget things, you know, or we mess them up. And computers are better at that. Once we enter something into a computer, it usually doesn't change the way our minds can sort of betray us.

So it's really a matter of learning to think with machines, learning to think with our technology and letting them do what they do best and then reserving for our own brains what our own brains do best.

Well, thank you, Mike. It's been a real pleasure talking to you today. I really enjoyed it.

Hey Mike, it's great to be here.

Sure. Well, what I mean by thinking outside the brain is that we usually imagine that thinking does go on inside the brain. That's kind of our assumption as a society, as a culture. But an idea borrowed from philosophy says that actually, no, we think with all these resources that are available to us outside the brain. And by that, I mean things like

the movements and sensations of your body or the physical surroundings in which you're doing your thinking or your relationships with other people or even your tools like your devices or a pencil or a piece of paper, all those things can be considered part of the thinking process. And that gives us a lot of additional ways to improve how well we think.

So in a practical sense, Mike, one way that I end up applying the extended mind an awful lot in my work as a writer is that instead of doing all my thinking inside my head when I'm laying out a chapter or an article, for example... I try as much as possible to get those ideas and that information out of my head and spread it out onto physical space.

So for me, that's a big bulletin board that I cover with Post-it notes that I can then move around and rearrange. And I find that getting information and ideas out of my head and seeing it spread out that way and being able to manipulate it allows me to think differently

That's right. And what you're saying there, Mike, brings out the point that we're already extending our minds. This isn't something that we need to start doing so much as something that we need to be more thoughtful and intentional about what we're doing already. We want to think, for example, about the point that you just made that the brain is not a great place to store information.

It is a great place to do higher level cognitive activities like planning and creating and imagining. So the more we can intentionally think. use our devices and other tools and outside the brain resources to take care of the more mundane and routine tasks that we might usually lean on our brain for, like remembering things and keeping things in order.

If we can bring in outside the brain resources to do that for us, then we free up mental bandwidth to do the things that only human brains can do.

Yeah, so one of my favorite lines of research about how we think with our bodies concerns how we think with gestures. And a lot of us, if we think about gestures at all, which mostly we don't, but if we think about gestures at all, we think about them as communicative devices, like they're a way to communicate what we're trying to say to another person.

And they do play that function, but they are also a part of our own thinking. And what research shows is that our hand gestures are actually a few milliseconds ahead of our verbal expression and even of our conscious thoughts.

So before we even are saying something in particular and before we even know that we're gonna say something in particular, our hands are actually beginning to express that for us. And if we pay more attention to our own gestures and if we allow ourselves to gesture freely instead of inhibiting our gestures as many of us do,

then that can feed into our thinking process such that our gestures are actually helping us to think more fluently and more coherently.

Yeah, well, the funny thing is that we associate mental activity with our conscious minds. But in fact, there's a huge amount of activity that's going on non-consciously, and a lot of that gets expressed through our bodies. So if you've ever had the experience of not quite knowing the right word, it's on the

remember exactly what that word is, your hands will often be giving you hints and trying to sort of, in their own way, express and capture what that word is. And that can help you locate that word that is just outside of your conscious awareness.

Well, let me tell you about a line of research that gave rise to this understanding of the function of gestures. So children, when they are trying to understand how the material world works, their psychologists give them a set of tools. challenges that involve, say, for example, pouring some water from a tall, skinny glass into a wide, shallow glass.

And then the researcher asked the child, is the amount of water still the same? And of course, older children will say, yes, that's still the same amount of water. It's just sort of changed its form. But younger children are still grasping that concept. And a lot of them will say, no, there's less water now in the wide glass because the level of the water is lower.

But in children who are just about to grasp that very important conservation principle, their hands will be forming the you'll watch the videos of these children explaining their reasoning, and you'll see that they're starting to form with their hands, the shape of the glass and and sort of working out with their hands what their minds are just beginning to grasp.

And scientists have figured out that children and adults also who are in that kind of transitional period where their hands are expressing something different from what they're saying verbally, that they're just about to get a big insight. And that's a moment when they're particularly receptive to instruction and a teacher or a parent can step in and say, oh, I think what you might mean is this.

If you've ever had the experience of not quite knowing the right word, it's on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't seem to remember exactly what that word is, your hands will often be giving you hints and that can help you locate that word.

And they're ready for that insight, ready to take that on.

That is absolutely true, Mike. Actually, research shows that we gesture more when we're trying to figure something out, when we're trying to explain something that we don't quite understand yet. And that's because that activity we're engaging in is so mentally burdensome and taxing that we offload some of that labor onto our hands.

And that gives us more bandwidth to think about and solve the problem.

Yeah. And one of the best ways to get our thinking moving is by going outside. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that we get our blood pumping, more blood flows to the brain. But also there's the fact that our brain tends to think in metaphors. And if you think about, if you're not...

if your work isn't going so well, you might say something like, well, I'm really stuck in a rut, or things are really stalled for me here. And if things are going well, you might say, wow, I'm really on a roll here, or my ideas are really flowing. So we really understand things in terms of metaphors that tie back to our bodies. So when we move our bodies in ways that sort of

prime those metaphors for us when we're actually moving through space and seeing, you know, things flow past our eyes and feeling that dynamic sense of new vistas coming into view, that really primes us to think in that same way.

And if you think about how most of us try to do our thinking, sitting still, you know, seeing the same stuff around us all the time, that's not going to be an ideal setting for us to have the best kinds of thoughts that we could be having.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's why I think the kind of cultural assumption that if you want to get work done, you really have to just bear down and kind of power through and keep yourself in your seat until it's done is really counterproductive. And I'm glad that you mentioned getting out into nature, Mike, because that is another way of thinking with our

thinking outside the brain, thinking with our surroundings. And in fact, nature is one of the most generative and fertile kind of places, no pun intended, for us to think, to do our thinking, because the kind of stimuli that we

encounter when we're outside tends to naturally kind of relax the brain and put it in a very sort of easeful state where new ideas can occur to us, new sort of combinations of ideas can occur in a way that won't happen when we're engaged in very sharp edged focus inside or looking at our computers.

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Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

It is.

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But when he did that Kif, Ag campaign.

Get the bag. Get the bag. But it does. It struck me as, again, there's nothing to do with anything more than it does strike me as weird because Seinfeld is somebody who does have style. He has a look, a style. And I feel like when you... When you pop out of it every now and then, all I'm saying is style comes from the person. And if you chase the trends, you're going to look like a trend chaser.

And women can do it. Guys can't. Guys can't.

if I'm seeing a 40 plus year old man who is buff and is married, shit's gone wrong in their life. There, there, there is no like sex is bad. They want to get out of it there. This is the beginning of an escape plan that I've noticed. It's like, and, Check in in two to three years. It's not an immediate one, but it's a slow build. I've seen many people all of a sudden, whoa, what happened to you?

Oh, just doing this. I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing.

They're prepping, yes. Which is going to be incredibly disappointing from what I understand.

Yeah, it's going to be an interesting time. But the truth is, there's an element of like, hey, you're awesome. Let's get into it. But I don't know. I think it goes away quickly because that person's like, hey, I'm free and easy. You're like, no, no, I want you because you're a good guy that I think that would be a nice relationship. You're in a tricky spot. You get pulled in right back in.

like i guess uh i think the word is like fat or whatever sure what is it we're we're we're we're nobody's everything right yeah we're showing every body type but bald always falls by the wayside look just spend a day and just look around at billboards tv ads whatever you're not gonna see that many ball you're gonna see like one bald man to eight it like that's like that's the ratio it's like i think less brother less i think you're actually right yeah

No Kraft ketchup. We don't like it. Heinz has perfected it. We don't need your mango chutney ketchup. I just want the sugar. I want the taste of Heinz.

Preach. And here's the other thing. If you're going to be serving a burger, fries are not extra. That's a twofer.

I don't even enjoy the fries, and the fries are the best part. And you can give me a little carafe like this big. Don't treat me like an animal.

I don't even know how you make it, but I know that... I don't think anyone knows. That's why it's so bad. The Heinz factory is a mystery. Yeah, the Heinz factory has figured out something that no one can duplicate. What about Kraft Mayo? Have you ever had that? That, I can at least get a little bit behind. 100% disagree. Really? I want Hellman's. Oh, I mean... Look, I'm not saying Hellmann's.

I'm going to go for Hellmann's. Mayo at least is like eggs, and it will taste a little bit like it.

Not at all.

All right, I'm going to give you a more controversial take. I like Miracle Whip. Oh, Miracle Whip's disgusting. Oh, my God.

You know, look, I like eating at fine dining establishments, but the mistake that they always make is you make this great burger, you make these great fries, and then you kill it all with a ketchup that just doesn't taste right. And I read those comments and I was in those comments and the way that people are like, well, but you haven't tried this specific one. I don't need to.

I'm saying as a general one, yes, there might be one ketchup that might have a nice flavor to it, right? Maybe. I'm not even sure that I believe it. But let's just say for the sake of argument, there is one other one. You can't hang your hat on that. You can't just be like, well, you didn't talk about this one. I'm sorry, my friend. It's over. It is.

Why are we like if you're if you look in the Heinz? Yeah, there's a squeeze bottle. That's a little bit more backyard. But the glass bottle looks classy. That's why when you go to places like the Four Seasons, what are they putting in there? Heinz in the little mini bottles. And now how fulfilling that is to open up mini bottles.

That and the little Tabasco bottles. It's like, come on, people.

Well, this is what I want to say. Four Seasons is saying, hey, we know what you're doing. You're having fries and a burger and you're already spending, like, you're going out. You're slumming it a little bit right now. So let's give you the full experience. They are respecting that choice. They're not trying to force you down this other path, which I really like.

I've looked around. It's tricky, man. It's a tricky thing.

Oh, and that's the other thing. All the comments, you know it's a sugar. You know it's a sugar. It's like, Yeah, shut up. I don't fucking care. Like, I don't like, what are you saying to me? It's like, it's like, it's like, as if it's like, you know, well, it's not good for you. It's like, I don't care. First of all, are we, this is my favorite thing about people.

It's like, we'll drill down on that. Like, oh, it's got sugar in it. Let me see what else you're eating. Let's just take a look at your other, like, is everything passing through this small window that you're talking about here? Like, it's just that people want to be right. And they want to be, oh, right, it's sugar. Well, I guess my opinion is not valid anymore. I guess I don't like it.

No, I've tasted sugar. I have gummy worms. I ate all the fun dip. It doesn't taste like ketchup to me. So there's definitely a different flavor going on besides sugar, I think.

And by the way, fries, that's not an expensive thing. It's potato, people. We're not in a potato famine. We can make fries affordable again.

I know I lost a lot of people on that one. And I want to go on record and say this. I haven't had Miracle Whip in conservatively 15 years. So I do want to just go. But I'm going to also still stick with what I liked about Miracle Whip. is that it had a little tang to it.

Well, look, I'll say that I am definitely in the top ten of funny bald men.

I found sometimes mayo feels a little, but now this, I see the face that you're already giving me, which is like, there's something about, I do like a little spice, I do like a little tang. I haven't had Miracle Whip lately, but to me, Miracle Whip, in my mind, and I could be completely wrong, so I'm really curious to see, is mayonnaise with relish. That's what I thought Miracle Whip was.

I used to make tuna sandwiches with Miracle Whip, and I thought it was good. But here's the thing. Now, I should have brought a little can of Miracle Whip over here, because I don't even know if it's available, but I should have tried it. Because now I can feel confident all day about the other thing. But this...

I just felt like it's one that gets a little short shrift, but people really were upset. I didn't find any whip heads out there.

I'll take it.

My kids call sparkling water spicy water. Is that different?

Oh, I've never, I've never will say that. As a matter of fact, the biggest thing that I deal with, I grew up in New York and I always say, can I have a seltzer? And people look at me like I'm insane. And I'm like, oh, sparkling water. Cause I never even knew sparkling water was seltzer was New York. Seltzer was a thing like seltzer was what sparkling water has become.

Right, Larry David transcends bald, man.

But people look at me like seltzer. They've never heard the term before. And, uh,

Yes.

Okay, so yeah. So I've learned to adjust my, but never, and I will never say spicy water. Nor will I say bubbly water. I will say sparkling water, soda water, seltzer. That's it. But it's not club soda because club soda is disgusting to drink. But a lot of times people give me club soda. I'm like, no, I don't want this.

What? I'm pretty positive that club soda is a... It's something different in there. Club soda is... With added minerals, it's artificially carbonated. It gives it a salty or tangy taste compared to the neutral flavor. I think maybe my rejection of mayonnaise was it didn't have enough of those little flavors.

He's got the sides. Well, here's the thing.

Cause I'm going to, man, I don't want to lower myself in your eyes after that nice compliment about my take, but I'm going to say I'm a person that also at a period of my time, enjoy like Clamato or I like a, like a, like I like that kind of like thing, you know, I like that.

It's like, well, I don't even want to, I honestly, it's better for that. I leave you. not knowing what it is because you might be disgusted by me. But it's tomato juice with clam. It's tomato juice and clam juice mixed together. And it's a lot of times, like people, Budweiser now sells it as like a michelada flavor. It's like called like- Oh, you drink it. You drink it. It's like a spicy V8.

That's a different, you're right. I agree with that. That's a different world. I have a stand-in that I use. I love this guy, an amazing dude. And one time he's like, hey, if you ever need a stand-in, here's my resume. You could always give it to, you know, the production people.

I mean, I haven't had a V8 in a long time either. And these, again, these are kid- These are kid things. I'm not sitting here pouring a Clamato at home. By the way, Clamato is tomato juice, sugar, dried clam broth, and MSG.

I was, as a kid, left to my own devices. And I would love to, like... I like making, like, just weird concoctions at home. I think I just liked... like things that had some spice in my family. We were Italian. So Italian food is good, but it's not like spicy like that. I don't know. I think I was craving getting some salt and spices in and something.

Now I can need a much more balanced life, but I haven't had.

I would, yeah.

I'm thinking, like, I was like, I was thinking, like, yeah, because, yeah, you're right. I think we are the spiciest of the, yeah. French doesn't count. I would say that, I mean, I know we're pushing further, but Greece is not really. That's a whole different thing.

Okay, so that's it. Yeah, so I guess you're right. I mean, the sauces, it's tomato. We're talking a lot of tomato sauces.

Oh, I mean, look, I've watched Romance. I've heard that monologue. I'm into it. I'll take it.

Whoa!

Oh, I see what you're saying. Look, that's a hot take.

I don't think that Italians are hovering that low. I understand the push up of where people fall, but I feel like every... Here's what I think. I think everybody thinks of themselves as Italian. And I hate, and that drives me crazy. Everyone's like, oh, The Godfather's my favorite movie. You see all those dumb signs, like reserved for Sicilian parking only.

Like those signs, like people love, oh, they're all good cooks because pasta's easy to make. Everyone's like, I got a little Italian in it. Like no one, everyone wants to embrace that identity. So I'm going to say that Italians are never Italian. I think Italians hover in the Irish area. Irish is obviously the most accepted white. But it wasn't always like that. Historically, the Irish were black.

And what he gave me was a sheet of paper with every prominent bald man in Hollywood and my face is on it next to all the other bald men. I have it framed in my office. One of the best things I've ever gotten. It's like, I love that I am in that echelon. This guy is a bald man stand in and he has stood in for everybody from Alan Arkin to Bruce Willis to Patrick Stewart, me. It's all in there.

Yeah. Especially like the way that like, I mean, New York, New York, kind of like the way people came in a hundred percent. Yeah. But I do believe that before 9-11, Italians really worked their way into mainstream journalism.

All right. I see what you're saying. So we transcended the mafia stereotype.

By the way, I'm bummed that I wasn't at that show, but that's a fun conversation because you can take away the... Because I think that there's this thing, like the knee-jerk reaction. You hear that, and all of a sudden you're like, I want to be offended by this thing. But there's really nothing offensive that you're saying.

You're saying like, look, people were... There's a lot of different prejudices that we have here, right? And people have been through the ringer in different ways. And I think if you can get out of the way of just feeling like those words might be triggering, what you're actually saying is something that I think is an interesting, debatable topic, because...

There is, I mean, look, as somebody who has grown up surrounded by a lot of Italian people, and one side of my family, it's Irish, the other side, it's Italian. You see, I mean, I've seen all the stereotypes come true as well. Like, I mean, that's the other part of it too. So there's a part of me where it's like, I knew somebody was in witness protection. I knew a guy that was a mafia guy.

Multiple people that were, like, there are just certain things. Like one of my school friends, his dad was like a bag man. What's a bag man?

Goes around and collects the money from the places that it decided that they're paying protection for the... The VIG. Yeah.

I think the VIG is a gambling thing. And I think that the bag man is like, hey, you don't want me to look after your shop? Give me 200 bucks a month or whatever it is.

It's a very high, a high compliment.

Right. So they go around. The bag man just goes around to collect the money, you know, after it's been brokered. You know, so...

Well, here's the thing. So my friend, you know, I'm, I'm from a pretty working class, uh, environment. My, my stepdad was a truck driver for supermarkets. My dad is a pharmacist. Um, my mom worked at a hospital, like very basic, you know, kind of stuff. And, uh, I went over to my friend's house one time and his dad's always home. And I'm like, why is your dad always home?

He goes, oh, he can't work. He's legally blind. And I go, oh, all right. But he drives a car, right? He gets around the house fine. Didn't look legally blind to me. Like he could hear us and see us all around the house, yell at us, hey, stop doing that, do that, right? Didn't have a cane. And then found out,

years later oh no he was in the mafia the reason why he was home all the time because he was just what he was doing was he's a bag man he'd just go around collect the money and that was it he lived and by the way they lived in a mansion and the mom didn't work so that was the that was the uh again as a kid i'm not looking at these telltale signs i'm like i knew it was weird i couldn't figure out why it was weird but as a kid you hear oh my dad's legally blind and i go yeah yeah sure i have no questions no further questions your honor

And then Sal comes over and breaks some legs. yeah freddie the bone or sal the fucking snowman bagman is like reverse salesman you know you got the sale you just got to drive to the locations you know it's like hey how you doing you do a little glad handing now i will say my my my grandfather um was the vice president of a bank a bank a small bank on long island and the president of the bank

famous mafia guy who embezzled all this money from people's retirement accounts. He went away to jail, just like in Goodfellas, where he would get sent home on the weekends and go to jail Monday through Friday. Pretty sweet gig. So that was his jail time, that he would have weekend furlough.

Nice life.

I saw that. And this to me, you know what I'm going to say about this? And I don't want, I hope, but this doesn't come across in any way, you know, bad. I feel like that's a plantain ketchup. I feel like Jamaica is not, there's no tomatoes growing. Like, I feel like they're doing something. Jamaican ketchup is not the best ketchup. I'm just going to go out on a limb and say it's not good.

When I saw that, I was like, this is a ridiculous statement to have.

Well, I'm sure that you're having, you're having behinds.

So now I'm looking here on Jamaica ketchup. Jamaican ketchup is a unique flavor already eliminated from the conversation. Once you say it's a unique foot done. Nope, you don't have the best ketchup. It's something else. It's not ketchup.

I'm interested in this. It says tomato paste, water, sugar, starch, salt, vinegar, spices, against the rogue spices, sodium benzoate, and natural flavors. So what I'm getting from this is it looks to me like this is A spicy ketchup, a spicy ketchup, Jamaican ketchup. I also don't like the bottle. It feels too much like cats up, which I don't also like. Cats up is not a thing that I enjoy.

But yeah, Grace tomato ketchup. And honestly, they have too many full tomatoes on it. And the logo on the front says new, richer taste. Nope. All these things have disqualified it.

Well, that's the thing. All these people who fake bald, it's like, oh, what a great choice. I do think that, look, I walk around the city. I see people. There are a lot of bald people out there. We need somebody to just say, hey, it's cool. It's good. We're on board with you.

It's their version of ketchup, which is not ketchup. It's quite literally nothing. Thicker is one of the terms they use. Thicker. I like Heinz. I like Heinz.

Let's go. I literally have told them. I'm like, here's some dates. Let's go. Let's go fly in.

Well, that's my same exact experience. And I'll tell you this much where I really thought about it today was again, you know, we're talking about Heinz. I know my phone's listening to me. I don't care. And, uh, and what popped up on my Instagram was a new Heinz machine that

That, okay, so one of my favorite things in the commercial food world is that Coke machine where you have every flavor of Coke possible, the freestyle machine, I love that. they've created a Heinz freestyle machine where you can insert.

Now, again, I don't know if I'm going to be enjoying all the different, I may want it simple, but what they're doing is they put your little ketchup thing in a, in a, like a, it's spinning around and they're shooting all the flavors. And so they're mixing you a live ketchup. And I was like, well, this is, If I can't see this up close, I mean, why? There's no reason to live anymore.

Well, this is what I'm saying. I don't know where this is. It seemed like they were having some sort of new tech presentation of it. But there's a Heinz Freestyle machine. We need to see it.

Oh, you'd be done. It says Heinz is channeling its inner Coca-Cola with a new custom sauce dispenser called The Remix. Combines four sauces and with enhancers at varying intensity levels.

enhancers i don't know what that is what kind of enhancers like maybe you can up the sugar or the vinegar i mean i'm i'm so i'm like i'm making spicy then you're answering my questions you know maybe this is you know gosh we gotta get in this room i'm gonna we have to get in it's like willy wonka's chocolate factory for us i mean i want to go there so i've already said yes i me too and this is the thing i'm like i feel like somebody wants us there and then they're trying to upsell it and they're why why are we bringing these guys here

So much ketchup. Just fill your cupboard for life with ketchup.

I think you're supposed to after it's opened. Yes, I keep my ketchup in the fridge, but I keep my peanut butter in the cupboard.

Yeah.

Well, no, but there's a lot of people have a very strong, a lot of people keep their, my wife and I have this debate all the time. I keep the, the minute you put that peanut butter in the fridge, it's getting cold and I can't be swiping it on the bread. What are we doing here? Come on.

So this is interesting. I used to be a butter fridge person all the time. And then I've now seen that you can keep the butter out. And it's like, oh, this makes a load of sense because then it's always soft, ready to go.

Well, look, I have had this gap in my teeth for a very long time. Every now and then, you know, when I'm getting into it on social media, someone will be like, hey, why don't you find a dentist? As if... This is something that has never occurred to me, nor have I done any. Like, wait a second. I could have fixed it.

See, this is what I didn't know. I didn't even know I got to this level.

I got a thing. It's like a butter bell. So I, cause I was like, I think I should be keeping it out. And then I read that as you just can't keep it out. You got to keep it like there's this butter bell. So you put, you kind of take the butter, you put it in the, it's almost like a cocoon. And then you put that cocoon into another device that has, I think it has a little bit of water in there.

So it keeps it moist, right? So it doesn't go bad. And then you can take it out, and you're kind of pulling out from the inside like that. It's like a honeycomb hive or something like that.

All the years I've been – I mean, all the years I've been – I'm looking here. It's a butter crock with a lid, butter bell. Yeah, I'm looking. Look, these are $12 items. This is not – You know, you can upgrade your whole life in a moment, right?

Well, I guess, you know, I'm using butter.

Well, you know, my whole life changed when I had kids. And one of the ways it changes, I eat breakfast or at least grab at breakfast. And I definitely make my kids breakfast because if I don't, the people will come and take me away. And I... Or they'll take the kids away.

Or yeah, they'll leave or I'll leave. Somebody will leave. And so in the morning, it's a frantic rush to get out of the house, get to school. So I'm making waffles. I'm doing English muffins. And I want that butter to be ready to go because I got to get it on the things. Oh, this is a good question for you.

A question that was asked to me by, and this is a name drop, but he's the only person who's ever brought it up to me. Jimmy Kimmel said to me, do you butter your pancakes? And I grew up buttering my pancakes. But other people never butter their pancakes.

Yeah. Start asking that to some people. You're going to be blown away by your reactions. You're going to start to see that there are two types of people in this world. People who use butter on pancakes. People who don't. It may be a New York thing. I felt like this is an insane thing. No, that's a universal thing. Jimmy was like, it is...

And since he's brought that to my attention, I have seen that there are two schools of thought on this. Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

And the whole reason I have a gap in my teeth is because when I went to the dentist as a kid, not saying I went to the best dentist, probably not the best dentist. He's like, oh, you can never fix that. And I was like, oh. And we took that as fact. There was no second opinion. There was no anything. That was what it was, and done deal.

Yeah.

I have been doing this. This is the way I run my show. Okay. I'm not pouring it on. Like that's like rain hitting a, if you don't cut your pancakes before it's like rain hitting like a, a protective thing. Like, you know, like a, like a car wash slides right off. What are we doing? You got it. You got it. Cut. You got to make sure it can get down to the bottom.

Look, here's the thing. And maybe you disagree. You might buy this. I like them right on the border of wet, but not soggy. Right. I don't want I don't want to be. You got to walk. You got to still give me the taste of what I want. which is, you know, I don't, so when you do want them wet, you have to then eat a little bit quicker because you're, you're, you're running this line.

You got to make sure that before you get it, you're just not putting like a, you're not just putting like paste in your mouth.

Yeah. I'm, I'm very much a, this is, and as somebody who cuts pancakes, uh, more than I'm eating pancakes, this is what I'm working with all the time.

it's tricky. I like to cook. I love cooking. I came from that Italian background of making food. My wife is a vegetarian. I became essentially a pescatarian being with her because it's easier and I like it and it's fine. My kids are essentially vegetarians. And what I've learned is when I'm cooking for them, I'm cooking for them. When I'm cooking for me, it's not going to be enjoyed.

It's not going to like, like I can't make a family meal. I have to make a meal for my wife and I, and then a meal for my kids. And once I got over that hump, you realize also it's so simple. Like, My kids love scrambled eggs. Why they love scrambled eggs? Cause I'm putting a shitload of shredded cheese in there.

Now, I've gone to find out that dentist probably is pretty bad.

And I'm like, and it's, and it's like, it's basically the egg is holding the cheese together. Just having cheese bombs. Right. Like that is where we're at. And it's like, I'm making cheese quesadillas. Like I would love to dress it up. My kids palates are not there. I mean, they're spicy watering, you know, that's, that's, you know, and so it's, I want to cook for them, and I've figured out ways.

I can tell you how to make an Aunt Annie's mac and cheese where they'll go nuts. They like pesto pasta. I can do that. I can do these things, but we're going to be leaning heavily on the cheese always. And I said it to my doctor, my kid's pediatrician. I was like,

I'm a big fan of, I tell my kids, we don't make candy an impossible thing to get. And because of that, they actually are more, they don't go crazy. I've seen so many kids- Moderation. Yes. I'm in this world out here. I'm in LA. I'm watching these parents. You can't have sugar. You can't have this. Don't do this. Don't eat red dye, Doritos, whatever. I get it all.

Yeah, comically easy in a way. But yeah, never fixed it because a dentist told me. And then I had achieved some success when I realized that it could be fixed. And I was like, well, now... I'm not, I like it. I'm here. I'm, I'm all on board. Um, but yeah, it's a, uh, it was an unintentional thing. And, and a lot of times opens up conversations that are nice, sometimes very awkward.

I'm not even disagreeing with it in theory, but these, what you're creating is these kids who are like coming down from heroin. They're looking, they're looking to score. They're looking to get a Dorito in their mouth and, and they don't care. And you see, and it's animalistic. And I don't want my kids to be like that either. Like I was, you know, like, And there's a balance.

You just walk that balance.

I... Okay, so... I drank soda to such a degree as a child that I'm like, what was happening? I had a comment like this. It was a big debate on how did this get made, where I said, oh, water wasn't a thing when I was growing up. Water was just like, it wasn't like I'm going home and having water. I go home, I drink a glass of milk. I drink a glass of orange juice. I drink soda.

It was never like apple juice, maybe every now and then if we're lucky, right? But water wasn't like an option of like, I'm thirsty. let me drink water. It's like, I brush my teeth with water. Sure. Shower with water. I'm not drinking that shit. That's gross. Like, it's not like it's that my parents weren't packing. I'm packing me Capri suns, not water.

Um, you know, and so that's a damn shame, buddy.

Well, that, and like, and that was, and that was like, so I grew up like that. And now like my kids drink water. We don't, there's no juices, you know, if anything, they're drinking, uh, some McCroy, uh, but really only one of them. And now I drink, I primarily only drink water. That's all I drink. Right. But it was sort of like, but growing up, like water, like Coke, uh,

And that was like the one thing that my parents were like, you can't have sugary cereal, but I could drink three glasses of Coke at dinner.

100% agree. Oh, come on.

Come on. Here's the thing. do we need this? Well, wait, well, hold on. I want to think about it. I like a happy birthday. I don't like the restaurant doing it. Like, like let's, if you, if you were there and we have a little thing and they sing, I feel like it's tricky because I'm also thinking about the embarrassment that I feel when there's a circle of people around me.

So like, I don't want that. I don't want the pomp and circumstance. I don't want the whole place to be a clapping and I don't know, but maybe I do. This is a tricky one.

that sucks and is really sad but i think to abolish it is a little too much for me you know what here's the thing i i you have swung me around i think what i want is the option to hit it or not hit it right like it's sort of like it's like you come in you're like we do have a birthday Drop all the shit. We don't want the shit. We do want the shit. And then, because it's different vibes, right?

Like some people I've had this happen to me where, you know, people come up to me and like, you know what they, you know what they say about a guy with gap teeth. And I go, Oh no. And this has been told to me multiple times. It's like, you're very sexual. Um, And I was like, oh, OK, great. I'll take that. It's an uncomfortable. Where do we launch from that point as a married man?

Different vibes are different things. Like, and I think people are different. I think the forced nature of it, like, well, everybody loves this. They don't. Like, I know my wife would not love that. Um, but I know that other friends would, right?

So it's like, it's like, I think it's like, give me like a card to check off because you know what I would really like that waiter or a waitress that comes to our server, I should say that comes to the table. I'd like them to say, hey, happy birthday, man. Hope you have a great year. And I'm like, oh, thanks, dude. Like, there we go. Give you a little dab. Yeah, just a little boom.

And then I'm like, well, I have a connection. I'm going to leave that fat tip there. But then I can do it because I think a lot of the times birthday things are used as an embarrassment technique. It's like, let's go...

make this person feel uncomfortable and it's their day and if they don't want to feel uncomfortable in their day like don't do it but i like singing happy birthday i also feel like servers sometimes sing it in an angry way it's like they're so pissed off at everything else so they can really put a lot of energy you know it's like i'm happy you fucking jerk like you know

Yeah.

This is...

do you and this is why i am a strong agree because it's too it's too flexible i think it needs to like there are some you know like right now when you get an uber it says prefer no conversation or conversation like that's that's what i want i want it to be like a nice option right it's just like and it's not saying i hate to talk it's like right now i'm not in this mode i want quiet give me quiet like so i want that option because i do think that

look, when you're in high school and you're playing that game of it's his birthday and we'll get a free dessert, but then you're not, then you also like, then you're also walking this line. Cause I think that that's often done in high school. You get the free dessert as if it's a win, but you're not tipping as if you got a free dessert. Like there's a lot, you know, you gotta like,

I just think it's a- There are rules.

That's not a conversation starter for me. That's a kind of a conversation ender. And and then but somebody then somebody said to me. you must be really good at going down on women. And I was like, oh, wow. And again, but also, at that point, you picked a sexual preference for me at that point. You don't know me at that point. I mean, I guess maybe it would be harder to go down on guys with this.

Well, I'm going to argue that your friend is a clear example of someone who doesn't understand the rules of engagement. And this is why I agree with- Hasan, that we need to either abolish it or reconstitutionalize it. We need to say, what are the world, what is the world in which this is acceptable? Because I do like the celebration and I do think that we should be celebrating people more.

I'm never more excited than, oh my gosh, I bought, I'll tell you this one thing. I didn't know this, right? So I'm in Mexico. We're at this fine restaurant, a steakhouse, right? It doesn't seem insane. Um, and I say, oh, I'll have like a tequila on the rocks. And then my friend, she was like, I'll have a margarita. My wife's like, I'll have a margarita.

And then somebody else is like, I'll have a margarita. And the guy says, oh, we'll just get you a bottle. It'd be easier to do that. And I was like, oh yeah, right. Yeah. That's like, it's four tequila drinks and that's great. Before I knew it. There's a fucking firecracker on top of this Casa Azul that comes out. The entire restaurant's like, hey, hey, hey, hey. People are going nuts.

You inadvertently did bottle service. And I was like, this, I've never lived with more guilt in my life for that because I was like, yeah, yeah, the bottle is fine. It's like, I didn't understand. I was like, oh yeah, it's...

Oh, and they popped the thing already. So they've literally popped it. You can't go back.

That's so embarrassing and sad. It's so embarrassing. And then the whole restaurant got excited. Now, here's what I'll say. I'm living in absolute fear.

Now I'll tell you the other funny part of that story. I, we were at our table and I just happened for the moment. I looked out the corner of my eyes and my friend Jeff, who is the showrunner of Curb with Larry David. I'm like, and I text him, I go, were you, were you just at this restaurant in Mexico? He's like, yeah, we left. Larry saw the bottle service and was like, nope. And walked out.

They literally had it. They like walked in, saw it and walked out the door. And so, again, we need these laws. We need these rules in place.

She's like a smack. Like a smack on the ass or something like that.

Wow.

So I know it's a tricky, you know, it's like, look, it's a tricky topic because it's sort of like, I feel like there's a, I mean, it's hard for me to say a strong agree, but I also feel like, again, we're talking about variables that are hard to, hard to like knock in. Right. Because it's sort of like, you know, um, Oh, man, I'm going to say strong. I'm going to say strong disagree.

It's a hard show, right? Hard show. I have a hard job. You do, because what it's all in the nuance. But again, I don't want to give people the freedom because your light smack could be somebody's hard smack, but a smack from mom. those are the ones that you remember. Like, you know, and it's in a good way.

I understand why it might be good.

Like, you know, like I, like my mom, you know, and then I straightened up, I got my shit together. You know, sometimes like there is an element where it's like, there's abuse. And then there's also like, Hey, get your shit together.

I have a kid for eight years for 11 years and eight years. I've never laid hands on them in any way.

Well, beat is... Then it's a strong disagree. The term beat... I guess what I'm thinking is a slap on the... I would never do a smack.

No, the more I think about it, I disagree with it because it would have to be so specific. It would have to be, and I guess the way I'm thinking about it is nothing on the face, nothing really on the body, like more of a slap on the tush. And I feel like that slap on the tush is like, hey, come on, let's go. Like, you know, like a little like, but that's not beating.

So but then the craziest moment with the gap was one of the first times it was actually the very first talk show I ever did was Letterman. And as a gap tooth man, I'm looking to the, you know, Eddie Murphy and David Letterman. Those are my gap tooth gods. And I'm backstage at Letterman and I run into Biff, stagehand Biff, who was on the show multiple times, also a gap tooth man. Wow.

And then that's just like a push along. So I don't want to devalue beating. I'm going to say strong disagreement.

As a parent of 11 years and I have two kids, I've never felt the need to do that, nor has my wife. Yeah, it's probably bad.

But again, it's all in the nuance, right? It's all in the nuance.

Look, this goes back to it. Well, it's got sugar in it, right? Like, well, how are we living our lives? Like if you're going to go around and like, look, I eat primarily, like I said, pescatarian. So, but I'm not also not like sticking my nose up at everybody who does. I'm not judging your meat. I'm going to go eat barbecue because I like barbecue. I'll do that.

I will go in different directions occasionally. But I want to make this true for all the people who are flaunting it in your face. Like if you're living that life of like, well, I don't do that. I don't eat this. I don't do this. Then you have to live, you got to live, you got to be on your sword. Like you want to tell me that ketchup has sugar in it and that devalues why I like it.

Then you got to show me that you don't eat, you eat a life full of, you're devoid of sugar. Like live, walk the walk, talk the talk. But if you can't, then no.

Well, what is it packaged in? We don't know what it's packaged in. Is it, like, what kind of bags it was made? Where was, like, the bag that it's transported in?

See, I was looking at it in a different way. I was saying, you don't know what kind of shoes the delivery person is wearing. You don't know how the bag is packaged. You don't know where it's sitting, if it's sitting next to other food in that bin on the back. You don't know all the details. So it's like the minute you...

take it out of that place of veganism, that place where it's cooked in all the right moments. You're putting it into the harsh world and subjecting it to multiple things that you could be against. So that's where I was looking at it as like, it ceases to be, unless it's like vegan to, you know, restaurant to door delivery. I can't, I don't know what, I don't know what's going on in that car.

I don't know if that gas car, am I getting some gas fumes in there? Are you smoking in there? What's happening? Like a lot of things, a lot of contaminations. A lot of contamination.

But I don't disagree that... Here's what I would say. These are hard, by the way.

A lot of good bits. The idea being that you are... Animals don't have a choice. this animal does have a choice. You don't have, like, it's not like you're not drafted into being an Uber driver, an Uber door, you know, like you might be by the economy, but you don't have to do it. So I, yeah, so you have free will.

So I feel like, I think a lot of the strength of veganism is like, well, these animals don't want to suffer for your pleasure, whereas, Am I going to say this or am I going to say the person who's delivering your food has an agreement? I am suffering for your pleasure because I'm making money. My driving through traffic in a snowstorm is judged simply by my want to pay the bills or do the thing.

It's a choice.

i'm gonna say jesus was a hundred percent uh agree he was not a republican yeah he lived his life by yeah i mean no great take but the republicans want him oh i mean that's the they want him so badly they want him so badly i mean this is the this is the issue i just watched life of brian recently and i'm like they were ahead of the time in 1979 like calling it out it's like these

And Biff says to me, hey, look at this. Like, look at, we both have this pointing to the teeth. And I go, and so does Dave. And without missing a beat, it was like I had crossed some line, like,

It, they, they want them.

I saw it for the first time a week ago, uh, for this podcast I do called unspooled and it is,

so ahead of its time you should watch it it's great it's like it just talks about all the like it's all like there's like a one of the jokes and i don't want to spoil all the jokes but the this idea of like there's a sect of people that then splinter off to another sect of people because that sect of people isn't aggressive enough like it speaks so much about how how our society is so quick to want to follow like uh

they blindly follow rules and people and they just get behind it. It's like, yeah, I grew up Catholic and I went to Catholic school and all of Jesus's teachings were, versus all the laws that are being in place by people who are saying that their hands are being guided by Jesus are so wildly wrong.

But the way that people can wrap themselves in circles to justify why it actually is right is the most confounding thing I've ever seen. And I always have like a thing where Howard Stern said it. I like this idea. He's like, if you don't want abortions, that's fine. Then you must adopt. If you are standing against abortion, then you have to be actively... like taking responsibility.

Like, it's like, how do you say we won't, you can't have an abortion, but we also won't provide like childcare. We also won't put money into schools. Like you, you, you want to, you want to protect the baby while the baby is in the womb. But once it's out, you're like, fuck it, I'm done. I did my part. And it's like, well, that's, you know, it's like, it's such a crazy thing.

It's so wildly and simply two-faced. It's not even like, well, I had this cool thought. It's just right there. If you told me a thing, you'd be like, oh, that's something that AOC would do, and that's something that J.D. Vance would do. It's like you could pick it out. You could do no.

I do podcasts. I have one called unspooled and one called How Did This Get Made? And then every week, Rob Hubel and I do a show on YouTube called The Dark Web, where it's just we just watch. crazy shit from the internet, from like old sizzler training videos to a video that I'm been obsessed with, which is, and I, I tell everybody in your audience to go find this.

dave doesn't have a gap in his teeth i'm like really famously has a gap in right doesn't he famously have a gap in i mean i know he does and then i'm like but he was like like as if i said to him well you know like uh you know david letterman's famous mustache you know it was like you know it was no it was like what what are you talking about he has again it i and then it was like as soon as he gave me that reaction it was like go and i walked out on stage and i'm

It's the waffle house, how to present a plate. And they have a system that seemingly was created by someone who was suffering from such advanced OCD. The way that they decide to plate any food is truly insane. It gave me a headache. I literally watched like the first five minutes. If I got this job, I would immediately quit. In the middle of the video, I simply can't do this.

I simply put a jelly on this side of the plate if it's for rare, put a piece of cheese on this side of the plate if you want a packet. Just type in Waffle House food presentation. It will make you nauseous with anxiety. Yeah.

Let's get on this.

Just about Heinz. I'm taking the praises of it.

talking to letterman my first ever appearance on a show and just staring i'm like he doesn't have a gap i guess it's smaller maybe it's smaller i don't know like this is your first first tv appearance ever on on late night it was one of the best experiences ever i'm huge letterman fan still a huge letterman fan um and one of the craziest details i didn't understand how talk shows worked like i didn't understand that when you went and did a talk show

you have conversational topics. Different shows do it different ways. Some are very tightly scripted, others, like Jimmy Kimmel, very loose. It's like, we're gonna tell this story and we're gonna have fun. Uh, but Letterman, when I got there again, I'm, I'm new, I'm new in this game.

Uh, I'm given a script and I'm like, oh shit, I have to like, these are the stories that I told and they're written better than I told them. And you know, they're, they're very formulated and here are the questions. And I'm literally trying to memorize me like what, these are my stories. I'm trying to memorize what they want me to say. And, and the producer who was lovely, they were like,

here's the deal. He's going to ask you these questions, these three questions. If the interview is going well, he'll ask you a fourth. He might even ask you a fifth. So be prepared for fourth and fifth, but don't assume you're going to get fourth. It might just be three depending on what he feels. And I was like, God, it's, and then I'm out there and I'm like, I hope it's going good.

Look, you know, Lauren Hutton broke open that door and look, I need anything I can get. I'm a bald man. First of all, you know, bald representation is at an all time low. I feel like it's, there's sexy bald men, but there aren't just regular bald men. And if there are regular bald men, they're like, they're not looking good. The hair is out like on the side of their head.

We got to all five questions, uh, which was great. Um, But it was nerve wracking to feel like, oh, in the middle of the interview, I will know how the interview is going. And and yeah, it was a I mean, one of the best highlights. It was just I mean, yeah, that was really that was one of the best things.

know. And I wonder if, and I've noticed this with other people too.

Or he didn't hear me. You go through these moments where you replay these things and it's like, what actually happened there? And I don't know what it was. There might be an issue where maybe he got that gap slightly closed. I remember the gap being a part of him that was very big. It was like, this is... Like David Letterman has a gap in his teeth.

But if you look at it now, you don't really see it that much. The gap is closed. The gap is closed. He's closing the gap. And, you know, for everybody has the right to do it. It's like Jeremy Piven was a bald man. We all remember Jeremy Piven as a bald man. There are movies, big movies where he is a bald man. He is not a bald man.

And then, but if you would ever say, well, you're a bald man, he would look at you like, what? What are you talking about? Well, we know how hair works.

Oh, you see, this is the way to do it. You got to go out of country for the best implants and all that sort of stuff. It seems like that is the game thing. Here's what I'll say. Again, my bald head. creates a lot of conversation topics for people, especially men who are going bald, who then want to talk to me about what they will be doing with their hair. And I want to say to them, sounds great.

I can't really relate because I've made the choice to stay bald. Like you are now saying, I'm not going down that path, but let's talk. Like people come to me as like a bald Sherpa. I'm like, I'll tell you what, look, I'll tell you how to handle the mistakes that I made in being a bald man. But I can't talk to you about the hair part of it. I don't know about what's going on in Turkey.

But I've talked to some people. I've talked to some people who told me their scalp was pulled up. I've heard the craziest stories of hair transplants. And it makes me just more confident in my choice.

Well, here's what I'll say. I think that there is a, and the younger me would not want to hear this, but there is a blessing in going bald young because going bald once you are established as somebody who has hair, it's like that's when you start to see the John Travolta, the Nick Cage stuff where we're like, Oh, now you're, now we're not, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's changed too much.

I've always been bald. You're hanging on for dear life. Exactly. So yeah, the only thing I'll say, if there's any bald men out there, go to a barber, shave that, get that shit cut down tight. That's what I've noticed. And what I think, I wish somebody would have told me, like, don't let the sides, don't let the sides cut.

Like I, I need to get some, Jason Statham is a bald man. LeBron James should embrace his bald man. I feel like we need to, we need to lead with bald men. I think you guys need to rise. Yeah. Look, I'm not calling out James Gunn, but I'm going to call out James Gunn and say, in your Superman movie, you cast Lex Luthor as a haired man? Come on, man. That should be going to a bald man.

get you like we know what's happening we're seeing it like the side you don't need to get those sides out just yeah i mean unless it's a real choice like larry david's a beautiful choice he looks amazing with it but yeah what is that called just like just i think it's called bolt but it is a different cat it's it's a halo it's like right yeah it's oh the halo or a fryer tuck

Whenever you see that stuff, it blows my mind. It's like, oh yeah, Tom Cruise is the same age as Wilford Brimley in Cocoon as he is when he was doing Mission Impossible 2. Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon was like, I'm too old for this shit. He was 38, right? You know, it's like... You know, it's like, wait a second. I thought that guy was 70, you know? But like, there is a weird thing that goes on.

But I don't, I mean, this is interesting because I feel like you are somebody that is, when I look at you, the way that you dress, you dress hip, but appropriately hip. I feel like there are people out there who don't know how to walk that line. That's the thing that I feel like is, and you see it and you feel it on them, right? Like you feel it on them. It's like, oh... what are we doing here?

It's a, it's a, like, I don't like seeing, I don't like seeing dads that are looking too cool. Like here's a pet peeve or here's my take. I don't, I don't want to see, I don't want to see a little kid in like a pink Floyd shirt or like a who shirt. I don't want to see like that dad throwing their bullshit on their kid.

I'm like, keep that like, like your kid's not a friend of Pat, but you're a fan of Pat Benatar. Like, you know, like, I don't want the retro shirts on my kids. Let them be their own person. My kids saw it. It feels weird to me. It's like, oh, this is now a prop? Is my kid a prop for you to put on these funny things? Look, if your kid likes David Bowie, wear a David Bowie shirt.

But let them decide.

I think that's smart. Yes.

I think that as you age as a man... I think you're right. You commit to a style and a look. And if you can commit to something, there's a lot of style in dressing well. Or in keeping a level of a nice button-down, a good sweater, a good jacket. There are just things. I feel like you don't have to look like you are... you know, working in HR in Montana, right?

We cannot have bald erasure here, all right?

Like you don't have to like, I think that like people think it's like casual Friday, like slacks and like a tucked in LL Bean shirt. Like there's a way to be stylish. But I also feel like the thing that most people don't get, those people who are online, and by the way, I was just in New York City last week. I saw that line around Kif. Well, look again, love Jerry Seinfeld.