Whitney Cummings: Comedy, Robotics, Neurology, and Love | Lex Fridman Podcast #55
the following is a conversation with Whitney Cummings she's a stand-up comedian actor producer writer director and recently finally the host of her very own podcast called good for you her most recent Netflix special called can I touch it features in part of robot she affectionately named bear claw but it's designed to be visually a replica Whitney it's exciting for me to see one of my favorite comedians explore the social aspects of robotics and AI in our society she also has some fascinating ideas about human behavior psychology and neurology some of which she explores in her book called um fine and other lies there's truly a pleasure to meet Whitney and have this conversation with her and he went to continue it through texts afterwards every once in a while late at night I'll be programming over a cup of coffee and we'll get a text from Whitney saying something hilarious or weirder yet sending a video Bryan Callen saying something hilarious that's what I know the universe has a sense of humor and he gifted me with one hell of an amazing journey then I put the phone down and go back to programming with a stupid joyful smile on my face if you enjoy this conversation listen to it in these podcasts good for you and follow her on Twitter and Instagram this is the artificial intelligence podcast if you enjoy subscribe on YouTube good five stars on Apple podcasts support on patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter Alex Friedman spelled Fri D M a.m. this shows presented by cash app the number one finance I have in the App Store they regularly support Whitney's good-for-you podcast as well I personally used cash app to some money to friends but you can also use it to buy sell and deposit Bitcoin in just seconds cash app also has a new investing feature you can buy a fraction of stock say $1 worth no matter what the stock price is brokerage services are provided by kept investing subsidiary of square and member at CIBC I'm excited to be working with cash app to 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for example codable co-founder Gretchen Abner used the recruiter to find a new game artist to join her education tech company by using zip recruiter screening questions to filter candidates Gretchen found it easier to focus on the best candidates and finally hiring the perfect person for the role in less than two weeks from start to finish zip recruiter the smartest way to hire cy zip recruiters effective for businesses of all sizes by signing up as I did for free at zip recruiter comm slash Lex pod that's zip recruiter calm slash Lex pod and now here's my conversation with Whitney Cummings I have trouble making eye contact as you can tell me too do you know that I had to work on making eye contact because I used to look here do you see that yeah do you want me to do that I'll do this well chief to camera but I used to do this and finally people like I'd be on dates and guys would be like are you looking at my hair like they get it would make people really insecure because I didn't really get a lot of eye contact as a kid it's it's one two three years did you not get a lot of my contact as a kid I don't know I haven't done the soul-searching right so I but there's definitely some psychological is she makes me uncomfortable yeah for some reason want to connect eyes I start to think I assume that you're judging me oh why am we all are all right the POC has to be me and you both do you think robots of the future ones with human level intelligence will be female male genderless or another gender who have not yet created as a society you're the expert at this well I'm gonna ask you the answer I'm gonna ask you questions that maybe nobody knows the answer to or alright and then I just want you to hypothesize as a as a imaginative author director comedian can we just be very clear that you know a ton about this and I know nothing about this but I have thought a lot about yes what I think robots can fix in our society and I mean I'm a comedian it's my job to study human nature to make jokes about human nature and to sometimes play devil's advocate and I just see such a tremendous negativity around robots or at least the idea of robots that it was like oh I'm just gonna take the opposite side for fun for jokes and then I was like oh no I really agree and this devil's advocate argument so I please correct me when I'm wrong about this stuff so so first of all there's there's no right and wrong because we're all I think most of the people working on robotics are really not actually even thinking about some of the big picture things that you've been exploring in fact uh your robot what's-her-name by the we'll go on bear claw what's the genesis of that name by the way would bear claw was I god I don't even remember the joke cuz i black out after I shoot specials but I was writing something about like the pet names that men call women like cupcake sweetie honey you know like we're always named after desserts or something and I was just writing a joke about um if you want to call us a dessert at least pick like a cool dessert you know like bear claw like something cool so I ended up calling her bad luck so do you think the future robots of greater and greater intelligence will like to make them female male would we like to assign them gender or would we'd like to move away from gender and say something more ambiguous I think it depends on their purpose you know I feel like if it's a sex robot it people prefer certain genders you know and I also you know when I went down and explored the robot Factory I was asking about the type of people that bought sex robots and I was very surprised at the answer because of course the stereotype was it's gonna be a bunch of perverts it ended up being a lot of people that were handicapped a lot of people with erectile dysfunction and a lot of people that were exploring their sexuality a lot of people that were thought they were gay but weren't sure but didn't want to take the risk of trying on someone that could reject them and being embarrassed or they were closeted or in a city where maybe that's you know taboo and stigmatized you know so I think that a gendered sex robot that would serve an important purpose for someone trying to explore their sexuality am i into man let me try on this thing first alien to women let me try on this thing first so I think gendered robots would be important for that I think genderless robots in terms of emotional support robots babysitters I'm fine for a genderless babysitter with my husband in the house you know there are places that I think that genderless makes a lot of sense but obviously not in the sex area what do you mean with your husband in the house what does that have to do with the gender of the robot but I mean I don't have a husband but hypothetically speaking I think every woman's worst nightmare is like the hot babysitter you know so I think that there is a common place I think for genderless you know teachers doctors all that kind of it would be very awkward if the first robotic doctor was a guy or the first robotic nurse is a woman you know it's sort of that stuff is still loaded I think that genderless could just take the unnecessary drama out of it and possibility to sexualize them or be triggered by any of that stuff so there's two components to this it's a bear claw so one is the voice and the talking so on and then there's the visual appearance so on the topic of gender and generalists in your experience what has been the value of the physical appearance so what has it added much to the depth of the interaction I mean mines kind of an extenuating circumstance because she is supposed to look exactly like me I mean I spent six months getting my face molded and having you know the idea was I was exploring the concept of Ken robots replace us because that's the big fear but also the big dream in a lot of ways and I wanted to dig into that area because you know for a lot of people it's like they're gonna take our jobs they're gonna replace us legitimate fear but then a lot of women I know are like I would love for a robot to replace me every now and then so it can go to baby showers for me and it can pick up my kids at school and it can cook dinner and whatever so I just think that was an interesting place to explore so her looking like me was a big part of it now her looking like me just adds an unnecessary level of insecurity cuz I got our year ago and she already looks younger than me so weird problem yeah but I think that her looking human was the idea and I think that where we are now please correct me if I'm wrong over human robot resembling an actual human you know is going to feel more realistic than some generic face what you're saying that that robots that have some familiarity like looks similar to somebody that you actually know you be able to form a deeper connection with that was the question that's an open question I don't I don't no it's an interesting or the opposite if then you know me and you're like why I know this isn't real because you're right here maybe it does the opposite we have a very keen eye for human faces and they're able to detect strangeness especially that one has to do with people we've whose faces we've seen a lot of them so I tend to be a bigger fan of moving away completely from faces recognizable faces no just human faces at all in general because I think that's where things get dicey and one thing I will say is I think my robot is more realistic than other robots not necessarily because you have seen me and then you see heard you go oh they're so similar but also because human faces are flawed and asymmetrical and sometimes we forget when we're making things that supposed to look human we make them too symmetrical and that's what makes them stop looking human so because they mold in my symmetrical face she just even if someone didn't know who I was I think she'd look more realistic than most generic ones that didn't have some kind of flaws got it you know cuz they start looking creepy when they're too symmetrical because human beings aren't ya know the flaws is what it means to be human so visually as well but I'm just a fan of the idea of letting humans use a little bit more imagination so just hearing the voice is enough for us humans to then start imagining the visual appearance that goes along with that voice and you don't necessarily need to work too hard on creating the actual visual appearance mm-hmm so there's some value to that when you step into the stereo of actually building a robot that looks like bear claws such a long road of facial expressions of sort of making everything smiling winking yep rolling their eyes all that kind of stuff it gets really really tricky it gets tricky and I think I'm again I'm a comedian like I'm obsessed with what makes us human and our human nature and the nasty side of human nature tends to be where I've you know ended up exploring over and over again and I was just mostly fascinated by people's reactions so it's my job to get the biggest reaction from a group of strangers the loudest possible reaction and I just had this instinct just when I started building her and people go oh and screechin people scream in there I mean I bring around on stage and people would scream and I just to me that was the next level of entertainment getting a laugh I've done that I know how to do that I think comedians were always trying to figure out what the next level is and comedies evolving so much and you know Jordan Peele had just done you know these genius comedy horror movies which feel like the next level of comedy to me and this sort of funny horror of a robot was fascinating to me but I think the thing that I got the most obsessed with was people being freaked out and scared of her and I started digging around with pathogen avoidance and the idea that we've essentially evolved to be repelled by anything that looks human but is off a little bit anything that could be sick or diseased or dead essentially as our reptilian brains way to get us to not Procrit try to have sex with it basically you know so I got really fascinated by how freaked out and scared I mean I would see grown men get upset you get something away from me like angry and it was like you know that what this is you you know but the sort of like you know amygdala getting activated by something that to me is just a fun toy said a lot about our history as a species and what got us into trouble thousands of years ago so it's that it's the deep down stuff that's in our genetics but also is it just are people freaked out by the fact that there's a robot so it's not just the appearance but there's an artificial human anything people I think and I'm just always also fascinated by the blind spots humans have so the idea that you're afraid of that I mean how many robots have killed people how many humans have died at the hands of other humans yeah many more hundreds of millions yet we're scared of that and we'll go to the grocery store and be around a bunch of humans who statistically the chances are much higher that you're gonna get killed by humans so I'm just fascinated by without judgement how irrational we are is the worry is the exponential so it's you know you could say the same thing about nuclear weapons before we dropped on Hiroshima Masaki so the worry that people have is the exponential growth so so it's like oh it's fun and games right now but you know overnight especially if a robot provides value to society we'll put one in every home and then all of a sudden lose track of the actual large-scale impact it has in society and then all sudden gain greater and greater control to where we'll all be you know affect our political system and then affect our decision did not just already happen which ones Oh Russia hacking no offense but hasn't already happened I mean that was like an algorithm of negative things being clicked on more we'd like to tell stories and like to demonize certain people I think nobody understands our current political system or discourse on Twitter the Twitter mobs nobody has a sense not Twitter not Facebook the people running it nobody understands the impact for these algorithms they're trying their best yeah despite what people think they're not like a bunch of lefties trying to make sure that Hillary Clinton gets elected it's more that it's an incredibly complex system that we don't and that's the worry it's so complex and moves so fast that nobody will be able to stop it once it happens and let me ask the question this is a very savage question yeah which is is this just the next stage of evolution as humans and people will die yes I mean that's always happens you know is this is just taking emotion out of it is this basically the next stage of survival of the fittest yeah you have to think of organisms you know what is it mean to be a living organism like it's a smartphone part of your living organism or where we're in relationships with our phones yeah but it's sex through them with them what's the difference between with them and through them but it also expands your cognitive abilities expands your memory knowledge and so on so you're a much smarter person because you have a smart phone in your hand but if what as soon as it's out of my hands we've got big problems because we become sort of so morphed with them with an assembly otic relationship and that's what the er mosque when you're a link is working on trying to increase the bandwidth communication between computers and your brain and so further and further expand our ability as human beings to sort of leverage machines and maybe that's the future the evolution next evolutionary step it could be also that yes we'll give birth just like we give birth to human children right now to give birth day I in other places I think it's a really interesting possibility I'm gonna play devil's advocate I just think that the fear of robots is wildly classist because I mean Facebook like it's easy for us to say they're taking their data okay a lot of people that get employment off of Facebook they are able to get income off of Facebook they don't care if you take their phone numbers and their emails and their data as long as it's free they don't want to have to pay five dollars a month or Facebook Facebook is a wildly Democratic thing forget about the election and all that kind of stuff you know a lot of you know technology making people's lives easier it I find that most elite people are more scared than lower-income people so and women for the most part so the idea of something that's stronger than us and that might eventually kill us like women are used to that like that's not I see a lot of like really wit rich men being like the robots are gonna kill us we're like what's another thing that's gonna kill us you know I tend to see like oh something can walk me to my car at night like something can help me cook dinner or something you know for you know people in underprivileged countries who can't afford eye surgery like you know robot can we send a robot to under-privileged you know places to do surgery where they can't I work with this organization cooperation smile where they do cleft palate surgeries and there's a lot of places that can't do a very simple surgery because they can't afford doctors and medical care and such so I just see and this can be completely naive and should be completely wrong but I feel like we're a lot of people are going like the robots are gonna destroy us humans we're destroying ourselves we're self-destructing robots to me are the only hope to clean up all the messes that we've created even when we go try to clean up pollution in the ocean we make it worse because of the oil that the tankers it's like to me robots are the only solution you know firefighters are heroes but they're limited and how many times they can run into a fire you know so there's just something interesting to me I'm not hearing a lot of like lower income more vulnerable populations talking about robots maybe you can speak that a little bit more there's an idea I think you've expressed that I've heard actually a few female writers and roboticist I've talked to express this idea that exactly you just said which is it just seems that being being afraid of existential threats of artificial intelligence is is a male issue yeah it and I wonder what that is if it because because men have in certain positions like you said it's also classist issue they haven't been humbled by life and so you're always look for the biggest problems to take on around you it's a champagne problem to be afraid of robots most people like don't have health insurance they're afraid they're not gonna be able to feed their kids they can't afford a tutor for their kids like I mean I just think of you know the way I grew up and I had a mother who you know work two jobs had kids we couldn't afford an SAT tutor you know like we could idea of a robot coming and being able to tutor your kids being able to provide childcare for your kids you know being able to come in with cameras for eyes and make sure you know surveillance you know I'm very Pro surveillance because you know I've had security problems and I've been you know we're generally in a little more danger than you guys are so I think that robots are a little less scary to us because we could see them maybe as like free assistance help and protection and then there's sort of another element for me personally which is maybe more of a female problem I don't know I'm just gonna make a generalization I'm happy to be wrong but you know the emotional sort of component of robots and what they can provide in terms of you know there I think there's a lot of people that aren't don't have microphones that I just recently kind of stumbled upon in doing all my research on the sex robots for my stand-up special which there's a lot of very shy people that aren't good at day there's a lot of people who are scared of human beings who you know have personality disorders or grow up in alcoholic homes or struggle with addiction or whatever it is where a robot can solve an emotional problem and so we're largely having this conversation about like rich guys that are emotionally healthy and how scared of robots are we're forgetting about like a huge part of the population who maybe isn't as charming and effervescent and salt mint as you know people like you and Allah mask who these robots could solve very real problems in their life emotional or financial that's a in general really interesting idea that most people in the world don't have a voice it's you've talked about it sort of even the people on Twitter who are driving the conversation you said comments people who leave comments represent a very tiny percent of the population and they're the ones they you know we tend to think they speak for the population but it's very possible on many topics they don't at all and look I and I'm sure there's got to be some kind of legal you know sort of structure in place for when the robots happen you know way more about this than I do but you know for me to just go the robots are bad that's a wild generalization that I feel like is really inhumane in some way you know just after the research I've done like you're gonna tell me that a man whose wife died suddenly and he feels guilty moving on with a human woman or can't get over the grief he can't have a sex robot in his own house well why not who cares why do you care well there's a interesting aspect of human nature so you know we tend to as a as a civilization to create a group that's the other in all kinds of ways right and so you work with animals too you've you're especially sensitive to the suffering of animals let me kind of ask what's your do you think will abuse robots in the future do you think some of the darker aspects of human nature will come out I think some people will but if we design them properly to people that do it we can put it on a record and they can we put we can put them in jail we can find sociopaths more easily you like why is that why is that a sociopathic thing to harm a robot I think look I don't know is enough enough about the consciousness and stuff as you do it I guess it would have to be when they're conscious but it is you know the part of the brain that is you know responsible for compassion the frontal lobe or whatever like people that abuse animals also abuse humans and commit other kinds of crimes like that's it's all the same part of the brain no one abuses animals and then it's like awesome to women and children and awesome to under-privileged you know minorities like it's all so you know we've been working really hard to put a database together of all the people that have abused animals so when they commit another crime you go okay this is you know it's all the same stuff and I think people probably think I'm nuts for the a lot of the animal work I do but because when animal abuse is president another crime is always present but the animal abuse is the most socially acceptable you can kick a dog and there's nothing people can do but then what they're doing behind closed doors you can't see so there's always something else going on which is why I never feel compassion about it but I do think we'll start seeing the same thing with robots the person that kicks them I felt compassion when the kicking the dog robot really pissed me off I know that they're just trying to get the stability right and all that but I do think there will come a time where that will be a great way to be able to figure out if somebody is has like you know antisocial behaviors you kind of mentioned surveillance mm-hmm it's also a really interesting idea of yours he just said you know a lot of people should be really uncomfortable with surveillance yeah and you just said that you know what for me you know there's positives for surveillance I think people behave better when they know they're being watched and I know this is a very unpopular opinion I'm talking about on stage right now I we behave better when we know we're being watched you and I had a very different conversation before we were recording if we behave different you said I'll be on your best behavior and I'm trying to sound eloquent and I'm trying to not hurt anyone's feelings and I'm gonna have a camera right there I'm behaving totally different then we we first started talking you know when you know there's a camera you behave differently I mean there's cameras all over LA at stoplights so that people don't run stoplights but there's not even film in it they don't even use them anymore but it works it works right in and I'm you know working on this thing and stamp out surveillance it's like that's why we invented Santa Claus you know it's the Santa Claus is the first surveillance basically all we have to say to kids is he's making a list and he's watching you and that behaved better I was brilliant you know so I do I do think that there are benefits to surveillance you know I think we all do sketchy things in private and we all have watched weird porn or googled weird things and we don't we don't want people to know about it the our secret lives so I do think that obviously there's we should be able to have a modicum of privacy but I tend to think the people that are the most negative about surveillance of the most high well you should do your thing you're doing bits on it now well I'm just talking in general about you know privacy and surveillance and how paranoid were kind of becoming and how you know I mean it's it's just wild to me that people are like our emails are gonna leak and they're taking our phone numbers like there there used to be a book full of phone numbers and addresses yeah that word they just throw it at your door and we all had a book of everyone's numbers you know is a very new thing and you know I know our migdal is designed to compound sort of threats and you know there's stories about and I think we all just glom on and a very you know tribe away yeah they're taking our data like we don't even know that means we're like well yeah they they you know so I just think that someone's like okay well so what they're gonna sell your data who cares why do you care first of all that bit will kill in China so and I said I said only a little bit joking because a lot of people in China including the citizens despite what people in the West think of as abuse I actually in supported the idea of surveillance mmm-hmm sort of they're not in support of the abuse of surveillance but they're they like I mean the idea of surveillance is kind of like the idea of government it like you said we behave differently in a way it's um like why we like sports there's rules and within the constraints of the rules this is a more stable society and they make good arguments about success being able to build successful companies being able to build successful social lives around a fabric that's more stable when you have a surveillance it keeps the criminals away keeps abusive animals whatever the values of the society with surveillance you can enforce those values butter and here's what I will say there's a lot of unethical things happening with surveillance like I feel the need to really make that very clear I mean the fact that Google is like collecting if people's hands start moving on the mouse to find out if they're getting Parkinson's and then their insurance goes up like that is completely unethical and wrong and I think stuff like that we have to really be careful around so the idea of using our data to raise our insurance rates or you know I heard that they're looking they can sort of predict if you're gonna have depression based on your selfies by detecting micro muscles in your face that you know all that kind of stuff that is a nightmare not okay but I think you know we have to delineate what's a real threat and what's getting spam in your email box that's that's not what you spend your time and energy on focus on the fact that every time you buy cigarettes your insurance is not without you knowing about it on the topic of animals - can we just linger a little bit like what do you think what does it say about our society of the society white abuse of animals that we see in general sort of factory farming is just in general just the way we treat animals of different categories like what what do you think of that what is a better world look like what's what should people think about it in general I think um I think the most interesting thing I can probably say around this that the least emotional cuz I'm actually a very non emotional animal person because it's I think everyone's an animal person it's just a matter of its if it's yours or if you've you know been conditioned to go numb you know I think it's really a testament to what as a species we are able to be in denial about mass denial and mass delusion and how we're able to do human eyes and do base groups you know world war two in a way in order to conform and find protection and the conforming so we are also a species who used to go to Coliseum's and watch elephants and tigers fight to the death we used to watch human beings be pulled apart in the cut there wasn't that long ago we're also species who had slaves and it was socially acceptable by a lot of people people didn't see anything wrong with it so we're a species that is able to go numb and that is able to dehumanize very quickly and make it the norm child labor wasn't that long ago the idea that now we look back and go oh yeah kids we're losing fingers and factories making shoes like someone had to come in and make that you know so I think it just that's a lot about the fact that you know we are animals and we are self-serving and one of the most successful the most successful species because we are able to debase and degrade and essentially exploit anything that benefits us I think the pendulum is gonna swing as being lately like I think we're wrong now kind of like I think we're on the verge of collapse because we are dopamine receptors like we are just I think we're all kind of addicts when it comes to this stuff like we don't know when to stop it's always the buffet like we're the thing that used to keep us alive which is killing animals and eating them now killing animals and eating them is what's killing us in a way so it's like we just can't we don't know when to call it and we don't moderation it's not really something that humans have evolved to have yet so I think it's really just a flaw in our wiring do you think we'll look back at this time as our society is being deeply unethical yeah yeah I think we'll be embarrassed which are the worst parts right now going on is it well I think no in terms of anything what's the unethical thing if we it's very hard to take a step out of it but you just said we used to watch you know there's been a lot of cruelty throughout history what's the cruelty going on now I think it's gonna be I mean pigs are one of the most emotional intelligent animals and they have the intelligence of like a three-year-old and I think we'll look back and be really good there's 30 they use tools I mean they're I think we have this narrative that they're pigs and they're pigs and they're they're disgusting and they're dirty and their bacon is so I think that we'll look back one day and be really embarrassed about that is this for just uh what's it called the factory farming so basically mess because we don't see it if you saw I mean we do have I mean this is probably an evolutionary advantage we do have the ability to completely pretend something's not something that is so horrific that it overwhelms us and we're able to essentially deny that it's happening I think if people were to see what goes on in factory farming and also we're really to take in how bad it is for us you know we're hurting ourselves first and foremost with what what we eat but that's also a very elitist argument you know it's a luxury to be able to complain about meat it's a luxury to be able to not eat meat you know there's very few people because of you know how the corporations have set up meat being cheap you know it's two dollars to buy a Big Mac it's ten dollars to buy a healthy meal you know that's I think a lot of people don't have the luxury to even think that way but I do think that animals in captivity I think we're gonna look back and be pretty grossed out about mammals in captivity whales dolphins I mean that's already starting to dismantle circuses we're gonna be pretty embarrassed about but I think it's really more testament to you know there's just such a ability to go like that thing is different than me and we're better it's the ego I mean it's just we have the species with the biggest ego ultimately well that's what I think that that's my hope for robots is they'll you mentioned consciousness before nobody knows what consciousness is but I'm hoping robots will help us empathize and understand that that there's other creatures out besides ourselves that can suffer that can they can experience the world and that we can torture by our actions and robots can explicitly teach us that I think better than animals can I have never seen such compassion from a lot of people in my life toward any human animal child as I have a lot of people in the way they interact with the robot because I should theirs I think there's something of AI I mean I was on the robot owners chat boards for a good eight months and the main emotional benefit is she's never gonna cheat on you she's never gonna hurt you she's never gonna lie to you she doesn't judge you you know I think that robots help people and this is part of the work I do with animals like I do I find therapy and trained dogs and stuff because there is this safe space to be authentic you're with this being that doesn't care what you do for a living doesn't care how much money you have doesn't care who you're dating doesn't care what you look like doesn't care if you have cellulite whatever you feel safe to be able to truly you know be present without being defensive and worrying about eye contact and being triggered by you no need to be perfect and fear of judgment and all that and robots really can't judge you yet but they can't judge you and I think it really puts people at they're at ease and at their most authentic do you think you can have a deep connection with the robot that's not judging or do you think you can really have a relationship with a robot or a human being that's a safe space or as a tension mystery danger necessary for a deep connection I'm gonna speak for myself and say that I grew up and alcohol Combe I identify as a codependent talked about this stuff before but for me it's very hard to be in relationship with a human being without feeling like I need to perform in some way or deliver in some way and I don't know if that's just the people I've been in a relationship with or or me or my brokenness but I do think this is kind of sound really negative and pessimistic but I do think a lot of our relationships are projection and a lot of our relationships are performance and I don't think I really understood that until I worked with horses and most mutations human is nonverbal right I can say like I love you but that you're not you don't think I love you right where's is with animals it's very direct it's all physical it's all energy I feel like that with robots too it feels very what how I say something doesn't matter my inflection doesn't really matter and you thinking that my tone is disrespectful like you're not filtering it through all of the bad relationships you've been in you're not filtering it through the way your mom talked to you you're not getting triggered you know I find that for the most part people don't always receive things the way that you intend them to or the way intended and that makes relationships really murky so the relationships with animals and relationship with the robots as they are now you kind of implied that that's more healthy I think can you have a healthy relationship with other humans or not healthy and don't like that word but it shouldn't it be you've talked about codependency maybe you can talk about what is called dependency but is that is the the challenges of that the complexity of that necessary for passion for for love between compassion I thought this would be a safe speech I got trolled by rogen powers on this I I am NOT anti passion I think that I've just maybe been around long enough to know that sometimes it's ephemeral and that passion is a mixture of a lot of different things adrenaline which turns into dopamine quarters it's a lot of neuro chemicals it's a lot of projection it's a lot of what we've seen in movies it's a lot of you know it's it's I identify as an addict so for me sometimes passion is like oh this could be bad and I think we've been so conditioned to believe that passion means like your soul mates and I mean how many times have you had a passionate connection with someone and then it was a total train wreck passionate the train wreck comedy track exactly a lot of yawning I mean what's a trainwreck what's uh wise obsession she described this codependency and sort of the idea of attachment / attachment to people who don't deserve that kind of attachment as somehow a bad thing and I think our society says it's a bad thing it probably is a bad thing like a like a delicious burgers a bad thing I don't know but right oh that's a good point I think that your your pointing out something really fascinating which is like passion if you go into it knowing this is like pizza or it's gonna be delicious for two hours and then I don't have to have it again for three if you can have a choice in the passion i define passion is something that is relatively unmanageable and something you can't control or stop and start with your own volition so maybe we're operating under different definitions if passion is something that like you know ruins your real marriages and screws up your professional life and becomes this thing that you're not in control of and becomes addictive I think that's the difference is is it a choice or is it not a choice and if it is a choice then passion is great but if it's something that like consumes you and makes you start making bad decisions and clouds your frontal lobe and it's just all about dopamine and not really about the person and more about the neurochemical we call it sort of the drug the internal drug cabinet if it's all just you're on drugs that's different you know because sometimes you're just on drugs okay so there's a philosophical questions here so would you rather it's interesting for a comedian a brilliant comedian to speak so eloquently about a balanced life I kind of argue against this point there's such an obsession of creating this healthy lifestyle no it's psychologically speaking you know I'm a fan of the idea that you sort of fly high and you crash and die 27 mm hmm there's also possible life and it's not one we should judge because I think there's moments of greatness I talk to Olympic athletes where some of the greatest moments are achieved in their early 20s and the rest of their life is it in the kind of fog of almost of a depression because they based on their physical prowess physical prowess and they'll never say that so they're watching the physical prowess fade and they'll never achieve the kind of height not just physical of just emotion of the max number of neurochemicals yes and he also put your money on the wrong horse that's where I would I would just go like oh yeah if you're doing a job where you peak at 22 yeah the rest of your life is gonna be hard that idea is considering the notion that you want to optimize some kind of but we're all gonna die soon what now you tell me I'm immortalized myself gonna be fine see you're almost like how many oscar-winning movies can I direct by the time I'm 100 how many this and that like but you know there's a night you know it's all life is short speaking I know but it can also come at different you know life is short play hard fall in love as much as you can run into walls I would also go life is short don't deplete yourself on things that aren't sustainable and that you can't keep yeah you know so I think everyone gets dopamine from different places everyone has meaning from different places I look at the fleeting passionate relationships I've had in the past and I don't like I don't have pride in that I think that you have to decide what you know helps you sleep at night for me it's pride and feeling like I behaved with grace and integrity that's just me personally everyone can go like yeah I slept with all the hot chicks in Italy I could and I you know did all the whatever like whatever you value we're allowed to value different here we're talking about Brian Kelly yes Frank Allen has lived his life to the fullest to say the least but I think that it's just for me personally I and this could be like my workaholism or my achievement ISM I if I don't have something to show for something I feel like it's a waste of time or some kind of loss I'm a 12-step program and the third step would say there's no such thing as waste of time and everything happens exactly as it should in whatever that's a way to just sort of keep us sane so we don't grieve too much and beat ourselves up over past mistakes there's no such thing as mistakes did it uh but um I think passion is I think it's so life-affirming and one of the few things that maybe people like us makes us feel awake and seen and we have just have such a high threshold for adrenaline you know I mean you are a fighter right yeah okay so yeah so you have a very high tolerance for adrenaline and I think that Olympic athletes the amount of adrenaline they get from performing it's very hard to follow that it's like when guys come back from the military and they have depression it's like do you miss bullets flying out you get kind of because of that adrenaline which turned into dopamine in the camaraderie I mean there's people that speak much better about this than I do but I just I'm obsessed with neurology and I'm just obsessed with sort of the lies we tell ourselves in order to justify getting neuro chemicals you've done actually quite done a lot of thinking and talking about neurology just kind of look at human behavior through the lens of of looking of how are actually chemically our brain works so what first of all why did you connect with that idea and what have you how is your view of the world changed by considering the the brain is just a machine you know I know it probably sounds really nihilistic but for me it's very liberating to know a lot about neuro chemicals because you don't have to it's like the same thing with like like critics like critical reviews if you believe the good you have to believe the bad kind of thing like you know if you believe that your bad choices were because of your moral integrity or whatever you have to believe your good ones I just think there's something really liberating and going like oh that was just adrenaline I just said that thing because I was adrenalized and I was scared and my amygdala was activated and that's why I said you're an asshole and get out and that's you know I think I just think it's important to delineate what's nature and what's nurture what is your choice and what is just your brain trying to keep you safe I think we forget that even though we security systems and homes and locks on our doors that our brain for the most part is just trying to keep us safe all the time it's why we hold grudges that's why we get angry it's why we get road rage it's why we do a lot of things and it's also when I started learning about neurology I started having so much more compassion for other people you know someone yelled at me being like fuck you on the road I'd be like okay he's producing adrenaline right now because we're all going 65 miles an hour and our brains aren't really designed for this type of stress and he's scared he was scared you know so that really helped me to have more love for people and my everyday life instead of being in fight-or-flight mode but the I think more interesting answer to your question is that I've had migraines my whole life like I've suffered with it really intense migraines ocular migraines ones where my arm would go numb and I just started having to go to so many doctors to learn about it and I started you know learning that we don't really know that much we know a lot but it's wild to go into one of the best neurologists in the world who's like yeah we don't know we don't know we don't know and that fascinated me that's one of the worst pains you can probably have all that stuff and we don't know the source we don't know the source and there is something really fascinating about when your left arm starts going numb and you start not being able to see out of the left side of both your eyes and I remember when the migraines get really bad there it's like a mini-stroke almost and you're able to see words on a page but I can't read them they just look like symbols to me so there's something just really fascinating to me about your brain just being able to stop functioning and I so I just wanted to learn about it study about it I did all these weird alternative treatments they got this piercing in here that actually works I've tried everything and then both my parents had strokes so when both of my parents had strokes I became sort of the person who had to decide what was gonna happen with their recovery which is just a wild thing to have to deal with it you know 28 years old when it happened and I started spending basically all day every day and I see used with neurologists learning about what happened to my dad's brain and why he can't move his left arm but he can move his right leg but he can't see out of that you know and then my mom had another stroke in a different part of the brain so I started having to learn what parts of the brain did what and so that I wouldn't take the behavior so personally and so that I would be able to manage my expectations in terms of their recovery so my mom because it affected a lot of her frontal lobe changed a lot as a person she was way more emotional she was way more micromanage she was forgetting certain things so it broke my heart less when I was able to know oh yeah will destroy hit this part of the brain and that's the one that's responsible for short-term memory and that's responsible for long-term memory set it up and then my brother just got something called viral encephalitis which is an infection inside the brain and so Wow it was kind of wild that I was able to go oh I know exactly what's happening here and I know you know so um so that's allows you to have some more compassion for the struggles that people have but does it take away some of the magic for some of the from this some of the more positive experiences in life sometimes and I don't I don't I'm such a control addict that you know I think our biggest if someone like me my biggest dream is to know why someone's doing that's what stand-up is is just trying to figure out why or that's what writing is that's what acting is that's what performing is it's trying to figure out why someone would do something as an actor you get a piece of you know material and you go this person why would he say that why would he pick up that cup why would she walk over here it's really why why would why so I think neurology is if you're trying to figure out human motives and why people do what they do it'd be crazy not to understand how neuro chemicals motivate us I also have a lot of addiction in my family and hardcore drug addiction and mental illness and in order to cope with it you really have to understand that borderline personality disorder schizophrenia and drug addiction so I have a lot of people I love that suffer from drug addiction and alcoholism and the first thing they started teaching you is it's not a choice these people's dopamine receptors don't hold dopamine the same ways yours do their frontal lobe is underdeveloped like you know and that really helped me to navigate dealing loving people that were addicted to substances I want to be careful with this question but how much money do you have how much can I borrowed okay know is how much control how much despite the chemical imbalances or the biological limitations that each of our individual myself how much mind-over-matter is there so through things and I've known people with with clinical depression and so it's it's always a touchy subject to say how much they can really help but very what can you yeah what what can because you you've you've talked about codependency you talked about issues the your struggle through and nevertheless you choose to take a journey of healing and so on so that's your choice that's your actions so how much can you do to help fight the limitations of the your chemicals in your brain that's such an interesting question I don't think I'm at all qualified to answer but I'll say what I do know and really quick just the definition of codependency I think a lot of people think of codependency is like two people that can't stop hanging out you know or like you know that's not totally off but I think for the most part my favorite definition of codependency is the inability to tolerate the discomfort of others you grew up in an alcoholic home you grow up around mental illness you grow up in chaos you have a parent that's a narcissist you basically are wired to just people please worry about others be perfect walk on eggshells shape-shift to accommodate other people so codependency is a very active wiring issue that you know doesn't just affect your romantic relationships it affects you being a boss it affects you in the world online you know you get one negative comment and it throws you for two weeks you know it also is linked to eating disorders and other kinds of addictions so it's it's it's a very big thing and I think a lot of people sometimes to only think that it's in a romantic relationship so I always feel the need to say that and also one of the reasons I love the idea of robots so much because you don't have to walk on eggshells around them you don't have to worry they're gonna get mad at you yet but you there's no codependence are hypersensitive to the needs and moods of others and it's very exhausting it's depleting just a well one conversation about where we're gonna go to dinner is like you want to go get Chinese food we just had Chinese food well wait are you mad well no I didn't mean it's just like that codependents live in this everything means something and humans can be very emotionally exhausting why did you look at me that way what are you thinking about what was that why'd you check your phone it's just this it's a hypersensitivity that can be incredibly time-consuming which is why I love the idea of robots just subbing in even I've had a hard time running TV shows and stuff because even asking someone to do something I don't want to come off like a bitch I'm very concerned about what other people think of me how I'm perceived which is why I think robots will be very beneficial for for codependence by the way just a real quick tangent that skill or flaw whatever you want to call it is actually really useful for if you ever do start your own podcast for interviewing because you're now kind of obsessed about the mindset of others and it makes you a good sort of listener and talker with so I think what's your name from NPR talked about Terry Gross talked about having that so yeah oh I don't get that at all I mean you have to put yourself in the mind of the person you're spoken to just in terms of yeah I am starting a podcast and the reason I haven't is because I'm codependent I'm too worried it's not gonna be perfect yeah so a big codependent adage is perfectionism leads to procrastination which leads to paralysis so how do you sorry take a million tangents how do you survive and social media gives you exceptionally active but by the way I took you on a tangent and didn't answer your last question about how much we can control I want you to yeah we'll return it or maybe night the answer is we can but you know one of the things that I'm fascinated by is you know the first thing you learn when you go into 12-step programs or addiction recovery I mean this is you know genetics loads the gun environment pulls the trigger and there are certain parts of your genetics you cannot control I come from a lot of alcoholism I come from you know a lot of mental illness there's certain things I cannot control and a lot of things that maybe we don't even know yet what we can and can't because of how little we actually know about the brain but we also talk about the warrior spirit and there are some people that have that warrior spirit and we don't necessarily know what that engine is whether it's you get dopamine from succeeding or achieving or martyring yourself or or that tension you get from growing so a lot of people were like oh this person can edify themselves and overcome but if you're getting attention from improving yourself you're going to keep wanting to do that so that is something that helps a lot of in terms of changing your brain if you talk about changing your brain to people and talk about what you're doing to overcome set obstacles you're going to get more attention from them which is going to fire off your reward system and then you're gonna keep doing it see yeah so you can leverage that momentum so this is why in any toe step program you go into a room and you talk about your progress because then everyone claps for you and then you're more motivated to keep going so that's why we say you're only as sick as the secrets you keep because if you keep things secret you know there's no one going and guiding you to go in a certain direction it's based on right we're sort of designed to get approval from the tribe or from a group of people because our brain you know translates it to safety so in that case the tribe is a positive one that helps you go this direction so that's why it's so important to go into a room and also say hey I wanted to use drugs today and people go hmm they go me too and then feel less alone and you feel less like you're you know have been castigated from the pack or whatever and then you say and I do haven't you get a chip when you haven't drank for 30 days or 60 days or whatever you get little rewards so talking about a pack that's not at all healthy or good but in fact is often toxic social media so you're one of my favorite people on Twitter and Instagram to uh sort of just both the comedy and the insight and just fun how do you prevent social media from destroying your mental health I haven't I haven't it's the next big epidemic isn't it I don't think I have I don't I don't think it's moderation the answer what maybe but you can do a lot of damage in a moderate way I mean I guess again it depends on your goals you know and and I think for me the way that my addiction to social media I'm happy to call it an addiction I mean and I define as an addiction because it stops being a choice there are times I just reach over and I'm like that was that was weird Wow is weird I'll be driving sometimes my bag oh my god my arm just went to my home you know I can put it down I can't take time away from it but when I do I get antsy yeah I get restless irritable and discontent I mean that's kind of the definition isn't it so I think by no means do I have a healthy relationship with social media I'm sure there's a way to but I think I'm especially a weirdo in this space because it's easy to conflate is this work is this I can always say that it's for work right you know but I mean you're don't you get the same kind of thing as you get from when a roomful of people laughs your jokes I mean I see especially the way you do Twitter it's an extension of your comedy in a way so a big break from Twitter though a really big break I took like six months off or something for a while because it was just like it seemed like it was all kind of politics and it was just a little bit it wasn't giving me dopamine because there was like this weird a lot of feedback so I had to take a break from it and then go back to except feel like I didn't have a healthy relationship I ever tried the I don't know if I believe him but Joe Rogan seems to not read comments have you and he's one of the only people at the scale like a year level who at least claims not to read so like because you and him swim in this space of tense ideas yeah they get get get the toxic folks growled up I think rogue I don't I don't know I don't mmm I think he probably looks at YouTube like the likes and that you know I think if something's if he doesn't know I don't know I'm sure he would tell the truth you know I'm sure he's got people that look at them and he's like disgusted great or I don't you know like I'm sure he gets it you know I I can't picture him like in the weeds on know for sure I mean I nameste she's saying that just it's it's uh it's a to feedback yeah we're just a feedback I mean you know look like I think that our brain is designed to get intel on how we're perceived so that we know where we stand right that's our whole deal right as humans we want to know where we stand we walk into a room and we go who's the most powerful person in here I gotta talk to him and get in their good graces it's just were designed to rank ourselves right and constantly know our rank and social media because of you can't figure out your rank with 500 million people you get small you know cert brain is like what's my rank what's my and especially for following people I think the the big the the interesting thing I think I may be be able to able to say about this besides my speech impediment is that I did start muting people that ranked wildly higher than me because it is just stressful on the brain to constantly look at people that are incredibly successful so you keep feeling bad about yourself you know I think that that is like cutting to a certain extent just like look at me looking at all these people that have so much more money than me and so much more success than me it's making me feel like a failure even though I don't think I'm a failure but it's easy to frame it so that I can feel that but yeah that's really interesting especially if they're close to like if there are other comedians like that or whatever that's that's it's really disappointing to me I do the same thing as well so other successful people they're really close to what I do it I don't know I I wish I could just admire ya and for it not to be a distraction but that's why you are where you are cuz you don't just didn't Meyer you're competitive and you want to win so it's also the same thing that bums you out when you look at this is the same reason you are where you are so that's why I think it's so important to learn about neurology and addiction because you're able to go like oh this same instinct so I'm very sensitive and I and I sometimes don't like that about myself that I'm like well that's the reason I'm able to write good stand-up and that's the reason and that's reason I'm able to be sensitive to feedback and go that joke should have been better I can make that better so it's a kind of thing where it's like you have to be really sensitive in your work in the second you leave you've got to be able to turn it off it's about developing the muscle being able to know when to let it be a superpower when it's gonna hold you back and be an obstacle so I try to not be in that black and white of like you know being competitive is bad or being jealous of someone just to go like oh there's that thing that makes me really successful in a lot of other ways but right now it's making me feel that well I'm kind of looking to you because your ear basically a celebrity the famous sort of world-class comedian and so I feel like you're the right person to be one of the key people to define what's the healthy path forward with social media so I because we're all trying to figure it out now and it's a I'm curious to see where it involves and I think you're at the center of that so likely you know there's you know trying to leave Twitter and then come back how can I do this in a healthy way you mean you have to keep trying exploring it because it's being I have a couple answers I think you know I hire a company to do some of my social media for me you know so it's also being able to go okay I make a certain amount of money by doing this but now let me be a good businessperson and say I'm gonna pay you this amount to run this for me so I'm not 24/7 in the weeds hash tagging and responding and just it's a lot to take on it's a lot of energy to take on but at the same time part of what I think makes me successful in social media if I am is that people know I'm actually doing it and then I am an engaging and I'm responding and developing a personal relationship with complete strangers so I think you know figuring out that balance and really approaching it as a business you know that's what I try to do it's not dating it's not you know I try to just be really objective about okay here's what's working here's what's not working and in terms of taking the break from Twitter this is a really savage take but because I don't talk about my politics publicly being on Twitter right after the last election was not gonna be beneficial because there was gonna be had to take a side you had to be political in order to get any kind of retweets or likes and I just wasn't interested in doing that because you were gonna lose as many people as you were gonna gain and it was gonna all complain in the wash so I was just like the best thing I can do for me business-wise is to just abstain you know and you know the robot I joke about her replacing but she does do half of my social media you know yeah because it's I don't want people to get sick of me I don't want to be redundant there are times when I don't have the time or the energy to make a funny video but I know she's gonna be compelling and interesting and that's something that you can't see every day you know of course the the the humor comes from Europe I mean the cleverness the wit the humor comes from you when you film the robot that's kind of the trick of it I mean the the robot is not quite there to making to do anything funny the absurdity is revealed through the filmmaker in that case where whoever is interacting not through the the actual robot you know being who she is let me sort of love okay how do what is it they have what is it well first an engineering question I know I know you're you're not an engineer but how difficult do you think is it to build an AI system that you can have a deep fulfilling monogamous relationship with sort of replace the human human relationships that we value I think anyone can fall in love with anything you know like how often have you looked back in someone like I ran into someone the other day that I was in love with then I was like hey it was like there was nothing there no there was nothing there like do you know like where you're able to go like oh that was weird oh honey you know I were able to me as from a distant past or something yeah when you're able to go like I can't believe we had an incredible connection and now it's just I do think that people will be in love with robots probably even more deeply with humans because it's like when people mourn their animals when their animals die they're always it's sometimes harder than mourning a human because you can't go well he was kind of an asshole but like he didn't pick me up from school you know it's like you're able to get out of your grief a little bit you're able to kind of be oh he was kind of judgmental or she was cut you know with a robot it's there's something so pure about an innocence and fish and childlike about it that I think it probably will be much more conducive to a narcissistic love for sure at that but it's not like well he cheated us she can't cheat she can't leave you she can't you know well a bear claw leaves your life and maybe a new version or somebody else will enter there will you miss bear claw for guys that have these sex robots they're building a nursing home for the bodies well that are now rusting because they don't want to part with the bodies because they have such an intense emotional connection to it I mean it's kind of like a car club a little bit you know like it's it you know but I'm not saying this is right I'm not saying it's cool it's weird it's creepy but we do anthropomorphize things with faces and we do develop emotional connections to things I mean we're there certain have you ever tried to like throw it I can't even throw away my teddy bear from when I was a kid it's a piece of trash and it's upstairs like it's like why can't I throw that away it's bizarre you know and there's something kind of beautiful about that there's something it gives me hope in in humans because I see humans do such horrific things all the time and maybe I'm too I see too much of it frankly but there's something kind of beautiful about the way we're able to have emotional connections to objects which you know a lot of I mean it's kind of specifically I think Western right that we don't see objects as having Souls like that's kind of specifically us but um I don't think it's so much that we're objectifying humans with these sex robots were kind of humanizing objects right so there's something kind of fascinating in our ability to do that because a lot of us don't humanize humans so it's just a weird little place to play in and I think a lot of people I mean a lot of people will be marrying these things is my guess so you've asked the question let me ask it of you so what is love you have a bit of a brilliant definition of love as being willing to die for someone we who you yourself want to kill so that's that's kind of fun first of all that's brilliant that's a really good definition I think you'll stick with me for a long time is this how little of a romantic I am a plane went by when you said that and my brain is like you're gonna need to rerecord that and I want you to get into post and then not be able to use and I'm a romantic as a mom I actually I cannot be conscious of the fact that I heard the plane and it made me feel like how amazing it is that we live in a world planes and I just why haven't we fucking evolved past planes and why can't they make them quieter yeah yeah this my definition of love what what yeah what's your producing dopamine consistent output of oxytocin with the same person dopamine is a positive thing what about the negative what about the fear and the insecurity the longing anger all that kind of stuff I think that's part of love you know I think you don't I think that love brings out the best in you but it also if you don't get angry upset it's you know I don't know I think that that's that's part of it I think we have this idea that love has to be like really you know placid or something I only saw stormy relationships growing up so I don't I don't have a judgment on how a relationship should look but I do think that this idea that love has to be eternal is is really destructive is really destructive and self-defeating and a big source of stress for people I mean I'm still figuring out love I think we all kind of are but I do kind of stand by that definition and I think that uh I think for me love is like just being able to be authentic with somebody it's very simple I know but I think for me it's about not feeling pressure to have to perform or impress somebody just feeling truly like accepted unconditionally by someone although I do believe love should be conditional that might be a hot take I think everything should be conditional I think if someone's behavior I don't think love should just be like I'm in love with you now behave however you want forever this is unconditional I think love is a daily action it's not something you just like get ten you're on and then get to behave however you want because we said I love you 10 years ago it's a daily it's a verb well there's some things there you see if you make it if you explicitly make it clear that it's conditional it takes away some of the magic of it so there's some stories we tell ourselves that we don't want to make explicit about love I don't know maybe that's the wrong way to think of it maybe you want to be explicit in relationships so something love is a business decision like I do in a good way yeah I think that love is not just when you're across from somebody it's when I go to work can I focus do I am I worried about you am I stressed out about you am I you're not responding to me you're not reliable like I think that being in a relationship the kind of love that I would want is the kind of relationship where when we're not together it's not draining me causing me stress making me worry you know and sometimes passion that word you know we'd get murky about it but I think it's also like I can be the best version of myself when the person's not around and I don't have to feel abandoned or scared or any of these kind of other things so it's like love you know for me I think is I think it's a flow Barre quote and I'm gonna butcher it but I think it's like be you know boring in your personal life so you could be violent and take risks in your professional life is that it I got it wrong something like that but I do think that it's being able to align values in a way to where you can also thrive outside of the relationship some of the most successful people I know are sort of happily married and have kids and so on it's it's always funny boring boring is okay foreign is serenity and it's funny how that those elements actually make you much more productive I don't understand the I don't think relationships should drain you and take away energy that you could be using to create things that generate pride okay did you say your relationship of love yet have you said you're really your definition of love my definition of love no I did not say it we're out of time do what when you have when you have a podcast maybe you can invite me on alone oh no I already did you're doing it we've already talked about this and because I also have codependency I have to say yes yeah actually what the I wondered whether when I I asked if we could talk today after sort of doing more research and reading some of your book I start to wonder did she just feel pressured to say yes no I actually because I am putting on but I've been recovered for codependents so I actually do I don't do anything I don't want to do you really you got anywhere saying no but good November I moved it from 1 to 2 yeah just yeah I don't do anything I don't want to do yeah you're ahead of me in that okay so do you think about your mortality yes it is a big part of how I was able to sort of like kickstart my codependence recovery my dad passed a couple years ago and when you have someone close to you in your life died everything gets real clear in terms of how were a speck of dust who's only here for a certain amount of time what do you think is the meaning of it all like what the speck of dust what what's maybe in your own life what's the goal the purpose of your existence is there one well you you're exceptionally ambitious you've created some incredible things in different disciplines we're all just managing our terror because we know we're gonna die so we create and build all these things and rituals and religions and you know robots and whatever we need to do to just distract ourselves from imminent rotting rotting yeah we're all dying and you know III you know I got very into terror management theory when my dad died and and it resonated it helped me and everyone's got their own religion or sense of purpose or thing that distracts them from the horrors of being what's terror management theory terror management is basically the idea that since we're the only animal that knows they're gonna die we have to basically distract ourselves with awards and achievements and games and sperm whatever just in order to distract ourselves from the terror we would feel if we really processed the fact that we could not only we are gonna die but also could die at any minute because we're only superficially at the top of the food chain and you know we technically were the top of the food chain if we have houses and guns and stuff machines but if me and a lion are in the woods together I'm it's most things could kill us I mean a bee can kill some people like something this big can kill a lot of humans like you know so it's basically just to manage the terror that we all would feel if we were able to really be awake because we're mostly zombies right new job school religion zoo so go to sleep drink through the football the relationship don't mean love but you know we're kind of just like trudging along like zombies for the most part and then I think that fear of death as some motivation yes well I think I speak for a lot of people in saying that I can't wait to see what your terror creates in the in the next few years I'm a huge fan wouldn't you thank you so much for talking to thanks for listening to this conversation with Whitney Cummings and thank you to our presenting sponsor cash app download it and use code let's podcast you'll get ten dollars and ten dollars will go to first stem education nonprofit that inspires hundreds of thousands of young minds to learn and to dream of engineering our future if you enjoy this podcast subscribe on youtube give it five stars an apple podcast supported on patreon or connect with me on Twitter thank you for listening and hope to see you next time you