648: Solo!!

Summary

Duncan Trussell Family Hour – Episode 648: Solo!!

Release Date: November 10, 2024
Host: Duncan Trussell

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1. Introduction and Elton John Tribute

The episode begins with Duncan expressing his excitement about hosting a solo episode, signaling a departure from the usual guest-filled format. He shares a heartfelt tribute to Elton John, revealing his deep admiration for the legendary musician.

• Duncan Trussell (00:00):
  “When Elton John reached out to me and asked if I would play this new song that he's releasing from his upcoming album, Free Climbing, I wept.”

Duncan humorously mentions a personal connection by revealing that he has Elton John's lyrics tattooed on his body, adding a whimsical touch to his admiration.

• Duncan Trussell (00:45):
  “The lyrics are tattooed on my ass. I'm not ashamed of it. In very small letters.”

He introduces Elton John’s new music video, setting a celebratory tone before delving into more intense discussions.

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2. Operation Beast Blast and Critique of Mr. Beast

Duncan transitions into discussing "Operation Beast Blast," a campaign aimed at challenging the influence of YouTube sensation Mr. Beast. He criticizes Mr. Beast for what he perceives as manipulative marketing tactics and symbolic representations.

• Duncan Trussell (04:00):
  “Mr. Beast, the great manipulator, this Mr. Beast who thinks, oh, you just send shit to people with YouTube subscribers and the shit goes on the air.”

He dissects a package sent by Mr. Beast, highlighting what he believes are hidden symbols and critiquing the moral implications of accepting such gifts, especially given his own health concerns.

• Duncan Trussell (07:20):
  “Mr. Beast thinks he's smart because he sends me things and he thinks that by sending me stuff, I will be stupid enough to give him free ads on this podcast.”

Duncan introduces the core mission of Operation Beast Blast: to undermine the pyramidal hierarchy symbolized by the Great Pyramid of Giza, which he equates to societal hierarchies and the spread of influence by figures like Mr. Beast.

• Duncan Trussell (09:00):
  “We're going to blow up those pyramids. We're going to send Mr. Beast some chocolate. And most importantly, by destroying the pyramids, we symbolically and physically destroy the entire hierarchical framework.”

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3. Symbolism of the Pyramids and Hierarchical Structures

Delving deeper, Duncan explores the symbolism of pyramids as representations of hierarchy, slavery, and misplaced values. He critiques how societal fascination with such symbols diminishes the perceived value of individual existence.

• Duncan Trussell (10:30):
  “The pyramids themselves are a mockery of humanity. They laugh at us out there in the desert at night.”

He draws parallels between ancient symbols and modern social structures, suggesting that the reverence for hierarchical symbols like pyramids and YouTube subscriber counts perpetuates inequality and control.

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4. Transactional Analysis and Cultural Inflation

Shifting gears, Duncan introduces the concept of transactional analysis, particularly focusing on Eric Berne's idea of "stroke tokens"—units of social recognition or validation exchanged between individuals. He connects this to the phenomenon of cultural inflation, where the overuse of certain words dilutes their original meanings.

• Duncan Trussell (25:00):
  “The exchanges of tokens create what Eric Byrne called games. Maybe pull up some transactional analysis games, because the games are fucking cool.”

He provides examples of how words like "trauma" and "racist" have been overused in contemporary discourse, leading to their diminished impact and contributing to societal confusion and polarization.

• Duncan Trussell (84:00):
  “So what ends up happening? This over saturation of words that used to have specific meanings. The spreading out of these words ultimately reveals that we are living inside of a linguistic bubble.”

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5. Philosophical Musings on Value, Symbols, and Diogenes

Duncan reflects on the nature of value and the futility of societal symbols that fail to represent true worth. He references the ancient philosopher Diogenes to emphasize a life unburdened by societal hierarchies and materialistic pursuits.

• Duncan Trussell (41:00):
  “Diogenes was the first fucking globalist. Yes, Diogenes was part of the global. He was like a benevolent globalist.”

He discusses Diogenes' disdain for materialism and societal norms, advocating for a return to innate human dignity and the rejection of constructed hierarchies symbolized by concepts like money and fame.

• Duncan Trussell (58:00):
  “The entire universe, the cosmos, that's you. Which means what is of ultimate value? That's the real question.”

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6. Call to Action: Accelerating Cultural Token Inflation

Towards the end of the episode, Duncan makes a compelling call to action, encouraging listeners to intentionally "inflate" cultural tokens (like likes and subscriptions) to the point where they lose their significance. This, he believes, will disrupt existing hierarchies and promote genuine human connection beyond superficial symbols.

• Duncan Trussell (95:00):
  “We must become inflationary accelerationists when it comes to cultural tokens. We've got to accelerate this bullshit to the point that all symbolic culture tokens become devoid of meaning.”

He urges his audience to engage with the podcast by liking the video, framing it as part of the Operation Beast Blast initiative to dismantle hierarchical structures symbolized by figures like Mr. Beast.

• Duncan Trussell (96:00):
  “Just press like on this fucking thing. I want to see what happens. I'm trying to understand the algorithm.”

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7. Conclusion: Embracing True Value and Compassion

Wrapping up, Duncan emphasizes the importance of recognizing the emptiness of societal symbols and the need to cultivate genuine compassion as the true currency of human interaction. He envisions a liberated society where value is derived from authentic connections rather than superficial metrics.

• Duncan Trussell (87:00):
  “If you’re trying to find some kind of currency that works anywhere you go, it’s compassion.”

He reiterates his mission to destroy the pyramidal hierarchies and promote a world where symbols like subscriber counts and monetary value hold no sway over true human worth.

• Duncan Trussell (89:00):
  “The only answer to that must be compassion. And I don't think that's it. I think the ultimate currency, the thing of true value in this world, is my subscribers on YouTube.”

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Key Takeaways:

• Critique of Hierarchical Symbols: Duncan challenges the societal reverence for symbols like pyramids and YouTube subscriber counts, viewing them as perpetuators of inequality and control.

• Cultural Inflation: The overuse and dilution of meaningful words lead to societal confusion and weakened communication, necessitating a reassessment of language and its impact.

• Transactional Analysis: Understanding social interactions through the lens of "stroke tokens" reveals underlying systemic issues in how value and recognition are exchanged.

• Philosophical Reflection: Drawing inspiration from Diogenes, Duncan advocates for a life unburdened by societal hierarchies and materialistic pursuits, emphasizing innate human dignity.

• Call to Action: By intentionally inflating cultural tokens to their point of absurdity, Duncan aims to disrupt existing hierarchies and foster genuine human connections based on compassion.

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Notable Quotes:

• Duncan Trussell (00:00):
  “This is a solo episode. I've been excited to do one. We've got so much to talk about.”

• Duncan Trussell (07:20):
  “Mr. Beast thinks he's smart because he sends me things and he thinks that by sending me stuff, I will be stupid enough to give him free ads on this podcast.”

• Duncan Trussell (25:00):
  “The exchanges of tokens create what Eric Byrne called games. Maybe pull up some transactional analysis games, because the games are fucking cool.”

• Duncan Trussell (58:00):
  “The entire universe, the cosmos, that's you. Which means what is of ultimate value? That's the real question.”

• Duncan Trussell (95:00):
  “We must become inflationary accelerationists when it comes to cultural tokens. We've got to accelerate this bullshit to the point that all symbolic culture tokens become devoid of meaning.”

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This episode of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour serves as a deep dive into the mechanics of societal hierarchies, the dilution of meaningful communication, and the philosophical quest for genuine human connection. Through a blend of humor, critical analysis, and philosophical insights, Duncan challenges listeners to rethink the structures that govern their perceptions of value and worth.

Transcript

[Duncan Trussell]

Hello to you, my beloved listeners, watchers, family, it's me, Duncan. This is a solo episode. I've been excited to do one. We've got so much to talk about. But before we get into that, and before I give you an update on Operation Beast Blast and show you what Mr. Beast himself sent me. The poisoner. Mr. Beast, I want to play a music video for you every once in a while. I'm shocked to find out the people who actually listen to the dtfh. It blows my mind. And sometimes I'm honored by being given the opportunity to premiere a music video. So when Elton John reached out to me and asked if I would play this new song that he's releasing from his upcoming album, Free Climbing, I wept. I'm a huge Elton John fan. I've been to over 500 Elton John concerts and he's just an incredible performer. A Candle in the Wind. The lyrics are tattooed on my ass. I'm not ashamed of it. In very small letters. And it took a long time and it hurt. And I have to shave my ass now or no one can see the tattoo. And it's worth it. It's worth it. I love it. Sometimes I have my wife read it to me from my ass. Helps me fall asleep. So now, everybody, I would like to premiere Elton John's brand new music video, Free Climbing.

[Elton John]

Sitting on led I'm about to fly what's the point of living when your heart is died? What's the point of sing when you're singing somebody else's song? That's when he climbed up and he said to me, where are your ropes? What are you doing? I'm here. I laughed and told him I was free climbing. He told me that he's always wanted to try free climbing. And he threw his ropes off the ledge. He smiled and said, you inspire me. A little ways up he lost his grip and fell. I watched his body splatter on the ground below. I climbed to him and his last words to me were, you set this creature free. I think about it every now and then, wondering who was luckier. Was it me or him? Did I kill a man or did I help a changed my life.

[Duncan Trussell]

It. I mean, you know, you know, you. When you love a musician as much as I love. Excuse me. As much as I love Elton John, you. Now, I'm sorry. If you're watching this Elton, you worry. You think, can he make something as beautiful as Candle in the Wind? And to see that not only can he do that, but he made something infinitely better. And I Feel like free climate is the message that the world needs to hear right now in this confusing world. You know, like, we're all kind of free climate. Operation Beast Blast. All right, I want to give you some updates on what is going on with Operation Beast Blast. For those of you who are just joining us on AudioBoom or joining us on YouTube, many of you are probably aware of Mr. Beast, Mr. Beast Influencer. Mr. Beast, the most popular channel on the YouTube. Mr. Beast. He has contests where he locks people into grocery stores, gives them money. Mr. Beast helps the blind see, removes cataracts. Mr. Beast, apparently being investigated by the FBI. Mr. Beast, who likes to send me gifts, I guess. And Mr. Beast, by now, I'm sure, is well aware of the fact that you and I and all the other DTFH community are engaged in a campaign that is designed to make enough money so that we can blow up the Great Pyramid of Giza, filling it with Diet Coke and Mentos, creating an explosion that will destroy the pyramid once and for all. Of course, we all know the pyramid is a symbol of hierarchy. The pyramid is a symbol of slavery. The pyramid is a symbol of what happens when an idiot convinces enough people that they're God. They play blocks with human lives and they build stupid shit in the middle of nowhere that everyone thinks is important. Who gives a fuck? If we weren't so small, the pyramids would just seem like blocks. It wouldn't seem that great. Who cares? But because we're small, it's a big deal. Just grow a few stories and no one gives a fuck about the pyramid. So we're talking about just a size issue here. We're so small that some stupid pyramid is exciting to us. Therefore, the pyramids themselves are a mockery of humanity. They laugh at us out there in the desert at night. They say if you get close enough to the pyramid, you hear it laughing at people as a whole, at the planetary civilization that we have developed. And any place you find that kind of hierarchy, such as the YouTube subscriber amounts, then at the top of that pyramid, you've got a Pharaoh. And at the top of the YouTube pyramid, we've got a Mr. Beast. And Mr. Beast thinks he's smart because he sends me things and he thinks that by sending me stuff, I will be stupid enough to give him free ads on this podcast. And it's infuriating because he thinks I'm a fool and I'm not. Now, let me give you an example. He just sent me this feastables, this box of feastables I guess that's his logo. We've got the leopard with the lightning bolt Luciferian symbology there. And let me just open this up now. He's got a little QR code there. Can we pull that up just so you could see what this Mr. Beast sent to me. This Mr. Beast, the great manipulator, this Mr. Beast who thinks, oh, you just send shit to people with YouTube subscribers and the shit goes on the air. Here you go, scan that shit. It'll probably hack your phone. Welcome to. I wouldn't keep that in my pocket after that. I'm sure the fucking, I'm sure the people, people in. I don't know where that happened in Lebanon. The people pagers blew up. I guess they were scanning Mr. B's QR codes. So let's, let's take a look at what Jimmy had to say to me in this volley. Look at that look. Look at that smug look. If you're watching this video, that means you just opened our Feast Fools creator box. As you know, I like to give away money. It's a lot of fun. Can you pause it for a second? Let's do a quick analysis here. What's going on in the background, because this is how these people work, folks. This is how they work. They put it all out front. And Mr. Beast, he's not hiding anything. Look in the background here. What we have there is the arachnid half of a spider. Notice how we can't see the other four legs. So the spider, of course, a representation of time, of Kronos. And by cutting off four of the legs, he is saying, I am in control of time. He's not just Mr. Beast, he's the Time Master is what he's saying there. Now behind him, you'll notice some kind of series of cut out orange rectangles. It kind of looks like a window, a church window, doesn't it? Like so. Oh, I see. Now we're in the church of time. Mr. Beast is the Time Master in the Church of Time. And he's basically trying to hypnotize us into thinking that he controls the flow of time. Maybe, maybe he's saying he's a time traveler or that he is corrupting the time space continuum via his no doubt blasphemous rituals where he attempts to meddle with the fabric of space time. And I don't know if it's true or not, but I have heard that he's building his own particle accelerator and he's going to shoot chocolate through it. So let's keep rolling this Halloween. So go make some trick or treaters happy, because this Halloween, we're actually giving someone who gets feastables on Halloween night a million dollars in cash. Enjoy it. Hope you have a great Halloween. Wow. So There you go. Mr. Beast wants me to not just do a free ad for him, but to give this poison for me. It's poison. I'm diabetic. Which brings me to the central point of what's actually happening here. Did you want to say something?

[Josh]

No, no, no. Just.

[Duncan Trussell]

You can chime in whenever you want on these soul episodes, please.

[Josh]

Have you tried. Have you tried the candy?

[Duncan Trussell]

I. If I tried, I would get sick. But let's take a look at the candy. I mean, I could probably eat a little bit, but here. Oh, shit. Well, well, look at. Looky here. Look, look. Mr. Beast. That's crazy. Mr. Beast sent me $100. This is an insult. You know, it's an insult essentially to me, but, I mean, it's probably fake anyway. Let's take a look, see what we got here. It's real. It's a stack. 100 fucking dollar bills. So, yeah, I guess in Mr. Beast's world, everyone can just get paid off. I guess that's his plan. And it makes sense, right? This is totally in line with the Book of Revelations and what one might expect from the Beast of the Apocalypse. Just. I will send you money and then you'll do. You'll be my little marionette. And I don't care if you say shitty things about me, because you're still promoting my product, which I'm absolutely not. I couldn't eat this shit. I would get sick and die. And, like. So here's the real torture. Apparently, within these chocolates. Oh, this is really good Peanut butter, huh, Mr. Beast? Peanut butter. One of my kids has a peanut allergy. You fucking monster. You should be ashamed. And I guess, like, if I open up these, maybe I could win a million dollars. But then if I give them out, some kid in my fucking neighborhood gets a million dollars, which would torture me for the rest of my life, right? That's his plan, right?

[Josh]

Yeah, he's trying to be Willy Wonka. Golden ticket.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, Willy fucking Wonka. The Willy Wonka of the apocalypse. Mr. Beast, huh? And who are the Oompa Loompas in your chocolate factory? That's what we wonder. But, yeah, I think if I took, like, one bite of this, I would be okay. I haven't had chocolate in over a year.

[Josh]

Or do you have, like, a shot that I Need to give you. If you go into, like.

[Duncan Trussell]

I left it in my car, but I'm sure I'll be fine.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Duncan Trussell]

Cookies and cream. See what we got here. I'll just have a square. Do you want some?

[Josh]

Yeah, I'll try it.

[Duncan Trussell]

Here you go. Let's see what we got here. And guess what, Mr. Beast, it's not going to work. I just. Maybe once you recognize that I. I don't have the kind of diabetes where if I. I mean, I don't think I would die. I haven't had chocolate in so long. Mmm. Honestly, I don't want to cry. Got that nice crunch to it. Wouldn't hurt that. Another square. It probably tastes so good to me because I haven't had chocolate in so long. I'm sure anyone who's eating sweets.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

What's your take on it?

[Josh]

I like it. I like the creaminess of it. Has a good texture. Yeah, it's a really good bar. When was the last time you ate a chocolate bar?

[Duncan Trussell]

It's been at least a year.

[Josh]

Doctor says I shouldn't, but Mr. B says you should.

[Duncan Trussell]

Mr. I'm not following Mr. Beast's directive. I'm just living according to my true will. Freedom. Do as thou will shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law. Love under. Well, Alistair Croyd basically means eat chocolate even though you have diabetes. You all right? No, I'm fine. I'm just. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Josh, do you know what happened to me on the road recently?

[Josh]

What happened?

[Duncan Trussell]

So when you're traveling on the road, you go to states where there's, like, legal weed. I got, I don't know, some edible, like, actual THC gummy, 100 milligrams. And I mixed it up with some other, like, just basic CBD gummies. So I thought I was taking, like, just basically just like, you know, a normal dose, but I ended up, I don't know, eating a shit ton of weed. That's what I'm trying to get out here. And I just want. I couldn't sleep. I woke up the next day. Wandered around the city. I thought I was dreaming. I was blasted, man. Which is why I love today's sponsor, Soul. I'm telling you, these are incredible gummies. And you're not gonna wander around a city wondering if you're actually a video game character, which is what happened to me. I'm telling you, you gotta try. Soul's new out of office THC gummies. They're perfectly microdosed. To get you blissed, not blitzed. No matter. Like you might have had some kind of like rough experience like I did and probably will have again with like super powerful gummies. So I get it if you feel a little nervous, if you feel some trepidation, because why wouldn't you feel it? No one wants to stare the devil in the face, which is exactly what will happen if you OD on weed. I'm telling you, these out of office THC gummies are incredible. We're talking about bliss, joy, euphoria. Just the good stuff. This is the era that we're living in now. They're figuring everything out and now they know how to bring out the best in thc. Now we have the option to not ride a roller coaster into hell. Also, you can now buy hemp derived THC products in all 50 states. Because of the 2018 farm bill. Hemp derived THC is now legal and accessible nationwide. It's incredible. You can fly with it. That's all that matters. You could get on a plane with it and you don't have to worry about going to jail. Seoul was founded five years ago by brother and sister duo Mike and Angie Lee. Mike is a former world ranked professional boxer and Angie is an author and professional speaker. This holiday season, give the gift of Soul Head to getsoul.com and use code Duncan for 30% off your order. That's 30% off your order. Using Code Duncan one last time. Get soul.com and code Duncan for 30% off. It's time for you to make someone's Christmas full of soul. Okay, quick trip to urgent care. Back again to do the podcast. Maybe a little bit of brain fog, but ultimately you didn't get me this time, Mr. Beast. And I will be giving every single one of these dollar bills to artists, to true artists, actual artists, to women who dance professionally. Every one of these will go to an artist working on their craft. So guess what? This isn't going to some bullshit. This will go to help so many beautiful performers out there just bringing joy to the world. I will see you later, diamond friends. Okay, look, I. This is something occurred to me. I'm going to ramble about something for a second here, but before I start rambling about it, for those of you who are still hanging around listeners and viewers alike, one of the complaints that have been popping up in my comments, and I totally get it, is too many fucking ads. And that's annoying the shit out of people and I don't blame you. The solution to this, there's a few different solutions to the problem. One, and I would highly encourage this from any of the billionaires. And I know that 80% of my audience are billionaires. Any of the billionaires watching. One excellent solution would be to sort of take over the financial aspect of my role as a father. You could just buy my kids food, pay the mortgage and pay for like car payments and stuff. And if you do that, then I will definitely like, I probably won't get rid of the ads because, you know, need a little. This isn't going to go far tonight. But that would be one option and I will totally take that option. The other option, which is more realistic, is starting in November. So if you're watching this in November and you're sick of being assailed by ads, then just become a member. Look down there somewhere on the page. I don't actually know where it's going to be. Subscribe and become a member to my YouTube and you will get instantaneous access to uncensored sexy, erotic. You don't know what's over there. Honestly, we haven't really censored anything yet. Have we censored anything yet?

[Josh]

No, not really.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, but because of the, the way YouTube works, if you certain things, if you put up or you say, or you say the wrong thing, then you get dinged. And so that's a pain in the ass but also feels really fucked up to censor yourself. And so one thing you'll get is uncensored episodes. The other thing you'll get is commercial free episodes of the dtfh. Just straight raw free based, raw dogging episodes of the dtfh. You will be rid of the commercials and I know there's a lot of them. And so that is one thing you can do. The other thing you could do, though I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to this experiment is going to determine the next part of this. If you want just commercial free audio episodes, you can find them [e-mail] dtfh you can subscribe and get audio versions of the podcast there with no commercials. Now there's going to be two tiers and I don't know, I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck do you charge for a tier. The whole thing feels weird on some level, but then, you know, we live in a marketplace and so we've got to, we got to make money somehow. You have to have a job and I'm lucky enough this is my job. But whatever it is, I'm thinking like 500 to $700 a month. There's going to be two tiers. One of them, you just get the basic commercial free episodes. The second tier, we are going to start up with something I was doing with the Patreon for a long time that I really enjoyed, which is we had a meditation group. We'd meet once a week. In this case, we're going to do it twice a month because I don't want to, like, disappoint anyone again. And so I know I could do twice a month, no problem. It's called Journey Into Boredom. And if you're interested in meditating, I know I yap about it all the time, but what one of the things I loved about the group is it got me to meditate because it forces you to do it, which, sadly, is where I'm at in my spiritual life when it comes to meditation. But if you're interested in it, there's something really nice about having a group of people to sit with. And I know it might seem weird to, like, sit quietly in front of your webcam or whatever, but you might be surprised at how powerful it can actually be. I certainly was every time. And it's nice to make friends with other people in various stages of their own, like spiritual meditation life and bounce ideas and talk about it. And then the other thing that we're going to do connected to that is what I used to call family gatherings, and that's just us sitting around yapping. Also, the other thing at the second tier that you're going to get is when I do these solo episodes. And once we figure out how to do it here, it's where I'm going to livestream the solo episodes. And there'll probably be other stuff, too, but that's the starting point. So I've heard your complaints. I'm going to fix it. I will give you a way that you can enjoy the sweet baritone, booming glory of my voice without being interrupted by commercials. So that's coming. If you're watching this in November, it's already started. You know, the craziest shit when you have taken a psychedelic is looking at money. I don't know if you've ever done that. You ever do that, Josh? You ever, like, get. You ever, like, take mushrooms or acid and look at, like, money?

[Josh]

I was the guy folding the bills, showing people on drugs.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, yeah. The symbols in there. Yeah. Which there are what's wild to me. And I know this is kind of like basic stoner 101, like, high school tripping. You start Realizing this stuff. But to me it still is a 50 year old aging acid. It never fails to astound me how weird money is like just the thing itself is so absolutely bizarre and. But American currency, specifically the $1 bill is so insanely weird to me. And you know, God, it's like a. Now it's a whole genre of hilarious content which is some like paranoid person attempts to dissect some bit of, I don't know, some movie, some commercial, some music video. And they sort of reveal all of these occult symbols that show up in the content. And usually when they do that, they are alluding to a grand conspiracy. And this is right now. I mean this is like a hot topic. Everyone's talking about it because of the P. Diddy shit and before that the Epstein shit. And a general sense you get when you're living in America that there is some dark, shadowy underworld or overworld in which huge decisions are being made that are not based on democracy but that are in fact based on a sort of. Oh God, there's a great Paul Simon song. These are the days of lasers in the Jungle. It's called. Fuck, will you look that up for me? These are the days of lasers in the jungle. Lasers in the jungle somewhere. Staccato signals of constant information. A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires that actually pulls up a fucking. That's so funny. Well, that must be based on the Paul Simon song. You don't have to pull it up. Google those lyrics. I don't remember the name of the song, but it's great old school Paul Simon. But that loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires that he's pointing to. We've given it a lot of different names and the names that we've given it range from, oh, the Boy in the Bubble. That's it that we call the Deep State. We call it the Illuminati. We call it. What are some other names for the Freemasons? The Global elite. Yeah, global elite.

[Josh]

My favorite is extra dimensional beings that run the world.

[Duncan Trussell]

Extra dimensional beings that are actually being channeled through the millionaires and the billionaires that are ruling everything. That's a good one. But generally the way the story goes is all of us. And thus the name the Boy in the Bubble. Everybody thinks he's talking about that kid who lived in some kind of hyperbaric chamber or something because his immune system was wrecked.

[Josh]

Jake Gyllenhaal.

[Duncan Trussell]

Jake Gyllenhaal lived in one of those bubbles.

[Josh]

Oh yeah. He was in a movie called Bubble.

[Duncan Trussell]

Boy, oh, bubble boy. Yeah, but he didn't live in a bubble. He wasn't one of them.

[Josh]

He was created in a bubble. That's why he's such a good actor.

[Duncan Trussell]

I know Gyllenhaal was created in a bubble in Beijing.

[Josh]

Yeah, him and his sister.

[Duncan Trussell]

A lot of great actors are coming from those bubbles. It's one company in Beijing that just is producing some of the most incredible Foxconn. I think Chalamet came from a bubble, but the boy were the bubble. That's what he's pointing to is like you're sort of like humanity as a whole, or like the sort of you and me, the people like George Carlin was talking about when he said they're in a club and you'll never be in it or however that joke goes. That's us. So that bubble is an information bubble. And on one side of the bubble you get propaganda. On one side of the bubble you get all of the news, all of the non top secret information. Now on the other side of that bubble are people who have gotten, quote, security clearance. Now I don't literally mean security clearance, but certainly those people are on that other side of the bubble, but they've been vetted essentially. So if you get a job in the CIA, the FBI, the government, if you become the president, if you get, if you become a senator, whatever it is, you get security clearances. And so those security clearances give you access to databases of information which are essentially the ingredients that get cooked up into the propaganda that goes into the bubble that we all hear. So some event will happen and it's just raw data. Whatever the fucking thing that happened, it happened. Who knows what it is? Maybe, I don't know, a nuclear test happened in Iran or something underground in Iran, caused an earthquake that seemed to match exactly what a nuclear test would look like now, because you can't hide that there are signals. There was an earthquake, what do they call it? Seismographs. Suddenly the earthquake needle thing, ticket, ticket, ticket thing. Suddenly it like pops up. Some shit happened in a place where maybe that doesn't normally happen. And also the way it happened seemed to have matched a lot of signatures of what a nuclear test might look like, but it was too far underground or they really testing shit like a mile underground or something that doesn't make sense. But bottom line, you have that data. So now you have to find a way to get that information into the bubble and you're going to put whatever your particular political angle is on it. That serves whatever purposes you're trying to achieve. That's what we get. So when a reporter is giving us the news, it's very similar in a lot of ways to the way a bird feeds the babies. It has some kind of data that it's chewed up and is vomiting into our brains in a kind of like watered down version of the data that inevitably has some kind of angle to it, which is why you, everyone picks their flavor of news. You get people who like cnn, Rachel Maddow's way of vomiting information into your brain, or you get like Sean Hannity's way of vomiting information into your brain. That's Fox and. But it's all essentially regurgitated data that has made its way through the membrane of secrecy into popular culture. Default reality, that's where we're living right now. And so this was a wonderful system prior to the hyperconnectivity that we've been given via the Internet because it was very easy to control the data set. And even if you did have a fantastic leak, even if you did have information about, I don't know, UFOs or some impending nuclear war or someone who didn't actually kill themselves, but they were assassinated or something, and you knew it for sure, you were there in the room when they planned it, it didn't fucking matter. You could go to the newspapers, the newspapers, maybe they would print it. But even if they did print it, it wouldn't have the same impact that today like leaks can have. So this membrane that used to be, I don't know, semi permeable, the bubble, it was more difficult to get information through non vetted sources, but now it's becoming permeable. So we're getting all this information dripping into the fucking bubble. And this is like letting a lot of people get very confused because you start connecting dots that aren't there. Whenever there is a lack of information, at least I project onto it. Generally the most terrifying thing, like if you're laying in the woods at night and you're in your tent and it's completely dark and you hear twigs snap, you're never thinking it's a squirrel. At least if you're me, you're like, that's a fucking bear, that's a dude with a hatchet. That's something that's going to kill me. And so this is what we do with a lack of data, we project the most terrifying thing upon it. So, but objectively, what we do have in default reality, unless you have security clearance and maybe even if you do, is a big wall of unknown, of question marks. And then you start looking at little patterns and shit. And from that you can extrapolate this sense of there being a grander plan. An architect that lives outside the bubble that's affecting reality. So when I look at it, when you look at a dollar bill, it actually seems to confirm that idea, like verifiably. I mean, you look at this fucking thing and what do you have on it? A pyramid with an eyeball floating at the fucking top of it. And well, that's just weird, you know, like when you think about whoever decided the design for the dollar bill, which I should probably look up if I'm going to ramble about it. Who designed the dollar bill? Whoever fucking did this. I mean, there's so many things you could have put in that circle. You didn't have to put like a creepy ass pyramid with an eyeball floating above it and some kind of barren wasteland that said Novus Ordo Secularum underneath it. New Order of the Ages. I mean, surely there was something less cryptic and scary you could have put in that circle. Gilbert Stewart. Let's look up Gilbert Stewart. Sure doesn't sound like an evil person. You know, when I think of evil, I don't think Gilbert. It's like one. Whoa. Doesn't look like a nice dude. Can't judge him based on the oil painting. How? Go down a little. Gilbert Stewart. Wicked. What the fuck? Where is he? I mean, you'd think the guy who designed the dollar bill would be more well known. Artist Gilbert Stewart. There. Click on over here, Josh. This one. Artist Gilbert Stewart. Let's see what we got here. There he is. All right, let's go to his Wikipedia and check this. This weirdo out. Gilbert Stewart. I painted the presidents. Well, it doesn't matter. It's not like fucking Gilbert Stewart was like, let's put a creepy pyramid on the thing. They told him to do that. Right? They told him to paint that.

[Josh]

Or he was the Masonic leader.

[Duncan Trussell]

Was he a Mason? Look up Gilbert Stewart. Freemason. I don't. Do you think the Masons are evil? I don't think they're evil. I've never bought into that. No. Well, Gilbert Stewart painted George Washington as a Freemason, so he probably was.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Wouldn't surprise me. So, yeah, this is some kind of Masonic shit that you'll never understand because the Masons live outside the bubble and a lot of masons definitely have access to the data sets outside the bubble. And regardless, when you look at this thing with a rattlesnake Rattles sticking out of the circle. The spider webs, the sort of dark, dull, swampy green. The fucking eagle holding arrows in its claws. The sort of somber George Washington who looks like annoyed, like his order isn't coming to his table as fast as he would like. Then it all combines together to produce something that's really quite spooky. And especially when you consider obviously they didn't have to pick these symbols. They could have put anything there. They could have put a log cabin, they could have put a skunk, they could have put like a, I don't know, a fairy or something holding like a magic wand. But they chose a fucking scary ass pyramid. A really depressing fucking pyramid with the all seeing eye at the top of it. Now I'm sure that the interpretation of this is probably the all seeing eye doesn't represent the invisible cabal of people who are manipulating us to create the new pyramids, which is what America is the greatest. Like the, what is it the here, Hiram Habib, I believe that's the Masonic you know about him. So you know just from like surfing the net, I'm not a freemason. I believe the story goes there was this architect who was hired to build the Temple of Solomon. Now the Temple of Solomon is really interesting actually. Isaac Newton was fascinated with the Temple of Solomon and I believe the Temple of Solomon. The idea is like this is a direct transmission from God about how to build something. So it's like you're getting plans from God about how to build the perfect building. Let's Wikipedia that. The Temple of Solomon, the first temple, blah blah, Book of Kings, blah blah, blah blah. Okay, let's scroll down even further here, keep scrolling down construction, blah blah, the Hebrew Bible records. The Tyrians played a leading role in the construct of the blah. Yeah, there it is. David and Hiram forge an alliance. This friendship continues after Solomon. The point is I'm not, I don't, I don't know. That's the point. I don't know. I'm not a biblical scholar, but I do know the Temple of Solomon. The instructions were given by God. And so Hiram Abib represents this incredible foreman. I guess you could say he was able. He was the one that was given the responsibility of not diluting or changing the transmission of the divine. And the construction of this temple. He was the one that they trusted to do it exactly the right way. And so apparently he was just the ultimate boss. He was able to synchronize workers. He's able to do this incredibly powerful job. The temple was to house the Ark of the Covenant, which contained within it another direct transmission from the divine. The Ten Commandments. And so his job was to sort of create this perfect space. And so as I understand it, a lot of what the masons are into, and I'm probably confused. Any masons out there, feel free to correct me. And truly not a Freemason. I don't know if I could tell you if I was. I'm pretty sure if I was, I'd do some kind of like I'd be signaling right now. Is it. I don't think that's Masonic, isn't it? Is that Masonic? The eye.

[Josh]

I don't know.

[Duncan Trussell]

Regardless, the idea would be that the bubble that we're in, we're workers and we are being. The whole thing is being orchestrated. Though it might look chaotic and insane, it's being orchestrated by a divine architect working through humans to build this new temple which is all of society. A perfect harmonious sanctum within which the divine will of God is embodied in every single form. I don't know if that's actually correct or not, but that's sort of the idea. Regardless, what's wild to me when you, when you sort of trip out on money is not just that it's covered in bizarre occult symbols and that even. And you would think this would be the primary focus if you were someone who is like really interested in investigating the influence of the occult in the modern world. It's the other aspect of it which is really mind blowing, which is value. Just the idea of value itself, like currency value. When I went to Canada as a self proclaimed idiot, it really blows my mind, the exchange rate. It's very weird to me that here in the United States the dollar bill has a different value than it does in Canada. This is worth more in Canada. But in Canada, because they're dealing with inflation too, it doesn't fucking matter. Because shit's expensive in Canada because of inflation, because their currency has been devalued. And that's what we're talking about. When it. Which is with inflation, the dollar, it doesn't like, it doesn't work as well as it used to. Meaning shit gets more expensive. You mean you need more dollars to buy stuff. And that's bullshit because we're all getting paid the same. So that's other crazy thing. Like you look up minimum wage through the years and it doesn't really change that much at all. You would think like in an actual working system that minimum wage would have to change with inflation because if you're talking minimum. You're talking like this is the bottom thing. But that minimum wage was the bottom thing when the dollar meant a lot more than it does now. So even legally, if the idea is legally, this is the very least you can pay your employees, then it's everyone who's getting paid minimum wage. In a weird way, it's kind of illegal in the sense that you're getting paid the very least amount of dollars when dollars were probably worth double than they are now. So you should at least double the minimum wage or something like that. I don't know. I'm not gonna get. I'm not an economist. I can't even say it. So this is a really fascinating thing you like if you're in America right now, Jesus Christ. It's all you hear about. Inflation, the economy, these motherfuckers running to be presidents talking about inflation. They're going to fix inflation. They're going to somehow make the dollar worth more than it is right now. There's a lot of shit that causes inflation, by the way. But this brings me to what I wanted to talk about. Now, I don't know why I started looking it up, but do you know who Diogenes is, Josh? So this guy is fascinating. So Diogenes is from the 4th century BC and he was a cynic. He was essentially like the original Edge Lord. And Diogenes got into trouble, like him and his dad got into trouble because they were actually fucking with currency. They were defacing currency. They said he lived in a clay jar. Now, for Elden Ring fans out there, you gotta wonder, can you pull up the Elden Ring jar, people? This episode was sponsored by Built Rewards Renters. Do you feel like you're trapped in a never ending loop of rent payments just watching your money vanish into thin air? It's time for you to turn that rent game around and start earning some serious rewards. That's where Built Rewards comes in. Look, we've all been there feeling like we're burning cash with those rent checks. It's very frustrating. 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Join bilt.com Duncan to start earning points with your rent payments today. Yeah, look, these things, creepiest things in Elden Ring, especially when you get to the expansion, you find out what, what, what's in those jars. But Diogenes is a sort of. His idea was all of the trappings of wealth and all of the pursuits for fame, money, status, all of these things were antithetical to the pursuit of true happiness. So if you were caught up in whatever the particular games of your time period are, and for most time periods, throughout all time periods, that game seems to be acquisition of power, acquisition of resources, acquisition of mates. You know, to get too caught up in that bullshit means that you're robbing yourself of a sort of divine birthright that all of us have, which is like you're born already with everything, mostly everything you need. Obviously you got to get water, you got to get food. But even the pursuit of those things in a kind of basic way was more noble than getting caught up in the complexities of the systems that you're born into. So he was a cynic, and the cynics were really into fucking dogs. He loved dogs. He, when he died, his tomb, they. I think they put like a marble dog on his tomb because he saw the way that dogs lived as being more advanced and noble than the way that like the most sophisticated people live now. He was also filthy. Like, he was disgusting. And one of the things that he would do was like, jerk off publicly. I don't know if a lot of people know about that, but he liked to master. He would masturbate publicly. And when people are like, can you please stop jerking off in front of us? He famously said, if only my appetite could be satiated by rubbing my belly. So he was really smart, but he was also pissing on people and shitting in public. He was basically an edge lord. And the point of him doing all of that was a kind of like what I guess you call culture jamming. He was trying to disrupt culture in the hopes of waking people up and helping them understand that the entire game of modern life is sort of absurd. There's something about it that is. The reason that you inevitably hear about someone with massive amounts of wealth, massive amounts of resources, massive amounts of power blowing their brains out or being completely miserable is because they were tricked into believing that getting all this stuff would somehow make them feel better. Their anxiety would dissipate, their suffering would be reduced. And all that was happening in their furious ambition is essentially cutting themselves off from the natural world. And you look at the natural world, you know, you get the. Do you mind pulling this up? This was a great verse of the Bible. Behold the lilies of the field. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. So that's like, one of Jesus. Many like, fuck yous to the pursuit of wealth. Like, look at the natural world. It's beautiful. And it doesn't give a fuck about the economy. It's not thinking about inflation, presidential elections. Squirrels aren't in credit card debt, which would be fucking hilarious.

[Josh]

Babies are in credit card debt, though.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, yes, they are. You better watch out. You better watch out if you're a baby and your parents need some credit cards, because they will fuck you up. That's a common thing.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

For those of you who don't know what Josh is talking about, you missed it somehow, for one, you're lucky if you missed it, but I certainly did. Thank God. But, yeah, what happens is baby. They say baby brings the bread, but in this case, baby brings, like, good credit. And so the baby's born parents take the baby's fucking Social Security number, somehow get a credit card in the baby's name, and just by the time the baby's old enough, they're fucked. They're so in debt, their credit's wrecked.

[Josh]

Is this the guy that Alexander the Great was? Like, if I could be anybody else, it'd be this guy.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah. Alexander the Great loved this guy. Supposedly. Now, they say this could be mythological. People aren't really sure, but there's, like, all kinds of myths about, like, Diogenes died on the same day Alexander the Great died. So there were, like, twin souls or something. They were like Batman and the Joker or something. And there's stories of how, like, Alexander the Great came to Diogenes and said, what are you doing? And Diogenes is, like, sifting through bones again. This is a filthy dude. Like, he's like shitting in public, pissing in public. He likes to sift around. And I guess there were bone piles back then in Corinth, but he's sifting around through bones and he's saying, I'm trying to see which of these was your. Were your ancestors, but they all just look like bones to me. Basically saying, you ain't shit. Essentially. It was always just Alexander the Great was always going to get roasted by Diogenes. Like, supposedly he went to hang out with Diogenes and was so impressed with him. He said, is there anything that I can give you? And he's like, step to the side. You're blocking my son, bitch. But he was very much against hierarchy. He was very much against classism. He was very much against any kind of hierarchical system that placed a person's value on a symbol set that wasn't real, like this. So just because you have a bunch of these things doesn't necessarily mean you're more important than somebody else. It doesn't mean anything. In fact, it's like, so what? You just have a lot of, like, paper fucking rectangles that clearly don't have any true value in the sense that the value of these things is always changing, always shifting. Whereas, like, if you look into nature, speed of light, that doesn't change. There's no inflation when it comes to the speed of light or basic physics, because if there were, then we wouldn't be able to do anything. Shit would be the rotation of the Earth. Now, you could argue, yes, sure, the fucking magnetic poles change every once in a while, and certainly the Earth and the way the Earth changes, the continental drift and all that shit over long periods of time. You could argue, well, there's deflation or inflation when it comes to maybe the size of the Earth. Some people actually think it's getting bigger. You ever heard that?

[Josh]

No.

[Duncan Trussell]

There was kind of, like swelling up like a balloon. Regardless, his point was, don't fucking connect your value structure to transient cultural norms, but rather figure out what is of true value in the world and connect to that. Now, he went to the Oracle of Delphi. Or do you say Delphi? Do you know? Is it Delphi? Or. I don't know. Point is, there was this, like, oracle. Some people say that maybe in the. In the temple, there was. That they were, like, burning some kind of psychedelic. So you go in there and trip out, and somebody would usually say something very cryptic to you, which generally had a lot of, like, profound meaning. So he went there and they said to him, deface the currency is what they said to him. So he took that to mean not literally, like deface the currency, as in, like, you know, do the thing that people do, or they write fuck you on a dollar bill. Or like, let's go, Brandon, or whatever he was saying, like deface cultural currency. Help people understand that culture tokens are ultimately meaningless relative to the earth and the rhythm of the earth. And this is why he was really into. He called himself a cosmopolite, which means a citizen of the world. He thought that you should first.

[Josh]

He was a globalist.

[Duncan Trussell]

He was the first fucking globalist. Yes, Dajonese was part of the global. He. No, he was a what? He was like a benevolent globalist. Right now the term globalism has actually been corrupted. So the term globalism now doesn't mean what he thought it meant. The term globalism now just means that the pyramid is planetary. There's some one world government at the top of which is the Antichrist running the fucking show. And. But in this case, you have this hierarchical value set based on who knows, whatever they come up with is what value is, but certainly not based on just some innate basic human dignity, basic human value that we're all equal, regardless of what symbol set we have access to. Whether that symbol set is rectangles with occult symbols, whether that symbol set is top secret information, whether that symbol set is a more complexified set of emojis, which we call being educated, it's just. It doesn't matter. Fundamentally, we're all good. And that you can't create this hierarchical structure and expect anything good to come from it. At least if good means reflecting nature. So there's a lot of critiques of him, by the way, that people criticize him by saying, like, isn't. Aren't cultural? Aren't cultures a reflection of nature? How are you saying anything cannot be part of nature of Diogenes, you filthy fuck. Put your dick back in your toe. Go. What are you fucking talking about? And by the way, if we all just shake off cultural norms, what then? What's your plan, asshole? What's next? What are we supposed to do? Okay, now, money doesn't mean anything. Families don't mean anything. Religion doesn't mean anything. No more leaders. What then? You motherfucker. Get back in your jar, you filthy piece of shit. Those are the critiques of Diogenes, but. And you know, I think they're pretty valid critiques, actually. And this is the problem with edge lording, is that if everyone became Edge lords, there would be no More edge lording. Edge lording only works when there's a few edge lords and a lot of, like, offendable people. You know, edge lording can't work as a way of running civilization. It wouldn't. It wouldn't work. But his. You know, there's different intent when it comes to the troll. People think all trolls are nefarious or evil. This isn't the case at all. Many trolls are like artists. Many trolls are just doing social psychological experiments with now that they have access to populations that normally they'd never gain contact with. And many of them are just doing it for fun. I mean, they're not all evil. They're just silly.

[Josh]

Andrew Tate.

[Duncan Trussell]

Yeah, Andrew Tate. What about him? You mean the greatest man that ever lived?

[Josh]

The troll? He's the greatest troll to ever live.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, you think Andrew Tate. The whole thing's a troll? Yeah. The sex trafficking.

[Josh]

Yeah. That guy.

[Duncan Trussell]

You think Andrew Tate is all the way through trolling?

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Fuck. That's crazy. Where do you get that from? Where do you get that information? From Josh? Because I've never heard that take.

[Josh]

I mean, first of all, he's doing all of his. He does it shirtless, right. He has no shirt when he does his podcast. He said he would never do a cryptocurrency. Right. That if that's just. And now he's doing a cryptocurrency. It's gonna be the best cryptocurrency. He's. He's trolling everybody.

[Duncan Trussell]

You think it's a gag, the whole thing. Andy Kaufman level. Trolling.

[Josh]

On another level. Yeah, on another level. Like where? To the point where he's convinced himself that he is that.

[Duncan Trussell]

Okay.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

So, right. So, like, see, that's. You know that when it comes to conceptual comedy, which I love, and, you know, you look back at the, like, one of the original trolls in modern comedy, it's 100% Andy Kaufman and the genius of taking on the personality of a Hollywood snob and then wrestling in front of, like, wrestling fans trying to.

[Josh]

Like, crapping on women.

[Duncan Trussell]

Crap it out. Wrestling women.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Genius, all of a Genius all the way through. And we look back at it and we are like, it's hilarious. But back then, it wasn't so funny. Back then, people were really offended. Like this. How could he. This Hollywood. This Hollywood elitist ruining our wrestling. Yeah. So whenever I contemplate whoever happens to be the weak, the flavor of hate of the week, you know, every week we're. Or month, generally, we're instructed about who we're Supposed to hate. And various people land. Various people land there. And then most people just accept it. I guess I have to hate this guy this month, and then they fucking hate this guy. So whenever that happens, I do often wonder. They call it rage forming, basically. Like, and that's a real thing. Like, you know, people have figured, like, you know, you're scrolling through your Instagram and if you scroll through it long enough for your TikTok or whatever, you see some repeating patterns. And one of the repeating patterns and when, at least when it comes to. Rage farming is a genre of video where the mother shows the food she's sending her kid off to school with, and it's like a cupcake tater tots and a fucking Bud Light or something. Lunchable and lunchable. Yeah. And the outrage. The outrage. People are furious, but they don't care because they want that outrage because the outrage triggers the algorithm. The algorithm elevates their fucking content and they get paid. It's called rage farming. It's a horrible form of solar panel, you know, like a rage panel. You know, if you could, like, it's one step away from being able to run your house on rage. Like, do you have solar panels converting the hate of your. Of people around the planet into actual electricity? No, it's being converted into this stuff, which then you pay the power company with, but it's one step removed from alchemizing people's rage, anger, disdain, judgment into energy. And that's called rage farming.

[Josh]

So Limp Bizkit's really good at that.

[Duncan Trussell]

Who?

[Josh]

Limp Bizkit.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, yeah, the best. Yeah, the best.

[Josh]

Break your fucking face and everybody's like, tear it apart.

[Duncan Trussell]

There you go. It's a skill set. It's a brand new skill set by the. I mean, it's fairly new. I'm trying to think in history, Hitler, the muckraker. You'd have the person who'd write, like, you know, edgy editorials and stuff. And, like, I don't think Hitler was a troll, Josh. No, no. That's the most fucked up thing ever heard.

[Josh]

He didn't really believe that stuff. He's just trolling us.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That's. Is it. Is that worse? Is it worse if, like, you find out he's just like, a very, like, focused performance artist who wasn't afraid to murder people? It's. It wasn't based on ideology, but he was just trying to, like, entertain. Terrifying to think about that.

[Josh]

He just wanted meth. That's all he wanted.

[Duncan Trussell]

Who doesn't yeah, but the. So the point I'm trying to get out here is that we have inflation. And the way most people think about inflation is our money isn't worth as much anymore. But as above, so below, I hereby coin the term and if it already exists. I'm sorry, I wouldn't surprise me if it did. Get ready. Cultural inflation, what we are experiencing right now is. Don't even Google it. I don't want to know. No, please Google it, God damn it. Inflation, culture. No, scroll down. Nope. I'm sure there's something in there. I mean, this is like fucking freshman, I don't know, liberal arts school essay or something. But cultural inflation. So if, like, money, currency is really just a symbolic representation of value, then you have to start thinking about what are other tokens of value that aren't represented in money. And so this brings us. Can you pull up Eric Byrne? This brings us to someone who came up with a psychological framework called transactional analysis. This dude's name was Eric Byrne. There we go. And let's just pull up. Eric Byrne's transactional analysis theory is based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory, which states that the things people experience as children impact their lives. Essentially, though, there's a. There's a few different aspects to it. I don't have time to get into all of them. But one of the things he came up with was this idea of strokes, which are a form of token, so. Or a kind of currency that happens whenever you interact with people. So an example of a stroke in the most basic level would be, I send you a text. How are you doing? That's a stroke. Now, I've given you a token, a stroke token. Now, if you don't respond to me, there's an imbalance there. I've given you a stroke token. You need to give me one back. If you don't give me one back, in a weird way, you're in a kind of social debt to me. I feel owed. There's a sense of, now you need to give me something. And I start thinking, why didn't he give me my stroke token back? Is he mad at me? Is he a dick? Why is he ignoring me? Who the fuck does he think he is? So these exchanges of tokens create what Eric Byrne called games. And so maybe pull up some transactional analysis games, because the games are fucking cool. And you're probably going to be familiar with some of these. Maybe, like, what are some transactions? You know what? I actually pulled it up on ChatGPT here. I'll give you an example of one. Check this out. One second to scroll back a little bit. This thing is incredible, by the way.

[Josh]

Is this it?

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh yeah. List of life games. Let's do number four. Now I've got you, you son of a bitch. Let's see. You can find. We have to find more. Let me find it. Let me just ask ChatGPT. Can you give a brief summary of Eric Burns transactional analysis game called Now I've got you, you son of a bitch?

[Ryan Seacrest]

Eric Burns transactional analysis game Now I've got you, you son of a bitch Involves one person setting up another for a perceived mistake or wrongdoing, only to then pounce on them with anger or blame. The player of this game typically feels a sense of righteous indignation and satisfaction from catching the other person in the wrong. In Niggasab, the person setting the trap often doesn't really want resolution or an apology. They want the chance to vent frustration and reinforce their role as the wronged party. It's a way for the player to gain psychological satisfaction by blaming and attacking someone else, often over a minor issue. This game can damage relationships as it reinforces negative patterns where people feel constantly on guard or manipulated.

[Josh]

My wife does this all the time. She's been playing this game.

[Duncan Trussell]

I know what you mean, man. What are some other examples of these transactional analysis games?

[Ryan Seacrest]

There are quite a few transactional analysis games, each with its own unique dynamics. Here are some common ones. 1. Why don't you. Yes, but one person brings up a problem and others offer solutions. But the person always responds with yes, but to each suggestion, the real goal isn't to solve the problem, but to reject advice and reinforce that their situation is hopeless. 2. See what you made me do? In this game, one person blames another for a mistake or accident, often amplifying the drama to avoid taking responsibility. It shifts accountability to others rather than accepting personal fault.

[Duncan Trussell]

Hey, let me. Let me interrupt you.

[Josh]

He's King Gaslighter.

[Duncan Trussell]

Can you explain one of these games in terms of Eric Burns stroke token idea?

[Ryan Seacrest]

Let's use the game Poor Me as an example and look at it through the lens of Eric Burns stroke token concept. In Poor Me, a person consistently shares stories of hardship or difficulty, not necessarily to find solutions, but to receive sympathy and attention. In transactional analysis terms, they're seeking strokes, units of recognition or validation. Since strokes can be positive like compliments, or negative like pity, the player in Poor Me is often looking for sympathy strokes to validate their identity as someone who is struggling and in need of support. Here's how the stroke token idea plays out in poor me. 1. Seeking sympathetic strokes the person playing Poor Me feels a need for recognition or validation, but may feel unable to ask for positive strokes directly, perhaps due to low self esteem or because they're used to receiving attention in negative ways. By sharing stories of hardship, they prompt others to offer sympathetic strokes. Comments like that sounds so tough or I'm sorry you're going through that. 2. Dependence on the Role of the Victim this game creates a steady supply of sympathy strokes that reinforce the player's identity as a victim or someone constantly facing adversity. Over time, they might rely on these sympathy strokes to feel validated, making it harder to break out of the victim role. 3. Cycle of temporary Fulfillment each time they receive sympathy strokes, it's a temporary boost, a little token of validation. However, because these strokes are based on a passive or negative form of recognition, they don't provide lasting satisfaction. The player then needs to seek more sympathy to feel validated, creating a cycle where they continuously present themselves as struggling. 4. Negative impact on Relationships for those around the player, constantly providing sympathy strokes can become draining or frustrating. People may feel manipulated or feel their empathy being exploited, which can lead to resentment. Yet by feeding the need for sympathy strokes, the game perpetuates itself as both the player and the listeners remain in their roles. In Poor Me, the pursuit of stroke tokens based on sympathy creates a loop where both parties stay stuck in a transactional pattern. The player's reliance on sympathy strokes prevents them from seeking more positive, self affirming strokes that could help them move beyond the victim role, keeping them locked into the game for the temporary reward of validation.

[Duncan Trussell]

This episode has been brought to you by Better Help Friends. It's almost Thanksgiving and you know someone you don't thank enough. That's you. You're spending all this time out there thanking everybody else, but how often do you look at how insane it is that you're even alive? You're walking around, you get out of bed, you could turn left, you could turn right. You know how to drive. Maybe you don't, but you're learning or you don't want to. The point is, you give yourself no credit. And I must say, that seems to be something endemic. So many people out there, they'll help anybody. They'll cut their hands off for a stranger, but they won't say thank you to their body, to their life. You did it. You made it here. You're alive. A lot of people can't say that because they're not alive. Look. It's sometimes hard to remind ourselves that we're trying our best to make sense of everything. And in this crazy world, that's not easy. Here's a reminder to send some thanks to the people in your life, including yourself. Listen, therapy really helps with everything. And for those of you out there have been wondering about it, I hope you'll give it a shot because I have benefited so much from it. And I'm telling you, it is such a wonderful thing. And I know there's all kinds of weird feelings you can have about it, but when you actually do it, you realize, whoa, it's like a spa or something. It's a professional listener. Do you know how cool that is? If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. You could switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Let the gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.comduncan today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L P.comduncan thank you, BetterHelp. There you go. So.

[Josh]

So they're energy vampires.

[Duncan Trussell]

Energy vampires. And what happens in those relationships and in those up transactional games is you, after you've given a certain number of your fucking stroke tokens, you're like, dude, like, you're done. Your credit's fucked. You have shit credit now for my stroke tokens. I'm not giving you anymore. Like, I don't want to give you anymore. And then they freak out. And that's the thing. That's how you. Any of these games, they function. They only work if you don't recognize the game. The moment you announce you recognize the game and the dynamic of the game and what's happening, the whole thing collapses. It's very hard to keep doing any of these games. Poor me. Whatever it is, when you start understanding it's a game and you just realize, oh my God, we're playing like the most ridiculous non consensual. That's the other problem with the game. It's non consensual Monopoly. It's like, dude, I don't want to play this anymore. It's a fucking game. And the more I play it with you, the more addicted to the game you get. So I'm not helping you by playing it with you anymore. And so this is. Everything can be broken up into these games. Like everything can be Broken down from the hello game. That's a very simple game, which is, hi, how you doing? I'm great, how are you? I'm great. Bye, see you later. That's a game. We're exchanging tokens. We leave with having exchanged an even amount of tokens. The game gets fucked up when you go, hey, how you doing? And the person walks away. Oh, what the fuck? They didn't say hi to me. Where's my token, man? And then shit gets weird. So if you look at this from the perspective of cultural inflation, we have a whole new thing happening, which wasn't around when Eric Byrne came up with transactional analysis. You could check out one of his books. It's great. It's called the Games People Play, if you're interested in it. Now, we are no longer getting our stroke tokens from human to human interaction, but rather we're getting stroke tokens online. And so these tokens in YouTube, it used to be likes and dislikes, so you could get positive and negative reinforcement, but you were getting a token. Any kind of comments, anything. People are saying, you're getting all of these tokens. So here's how inflation would happen. What do they say about inflation here? Printer go brr, right? Printer go, brr. But the printer going brr here is a stroke token printer, and it's going brr online. Which is now, because stroke tokens are no longer limited to human to human interactions, but theoretically, between bots online, between paid shills, between people working for political campaigns, you are not getting actual human to human strokes. Therefore, the currency has been devalued. The currency is devalued, meaning that we have fucking cultural inflation now. It's not just that. The other forms of cultural inflation, you could say there's linguistic inflation. And so what this would look like is overproduction, overproduction of words. For example, trauma. This word has, via the Internet, started to lose its original meaning. Like, fuck. Trauma. Trauma was like you were sitting on a park bench next to some dude. A brick fell from a construction site 40 stories up and splattered his head right next to you, brain all over your face. He was on the phone with his kid. Phone lands on the ground, daddy, daddy, daddy. Trauma. Dude, you're not going to be okay. You're going to fucking. Every night when you fall asleep, hear that little kid's voice, you're going to wonder, what if I just, like, said something to him to make him turn his head? Trauma. That was trauma. And now. But what's happening now is trauma having Been co opted by so many different people, it starts getting watered down. Now the meaning of trauma begins to change. We are traumatized by, not by some horrific event, but traumatized simply by someone failing to play the game of hello even. Or we are triggered and traumatized. And so this is overproduction of a symbol. The symbol gets overproduced, it's meaning, it's watered down. And you have cultural fucking inflation. And so the more that this is happening, the more that cultural currency is being defaced. And this ultimately, I think is a good thing because if you don't like, you know, I don't want to blow your mind, but I will. I've been studying my brain. It gets obsessed with stuff as people have been listening to me ramble. Thank you so much for doing that for so long. Probably know, and right now my brain has sort of gotten like sucked into learning how to draw. And I just want you to know right away, I am not good at drawing, but I'm obsessed with it right now. I'm trying to learn how to do it. I know it takes years and years and years. I'll give you an example of like one of my incredible works of art I'm working on here. I'm thinking about putting this on a T shirt. A man in a field is saying, marry me and be my wife. Now the what's crazy about drawing? I even know this term. But like, when you're like drawing from your brain, you're using symbolic drawing. So you have an idea of what an eye looks like. You draw the eye, you have an idea of what the nose looks like. And there's all these tricks and if you know proportions and stuff, you can get really good. This is like comic book art and stuff. You can get really good at like emulating faces and stuff. So that's different from looking at a person and painting or drawing the person. When you do that, whoa, you realize that, like the way things actually look versus the way they look in your brain is very different. You realize there aren't like such like intense lines dividing up parts of the face. Things kind of flow into each other. You start learning about shading and tone and like, it's fascinating, but you start. It forces you to see the world as it is versus symbolically. And so this the problem, if you ask me, one of the big problems is most of us are seeing the world symbolically. Like we are living in the world. The way you draw doodle, the way you draw cartoons, you draw what the eyeball looks like. It's not what the eyeball looks like. And so this is like, emojis. This is our. Essentially, the various, like, teams that everyone seems to have gathered on are people who are using a set of emojis that identify them as part of the team and that produce a symbolic representation of reality as it actually is versus, like, what it is. So why would it be good if all of a sudden people are beginning to realize that the symbol set being used by power structures and people to gain power and the hierarchy and all this stuff actually are ultimately empty of meaning? They don't mean anything anymore any more than a dollar bill means anything, or anything means anything that isn't directly from reality. You know, like, if you're in the fucking desert and you need water, it doesn't matter if you have a hundred sweet Mr. Beast bucks, you can't drink it. It's valueless. There's nothing there at all. And so this is blowing my mind thinking about this. Maybe you guys can think about, like, other versions of this, but just think of any term that has been overproduced. Think of any term that within the, like, bubble of whatever the particular. You got one, Josh. Whatever. In the bubble of whatever particular team people are aligning with has been overproduced to the point that it's meaningless. And there's also terms that have value depending on the team that you go to. I mean, essentially we're talking about all of these, like, cultural identity filter bubbles, within which if you go there and try to sling around your cold, hard identity cash with your symbol set, it is meaningless there. Or offensive, even.

[Josh]

Racist. That's the word I was thinking of. So many people throw around the word racist now that it's like, I've seen real racists. And it's like, that's. You're just throwing that. It's like, not. Or Nazi.

[Duncan Trussell]

Nazi. Racist. All these like, what? God, what's another fucking word that gets thrown around like. Okay, so those are the. Those are the right wing. No, those are the left wing insults. What are the right wing insults that get thrown around? What do we call them? Snowflake.

[Josh]

Snowflake, yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

What else? Snowflake. I don't know. I'd have to look up. I don't know, look up a list of fucking MAGA insults, you know, Copium. Cope. Coping trigger. I don't know. The point is, like, yeah, all these, like, words that are generally serious. There's certain words, by the way, that you can't do that too. Like murder, for example. Murder can't really get Murder is you kill somebody. You know, obviously you can use the word to say I murdered on stage or some bullshit like that, but murder as a term, like it's murder or not. Whereas with like racism. Crazy. Crazy is another one that, like, you know, that doesn't mean anything anymore. Crazy used to mean something, man. Like you were fucking autistic.

[Josh]

Everybody's autistic.

[Duncan Trussell]

There you go. Yeah. So what ends up happening? This over saturation of words that used to have specific meanings. The spreading out of these words ultimately reveals that we are living inside of a linguistic bubble. We live inside of a pseudo reality composed of the symbol sets that we are using to describe what's around us. And because we're starting to. In other words, like, let's take a word that generally doesn't get diluted. Tree, right? Like I point to a tree, you know what I'm talking about? If I say a tree, I sat underneath a tree, I took a shit under a tree today. You know what I'm saying? But if people started using the word tree to refer to telephone poles, cars, what happened with book? Do you remember when everyone started calling magazines books? I don't know, that's growing up in North Carolina. But you know, I remember when people started calling magazines books. It's like, dude, that's not a book, it's a fucking magazine.

[Josh]

That's Playboy.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's Playboy. Don't call that a book. So I'm reading, so. But ultimately though, this is what's good about it, is that I think when you hear people, and it's across the board, you hear the great awakening, people waking up. That waking up would mean leaving the dream state of living in a world of symbols that don't accurately represent reality. Living in a world where you recognize that the very thing you're building your identity up, your sense of self worth is based on how many imaginary stroke tokens you have in your fucking stroking bank. And those are meaningless, irrelevant. They don't mean anything.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Duncan Trussell]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Duncan Trussell]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Duncan Trussell]

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[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Duncan Trussell]

Like, it's really funny, too, when you think about stroke tokens. This is called the imbued personality. I think Alan Watts talked about this, but, like, you are sitting on an airplane and you've been having a conversation with some dude for, like, 30 minutes. Great conversation. The flight attendant comes and it's like, would you like something to drink, senator? And you're like, oh. Suddenly the conversation has all this extra fucking meaning because you realize you've been talking to a fucking senator and you didn't know they were a senator. Whoa. Nothing's changed. It's just a person you were having a conversation with. But because this is an imbued personality, their stroke tokens suddenly have way more value than the stroke tokens of just some rando that you were sitting next to yapping about mutual masturbation.

[Josh]

Then you find out they're a state senator. Oh, never mind.

[Duncan Trussell]

Oh, who gives a fuck?

[Josh]

Wyoming. What the fuck?

[Duncan Trussell]

By the way, that's a great idea for a name for a kid senator. Oh, yeah, because then anyone talks to him. Like, people like, God, Jesus, there's a senator over there. But the point is, once you start playing around with this Diogenes shit, it's pretty trippy. Like, just start playing around. Not with shitting in public or jerking off in public. I would not recommend that. But, like, start playing around with the idea that you aren't an American, you're not Mexican, you're not Iranian, you're not Israeli, but you're a citizen of the cosmos. Like, literally, you actually are. Not in some hippie fucking way, but you actually are. You're shit in your bones. The shit in your cells, it came from exploding stars. And when you start playing around that idea, suddenly, like, your sense of value, it changes for, like, as it should, because you. When you're a. When you realize, like, oh, my God, like, I live on a planet, I'm a planetary citizen, it feels almost blasphemous depending on how bad you've been conditioned. But it Feels a little weird to say I'm not an American. I live in America. I didn't choose to be an American. I'm actually a Earthling. I'm a person of Earth. And then it gets even deeper when you say, I'm a person of the galaxy, of the universe. Then you start throwing off all the heavy duty weight that goes with being whatever your fucking nationality is. Dude, there's a lot of weight. You're like, we're carrying all this bolt. We're carrying a big backpack full of fucking emojis based on whatever state, heavy fucking emojis. It's the greatest country on Earth, no matter who, where you are. If you're watching this, I would love to know, have you heard that, like, no matter what country you live in, Because I kind of think they. In any country you live in, you hear some version of this is the greatest country on Earth. And you hear that with cities, oh, my God, the vile, like, weird team war, like, against Los Angeles and Los Angeles against Texas. Or you tell people you're from Texas and they'll be like, are you okay?

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

It's like, shut the fuck. Of course I'm okay. But this is again, ridiculous high school fucking pep rally bullshit. Who fucking cares? That's the point. If this cultural inflation keeps going on, we begin to realize that ultimately the entire symbol set that we've based this whole goddamn thing on is ultimately empty. Then at the other side of that is the possibility of real liberation in the Buddhist sense and the Vajrayana tantric sense, which is everything's empty. Things are empty of real value. There isn't any real value in the dollars, just a fucking rectangle. There isn't any real value in the stroke tokens you've been getting from people. Doesn't mean anything. It's an echo. Like if a person gives you a stroke token, it's nothing. It goes away. All the fucking exhausting games we've been playing trying to fix the people around us, or as they try to fix us, all of them, all the tricks and traps that we've been putting in front of people or being fallen into ultimately are meaningless, empty of any real value. Because how can you gain anything when you are an expression of nature itself? The entire universe, the cosmos, that's you. Which means what is of ultimate value? That's the real question. What's real value? I know a lot of people might say compassion, but if you want to find some kind of currency that works anywhere you go, it's compassion. If we live In a place where fundamentally empty things are being mistaken for things that are full and people are getting addicted and attached to meaningless symbols cast lost in the spells cast by wizards using linguistic tricks to make us hate each other for no reason at all, then the only answer to that must be compassion. And I don't think that's it. I think the ultimate currency, the thing of true value in this world, is my subscribers on YouTube. And I know that sounds like a cheap fucking joke at the end of a long, solo rambling episode, but it ain't. Because here's why. Here's why, if I can fucking get these subscribers up to Mr. Beast's level, guess what I'm going to be doing? I'm going to be sending Mr. Beast my own box of chocolate. But it ain't going to be sweet chocolate. It's going to be Diogenes chocolate. It's going to be Diogenes street chocolate. I'm gonna shit in a box. Well, if we can get these fucking subscribers up, gang, we're gonna blow up those pyramids. We're gonna send Mr. Beast some chocolate. And most importantly, by destroying the pyramids, we symbolically and physically destroy the entire hierarchical framework that this entire idiot dinner party that we all got born into is based on. And that's true freedom. No more pyramids. No more suffering, no more pain. And most importantly, Mr. Beast will no longer be on YouTube. We're going to take him out. We're going to do it the way we've been doing it. What's the subscriber count out now, Josh?

[Josh]

One hundred and nine.

[Duncan Trussell]

We're at 109,000 subscribers right now. What was it, two months ago? We were at, what, 70?

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Duncan Trussell]

Now we're up to 109. That is 39. What is that? 39,000 extra subscribers. And I love every single one of you and I appreciate what you're doing out there. I've gotten reports and. Thank you. People are going door to door. People are going door to door asking people to subscribe to my podcast. That's good work. But I have one last mission for you. And it is an embarrassment, truly, and I've never understood it, but now I get it. I need you to participate in an experiment with me based on everything I just said. We must become inflationary accelerationists when it comes to cultural tokens. We've got to accelerate this bullshit to the point that all symbolic culture tokens become devoid of meaning. And to do that, I need you to press like on this video, because I want to just do an experiment and see what happens. Just like it. It's so dumb. I would never do that. Full disclosure, I've never liked a single YouTube video ever. And I've loved many. There's YouTube videos I think about to this day and I never click. Like, why that thumbs up? It's an embarrassment. Yeah, thank you for changing my life. But do it. Just. I want to see what happens. Just press like on this fucking thing. I just want to see what happens. I'm trying to understand the algorithm. And again, when you press that thumbs up thing, I just want you to imagine you doing a thumbs up to the beautiful spray of Diet Coke, Mentos and old shitty Egyptian rubble blasting through the air as the pyramids at last are wiped from our planet. I love you guys. I'll see you next week. Hare Krishna hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Albertsons and Safeway this holiday season, make sure you set aside time for self care now through December 31st. Shop in store and online for partition participating self care products and get four times points to use for discounts on future grocery and gas purchases. Stock up on self care favorites like Pantene Shampoo, Gillette Fusion and Proglide razors, Tampax Tampons, Aussie Base Hairspray and Pampers Swaddler's diapers. Offer ends December 31st. Restrictions apply. Promotions may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details. How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says, happy Fri. Yay. Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, Happy Friday, random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with Geico feels just like that. Get more with Geico.