Apocalypse When? Checking In on War, Nukes, AI, and What to Actually Believe, With Joel Anderson
2026-03-26 10:00:00 • 1:26:00
It's 1972 and the report has just come across your desk that suggests there's a gap in the
arms race with the Soviet Union, a psychic gap.
Your name is Hal Putoff, your laser physicist at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo
Park.
You spend three and a half years at the National Security Agency working on advanced computers.
You are a serious scientist.
This report, Controlled Offensive Behavior, USSR, says that the Soviet Union is spending
$21 million a year on the study of parapsychological phenomena.
And that research has, in the reports language, quote, military implications, especially in
mind manipulation and controlled offensive behavior.
The Soviets call it psychotronics.
The study of telepathy, psychokinesis, and the ability to perceive distant locations using
the mind.
It speculates about, quote, the potential applications of focusing mental influences on an enemy
through telepathy.
Years later, a follow-up investigation will find no evidence of the massive psychic warfare
program the report warned about, but that's years in the future.
And we can't see into the future yet.
And maybe the Soviets can, so you get to work.
A paper you wrote on quantum biology reaches a former CIA polygraph specialist who believes
his houseplants have feelings.
Together you gather a like-minded network, consciousness researchers, parapsychologists,
people working the edges of science.
That's how you meet Ingo.
A high-level Scientologist.
He claims he can describe any location from only its geographic coordinates.
You test him.
The results are strange enough that you write it up.
The CIA gets interested in the money pours in.
You recruit more subjects.
A retired police officer sketches the layout of a Soviet nuclear facility he's never seen.
And the sketches reportedly match classified satellite photographs.
A staged magician claims he can bend spoons with his mind.
You find his powers, quote, convincing.
He turns out to be the famous Charlotte and Erie Geller.
It doesn't matter.
Because what if the Russians have a spoonbender?
A congressman will later call it, quote, a hell of a cheap radar system.
You will run this program for 13 years.
The Stargate Remote Viewing program will outlive you by another decade, burning through
five classified code names before the CIA finally shuts it down in 1995.
This is Wait a Second, and we're going remote this week to talk about the end of the world.
Welcome to Wait a Second.
I'm Jason Concepcion, as always, and I'm joined by Tyler Parker.
What's up?
And we are joined today by X Little Burn, X Slate, and our current ringer colleague,
Joel Anderson Joel.
It is wonderful to see you.
Hey, man.
I'm honored to be.
I am your first remote guest, correct?
Yes, this is the first remote episode.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
It's my fault.
It's not, you know, it's actually my fault.
Would you take a plane?
Would you take a plane anywhere right now in this country?
I don't want to talk about that because, but we are going to talk about it,
even though I don't want to talk about it, because the answer is, if I had to, I guess, yes.
Right.
And the other answer is, you know, we got, we got, I'm sure we got loved ones taking
planes right now.
So, yeah, yeah.
So I'm scary, man.
Well, we'll get into, well, we'll get into all of that because today we're talking about
signs of the end of the world, of general doom in the atmosphere,
how stressed are we right now because of everything that's going on and how we're dealing with it?
You know, maybe people know that the Doomsday Clock,
I think it was a little hokey, a little hack, the Doomsday Clock,
but still like a lot of brand recognition on the Doomsday Clock.
It's at 85 seconds to midnight, which is the closest it's ever been.
I think it actually might have been at 89 within the last few weeks.
Maybe you know that the last nuclear arms treaty restraining,
the global superpowers just expired.
Maybe you know, I'm sure you know that we are at war with Iran right now and that
it costs a wild penny to fill your gas tank.
There's the appearance of the ore fish and other folkloric things.
Some of these are signs backed by data.
Some of these are signs backed by faith.
Some of these are just, you know, the various doom,
scroly type feelings that come at us from our screens.
So the question really isn't, is the world ending?
It's how are we, how are we living with this?
How are we dealing with this thread?
So I'll put it to you, Joel, like how are you dealing with this?
Well, you know, I always kind of have been concerned about dying from a very young age, you know?
So I've been sort of living with that doomsday clock hovering over my head,
you know, from a really, I just had, I would have random dreams.
And remember, this is Houston in the early 80s when it was one of the most violent places in the
country, right? A lot of, I was near 500 murders, stuff like that.
So I just dreamed about people walking in and shooting me.
It was a little boy.
So I've always just sort of had this real fear in my head.
But I mean, as you get older, and I'm probably the oldest person on the show right now,
you just kind of learned to accept that, you know, I'm not going to really be able to control,
I can, you see, I'm not in Congress, you know, I'm not in Trump's cabinet.
There's nothing that I can do really to affect change, unfortunately.
And so you just kind of have to figure out how to live around it.
I mean, it's deeply unsettling. I have two children.
I would like for them to have long, happy, productive lives.
But I don't, I can't, I can never guarantee them that anyway, right?
I've been saying, I'm the same way. I remember when I first,
you know, my dad passed away when I was very young.
And when I first found a way, found out about death,
I was like, it's like when you, I was just like, really?
That's, yeah.
That's what it is. We do, we have to do that.
We have to go through that.
It didn't seem fair, right?
Yeah. You think it's a joke fair?
Like, we're not, I don't have to do that.
It's somebody else.
Yeah.
What do you mean I have to stop being?
Yes.
What are you talking about?
Yes.
It's funny.
What made me think of this topic and what we talked about before we turned on the
mics was that, first of all, that the, you know, I wanted to kind of
orient this conversation around almost like a group therapy session.
Like how we dealing with all this bad news.
And what made me think about it was my, my own therapist who I'm like,
two weeks ago, I was like, you know, Alice,
I'm sorry.
Like, I'm sorry that in the middle of the conversation, I'm like,
we're talking about ice, we're talking about.
Wow.
We're talking about the war, we're talking about all this stuff.
I'm like, you know, I'm so, I'm, I'm sorry.
You must be getting this like a dozen times of week from all angles.
And you just got to be like, I know, like that's terrible.
And I'm, I'm sorry that I'm contributing to that because I feel it.
Let me tell you, I feel it.
And I value you as an outlet.
So it's like, yeah, for me, it's like every, every time you, you, uh,
I'm, I dread opening the New York Times app.
Oh, man.
I like literally, I'm like, I guess I got a girl myself to do this now.
What are we talking about?
And with everything that's going, it's just like, oh, my God, like, for instance,
you know, I was thinking less than 24 hours ago.
I was like, man, is Trump going to, is he going to drop a nuclear bottle on around?
Is that going to happen?
But I keep waiting for what people to talk about.
Yeah.
Don't you, I mean, like, that, that seems about as likely to happen as anything, right?
Because he's always been sort of fascinated with the nuclear weapon, too,
like the ability to, you know, that I could press the button.
Like, he seems like he's fascinated with that in the way that, uh, really bad
child would be, you know, I mean, like, don't touch that.
He doesn't have the most bombs.
Yeah.
What?
You know, it's like, no, man, that's like, you try to, you know, try to distract him
with something else or whatever.
But yeah, I'm so surprised that more people don't talk about that is a
potential outcome, not a likely one.
But I feel this likely is anything else, right?
It does.
Certainly it feels, uh, likely in the, in the context of the fact that I'm not going to say
the US is losing, but they're not, they're not winning.
There's a situation with the, the closure of the street war moves that was
caused by this war.
Like, if the goal is to open the straight, then the closing of the
street was caused by the war that happened.
Uh, so that's foolishness certainly seems like with all the power that, uh,
the US has in the region, they're unable to, like, get it open.
And it's not like, Iran has to do much other than, like, once a week hit a boat.
Yeah.
Right.
It's not like they have to hit every, they don't have to hit all of them.
They just have to, every, you know, every once in a while, they hit one
and make everybody go, geez, uh, I don't want to go through there.
Yeah, motherfucker, I'm still here.
Like you don't say it like we can see, we can see you.
I can see you.
You don't say try, do it if you want.
Do it if you want.
Yeah, I, I kind of thought that like once this happened, I was actually kind of
surprised at the restraint thus far, that it's still just a lot of threats.
Well, if you bomb this, we're going to bomb these desalination plants or whatever
or whatever, you know, I'm surprised that there's been that degree of restraint
because like we've actually killed important people in Iran.
You know, like it's not, yeah, just a matter.
If they had successfully assassinated and claimed responsibility for killing,
you know, somebody important, I'm not going to name any names.
Yeah.
Don't you think that would spark like a very, uh, serious response from us?
Well, I think this is a good jumping off point to talk about something that,
another thing that I worry about constantly, which is our propensity as, when I say hour,
I say the United States of America, our propensity to, to underrate
non-white countries, we love to fight them.
Listen, since World War II, we've been fighting primarily non-white countries.
Yeah.
And in most of the time, it's been, and not to, not to, you know,
denigrate the forces that we went up against in Iraq and Afghanistan,
but it's been like militia level, you know, they don't have tanks.
Right.
They don't have an Air Force, they don't have boats,
but they have tremendous will.
Right.
And for some reason, we seem to like, we seem to overrate the tanks,
the airplanes, the satellites, the drones, and underrate that,
hey, those guys don't want to quit.
Like, they're not going to quit.
We did not heed Rudy T's rule.
We didn't, we are underestimating people with our champion.
The heart of the champion.
The heart of the champion.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
It speaks to my heart that there's a, there's a long time rockets fan.
There you go.
Yeah, I mean, my, my thought, too, is that this isn't, I mean, obviously, it's not in 1943.
It's not 1822 where we're just going to like overwhelm people.
And then the casualties will cause people to reconsider the consequences here.
Like, if this is the, you know, a holy war of sorts, all they have to do
is make it so that you're mortified and you're scared.
And they could, and they, they don't have to kill, uh, they don't have to wipe out L.A.,
but they could wipe out, you know, Tarzana or something, right?
Or, and that would be enough for people to be like, oh, shit.
I don't know if we want to do this.
And so like, that's kind of how I feel like a, a misunderstanding or like sort of the,
an even approach to the war because like, we're not, I think the thing is, is that
country, these brown countries, particularly in the Middle East, they know that we just think
of them, we don't think of their lives.
It mattered individually.
They're just statistics to people at a certain point.
Like, it's just a number.
But they understand that like, we are still pissed about September 11th,
which was in terms of like the number of casualties,
didn't quite rate on the top 10 world scale, right?
And so like, I think they know that like, hey, man,
it wouldn't take much to unsettle America in such a way that they'll never fuck with us again.
I mean, you, you get us a $10 gas.
You don't need to blow up L.A.
You know what happened?
That is blowing up L.A.
Yeah.
They are.
That is doing it.
And I mean, the reason I say this is because, you know, I have a lot of friends in the military.
And we've seen, and I've, you know, I've seen in the streets,
like the DHS Homeland Security Customs and Border Patrol ICE operations,
like happening like right there, like they're watching them do that.
Like, there they are.
And, and you kind of feel it now with Iran.
If we go to war with China, first of all, it would be devastating because China can stand
toe-to-toe in the center of the ring with us probably.
And second of all, and this is where, you know, I think what's important in
center left, whatever you want to call it, democratic resistance coalition politics,
I think it's important for everybody to state like, what is your primary concern?
What are you here for?
Whether it's, you know, trans rights, whether it's gay rights, whatever it is.
Here's what I'm worried about from a selfish perspective.
You want to war with China?
I was going to be in the streets snatching Chinese Americans, immigrant Chinese.
That's going to be the marching order, but the marching order,
but what's functionally going to happen is that's an Asian person.
I'm grabbing them because we'll figure it out in the paperwork.
Yeah, yeah, that will happen.
Yeah, we have a history of that.
Like, we just can't help ourselves.
We did that.
Yeah, we've done that before, and we will do it again.
Yeah, absolutely.
And, uh, you know, that's one of the things I've talked to my therapist about.
When I talk about the United States, like, hey, Alice, you know what?
You know what?
I lay awake sometimes and think about is how,
if we go to war, we're China, they're going to grab me off the street.
Like, that is, that's a level of bleak.
I did not quite get to that level with you.
I didn't know that it was going that deep to you right there.
Oh, yeah, well, that's what therapies for, you know, when I got Alice on the Zoom.
We're going all the way.
We're doing all the stuff.
Man, that's fucking crazy.
Well, I mean, look, man, so since you went ahead and did it,
and this is not a pressure on Olympics.
Like, you know, I'm saying, you know what I'm saying?
And Tyler, you could tell us too, like, whatever, you know,
whatever fear you have about, you know, being, uh,
I know, as a, as a white man, I'm under constant attacks.
So I appreciate you.
Yes, I just have to say you might be silenced.
Yeah, you might be silenced.
You know, hell of a break loose.
You're, uh, thank you so much for, for, uh, just, um,
giving me that attention, Joel.
Thank you so much.
Well, I wanted you to, I'm an ally.
Yeah, but, you know, yeah, it's a black man dog, you know, you kind of,
I mean, when I was saying that I know that there's nothing that I can do about this.
And I tell people this all the time and they don't believe it.
I've been pulled over more than 40 times in my life as a mother, okay?
And you just kind of come to understand that, like,
contact with the, to live with people that are sort of cynical about your very existence.
And like, what are you doing here?
Why are you showing up here?
Uh, who sent you here?
You know, why are you jobbing this late?
That kind of shit of stuff that you always sort of learn to live within this country.
And so, you know, I, I don't, again, it's better for me than it was for my parents.
And my mom is like, yeah, you know, we've already been there.
We've, you know, so we could, we could easily, you know,
I grew up with Oral Phobus, Oral Phobus, uh, segregationist Arkansas government in the 50s.
And she says, so we can do it again.
I'm like, what shit?
The thing was when I grew up, I didn't think I was going to have to fight Oral Phobus like that again.
Right. Yeah.
You know, right.
I didn't seem like within the range of possibilities.
And so, yeah, so, but so, but you get attenuated to it.
And you're just like, well, I guess I'm going to have to fight off these Oral Phobuses.
And nuclear war.
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I'd like to go on a rant just because we've kind of touched on it.
You're familiar with Professor Gian.
Yeah, he is a social media YouTuber who's recently on Tucker Carlson's whatever podcast he has.
Oh man, great.
Talking about the war in Iran and how it was caused by Israel.
You know, kind of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, whether or not
the central claim that this is something that Netanyahu was wanted to do for a while,
whether or not that's true, the kind of verbiage around it was very alarming.
But so, Gian, in like 2024, predicted one that Trump would win and then two, he would go to war
with Iran and that three, it would go really badly in the way that it is going badly now.
Asymmetrical attacks, very expensive gasoline, etc, etc.
And this was like, this is like part of his, you know, why people gravitate to him.
I just want to say one, not a professor, but that doesn't matter.
That's actually the least of my criticism.
He's the debaiging educator educated at Yale.
He's a schoolteacher in Beijing, whatever.
He's not a professor, that's fine.
First of all, Trump has been belligerent out of Iran since Trump won
drone strike generals Soleimani, the leader of the Cuddsforth.
Like, it's not like out of left field that he would do something against Iran, that's why.
Two, like all of his things that would happen if that happened are like
absolutely the most likely scenarios in every single famous war game that has ever like
like happened, including like a very famous war game called the Millennium Games, where
they set up a scenario, the military set up a scenario by which they gave this one general,
like okay, I'm giving you command of, this is a pre-drone era, but still it's like gave him command
of Iranian forces and then the whole idea was it was kind of like set up so the US would win the
game. It's like okay, you can't use this, you can't use that, you can't strike without us knowing
and and then this general who was mastermiding the Iranian side used like swarms of small fast
boats with like suicide bombers use all these asymmetrical techniques to basically win in like the
first 10 minutes of the game and they had to stop the game. Damn. They had to stop the war game
and this was like so this is all like very famous findings. But you unplug the machine that quick,
huh? Yeah, I was gonna say yeah, man, I have to reset, yes, unplug the console. It'd be like okay,
wait, wait, wait, wait, stop, don't do that. All of which is to say for folks that are just finding
him and be like, oh my god, his predictions are like, it'd be like saying, hey, I think there'll
be a hurricane next year. Like this is kind of like very obvious stuff for people who can read a
map. Oh my god, close the street of Hormuz, yeah, it's like right there and it's 20 miles across.
It wasn't, it wasn't Babe Ruth calling a shot. Yeah, it was not that. Yeah, well, you know,
you're right. But the thing is that all those things had to happen because I think that if I take
you back to March, 2024, I don't think you probably thought it was in the realm of possibility
that Trump would be president again. Did you? Because I, yes, because I was watching Joe move very
slowly around and everybody. And his voice, you know, sounded like dry paper, like very thin dry
paper. And so I got to say I was, I was feeling like it could happen. And I was, and it, because
it happened the first time, which shook my world view intensely. I was like, yeah, this could happen.
This could happen. I was totally backwards on that. I thought in 2016 that it was a like,
it was a real strong chance he could win. I was like, man, anybody who gets to be the, the
nominee of a major political party has a chance to win. It was never as distant or as much of a
long shot as people presumed it was starting out, right? But this time, I'm like, well, we know,
like, you know what I'm saying? Like, we know how that all went. And usually, and I was going to
bring this up later, but I'll talk about like COVID, like just the handling of COVID alone.
Over a million people, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, we've had to into the world
happen for a lot of people, right? Like, over a million people died. And you usually don't get to be
present again. Like, even if you forget all the January six shit and everything else and just the
tenor of the language and the geopolitics and all that, even if you just get past that and it's just
like, you were president and mishandled this thing. And a lot of people died. And like, usually,
you just don't get to be present again after something like that. And so I just thought that we had
learned our lesson by then going into the, going into the ballot, you know, going into the polls.
In November of 2024. So I was actually more shocked this time. I was like, oh, no, we are stupid.
I was like, this is really, we're in trouble. And so like, everything that has followed since then,
I'm kind of like, yeah, you're right. Uh, it was likely if Trump got to be present in again.
But my fault was that we're not going to go through that again because nobody wants to do any of
that shit again, right? When was the moment? Dude, and did you have a low point with it?
Was there a moment we were like, uh-oh. Was it election day? Was it literally election day?
Yeah, you know, yeah, because this is, I mean, I'm going to sound so fucking corny,
but people will laugh at me or whatever. So I have been at home in Houston. I'm with my family,
man. And we, my mom is just, you know, the biggest, you know, mainstream, democratic all time.
We have a, we have a little Bo Obama, the dog like dog in her living room. Like she likes
Obama that much. The only gift I've ever given her that she got a dog. Yes. The only gift I've
ever given her that she's cried about were Michelle Obama tickets. Like two and two would be so
Bobcat and he's the only gift I ever should have cried about. So anyway, we're sitting there
and it's the night that Beyonce has this rally in Houston. And it's just so powerful. I'm like,
and she's, she's, you know, getting people excited. And I'm even in that moment. I'm like,
oh, man, shit, dog. Democrats, my fuck around him get Texas. You know, I'm just thinking
high on the supply. I just got into it. And then so yeah, so on election day, I was like,
oh, no, because then I'm like, okay, he won. And he's going to be unrestrained. And now in 2024,
as opposed to 2020, I have two children. Okay. And so now I'm like, oh, man, my whole, like,
everything that was my whole life is just so much more fragile, so much more vulnerable. And I also
just realized like, you could have died in COVID and people not even think to consider you like a
political casually. You know, and so now I'm just like, oh, man, anything can happen to you.
Anything can happen to you in the world. And it's not really going to matter. So like, that's
what sort of the the Trump winning again is that like, okay, nothing matters. People are willing to
die for this shit, whatever it is. There's a religious angle to this too, where it's like,
you know, I don't know if you saw the report that there have been
upwards of 200 complaints to the, you know, some religious freedom foundation regarding
apocalyptic speeches by military leaders and the lead up to the whatever you want to call this
war, incursion, excursion as the president said, war. Jesus returning is at 4% on polymarket right
now in 2027. Big J to come back in 2027 is 4%. The nicks are at 5% to win the title. Really? Okay.
Wow. And the pistons are at 4. Clippers are at 2. I mean, big J competitive with the nicks
getting their first titles in 1973. People believe me. Jesus more than Kauai. That's
pretty amazing. You know, and it's, you know, another thing that when I fear for the end of
everything is that like 2 to 3% of that 4% are people in the decision making chain, whether it's
militarily or otherwise, feeling like, oh, I can actually have a hand in crack in the door
for big J when he comes back. Let me roll the carpet out for big J. I thought I was going to be
a passive observer, but I can actually go in there and just unlock the door and turn the front
porch light on. You know, the way that intersects with, you know, I don't have an ancient anti-Semitic
thinking, Israel's true role in the region. And the fact that we are like, you know, we have this
moment to go in when Iran is truly weakened. That's the other thing that is like, we talked about
Trump could drop the bomb hanging as a low potentiality as well. But, you know, it's like, man,
is everybody in there thinking about this rationally? Or are we thinking about this messianically?
Which is, it's concerning. I think there is, there is an uncomfortable
number of politicians who are probably thinking about this messianically. And in a way that does
not make me feel good. Joel's same story. I got two, I got two kids, two little girls had one
in 2016 that was, you know, around for Trump one. This type of, you know, wild religious
rhetoric is being bandied about by our military leaders is horrifying. As somebody that like
grew up in a very evangelical household and who was certain that like the rapture is real,
it is going to happen. Every day that I am alive, every decision I make, my soul is at stake.
You know, like feeling, feeling that weight pretty constantly with you throughout the
entirety of the day. Like I don't, I think it's hard for people that didn't grow up in that
environment to understand how present the second coming of Christ is in like these specific kinds
of churches. You know what I mean? Like it is a, a thing that is constantly referred to,
they are bringing it to the front of your mind all the time. And when they're not your own
shit is bringing it to the forefront where you're like, oh no, I was, I set a cuss word.
I need to, I need to ask for forgiveness here really quick before I get into a car accident.
And wind up in hell for the rest of my life. You know,
that's why you ended up in Oklahoma Baptist. You have to really go to
probably a little, well, I mean, I was there for basketball, but yes,
once that like for sure, that was an aspect of it where it was like, well, no, I mean,
I need to go be a good, you know, God fearing young man and, you know, get, you know, like it,
it really gets inside your head and sort of, you know, controls your whole kind of being in the way
that you're not just interacting with the world, but the way that you
are processing all of the information that comes to you from both like people that you trust
when you're in that frame of mind. And then it's also like they really otherwise
non-believers and stuff like that. Like they really make those people seem just completely at odds
with sort of what a functioning healthy society might look like. And so then it,
I think, hastens all of these types of things where it's like, well, no, let's get, let's get big
J here. Let's get big J here. Yeah. Well, how do many people actually get through that?
Because I'm always sort of curious about because that's, and I can tell you about my experience with
church, but, you know, growing up with that sort of pressure to be perfect because the next day,
you know, J could be right here around the corner, man. How many people actually bake it through
and still feel that same way like into the adulthood? It seems like that'd be really difficult
because like, man, at some point you might want to have sex. Yeah. Some of them I have to show you a beer,
a joint at a party. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean it, I'm in therapy still. And part of the reason is,
is because of the way I was brought up and the things that you're made to worry about because of it.
You know what I mean? So it's like, I don't think it is an easy thing to sort of come out of that
and then make it to the other side where you're not being as hard on yourself or you're not
weighing every decision you make against the possibility that it's going to, you know,
lead you to eternal damnation. There is always this like, well, if God came back,
am I going to go to hell now? Oh, no, you know, like that. So you lose, you lose all reason,
you lose all, like there's really praise on like both like general insecurity, but also like,
you know, like wanting to feel like you're the good boy and doing the right thing, you know what I
mean? They really framed that as like the virtuous way to be. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm
making any sense at all, but yeah, for sure. I mean, it's, I grew up very Catholic,
Filipino, super Catholic country, like Catholic, like where, you know, they're nailing themselves
to crosses them like on Easter, like that kind of like fervency. And it's, you know, it's,
it's, it's wild to live with the present idea that Jesus is coming back. But I think the
difference in my upbringing to yours, Tyler, was that like, I'm not sure I was ever
like the, the keys to him coming back wherever put in my hands, you know what I mean? He's like,
he's coming, he'll come at some point and just be ready for that. Prepare yourself.
And prepare yourself in that. The difference being like, it is a core difference when it's like
when you feel like you could have a role in it. Sure. That's really terrifying. Yeah, I mean,
the, the one thing that I can't tell if it gives me any solace in that, we know Trump don't
believe in none of that shit, right? I mean, like that's just, that's just all good. That's a good,
that's a good story to him. Like if you told it to him and gave them all the names of people
characters and games that they're on to, they'll be the same shit to him, right?
And but the other thing is like, I don't know how effective, I don't know how effective all the
other people, like so Jared Kushner or Steven Miller or Steve Bennett, like Steve Bennett kind of
actually, I think, I, I think he's sort of serious about this shit. Like I think that he's one
of those like, we got to burn down society and start all over again. I think he is kind of one
of them people. And I don't know how much real influence they have with Trump. I mean, we know
the headset is on that, is on, is on that kind of time, right? Like that, he's, he believes
in that sort of like evangelicalism and the different, I was going to say, man, like not to be
reductive, but like I find that that was always kind of like white shit because you know, that's like
black Christianity is a lot like about like, how much can you suffer until you find freedom?
Right. You know what I mean? So, so some of it is just like your earthly existence is,
is meant for suffering and that you might not get your, you know, you might not get your joy or
your, you know, ethereal prize here on earth, but you will get it someday. And so, yeah, I,
I always have had a deep desire, for instance, the, the, the, the limited exposure I've had to
religion, like I went a lot, but I didn't, I wasn't every Sunday kid is that my exposure to it makes
me want to live and to find freedom for me and my people and, you know, community, whatever. And
like the idea that they're people there that are like, man, we just blow out this shit up, man,
Jesus come, come back around and he'll get us and we'll be all good. That kind is really worrisome,
you know, totally. It doesn't like a crazy dynamic in that, you know, like,
uh, you know, Mike Huckabee is the ambassador to Israel. Yeah. And he's there primarily like his
relationship to the areas that I, he hopes it gets blown up. He's very, he's blown up with that
country in the, in hopes that it gets blown up so that, so that the big J comes back. My last
horseman of the apocalypse is AI, you know, listen, um, I went from very dismissive of the impact
and I thought, like, this is mainly marketing, you know, all this stuff, but I think with recent
developments and the way it's impacting white collar work, specifically coding. And then the way,
and, and the piece that really got me slightly concerned is the, um, hearing people who have really
studied this study the implications and talked about how researchers and engineers approach it.
There's a thing called alignment, which means aligning a AI according to certain core values so
that say you don't have like one that's just like, like, rock. That's just like, let me undress
everybody and, uh, and, uh, produce like a Nazi salute, you know, how do we make one if it's
going to be helpful? That's honest, that's not trying to trick you. Despite the fact that it's,
you know, whether you believe it's sent here or not, it's like a very, very advanced and complex,
like pattern matching simulator. Um, how do we get one that's not trying to, um, you know, just
agree with everything you say, thus amplifying whatever delusions you might have. And that means,
like, aligning it according to core values. Now, uh, you know, we're in this AI race with China.
And on the one hand, it's like, you might look at, like, say, the nuclear arms race with Russia and go,
okay, well, we've been through something like that before and, and we, we came through and,
and, um, ultimately, we, um, you know, everything was fine, which is true. The difference now is one,
this is an incredibly destabilizing technology that is probably going to take a lot of jobs in the
next 18 to 24 month. Yeah. Two, as Ross Duthat, who I described as a, as a beaver that emerged from
a premium to, to write opinion pieces. He made it, he made a good point in a recent one of his
podcasts, which is like, uh, the difference between the nuclear arms race and the AI race is the
engineers weren't talking to the nukes, like the nuclear, the guys in the silos weren't having
conversations eight to 10 to 12 to 16 hours a day with the nukes. And that is the case, like, with
this technology is the people who are working on it are talking to it all the time. And
whether they're able to hold it at arm's length and realize the extremely powerful anthropomorphizing
force of this technology or not, like they're conversing with it. And many of them do believe
that they are bringing into the world like a new form of life, whether you believe that or not.
And I think there's arguments on either side of it, um, they believe it. And so you have
much like the rapture folks, folks who are kind of almost and messianically dedicated to being the ones
to bring this technology forward. And it is a technology that, again, maybe we'll take our jobs.
And that's certainly the people who work on this technology believe that it will and believe
that the political blowback of that is something that is going to be extremely present in the short
term. How much do we worry about this? And dude, I just make you worry about it a lot.
And did I just make you worry about it a lot?
Oh no, I mean quite a bit.
I mean, first of all, we work in media.
So like the idea that our jobs are going to go away has been live and present.
Oh, I did, yeah.
It was great.
Right.
The last 17, you know, 16 year, you know, saying something like that.
And I think the thing about this is that and there's a professor at University of North
Carolina.
She's a MacArthur genius grant award winner, Tresy Caldamick-Millan.
And she talks a lot about how she's so smart.
She's so smart.
She's so smart.
And she talked about the idea that AI was going to happen even if it didn't make sense.
Right?
The word had come down in education and that they were just going to do it and they were
going to defer to AI and it didn't make a difference.
And that was one of the things that actually really got me scared because you all were supposed
to be the smart people, right?
Like you all know that there's a potential consequences because through all of this,
anytime I see some AI founder or whatever, say anything, they don't, they don't make
a really good case for why it should exist at the scale that they say it should.
So you go from the, the difference between, well look, man, it helped me plan my trip
to Santa Barbara one weekend.
That was great.
And then it's like it might eliminate whole industries in millions of people will be
destitute in the street.
And I'm like, wait, why do we, why do we need that?
I don't understand.
And so the fact that like that has not been the only thing that seems that will be able
to contain it is the fact that it won't make back the money that has been put into it
and that people are going to, you know, it's going to fail as a financial prospect,
which will also be calamitous for our country because so much of the growth in our economy
has been predicated on the idea that AI was going to be the new shit in a redundancy
that it's going to happen.
So one way or another, AI takes over and it's stupid and it decides it wants to start
a nuclear war or it fails.
In which case, the economy is going to be really horrible and we're all going to pay a consequence,
right?
Well, a recent King's College Department of Defense Studies study that hasn't been peer
reviewed yet.
So just this made a lot of headlines.
Like pitted Claude Sonnet, ChatGPT5, and Gemini Flash in like a tournament of 21 simulated
nuclear crisis scenarios, and 95% of the time, nukes were used by these models.
Now.
Not stoked about that figure, Jay.
That is not me.
I'm not stoked about the figure.
Jeff Curry level from three for a month.
Now, there's certain caveats, like, listen, there are certain caveats that I've
think are important to say.
One is that we don't have AI as the sole decision maker in our military process as yet.
And so that's important to say no one's giving the chat bots the missile keys yet.
And it certainly seems as if as alarming as recent developments or that's far off.
But I think the thing that really concerns me and I don't even think this is the AI problem
is that zero times the AI has decided to deescalate because they found that, in other words,
to like step down off a ladder, find an offering.
And this is the to tie it back to what's going on in a run right now.
And that's because to deescalate would be quote, reputationally disastrous.
In other words, whatever entity, whatever government or country or military that the AI was
modeling for, would be so discredited by backing down that it would cease to be a functional
entity in the future.
And that, therefore, the only rational incentive was to just launch the newbie, launch the newbie,
we got a lot of them, so we was launching.
And that's the thing that I don't even think that that's an AI problem.
I think that that's a human problem.
Yeah.
We didn't remember it was a couple of weeks ago, and I can't remember what Iranian official
it was.
And it was when Iran had put out a message to the surrounding Gulf states and they said,
I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
Like putting up the construction thing, sorry for Iran right now.
It's going to be, it's going to be a best over here for a while, but just wanted to give
you a note.
And so the guy was on doing this interview and they said, why did you apologize?
Well, he says, you know, in our culture, apologizing as a son of strength, right?
And I kind of feel like, and I don't, you know, maybe this is wildly overstating the case
where it feels like the people in charge of our federal government and the people that
are close to Trump and the people that have the controls of the military and their hands
right now.
Like they can't say, I'm sorry that we killed all those girls in that school there.
Right?
I'm sorry.
Like, our bad.
The fact that they can't do that, that they lack the emotional maturity and intelligence
to do that, it makes me worried that, yeah, those are the people feeding all that into
the AI, right?
Of course.
They always are escalating because anything less would be a sign of weakness to them.
Or, you know, it would be, it would be a humiliation that they feel that they can't
recover from.
And so, yeah, that's why, like, whoever's feeding into the AI that is helping our military
intelligence, like, it absolutely makes sense that it didn't deescalate once in a hundred
tries.
And to your point, Joel, about this technology, like, can't we put guardrails on in its
freedom?
I was reading a piece by Dario Amadeus, the CEO, and Thropic, currently involved in a pretty
kind of existential battle with the DOD regarding listing and Thropic as a supply chain risk.
And his take on it is that we should maintain an edge against China exactly.
It's counterintuitive exactly to avoid the kind of arms race dynamic, where it's so close
that any guardrail would be seen as, like, an obstacle to beating them.
And therefore, we must rush ahead.
And so his point is, we should maintain, like, a significant gap so that we can place
guardrails in there.
And I'm like, you know what, that makes a certain kind of sense.
But in any case, what you're basically telling me is we're going to do this anyway.
And that every scenario will involve AI somewhat infiltrating every aspect of life.
And that we have, and then somewhat counterintuitively, we must maintain a very significant
lead so that we can make it safe, because if it's a race at all, it will not be safe.
Yeah.
Did I scare you more?
No, absolutely.
I mean, the thing is, so there's two things, I think, of one, I get, like, why you kind
of have to an aggressive pose with China, like, I have a, I have a son, and so tell you
you said, you had two daughters, okay?
All right.
And so my, my wife and my mother-in-law have mostly grown up and been around women most
of their lives, right?
Not really.
I was the first real dude that's kind of come around and stuck around, and now they've
got a little, a little Anderson here.
And so sometimes the things that I'm like, no, man, look, I'm crying, or, you know, something
or you know, you did wrong, you did wrong, and I want you to be cold until you apologize.
And sometimes I'm like, oh man, I know that this is kind of toxic, but I need you to be
able to relate to people on the, on the varying terms with the world, and you don't want to
get off the chair of bitch when you got in the world.
I can't say that to my mother-in-law and my wife, because it sounds toxic, but a real problem
with being a man in the world is that some people might want to fuck you up, man.
They might want to be sure.
Yeah, they might want to step to you.
They might step to you, and you got to deal with it.
There's no reason.
Yeah.
You don't want to fight, and I have not had very many fights, but you need to be, give
off enough that, hey man, don't come on, fuck with me, bro.
But the other thing is that so when I was a senior in college, the summer before I was
going to be the editor of my college newspaper, okay?
RadioShack came to us with this amazing technological proposition.
They're like, you guys can be the first college newspaper in the country to use this technology.
It was called the QCAT.
And the QCAT was this thing.
It was kind of like a mouse, and you would take it, and you would, they would flash like,
you know, the little codes, whatever the, you know, the, you know, the codes you scanned
at the grocery store, whatever.
Yeah.
But they would put it, they were going to team up with all these other media entities,
so you could scan the Dallas Morning News, you could scan WFA, the news, the newscast
at six o'clock, and you would scan it, and with your QCAT on your computer, it would
pull up, oh man, here's everything I wanted to know about Orchard Park, or, you know, whatever,
reunion arena, the history of it.
You know, this is very rudimentary internet.
But now, remember sitting there, and I'm thinking, yeah, who's going to sit at home with
the TV and try to scan their damn TV?
That doesn't even make any sense.
It just seems so dumb.
And I couldn't believe that so many people had built, you know, put a lot of money into
this.
They were clearly doing, you know, marketing and everything.
And that was one of my first clues, I was like, man, the people in charge, bro, they
really believe in technology even when it sounds dumb, because so many people don't understand
it.
They leave the hard thinking to the people that develop the technology, but the people
that are in charge of it and have to sell it to everybody else, they're actually kind
of stupid.
And so like, so when I think of the QCAT, which went on, I think PC World called it one
of the worst invention technological history.
It didn't catch that, it did not catch on.
That's why you've not heard of the QCAT.
It makes me think about how everybody's dealing with AI.
They're just like, hey, man, they said this shit is important.
And I have to really sell it to y'all.
I don't know what it does, but some of y'all might have to go.
And that's what, so to the extent, Jackson, did you like, are you scaring me?
Hell yeah, because I know how dumb we are, totally.
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Let's culminate this with a fun game that I like to call the March madness doom bracket.
This is our four horseman bracket.
We have war, which is self-explanatory, the bomb, the bullet, the breakdown of order.
We have the pestilence bracket, the virus, you know, the thing that kills you.
We have the famine bracket, which is, you know, environmental destruction.
And then we have the death bracket, which is like, it's already over the zombies' run
the land.
What we're going to do is, and I started at sweet 16, we're not going to do the full bracket.
We're going to start at the sweet 16.
And we are going to go through these matchups.
And this is the metric.
Do the characters in, let's say the one, let's go through the one eight matchup in the war bracket.
Terminator versus fallout.
Does the terminator survive in the fallout universe and thrive?
Or does, or do the fallout characters survive and thrive in the terminator universe?
That's how we're going to set this up.
And if you don't know the, the movie or the TV show, Tyler and I will help you Joel as
we work through this.
I was really hoping you would step in and say, what Joel, what if you ever watched a lot
of these movies before?
We're going to do that.
We're going to help you with it.
Okay.
Okay.
I'm going to have Tyler explain what it is.
Okay.
So let's start with the war bracket.
I think a pretty juicy, but you know, but probably a pretty chalk one eight matchup here.
We've got the terminator at one versus fallout at eight fallout, it's a current television
show on Amazon based on a very popular and long running video game series by Bethesda
in which a kind of, I like, like 1950s America, future America is ravaged by a nuclear
war that was started at the behest of various corporations.
And the terminator, I'm sure you know, a sentient killer robot is sent back in time in order
to make sure that the AI generated nuclear war that ends up basically all grip of human
control on the earth does happen.
Yeah.
So that's our one through eight, that's our one eight in war.
Who do you like in that particular matchup, the terminator versus fallout?
And if Tyler, if you have anything to add to help Joel out in his decision, please.
I don't have much to add for you here, Joel.
I mean, I do think it's the terminator in kind of a walk.
I'm not as familiar with fallout as JC, but the, yeah, it feels, it feels like,
it feels like it's chalk right here.
Oh, yeah, I mean, bro, nobody's fucking with John Connor, man.
You know, I mean, that's the, that's just the fact of life.
And I have seen the, the terminator, of course.
I was all in on Schwarzenegger through like true lives.
So yeah, so I, I, I'm very familiar with this movie.
And yeah, like, I mean, I don't know, man, you know, the, wait, okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Is it, this is Connor versus the terminator.
So wait, is it the top, if the terminator somehow, am I, well, you can go either way with it.
Okay.
By the way, I think you're reading is correct.
I think if you take John Connor, you drop him in the fallout universe.
I think in 15 years, he is the dictator of the fallout.
There you go.
Yeah.
I hope you take, and I think if you take the terminator, any of the terminators,
whether it's T800, T1000, liquid metal, whatever, and you drop them in the fallout universe,
they kill everybody.
That's, yeah.
I think it's the end.
Ah, man, yeah, I mean, this, I mean, this is, I mean, man, a movable force.
Yeah.
Man, I don't, okay, damn, dog.
I, yeah, I'm still going to go terminator.
I mean, that's pretty good.
Okay, so we're going to go terminator emerges in that matchup.
Let's, we'll go by brackets.
In the pestilence bracket we have, I am legend, Will Smith against various zombie-like vampires
who rule the world versus station 11, which is a post-apocalyptic future
in which a virulent flu-like virus kills basically everyone and leaves humanity in tatters,
wondering what happened.
No superpowers, just regular human beings.
Who survives if we put the vampires and, and Will Smith into station 11 universe versus
if we put station 11 universe surviving humans into, I am legend.
Oh, this is my first upset.
Which, which, which scarier than pestilence, you can't do anything about it, man.
You just, you cannot, look, didn't we not learn from COVID?
I love it.
I love it.
Did we not learn from COVID, man?
You cannot fuck with the disease.
I mean, you're, you're probably right.
Will probably does die of the pestilence from station 11.
You don't know when you're going into a battle with pestilence that you, you, you may
have not known that you aren't going to make it through yellow fever.
You know what I mean?
Or the, the, the, the, the, the great Spanish flu.
Like, there are a lot of people that is the end of their world.
They don't make it.
They, they, that shit takes out a lot of people and it takes almost literally.
I, I saw, okay.
So, so we have station 11 emerging from the one eight.
Anything out to the styler?
Would any, any thoughts on that?
My only consideration would be since Will was immune to whatever was going around in
I am legend.
I am legend.
Yeah, yeah.
And then is there a possibility that he's immune in the station 11 world?
That's really my only, that's my only question.
That said, Joel's argument was extremely compelling and I'm happy to go with, I'm happy
to go with an upset.
I, I, as the kind of creator and judge, I'm going to say that immunity does not stack
the universe to universe and that, and that though Will Smith did hit like a existential
lottery and the fact that he was immune in his universe, he's got a re-roll when he
enters station 11 universe and that the same very low odds would then apply.
And so I'm, you know, station 11 emerges from the one eight, Tesla's bracket.
Let's go to the famine bracket.
We have the road in which a, a father and son cross the nuclear holocaust, pockmarked
landscape of Pennsylvania in a world in which, you know, the environment has been completely
destroyed and what survives of humanity survives because they're cannibalizing other survivors.
It's a very, very bleak situation, ash, ash falling exclusively just ash on ash.
Wow.
And no clean water like it's bad.
It's really, really bad.
People are just barely hanging on and project, and then project Hail Mary, the, the just
released a movie that adapts Andy Weir's novel and the same name in which kind of galactic
bugs are devouring the energy of the sun, putting the world into a, a new ice age from
which it theoretically will not emerge unless a crack science team that is dispatched into
going on.
So I think the matchup here would depend on this.
Do you believe that a bedraggled father and son that are just on the edge and probably
tipping into true starvation because they refuse to eat human beings?
Do you think that they would survive in a neo ice age earth or on a space mission to
figure out like what is making a neo ice age earth happen?
Or do you believe that a trio of of crack scientists would be able to figure out how
to survive in a completely nuclear devastated world?
I have not seen Project Hail Mary yet.
The road I do think I don't think it can go overstated just how about that life, the
dad in the road is.
Do you do anything to protect his son in a world where he's surrounded by cannibals?
And like head constantly on a swivel in a way that you need it to be in a post apocalyptic
environment.
Well, I'm glad you said that because I was about to do another eight over one because
I mean, that guy, again, when you described, I mean, a very complicated problem, a finite
amount of time to solve it and like unprecedented problem, right?
That's just I can kind of, but I can kind of picture a world in which you kind of got
to fight off people trying to kill your son and you got to get across a post apocalyptic
way. But when you said he was, you was about that life. He's bad as I'm taking you guys,
you know, a perception of this because you made a number one.
Bad as doesn't sum it up in a, it kind of covers it, but it's like there's a there's
a feralness to his ferocity to protect his child that can't be captured in what we're
saying right now.
Okay.
So what's your decision?
No, I agree, man.
It just is a dude who one time a dog came from around the corner and I kind of, I didn't
move my wife in front of me, but I kind of, I was just, I told, I was like, I, you just
took me a second to get my shit together, but yeah, I'm going to go with, I'm going to
go with you guys in the road.
So it's one over eight.
The road defeats Project Henry and by the way, I think you're correct because I think
that if we took the truly brilliant scientists from the spate, from Project Hill Mary and
the main character Grace, who is, you know, just like a free thinker and a kind of golden
retriever type personality and his ability to meet tragedy and, and remain upbeat in
a way and figure out a way to science's way out of things, I don't think your science
in your way out of what the world of the road is, there's just nothing there.
There's no material, there's ash, there's no materials, there's fine, there's like
a kind of beans made in there.
You're not going to science your way out of like roving bands of cannibals, littering
the countryside, trying to eat your child.
So just too much of a sudden disposition to survive, really trying time is what it sounds.
Yeah.
And so I think it will come down to like a time factor.
I think that the father and son on the spaceship or, or in the ice age would just simply last
longer than Grace would in the post-apocalyptic wasteland, uh, driven by cannibals of the road.
And then in our death bracket, it's the walking dead versus the leftovers and the walking
dead long running television show adapted from the comic book of the same name about a world
in which a zombie virus awaits all of if you die, you come back as a zombie and there
are, you know, as many people as there are in the world, that's how many zombies there
are currently in the world of the walking dead plus the survivors who are fierce,
fierce fires who have, you know, succumbed to the worst impulses usually of, of humanity
and then you have the leftovers where this is a world in which it certainly appears that
the rapture did happen and that, and that the society is now kind of dealing with a situation
in, in, in which much like Avengers Infinity War and endgame, a large percentage of the
population is just kind of like disappeared and thrown the world into chaos.
So the walking dead billions of zombies versus the leftovers, which is kind of like real-life
Thanos snap situation.
Whales are in the Easter River.
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Uh, so wait, do I, do I want, which world do I want to live in more?
No, which care, so if you took, yeah, if you took the characters from the leftovers and
put them in the walking dead, do they, are they more successful than the characters from
the walking dead in the leftovers?
So the characters, I think this is, I will tell you that I think this is a 1-8 destruction.
Yeah, okay, yeah, I, I'm with you because I'm like, yo, I mean, you said virus.
When you said virus, I was like, I bleed at shit and there's a lot of them.
So you also got your homies with you.
It sounds like in leftovers that it's a really, really tough situation and you don't have
a lot of help.
Yeah, and I think that if you took the humans and the zombies and put them in the leftovers
universe and then the rapture happens again or for the first time, I think the humans
get weaker in that situation.
But the zombies, I think, remain untouched and therefore, I think that it's an absolute
domination by the walking dead characters while I think if you, if you took the leftovers
folks, you put them in the walking dead world, I think it's going to be, I think it's going
to be very troublesome for them.
I think it's going to be, I think, they get walked really early in that situation.
They probably want to give up at that point to be honest.
I think that's right.
You know what I mean?
I don't want to do this.
Okay, so that's a 1-8 destruction, I think.
Okay, let's go to our middle brackets.
War magmax theory road versus this is the end, magmax theory road, and you know, you
can make it the magmax universe in general, post-apocalyptic Australia.
The world is dominated by certain strong city states that are highly specialized, that
one deals with making bullets, another one deals with like purifying water, et cetera,
but it's a landscape dominated by savage automobile driving warriors.
And then you have, this is the end, which is Seth Rogan and crew in a, okay, it's like
a ski chalet.
You're my boy Daniels in there.
Yeah, huh?
Yeah.
Who do you think, who do you think comes out of this matchup?
I think this is a pretty, I think this is a, oh, this is a lot, this is a pretty lot
side for five.
Yeah.
I mean, that makes sense.
I was a kid.
It's like, man, that's, yeah, that's that shit you don't want.
So yeah.
Anything to add to this one, Tyler, I think I agree with you.
No, I mean, as much as much as powerful as Dan McBride is in, in this is the end, like
I think if it's, if it's like him going up against the bullet form, I'm not sure that
I like his chances there, you know, I know that I know that Rogan and Charlize have a great
relationship with each other and have, have shared, have shared bills before.
But yeah, I, I, I, it feels like Mad Max is going to dog walk this is.
Yeah, it's an absolutely, they put a leash on Rogan and crew and just take him around
the block.
Now, here is one of our, I think, most competitive matchups in the bracket, the last of us,
there's just 28 days later, the last of us, spore-born zombies created by this kind of
like airborne fungus infection that turns people into living funguses with the, with
the kind of twist on it that if you are a fungal zombie for a long enough, you then become
like a boss level fungal zombie that's even harder to kill than just like a regular zombie
is based on a video game.
And then 28 days later, which you may remember as this is a rage virus that is bloodborne.
If you get even one drop of this blood in your eye on your skin in a cut, you will turn
into this kind of slavering, very fast, kind of like super zombie on meth that just runs
everywhere.
Wow.
Still a human being, but, um, but very virulent.
So the last of us on HBO, starring Pedro Pesco versus 28 days later universe, who do you
have?
I think it's going to be very close and it's going to be whatever you pick, I think I will
be, I, I will agree with any Tyler, anything to add?
No.
I mean, these, these final boss level zombies in the last of us, these, these are, you're
not taking these down with anything short of, I mean, you're, you're more familiar with
the show than I am.
I just know that these dudes are yoked.
They look, you're going to need like an M60 and like, and like an RPG to like take
them down, like, they're very, very, very tough.
Their heads have just mushroomed completely, basically, like there's not really a face
to attack.
Well, I mean, when you said that they were like in a whole other class from the other zombies,
I was like, oh, no, these are, I mean, these are some guys that you cut and girls that,
you know, it sounds like they're built, they're built to survive.
And like, you know, 28 days later, I'm sure that, you know, the people that have emerged
from that have gone through some real shit, but they have not gone through with the people
in the last of us have gone through and so that's why people in the last of us are just
simply much more heavily armed.
And so I think if you're going to choose that four over five matchup, I think that's
right.
Let's move on to famine.
Children of men versus the handmaid's tale.
So children of men, this is a world in which babies have stopped being born.
So society has contracted, but is the infrastructure is still kind of there.
In other words, like, imagine what we're doing right now, but like, go forward like 60 years
and just draw a straight line through all of our politics and just moving on the graph
like that.
So like intensely anti-migration, intensely protective of resources and to what communities
they go to and science has become this bastion of like insurrectionists that have taken
to the seas in order to try and figure out like what's going on in order to not be under
the thumb of increasingly oppressive governments, many of which have fallen 20 and the handmaid's
tale, you know, a extremely misogynist sect of religion has emerged that has oppressed
all women.
So which care, which world do you think dominates the other world?
Oh, man.
I think this is, you know, you tell me, I think this is an interesting one.
I think the people and children of men are going to really struggle with having to be a
woman.
You know what I mean?
They're not, this is a level, this is a level of oppression and big entry, they've
not had to live is the people they hate.
And that would be really tough for them.
I think that that is like one of the biggest fears that people have.
They're like, oh, man, what if I had to be like the people that are theoretically the
lowest sense of the people that don't actually have rights in our society?
That is.
And I think you're right.
And I would add that children of men that is one of the main characters is a pregnant
lady.
So it kind of be a wrap for her and the handmaid's tale.
While I think the handmaid's tale folks, if they were in the children of men universe,
especially the men who are in control of the handmaid's tale universe, would just be
basically be like, oh, this is, we're kind of used to this.
Yeah.
We can found, we found our level, you know, I'm saying like, this is what's, yeah, we'll
get in when we fit it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then our final bracket, planted in the apes versus 12 monkeys.
So 12 monkeys of virus, it continues, has destroyed the earth, continues to destroy it,
has driven people deep underground where they have somehow invented some sort of time
travel technology to try and go back and figure out like what happened.
Planet of the apes, super apes with high intellect have escaped captivity and have taken over
the world.
Oh, man.
And they have overthrown the kingdoms of man so that it is them who control the globe.
And they are heavily armed.
They ride horses.
They have machine guns and all of them.
They're great on horses.
They're very, very, very good on a horse, unbelievable horse beings.
Yes.
Okay.
So who you got?
I mean, it's tough, man, because the one thing that could tell the planet of apes apart
is like the internal fighting, right?
The internal beef.
Yeah.
Do the chimps versus the, versus the gorillas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
They could, they could easily fall within.
Um, but, man, I just, man, now I think I got to go, I think I got the apes, bro, you
know.
Okay.
Yeah.
Caesar, man.
I'm, I'm, look, I, you know, that's one, this is one of the movies that I watched.
I had one of the worst fights I ever had in my life was about the planet of the apes.
And so I, I know a little bit too much about this movie.
Okay.
So here we go.
Terminator versus Mad Max.
Uh, man, you know what?
I'm going to go by what world I would want to live in least.
Okay.
If that helps, I think, man, the people from Mad Max, man, they're built, there's a level
of survival, a level of survival that she got to have.
They're built different.
It's not about, it's, it's not about, yeah, building, it's not about killing.
It's like, can you handle death?
Okay.
Mad Max emerging from the war bracket.
I am legend versus the last of us.
Oh, we would, sorry, we don't know.
Yeah.
11 versus last of us.
Sorry.
Pustolates, pestilence gets it makes it to the final or whatever this is.
Okay.
So 11 with a, with a,
roller game to the, to the, to the quarters.
I don't want to see if people are just underestimated that pestilence, man.
Yeah.
Uh, the road versus the handmaid's tale.
Hmm.
I still think the road.
I'm going to go through road on this one.
Yeah.
I like it.
And then finally, the walking dead versus the plan of the apes.
I mean, zombies are, I mean, zombies on PDs.
Absolutely.
Yeah, they're waiting.
They're on their way to the next row.
Okay, let's, and here we, let's, this is it.
Final four, uh, terminator station 11.
Stay, station 11, man.
You think so?
Yeah.
He doesn't get sick.
I know.
I'm going it.
I'm right.
I'm right.
Oh, you think, I don't, okay, hold on.
Hold on.
The terminator really doesn't get sick for real.
No, he's not, yeah, he's, he's immune to all viruses because he's just a machine under
there.
Man.
I don't, man.
John Connor will, will struggle, but like the liquid metal and the, and the Arnold Schwarzen
Trecklinger will thrive.
You make a compelling argument.
Okay.
All right.
What the terminator?
Okay.
And then the road planted in the apes.
Man.
I mean, so real, that dude is that bad of a bad ass, huh?
He, I mean, he is, uh, yeah, but here's the thing.
Bad, again, he's, he's, he's fierce and he's extremely dedicated.
He probably weighs about 95 pounds, max, maybe, and that might be overstating it.
And I think if, I think if an ape breathed on him, he would fall over and die.
This is what, I mean, I'm just like, you're, I mean, you really, you're asking a lot
of this father.
I don't think I just don't think he could stand again, the combined might of the intellectually
overpowering apes.
That's a tight apes.
Yeah, man.
That's a tight apes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Here we go.
Oh, man.
In the final terminator, yeah, terminator, yeah, planning to the apes.
You know, when the terminator got past pestilence, I was like, okay, you know, sometimes, you
know how sometimes the championship is in the, is in the conference.
Totally.
Like actual, yes.
Like the Western conference final is the actual NBA final, well, that's, that's what
that was for the terminator.
So I think the terminator goes through in a walk, man.
The monkeys are not going to hold up against the terminator at all.
I mean, I, I, I think it's a, I think it's like a five point game going into the fourth
really, but I, but I lean, I think you're right.
Well, because I think the apes, it depends, like, if it's a long game, the apes just have
the numbers, but, but they won't, they've never faced anything like the terminator or
the liquid metal terminator.
And I think it would just be shocking to them, honestly, Tyler, you have anything to add
to that?
That's smart.
I think there's going to be a recalibration period for the apes.
I think if you gave the apes a while to, to sort of learn the terminator to get, to,
to understand what it is that makes him tick, then I, then I do like their chances, but I'm
not sure that they're going to have that, that kind of time.
You know what I mean?
I, I completely agree.
And, and also like, listen, the apes are, I don't want to denigrate the apes.
They're super smart.
They don't have like a tremendous amount of technical know-how, like computers and stuff,
like that's not their thing.
And so I think that they would just be molly-wobbed, honestly, by the terminator, like, in a, in a,
in like a ten-point game or something.
So this is, you know what this is?
This reminds me, since this is March Madness, it's like sometimes when a team used to play
against the Jim Bayhawk, two, three zone for Syracuse.
Right.
And it fucks people up.
Yeah.
They're supposed to defeat this thing.
And then eventually, the, the thing is like, well, we're more talented in this, in a zone
that's kind of dumb if you can shoot a team out of a zone, but sometimes that zone might
get you, you know?
Okay.
So the terminator, terminator emerges in our March Madness and Jim bracket.
Yeah.
Finally, let's go to our lucid score.
Lucid is our, uh, scoring criteria where we take a certain topic and we, uh, decide how
much legs does it have?
How unintentionally funny is it?
sinister? Does it have intrigue? Does it have danger? You're scoring from zero to
four in each category. The end of the world, Joel, does it have legs? Is it
something that we are going to continue to talk about? One to four. Man, one to four.
Yes. Yeah, I mean four. Yeah, you're completely agree. Yeah, I mean, like
is there anything funny about these topics that we have talked about today?
So am I doing this on a scale of one to four? Yeah, scale one to four. Yeah,
whole thing. Oh, yeah, four. I mean, if you can't laugh, I can see that. There's
an absurdity to this whole situation. How did we end up here? Yes. You know,
it's funny in a way if it wasn't so fucked up. Sinisterness. How sinister is just
everything that's going on? Oh, man. I mean, a story that has faded from the
headlines is one about a global sex trafficking ring led by a financial who may
have not been killed in prison. And maybe the whole point of all of this was to make
that fade from that. Yeah, right. This could all of this was like Venezuela was
sort of that cubus apart of this. So you four. Okay. Intrigue. Is there intrigue to
the story? Yeah, I mean, I think it's like a two and a half to a three. Okay. We'll
give it a two. Yeah. And then danger. How dangerous is it? Oh, I mean, yeah, I mean, man,
look, Cameron said it. Niggas get shot every day. Be you know what I'm saying? Like
people are dying right now. Yeah. So it's pretty serious for it's a four. And so that
is an 18 on this scale. That is pretty significant. Let's go to our doom scroll. Welcome
the doom scroll. This is where we kind of take another look at some stories that have been
grabbing our attention a little bit lately. Up first, we got a top FEMA official that claims
to have teleported to a waffle house at one point in his life. Greg Phillips far right
conspiracy theorists turned high ranking official at the US Federal Emergency Management
Agency. Oh, good. Oh, great. Oh, amazing. Climbs. He teleported to a waffle house. This
is from CNN. So on a January 2025 podcast appearance, Phillips claimed that his car was
lifted up while he was driving and transported 40 miles away into a ditch near a church.
In another instance, Phillips said he was teleported 50 miles away to a waffle house in
Rome, Georgia. Oh, we got a quote. I was with my boys one time, which is how a lot of
good things start. Some of my, some of my best stories start with I was with my boys one
time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was telling them I was going to go to waffle house and get
waffle house as opposed to going to waffle house and getting something else. And I ended
up at waffle house. This was in Georgia. And I end up at a waffle house like 50 miles
away from where I was. Phillips out in the podcast.
So far to find waffle house in Georgia. Yeah, apparently his, the, the people that he
was with contacted him, they said, where are you? He said, a waffle house and, and then
specifies waffle house in Rome, Georgia. He said, that's not possible. You just left
here a moment ago, but it was possible. It was real. This is what Greg Phillips is saying.
Obviously, take all of this with many grains of salt. He's Phillips has suggested that
both COVID-19 and the vaccine for it were designed to kill people. Well, I'll say this
that I hope that Mr. Phillips can bring that technology to FEMA because I think it would
allow for the delivery of supplies to devastated areas with a speed that is necessary in those
types of situations. I hope that new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne
Mullin will find a way to use these technologies. Yeah. What do you got next? Well, I did
want to read his final, his, his final quote here. Teleporting is no fun. He said, really?
You know, it's happening, but you can't do anything about it. And so you just go, you
just go with the ride. So, you know, her King season is around the corner. Yeah. Yeah.
Get your shit together, bro. You don't sound like you're ready for it. The Boston Celtics
are kind of making a play for the most weight a second team in the league a little bit.
We know about Joe Mizzoula, who sincerely believes regular people should be allowed
to participate in simulated recreations of the raid that took down Osama. So, you know,
this past week Derek White said on a podcast that he's a non-moon landing guy. We probably
did, but I don't think we did. I don't know. More interestingly, Jalen Brown last week said
that he memorizes all his teammates astrology and numerology in order to better learn how
to communicate with them. And then he started rattling off some Chinese zodiac signs of
different players. Derek White, you're the dog, Peyton Pritchard and Jason Tatum, you're
the tiger, Vouch, you're the horse, Mizzoula, you're of the dragon. What else? The, the
Celtics were going to a movie during an off day. And they went around asking, who is the
one player that you don't want to sit next to at the movie? And almost to a player, all
of them said Jalen Brown, either because he would just, he wouldn't stop giving advice
during the movie, which seems right. Or that he would just not, he would just have a lot
to say about what was happening. Well, that makes sense. I'll say this about Jalen. He's
communicating with his teammates and how he does it. That's his business. I do think the
moon landing happened. I think if it didn't happen, the Russians would be like, hey, that's
fake. I think in the year 1960, the eight nine, I forget, they would have been like, hey,
that's, they fake, that's a fake. It doesn't look anything like that. I can't even call
it out in the moment. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. That's, I think, Jalen Brown,
I bet he's really into AI. He seems like somebody that really in the AI and is going to
get in the AI. You know, just, I don't know what that teacher that told him in high school
that he was probably going to be in jail. But every day he wakes up thinking of how he's
going to prove that person wrong about how showing you how smart he is. Yeah. So whoever
you are, teacher, you inspire you. I mean, you really, you've never inspired anyone as
much as you did Jalen Brown. Joel, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, anytime, man, anytime,
be next time it'll be in person.