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- [00:00]
Duncan Trussell
Hello, my dearest loves. It's me, Duncan. And you are watching the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast or listening to it. To my sweet listening audience, I welcome you here today. Before we get going with this premiere podcast, I feel like I have to mention a few things. Number one, paternity leave is over for old papa here and I'm headed back out on the road. This weekend's I'm going to be in Naples, Florida at the off the Hook Comedy Club. The next weekend, you can find me in Fort Wayne, Indiana at the Summit City Comedy Club. And then right after that, I'm headed to the Pittsburgh improv. And then March 26, the comedy works, one of my favorite clubs on the planet. I hope you'll come see me. All my dates, you can find them@duncantrussell.com or just go to the website of any of the clubs I just mentioned. I've got dates all the way through, through the summer and the fall. See where I'm going and I will be with you soon, resting my head in your lap after the show, weeping into your lap. So come. Also, I've been doing a new experiment that I would like you to participate in. If you subscribe to the dtfh, obviously you're gonna get updates about when we release a new episode, but I've sort of moved my solo episodes to the night and you can find them on my night stream. It's the new solo stream of the DTFH. Usually I'm doing them around 7 or 8 o'. Clock. All you gotta do is subscribe to YouTube and you'll get updates about when they're happening and they've been super fun. I hope you would join us for a night stream. For those of you who've been there. Boom. Yeah. All right. We have got an incredible episode for you today. Whenever this old man's brain gets a little confused, whenever this old man's brain feels a little overwhelmed by things happening in the world, I always reach out to my dear friend, Doug Rushkoff. He's got an awesome podcast, Team Human. He's written so many incredible, mind blowing books. He has been plugged in to what's happening in culture and technology in such a deep and brilliant and philosophical way that he always can shed light on things that. I mean, generally the things that are having light shed on them now are the same things that like burst into flames when light gets shed on on them. What I'm talking about is the sum total of all the bizarre disclosures, the Epstein files, the various leaks and hacks that all seem to be happening at the very same time. How do we react to this is the culture? Rushkoff has one of the most brilliant takes on what's going down right now that I've ever heard. So tune in, get ready, strap in, strap on, wet your entire body. And please welcome back to the dtfh, Doug Rushkoff. Doug, great to see you, man. How you doing?
- [03:17]
Doug Rushkoff
I'm doing it's life right now.
- [03:20]
Duncan Trussell
I'll tell you. There are so many things happening right now that I just, I really need you to help guide me through some of the quandaries I have related to what's going on right now. It seems like we have, I would say like three, four major world things happening right now. I'm going to go through them. You pick whichever one you want to start with. There are none of them if you don't want to. We've got the Epstein files percolating through the Internet. We've got potential war with Iran, which somehow seems to be on a lower tier as far as focus goes, which is wild. Then we've got the recent release of these incredible AIs that are now semi autonomous and can just code in your terminal window without you doing anything. Which also chatgpt said the most recent iteration, it self improved. It's the first time an AI improved itself. And going along with that release, we have resignations from the safety, from engineers in charge of safety and AI companies leaving cryptic tweets and shit that are quite ominous and unnerving to say the least. And what am I missing? We got Warther on and then, you know, Samantha Gustry. Those are the main ones right now. And it's just interesting the ones people are focusing on. But yeah, that's what I'm working on.
- [05:03]
Doug Rushkoff
I don't know, I'm looking at this. And also because in a fractal way, I'm dealing with this personally, I'm looking at this from the perspective of fatherhood.
- [05:14]
Duncan Trussell
Okay.
- [05:15]
Doug Rushkoff
You know, so we got, in America, we're looking at the end of kind of this fatherhood authoritarian stretch, that kind of colonial American thing.
- [05:29]
Duncan Trussell
Gotcha.
- [05:29]
Doug Rushkoff
You know, so there's that one, there's. There you look at AI is about how are we parenting this new form, this new child.
- [05:45]
Duncan Trussell
Right, okay.
- [05:46]
Doug Rushkoff
And the second one, what was your second one? Oh, and Iran. Iran is the other kind of paternalism, you know, is this, you know, other extreme, you know, male dominated ayatollah thing that's coming to an end. So I feel like we're, we're this sort of era of fatherhood of kind of male archetype trying to drive the friggin car, I mean, is, is kind of ending. And you know, and in the, the healthiest among us. I think the healthiest among us males who are driving are kind of like, honey, you drive.
- [06:31]
Duncan Trussell
You know, it's like I'm going off
- [06:33]
Doug Rushkoff
a cliff, you drive. Which is necessarily the healthiest end response either. But for a lot of us, for a lot of us, and I mean collectively as well, it's like, how are we going to hang on to this thing? You know, and the tech bro thing is also like, oh well, you know, so daddy gets to take the ultimate vacation to the next planet, you know, and leave humanity behind or whatever. But it feels, it feels a little bit like the, the, the uncomfortable end of a certain sort of well meaning in some cases version of paternalism Again. Even the Epstein thing that we're talking about is what is. Goes back to the Bible. It's the, the, the fear and temptation that patriarchs had to fuck their own daughters. I mean that happens in the Bible. Lot has sex with his daughter, they get him drunk, it's a thing. But it's still Epstein island biblical times, right? It's like it was still, it was still Rapo. So. And again, it's like that, that, it's, that it is a daddy, call me daddy thing. That, that it's like, how do we, and I'm not, I'm not sort of through figuring it out, but how do we, you know, evolve and kind of parent ourselves and become genuine adults here rather than these kind of baby daddies that we are now?
- [08:06]
Duncan Trussell
Right. Well, that's scary. I mean, you know, anybody who had to back up what you're saying, anybody who's had an aging parent knows the first moment where you realize, wait a minute, I don't think they're quite all there right now. Like, I'm not sure they're. This is a person who, you know, you had to obey. This is the person who taught you how to walk and talk and suddenly the machine's breaking down a little bit and you don't want to admit it. So you, you can go, you can go. You know, a few years kind of acting like, ah, you know, it's just they're probably tired or something. And then at some point you do get to the place you're talking about, which is a seminal moment in an adult's life, is when they have to tell their parent, no, you're not driving. Not because they're drunk, but because they're too old and they can't drive. And I've seen it happen and it is a dramatic moment. I saw it at a party. A group of people standing around their elderly patriarch, some of them crying because he wanted to fucking drive. And it's like, no, you could just look at him like, that guy should not be on the road. And so you are so right to draw a parallel between the national experience for the last two presidencies and that experience that any adult has, which is, wait a minute, I don't think you should be driving the car. You aren't making sense. Except in this case, the car has nuclear missiles attached to it. So it's a little different in the sense of, you know, if grandpa or Pop Pop drives the car and rear end somebody that's gonna.
- [09:55]
Doug Rushkoff
Yeah, well, he could still run over a line of kindergarten kids walking across the street.
- [10:00]
Duncan Trussell
You can't drive that good. It's not just he doesn't have that
- [10:03]
Doug Rushkoff
name, but, but, but it's interesting when you talk, when you talk about it that way. I feel like it's like in the 1960s we kind of had that adolescent moment, that 13, 14, 15 year old where we were like, oh, mom and dad aren't perfect, but now, you know, and then we went through our 20s or so and sort of tried to experience independence, but now we're kind of in our 30s, 40s, 50s, where it's like, oh, mom and dad are not really competent, Daddy's not. You know, it's interesting. And there is that moment that is that moment.
- [10:36]
Duncan Trussell
And let me add to it, we've all seen it happen. The billionaire elderly person gets a hot, super hot, super young girlfriend that is obviously in it for the inheritance, in it for the money, in it for the power. And generally when it's like the age disparity is that massive, it's less judged. It's like, yeah, I mean, shit, it's a pretty interesting business model, but in this case in the doddering elderly patriarchs leading the planet, leading the country, it's not some like blonde bombshell with, you know, fake tits sucking their dick every once in a while. Watches. It's lobbyists. I'm sorry, it's oligarchs. You have sidled up to the elderly. Yeah.
- [11:29]
Doug Rushkoff
And the, the, our participation in it doesn't have the qualities of consent. You know what I mean? If a 20 something model wants to go out with a 90 something media baron, it's like, you know, you're making your choice I get it. You're going to put in the 10 years, get $100 million and still be 35 and hot and get your real husband, then.
- [11:51]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, that's all.
- [11:51]
Doug Rushkoff
It's your. Your choice.
- [11:53]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [11:54]
Doug Rushkoff
You know, we as a society right now, I don't feel like we are. We are experiencing consent for our submission to this, you know, aged oligarchy. And I think that's part of why the Epstein story is so profound, because we're looking and saying, wow, you know, this whole society, the power structures in the society that we're living in weren't really based in consent either. This is how sort of capitalism and European colonialism, this is how they work. They would go to a place Native Americans didn't consent.
- [12:33]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [12:34]
Doug Rushkoff
Africans didn't consent. And now it's like, oh, so the society, the culture, the sexuality, the fetishes that were built on top of this kind of civilization didn't involve consent. And the part I think that's so strange for many of us is like the worst I could imagine things getting in this kind of society was kind of Bill Clinton era stuff where it's like, I'm gonna use my power and charisma and charm to convince young women to give themselves to me. You know, when you see the Epstein thing, it's like, oh, man, this isn't that. This is so many notches worse.
- [13:18]
Duncan Trussell
No, no, no. It's like, yeah, it's in. You know, also when the Clinton stuff, who knows what other stuff we didn't hear about?
- [13:27]
Doug Rushkoff
I don't know. Right? We didn't. But the kind of stuff that we were so upset about, and I still am, is like using a. Using a framework of power to not to get to total like Harvey Weinstein metoonists, but to leverage your power like professors fucking their students and things like that that are, that are. People say there's consent, but it's like, dude, look at this dynamic. It's very different from. And this is the thing I've been interested in, sort of the permission structure that allowed for that kind of rape to happen. And I was. I experienced the edges of that.
- [14:06]
Duncan Trussell
What do you mean?
- [14:07]
Doug Rushkoff
And I had a. And I don't want to talk about names just because it makes things too searchable, but my literary agent back in the early 90s when I was a just baby up and coming cyber writer, was inviting me to these kind of parties of scientists and cocktail parties of the sort of the elite scientists. And I remember just initially just having. I wrote about it in Survival of the Richest the experience of their atheism was so profound and so haughty and so patronizing. I would talk about human soul and intention and what. And they'd be like, oh, there's nothing. You're crazy. You're a moralist. You're nobody. And then of course, 10, 15 years later, I see those same scientists on the Lolita Express going out to TED as funded Epstein scientists. And I realized, oh, well, of course, if Epstein is going to do what he's doing to these people, he's got to believe that there's nobody home, that there's no soul, there's nothing, that women are just vegetables. So there was that. But also I was invited to these. I got. I can talk about it. We're among friends here. Got invited to this cocktail party, expensive dinner thing with all the scientist people. And they're going to be a lot of the, like the owners of the early.com super companies like AOL and those sort of things. The first.com billionaires kind of people. And the guy said, you can come. And you know, because you're kind of cool in East Village, whatever, you can come.
- [15:41]
Duncan Trussell
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- [18:59]
Doug Rushkoff
So, anyway, so I got invited to this dinner party of, like, famous scientists and. And the owners of some of the early technology companies, really high status. And the guy said, you know, okay, you can come plus one, right? You can come plus one, but don't waste it, you know, and. Because these are really super people. And I was like, oh, my God, don't waste it. Don't waste it. So I invited the smartest woman I know. She was head of one of the early, like, literary websites when there were only like 50 websites out there. Just super genius Brooklyn, you know, knock. And I bring her there. I get there, and as soon as we get in, the guy, the host grabs my wrist, pulls me aside, and he says, how dare you waste your plus one on a lesbian?
- [19:50]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, my God.
- [19:52]
Doug Rushkoff
And I was like, what? And he goes, I invited. You're young. You're the cool Easter. I invited you plus one so you could raise the quotient in the room. And he's like, look. And then around the room were, like, a lot of guys with young, you know, arm candy women. And I find that later, like, 20 years later, I realized that was one of the dinners funded by Jeffrey Epstein.
- [20:18]
Duncan Trussell
Holy shit.
- [20:20]
Doug Rushkoff
The scientist dinners that he would fund in New York, you know, to hobnob with these scientists and bring in, you know, because he was also interested in life extension and all that kind of stuff and eugenics. But he was apparently smart. But he liked talking to scientists about these ideas to help kind of justify his. His own version of, you know, transhumanism and spread my genes as far as they can go.
- [20:43]
Duncan Trussell
He was, you know, so he was probably at this party.
- [20:46]
Doug Rushkoff
He was probably at the party. But I was so punk and Gen X that I didn't want to sit at any of the tables with the billionaires. It's like, fuck all y'.
- [20:55]
Spin Quest Advertiser
All.
- [20:55]
Doug Rushkoff
I don't need to meet the head of aol. I'm good, you know.
- [20:58]
Duncan Trussell
Wow. And so they were mad because, like, Epstein's looking around, there's all these young dates that potentially he could poach. And then there you are. How dare you? A Brooklyn lesbian, completely inaccessible to. To the other side of these parties. Oh, my God.
- [21:20]
Doug Rushkoff
Because it was a marketplace. And it's like, oh, I get it. I'm invited. Partly because I can hold a conversation I can keep up. And part because I was like a new Internety, whatever, like the kid at the table. But mainly because he figured as a down, he didn't know me. He figured as a downtown, somebody lives on Avenue B, I would know, you know, whatever. They were hot Gen X's.
- [21:41]
Duncan Trussell
Holy shit.
- [21:42]
Doug Rushkoff
That is so anyway, so yeah, it's. It is sinister. It is sinister, but it's the, it's the. I could see it because that night, I mean, I went home. I mean, I was 28, 29 something, and I was still young and stupid enough to be thinking, what's wrong with me, right? That maybe he's right, that I should have used this for that. And look at these asshole guys. This is why I didn't get laid in high school. The girls I hung out with and talked to and confided in me, they'd always go out with the assholes, right? And they felt like not with. Not with me. And so there was a time, a good hour or two anyway, where I was like, am I going about this wrong? Am I not being masculine? And then I realized, no, they're not. That's not masculinity. That's something else, right? That, that masculinity is a. Is a confidence to sure to hang out with your lesbians, with your guys, with your whoever. To not feel like you have to somehow leverage every social advantage you have to the procurement of what high market value 20 something hotness.
- [22:54]
Duncan Trussell
You didn't accessorize appropriately. I guess from that perspective, it was a kind of like costume party. But in this case, it wasn't like, dress like your favorite superhero. It's like, bring a meat accessory with you. And we're, you know, because, you know, you go to a costume party, some motherfucker has invested $1,000 in some insane costume you threw on, some shit you got at the Halloween store. And an inevitable hierarchy emerges based on costuming. In this case, they. They wanted you to dehumanize another person. Right? That was. That's the idea that. And that runs through the Epstein files. These. They don't look at the people that they're manipulating, exploiting, abusing, fucking trafficking as humans. They. They see them as some kind of like Android flesh thing that is basically there for them to do whatever the fuck they want to. And so yeah, that's what you experienced, man.
- [23:58]
Doug Rushkoff
Yeah.
- [23:59]
Duncan Trussell
And it was an. It was.
- [24:00]
Doug Rushkoff
And if you.
- [24:01]
Duncan Trussell
A test. It was a test.
- [24:02]
Doug Rushkoff
And by. And by, it was a test. It wasn't a. From. From. Not from them. It was a test from. From a higher power, you know, and a great, A great learning lesson for. For me in that. And ultimately a confidence builder. But what it did, the reason why it's a threat to them in that world is because it kind of violates the permission structure that they've created. They have a permission structure where you're allowed to do whatever you want to one of these girls. You're allowed to. To live this way. You're allowed to think about women that way. So if you're not, you know, it's like you're being a spoil sport to the game that you're supposed to be playing there.
- [24:43]
Duncan Trussell
Well, yeah. And you could potentially create a crack in the windshield of the pov. You have to maintain to be able to execute some of the shit that is being executed in those emails and files. The moment you let any sense of, are we monsters? Are we maybe the worst people that ever lived? We're really seemingly hurting people and lying to them. Maybe we're bad. The moment someone comes in with any kind of just normal conscience, the whole game is at risk. It could spread like wildfire. Then there's gonna be arrest, someone's gonna snitch. And you just saw. You just saw because you fucked up from their perspective because you didn't pass the first test. You just saw the very driveway of whatever this gated horror pleasure dome is.
- [25:46]
Doug Rushkoff
Right?
- [25:46]
Duncan Trussell
I know.
- [25:47]
Doug Rushkoff
Like Tom Cruise in the Eyes Wide Shot. I only got to that first gate, didn't get into the party. I mean, thank God I didn't go to the friggin party because who knew? You know, you get on an airplane, oh, we're gonna go see a bunch of scientists on an island and talk about evolution. You know, who knows? I would have hopped on a plane to go with a bunch of scientists to Talk about evolution.
- [26:09]
Duncan Trussell
Of course you would have. I mean, that is. You know, that's the sort of, like, discernment. I think some. This is gonna. I feel like before, like, just because someone's in those fucking files, like Stephen Hawking, for example, I don't know what he was doing over there, but my guess would be. I mean, I just think back when I was a young comic, if Epstein had been in the fucking audience and had been like, why don't you guys come do a show on my island? I wouldn't have. I would have, like, probably in most
- [26:45]
Doug Rushkoff
comics, 10 grand a pop, 10 grand business class air or private jet to go to. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't know until hopefully, what we have, and this is what we're supposed to have, is, like, agents and managers and others to look at things and always be like, oh, Duncan, you know, that might not be the island to go to.
- [27:05]
Duncan Trussell
Don't go to the island. Or they're like, hey, I'll see you on the island. It just so happens I'm booked there that very same week. I mean, this. Because this is to get back to your original brilliant analogy there. What we're looking at is archetypical, and I think that's where a lot of people can take comfort because it would be easy to see what's happening and feel like you don't have anything to compare it to or what Handle linguistic handles can I use to break down what's happening? And I think what we're witnessing is what you're saying. Elderly patriarchy losing control. Family in this ridiculous position of having to safely withdraw power from this person who used to be the most powerful thing in their minds, but then you have to add to it, but also you're finding out that not only should the grandfather not be driving the car, the grandfather has been fucking your sister for the last five years or something. You know what I mean? You have to add the other side to it, which is that what's emerging with the Epstein thing is identical. From what I've seen in families where there's abuse, which is the victim is quite often maligned, called a liar, called overreactive, or basically, it's like, you know, you're gonna wreck our entire family if you say anything about what your grandfather did to you. You know that, right? Like, you're gonna ruin our family's reputation. You're gonna destroy. And it's true. It's true. And I think it was Pam Bondi or one of these people said it out loud. If we release everything, basically, it will destabilize the United States. It's a security threat because of what it will do if all these names come out. It'll fuck up the economy. It'll fuck everything up. It is the nationalist version of. Listen, your grandfather, he's a complex man and he regrets what he did, and he's not doing it anymore. So don't you talk about this to anybody ever. It'll destroy our family and our inheritance. You know what I mean? So you have these defenders emerging who did the exact fucking thing that happens in systems like that, tried to lie about it, tried to shame the victims. The whole thing is identical, but it's.
- [29:49]
Doug Rushkoff
Yeah, and it's. It's. It's also metaphoric or analogous to the American project as well. It's like, America's this great place and we came here, but yes, we did a genocide of the natives who were here. Yes, we used all these enslaved people to build it. Yeah. And it's like. But, you know, it's really hard. I mean, that's the thing. And I get it, you know, and, you know, Wokeness may have attempted to reckon with that karma in a primitive, childlike way that left no room for reconciliation. That was just, you know, shame and shame and casting out rather than casting in and actually having the conversation, you know, and then while we're having. While we're dealing with that, and in some ways, as a country, we kind of pushed back against that. We look on the other side and say, oh, no, but these guys were actually doing way worse things now than that.
- [30:55]
Duncan Trussell
Now, this is now.
- [30:56]
Doug Rushkoff
Oh, my God, we were freaking out about what this face, you know, going with that on the. On the woman's titties on the plane. Al Franken, you know, you know, you know, it's like stuff like that, or, you know, Louis CK jerking off in front of people, you know, and it's like, that was like, these were the crimes. Not that they're not awful in their own ways, but it was like. It was like, okay, we can't just. We can't kick these people out of reality for the rest of their lives for those things. And, and we kind of over push then against that. And it's like, okay, now we can't have any class with the word feminism in any university in the United States for it to keep its funding. It's like, wait, wait, wait, wa. And then we look on this side and it's like, oh, my God, these guys did such worse stuff than we were even upset about before. And then you think, which is also dark is, you know. And I was friends with Genesis P orridge who was this musician who inspired a lot of psychic industrial people. Yeah. And Trent Reznor and all. And Genesis always used to say, oh, you know, the kings and queens and Parliament in England, they've always maintained these, you know, population of children that they do, you know, sex rituals.
- [32:12]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [32:12]
Doug Rushkoff
To this horrible stuff. And I was like never. I like wink, wink. Yeah, yeah. Kind of maybe like Tower of London, Queen Victoria, Jack the Ripper era. And then like scandals came out in the 70s and 80s and it was like, oh, kind of true. And it was. And that's almost, you know, like, like the Catholic Church sort of stuff, but. But worse in some ways. And then this. And I start to think, geez, this has been a continuous thing. This is, this is not like some weird, you know, 1980s, 90s aberration that was just, you know, some Ghislaine Maxwell Massad, Jeffrey Epstein, honeypot trap, anomaly. This is the continuity of what people do when they get to extreme power. And of course, in a world where now the disparity of wealth, where there's fewer people that own more stuff than ever before.
- [33:11]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [33:11]
Doug Rushkoff
When the fewer richer people own more human beings, regular people, the 99% own less than they ever have before in America, it's that extreme that of course that same sort of abuse is going to get more extreme. It's gonna come to a head.
- [33:30]
Duncan Trussell
Well, I mean, this is. So this, this place that you're pointing to is, I guess you could call it a kind of like cultural Nibiru, the Sumerian planet that supposedly exists out there and has a weird orbit, but whenever it gets close enough to the planet, it fucks shit up because of the gravity of the thing. This is a. You know, and you know, astronomers and stuff have seen things out there that it seems like there's some massive object that could be out there. Maybe that's what they were talking about, maybe it's myth. But the Nibiru in this case is the story Genesis P orich told you. That's the invisible doom planet. And we've heard it before, we've seen it in all kinds of depictions from Rosemary's Baby to Eyes Wide Shut. There's some sort of, not just depraved cobble of sex maniacs out there, but it's ritualistic, it's intentional, it has history that is not broken. It's not like every. When there's just power disparity, suddenly people start Raping children. It's that. No, no, no, no. That is the way it has been and is right.
- [34:52]
Doug Rushkoff
And if it is, then you start to wonder and in the place where, and I haven't decided yet, that is there evil as a thing. And by ignoring the existence of evil, do we let it manifest and grow. In other words, me being sort of hippie person, to think the only energy is light, the only thing is love. And evil is just the absence of love. A place that love hasn't reached and filled in warmth. Sort of like heat and cold. There's no such thing as cold. There's only lack of heat. In physics. Maybe you know that, that, that good and evil are like that or, you know, which. Which way is it? So are these guys, is this stuff evil? Like evil evil? Or is it a permission structure that slowly, like Hannah Aret, the one who wrote about the banality of evil, wrote about this after World War II, that I was just following orders and everyone else was doing it. And it kind of seemed that you just slowly go down that slippery slope that, that, that Epstein funded party I went to.
- [36:15]
Duncan Trussell
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- [39:06]
Doug Rushkoff
I start to think, what if I had just done something else? If I had, if I had thought, oh, why don't I bring the hottest woman I can find? And then they all like. And then they're inviting me into the back room and I got my hot date. And then I'm looking around, it's like, oh, my God, they're all getting blowjobs from their hot dates. This is pretty weird. And then, you know, oh, so, but, but is this okay? And it's like, well, there's the Prince of England, right? There's a president of this. There's no Chop Noam Chomsky, right? It's like if they're all saying, right, he's like, my, he's like my, my, my Naomi in terms of, you know, social justice warrior thing. It's like if all those people are there saying, doug, it's okay, you know, the age of consent in Japan was only 13 years old until a couple of years ago. This is the way societies have always been. If anything, the anomaly is America and it's puritanism that you have to be 17, 18 years old. She's getting something from you, you're getting something from her. You're always going to make sure you're going to get her to college and a good job. This is the ancient Greeks and ancient
- [40:10]
Duncan Trussell
Romans and, and you're on ecstasy.
- [40:13]
Doug Rushkoff
And you're on ecstasy or you're drunk or you want to get the job or you just got $100,000 funding for your scientific project. From the end, it's like, geez. And so is it that. Or maybe these guys just incrementally fall into this thing. Like, you know, like, because of the permission structure around it. Now Hannah Arendt says we have to think of it that way because otherwise, you know, if we so look at these guys as alien from us, then we're in danger of falling into the same thing. Rather, we have to realize we are all potentially sinners. You know, we all have that. That. That gene, that tendency. And we do have to be, you know, not on guard for doing evil, but listening to that. And that's the thing going back to that night. I got in that room. The guy grabs my wrist and says, how dare you bring a lesbian as you're a plus one. Something in my solar plexus really did say, this is wrong. This is fucked up, you know, right? This is off the same way. And when I was like 14 years old in a play, the adult director of the play kind of grabbed me in a way that I knew was wrong. And I got that feeling like, oh, this is. Oh, bad thing happening here. You know, that just the beginning of being kind of molested. That same feeling came up when I was in that room. And we got to trust that thing. The temptation in that moment is to suppress it and go, yeah, but I'm going to get money. I'm going to get this. I'm going to do the thing. I'm going to perform on the island. Whatever. I'm just do whatever I have to do to get to the next place in my career or with this woman or with money. And it's that moment. And we all get those moments in our lives that we gotta listen to it. It's just. It's hard when you're backed into a corner or where there's a big temptation, but you kind of have to.
- [42:19]
Duncan Trussell
Okay, so again, you can. You know, what's. I think the moment you just draw the connection between. I mean, what you just described, that feeling when an adult is trying to fuck you is, you know, sadly, I think a lot of us have had that feeling as children or something adjacent to it. And you gotta. If you can remember that feeling. Some people don't remember that feeling as being entirely unpleasant. Because what's going along with it is you're special. I think you're, you know, you might be young, but I think you're so smart that you're like, you're old enough to understand some things that kids your age can't so right there you have. Right.
- [43:05]
Doug Rushkoff
Why'd he pick me?
- [43:06]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, why did the Illuminati pick me? Right there you have the identical structure, the perfect structure. The pattern of abuse is weirdly equivalent to the way people get drawn in and initiated into all kinds of nefarious sociopathic systems. It's the. Whatever the system may be, might be, you know, it could be startup.
- [43:34]
Doug Rushkoff
Startup culture, for that matter. Oh, I did my pitch for Y Combinator and they picked me. I got 50 million dollar valuation. Why me? I don't know, but it's me. I must be great, right?
- [43:48]
Duncan Trussell
You know, the question is, are you cool, man? You're not a cop, are you? And like, so depending on what system you're entering the way of verifying that indeed you are not a cop and you are cool is usually by. In front of the people you're wishing to be included by breaking some law, doing something that makes you bound to them by the fact that they've all witnessed some variety of crime, whether it's taking a hit of acid, whether it's like, you know, in some gangs you got to do a crime. Like you have to do, beat somebody down or rob a fucking store or some shit. It. It. You know, one of. I had a. I'm trying to think of a way to not connect. I just will be very. I had a friend who like, literally went through the initiation process of getting into a clandestine gang and.
- [44:39]
Doug Rushkoff
Right.
- [44:40]
Duncan Trussell
You know, the. It was fascinating to hear the steps. The steps you recognize.
- [44:45]
Doug Rushkoff
Well, yeah, like the Yale secret societies and stuff. You know what they do, they gotta like lie in a coffin and jerk off or something. I mean, something that's sort of irretrievably embarrassing. And it's just like the kompromat that Ghislaine and Jeffrey were gathering for. All the guys going to that island. That's what it's for.
- [45:05]
Duncan Trussell
Listen to the. I've been listening to the audiobook that. That movie, that famous mob movie was based on. Wise Guy or something. It's basically this. It's fascinating because the guy who's now like in witness protection, he was born right next to a cab stand where the mafia was like one of their bases of operation. And, you know, at first he just gets a job parking cars, but then,
- [45:34]
Doug Rushkoff
of course, this great Ray Liatta movie.
- [45:37]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, there, that's real. That's biographical. And so then, you know, you're not just parking cars anymore. Now they give you one little cutesy little criminal thing to do. And then over time, you become like a Made man. You're literally in a crime family. And so these are the. When you look at the thing as an organism, this is the cellular wall that determines a threat from a non threat. And that cellular wall has a mechanism of not just determining that you're not going to be a threat to the organism itself, but changing your DNA over time slowly, so that you then become part of the organism, you're absorbed into it. So what you're talking about is absolutely correct. It's a childish idea that suddenly you just become evil. It doesn't happen like that. And it's also a childish idea that you good, you evil. It's like no, man, like people find themselves in all kinds of predicaments and pickles and they need money and it's a whole gumbo of neuroses and insecurities and ambitions and pridefulness that mix together to make you a perfect mark to get sucked into this shit. But all that being said, weirdly, it's somehow it would be better to shoot a stranger in the face than to abuse a child. If we're looking at a hierarchy of where you're not like, you can listen to wise guy, this guy talks about killing countless people, his friends killing countless people. And you listen to that and somehow he still sounds like an affable, dangerous man. He's a mob guy. But if you replace those moments with hurting children, it would be unlistenable.
- [47:34]
Doug Rushkoff
Exactly. But that's why, you know, my life project, this whole team human thing even, has been about how do we extricate ourselves from this. And I get there are people, you know, who are ambitious and smarter in certain ways than I am, who are looking at how do you do it? Legislatively, judicially, punitively and systemically in that way. And where I'm looking at it is more how do we do it? Kind of socio, emotionally, ourselves, right? So some of us, 2% of us, 5% of us, whatever, can go and march and write laws and do all that. But. But as a society, what we've got to do is learn, learn to operate from this other place. It's almost like we need to do a kind of a collective 12 steps not from our addict to alcohol or a drug, but from our addiction to this need to somehow control or silence that inner voice, that thing. How do we move through our day? And it's going to be a slow, meticulous process. How do we move through our day? And in a way that unwinds the more exploitative, dehumanized relationships, how do you
- [49:08]
Duncan Trussell
unnumb and it's tricky. How do you un numb, right? Because it's like something has happened. Something has happened where I guess the equivalent to emotional ozempic has been injected into people's brains. Like where you're supposed to feel horror, where you're supposed to feel like, no, it might be there, but you get a sense of like, man, it feels like if I saw some of this shit ten years ago, I'd have a more powerful reaction than I have now. I feel like many of us have been numbed down and just because we wanted to survive. I mean, again, I don't want to keep going back to your family systems thing, but it's so brilliant. It's like. Like in the same way that if you were born into a dysfunctional, alcoholic, codependent, fucked up psycho family dude, good luck keeping that human thing going when you're watching your fucking dad hold a gun on your mom. Good luck doing that when you don't know which version of the parent you're meeting that day. Is this the crazy dad, or is this the nice dad, or is this the drunk dad? So you numb it down. Now, if this exact thing is mirroring in some kind of weird Jungian, the projected shadow of millions of dysfunctional families ripped apart by PTSD from multiple fucking wars the United States has been in. And now that dark shadow is being projected into the political class. If that's fucking happening, of course you're numbed down right now. Of course you're not feeling it anymore. Of course when you hear warships have moved towards Iran, you're not like, what the fuck? No, no more fucking stupid wars in the Middle East. Of course you're just like, ah, I guess I'll go get a coffee. You know what I mean? That is the national. That is this callous that has grown on. On many of us feels impenetrable, you know, and anyone out there is, you know, survived some fucked up childhood. You know what I'm talking about? It's not like you can just be like, I want to feel again and then suddenly you feel right. It takes time and work.
- [51:33]
Doug Rushkoff
Yeah, but you do it exactly. But you do it a moment at a time. A teeny thing. It's like you're walking down the street. Do I feel safe enough now to look up from my phone and just look at other people going by, See if someone makes eye contact with me, you know, give it. Do like a 32nd practice.
- [51:55]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [51:57]
Doug Rushkoff
You start really, really little and you. And you just start to notice. You Start to notice things. I know it sounds pathetic, okay? We're invading Iran and rushkoff saying, take 30 seconds down the street, but I promise that's where it starts. Because you are part of the greater human organism. I'm not saying if you meditate today, you'll save the whales 2,000 miles away. But part of that is true. If you move through the world differently, it does change the organism. It's got to start somewhere. Because if you're doing it and then the person you extra nice to one person for 30 seconds, and then they're extra nice to another person for 30 seconds, my God, that moves so quickly and trickles up and around in all different places.
- [52:49]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, yeah. First of all, I do not think what you said sounds pathetic. I think maybe for some. I don't know. I doubt for anyone listening to this, you sound pathetic to me, actually. Anyone who's done the exercise you're talking about, anybody who's tried to do that. It doesn't even have to. I mean, do it with, like, your own family. Do it with, like, you know, just notice how uncomfortable you might feel doing what you just described. Note, like, for me, I. Like, I've been noticing that. That thing where you fully open yourself up to another person you're not familiar with or somebody that you know you. You never going to run into again, probably. And how it feels weird. Like, it feels like writing with your left hand or something, that there's an initial offness to the experience. Vulnerable, potentially dangerous, potentially like, you know, uncontrollable. All the things that you have adapted a skill set for to survive in a world where if you aren't being literally confronted with violence, aggression and shittiness, you're getting it from your screens and you've your brain.
- [54:04]
Doug Rushkoff
And that's the other thing. It's not to say that the things on the screen aren't happening. They are happening.
- [54:09]
Duncan Trussell
They're. They're real.
- [54:11]
Doug Rushkoff
But there's not necessarily a lot you could do about those things right directly today. So it's like, yes, Gaza, yes, the Kurds, yes, Uyghur. Yes, Epstein. And.
- [54:41]
Duncan Trussell
This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by. Soul. Look, you know, maybe some of you out there sleep like little babies. You just lay your head on your pillow and close your eyes and just go to sleep. A nice dreamless sleep from which you wake up feeling refreshed and overjoyed to meet the new day. But it could be that some of you out there struggle with sleep. And if you want to add to things to worry about as you're trying to fall asleep. Look up the data on the effect over time of not getting enough sleep. You might as well just let tiny little weasels run into your nose and nibble on the parts of your brain that hold all your most precious memories. The parts of your brain that help you feel happy or good or stable. You need sleep. Sleep Garbage truck of the night comes in, cleans out the accumulated disease fragments. That's my own word. I don't know what actually is happening. Flushes your brain basically the way you flush a toilet. So if you're not getting enough sleep, then your brain is essentially like one of those toilets at a rest area that's been clogged for a couple of days, just filled with the accumulated excrement of your subconscious mind. You got to get good sleep. And this is why I love soul. They have amazing CBD gummies that are fantastic. I highly recommend the out of office gummy. This is what you want when you're ready to start winding down and yeah, sure, get some red fucking lights, Wrap yourself up in some kind of silk vibrating thing. You can still do that. Or take an out of office gummy and then just catch up on your sleep. The difference it makes when you finally get eight hours a night, seven hours is so extreme that the first few days of feeling rested are shocking. Shocking. With precise dosing, clean ingredients and formulations designed for predictable feel good effects, SOL is the alcohol alternative that puts you in control of your mood. The best selling out of office gummies I mentioned earlier deliver a customizable calming buzz. I love them. Give yourself the gift of a healthier unwind. Right now, Sol is offering my audience 30% off your entire order. Go to getsoul.com, use code duncan. That's getsoul.com, promo code duncan for 30% off. Thank you, Sol.
- [57:52]
Doug Rushkoff
The way your high leverage point to impact those situations might be how much oil are you consuming? How what relationships are you modeling? How are you talking to your friends? That those are high leverage points and there's a powerlessness that comes along with are we going to invade friggin Iran and what am I going to do about it? And I got friends who are on that base. Are they going to be sent over to Iran? It's like I thought we this guy was the one who was not going to get us in any wars. This, wait a minute, you know, and it's like that's all real. But limit your day, you know, in the old Days we used to watch the news at 6:30 to 7 every night, or 6 to 7, like Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather, Peter Jennings. The end of the day was everything there. They kind of made sense about it as much as they could. And then you went on, and we kind of need to do that.
- [58:53]
Ryan Seacrest
Otherwise.
- [58:53]
Doug Rushkoff
Otherwise, if we're focusing on the figures on the screen, we are becoming less engaged with the ground on which we live. They own the figures. Paramount, Larry Ellison, Trump, Elon Musk, whoever it is, they own that landscape. And it's not real. It feels so much bigger. It feels so much bigger than the real world in which we live. But it's smaller. It's smaller. Digital will never be bigger than reality.
- [59:25]
Duncan Trussell
Listen, man, it's a teeny thing, okay? This popped into my head because I wish I could cite where I got the source of this. Somebody wrote this sort of brilliant paper on. Algorithmic propaganda and mind control. How subtle it could be. And so. Which is fascinating, just basically talking about if you wanted to control public sentiment, you could do it in tiny little drip drops with an algorithm based on what you already know. They're like, now, let's add to that what kim.com just tweeted. I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently Palantir got hacked. Palantir got hacked. Of course, what you would expect the hacker would find at Palantir, surveillance of all world leaders.
- [60:18]
Doug Rushkoff
Everything of everybody. Everybody's dick size. Everybody's.
- [60:23]
Duncan Trussell
Everybody's dick size. That's all that was at Palantir. That was the only information there.
- [60:29]
Unknown Interjection
They knew.
- [60:30]
Duncan Trussell
That's all they needed to control the world.
- [60:32]
Doug Rushkoff
I know stuff, though, that we don't even know about ourselves. Because Palantir, they know whether to measure from the top or the bottom. They got it all down.
- [60:40]
Duncan Trussell
So. So mix that in with the other. And I think it's worth noting how all of these things are happening simultaneously. The Epstein files, all of these things that are these kinds of cultural disclosure moments. For whatever reason, they're happening at the same time. I guess when Doge went in to the Social Security Department, somebody just put everyone's Social Security numbers on, like a
- [61:07]
Doug Rushkoff
thumb drive or something. Yeah, they took everything. They took everything. And then Larry Ellison is building, what's it called? Stargate Project Stargate, which is to gather all of our DNA, get DNA on everybody in the world.
- [61:19]
Duncan Trussell
There you go. So from just these things that we know are now, I wouldn't call them publicly accessible, but theoretically accessible by people who could Figure out how to get the data. It would be so easy to connect a profile of somebody based on all this data that's been vacuumed up by all these various nefarious organizations and people, and plug that into a person's social media account and then let an AI determine algorithmically what tiny tidbits of content you might need to feed people on an individual level to shift their opinion on certain policies that, that you need in place. And at that point, it is the word Orwellian gets thrown around. But this is infinitely worse than Orwell, because in that dystopian nightmare, you know, you know, you have to put yourself in a state of denial and just believe that two plus two equals five to survive. In this case, there's nothing to resist because it's no longer Big Brothers watching you. It's tiny drip drops. Based on B.F. skinner and based on everything that's known about you and based on everything you've posted that are very, very slowly, slowly pushing you towards an epiphany.
- [62:52]
Doug Rushkoff
Yeah, this is what I started writing about this in 1999.
- [62:57]
Duncan Trussell
It must feel good to watch it happen.
- [63:00]
Doug Rushkoff
Coercion, where I said just that, that we're building a Skinner box of behavioral control that will use sort of the feedback loops of each thing we do. It can adjust and tune, adjust and tune, and every interaction is another training opportunity until we are that. Then what brings me to two questions, though. It's like, first, in that sort of frog in the water example people use in reality, when the water gets hot, the frog always jumps out.
- [63:28]
Duncan Trussell
Is that true?
- [63:29]
Doug Rushkoff
It does. It actually jumps out. It doesn't boil in there, it jumps the fuck out. Yeah, duh. Is there a place where we will jump out? Where we go, oh, you know, this killing and raping of people and stuff is really just not.
- [63:49]
Duncan Trussell
Not my thing.
- [63:52]
Doug Rushkoff
Right. I'm getting stomachaches. Why am I getting stomachaches? Oh, because I don't like killing. It's like. Or whatever that. I mean, we would see if that happens. The other scary thing, the more primitive thing they can do with these systems, is they can very easily predict who's going to resist, who's going to make a podcast that talks about some of these things and warns people about that. And then you. The AIs can very easily just go, oh, let's give a few tax audits over there. You know, let's do a few insurance denials. Let's, you know, the easy stuff. It's like you want to keep Duncan Trussell off the playing field. For a while. Jump two or three audits on that guy, he's not going to be talking that much for the next year. You know, it's like the systems they have are going to be, I think are going to be more penal than they are high.
- [64:51]
Duncan Trussell
They don't even. They don't need to get to the audit. No, they don't need to get to the audit. I mean, they don't even need to get there. They're just like, you know what? Don't just shadow ban the threat of it. Shadow ban the threat of.
- [65:03]
Doug Rushkoff
It's enough for most people.
- [65:04]
Duncan Trussell
You can just suppress. You can do like something worse than censorship, right? You could just shut down. Yeah, they own it.
- [65:11]
Doug Rushkoff
So it's like, I know the censorship is great. Getting censored puts you on the map. You get Ali, Belshi or somebody. Banned books. Come on.
- [65:20]
Duncan Trussell
I'm on a banned bookshelf. But yeah, in this case, yeah, just, just like, you know, just. You don't even have to fully mute the fucking thing. Just like give it a tepid sort of engineer response. Throw in some, you know, bots posting in the comments. It's just like, yawn, and then, and then you will just eat away at that person's psyche.
- [65:46]
Doug Rushkoff
Right, but that's why. Right, but you don't want to be depending on the algorithms for your. For your news or for your career, for going out. You want to try to get a. You know, when you're doing this, you get a loyal, you know, a community of people and patreon, or subsec, wherever it is, you know, your own. Your own group of people that aren't being swayed by whether you're in their algorithm or not.
- [66:15]
Duncan Trussell
There you go, man. And you have to. I mean, I feel like if you're making anything, anything, anything, like you should be. Your online. Anyone's online hygiene right now should be akin to somebody working with cadavers in the 1800s. When you're going online, you need to make sure you need to do the same thing that people who practice ceremonial magic do. Basically, we need a lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram for the. The lesser banishing ritual of the algorithm or something. We need some mechanism within which you can shield yourself and understand you. Whether you like it or not. You are being nudged. It might not be by state entities, but for sure you're being nudged by corporations, by lobbyists, by. You got to know that. So that any opinion you're forming based on your algorithmic feed, you need to scrutinize that like you're testing gold before you start blabbering about it, because you gotta watch out right now.
- [67:22]
Doug Rushkoff
I know going online in the old days was so much more like that because you had to plug in your modem and dial in and, you know, until you were on it created this sort of ritual of immersion. Now I'm going online. And then you'd go offline.
- [67:39]
Duncan Trussell
Yes.
- [67:39]
Doug Rushkoff
And just having that threshold was, was it accounted for psychically, Anyway, the idea that I'm now entering a different space. But people now, they live, you know, in that perpetual online state. So it's, it's really hard to distinguish it from, from reality.
- [67:58]
Unknown Interjection
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- [69:27]
Duncan Trussell
So, I mean, look, every. It seems that I think at some point the next time we podcast, like, nanobots are going to be flying around like us. Or like, I think every time, like as we, every time we podcast each time, shit has gotten exponentially more fucked up. And so again, like, I think most people are even past thinking that there is. I'm not Saying that everyone's black pilled or anything like that. But I think most of us now have gotten to the point where we do recognize we can no longer cling to the digital reality. If we're interested in having any sense of stability or if we're interested in harmony and society, it's not doing that. So outside of looking at people when you're walking around, I really would love to hear your thoughts on these clawbots, on the ability to vibe code and within that, how there theoretically could be a potential to start building artificial intelligence bots that actually thwart the algorithm or at least at the very least inseminate the online space with ideas like the ones you're proposing today, like team human style ideas, revolutionary decentralized ideas. Have you thought about that at all?
- [71:03]
Doug Rushkoff
Yeah, I mean, the trap I always fall into is I recognize the sort of revolutionary or pro human potential of a new technology once it's in the people's hands. But what I sometimes fail to recognize is that the technology that's now in the people's hands is one level less deep than the one that's in the elite hands. So we got, you know, I was excited about, you know, blogging and things like that, but you know, we were blogging on platforms built by Google and this one and that one. So we're all blogging and thinking we're going to exchange our ideas in these new ways. But it basically became shouting on social media algorithms for attention. So we might have controlled the content, but they controlled the context to the point that our cup let them eat blog. So now with AI, I feel like we can use AI to vibe code and build stuff. That's looking pretty friggin powerful to me. You know, I've been, I've been playing some with Claude and building something and it's, and it's, you know, it's easy to be fooled and think I've done something great in the morning because it works. But then it's like, yeah, but it's actually a shitty piece of software. So there's that, you know, you've got to really iterate, you've got to work, you've got to really do it. But if you do the ability to make a Hollywood level animated movie, the ability to make a piece of software that can, that could undo a lot of what we're seeing out there, like find you could do different kinds of searches and things and create dashboards for activists and anarchists and everything that are quite interesting. Yet all of the stuff that I can finally do now. Now I can program in a way I couldn't before because I have AI letting me do that. But I'm not building the AI systems on which that is happening. My AI activity is still circumscribed by Sam Altman and Elon and the people and Gemini, the people that are building those platforms. And I don't fully understand the probabilistic logics that they are using to steer all AI activity towards certain kinds.
- [73:29]
Duncan Trussell
But what about Olamo? What about the LLMs that you can run on your computer that are not.
- [73:36]
Doug Rushkoff
Those are cool. Yeah, those are cool. And you know, and there's like, there's a. Who is it out in the desert? What is it called? High Mountain something. They're taking a Raspberry PI computer. It's like a $9, you know, tiny little computer, and you hook it up to your local library's database of information, and then you use a mesh network to access it and to share processing. Interesting stuff. I'm really into decentralized local.
- [74:01]
Duncan Trussell
Me too.
- [74:03]
Doug Rushkoff
But I was also into cyber cafes as a way for people to get online. You know, I was into, you know, a lot of things that, that, that didn't win in the end. But yeah, I'm really into watching and seeing whether or not people are willing to play in decentralized ways with these powerful technologies. Cassette will. That would change the equation.
- [74:29]
Duncan Trussell
I think I do too. Thank you so much, man. I love chatting with you. You're so brilliant. Thank you. It's just every time we talk, it's like months and months and months of contemplating what we talked about. You're just such a genius.
- [74:46]
Doug Rushkoff
Well, thanks. I think about it. I'm really, really glad we're friends too. I mean, these are conversations like I don't have elsewhere. And I also progress. So I'm going to be thinking about this parenting thing and what does it mean for us as people to become the parents.
- [75:00]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [75:00]
Doug Rushkoff
Rather than the abused children. What, what, what will that be like? Can we do that? Yeah.
- [75:05]
Duncan Trussell
With a, with, with a non violent revolution. I mean that. It's like, you know, how do we do that without doing the thing those rich kids did to their parents, you know?
- [75:13]
Unknown Interjection
Yeah.
- [75:14]
Duncan Trussell
It's like, it's really.
- [75:16]
Doug Rushkoff
Stop the psycho. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [75:18]
Duncan Trussell
Hey, well, thank you so much, Team Human.
- [75:21]
Doug Rushkoff
Okay. Be good.
- [75:22]
Duncan Trussell
All the links, you just find human.
- [75:24]
Doug Rushkoff
Yeah, yeah.
- [75:24]
Ryan Seacrest
Link.
- [75:25]
Doug Rushkoff
Go watch play. I love you.
- [75:27]
Duncan Trussell
Love you. Bye. That was Doug Roshkoff, everybody. Come see a live show, won't you, and join one of my night streams. I'd love to see you there. Definitely. Subscribe to Doug's podcast Team Human. All the links will be down below. Or if you're listening to this, you can go to duncan trussell.com just check out this episode on my webpage. You guys are awesome. Hare Krishna, I love you.
- [75:52]
Ryan Seacrest
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- [77:21]
Duncan Trussell
Com.
- [77:22]
Frog Fuel Advertiser
Stay unbreakable.