Welcome everybody to another episode of the H3 podcast live. Every Friday at twitch.tv/h3productions except sometimes it's not on Friday. Uh. Thank you to Omaha Steaks, Lyft, MeUndies and Honey for sponsoring this episode of the H3 podcast. If you guys have any questions for us or a guest today. Give us a ring at eight one eight two one four eight five zero four Next week, there's still alot of you know, there's some housekeeping stuff to get to you so just keep it , just keep it chill you know. keep that house Sometimes it surprised me how much housekeeping we have but anyway Michaels here. I'm gonna do like an official intro I just want to say we have some houses keep chilling you're doing good Doing great Next week I'm very excited to say that we have Brendan green Coming on to the podcast aka player unknown the creator of the massive Successful PUBG is the director designer producer aka the new notch right? Very excited that episode will be at an irregular time Wednesday the 20th at 3 p.m.. Leave your questions for him on the subreddit I'll be throwing that up here after this live broadcast. I forgot to put it up today's guest is a saucy fellow A vsaucy fellow if you will We all know him and we all love him. He's Michael and he's you've recently Ascended from a science guy to a living meme status I would say I think the Vsauce memes are in high demand as far as the meme economy is concerned He just came out with in Second season of YouTube red series mindfield was just released and I had a excellent time watching it And he's got one of the best channels on YouTube Vsauce Very honored and thrilled to introduce once again to the show Michael. Thank you great to be here yeah after Being here for the groundbreaking of this very studio. I'm back. It's it's very cool You are I think our first ever guest In this studio, it's a lot your friend first ever was PewDiePie right yeah, and that was like in a some warehouse Right he had like a Airbnb in LA he was shooting scare PewDiePie Right season 2? Yeah, I don't know if that yeah I think that was season 2 Wow we all know we all know how that one ended a little season Yeah, one of my favorites. I was in it by the way. Did you know that? No kidding. How you were in minefield where like it didn't work. Yeah, and so it's kind of like thanks for trying It was actually much worse than that I was a full episode I co-starred mean HeLa both in an entire episode. No Kidding. It was a whole fucking thing. I got electrocuted, bro For real yes technically For those science fans out there watching electrocuted means killed If you didn't die you weren't electrocuted so shocked I'm sure there's some other word but yea electrocuted. Look it up. You have the power. I believe you I believe you. I'm just I've said "that shocks me" I'm not saying that I know every word Electrifying knowledge electrocuted can I put my mouth right on the mic? It feels kind of good. Yeah, I prefer Basically, the more in the better it sounds. How did this A lot of famous mouths have been right up next to these thats true you get there's hep there's a Really passionate and tender kiss have you ever seen me kiss. I'm all the sudden jealous of your wife. You should be. Yeah, there's all kinds of hepatitis. It's a petri dish dish It's basically new new forms of STDs being transmitted to your tongue right now glad to be part of history cheers to that more Brad Berry more Brad Berry yeah That's one set of lips you may not like. This very mic? Yeah, you keep this mic here, and you guys use the same mics every time. Yeah, well we...we have switched around. What? Well I have been there before and here. This is my mic. I don't know what Hila has been up too. Ethan doesn't move. I don't fucking...I don't let anyone use this mic. Where was moo? He was right there. We bleached it though when he was done. Thank you. I bleached it like halfway through the show He was like protect me from myself. Yeah, I was like sorry buddy How's the show change, I mean last time you were here We had like tape it was it was kind of a funky setup right. Yeah, I was on that couch I think. Yeah. Which was very comfortable now? I'm I do feel kind of tall with this chair being up high But I'm afraid to move it cuz then the Michael have to move it'll just the Mike is very everyone. Yeah, the micah Yeah, the mike but what if I don't move it right? What if I get too low? I just want to get fishing you can really just manhandle this thing. Okay. Well. How are you? How have you been? I mean how the hell is life since we last spoke with you. It's great. You know it's been it's been fantastic I just got back from the brain candy fall tour And that is you know it's a it's a slog you know everyday You got a show well six days a week, and they get one day off we perform in Kansas City my hometown gave shout outs to some teachers that made a difference in my life when were there in the audience and Got to have my grandmother's come You know couldn't really make it very far away from Kansas City's having the show there It was really cool that is very cool You do it six out So how long do these tours last because you says you do it six times a week at once a day six times a week So how long is that duration? It could be four weeks like this fall one, but in the spring we did nine Holy, no break. I mean how? Level with me Michael how awful is it? Yeah? It's it's not because here's the thing Adam Savage has been traveling and touring for years He knows how to make it nice, so we've got star coaches right. We've got rooms in the back of these buses. We drive Overnight right you wake up whenever you want to because you don't have to worry about the show until like 6:00 p.m. So you've got a day to just lay in bed go to the dressing room. I could do a lot of work I can still make my regular calls and I can visit the cities. I'm away from home I'm away from my cats Millay from my wife. I'm away from the Vsauce office. That's a drag right but meeting people in person is Really important. You know you can watch a YouTube video and and Engage with me that way, but when you meet in person or when you turn it your whole evening And it just coming to a live show it's a bigger part of your life. I think you know you remember it longer You've been to show. Yeah, we really we're in Costa Mesa right there's in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara. That's right Yeah, so I remember It's a total blast. It's a total rock really the kids they love the goddamn balls Balls well they're free yeah, there's free balls. I mean guys free balls that you you really you're selling tickets to bring candy But we you should really be selling us free balls free balls coming well. They're not free Free it's lots of balls and then underneath in parentheses brain candy brain candy yeah paper balls balls yeah stay for the candy Yeah, I found that to be true as well I mean when you meet a fan you writ that personal connection or realizing that these like real people watching your oh man and the best thing is that especially because I'm touring with Adam Savage a lot of makers come to the shows people who have a craft people who love To make things and they make us stuff They make us wire sculptures a guy made these muppet type puppets of Adam, and I that are just phenomenal I mean it's not like I tried it's like I'm a professional here normally This would have probably been thousands of dollars And I just made it because I love making puppets and now I have a puppet of myself which So you're collecting treasures? You collect treasures, that's that's powerful. Yeah. How I do get nervous before the shows I mean, this is a serious production and there's a lot of people in the audience Create these you know. It's it's a whole or thing they come out tonight. They come out They watch you. I mean you've done a lot by now, but walk me through the process of of Prepping yourself for that and now after doing it for so long Dude does the nerve still affect you? How is it? No, the nerves. Don't affect me now. They did for that first show because I had never done this. I have no idea What the show was gonna be like we'd run through a few rehearsals with no one in the audience But luckily you know Adam And I are both pretty good at improving something goes wrong If someone needs to change we can just do that on the spot And you start to get really familiar with it And then I've got a background of doing live performance ever since you know high school Giving informative speeches and and that kind of stuff in forensics and debate And so I got the butterflies out like I feel comfortable if something goes wrong I can fix it Yeah, I feel like I would be shitting like my pants every fucking night We thought we've toyed with the idea of doing a live tour And I just I think I would I would I would have a breakdown well. It's too much stress You might, but not forever. You know I'd get over it forever not forever No, you would you would learn every night would be the worst night of my life. I feel it you know I Disagree okay? I should do it. I like your encouragement yeah, you'll be super nervous the first the second the third But then you'll start to be like man. I can't wait for this I can't wait right so it's a fun thing for you. Now. You go onstage you do your thing you look forward to it It's really fun I mean it's the same show every night but not really because there is no script and So are always tweaking things before the show will meet and I'll say you know I think that joke would land better if we did this or I think we should change the order or I think we should Explain that part and then I'll explain this part, and then you can think you don't understand and then I'll pretend understand It's always really fun, and it's new to every audience right I've seen the show or I'm in it, but every night It's a new city, and it's new people who were like hearing and seeing these things for the first time You had said that you Guys are both really good at improv and so when something goes wrong you feel comfortable picking up the pieces What's the most dramatic thing that's gone wrong for you guys on stage? I fall a lot on stage faceplant. Not a faceplant There was one night. It was in Canada. I believe it was in London, Ontario where we didn't have the right party fog juice normally we use propylene glycol I believe and instead we had this oil-based thing which meant that a Layer of oil formed on everything on stage including before me Yeah, so you know I danced in the show as you've seen yeah, but it wasn't even during dancing It was just I was just walking carrying this bottle of acetone and boom slip hit the ground It was so bad the like I needed to discuss it during the QA and the middle of the show because the audience was like Okay, and also maybe that was the had to have been scripted and planned because no way the show would have gone on that's not Even the worst though the worst you ate shit pretty hard it sounds Yeah, yeah, and I I'm a real jumpy person so when I fall. I don't just like kind of you know fall I go Because I feel like me that'll be more entertaining or everyone thinks I'm really hurt another I fell and Though this this was the same the same show with the oily floor I fall and I feel while I'm falling I think you know what I can save this if I start like breakdancing Maybe that's what I meant to do right, but there was a stagehand in the way And I roll into him because of course the floors covered in oil I can't breakdance I can't breakdance anyway, but I also can't even like get friction with the ground, so I just slide into him and Killer show that sure we couldn't get the oil out of it, so Was that a good was that a favorite sure yours it was a really good stage shirt? That's of London, Ontario you guys were the last ones I haven't seen any but I'm sure the Michael are like Dan and Han, can you guys look up if there's Michael eating shit on stage? Oh my god? No, there's some just like Dancing and not falling Clips out there. Oh my god. I hope that's up there I mean that sounds like a hell of a show if I'm being honest Yeah, they were very lucky. Yeah, they're very fortunate people I again what my next question for you is that? I'm fascinated by people who do a lot of stuff. Thanks. Matey. Thanks, Dan I Can't go I can't get a break people make fun of me because I say fascinating a lot Like I wonder how they fascinating fascinating and every time I say fascinating Dan hits the soundboard to mock me fascinating fascinating I'm I can't even say it do I get to do I get passes should I get some? The F word the F word, but the guest won't know what I'm talking about dance err Michael just confused right now There's no idea what's going on alright. Let's get I'm fascinated Give me a give me a breakdown give me a fucking pass on this one by showman or productive professionals Who manage so many things in their lives because I find myself always like Overloaded and I get flustered and lose focus when I have too much shit Do you in minefield Vsauce brain candy of the Curiosity box? How do you manage all these things at once and keep yourself sane and focused I? Don't and I'm going insane. No. I think what it is is it's um It's about a great team to help you you know I'm I'm involved with the Curiosity box and help curate things But there's a different team that packs them deals with orders deals with getting samples And I love what I'm doing that's kind of a cliche answer, but like when I wake up in the morning I want to continue reading about You know rigid rotational dynamics. You know because I just want to and it happens to also be my job But if I couldn't do that I'd be kind of like Annoyed mmm so it's I'm really fortunate that my job happens to be what I do anyway when I have free time But that also means that I do I ever have free time. Yeah, I gotta take a break you say okay I'm gonna stop What do you? feel like you have free time do you feel you need free time does being so busy all the time how does that affect your life It doesn't affect my life because my life was already even before YouTube the same thing I just didn't have anyone to listen to what I had discovered right I would talk out loud to myself But then with YouTube around I could just turn who I was into a show a show right and To get to get bigger than that to do a live show to do the Curiosity Box to do mine field you have to have other people help and so wonder people work with you and Supporting you so gosh. I mean there were more than a dozen people on mind field well, and we had a number of actual psychologists helping with Pre-production because the first season was classic Experiments it was stuff that I knew because I had an undergraduate degree in it And I was like let's just replicate all of these famous experiments. We know the result to expect and we kind of you know we know we want to do but for season two I wanted to go into what a psychologist doing today, and how are they doing it so we had to bring in people who were Career psychologists who could then reach out to different universities and say what are you doing? What can we help you do we've got Money, we've got resources. We've got in some cases cameras like an episode that isn't out yet, maybe it will be When you're watching this Was about the placebo effect, and how we're enchanted by neuroscience that we believe it can do more than maybe it really can and having Mine field there as a documentary crew Made people believe that the study was more powerful than it was because of course it was a placebo study But it must be something if all these people are here with cameras if this you know if Michael Stevens is here It must work, and that was all part of of Planting that suggestion in their mind that they're gonna get better mm-hmm That's very cool. I'm looking forward to uh how there's another six episodes coming on my field or what's the deal? I think were six already. I think there are three more There's eight total and so far five have come out so over the next year the next three will come out So I wanted to talk about the season to mine field actually Because you definitely it seems kicked it up a notch From season one and I appreciate you sacrificing your own body of mine as guinea pig you dabbled in a little bit season one with the deprivation yeah, but I Loved the truth serum, and I loved the ayahuasca trip Tell me about how you guys came up with that deer and I basically I just want to hear like what was the experience like let me start with the ayahuasca because I feel like on the show I Wanted to I wanted to hear more about how was that experience for you right because it was fucking it was a weird trippy thing like it's one thing to take a psychedelic and hang out with your friends as another thing to hang out in like a Jungle while some robed man chants while you trip balls and be recorded. Yes. Yeah, yeah, there's like yeah That's a weird way to do a psychedelic. Yes. Hey guys rather than doing it in like my dorm room I'm gonna do it in the middle of nowhere Where no one has cell connection where the only way to get back to a city is by taking a boat ride for hours Lying there was a measure of paranoia. There was a lot of fear, and I don't think you know we didn't record a lot of that, but I was really nervous as the date approached because I couldn't Say no I could I made it very clear that like look if We're gonna do this we all need to agree that up until the moment I put it to my lips I can say no and no one's gonna be mad that we went all the way out there Because I didn't plan on not not doing it, but I wonder you want to reserve the right. I didn't want to feel forced yeah And so I said look when it comes to the decision process and what we do and how it works that hierarchy goes me then the shaman and Then everyone else If the shaman thinks that we need to have the lights off if the shaman thinks I need to stop recording And I can't respond you listen to the shaman yeah, I know he's not on payroll I know you didn't approve him as a director, but did he get EP credit. I don't know what he got But he was a great guy. He was also our boat captain. Oh he's uh he moonlights Yeah, yeah he moonlights with the ayahuasca right yeah But tell me about that experience because I'm first of all was it your first Psychedelic experience as far as my mother knows. Yes, of course. Okay, all right. Yes, not watching. This isn't your mother show and It was ah Man, I think the the initial emotion. I had before the ceremony was Aggravation really yeah, because I was nervous But I couldn't I couldn't do it my way What was your way my way would have been? To not have all the cameras there don't have to make a show right and so this is what's going through my mind I'm like hanging out in the hut waiting for the shaman and and his assistants to come and get me but I can't just get picked up and then taken to the The the ceremony we have to like do multiple angles and take the experience couldn't be authentic it was it was totally authentic But I had a job to do during right yeah, that was the hard part that I couldn't just completely Surrender myself to the experience as me I had to be Michael the host of mind field right I had to listen to direction like ooh you know what we have to do that again because This light was in the wrong place or oh we need to get the coverage of the shot of you entering and I'm fine doing that but I had bigger things on my mind and colors and shapes well I didn't even know what kind of colors and shapes are gonna be it was frightening Okay, so then we've got a crew of people right We've got something like eight people there And they've got microphones all around and usually you do this in the complete darkness That makes for a terrible show so we had to have lights installed which made me really self-conscious because not only am I being watched and surrounded by people you're expected to perform, which I can only imagine would be such an Awful feeling while you're tripping right okay, so expected to perform was another concern I had so I also made it clear that if if I do nothing, but lay there catatonic leave for eight hours You're all gonna be happy a speed. Yeah. Yeah, because I don't want to have any responsibility or obligation Because you're in a different state of mind yeah, and I can perform. It's my career. That's my job I'm used to that in this state of mind right if I get hangry or grumpy or happy I can still do those jobs But I wasn't familiar with what it was like to be in the state of mind that DMT creates So luckily we had all that figured out, and it wasn't that big of an issue, but I felt really Unhappy that I had to have all these eyes on me And and then as the drug started to take the effect I felt feelings of guilt Here I am I Was paid to fly to Peru to take drugs and only I got to take them no one else on the crew Had signed the right insurance paperwork Or would probably be able to do their job properly if they had also taken it so it'd been interesting though It could have been interesting maybe for the season three the boom Yeah I mean the shaman drank some okay. Well you would do that, but when you took a dose I was like were you a little concerned when you saw the shame and dip in yeah, cuz I was thinking wait I thought you were your my god over me you're my guide, bro. Yeah But let me let me tell you this in The the effects got stronger and stronger my feelings of fear and guilt and and cut the the self-awareness of all the cameras on me that every motion I Did was gonna be caught and if I sat up they'd have to reposition cameras? And I'd be aware of that and what if it didn't work What if they needed to give me some kind of direction and I wasn't in the right state of mind I've intial II realized hey as annoying as it is to have all these cameras around if We didn't have the cameras here there wouldn't be a show and I'm doing this for the audience I'm doing this for Robin the researcher who was there mm-hmm It's not about me all of these concerns about hey guys stop walking that noise is frustrating or stop asking for the coverage shots That's my job. It's for everyone else. This is not for me and Starting to think about I need to just give Robin. I come come do the the the EEG scan I'm ready for that I didn't want to but then I realized by allowing you to do it I'm giving it's not about me and what I want. It's about what everyone's here for so that's a lesson. I took That from that afterwards citrus in yeah How that's interesting that makes you think about? When when something is your hobby, and then becomes your job, it's kind of like it's not so much about you anymore Yeah, that is kind of profound. Yeah, exactly Did you you've you felt that on a level that you hadn't realized before yeah, I mean, I literally envisioned myself as this like Waterfall that's just offering Its water to the world And I'm like I remember sitting there going at some point Robin has to come over and give me a series of questions He's got to put this thing on my head and measure the electrolyte electrical activity there And I could say no and I planned on saying no until I realized the way to get rid of all that anxiety Was to just say let's do this I am a vessel for your research Were you concerned from the beginning that you weren't going to be able to perform that? Hmm no, I wasn't really couldn't because I figured even if it all completely is messed up And we don't get everything right that in and of itself is whatever happens is good. Whatever happens is well how did the experience meet match up to your expectation let's let's let's Let's just assume that you've taken other psychedelics. Let's just imagine a world where you have how would that? Hypothetically compare to your experience well It's it's different for every single person But anxiety was my biggest fear because once you're you're once you've drank the ayahuasca it's you're you're on the ride like you can't take the antidote right you know and The first ceremony was really Pleasant and and quite low in its dosage the second one within 20 minutes. I was like oh No you took twice as much as I recall you took like a third of a cup the first time and then 3/4 of a cup that's right. Yeah, yeah, and It happened so fast. I had lost control. I no longer was like observing What was happening things were just happening to me right and? My heart started racing right we had a medical doctor there, which normally you don't because it's not dangerous basically but YouTube requested that we have a yeah Yeah, and so I was but here's the thing my heart was going. It was literally beating very fast I actually there's a moment where I touch my chest and I'm like yep It's really happening, but then I thought how do I let the doctor know? Because I can't think no this is not how I normally feel is it weird if I just say hey um help How are they going to interpret that and so I just I thought maybe I'll just ask for water You know maybe that like will tether me back down to reality because someone will have to bring me water And that's a really Mundus is so I've been that like I feel like I've been in that headspace of trying to like You're stuck between like the ethereal world and the physical world and trying to make sense of Being on another in another place, and it's frustrating. I hate that. It's frustrating because I was probably Most consumed not by anxiety, but by the feeling of how do I? Relay and describe what's happening to me later. You know because that's what always annoyed me about Discussions of psychedelic experiences is that it all felt really vague and Hard to empathize with and now I I mean I I know why it's it's like describing colors to someone who's never seen it's a completely different state of mind right and So I I every a psychedelic experience I've had I've hated it. I don't know why would you say it doesn't sound like you quite hated it? But it seems like it was marked with some negative feelings Might yeah, my experience always have a lot of I think my problem is like I'm too anchored I never really let go and you're always like resisting the urge to just kind of float off And you're trying to hold on to the earth as you're floating to the sky I think getting over that resistance is there a part of what psychedelics teach you right I didn't I? Didn't break from that, but I'm aware now of its existence. I know what it feels like Robyn Carhartt Harris from Imperial College London who came with me? Didn't say I had a bad trip. He describes. It as a challenging trip. Yeah. You know I like that I'm still glad that I did it, but I'm not like I got to do it again, and I think that's fine you know That's exactly it's fine. Yeah I think I think if you're so that eager to return to that state of mind you probably having some trouble dealing with the Actual physical world if you're so eager to its embarked out there and and on a daily basis um I don't know, but I know that There's a bonus clip where we spoke to a woman who took psilocybin as part of this. Oh, that's like mushrooms yeah, she took a pill through a study at NYU and She worked with these researchers for months And they crafted a pill just for her based on her weight based on her past They knew what dosage to give her and they I think she felt incredibly safe. She wasn't in the middle of this brand-new space Therapies for coping with death yeah, she heard death. Yeah because she had been diagnosed with cancer and confront your own mortality is obviously frightening, but they they Were experimenting with how psychedelics can help you deal with those feelings mm-hmm and she? Was it was a phenomenal experience for her? She she tells a story of? Seeing a table with all of her family and friends, but also death is at the table mm-hmm and she realized yeah Deaths invited of course hmm and and ever since this happened years ago ever since. She's felt much better she's she's You know felt healthier, and she only took that one pill. It's not like just it's one dose ah That's that that's awesome, I love that I think psychedelics and and drugs like that really have a lot of value to our society It's just it's a shame that they get stigmatized And I think that stigma itself is what contributes to a lot of the negative feelings you have when you take it I think so too. Yeah, because you start to feel like oh my god doing something wrong. I'm doing something wrong yeah in fact I had this thought that cracked me up during that second ceremony where I was like You know what when the shaman lights the candle and says that it's over first of all it's very comforting because he knows how long These experiences last when he lights that candle it's proof to me that The effects aren't only going to wear down from now. I mean it takes a very long time, but they When you're going down you start to regain control anyway I'm thinking you know once he lights the candle and like the crews done the first thing I'm going to say is I can't believe I'm gonna have to tell my mom. I did this and Such a funny thing I didn't mind obscene it cuz it just felt like a joke when the experience was really traumatic and poignant, but I Forgot what I was about to say you were Talking about the stigma how it makes that oh, yes I think that if if I was part of the you know Shipibo indigenous tribe where this is a Medicine prescribed all the time I would not have felt the same kind of am I a bad ryerson am I am I I mean This is illegal in the country that I live and I should feel bad that I'm doing this This is a behavior that only bad people do right and you have that social baggage on you. Yeah, it's interesting You know I heard about a study that doctors are starting to use MDMA to treat PTSD so they give you a dose of MDMA which is ecstasy in the pure form and they set you down, and I guess if It makes you feel more comfortable talking up and you feel more comfortable with the emotions that you're dealing with and so All these drugs that that I think it's a shame. I really think it's a shame this war on drugs. What is done III genuinely believe that people Yeah, I generally believe that people don't abuse drugs unless there's something else going on like people don't just all the sudden become addicted at drugs I think all drugs should be legal and people should decide what they want to do And if there's education and support to help people navigate those waters that we would be a healthier better society in the word drugs What does it mean because it sounds like so many gangs? everything from heroin to DMT tylenol caffeine to tylenol right and so we Have done a disservice to both ourselves and to innovation and knowledge by saying ooh You're gonna study psychedelics we really only want to fund that if you're going to be studying the bad side of them right and only recently has that started to break apart, and we have this now renaissance of Investigation of psychedelics Imperial College London has this whole psychedelics research group And that's who what Robin was from who came with us and so we're starting to be able to understand more about the mind because you cannot have a complete theory of the mind if you avoid or ignore Something that it's capable absolutely. I mean it's crazy that I Mean yeah, we've tried some obviously by now from the way. We're talking about it and It's it's weird to see what your mind is capable of So I was ashamed to do it on like a daily or weekly or I don't I mean we don't do anything now but we've tried it the Experience of trying something that is really interesting just to learn by your own Body people are so there's all these scares like you'd like you take acid once and you lose your mind I knew a guy who took acid and fucking jumped off a roof or he never came back from the trip like these are these Are I swear to god? These are all just old wives tales that are just designed to spook you I don't think that really happens Yeah, when I was a kid very very very rarely, right Well two things one when I was a kid. I read the story about the guy who took LSD thought He was an orange and locked himself in a closet because he was afraid of being juiced and there's no you think oh my gosh How terrifying and and to be fair, this is a significant decision this isn't like hey You know what? I should do is invest in gold right? No, you really you should it's I don't think anyone should I don't have any Advice or or I'm not gonna Recommend to anyone what they do it's their choice or maybe the choice of medical professional should make but the fact that you know HeLa you're like well as you guys can tell like maybe we have done something that Cajun is we have to have that yeah I feel bad like even talking about it because some people are gonna say oh you guys are promoting. Oh, yeah I don't endorse it. I don't recommend it I think you're like you shouldn't be able to talk about it Right and like I think like you said it's a big decision to make for yourself And I don't think that it needs to be caged by law or stigma I think that there should be open dialogue there should be conversation and like go to a place like Places in Europe where drugs are legal And they'll test it for purity for you so that you don't take something awful and die right Yeah
I can always that you know where's it's some shady stuff can hit me is that drug that shady bad people are gonna own the Market, it's not gonna be regulated and there's not gonna be anything you're not gonna feel like there's anyone there Who can help you or advise you through through the experience something I found fascinating Was that when I spoke with Robin hit him heaven with the den fascinating fascinating? I Asked Robin the head of the psychedelics research group at Imperial College London I'm like so what's your experience with psychics assuming? She's done it? Hee hee sorry Robin Robin, Robin like Batman and Robin right he goes well. I don't talk about that My grandmother might see they're such a cop-out, and I'm I'm saying that is that is I? Was gonna say fascinating like that is you see it's fucked up. Yes. That's like drugs. It's the f-word I've got all the stigma around they're a great example of the stigma. That's your job is to research Psychedelics, and you can't say that you've ever experienced them what other scientists does that Oh mom I study gorillas Oh have you ever seen any Oh, No yeah? I would never look at a gorilla right I talk to people who have looked at them. Yeah Or an imagined an astronomer who's like yeah, I've been studying the Stars and the motions of the planets. I've never looked up Yeah, don't judge me if I don't look up. I've talked to others who have and until we break that barrier I think we're really missing out on a big part of the human mind. It's a such a beautiful paradox I think of this guy. I love even on a personal level. He's like no no no I don't talk about them Yeah, anyway listen. Let's let's roll to a break Quick thank you to our sponsors, and we will be right back with your boy. Saucy saucy Vsauce Thank you to Omaha Steaks for sponsoring this episode of the h3 podcasts listen Omaha Steaks is a product that I am fully behind You know that scene in Pulp Fiction where they open this mystery chestnuts like glowing orange? well That's basically what they send you I received my package full of filets sirloins pork chops in gabon size it Arrives in this chest with ice and you open it's like glowing. It's like I'm enlightened when I open this thing. It's unbelievable Let me tell you about Omaha Steaks for $49.99 You can get my family gift pack When you go to their website and search h3 in the search bar. That's 75% off This is high-quality meets my friends for $49.99 listen to what you get two filets of the mignons I? Knew a guy who once said fill it MIG nons here in Australia. He was Australia apparently That's what they call it in Australia, but I didn't know that I'm sitting at a restaurant with this guy he goes I'll have a Phillip MIG. 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Let's get back into the socks And we're back HD podcast with Vsauce what you did you ever consider Puking out the ayahuasca after you drink it were you like can I do that Yeah, you don't have time as soon as it's entered your body You can try to vomit it up, but some DMT has already entered your bloodstream Oh, you would reduce the effect if you just like gagged maybe yeah I mean you would have to be the case rheya rough start vomiting and diarrhea argh or not not diarrhea But like lots of pooping could be solid. I'm assuming is a big part of the ayahuasca experience You know and it's um how nice something they're prepared for I had a puke bucket there. There are bathrooms there. They captured never happened never have I ever even felt like I had an upset stomach and I've heard of shaman who encouraged that it's part of the process of kind of abusing yourself And there could be a legitimate medical reason that it's good in that you can flush out harmful bacteria If you really are having some intestinal problems But never happened to me some some shaman will make you puke by either Disorienting you with their song or giving you a tobacco drink, but that could be pretty dangerous I mean we did this as safely as possible again. We had a medical doctor there. You don't play yeah Yeah, and so I think that's a huge lesson to learn like this was not a recreational Let's have fun in a weird kind of a moment this was a let's work with a university Let's work with a hospital and let's let's learn. What was the scientific purpose of the I know you did you put the electrode? Things on yeah on your head to measure your brain with it was that the purpose or was it just To go through this experience as a science Scientist of sorts and to try to describe it it was both because I wanted to see if I could help It talk about that state of mind as someone who's a professional science communicator But at the same time no study had been done. That was that environmentally valid like literally done in the Amazon With those songs in those languages in that location. They're usually done in these very clinical Hospital and where you're in a white room And you don't know you're in a big city right so we were able to look at that and help The researchers learn what variables to worry about what kind of technology works obviously, it's not an experiment It's not like oh we had a whole sample size in a control group It's just one person you've got an N. Of one drops pretending. Yeah. We're not pretending that this is some experiment it was more of a Kind of pilot study to see what is it like to go to these? retreats and try to collect data mm Can we find anything interesting is this particular EEG helmet gonna give us enough data? or is it too noisy and all of that so we learned a lot in that case I Felt a little bit cocked eased by that experience because you guys were saying in the show you did it the first time you took a small dose the second time we took a larger dose and you guys were saying I Almost had a ego day. I know I wasn't almost there. Yeah, I didn't quite get there Yeah, then I was like oh great. Well. I can't wait for the third one when he gets there right now I know that way there's only three minutes left. I know what happened That's what happens when you are doing it for real And you you you you don't know what the results gonna be you know we have a lot Did you consider doing it again? Though? Cuz you could have taken more I you know yeah, I could have decided cuz a few hours in that second ceremony I realized who you know what I can't get back to that ceiling that I was afraid of and turned away from I could have gotten up and asked for more this can happen during a ceremony, but I didn't and There are other things that you'll see in future episodes where like I tried to get TMS on my head to disrupt and arrest my speech we could not find Broca's area. They couldn't make it happen hmm That's just what happens you know If we'd spent muscle was the dose was the large dose you took What is normally enough to have someone have like a full ego loss? I think it's different person to person Depends on your weight depends on your mindset depends on the setting You know a full cup is pretty strong But you know the point of ayahuasca is not to experience ego death It's it's different person-to-person like for a lot of people a small dose. It's just to kind of like I don't know whatever effect. Do you think it's you know you want from it, right? It's not about your doing well if you're taking more not at all hmm not at all You continued down the rabbit hole of strange drugs later in the season and you? experimented with the truth serum to see if an interrogator who gives you this truth serum can actually get information out of you I Was actually surprised by how effective in my opinion it was like you you just shoot the interrogation technisches was very Clever right like it's not what you expect like in the movies You have like a Bond villain who's like and you just get brainwashed and say everything But the way she approached it was very clever Yeah, it was clever, and it was really fun like I just felt like I am the most funny person ever right now So I'm just gonna give you materia And she She yeah didn't play bad cop and I think at one point I asked her to you know I was like hey, could you stop being so nice right um? I don't remember that I don't remember much after I think when she asked me who the president was they kept giving you more There like him a little bit, you're like. I'm pretty fucked up and like tomorrow. I was like dad Thank you Father funny moment where the guy's a sadist out you know This is this is more than I I'm not gonna give any more When I was like I could take more and but I don't remember it that was the scary part It was that they could have told me I had said anything and I wouldn't know if they were wrong or not, right and the thing about midazolam Which is the truth serum that I was administered is that there's an antidote forest that works quite quickly really so? All of a sudden, I just come to and I'm like away I always wondered if that was possible it was weird It was like just to go from completely fucked to sober I find that yeah I didn't know how much time had passed. I just immediately was like hey Wow mmm what happened and I was forming memories again all of a sudden huh yeah but the So the way that she got in for the game was that you had information you're trying to conceal from her She was trying to get it like for example that you had a sister. I guess was one of them Yeah
And my sister's name Your sister's name so her approach wasn't to be like tell me your sister's name like you would exceed in a movie It's what like she would wait to your super smashed and be like So your sister jessica is a dentist for a living, and then you would be like yeah That's what you you know you like it's really clutch really tricky you had to really be sharp And you had to not just be living in the moment To keep the information they basically just dull your brain to the point of You're just Agreeable well. Yeah all your inhibitions are gone Yeah, you're not holding anything back because you're it's not aware of what you should be holding back You're just living in that exact moment where there's nothing else to be concerned about right It's like the puppy-dog mode you thinking about a little puppy. He's a truth serum all the time What do you what do you think after doing that do you think that? That serum is is it an effective way to get information from someone I? Think that it is an effective way to get information I Don't think it's an ethical way right and I should with the caveat that I don't I'm not sure it's effective because studies that were real studies Not just Michaels experience have shown that you get some pretty unreliable stuff people will say all kinds of lies as well sure Did you lie at all during it mm-hmm um? No, I didn't really lie. I told obvious jokes but I don't like I can't I can't see lying in that state of mind but you know she's unreliable it was hard to it was hard to construct a Lie that I knew was a lie But I maybe could have or someone as has been shown in prior studies they can Confabulate all kinds of made ups just like a dreamlike state, or you're just following some random thread in your head There's also the ethical dilemma of can a person be forced to confess against themselves Sure, right, if if what you have to do is torture someone or administer drugs intravenously to get the truth Is that really the way we want to get the truth? What's more important and ever since the days of torture you know? We've been a hey you cannot self-incriminate If we have to resort to that it's not worth it, and there's something kind of beautiful about that. Yeah totally Oh, it's completely unethical I just found it with it's really interesting to see because truth serum always seems like something which is ridiculous like how does that? How could that possibly exist yeah, but that real-world application of it it was like oh that makes sense yeah I mean truth serum is a terrible names It makes it seem like sorry fictional sci-fi drug like mine was the truth right in reality it Just pretty makes it harder to conceal in life right exactly I Think the most interesting thing that you confess to well on the truth serum is that you prefer making Vsauce videos to Minefield yeah, I had looked right out. I had no memory that ever happening. It wasn't until I was One of our writers was like driving me home Date like months later And he was like oh cuz I wasn't supposed to know what I'd said because if they wanted me to watch the footage back on Camera, and he spilled you watch the whole thing back watch the whole thing back. Yeah And you were really genuine the interrogators like Michael do you prefer doing Vsauce or minefield and you're like you were just very? passionately in favor of Vsauce yeah you know in the show and I felt I felt bad cuz you know if I hadn't have been under the effects of midazolam I Would have given a more diplomatic diplomatic answer But you know I think You know the truth should be out there now. I love making minefield, but as you can imagine? Minefield has a deadline. It's got schedules. It's got you know Sauce it comes out when it when it comes out when I'm ready. I thought it was a great moment because it really exemplified how? unguarded you were yeah Totally was there anything else in that interrogation You don't have to tell me what it was But I was curious was there anything else you said during that where you're like oh fuck I can't believe I said that no okay. No and so when I saw the original cut is again I'm not I'm not editing minefield episodes, but I'm watching and we're screening episodes So I'll see one like four times throughout the editing process But usually notes you don't involved in that a bunch of notes, and then no they're doing the Edit over the shoulder yeah but I remember watching the first cut and going we got to include more of the Truth serum experience and so I got the all the footage watched all of it and made notes And I was like don't include all of this like even if it's not scientific data. It's still interesting Yeah, so the stuff that we cut because you have to cut for time That's sure bummer like the whole thing to read for two minutes. Well. Why don't they care about time? I think audiences care about time because the if you show the whole experience all of a sudden the whole episode Becomes three hours long so we have bonus clips this season which allow us to show more Like when it came to false confessions. I was like we have to include a raw uncut false confession right because even though there's a whole lot of stuff that we can cut for time like just the Pleasantries the hellos the conversations that go nowhere. I want someone I want everyone to be able to see Beginning to end how it happens how you get a regular person to confess to a crime they never admitted I Am horrified by that yeah, and well, I think a lot of people have seen the documentary to make making of murder Yeah, and it wasn't the main guy's story that disturbed me honestly It was his cousin yeah, brand-new yeah, Brandon who went to prison? He just got out this year He was thrown out by a federal judge. He was in prison for 12 years and the prime of his life You see him now. He's like this grizzled Like shell of a person who lost the prime of his life the guy is Mentally handicapped I mean I you can tell throughout. He's like a simpleton. He's like Lenny from my should not have been interrogated He shouldn't his yeah, and so these cops are grilling him and grilling him grilling him for hours and hours and hours How the like having been through that you're yourself and having produced it And how do these police or people who do this? How do they justify it to themselves because certainly? People don't just think of themselves as evil or wrong like in their minds as completely justified that's a incredibly important point that very few people on earth are like you know what I mean I Really like Captain Planet villains right yeah to be mean instead Everyone's different, but you know you might think look this person is a bad apple You know they've maybe committed crimes in the past They're going to continue to whether or not they committed this particular crime doesn't matter Let's just get them off the streets right so the motivation feels like good intentions, right but it does a disservice to our society when we aren't getting the truth when we don't get reliable information right it's Disturbing to think how many people are probably in prison right now Due to false confession. It's the second most common reason people are falsely convicted of crimes number one is eyewitness testimony That's a whole other. That's a fantasy yeah yeah, yeah, I just the justice system really surprised me sometimes and whenever you hear I Was watching another one of these true detective. Oh, there's a whole documentary on Netflix really so about yeah, and it's I Had to turn it off. I watched one episode and I was like man this ended awfully Yeah, like there was no just there was no Vindication it just ended like and now he's in prison, and he's been there for 20 years. It's like wall All right, yeah, so I don't remember the name of that documentary But I so recommend it because it's got multiple episode and you find that Because you see that the reasons all these different people falsely confessed are completely different in some cases It's that you know the guy just drank a lot and would often black out and didn't remember what he had done and Just became convinced that he must have in other cases. It's well How can a lie detector be wrong like I was shopping with my friend, but the lie detector says that I killed my daughter So by the way the confession tapes is what it's called an infection tapes must-watch I don't know if we ain't even introduced this what we're talking about but you did an episode on false confessions correct and The way that you got that one girl to confess, it's like You guys manipulated her like very intentionally and perfectly, but seeing it happen just makes you realize like how fucking Howie Howie you can have because it's always easy to think like Like why would they confess if I didn't do something? I wouldn't confess exactly right you you weren't course it was assumed the person might be kind of crazy Or maybe they did commit the crime how could how could a otherwise healthy person confess and? It's manipulation. Yeah, it's it's not about Coercion in the sense of like force and meanness being the bad cop there was no bad cop no bad cops was this Director who they never met that could show up at any time. I'm the good cop and for half of the day I was not getting false confessions wasn't able to make it work So Melissa who was the expert I said Could you just do the next participant? Funny enough it wound up being someone who was a big vsauce fan could not have been luckier that the one person who knew vsauce Was not interrogated by me. He probably would have had to have called it off for that participant, but anyway It was about being nice. It was about being friends with the person. You're just showing them that if you confess That's like honestly the best thing because maybe you don't who knows what could happen look if you confess it's like a piece a I get it, it's Just it's the best thing for you in my opinion as someone who's your friend and people's? and eschewed as you got this girl to sign this paper you wrote out a paper saying like I cheated on the exam and just Sign and date it and I'm in my mind and playing it through my through my head the stories I've heard of people who just signed that paper so easily and then Next thing they know that the police come in with handcuffs, and they never leave prison again for their whole lives Yeah, and the the thing that struck stood out to me about what you did too is how much practice it took? Yes, you don't you that you don't just? Accidentally get someone to falsely confess you have to be an expert you have to be a professional you have to be trained you have to know exactly how to Manipulate people and so to me It I really it made me hate those those Pig you know But it made me like it's really this it made me very frustrated to think that there's people using these these techniques for nefarious yeah processes Melissa it's very it's very It's very What's the word? It's very conscious you have to know exactly what you're doing to do it. Yeah, you do and Again, it's hard to know what people's intentions are often. They're not bad instead. It's like I'm convinced you did it yeah and Now it's my job to get a confession, and it doesn't matter how I get it. It doesn't matter if I sort of That's a shame. That's that's it that means there's something fucked up in our justice system where There's not more emphasis on the truth yeah, there's more emphasis on Buchan Bucknam Yeah I think what we need is a better Way to analyze whether someone's telling the truth and cooperating or not before the decision is made that they're guilty Time to get that confession because once you have a confession in a court looks pretty bad Yeah No matter what the evidence says if you've confessed to the crime a murder and a rape it's kind of a closed case Yeah, it's done So you know I I don't know all the details of the legal system obviously I was just interested in the psychology of how do you get someone how to manipulate someone in they're just saying? You know what I'd rather cooperate and do what you say then stand up for what? I really did and the thing is how much time did it take you to get that one girl to falsely confess? So it took her maybe 25 minutes because they spent on His cousin Moses name Brandon Brandon yeah they I think they spent like 12 hours with him right now of course the difference there is that? He is being interrogated about a very serious crime right whether or not you exchange information and also had ups meant exactly now we Didn't include another girl that I got a false confession from and it took I I don't know the exact number, but it took like Nine minutes Wow she was only 19 And the power dynamic was incredibly skewed And I when we debriefed her. She was like she literally said well I confessed cuz you had all the power like what was I gonna die already made you mad bye apparently cheating hmm I wasn't gonna say no to your request for me to sign a data form and it just made me see She was 19 which means her confession is a signed confession from an adult, right But because of the she was the small person, and it just she was like how come you didn't include that one? It was again about time, and that's the biggest kind of bummer about it made. It look like you only got it once Yeah, yeah, and so I want to use bonus clips to tell more of these stories But one thing we've noticed in season two is that the episodes contains so much stuff like we should have just done false confessions as an episode but instead we fit lots of things in there we had the P300 brain scanner we had midazolam, and so we couldn't say all right now We're gonna spend 40 minutes on interrogation and then after all of that we're gonna switch gears again I think that's a good idea, and you have more content to you can get for all those all of those deserve Yeah their own episode. Yeah, exactly, so now I think you know moving forward. I would like to focus on more seasons ahead Uh well, I don't know I hope so okay a support minefield of them And you know I I understand it costs money, but YouTube bread really helps Creators like myself and shows like mine field be made So you know I really want YouTube to see that this is a good bet educational content is popular It's gotta be one of the most popular YouTube It's only when I watch and my opinions only good one if I'm being honest. I mean not to throw salt Everyone has different tastes And I'm excited to see what you know YouTube red comes out with next what kind of decisions they make about their original program. I Don't know I don't understand a strategy. I don't understand you to read, but whatever that's a whole different fucking camera. It's so complicated I Have to mate you know what yeah, I don't I don't need another episode of me bitching about you That's already like 20 of those, but I am curious What is it like I? Actually want to ask you something else that the what you did with the brain scanner Yeah, where they could tell what you stole? I am very I don't like that shit yeah, and I don't like that shit the same as I don't like lie detectors It's all a bunch of crap, and I hate it. I hate those I hate those machines And I hate people who think bright can use it to tell the truth right that one was disturbing though Do you very district? How do you fit? Do you think that that would is it accurate? maybe you can describe what it was so people know what we're talking so so a Typical lie detector is looking at skin conductivity and things like that and blood pressure blood pressure whatever you mean It's a solo pseudoscience. It's not very reliable yeah, yeah, and it's more about You know making the person nervous enough that they feel like they can't hide things But really what happens is people who don't have anything to hide feel like they're not being believed and they start to not believe themselves But we are if you're a real psychopath you can just fucking If you believe it yeah, George Costanza season 7 episode 2 exactly however the p300 doesn't fall for those problems right what this does is it looks at how your brain electrically responds to to various stimuli and There's a response called p300 that has to do with novelty so if something is new to you You'll see in effect, but if you've seen something before oh, that's what it measures. That's what it does I thought I thought it was measuring the familiarity and not the not the novelty verka they're related You know it's something like look if if you really didn't commit this crime And you've never been to the crime scene you never would have seen this door and you have no control at all over How your brain would react to that image you you you have no voluntary control over whether you? Recognize something right you can't show me picture my mom and have me go no I'm not gonna turn on the recognition switch it happens But it sounds like there could be room for mistakes to happen with something like that Well people have tried right the you know and that's what I tried in the episode I tried to like every time an image showed up I tried to Pretend like there was something Amazing I was just breehn about it, and it didn't make a difference because again It's not this simple a to be if there's this algorithm in between that knows how to correct for different strategies So it's not accepted. There's an algorithm see that. That's where I'm out. I don't mind I don't but like if the brain is actually sending a signal I would buy that but if they have a man-made algorithm that Reduces sure that I don't buy right cuz then you wonder What's in between? Well the algorithms are fallible human work is fallible if my brain shoots off a signal every time I see something that I recognize That's compelling right, but if this if these guys, are you know? I don't know how they can make an you know what? You're saying I mean what their algorithm tries to do is better read that recognition signal and and Get rid of noise or other things you might be trying to do like with a regular lie detector if you you know clinch your Budget, I'm they ask a question your blog exactly, but with this they They're their computers are are watching every measure and they're able to detect when you're trying So what do you think is this a true lie detector that they've developed? I believe that it is the most reliable Truth detector out there. That's terrifying and it's terrifying and that's why it's not accepted by any court That's that's unethical a my opinion exactly so so Craig Stark actually who was on the video games episode he had I don't if I can say this he's been involved in these kinds of discussions like should a prosecution be able to force someone to undergo a functional MRI or any kind of brain scanning Lie-detector and there are two issues one is that if it is really good Maybe that's bad because maybe we should be allowed to have Privacy in our own minds yes secondly if it's even if there's a chance that it's not reliable that it might have a wrong result a Jury is easily swayed by well I'm wearing a lab coat and this they exhaust a million dollars and said that you did the crime. What are you gonna? Do you're gonna believe the science? Yeah, even if in reality it could be 50/50 I? Yeah, they're I don't like You do you need privacy in your own mind. We can't have this All-powerful machine that knows when you're lying The social implication of that is awful. It's like a dystopian future. Yeah, and again. There's a chance that it's wrong You know there is always a chance of something right it's like the like. What if there's a door that I? Don't necessarily know, but maybe I've walked by that place. Oh, yeah, exactly sometime in my life that reminds me of something Oh it reminds me of this machine it reminds me of that fucking Tom Tom Cruise movie was by Steven Spielberg Just don't be in future You got it Minority Report Mike that it's the Minority Report Yeah, so we have to be really careful, and I feel like yeah we're gonna have more and more discussions about this as the technology improves and Weirdly, I think yeah, we might have to start saying that some methods of learning some methods of knowledge are off limits I I did an episode on is all really fair in love and war and I looked at the Geneva Conventions I looked at things like um You know is it? Not all countries have this kind of a law, but in the u.s.. Your spouse cannot be compelled to testify against you Because in America. There's this feeling that if we have to ruin a marriage to get the truth. We shouldn't get the truth Because the marriage is you know more important? And there's a lot of religious overtones there like that marriage is under the umbrella of God right and us determine whether you embellish it Embezzled these funds That's our concern, and if we can't prove you did without ruining your marriage then you're free yeah And not all countries do that, but there's something very philosophically powerful about the notion of If we can't we're not gonna go after your family to find out what you did It's the same with parents right some states have the law where the parents have To cooperate or they don't if like their son for example is in suspect of murder Then in some states the parents don't have to cooperate. Yeah, the cops. I think it's I think it's great I think there needs to be some things more important than or not even that but there needs to be some there Needs to be some boundaries right right and that doesn't mean that there's no way to find the truth like look for evidence elsewhere But I think there are there are other protections about privacy with your attorneys with clergy You know what I say in in this religious context to a you know to a priest in in a confession I should be free to have that relationship and not Withhold stuff and keep it to myself because it could be you know used against me right is then where are we mm-hmm? Was it worth it. What was it like working with YouTube executives because you had expressed You know you preferred Vsauce, so let's just shit on YouTube a little bit here. No, I'm kidding, but how what was it like? Having someone else over your head. I mean II Latoya the idea of having a show yeah, and I think I underestimate how? Annoying or awful or that that would be having someone all of a sudden you've had creative control your whole life And you've got some guy over your head telling ya. Well. You can't can't do yeah We're all so spoiled by the fact that we can make whatever kind of contract you want as long as we're not breaking laws Right, that's the way it is sometimes It means that it's worse because you should have taken someone else's advice either other times It just means that what you're making is more. Authentically you I think that in this season YouTube and and the production company and myself and the whole crew we got much much closer to understanding What science community communication can be and how to you know make the right show I think that for all the disagreements I'll have with YouTube saying yeah That's boring, and then I think I think personally I'm probably a bit too precious about we got to put more facts more Explanations more just me talking about the thing I think when you find the right balance you can reach more people that would drive me Crazy some asshole telling me that's boring Feel yourself getting like the righteous sir Not ever, but like offensive right like well. Fuck. Are you it's not boring. It's my show. No one ever said anything was boring It's good more like here's my concern about this, right and then it gives me a chance to Externalize why I think it's important and that's valuable because when it's just in your own head You don't always know what your instincts are telling you or how to vocalize them But when you're forced to sit in front of someone and say here's why I think That you know we should release the false confession with no edits. Yeah, but if you if you don't edit it There's gonna be a lot of boring stuff. I'm like well, but I'm not doing it for the views. I'm doing it for like look Slice of it's a human Zoo or watching you know and and and by thinking that out and in defending it Yourself you're defending. Yeah, I'm gonna you're right. You're a real half Glass full guy aren't ya there you go. Yeah, all right? We come up on our second break We've got tons more sauce - v/o. We'll take some questions. Yeah, we take some questions guys. Give us a ring Pop up the number was the number I read it to you guys your revenge Eight one eight two one four eight five oh four give us a call if you got some questions for your boy Vsauce we'll be Right back after this commercial break. See you guys soon, thank You to me undies for sponsoring this episode of the H Street podcast these guys make the best underwear end Of Perea end of period wherever that means end of sentence if you wear underwear you need me undies it's that simple Every year, thank you for showing tip you can I'll tell you you could dip my uh you Could dip my Froot Loops, and that milk if you know what I mean. No. I like to dip my Froot Loops in that milk Anyway, every year millions people receive the least like gift of all time underwear But we still give it to our family loved ones who don't want it because we hate them That's not in there. I added that but maybe it's not the underwear. That's the problem. 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Let's get back to sauce time Welcome back everybody to the h3 podcast with Vsauce Talking again about we were talking about YouTube executives before was there anything they vetoed or got in the way of creatively During the making of the show that did stuck out to you um I'm trying to remember Oh, yeah I think I can tell this story because it did it makes them look good like I really wanted to be waterboarded oh That was going to be an episode I'll watch that yeah and we Found people who were willing to waterboard me There I'm sure they were lined up Yeah they were I mean I was I would only feel safe doing it in that way that you've seen other people have done this where You've got people there who know what's going to happen And you you have an immediate off switch from what I've seen it's like you're holding a big metal bar Oh if you let go of it And it hits the floor. It's loud it rings, and they immediately unhinge you I know there was there was like this Conservative reporter who was like I'll get waterboarded that she was in torture I forget his name, but I he got waterboarded and he was like he sat up immediately and is like that's torture There's no question about it immediately. Yep, so it's different than like Being physically hurt you know Splinters up your fingernails because you can you become numb to that kind of pain like your body releases Whatever it is hormones or chemicals that allow you to kind of like the the next one hurts less the next one hurts less But when it comes to elevated co2 in your blood There's no mechanism for adapt like it's not that bad it gets It's it's bad all the time, and it's it's much more psychologically damaging It's not physically dangerous unless you're administering it poorly as I understand it It's just like if shouldn't I don't think you you don't die yeah You don't really have any marks and unless the restraints were too tight and that's what makes it so nefarious you just feel like you're drowning right you feel like you're about to die because you don't have you have too much co2 in your Blood you're not getting enough oxygen you can't why is that I mean? How does that work by just dumping water over your face? Well your face is completely covered in this cloth, and you're like you can't draw in air and then we have this reflex to water because we've evolved to know that we we are not water creatures and So you have a panic reflex to that I can't breathe this I cannot live like this That is very different from being whipped or being punched repeatedly It's a different kind of torture like a pure panic yeah But you so they administer it for just enough time they let you breathe How does it work that you can keep because clearly you can keep breathing because you don't die yeah You you know you're only unable to breathe for seconds But it doesn't take long for that panic instinct to come in where you realize not only am I not breathing but I'm at water is all around me and it's in my mouth and um It well you only need a couple of seconds and that panic happens, and you can't do it any longer Okay, so what happened with the executives. Oh they just thought that it was way, too Dangerous and new and it was the scary thing about waterboarding is how easy it is to do It's not like well first of all you have to get you know permission from the FBI to handle you know c4 It's like no you just do you have a water some oregano? In it. Yeah, are you a bad person here right? It's like just do it That up Yeah, yeah so um I think it was really smart to say let's not do that do you wish you did it though looking back I mean it would have been interesting That's the one what was the scientific purpose of getting waterboarded the purpose was to talk about what I've just Said which is the sort of physiology of why it's different from? Repeatedly being whipped or being just just confined Yes that that sort of reflex, we have to Water is not good around my mouth and covering all of my ways of breathing, and I could have just discussed that But you know minefield gives me a chance to do things right the question is what do we gain by having me? Undergo it and then say yep, I can confirm that one of the worst things you can do to a person is indeed bad right yeah And watching it may be too much like if I'm trying to Thank myself, but it wouldn't be like to watch you go through it You don't bit too much exactly and it that was a question we had which is that? We don't want to just do things for the sake of like boy This will be dramatic and good news so we try to figure out. What do you do while I'm being waterboarded? that Contributes to scientific knowledge, and you know you go to like the obvious. I don't know Put an EEG net on your head, and it's like what so you can see panic like we already know Yeah, so it turned out to just also not be Educational or interesting just to see just juicy dangerous, yeah That sounds like ratings to me boom you seem dangerous. There you go Can I ask what's the budget on a show like yours um? Per episode. I don't know the per episode budget I mean
I'll tell you that it cost more money to make season 2 then vsauce has I mean I could have not paid anyone for a Year, and still not made season 2. That's why I had to work with YouTube. You know they made it possible Millions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not talking about like well, Michael. Why didn't you just? Take out your debit card and give me a season two please yeah And and then give it to us all for free or with AD support mm-hmm I was like this is only possible only possible to build a team working on Educational content like this if you got money cuz they deserve to be paid for their time sure I couldn't do it on my own Yeah How long does it take to film each episode how long did it take to film the entire season? We filmed through parts of four months. I had VidCon and a trip to London in there But took a long time After ayahuasca, it was smooth sailing I wasn't so anxious about like what was coming up yeah And then we do all the rooftop scenes in a week. You know we were six days that week Like 6 p.m.. To 6 a.m.. You know sunset to sunrise and that's pretty weird you flip in your whole day So it took about four months of? Constant shooting to film the whole season yeah And then the whole time I was on the spring bring handy to where we were in pre-production So I would have these long hours and hours long conference calls running through ideas working with psychologists on what can we do? Have we heard back from that university yet can get this person on board? Then of course you've got all the editing the screening the watching the episodes the notes then the voice-over And then you're finally locked and then you wait for the ingestion Process of getting captions getting them approved getting them rated and then getting them available on on YouTube So that's your process. Yeah, yeah Compared to that how long does it take to research film and edit an episode of Vsauce I? Mean it takes Weeks as well it can take months You know in its bits but it's up to me when I feel like it's done when I feel like I've got deep enough in the Explanation like right now. I'm working on a thing about the center of mass and the center of gravity and and how things rotate And I'm just not happy until I've gotten to a point where like the explanation is say purely geometric No There's no more like but why but why it's like because we live in a universe with these dimensions hmm There you go, and so yeah, it takes a long time But it's it's not like it takes a long time because I'm just busy with mine field or with brain candy or with the curiosity Box it takes a long time because I've decided That I want it to be that runt. I want to put that much work into it right. I think that's I'm kind I'm jealous of that Mindset that you have and I know there's other channels on YouTube to have this It's done when it's done cuz I get so anxious when I don't well. They have a whole different It's letting you be doing Educational content because I can keep going deeper into the subject right? But if I was doing like comedy like wins a joke done. Yeah is no Answer, there's no definite answer. Do you get anxious when you don't upload on V, Sun like a like a classic video? Oh, yeah, of course yeah of course, and I really start feeling that pressure And I really feel like you know if I if I'm not active enough then people move on maybe they Stop even remembering that there's this great. Thank you I think that I'm making minute and so you know I can use social media to put more out and the question is like do I Create a format like a type of show that takes less work You know like I could easily I could I could do you know an episode about something Just from reading a Wikipedia page, but I wouldn't be happy with that it wouldn't challenge me so I Put a lot of time into things and I try to consume all the media that already Exists on that top and so I can say look. I've read all the books I've watched all these lectures and here's the synthesis of them Here's what some of them missed out on some of them added and so it it did Justifies its existence. It's not just another of the same hmm interesting Tell me about this was one from the subreddit people were interested in Tell me about Michael Vsauce from middle school and high school. What kind of dude were you then oh man? What was your lower? Education experience, I think that's lower education middle school high school I mean I was still the same person right now But I you know there was no YouTube um I did all the things you would expect right I was part of the trivia team I I did act in a lot of musicals and plays and stuff And I I find that interesting that you're you are an entertainer. I feel like yeah as much as you are an educator Yeah, which one do you think you're more of an entertainer? Huh? I think it's just important for me not to say like I'm scientist Michael because I'm not and I don't want anyone to think that I Believe I have super knowledge or any kind of like I don't I mean the more episodes. I make the more I'm like I'm an idiot, and thank goodness that are such smart people out there I can talk to so you know. I think it's just safer to be an entertainer mmm science communicator But what I'm pointing to and you can see by the length of my video descriptions Look at what the researchers have done look at what they're doing. They're the ones whose work I'm showing to the public and helping them show to the public What kind of plays were you in in high school uh? I was the oldest looking student Okay, so when identical yeah, right in hell why high school? I already had a receding hairlines, and so they needed a dad Michael like yes, you were the typecast dad. Yeah, I was the general and Kiss Me Kate because I was the oldest looking person Right I had that does the authority right. Did you have a beard back then? No, I'm mmm. I had Sideburn very nice I'd like to say that I'm a played around with a goatee. I definitely did and through college I had a goatee okay. It wasn't until I graduated college moved to New York, and that was like right when the hipster sort of subculture emerged right like I was there with Williamsburg and all of this and all of a sudden the beard was totally of course you should have a beard Did you ever bleach her? nope That's a question. I should never all I guess I rush to my tips once. I loved it. I loved it you looked great No, no you didn't actually Oh, what are you talking about? You didn't know me then you're talking about that I'm talking about this boy band the boy band you did it not ironic. Oh when I was in middle school and my hair Where'd you grow up? I grew up in Ventura Okay, yeah, of course so yeah, you're like you know offspring and crazy taxi in frosted tips yeah, thanks You're giving me a break here. You're you're letting me off. The hook. It was the society around yeah It was very popular at the time, but as you can imagine there's all these cool slick kids Where all the girls one of these guys they all the girls? I don't know what it is They love the spiky frosted tips. Yeah, all I wanted was some spiky frosted tips yellow. What is what is it about the soprano? B44 look But anyway back in high school Man, I hate my fucking hair, but I wanted to look like these cool frosted tips gentlemen and I try to frost my curly ass hair, and it just really I looked like I Looked like a Three Stooges are something like it was just a total fucking disaster Is that is that good hindsight or at the time was it cool? It was bad all that I really yeah I hated my hair so much as a kid my mom's a Hairdresser and once because my hair used to be quite long. I had like a full-on Jew fro down here yeah, and she straightened it I Swear to you now. She's chemically straighten my hair, and I came and even then it wouldn't fall I was like I'm gonna have like a baffle made of hair right. Yeah. It was it just went like this Wow like see photos Bro it was Humiliating and it was chemically straightened, so I couldn't undo it right right yeah I I I had curly hair as well, and so I couldn't do the looks that I wanted you know Did you wish you had frosted - no Did you want a spike? I wanted the really gelled look right? You know some curly guys pull off the gel look I never can I probably didn't have and I didn't care enough. I didn't put and how would I even do it? I'm 31 okay, so we're from the same generation yeah Got it. I'm older than you is that strange how much that's strange not by the minds But it's still strange because you stopped the dad vibe. Well, yeah Great hair yes, that's true. They didn't help my case. I'm gonna bleach those. I'm gonna take care of It is funny to realize that like touring with Adam Savage who is 50 right that We gotta come across like which is the same age. I totally agree at a certain point like past. I'd say it 20 I want to say like 20 is there I know some people who are 22 that I consider my complete and utter peers yeah But that's um yeah, it's really definitely not but over the age of like 30. It's pretty much all the same shit. Yeah some Look older, but yeah, you just become an adult. You're just in this yeah Locke Yeah life sucks for all of us we all have way too much responsibility Why do you think people are did you know Jordan Pearson? No anyway? He's this guy he's a He's a brain guy He's a psychologist he's a psychoanalyst or Psycho anesthetist I was one. I was talking about why is it that he thinks that so many people are depressed these days Because it seems to me Do you have that same impression that there's more people with mental more people with mental health issues now then then there seem to be Before maybe it's an issue of reporting or people more comfortable talking about it But his explanation that I thought was really compelling was that life is more complicated now For an individual than it was ever intended to be or ever was before What do you mean? I'm just curious what are your thoughts on that that's a great question and I'm completely unqualified to talk yeah sure but Life being more complicated. I'm not sure what that means but You have so much knowledge Are not knowledge, but like so much information available to you It's an overload to me it felt like We have so many more responsibilities. We have to go work. We have to take care of people we have to pay bills We have to worry about making money We have to worry about having an apartment like all these stuff, but the one you have to worry about government You have to worry about Taxation I mean naturally You don't you just have like a fucking farm that you till right you just feed yourself. I mean shelter yourself feeding yourself Surviving off of the land is also pretty complicated. Let me ask you this have you ever read the Unabomber is manifesto I live it I wouldn't recommend living it but You know I I'm not afraid to admit. I ordered it off Amazon Yeah, and you know His his theory by the way, can I just say it's like god Bless America that you can buy that book Yeah, you know I think It's it's such a weird thing when you get the book. It's got this whole disclaimer on the back That's like no funds Go to the Unabomber like all the funds are donated to the Red Cross and the publisher just to cover the costs, right But it's cool that we can preserve that and not just burn it and be like this was a he like now let's hear what these guys these going on the Blow up some schools right Mike no. It's not okay the uncomfortable thing about The Unabomber is that he had a lot of the same philosophies that futurists do today Except that he mailed bombs to people I have words that disconnect everything yeah I think you know the disconnect was that he believed the only solution was a revolution that Completely tore down society okay He goes so far as to say we need to destroy and burn technical manuals books. This is all based on You know this is an idea we hear all the time that like we evolved for millions of years to deal with a certain kind of society in life, and then rapidly in the last just Hundreds of years or less we've had go into a whole different kind of living that our biological bodies and minds Weren't I guess that's what well Jordan bits writer cement, and and what the Unabomber says which I'm glad to be quoting now Let's put him on yeah. He's like look if if you He asked this good question, which is if you had to spend every day? fighting for your survival finding food hunting building structures Reproducing if that was and you had to do this all these creative challenging ways every day And that was it just to not die hmm Would you still want to check Twitter? Would you still want to study the motions of the moon? Yeah like are those really giving humans happiness or? is it a thing that we've invented to fill the time should we now have because we've invented agriculture and We don't have to worry about Food and survival instead we can study the physics of ceramic we can do all these other things and those those Aren't the I forget what he calls them, but they're not these True goals so his Opinion is that arts and science is Bad yeah, yeah I mean he was he was easel is that just I mean I'm like argument that you Unabomber here like defending him But that just seems stupid because I mean you can just go living on a fucking farm if you want to and that's what he Did right you know I mean he's still I think had to buy Certain things that he could not get for himself I think he didn't make a lot of his own clothing, but his whole argument was that look look at the car Okay, the car was invented and It's more than an invention though It is something that we now have to deal with Because think of how many people live in a place where they need a car just to get to work or to some family Yeah, again, that's what it's like you have to buy a car insurance. You get home. It shares all this shit You have to feel right so technology isn't just lawless balonus a technology is a thing that changes us And all of a sudden now. We've got cars We have roads you're not free to go wherever you want to go actually you used to be you could just walk wherever Now ooh the highways. It's actually you know you can't walk there. No pedestrians right and and you know a lot of this is At least philosophically interesting I don't prescribe to his philosophy. Yeah, I think that it's worth considering these I I There's a great wired article called the future doesn't need us and In that article the author quotes the Unabomber without crediting him, and you read this section you go, that's really Amazing that like we're reaching a point where We can't turn off the technology because our lives depend on it and then later in the article He's like by the way that was the Unabomber you're like whoa You know and that's what actually spurred me to get the book because I wanted to see this and it is fascinating to think What I've evolved to be able to do to spread my genes All happened before the internet before telephones before agriculture before tools and now this technology is here, and it's You know it's affecting us. Yeah, definitely. I I've always felt that like evolution Has isn't really taking form in humans it's more the The technology is our evolution like we were fighting natural evolution because if someone's born with a birth defect We we help them survive Someone who's like we we we coddle or That I see what you're saying People are being eliminated from the gene pool like what would happen in the wild I guess is what you say natural selection is stopped controlled by us yeah, and I think there's Incredibly great arguments for why it is important? Hey, you're not you you have trouble getting around this can help you that's fantastic Yeah, there's there's this much more abstract question of because we invented the container It's all gone hill downhill Yeah, like because we could start collecting more berries than we needed for that day. We all of a sudden lost this cycle that we have to go through psychologically of Finding a challenge and overcoming it right all of a sudden. It's like well I don't need to do any of this stuff to live yeah, but I've got the time So I'm gonna go to and do a nine-to-five job Or I'm going to you know learn how to juggle or I'm going to and those all are great But the the perspective that do they make us happy I get really deep I genuinely think that part of the reason why people are so depressed or anxious or whatever is the lack of? like Fundamentally and biologically fulfilling things like growing shit or Raising a child or have like these things. I really build building a shelter stuff like that Yeah, that like our brains are wired to actually Be satisfied when you do something like that, and we don't have that level of satisfaction By going to a nine-to-five job and getting a check and picking up groceries like you don't get that same sense of purpose from these things fulfillment, I think is that key word yeah, you know you said that and a It's weird to imagine that question that I that I you know posed earlier which is that if every day was about will I be able to find enough food and clean water to survive and But I can I'm able to do that, but it takes up all of my time and cognitive resources and creativity every day Would I still? Do X mmm would I still? You know and and it's weird because are you arguing that we shouldn't have explored the world or invented the printing press or? poetry right the Unabomber would say yeah, that's bad and I Hate the cliche of well, there's a balance that we need but I think that it's something we're going to be asking ourselves more and more and Well-run evitable. It's like you can't fight progress It's like can you the Unabomber believed? He could not I feel like I work out what he thinks is he's going back to a natural state, but I would argue It's unnatural to fight the progress right we're having yeah This is this and I think what we're we're undergoing is is natural because our brains evolved to be able to realize hey, I can make this stone a bit sharper and Everything happenings natural yes. It's all we're all playing out like the natural course of how a species like ours evolved and at my point about Natural selection no longer taking place is that we're no longer being Selected on a biological like I think in a thousand years if we're still around we're gonna be the same species But the technology is now what's replaced biological evolution is a technological evolution Yep, might it. Be that in the future thousands tens of thousands of years from now Natural selection will have selected people who don't get so stressed out and depressed by Technology's influence on the world because you just if you don't fit into the mold of like well, what's your job? But you gotta have a career you gotta you got to do this thing you can't but they'll still reproduce Probably maybe over the course of many many times that that because it's still a matter of reproduction right yeah Totally totally so everything that happens after you can reproduce is in this selection shadow natural selection doesn't really Get molded by what happens to you later so heart disease Alzheimer's those things all happen so late right that it didn't get weeded out by natural selection, right so I I don't know. I think that's that's a that'd be a great movie. What is it like in thirty thousand years is? everyone just like The kind of mind that thrives in a corporate environment because that's what's expected. I mean, there's this really narrow expectation and if you deviate from that you're weird and dangerous and You can still reproduce, but then you've got With suicide you've got factors that could influence that right and in sounds like a sci-fi movie. Yeah It's it's a possible future and so again if you want to learn more about it I would recommend other futurists besides the Unabomber but it all starts there all good start there, but he You know got the manifesto published in the New Year times, but well yeah that well That was one of his demands so this this is called I find that a little bit paradoxical this Philosophy is called futurism of this thought that we should That's just a a broad term for thinking about a long long future. Yeah Being terrified of technology and its influence that's being a Luddite That's a like a different thing you could be you totally love technology and think that it is gonna bring the best future possible So what do you think about Elon Musk? What do you think generally about him? What do you think about his plans to call it colonize Mars? Do you think that's do you think that that's a worthy goal, or is that a waste of time? Oh totally? I think it's totally worth it because we Whether we like it or not are sort of the autobiographies of the universe he record information better than the universe does it says Carl Sagan is just great saying We are a way for the universe to know itself right yeah, and it's not just it's knowing in a really Rich way like we can write down exactly what the temperature was every day But it's hard to look back at you know tree rings and glaciers and really figure out what the temperature was on January 12th For billion BC right, but we can record those things, and I don't know What the you know end purpose of all that is but? We can tell those stories and nothing else can so so going to Mars Exploring it Preserving how it is today? That's that's my big concern is making sure that I don't know how you do it But you section off We need to make sure that as Mars is and has been for most of our species Existence is still There as a historical artifact, right? So if you're watching out there future people who are colonizing Mars named a park after me on Mars amen keep it natural guys we Need some natural parks and Marlies parts of it right like we need to Keep records of the story because why is that important to because most people say well It's a it's a biological insurance. It ensures that human. We'll continue to thrive and exist I Had geing our bets like what's what is it about the record-keeping that that's more That's important to use because what makes us different from everything else in the universe There's nothing bigger to it than that. I'm not like because then we'll all be happier It's more like because at the end of the day if our entire species died Jupiter wouldn't even know yeah, the moon would keep orbiting yeah, right? The only impact we have is records that also last a long time so Telling stories whether they're fiction or not like they can be made-up stories - that's a whole other Reflection of our minds that we get out there, that's there for after our Sun is exploded We've still got a Google years before the heat death of the universe other living organisms can discover what we have found and they will know the universe better because of what we Recorded about it does this idea terrify you of like an empty universe Just no conscious being like all this space all these stars and planets and not a single conscious being right this strange thought It's a weird. It's a weird thought that at a certain point because of entropy we will have No usable energy anywhere energy will be completely spread out there won't be more here and less here, and there won't be the ability to Put more energy in one place like to make a battery right and so that's the heat death. There's just it's we're done That like I said, it's like at Google years from now yes, it's it's a long way off, but you know if Organisms like us live that long maybe We'll find a way to feel like there'll always be some there's always a way And I feel like these theories are always changing - oh like that's the only if only fifty years ago everyone thought The universe would crunch back it crunch people still do think that's like ruled out. It's not like hey guys. I've got the answer We're gonna inflate forever It seems like nature is always way more simple and poetic and like the Big Crunch makes like poetic sense and that it like Crunches up it comes out at big bangs. It crunches up. I feel like the real answer is probably something more Cyclical then it just like phases out and disappears forever that seems could be just seems unlikely, but I don't know why I don't I don't think we well, yeah, we don't you know a lot and You know if we need to escape this universe and we will find a way to Enter another set of three. It's gonna be it's gonna be the Our brains are gonna be on a computer right. I'll blow into your mind. That's the fuckin that's it blackmail we were listening to I forget if it was a podcast about these guys working on AI mm-hmm and This whole philosophical debate about keeping them in a box you are you familiar with that no because basically a lot of people are afraid of AI right now and So they didn't get into much detail But they speak very metaphorically about keeping it in some kind of box so that we can get its help But we keep it caged up because we're afraid of what will happen if it's not caged right Thank you is with Sam Harris yeah, Sam Harrison some AI guys, but there's this really big Debate going on right now with Elon Musk and other people working on AI about should we be afraid or? Is it completely overblown, and this is gonna be I mean it's gonna be revolutionary one way or the other But it's just something that we should be afraid of it's very Right, it's great. This is real science fiction happening. It's ethical. You know it's like whoa wait a second if We can't be sure that these you know a eyes Aren't conscious then yeah, is it wrong to keep them in a box, but then you have to start asking well What is it like even to be a cockroach? like that they're fantastic if that was an AI We'd be like that's genius this thing it finds food. Yeah Yeah, could survive all kinds of things so should we not even be killing cockroaches if they have any kind of semblance of? goals for the future or Plans then. It's a tragedy when they died One of the more terrifying things I heard from that podcast that I thought was very thought-provoking is that we create AI? We can never know actually if there's real true consciousness instead of a AI right yeah I can't know if you're conscious. You could be a philosophical signe I think I really love that's true, and that's why I love to sing I think therefore I am yeah Because it's like you just know that something exists by the very nature of yourself thinking yeah acting stuff, so we create the super Intelligent AI that can reproduce it can get resources it can build it can colonize you Creative against it can see reactive things as though. It's faylene thing exactly it has families it colonizes Other planets But we never know if it's conscious And and this guy he posed this question that what if they're all actually just ten boxes yeah And they actually don't know or care that they're alive and the universe ends up being populated by essentially dead matter Right essentially just like a really big virus. Yeah, we not to hate on viruses They might have consciousness, but not only not yeah But what viruses are dead by by some accounts right? They're not living is what they say is that yeah, it's when you get into like well What is alive because a virus can replicate itself in? But I they're right on that edge. I think most people would say they're not alive is what the virus is so fucking crazy Right now it just happens like like gravity happens like it injects its You know what it needs to reproduce itself just by chemical reaction just by mechanics and physics It's not deciding or the you know the virus whole thing is so it's such a trip. It's like the perfect antithesis of conscious life And I think the analogy of that and like these tin robots colonizing space is a perfect example like this man-made Unstoppable virus that just an empty universe and where we perish yeah for whatever reason and these fucking empty robots Just populate the universe But are they empty you know the weird entity and only way we can know is by asking them And if they report back no I'm aware that I'm aware You have to take the word for it Just like I have to take your guys's word for it when you tell me that you feel things and that you're conscious and that You're aware of your existence. It could be lying you could just be you know I could be a brain in a bat We're all just sent to ten boxes. Yeah Meet Bob, and now this there's shit with the viruses are being used now engineered to treat like cancers right yeah This is the new thing that they're engineering viruses to go after certain cancer cells and now it turns out that Viruses that I've been killing and devastating living creatures for all this time could end up being the the answer to all these horrible diseases Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy, and and I mean they give us a great vessel for look. They already have the mechanism to Spread and and survive certain you know traumas, but if we get them on our side But I wonder what the definition of a virus is because when you really get down into some of the most simple viruses It's just like these two proteins when they touch each other the molecular bonds cause a Folding that releases the DNA or RNA or whatever it is, and it's just like what that's like if you drip Let go of a ball it falls to the ground. It. Just it just is a it Just happens due to natural laws. Not any kind of biology, or life. Yeah, there's no There's no like Biology the one the rule is like reproduction right but viruses have that desire to reproduce Don't they oh I don't know if it's a desire or like uh You know yeah, it happens it just it just happens the way something that goes up comes down it just happens It's not like the thing that's going up says yo, yo yo We're gonna have a better existence, and we're gonna be able to reproduce if we fall It just does fall and then some things follow the laws of the universe and make more of themselves And we're we're related to them we came from them All right, let's tone it down here a little bit let's Um I've got some I have I want to finish off with some really important stuff. I want to tone it down Let's come back to earth for a little bit How does it feel being transcending from a science channel to becoming a living me as I was telling you Previously these sauce memes are in very high demand the meme economy shows that Vsauce memes are taking a very strong upturn How do you feel about having having ascended? Do you follow the mean economy? Yeah, big-time? Yeah? Yeah, I love that I love that kind of analytical approach to Because it means psychology really it's like at what point is a joke gonna. Be lame well It's my currency of course i-it's like my you know you've got a lot invested. Yeah economy Yeah, yeah, and I love that kind of idea of like what I want to do an episode on the psychology of lameness when something becomes Cringy, and I roll II in old news right because we're living in such a fast-paced information world now that we're we have many more examples of that than we did decades ago But no, I've never seen any memes of myself what give me a freakin break. Do you have any jokes don't speak? That's yeah? No, I'm a known purveyor of saliva knowledge. I didn't choose that job, but that's why I exact It is it is something that I'm you know a favor or dant. Get plug link me some Vsauce memes Let's do it me and reveal right now The thing about memes of course is that like at what point a I'd loved it here. This is me asking you a question okay? Like do you? Respond to memes other of create others have created about you, or are you ever afraid that like if you acknowledge it? It's it loses its power. Oh, yeah Well, okay first of all Yeah, you like I feel a I definitely see what you mean because once you acknowledge it Then the the magic is lost right because it needs to belong to everyone, but you right You don't want to be in on the joke exactly are you right yeah? No, I see what you mean yeah, but I think I think this is like we can review memes of you. It's fair It doesn't kill it mmm-hmm meme review. It doesn't kill it because it's my I'm the one that's pushing it. Yeah This is Aaron the driver. See I'm in the driver's seat. You're not like let's look at these great memes of me that would kill These great Vsauce memes could check this out check. Yeah, exactly because you can embrace the meme sometimes you can over brace me Yes, ready, you embrace it so hard you you strangle it in college Did you khaled embrace the meaning strangled to me? Yeah? And there's a right and a wrong way to embrace it so that it grows and can write your source of creation Where they maim you're afraid of killing it you like me in other words you love you like being a living me You respect it clearly. I respect the the creativity that comes from we're getting lots. We're getting 1000 degree chainsaw verse 1 year old infant. I found gone wrong the hell is this I don't I don't understand That's just a video I made that's not it wait your channel is called a rape breed and the science man, all right, but come on guys What was that? There's also you know? There's obviously the like Inappropriateness of them which is is where the comedy summarizing random boys at the park? Yeah boy vase sauce All right, let's move on Let's do you make those no Ian may have just cooked those up in the back All right there there are some that are not so offensive yeah, but the kind of you know Edginess of them right like that's part of the whole comedy series video man : You're a Titan bit are you familiar with a shell Dolan guard? No, I'm not Yeah, yeah That's powerful, so so look at the this creativity look at this Gil you inspired that video I can't edit that well. Yeah, right and and when I was first doing YouTube videos. I was taking Politicians, and I was trying to do effects like that you know get them involved in shows make it look like they said they hadn't said and that is a Phenomenal power that people haven't had for a long time it used to be that if you wanted to see a public figure or a movie Warp to mean something else you had to see it on Letterman or something like that No one else had those tools, but now with editing software and the internet Everyone clearly the Unabomber hadn't foreseen meme economy, otherwise he would have come not written up He's still alive I wonder if he's aware. Oh is he the meme economy mulcher yeah And the power that people now have to take that culture and make it their own right some of the first videos I made Were worth that it was I made one called Ferris the 13th And I took Ferris Bueller's Day Off and I used the voiceover for a Friday the 13th trailer so it made a comedy look like a horror film and It's easy to forget what it was like back in 2008 2007 to make something like that because you had no gatekeepers allowed you to do that you just did it and Before you had to be a Hollywood executive to make them make something like that you had to have money What is an editor's a day and age we live in now? By the way subscribe to Dylan dart subscribe to Dolan Joe. I feel like in this day and age I don't know Maybe it's already a thing But I've been feeling the desire for a form of therapy to Start taking classes of like working with wood and building stuff that does a form of therapy Yeah, that's kind of brilliant I actually did some sculpture classes and when I went to art school and it's really fun when you can just like drill a hole in a piece of wood and that's Actually like build a shelf full of seven and it's a functioning Object it. Goes back to what we were saying of doing something like meaningful with your hands. Yeah, yeah with physical objects I Find some of that in puzzles You know in solving puzzles and in using construction toys to make geometric figures and stuff And you kind of realize wow I haven't looked at a screen. I haven't been a part of the technological world That's really that's a really great idea. I actually think there's something to that yeah, I mean things you can do even without technology like not wood stone tools, but just your own body like yoga or Calisthenics, I guess like those kinds of things that force you to be alone with just the body are phenomenal yeah very cool alright, let's let's Last thing we had you on we didn't do this thing we do this now with Oliver I guess it's very interesting thing with our fans. Love it, so I'm gonna leave you with this one one question here Do you have any interesting ghost stories paranormal experiences alien encounters and? It's fine if you don't it's completely fine. I don't have any but it's just turned into the segment It's just a little thing ghost stories. Yeah I have none. Yeah, okay, that's fair I know that's perfectly fine people feel bad I Don't have any but sometimes. You know you get surprised. I mean as you can imagine That's what I expected like I'm not the kind of person who's gonna go Ghosts I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say. Oh interesting. I mean how could something be right next to me They're not here so to be in a fourth spatial dimension right right and that's what people have the turn of the century the 1900s Were really obsessed with they were like where the heck is heaven right because we're starting to feel like we can't fly there maybe It's right next to us in the way that on a sheet of paper something can live on that surface and only be 2d But something can be right above it and look inside of it and know what's inside of it What if that is where these spirits and ghosts are and? after that in Cocoa if you're Right that was a great movie. Yeah, but it's like I Mean I I would love to have an experience But I sure that the same sentiment is you sometimes people have experience is so strong that you can be a completely rational Scientific person and you're like yeah, I believe in ghosts so and and and that kind of experience is very real Yeah, I mean if you think you saw a ghost you thought you did that's and and there are things We don't know still if we we could discover a hundred years that like oh no no when you die you you enter a different spatial dimension in your There and you can be around all of us, but we can't see you because we don't have eyes the point anywhere but in these three right sure Will we ever be able to design an experiment that proves that we find evidence of it. I don't know but So in short no go stores No I'm waiting I'm waiting for the day I have a ghost story the closest I've had is that a moth shit on my wall, and I thought it was blood But it was just shit Spooky, and I was like I was like ela There's fucking blood running down our wall, and this was right after we started the ghost stories thing and I was like hold on I'm like that's more Brown than red Ah, no. No. No, there's a giant monstrous shit on our wall is I was scared for a moment moth blood is not brown Um. What are the round in there poop is red. Yeah was What moth goes blood I? Love scary movies, I love you know like the conjuring the kind of like Spiritual Ouija board sort of stuff because you love Lance Stewart sorry those It's it's a it's a big part of our like our minds create these stories, and that's very significant I think it's what's more scary is what we can convince ourselves of right then what's real May I suggest some video that we watched recently. I generally don't like spooky films because I'm very I'm very easily spit You're easily spooked, but there was a movie creep Haven't heard of it. Oh my god. It's incredible. Yeah, like it's not it's not like Corny what I don't like is um Graphic violence, what about jump scares? I genuinely don't like jump scares I don't like to see I like says I guess what I like more is just Suspense right like that's the difference of a good movie and like a corny like very gory But this was a straddled the perfect line between being spooky and suspenseful career. There's no violence. There's no There's something it was so simply made right. I really enjoyed that it felt like I loved it. It's on Netflix. Okay Cool, is it all of October? I made my wife watch scary movies every day. I called it spook Tober. Yeah, hated it, but We we wanted suspense And we found ourselves actually moving away from horror into the suspense section because we wanted that like get out right phenomenal Right get out Jerry because get out was more of just a good film than it was like. Oh, this is a scary film Yeah, it wasn't like you just jumped out of your seat and also get this gore it was more like Yeah, this the Stephen King book the they made a movie out of it, but an author who Is in a car accident? I want to say mercy hmm. It's a recent one or it's a classic It's not recent, but it's another one of those like Unsettling is read misery not mercy misery so good. Oh, we should watch that ela yeah Oh, you totally should yeah again. It's just it's just off kilter from reality hmm Well, what are you eight to was great because it was kind of funny Yep, so it was I I found I found that most good horror films. There's an L Strong element of comedy and absurdity and cheekiness to it. Yeah because you have to you can't take yourself too, seriously When dealing with these kind of issues so yeah Stephen King by the way There was a child orgy in that book. I know if you know that I know that because after I saw the movie Yeah, I read the book yeah, and how do you feel about that cuz I've only read about that scene Oh, you know what? I haven't read even read the book, so I'm curious. What was your reaction to okay? Well first of all the book Shows you why books and movies are different and deserve to be Treated different look like a big boy when someone says like yeah, but did you read the book? Yeah? I know that's annoying but books are so different because they allow you to really get inside someone's head for pages for hours for days, but in a movie you kind of gotta like Get it over with and like Recollections people have in a movie have to be done with like recreated scenes and but with this book you really get into the dark Parts of people's minds you can it cannot translate to a screen anyway Yeah, when when I started to get to that part of the book? They kind of hint at it? before it really happens and I immediately like had to read like what critics have said about why the heck that's in the book because The Stephen King health says well it represents this transition from childhood to adulthood this connection But of course the hallway connecting the children's library in the adult library also represented that why did you also have to have a? Graphic, it's like a it's a gangbang on this one girl as I as I read about because right that's exactly what it is Well, it's just yeah. I mean in its her idea mm-hmm But it's not really goes against her character arc like is she's supposed to all the characters? become Free in a way right like like oh you mean my medicine is just a placebo hmm You know those were these big route revelations, and and you feel like the the girl it gets there, too But then there's that scene and you're like what I was reading about a lot of people were just like he was on a drug-fueled He was just doing like lines of cocaine during that whole period and was just yakked out and wrote it But still how do you leave the ED that he's got a editor? I assume didn't seem central to the story I Also bought his book on writing. I haven't read it yet, but I was really like I got to know more about Because that scene aside the book is all of Salem's Lot I read as a kid, and I just it's incredible Yeah, I mean I did a whole episode on what is creepiness. Why are things creepy, and and you know his? Idea of creepiness is a big part of the episode so anyway, but yeah, oh, man. That's weird And they're troubling things in the book too involving Animals being harmed that it's just a different kind of it's not horror like Oh spooky clown. It's horrible Ice why are we capable of that yeah? Well the question is about that scene in particular - was like was it necessary to be in the book Or it was just just a sick weird thing. He did - like fuck with the reader or maybe that's valid - I don't know he did a lot us for sure to mess with the reader III I Mean he has responded this and I think he said that you know if he did it again He wouldn't include that scene no he did say that because I thought he was defending Well, yeah as far as I know his defense was I can't believe that people are upset by this and not like the actual violence And whatever you know right? But still it just was a weird because what I love about the book is that it it's about belief if you believe That's that the clown is real. It is if you believe that you can destroy it you can and there's this great analogy He makes to like look it took a lot of people to create the myth of the vampire but someone created the myth of the wooden stake and In the book in it right the kids think that the medicine is acidic, and it's gonna destroy the clown And it does hurt them but once they become adults and they don't believe these things anymore. They have to find new solutions You have to believe you can destroy it to destroy it, and I had never seen as a horror story that focused on that aspect so Yeah, but that scene it was it was weird too. Cuz it was like if we do this We will learn how to get out of the sewers. I was like I don't see the connection right And they got out yeah, it was literally like after that scene. They're like. Oh cool. You just take a ride over there Isn't it weird? Also, the matter of the time when you wrote the book. I guess those stuff like today It seems yeah, it's strange, but made a background for No, you're right. I don't know yeah, and when was it that? actually probably the eighties Anyway, let that's a great no.10. Don't ya we got the Unabomber yeah Unabomber is manifesto we need a new chapter for memes, but in that book but in 1986 according to you in 86 the year I was born, and if you if you want to find your way out of a maze you Have a child orgy oh no, no it's not okay well still on that All right well oh yeah, thanks guys for watching damages singing let's end on shredder cam I think that's a great idea hmm Please go watch season 2 of minefield support Michael in any way you can go to brain candy and pick up some tickets Anything to supplement to that Subscribe to h3h3 be sure to next time You guys are it on a Wednesday. It's a different. It's a different time Course Follow follow Ethan and Gila on the gone man Twitter. I love it by the fashions Thank you, I appreciate that Thanks for having. There's a lot of fun Yeah, but if we got a weird. We got a little wild got a little one we went there We got a little deep we came back got a little scared, and then we do a couple spooks a couple hundred orgies couple Bomb the Unabomber he blew up the apartment building right no. He just mailed pipe bombs Oh, that was the who was the guy who blew up the apartment building Jonathan Jonathan McVeigh Who's that Timothy McVeigh Timothy the Oklahoma City? Yeah? That's the guy federal building, so yeah, yeah? A documentary on him and if you watch that it's on Netflix It's fantastic you should also watch the one on Ruby Ridge because he was responding to Ruby Ridge He was responding to the you know the government and and its power over people and it is so relevant today today I mean, it's it's the same world History main Important stuff let's get on Mars and start recording data Yeah in Michael Stevens Park. All right. I'm Calling him now guys Thank you so much for watching as Michael was gracious enough to say we are going to be live Next week on Wednesday with player unknown very excited about that, so please join us then until then my friends I wish you I do and with that I say adieu Multi shredder cam thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next time Tata
