Black Box of Doom

Summary

Flightless Bird – "Black Box of Doom" (January 7, 2025)

Host: David Farrier
Cohost: Rob
Guest: Jason Pargin

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Episode Overview

In this episode, David Farrier, a New Zealander living in America, delves into the intersection of modern Internet culture and American uniqueness. Inspired by the new novel “I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom” from author Jason Pargin (who also joins for a discussion), the episode explores technology, social media rabbit holes, truth in the digital age, and the ways America provides fertile ground for extreme personalities and cultural oddities.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. New Year Reflections and the Influence of Algorithms

[00:05–03:05]

• David and Rosabelle chat about their New Year's experiences, with Rosabelle recounting tarot readings in New Zealand and David describing a "transcendent" Creed concert in Vegas (no bedbugs).
• Discussion about TikTok's influence: Rosabelle observes, "A lot of people worry that the algorithm is closing how expansively we see the world...that's true, especially on TikTok." She also feels that, at least intergenerationally, her world has expanded through social media.
• The “big frog” incident is introduced—a viral AI-generated animal video that sparked debate about discerning truth online.

Notable Quote:

“Why would someone fake a big frog? Like, there’s no payoff for this. And I felt like I had to get my act together in terms of my Internet savviness.”
—Rosabelle ([02:33])

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2. AI, Internet Curation, and the Battle for Authenticity

[05:03–12:44]

• Rob talks about resetting his Instagram algorithm due to “weird” AI-targeted content.
• David laments the mundane admin of maintaining a manageable online experience: “You’d think in 2025 we’d be at a point where everything is easier. And look, maybe it’s me aging out, but I feel like everything is just getting more difficult.” ([07:30])
• The hosts discuss how quickly algorithms adapt and the unsettling presence of AI.
• A debate: Is it artful or exploitative for artists to use AI? Rob feels it can be creative if human-guided, David worries about missed opportunities for artists and a general loss of trust/truth.
• A recurring theme is confusion: not wanting more “gray area” regarding what’s real or fake, as with the “big frog.”

Notable Quote:

“I don’t want more confusion in my life...if I have to go through my day being like...is this a real frog or is this a fake frog? I just don’t want to have to deal with that.”
—David Farrier ([11:25])

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3. America as a Stage for Strangeness: Vegas on New Year’s

[18:58–27:37]

• David details his uniquely American New Year’s: a Creed concert at Caesar's Palace, staying at a rough-around-the-edges Circus Circus hotel, encountering heavy police and military presence reminiscent of “Civil War,” and witnessing surreal elements like the “clicky cards” and military Humvees.
• The aftermath: discovering the cybertruck incident at Trump Tower (an apparent suicide-bombing attempt, which Elon Musk spun into a praise of the vehicle’s containment).
• On the way back, David marvels at the Goodyear blimp and contemplates its $21 million price tag—a “flightless bird” if there ever was one.

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4. Cultural Time Capsules: Blimps and Baseball

[27:37–30:16]

• The hosts riff on the Goodyear blimp—David’s quixotic desire to ride one—and discuss Fenway Park’s classic Green Monster scoreboard, still operated by hand.
• Jason joins in to compare these cultural relics to time capsules, still inspiring awe and unmediated by algorithms and AI.

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5. Conversation with Jason Pargin: The Internet’s Amplifying Role in American Weirdness

[32:16–52:40]

a. Jason Pargin’s Rise on TikTok & Cross-Media Resonance

[32:16–40:16]

• David reflects on a viral TikTok review of his documentary “Tickled” by Jason, which reignited interest in the film:

“This is one of the weirdest and most unsettling things you can watch that doesn’t involve anybody dying.”
—Jason Pargin ([32:58])

• Jason and David bond over being “mutual fanboys” of each other’s fascination with cultish personalities.

b. America’s Cult-Like Microcultures

[34:34–37:03]

• Pargin’s thesis: America is full of “would-be cult leaders” with small, intense followings. He references “Tiger King” as symptomatic of this phenomenon.

Notable Quote:

“There’s people everywhere just hiding among us, and the only reason you’ve never heard about them is because they never had a shootout with the police. They’re happy to just run their little kingdom.”
—Jason Pargin ([36:17])

c. Technology as Accelerator: From Hitler to TikTok

[40:16–42:41]

• Pargin draws provocative links between the advent of loudspeakers enabling Hitler’s rallies and social media today amplifying dangerous/charismatic actors.

“The technology and the man came along at the same time.” ([41:44])

• The intersection of inventions and vulnerable audiences keeps recurring, from the printing press to television to social media.

d. Information Overload & Social Fragmentation

[42:41–45:56]

• How TV and the Internet have exponentially increased the speed and impact of cultural trends.
• Pargin treasures the connective and democratizing potential of the Internet but warns, “There is nothing in our brains that has evolved to handle this much information or this many social connections.”

“Kids wind up just being the subjects of this big mass experiment that they didn’t consent to and being subjected to this technology that we never tested.” ([45:56])

e. When Online Drama Spills into Reality

[45:56–49:53]

• David and Jason discuss the dizzying and sometimes terrifying moment when Internet drama “escapes” into real life—like misunderstanding and swatting, or when anonymous threats bring police to your door.
• The mass shooting example: Reddit and social media quickly (and often wrongly) “out” a suspect, amplifying engagement regardless of truth.

Notable Quote:

“There’s this feeling that there’s no word for yet because no one had ever experienced it prior to the Internet era—that dizzying sensation of seeing an online drama escape into the real world.”
—David Farrier ([46:24])

f. Hope Amid the Madness: The Guinea Worm Story

[50:45–52:40]

• David brings up a fact from Jason’s book about the guinea worm: once infecting millions, now almost extinct due to sustained, unglamorous human effort.

“Here in the real world, actual real problems are solved all the time...but there’s not much profit to be made in telling you that.”
—Jason Pargin ([51:28])

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6. Reflections & Meta-Conversation

[53:09–70:49]

• David and Rob reflect on Jason’s style, comparing it to Michael Crichton and Erik Larson—mixing narrative fiction with real-world facts and pop-culture.
• They delve deeper into the dual nature of online communities: the empowerment of marginalized individuals versus the congregation of malign actors.
• David points out the dominance of negative stories in online discourse (“the louder, more obnoxious ones may seem like they’re more prevalent” — Rob, [56:34]) and how that rarely reflects reality.
• They discuss the loss and fleeting nature of internet history and digital expression—how platforms fade, trends shift, and what we document can vanish.

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7. Nostalgia, Archiving, and Scrapbooking

[63:06–66:11]

• As platforms like LiveJournal, MySpace, and Bebo disappear, they wonder if future generations (or aliens) will ever access digital artifacts of this era.
• The episode concludes with enthusiasm for upcoming Australian episodes and a warm sign-off reflective of the show’s quirky, heartfelt tone.

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On AI & Truth:

  “I want to know if I’m being taken down an AI path or not. Just tell me if the frog is real or not.”
  —David Farrier ([08:51])

• On TikTok’s Generational Shift:

  “TikTok is for old people now. The kids have moved on to something else, and you don’t even know the name of it yet.”
  —Narrator/Host ([44:37])

• On Online Drama Becoming Reality:

  “It’s like in The Ring where the little girl crawls out of the TV...So much of the way people behave online, it’s based on the fact that they clearly, on some level, don’t really think it’s real.”
  —Jason Pargin ([47:27])

• On Real-World Progress:

  “It is not exciting to stop and talk about the problems we’ve solved, like the fact that cancer survival rates have skyrocketed...But you can get a very skewed version of the world that way.”
  —Jason Pargin ([51:28])

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Important Timestamps

• Rosabelle on TikTok and algorithms: [01:45–02:15]
• AI & the big frog story: [02:24–03:05]; [08:51–09:04]
• Instagram/algorithm curation frustrations: [05:49–07:29]
• AI in creative work, intent, missing the human touch: [09:37–10:50]
• Creed concert & Vegas stories: [18:58–22:45], including the surreal police/military atmosphere
• Goodyear blimp as a “flightless bird”: [27:37–28:53]
• Jason Pargin’s viral TikTok review: [32:42–34:01]
• Cult of personalities & American microcultures: [34:34–37:03]
• Technology empowering/accelerating culture (Hitler, TV, TikTok): [40:16–42:24]
• Online social overstimulation & youth: [42:41–45:56]
• The “online spills into real life” phenomenon: [46:24–49:53]
• Guinea worm & overlooked progress: [50:45–52:40]
• Meta-discussion: archival, nostalgia, the fleeting Internet: [63:06–65:11]
• Closing, upcoming episodes, Australian meat pies: [70:57–71:41]

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Episode Tone & Style

• Curious, self-deprecating, and wry: David and Rob’s Kiwi/American banter is peppered with dry jokes and awe at American weirdness.
• Thoughtful and just slightly anxious: The hosts’ musings on technology, AI, and the fragmentation of truth blend fascination with palpable concern.
• Generationally aware: The conversation is attuned to how quickly platforms, trends, and algorithms shift, often leaving older users behind.

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Closing Thoughts

“Black Box of Doom” is as much about the search for meaning and authenticity in modern life as it is about wild American peculiarities. Through their conversation with Jason Pargin, David and Rob reflect on internet rabbit holes, mistrust of digital realities, the joys and horrors of algorithm-driven existence, and the reminders—like the extinction of the guinea worm—that real progress persists, even if it’s rarely headline news.

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Recommended for:

• Anyone intrigued by how internet culture mutates society
• Fans of trenchant yet humorous social observation
• Listeners interested in digital anxiety, Americana, AI, cults, or just a really weird big frog

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Transcript

[David Farrier]

Oh, my goodness. Rosabelle, you're calling me for once. Happy 2025. Thank you, Roosevelt. That means a lot. How did your New Year's go?

[Rosabelle]

It was nice.

[David Farrier]

You sound a bit far away. I'm gonna be honest.

[Narrator/Host]

I am.

[Rosabelle]

I'm walking around a bit.

[David Farrier]

Why don't you put your earpods on?

[Rosabelle]

Okay.

[Jason Pargin]

Hold on.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. What were you saying? Happy 2025, Rosabelle.

[Rosabelle]

Yes, happy. How was Creed? How are the bedbugs?

[David Farrier]

Creed was so transcendent, and I think there were no bedbugs.

[Narrator/Host]

Wow.

[Rosabelle]

What a perfect New Year's night.

[David Farrier]

What did you do in New Zealand?

[Rosabelle]

I had a few people over, and then we ended up just doing each other's tarot cards and doing the future.

[David Farrier]

Oh.

[Rosabelle]

And it was really fun.

[David Farrier]

What does your future have in store? Do you know?

[Rosabelle]

I had such a nice reading. It was basically like, you have a great life. Everybody likes you. Just relax and don't be worried.

[David Farrier]

Roseville. I love that for you. That's so fucking great.

[Rosabelle]

It was such a funny reading.

[David Farrier]

Can I tell you something?

[Rosabelle]

Yes.

[David Farrier]

When I called before and you missed the call, I was calling about the podcast.

[Rosabelle]

Do you need to. Have you been recording me this whole time?

[David Farrier]

Of course.

[Rosabelle]

What the hell?

[David Farrier]

Today we're talking to one of my favorite authors who's written this book that I really like, but it's basically an excuse to talk about modern Internet culture and the ways that we communicate. And the author, Jason Pargen, is quite big on TikTok, and I know that TikTok, Rosabelle, is quite a big part of your life. And I guess I'm wondering, when you think about the Internet and Internet culture and TikTok and modern life, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how it's affected your life and the way you see the world.

[Rosabelle]

I feel like a lot of people worry that the algorithm is closing. How expansively we see the world. And I think that that is true, especially on TikTok, which has such a refined algorithm.

[David Farrier]

Yeah.

[Rosabelle]

But I also find, personally, that I think that my understanding of the world, especially intergenerationally, has become so much more expensive because of social media, at least.

[David Farrier]

This is a bit of a hack question, but what's the. What's one of the craziest things you've seen on TikTok? Has it been something that's really surprised you?

[Rosabelle]

Well, is this a leading question? Because you want me to talk about the big frog?

[David Farrier]

Yeah. Can you please explain the big frog?

[Rosabelle]

Yes. Because on TikTok, once, there was a video of a guy with a really cute but giant pet frog. And I sent it to you and you laughed at me and you said it was fake. And that was probably my first encounter with AI on social media. Because at the time I was like, why would someone fake a big frog? Like, there's no payoff for this. And I felt like I had to get my act together in terms of my Internet savviness.

[David Farrier]

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now, this is going to be one of those episodes where I'm just going to hope that you trust me enough by now to go on this journey with me, because it fits pretty loosely into the premise of this show. This week I wanted to talk to one of my favourite American authors about the sorts of things I love talking about. Things like the Internet, strange rabbit holes and how odd and unique America is. Born in Lawrenceville, Illinois In 1975, Jason Pargin was part of my life before I even knew it, starting a website in the late 90s called pointless waste of Time, which ended up being part of another site called cracked.com. as a New Zealander, cracked.com provided an insight into American pop culture in a way I hadn't really experienced before. Mo TV shows, music and games were analyzed with wit, humor and smarts. There were also a lot of memes before we called memes memes. Jason ended up turning his Internet writing into book writing, becoming a full time novelist. And a few months back, I noticed he had a new book out called I'm Starting to Worry about this Black Box of Doom. It tells a story of an unhinged road trip across the United States. And it's also the story of how weird the Internet and social media has become. So get ready to meet an American who's curious about the world in a way that I really appreciate because this is the Black Box of Doom episode. Flagless flightless.

[Rob]

Flightless birds hunts down in America.

[Jason Pargin]

I'm a flyless bird. Touchdown in America.

[David Farrier]

Rob. Happy New Year. Happy New Year 2025.

[Rob]

We made it.

[David Farrier]

We made it. We're still here. Miraculously, yeah. Now, just quickly, just to clarify, this video that Rosabelle saw of the big frog that she sent to the chat, it was about the size of a dog and she had just seen it and gone. This is the biggest frog I've ever seen. I didn't know they got this big. I want to share this with my friends.

[Rob]

I mean, I also hate. I get targeted a ton on Instagram for videos.

[David Farrier]

Oh, yeah.

[Rob]

Some are, like, really weird ones.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. Clearly just messed up and.

[Jason Pargin]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Where they're, like, melting and turning into other things.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. Will turn into a puppy. That will turn into a woman.

[Rob]

Yeah. And then there are other ones that look like they are real things.

[David Farrier]

Yeah.

[Rob]

But they're not. So I've. As of a couple days ago, I actually reset my Instagram algorithm, which you can go in and say, like, forget everything.

[David Farrier]

Great concept. What does it reset to? Like, what did you start getting, like, straight away? Was it a decent variety or.

[Rob]

Now it's, I think, just based on who I follow.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. Okay.

[Rob]

And it, like, resets, though, like, who I follow in my feed, how it prioritizes those people. So I don't actually love it, but the things I was getting targeted for were getting too weird.

[David Farrier]

Because also, if you spend more than two seconds on a thing, that becomes your entire feed. So you watch, like, one weird AI video.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

Suddenly it's nothing but that.

[Rob]

Yeah. Also, like, that's not necessarily how I want the content that's being fed to me. Like, I don't want it to prioritize what necessarily gets me to click and watch it for a little bit. Well, no, because that'd be fucking weird.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, completely. Because the stuff that doesn't. That's usually stuff that is deeply, like, unsettling and odd, and you click it to find out what it is. Not because it's good for you in any way at all, or.

[Rob]

Not that I'm necessarily more interested in that than something else. So I'll sometimes intentionally, like, well, I like this and I like this. I don't really want to watch a video of that right now, but I'll click it because I want.

[David Farrier]

Isn't it crazy that we're having to spend our time even doing this, like, trying to curate our own experience online just to be less filthy and, like, less annoying and less weird.

[Rob]

Yep.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. I don't know. I think about this a lot. Just the amount of my day that I waste doing. No, it used to be, like, I got. I got annoyed at doing admin, like, paying bills and that kind of thing. Now I get annoyed at things like this, like curating how I experience the Internet.

[Rob]

Yes.

[David Farrier]

And you'd think in 2025 we'd be at a point where everything is easier. And look, maybe it's me aging out, but I feel like everything is just getting more difficult.

[Rob]

I think the AI stuff is started morphing it even weirder. And I feel like it amped up A lot the last couple months.

[David Farrier]

Well, it's also. It's getting, like, crushed into every product we have. Right. Like, I think I mentioned to you this before, but I messaging my friend Dan some, like, really, like, I don't know, back and forth, like, quite intense stuff about life and the AI and messenger was summarizing it into these pithy little lines he was getting. And he's like, none of us want this. I just want to read your messages, Dave, that you're sending when I have time. I don't want messenger suddenly, like, truncating them into an AI response.

[Rob]

Well, even Google's doing it. But the thing that's weird to me with it is I do feel like socially people have issues with it. When civil war came out over the summer, remember, a bunch of people were, like, up in arms.

[David Farrier]

That's right. The posters were all generated. Right.

[Rob]

Which I did. Look at those posters. And we're like, these are awesome. Like, I really love.

[David Farrier]

They were cool posters.

[Rob]

Pain.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. There was one in, like, the Echo Park Lake, right, With one of those swan boats.

[Rob]

People got real mad about that. I don't know if that was just the people that got mad were the louder people on the Internet, but it. It seem to draw a little bit of a line of, like, okay, studios shouldn't be doing that with artwork.

[David Farrier]

I think people want to know if they're being taken down an AI path or not. Right. It's, like, comes back to the big frog. Like, just tell me if the frog. If you tell me this is an AI thing, I don't mind looking at this big frog, but don't try and trick me that it's real when it's not.

[Rob]

Well, but then, like, yeah, Google does this whole thing now where the search results are. Google. I saw during the holidays, there was, like, full AI commercials.

[Narrator/Host]

Really?

[Rob]

I think it was like. And I didn't like it. I was like, this. Also. This feels like a crappy old commercial that, like, I felt like there was life sucked out of it.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, it felt that in, like, uncanny zone of, like, this isn't a human connection in any way.

[Rob]

There's something eerie about, like, the stuff, those, like, videos where there's, like, an element of it that's missing.

[David Farrier]

No, it's. It's missing a soul. It's like missing a human. No, you can pick that up whether it's in, like, the flicker of an eye or just the way someone moves or, like, whether they've got, like, four fingers or five. But it is. It's that Feeling right. It's like.

[Rob]

But from, like, a creative standpoint, it is kind of cool to be able to, like, output and explore that. If it's, like, run by a human.

[David Farrier]

I'm gonna completely drop the ball on this. But there's some concert film recently or a documentary that is basically, every time it is generated by AI in a slightly different way. And so you're watching a different thing every time.

[Rob]

I saw MGMT do their, like, 20 years on the album right. Over the summer. And I do think all of the, like, video stuff for their live set, a lot of it was AI generated. It was, like, leaned into. In a creepy way where, like, they weren't hiding. It was AI.

[David Farrier]

Yeah.

[Rob]

And it was just like, a little bit unsettling.

[David Farrier]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Too. Which I think they want as well.

[David Farrier]

For me, it's two things. It's that there's a human that's missed out on some work. And it's just when you start reading about the data centers that have been created to, like, crunch the numbers that are used to output this stuff, it's pretty insane.

[Rob]

Well, but I also don't know, like, a human might not have missed out on the work if, like. Because there is the difference of an artist creating through AI and using it to facilitate their ideas. I feel like it may be okay.

[David Farrier]

As opposed to, like, them being like, we're not going to pay someone to animate our backstage stuff, so let's get AI to do it.

[Rob]

Which they could have. They could have, like, paid a shitload to some agency to create this and some visual designer that does use AI AI. But they're able to do it in, like, a crazy, efficient way to make this weird style. Like. Yeah, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

[David Farrier]

In my mind, it comes back to that thing of just the intent and also just, like, the overall truth of a thing. Like, I don't want more confusion in my life. Like, I found life confusing enough already. And if I have to go through my day being like. Like, Rosabelle, like, is this a real frog or is this a fake frog? It's just. I don't want to have to deal with that. I think that's, like, what it primarily sort of primarily boils down to for me.

[Rob]

Yeah, well. And we're just in this world currently of there being a divide of what's reality and what's fake. Even outside of. Even within the first consumer.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, yeah. Completely.

[Rob]

Where the last, like, 12 years, eight years, that has been a big point of contention. Completely of 100% people being intentionally deceitful.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. And now here's a whole new box set and a way that people can be deceitful en masse, where the truth.

[Rob]

Is like a gray area now, which it shouldn't be so frustrating.

[David Farrier]

And I don't think we're going to come back from it.

[Rob]

Yeah, I don't think so either.

[David Farrier]

Well, that's what I mean. This topic today. This is a book, by the way. If I completely forget to do this, I love that. I love Jason's work. This is this back. I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom. I love this book. He basically gets stuck into, like, a lot of these kind of topics within the fiction that he writes. And we'll get into more of that stuff soon. Quickly. I just wanted to recap New Year. How was yours?

[Rob]

It was good. I was asleep before midnight.

[David Farrier]

You were sleeping?

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

I just quickly wanted. I just am selfishly just wanting to talk about my New Year's.

[Rob]

Well, I'm not going to mine yet. I was asleep. You went to sleep before midnight? I did go to dinner. Okay.

[David Farrier]

You had a nice dinner.

[Rob]

Eight o'.

[David Farrier]

Clock. Okay.

[Rob]

At Meteora. You and I.

[David Farrier]

Okay. We've been there. Beautiful place.

[Rob]

There was a fun guy there that he walked in with gun holsters on, but it was like, not. Not with guns, though.

[David Farrier]

Okay.

[Rob]

It was part. It was a fashion choice.

[David Farrier]

Oh, wow. Gun holsters. No guns in them.

[Rob]

No guns in them. And then his date went to the bathroom at one point and he just stood there with his. Or sat there with his eyes closed until she came back.

[David Farrier]

That's such a good move because most people, they're just on their phone, right?

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

Shutting the eyes. I support this move. It's kind of wild. It's like, at peace. I'm not going to distract myself. I'm gonna wait for my beautiful date to come back from the bathroom.

[Rob]

Well, they were like, across from, like, they were direct eyeline from me. So I was just, like, watching them most. Yeah, most of the time.

[David Farrier]

What posture was he?

[Rob]

Just like, I have a video of it. I'll show you. And then there was another point where him and his date were about 6 inches from each other, just, like, staring at each other, not talking.

[David Farrier]

Oh, they sound to see the sounds.

[Rob]

For a good amount of time. No, it was like.

[David Farrier]

Like sweet or like, what is happening right now?

[Rob]

It was a little bit more that.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. Wow, that's amazing, because I find it really hard to lock eyes for too long with anybody. Like, and I think that's like a normal human behavior. Like you start looking at someone for too long and. And it gets.

[Rob]

Yeah, No, I agree.

[David Farrier]

It might have just been like a deep, deep love. It's like I'm going to this new year with this person and.

[Rob]

Well, for the record, I don't think they, either of them were doing anything wrong.

[David Farrier]

No, no, no. It's just an interesting observation.

[Rob]

It was interesting to witness.

[Rosabelle]

Wow.

[Rob]

Let me show you the video.

[David Farrier]

I love. I love the eye shutting because I. Yeah, I'm trying to not go on my phone at any available downtime. Like, I'm trying to be a bit more sort of chill about it. But then that's a vibe.

[Rob]

Yeah, it was intense.

[David Farrier]

I think we can leave this in. It's kind of fascinating. As long as we're not showing his face. That is fascinating.

[Rob]

I just showed you the video.

[David Farrier]

The gun holsters had a certain level of intensity when you are sitting there with your eyes shut.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Narrator/Host]

Wow.

[Rob]

But it was kind of futuristic, too.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. I mean, looking at that, it feels like I'm looking at a scene from John Wick or something where Keanu is, like, preparing to, like. Yeah. Do some sort of, like, intense.

[Narrator/Host]

Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. This show is sponsored by Better Help Now. I love storytelling and I guess thinking about 2025. What do you want your 2025 story to be? Every January brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled up, filled up with your Life. And in 2025, maybe you're ready for a plot twist. Or maybe there's a part of your story you've been wanting to revise, something to change. Life isn't about resolutions that fade in Feb. It's about picking up the pen and becoming the author of your own life. Or if you don't have a pen, you can just use a keyboard. Think of therapy as your editorial partner, helping you write new chapters in creating the meaningful story you deserve to live. One thing I've appreciated about being in America is that therapy is talked about a lot more openly. Wherever you are in the world, therapy can be a benefit. You've just got this person you can talk to outside of the situation you're in and can offer you advice that you wouldn't necessarily get from a friend that knows you and the situation too well. Sometimes it'd be good to have that outside perspective. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient. Serving over 5 million people worldwide. Access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties, and you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. Write your story with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.combird to get 10% off your first month.

[David Farrier]

That's BetterHelp.

[Narrator/Host]

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[David Farrier]

Okay, so I had a very different New Year's. I mentioned the last step that I was going to go and see Creed and I did. Hence the Creed hat. Just a few observations. Vegas at New Year's was so intense. So we stayed me and Noah went we stayed at Circus Circus, which is I haven't spent a lot of time in Vegas, but it was pretty rough.

[Rob]

Is it got like the rides outside of it?

[David Farrier]

It's a really good question. No, it doesn't have rides. It's right at the end of the Strip. It's got water slides, but you wouldn't see them from the Strip. It's, like, pretty low key. It's got inside. It has, like, performances from, like, clowns and stuff that you can watch inside the casino. But the hallway to our room, like, everything was low, so my head was almost hitting lights as I was walking down the hallway. So it felt.

[Rob]

Was that. Was that intentional?

[David Farrier]

No, it's just the way this place is.

[Rob]

I mean, is it meant to be, like a fun house?

[David Farrier]

No, I don't think so. It's just. It's just a really. No, it's just built oddly and not in a way that's meant to be making a point. It's just like you could have felt like the walls were, like, moving in on us. So circus Circus was very intense. And we walked from there to the venue, which was at Caesar's palace, which is like a half an hour walk. And as we walked along, just more and more police cars were starting to shut streets down. And then also the military. So there were big, like, humvees and soldiers there. And that started to feel like civil war, Like a scene from that. And then by the time it got to Creed was on at 10:30, so we were kind of in the heart of it. By about 10, it was. There was so much police and so much military, it felt like something was going to break out. Yeah, well, there was bad.

[Rob]

There was an explosion.

[David Farrier]

No. And. Okay, so. Yeah, no, that's the thing. So that night I was talking to someone, and they were doing random checks in different hotels where if you had a window facing the Strip.

[Rob]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Farrier]

You get random knocks on the door. Just checking that it wasn't going to be a case. Like, was it Mandalay Bay where they had a shooter that unleashed on a country festival years ago?

[Rob]

When I went for F1 last year, it was the same, like, all week checking hotel rooms, just random checks.

[David Farrier]

Making sure that you weren't the guy with, like, a bunch of weapons in the room.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

It felt so oppressive. And then you mix that in with the casinos. The smell of a casino when you walk through, which is just like. I know, like, there's meant to be, like, air quality control there, but it's rough. Well.

[Rob]

And the people on the sidewalk doing that clicky thing with the cards.

[David Farrier]

Oh, the clicky thing with the cards. Trying to get you to go to, like, strip joints and stuff, or it's.

[Rob]

Cards for, like, prostitutes.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

Right. I thought they were just strip clubs. Right.

[Rob]

No, there's, like, signs, like, direct to your room in 30 minutes.

[David Farrier]

It's just an intense. It's an intense atmosphere. So, yeah, that military was a lot. It was the weirdest experience getting to that. It's like the weirdest experience going to a show that I've ever had in my life.

[Rob]

Was that your first time in Vegas?

[David Farrier]

I've been there before.

[Rob]

Okay.

[David Farrier]

But this felt. It was extra Vegas. It was extra Vegas. And the military thing was so, so strange. The Creed concert was. Was amazing. So essentially it was a Creed concert. Sort of what you'd expect after listening to our Creed episode having Scott Stapp count down the new year. They basically. They played higher, and then the band left the stage. Then they came back on. Scott Stapp counted in the new year.

[Rob]

Nice.

[David Farrier]

And then they played the encore, and it was just the fun. Funniest, but also, like, I genuinely had a really, really good time in there.

[Rob]

Was it four?

[David Farrier]

It was, I'd say, three quarters sold out. So they played.

[Rob]

This is not sold out.

[David Farrier]

Not sold out. Okay. No, no, no. So they did two nights. So they did a show the previous night which was sold out. This one a little bit quieter.

[Rob]

Okay.

[David Farrier]

But it was just one of the weirdest New Year's experiences I've ever had in my entire life.

[Rob]

Was there the same amount of, like, prayer?

[David Farrier]

And it was pretty much the same set list and the same kind of speeches as the show I went to? Yeah, A lot of people, like. A lot of people, like, doing, like, what they used to in church. Like, a lot of people out with their hands raised like this. Probably my favorite point of the night was he was giving one of his speeches. And so just about kind of like, America's divided. We've got to come together. So I went to go to the toilet. I was in there, and they were just. They had the audio just, like, spouting in through the bathrooms. And so I was pissing, and I just had Scott Stap giving a speech, which was amazing. Like, shifts gets amazing.

[Rob]

That happened to me at the Vista Theater when I went to see Zone of Interest. Oh, God, I did not know that. And it was during a quiet part that I went to the bathroom.

[David Farrier]

Oh, that movie is in tears.

[Rob]

I'm at the urinal. And then German, like, yelling just starts happening. And it scared the shit out of me.

[David Farrier]

I mean, I quite like the idea of, like, you don't miss the film. Like, you kind of know what plot's going on.

[Rob]

Yeah. But it was just like the way I way it was time when I went and it being quiet when I went in there, so I didn't know it was going to happen. And then.

[David Farrier]

Oh, that is when it came back. So surreal.

[Rob]

Yeah, it was.

[David Farrier]

Oh, my God.

[Rob]

Was the like, maga element as present there? Because I. Because I feel like Vegas is different than like Redlands where you totally. To see them.

[David Farrier]

No, I didn't see any T shirts that had like, don't take my guns away. There was no, like, don't tread on me stuff. This was more probably like old rockers and it was like a little bit more. Yeah, it didn't have that same element. Like, the crowd felt more mellow than it felt when I saw them at their festival.

[Rob]

It's also post election too. You went pre election for that.

[David Farrier]

And to be honest, like, there's a thing even in my own mind, I'm like, am I going decreed as a joke or do I like this stuff? It's both. Like, I genuinely like their music. I like. They write a great. They write a banger of a song. Like Higher. Great song. Undeniable. Huge. But also like, just the whole. The whole culture of Creed is quite funny because it's like it's stuck in the 90s. Like, Scott step had like, tight black jeans, singlet, and, you know, the. The. The chain going to your wallet. He had two chains going to his wallet. Like, that stuff is just inherently quite funny to me.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

And so it's both. I love the music. I also find it incredibly entertaining and funny.

[Rob]

Was 2 Chainz part of the show too?

[David Farrier]

Wasn't part of the show. I see what you did there. And then of course, the other crazy thing that happened is when we left the next morning, about an hour after we'd left, that's when that cybertruck was parked outside Trump Tower.

[Rob]

How far was that hotel from you?

[David Farrier]

The weird thing about Trump Tower is it's not on the strip. It's like in its own little area. Like, as we were walking to Creed, I actually commented to Noah, I was like, oh, Trump Tower is in its own little space. Like, it's got its own thing going on.

[Rob]

You could just see it off in the distance.

[David Farrier]

You could see it. It's just this really tall tower in the middle of nothing.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

So, yeah, gentleman shot himself and then lit off a bunch of fireworks and some gas bottles in the Tesla out front of Trump Tower. Crazy thing. Yeah. So we're about an hour out and it started popping up on social media. And I was like, oh, there. We were just near there. That's weird.

[Rob]

So it was a suicide. I don't think I got.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, so he. My understanding of it, as we're recording now, is he shot himself and then things were detonated. Yeah. There wasn't that much damage done because most of the blast was contained within the cybertruck. So, of course, Elon came out tweeting about how great the cybertruck is because he's like, because this is a cybertruck, it's so strong, it wouldn't let the blast out. So it's just all these, like, very American things around it. You know, essentially, Elon kind of used it as a commercial for how great the cybertruck is, which I found this added level of weird to it.

[Rob]

Yeah. I mean, the headline that I saw that I think I sent you was just like, Elon said the car was working as it was intended to. And that was the comment currently at that time.

[David Farrier]

I guess the interesting thing is they could track exactly where that truck had been and, like, the lead up to it. So I think they helped law enforcement authorities, like, sort out what had happened prior pretty quickly. But, yeah, an awful thing. A very weird thing to happen. As we left, another thing, because I was with Noah, who was from that Spaceman Barry episode, we were going to check out the Tropicana, which is where Barry said the UFO had its base. Didn't realize the Tropicana, they had given it a controlled demolition, like, last year. No more Tropicana. So, yeah, those are my notes from Vegas. It was a really weird time. Oh, the last thought I had, driving back from Vegas, back into la, saw the Goodyear blimp, and I was like, that is a great flightless bird.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

Did some Googling. Guess how much the Goodyear blimp costs. What do you think that thing's worth? Like, how much is that, like, worth, like, on the insurance forms, how much is insured for? Because this blew me away.

[Rob]

$6 million.

[David Farrier]

21 million.

[Rob]

21 million.

[David Farrier]

That's how much that blimp is worth.

[Rob]

Yeah. If we can somehow get you up in that blimp.

[David Farrier]

I want to be up in that blimp. It moves so slowly. There's a specific place it lands. I've emailed the blimps, PR people being like, get me on that blimp. I want to be on that blimp. How amazing would that be?

[Rob]

That would be amazing.

[David Farrier]

Hey, heights. So I'd be terrified the entire time. Also. What? What Is the blimp driver doing, like, it's got to be, like, a quiet drive. Like, it's.

[Rob]

It's a mix between, like, a hot air balloon and a, like, Wright Brothers plane?

[David Farrier]

No. Like, I don't even know the structure of one of those things. Like, I was blown away that it cost $21 million. I'm like, what is costing that much money? I imagine it takes a lot of, like, helium. I imagine that costs a lot. But the structure of the thing, I have no idea. How big's the cockpit? Has he got, like, can he sleep up there?

[Rob]

Do they do rides in it? All of that? Just one guy.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. I'm deeply curious. Is he up there with his family? I want to find out. So. Yeah. Happy New Year.

[Rob]

Happy New Year.

[David Farrier]

Any other thoughts and queries about the year?

[Rob]

No. The blimp just makes me also think that we should get you behind the scoreboard at Fenway park in Boston.

[David Farrier]

What is that?

[Rob]

Fenway park has the big green monster. It's a wall on the outfield. It's baseball. Baseball stadium. Where the Boston Red Sox play.

[David Farrier]

Okay.

[Rob]

Which Liam Hendricks now plays for the Boston.

[David Farrier]

Oh, I love Liam Hendrix. Okay.

[Rob]

And I think they're still manually, like, putting the score and numbers up on this wall. And it's just this, like, old, historic stadium.

[David Farrier]

I like the sound of this. This sounds. It sounds like there would be, like, a story behind, like, who's putting the numbers up? Y.

[Rob]

There is, and.

[David Farrier]

Sorry. There's a big green monster.

[Rob]

Big green monster is what they call the big green wall. So a lot of the outfield walls are, like, I don't know, 12ft maybe. This one is massive. It goes up, like, three stories. So it's a shorter wall. And then it makes it harder to hit over it.

[David Farrier]

Okay.

[Rob]

Because it's so tall.

[David Farrier]

Okay.

[Rob]

But people do.

[David Farrier]

I think that sounds incredibly American. I'm into that. And I want to see Liam again. I want to have him cussing on the podcast.

[Rob]

The idea of something that exists still and is being used still as it was intended.

[David Farrier]

Yeah.

[Rob]

From forever ago. Well, yeah. Like, the blimp is.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. It's like a time capsule in a way, right?

[Jason Pargin]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

It's like this is a thing that still exists, and it's still, like, awe inspiring. Yeah. But you see that blimp, and you're like, holy. It's the blimp. It's like. It's still amazing. It's got no AI doesn't need it.

[Rob]

I'm gonna text. I'm gonna text Liam and see if.

[David Farrier]

We can get you, that would be. I would love that so much.

[Narrator/Host]

Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Quince. Now here in la, it's starting to get pretty darn chilly and I really like to be warm. So I am either in front of the TV watching documentaries covered in a big giant duvet, or I am outside in my puffer jacket that I got from Quince. Because when it comes to winter, it's like survival of the fittest out there. And I'm willing to do or sometimes buy whatever I can to stay cozy. And for the ultimate cold weather and necessities made from premium materials, you've got to check out Quince. With Quince, you can treat yourself to true quality at an affordable price, no matter what you're looking for. All Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And by partnering directly with top factories and cutting out the cost of the middleman, Quince passes the savings on to you. Their super soft fleece sweatpants are a major upgrade to whatever you're lounging around in on that couch right now. Highly recommended. And as I said earlier, the puffer jacket, that's the one that I love. But if you go to quince.com, you'll find something that you love. Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and they use premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. Luxuriate in coziness without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.combird for $360 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N C E.combird to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.combird.

[David Farrier]

In the meantime, this is my conversation with Jason Pargen. We talk about his book and I just like talking to him about his observations on the Internet because I love the Internet and obviously in America at the moment there's a big debate around whether TikTok is even going to exist here anymore. That goes back and forth through the courts. He is a big TikTok user which we get into.

[Narrator/Host]

Okay, so this is a very self involved way to start the story. But almost a year ago a bunch of people started sending me this video on TikTok. It was a three minute clip of this man in his late 40s reviewing my old documentary Tiku. And honestly it did a better job of selling it than I did.

[Jason Pargin]

This is one of the weirdest and most unsettling things you can watch that doesn't involve anybody dying.

[Narrator/Host]

That video had a lot of likes and views, like more than anything I'd ever got online. And suddenly I was getting other people messaging me about Tickled and how to watch it, to which I replied, just Google it. My point is this old thing I'd made has somehow become popular again. And then I realised the man who'd made that video was Jason Pargean, one of my favourite authors, who is apparently now a TikTok star. So I convinced him to talk to me on Zoom. You did this really flattering, nice tease of my documentary Tickled from a while back. And you know, Tickled was this documentary that had kind of had its time. It had kind of sort of fizzled out and you did that review and then suddenly people seemed to be watching it again. So it's just this funny kind of thing where I made this thing with this sort of old fashioned format of documentary. Suddenly that's finding a new life again via you on TikTok, who is an author that is finding this new life online as well.

[Jason Pargin]

So some of the people who are listening this are my fans who I've sent here from social media. And they actually don't know who you are. So there's two groups listening now. There's people who have no idea who I am and there's people who don't know who you are. People out there, what he said is the word tickled. That is the name of the documentary. I don't like to talk about what's in because the whole point is, it starts off in the first few minutes you say, oh, this is mildly amusing. And then it goes so far off the rails and so far down a weird rabbit hole that you're not gonna believe it.

[Narrator/Host]

As Jason talks, I realize we're both sort of excited to be having this conversation. Mutual fanboys of each other's weird shit.

[Jason Pargin]

Now I'm sitting here talking about it like it's a movie I watched where this person actually had to live through it. And it is harrowing. But this one and then the One you made, Mr. Oregon, these both touch on subjects that I am secretly obsessed with. And what I'm about to say is not a scientific explanation. I'm not an expert. I have this pet belief that the world is full of people who would be cult leaders if they had that ambition. They have a superb ability to manipulate. They have a Machiavellian personality, they have a desire to control People, but they do not have the ambition. They don't have, like, the messianic lore or worldview. They're not L. Ron Hubbard. They're not somebody looking to take over the world. So what they have is a little weird cult around them of just like, a few people. They either are controlling those people or victimizing them, or they are, like, fiercely loyal to them. And you can see that person, like, you talk to them, and there's something otherworldly about them and kind of dangerous and kind of fascinating.

[Narrator/Host]

This to me is all very, very American. Like, I feel this country is set up for this personality type to absolutely thrive.

[David Farrier]

It's not every day that a zookeeper went to prison for murder for hire. There are more captive tigers in the US Than there are in the wild throughout the world. Animal people are nuts, man.

[Jason Pargin]

They're all crazy. Thus the people who watched Tiger King, which I realize is not a great piece of journalism. But what people found compelling about that is that in this circle of people who run low rent tiger zoos, they all have these little cults of like six people, and they dictate how they dress, what they eat, where they live, how they talk. And they are fiercely loyal to the guy who owns the tigers. And it's so weird. And it's like, wait, are these people everywhere just hiding amongst us? And the only reason you've never heard about them is because they never had a shootout with the police. They're happy to just run their little kingdom. And both of those. I don't know how you ran into two of those people in your life, but it seems like there's a similarity because in both cases, I found them absolutely chilling.

[Narrator/Host]

So we've established that both of us are fascinated by many cult leaders. Americans like spaceman Barry from a few episodes ago. We're also both really into exploring American culture in general, which is how Jason's gotten so big on TikTok with hundreds of millions of views. This is his video about Dennis the Menace.

[Jason Pargin]

Before you ever accuse someone of stealing your idea or of plagiarism, please consider the bizarre case of Dennis the Menace. Dennis the Menace, you see up there first debuted in the United States in 1951. In March and the same week of the same month of the same year, Dennis the Menace also debuted in the uk. These had nothing to do with one another. Neither artist or company knew the other was working on it. They never communicated. They never spoke. But by blind coincidence, after all of human history had passed without a comic called Dennis the Menace on the Same week, two completely separate artists came up with a rambunctious young misbehaving child with that name and published their comics within days of one another. By blind coincidence. This is what they call parallel thinking. Two people separately influenced by the same cultural forces. And their backgrounds were similar enough that they arrived at the same place separately.

[Narrator/Host]

Every TikTok he makes takes you down some weird rabbit hole like that one, and it's made him popular.

[Jason Pargin]

Well, see, here's the thing. These days I have a much larger audience on TikTok than I have in books or in my old articles or in anything else. I joined TikTok at age 47 two years ago, and that is the first time I did any kind of video stuff ever. I used to not like to have my face out there at all. So I had to teach myself how to do video because I was told, look, I mean, I could go to a bookstore, they've got a shelf that's like BookTok recommendations. And it's like, hey, this is where the readers are. This is where the young people who read this is where they get their recommendations. You can either reach out to TikTok or you can just wait for all of your fans to get old and die and hope that that happens before you die. So I joined and had to teach myself how to be on camera and then to like talk about interesting things. And then the way you do it is about 95% of the feed is just, here's an interesting thing, I want to talk about it. And then the other 5% is, oh, by the way, I write books for a living. So now I have something like 550,000 followers on TikTok. The videos have been viewed something like half a billion times. It's like 500 million total views on the channel. So now it will be very common to hear people say, oh, this elderly TikTok influencer is trying to write a book. He's branched out into book writing the same way that like Logan Paul became a boxer. It's like, no, listen, that's not what happened. I am a washed up author trying to revive his career in his late middle age by trying to talk to the youth where they are, even though we are from completely different worlds.

[Narrator/Host]

His popularity on TikTok got him thinking about how much technology comes into play when amplifying certain voices and how certain horrific people owe their rise to just having access to a new thing, a new invention.

[Jason Pargin]

This is a terrible comparison and an example of the type of terrible comparisons I make. One thing that people have talked about is that when Hitler came along, he came along at the same time as the invention of the loudspeaker, where for the first time in history, you could hold a gigantic rally and they could all hear you. When you watch a movie about the life of Christ or about William Wallace in Braveheart, and he's speaking to a crowd of 30,000 people for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom. The only people that can actually hear him talking, if you were actually there, are like, the six people in front. Everybody in the back is like, is he talking to us? What's he saying? The ability to hold a rally. And everything he did about his Persona, Hitler's Persona, was based around the idea of the microphone and your voice booming and the spectacle of 50,000 people and all of those banners. That was a thing you could not do in another era. I don't know that Hitler's style of manipulating people is possible if they don't invent the loudspeaker in his time. That seems like a silly thing to say, but his style in a little beer hall is one thing. It's when it becomes a stadium and the energy of that crowd, it becomes something else. The technology and the man came along at the same time. So I think you can see this through history. The printing press and certain writers came along at the same time. The printing press hadn't existed. The only people that can read what he wrote are people are going to see a scroll. So I'm fascinated by this idea of how technology changes the game for certain personality types.

[Narrator/Host]

I mean, just look at podcasting in the election. Without podcasting, would Joe Rogan be as Joe Rogany? And without Rogan, how would Donald Trump access all those young men staring at a computer screen? Technology shapes the culture, and the culture shapes us.

[Jason Pargin]

In the United States, the turmoil of the 1960s and the peace movement and all of that, that does not happen without television arriving here in the 1950s, because you start to see the images of war and spreading around ideas, like the speed at which ideas get picked up, the speed at which fashion trends and language gets picked up with television versus people doing it personally. And trends and jargon and slang and fads used to move very, very slowly. But with tv, it's like this is disseminated it like this. This is what we're all wearing now. And then one week later, the trend that started in California, you're seeing it in the Midwest. Things have accelerated even faster in the Internet era. It takes the culture a while to adapt and the technology doesn't give us that chance. I wouldn't go backward. The fact that today you can have a community online where the technology lets you be in a club, in a group, where, you know, in a discord server, in whatever, where have friends who are all going the same thing you're going through, I would not take that away, regardless of what the other consequences were. The ability of people to find each other, the ability of non believers in very religious communities to connect with other non believers and realize, oh, I'm not crazy, I'm not a sinner, I'm not abandoned by God. There's other people like me who see the world the same way. I would not take that away from anyone. But there is nothing in our brains that has evolved to handle this much information. There is nothing in our brains that has evolved to handle this many social connections. To be exposed to the opinions of a hundred thousand people a day on social media who you've never met, that was never a thing anybody had to do before. So all of the things that we teach kids when they're growing up about how to live in the world, we don't have those lessons.

[Narrator/Host]

We don't have those lessons and we can't keep up. TikTok is probably already on the way out. If they don't ban it, the kids are leaving. You missed the boat. TikTok is for old people now. The kids have moved on to something else and you don't even know the name of it yet.

[Jason Pargin]

How to teach a 12 year old girl now how to deal with the comments she's getting on TikTok or on Instagram or on whatever app, app they actually use, which I probably don't know the name of it. I think it's the rare parent that knows how to prepare her for what she's seen. It's like, oh, you've gone viral. 50,000 people have seen this little video of you dancing or whatever to this pop song and TikTok's algorithm is feeding everybody and now there's 5,000 comments and a lot of those comments are like from 40 year old men telling you how beautiful you are. Do parents know how to tell a 12 year old girl how to deal with the fact that you're famous for today, but only today? Like here's how you deal with that, here's emotionally how you deal with that. I wouldn't and I do this. I don't think we know how to Teach them how to deal with that yet. And so they wind up just being the subjects of this big mass experiment that they didn't consent to and being subjected to this technology that we never tested. It was just suddenly out there.

[Narrator/Host]

There was something I noted down from your book. I jotted it down here, and I don't care. I keep meaning to bring it back to me, but it sort of resonated with how I felt when I was making Tickled years ago with Dylan. I might be mucking up the words here a little bit, but you wrote there's this feeling that there's no word for yet because no one had ever experienced it prior to the Internet era. That dizzying sensation of seeing an online drama escape into the real world. And when I read that line that.

[David Farrier]

You wrote, I was like, yeah, that is a thing.

[Narrator/Host]

This is a thing that we've all, like, witnessed or seen or heard about. And if you've been involved in it, it is the most thrilling thing you can ever feel.

[Jason Pargin]

Yes. It's where there was a safety and a separation that you thought existed from all the stuff that's happening on your screen. There was a viral video years ago. It was one of the earliest YouTube videos I saw where a guy is watching a chase in. I think it's la, the local news here, they love to get the news helicopter and film, like, a chase westbound. I believe he's on Century. So he's watching on his T. And then realizes that the chase is coming into his neighborhood. Holy shit. So he's, like, filming his TV with his phone and then hears a noise and then turns around and you see the cops and then this vehicle all compiling into his yard from the chase he had just been watching. And this moment was like, oh, this was really happening. And now it's here. This thing that we all thought was kind of fun and games and kind of like, yeah, I'm going to destroy this person's reputation. I'm going to get them fired from their job or whatever. And then suddenly it's at your door. It's like in the ring where the little girl crawls out of the tv. It's like, oh, that's not. No, this isn't real. These people don't actually exist. It's that feeling when you see it happen where you see something spill into your real world. For example, somewhere right now, there's some teenager who said something anonymously on 4chan that has gotten police to come to his door because he made a threat against the president or something and thought well, these are just words I'm typing on a screen. It's like, no, that's. You made a statement. They can find you people on that website, Absolutely will cooperate with the police. They can track you down. And now here they are in your living room and your parents are there and they're asking you if you actually intend to assassinate the president. And that feeling of just like a movie come to life. And so, so much of the way people behave online, it's based on the fact that they clearly, on some level, don't really think it's real. They may say they do, but they would not behave the same way if they truly conceptualize the fact that there's a human being on the other end of that.

[Narrator/Host]

The idea of something springing from the virtual world into the real world is something I'm obsessed with. It happened to me really clearly in Tikkuid. I was sitting in New Zealand exchanging these weird sort of funny emails with a bunch of. Bunch of quirky, angry people online. The next minute, they were sending their lawyers from New York to meet me in New Zealand. Jason sees this phenomenon of things jumping from the online world to the real world all the time. You often see it in America in the aftermath of a mass shooting.

[Jason Pargin]

If there's a mass shooting and you're on Reddit watching a live thread as headlines come in, and you see the speculation that rises to the top, and you see somebody who has decided that they've dug up the shooter's social medias, but in reality they found out a totally different person who happens to have the same name, that, guess what, that's now out there. So that's been picked up From Reddit onto 4chan and onto Twitter and onto TikTok gets now out there and there's no stopping it, because engagement is engagement and the system doesn't know whether or not what you said is true or false. It just knows that people are talking. And so now you've got an innocent person out there who you've called a mass shooter. Something that in the past, falsely accusing somebody of something like that would have been a serious crime. But on the Internet, we do it once every five seconds. Seconds. Because everybody wants to be first.

[Narrator/Host]

My time with Jason is winding up. We both have stuff to do, but if you like his observations, try his TikTok or his books. Like, I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom. As well as being this really zany, crazy story, you also learn a lot. One fact in particular stuck in my mind, and it was the last thing I talked to him about. Look, before I do leave you to get on with the horrors of this day, is there a particular fact from Black Box of Doom that you're particularly proud of? One that I really enjoyed learning about was this worm that you ingest via eggs. When you drink water, it will get into your guts, the eggs will hatch, the worm will sort of bury up through your guts, through your skin and will present as a blister on your skin. This blister gets very hot, you want to cool it down with water. And that is simply giving this now couple of foot long worm a little drink, which is just what it wants.

[Jason Pargin]

It's the guinea worm. The only way to get it out of your body is to roll it up on a stick a few inches at a time over the course of months. Because the worm can grow to be up to three feet long and lives in your muscle. And the reason it is brought up in this book is because it used to infect millions of people a year, including children. And that I think last year the number of guinea worm cases worldwide was like 10, not 10 million 10. Because we've wiped it out. It's a series of governments and NGOs and heroes have, through sanitation and medication, everything have this horrible, horrible thing that used to be common, have all but stopped it. And this kind of miracle occurs in the background all the time. Because if you go by the way people talk about politics online, it just sounds like the worst, craziest people representing the most fringe point of views just hurling petty insults at each other. But here in the real world, actual real problems are solved all the time. Rivers are cleaned up and buildings are built and all sorts of medications get approved. And the average everyday bureaucrat and employee and worker is out there just doing their job. And they're doing it well because they take pride in it. And that's why we have a civilization. But it is not exciting to stop and talk about the problems we've solved, like the fact that cancer survival rates have skyrocketed just in the last 30 years because we got so much better at screening, so much better at detection. And people complained like, why can't we cure cancer? Well, we've gone, gone a long way toward curing cancer. The number of people who have died from it keeps going down. We've made huge strides, but there's not much profit to be made in telling you that. There is much more engagement to be had by trying to scare you about the next thing. But you can get a very skewed version of the world that way. And you can get a sense that at some point in the past the world was wonderful and it's been falling apart ever since. That is not true.

[Narrator/Host]

I really like that. To end on this disgusting story that somehow went somewhere positive and slightly uplifting. The story of a worm you have to extract from your body inch by inch, leading to a reminder that despite what it might seem like right now, especially in America, there are people out there doing amazing things. Things might seem worse, but maybe in many ways it's not as bad as we might.

[David Farrier]

So just so you know, as you're listening to that or watching it on YouTube, Rob was giggling away every time. So on YouTube, there's a little photo we took for whenever I'm talking in the doc.

[Rob]

Yeah, we did a little photo shoot.

[David Farrier]

A little photo. And it was, you know, Rob was like, this is just a temp. We're just going to mock up what this looks like. We've just continually used that photo and it just. It looks like I've been out on a two day bender, which is probably actually how I look right now currently. It's just something about it. It's rough. Rough.

[Rob]

You look.

[David Farrier]

It's rough.

[Rob]

You look extra deranged. I thought I had the thought of like, oh, we can probably take some new ones. But then that thought right now was like, I'm not sure that would be much better. That one maybe is better.

[David Farrier]

Sometimes you look at a photo of yourself and you're like, I look like that. It's one of those moments. Anyway, so something that Jason does, and I'm not sure if I talked about this enough, but in all his books, the way he writes in fiction is he's got a story going on, but the characters are constantly interacting and talking in a way that just lets them bring in all these facts about the real world. And so as you're sort of like Michael Crichton used to do it, in a way, like you'd be reading this thriller, but then along the way you're learning about science.

[Rob]

Yeah. Or like Erik Larson, I think does that a lot.

[David Farrier]

I don't read his stuff, but yeah, same sort of thing.

[Rob]

Devil in the White City, which is a lot about Chicago.

[David Farrier]

Gotcha.

[Rob]

But I think it actually is based on a crime that happened.

[David Farrier]

Jason does it in a very hyper way. So you're just constantly absorbing pop culture the whole way. Have you ever seen the film John Dies at the End? End. That's him as well. So that was a book he wrote. It's a really great film. I also recommended that a lot. But yeah, I like his stuff. And my, my main fact that I still love. If you Google guinea worm removal, there are just amazing videos of people just winding the worm up on like a little stick to like extract it from inside.

[Rob]

Yeah. That reminds me of like, I remember hearing about ingrown hairs in someone's like stomach that got like knotted up to a degree. That, that's incredible. Was just like the size of a baseball.

[David Farrier]

I love medical videos of problems. Like there's a chat I'm in with Roosevelt and some of my oldest New Zealand friends. It's called Intestinal Worms.

[Rob]

Is it the one where the frog was sent?

[David Farrier]

That's where the frog was sent.

[Rob]

Okay.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. And it was called Intestinal Worms because we were all together watching videos of intestinal worms being removed from humans. And we're all watching it together and we're like, let's call this group chat Intestinal Worms. It's always been the worms ever since.

[Rob]

You should look up extracting ingrown hairs to stick to that.

[David Farrier]

That's my new thing.

[Rob]

I'm sure there's some gross ones out there.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. I love hair. I love pimple popping, I love worms. All that stuff.

[Rob]

I'm down all of these things.

[David Farrier]

Did you have any takeaways from Jason's thoughts on the Internet and culture in the world?

[Rob]

I mean, it's all just super interesting, the, the positive and negatives of connecting these communities online. I think it's great that people can feel less alone and find like minded people on the Internet. But then you also have the other side of that where it's that balance. Not great people are finding other not great people.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. For every like closet gay kids that finds someone they can talk to, you've got a Nazi meeting a Nazi. It's like.

[Rob]

And you hope that the good outweighs the bad. And when we're really just hearing the bad examples because usually, I mean, it's the same with comments that like completely.

[David Farrier]

They rise to the top.

[Rob]

The louder, more obnoxious ones may seem like they're more prevalent.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. But completely they're maybe not, but they're the loudest people. It's like that old thing. I think about this, like you're always gonna fire off an email to someone to complain about something. You're really going to write them an email being like, I love that or I felt good about that. Like you seeing stuff when you're angry and that elevates to the top.

[Rob]

Which was also Kind of what he was talking about. We're not hearing the positive stories as well.

[David Farrier]

All the amazing stuff going on. Yeah, yeah. The fact that people aren't infested with the guinea worm anymore, like, that's not a headline. That's just something that happened because science is amazing that we completely forget about.

[Rob]

Which, I mean, we're probably guilty of it on this show and your work too.

[David Farrier]

No, my whole life is just highlighting terrible people doing terrible things mostly. And it's like, that's not an accurate portrayal of the world.

[Rob]

But it's also. I don't think you do it in a sense of like, let's put these people on a pedestal. It's more like share this interesting story completely.

[David Farrier]

I think it's like, I think. Yeah. Talking about bad stuff happening because there's also that thing around, like the fear that you get from the news. Right. Like crime's always going to be reported. Like a crime is going to be reported. And it gives people this inaccurate feeling of like how dangerous a place actually is. Like, there's things like that in the media that I find fascinating. And it's that balance.

[Rob]

And there is a thing, there is a purpose to being able to live out some of those fears. I mean, it's the same with like true crime and why it trends so highly among women. Because that release valve is valuable to have.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. And to feel seen and to be able to process that. Those fears in a way that is.

[Rob]

In a safe space.

[David Farrier]

In a safe space. Yeah. Before anything's actually acted out. Yeah. I love Jason. I'm a big fan of his stuff. And his TikTok is. I mean, he basically started the TikTok to promote his books, but to do that, he just ended up releasing videos that would actually go viral. And he just is this fact master of just like finding the weirdest stuff. Like the fact that Dennis Sim up within like two different continents at the same time. At the same time, which is just completely mad. And there are different examples of that. Right. Like these movies that come out like, although that is probably just Hollywood swapping there.

[Rob]

Black Dahlia at the same time as Hollywood Land.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's like Volcano and Dante's Peak the same year? Stuff like that Deep Impact and what was the other one? Armageddon? You know, just these things all spring up at the same time.

[Rob]

It does always trip me up to the idea of just how fast these social media platforms change of like how all consuming even Instagram is, which at this point I don't know if, like, we're the old ones now because we're using Instagram and like, to me, the old ones are the ones using Facebook. But yeah, just like, generationally, how much that's passed.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, completely.

[Rob]

And just though how much we depend on. On Instagram as a platform for our work and that goes away then, oh, it's me figuring out, like, all right, how do we make this show and this business work without that thing?

[David Farrier]

I mean, that's the thing. It's like the newsletter I write, Webworm. The big part of what I like about that is that that is mine. Like, I have an email address and that will never go away. I can always directly communicate. And when you compare that, that with what you would invest in, like Twitter or X whatever, or Instagram, it's like, it's great when your audience is there, but they do one tweak on that and it's dead. I hate to think about how much time I've spent in my life over the last, like, 10 years posting and writing on Instagram. I have control over none of it. Like, that's so silly to invest so heavily in that.

[Rob]

But inversely, you have more potential to reach more people on a platform like Instagram than you do on, on newsletter.

[David Farrier]

You can tell people about things and hope that they'll find you in the place that you actually, like, want people to be reading you. But it's that. Yeah, it's the lack of control you have over it. And yeah, you have people doing so well on Tick Tock. They do one tweak of the algorithm and suddenly, like, your audience is gone.

[Rob]

Or it gets banned in America.

[David Farrier]

Or it gets banned in America.

[Rob]

Businesses that were built and dependent on using Tick Tock.

[David Farrier]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Or even people that are making all this money on TikTok. Yeah, that gets banned. That goes away. Like there's someone's livelihood gone.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, gone instantly. Do you have a, like, gut feeling on whether TikTok will get banned here or whether it will just remain?

[Rob]

I mean, I feel like we've been hearing this for five years.

[David Farrier]

It keeps bouncing.

[Rob]

So I, I'm. Yeah, I don't think it's going to happen.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, I tend to agree.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

I also think, like, if Trump sees himself being popular on there and being talked about, then there's no way it's going to get banned. You know, that's the thing.

[Rob]

Facebook still exists now, and I'm sure there's still a lot of people using it.

[David Farrier]

Do you remember when you would. I mean, maybe you didn't do this. But in New Zealand, when Facebook first came out, you would have, like, a night out and you would take photos and you would just upload, like, all 50 into a folder, being like, yeah, great Friday night. Just chaos.

[Rob]

Well, but. And then even before that, though, it was MySpace and, like, how prevalent MySpace was. Like, that was such a part of the music scene for me when I was growing up and.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah, right.

[Rob]

Pure Volume and, like, live discovering bands on that.

[David Farrier]

What's Pure Volume?

[Rob]

It was a streaming site for me. I'm sure it still exists. But then, like, the. I mean, remember, like, top four and top eight on MySpace?

[David Farrier]

Yeah, I do.

[Rob]

And, like, how important that was. Completely assigned your friends there and. But then I do remember within Pure Volume, too. It was like the top ten bands on the. Like, that was a game changer for the success of this band. Or not.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. Right. Did you ever make the transfer to. Was it Bebo that came after MySpace? Did you ever have that? Was that a New Zealand thing? I don't.

[Rob]

I mean, what was it?

[David Farrier]

Bebo? B E, B O. I can't even remember what the gap was between, like, when MySpace stopped being a thing and when Facebook came. There was a big gap in that.

[Rob]

Well, there was also livejournal, and.

[David Farrier]

That's right. Live Journal, which I never did. Livejournal, which surprises me because it's very much at my app.

[Rob]

Yeah. I think I had a Live Journal at one point.

[David Farrier]

I hope it still exists, and I hope I find it.

[Rob]

That was also, like, part of. Yeah, the music community was driving a lot of that, at least for me, culturally. Of, like, there's bands on. Here's their LiveJournal, and here's their, like, tour updates and.

[David Farrier]

And the crazy thing as well, like, all that's lost now, like, that's gone. Like, Internet Archive will have, like, a tiny bit of it. But all that culture is, like, dead to the world now.

[Rob]

But so much of that just moves from platform to platform. So I guess that's almost a. A positive from this. Of, like, what people were using LiveJournal for. They then used on MySpace and then Facebook, and it was kind of this evolving thing, but it was still all about the connective tissue of.

[David Farrier]

I love. I love that. That still that people can communicate continuously. What my brain gets obsessed with is, like, always, like, documenting stuff.

[Narrator/Host]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

And I worry, like. Like, the aliens come down in, like, 200 years and they look at this phase. There's just nothing documented. It's all just shifting so much. It's like this part of the culture, like what even is it as far as like a documented thing? It just doesn't exist.

[Rob]

I like documenting things too, but then part of me, it almost feels pointless and hopeless because of looking at like look at what I was documenting 10 years ago and the quality of that. It's on a CD ROM somewhere now that I can't even. Unless I buy adapter for my. It's on a zip disk.

[David Farrier]

Yeah.

[Rob]

And then like the resolution of that shit.

[David Farrier]

Terrible. Yeah, I know.

[Rob]

Which if the progression of quality changes as it did then.

[David Farrier]

Yeah, which it will do.

[Rob]

Our HD videos or 4K videos on our phone now are going to look like standard definition low res files from 15 years ago that I know we're also looking at.

[David Farrier]

And there's also just the stress of like sometimes I get stressed about the amount of videos and photos on my phone and I look at it and I'm like, here are 10,000 things. Should I have these somewhere or ordered? Because it's just a mess. My camera roll is just 10,000 random things.

[Rob]

But it is fun to go through.

[David Farrier]

And look things I didn't even remember had happened. It's wild. But there's part of me that's twitching being like, should this be more organized? What should I do with this? Should this be in an album? I used to meticulously have hard drives that I'd order all my photos into. Dates and events and stuff.

[Rob]

Should we get into scrapbooking this year?

[David Farrier]

Oh my go debt with age wise, I'm probably not far off.

[Rob]

I mean maybe that's an episode too. That means Love scrapbooking. We'll do an episode on scrapbooking.

[David Farrier]

My friend. My friend K who lives on Long Island. I met her while I was making tickled. She was linked in with that story but she bought out LinkedIn. She. She showed me her scrapbooking world. She'd be in her 50s and it's just a whole other thing. And she gets together with other ladies and they scrap scrapbook and that's all they do over a weekend and it's this huge thing I think I could.

[Rob]

Get done on scrapbooking.

[David Farrier]

Oh, I absolutely could. Like I guarantee you at some point I will get into that.

[Rob]

Yeah, I like the visual aspects of. I mean I still have a little binder portfolio thing at home that's got like all of my tickets and backstage passes and stuff.

[David Farrier]

Oh, that's so cute.

[Rob]

25 years, really.

[David Farrier]

And you sort of stick them in and you sort of write like I used to.

[Rob]

It used to Be kind of chronological. Now it's just a pile.

[David Farrier]

If we do a scrapbooking episode.

[Rob]

Yeah, I'll bring it in.

[David Farrier]

I definitely want to see that. That's really. Yeah, I used to collect stuff like that as well, but it was, like, just a chaotic box that I'd, like, throw them into. I wonder where that box is now. Okay, a little bit of feedback before we wrap things up. Feedback continues to come in about shower curtains, and I appreciate all of it. Someone wrote in about our porn Revisited episode, several mentions of cream pie without defining the term. Since I refuse to feed that query into my algorithm, I suppose I'll have to live with the mystery. Someone left that comment. And then someone just said, what a cream pie? What should I read it out is? People are misfit.

[Rob]

Let's go for it.

[David Farrier]

It's when a guy comes inside without a condom on, and then the semen drips out when he withdraws. So there you go, Heather. You now know what a cream pie is.

[Rob]

She's probably not the only one that didn't know.

[David Farrier]

There'd be a lot of people that don't, and that's fine.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

The thing that blew my mind on that porn set was that the guy came with Drew. And then we all just waited because, like, it's like everyone expected to sort of come out instantly but didn't. But they needed that shot for the porn film. So we're all just, like, sitting, like, looking at this vagina, like, waiting for semen to come out. It was one of the. The weirdest. Like, three minutes.

[Rob]

I like the idea of picturing you there with, like, a bib on and waiting for a cream pie.

[Jason Pargin]

Where is it?

[David Farrier]

Where's the pie? Knowing Katie wrote a really nice message. She said, it's nearing midnight here in Australia, and as usual, I'm reaching out to people that I appreciate. It would be remiss of me not to wish you all a happy New Year. In a year where I have not only just lived on this planet, which was difficult, I've had to endure a whole lot of hard things this year. She then lists a bunch of stuff which I'm not going to read out because I think it's probably identifying, but it was some really, really intense stuff she went through. And she said, through all these crazy moments, I've had you guys in my ear, keeping me entertained and informed. Being someone born in Australia, there's a lot of American culture that's mostly foreign to me, despite having visited New York twice. So thanks for the work, you guys. Do. And she included a photo of her daughter Dita wearing one of our T shirts. And then she said in her email, she listens to Flight this bird with me and your voices calm her down when she's hungry for her lunch at 8:30 in the morning. And I was like, that's weird. Opened up the thing. Deer is a cat. It's wearing a T shirt. Beautiful. I was like, she's talking about her daughter in a really unusual way. She said, happy New Year, guys. And I just thought that was a really nice email to bring in the new year. We're in 2025, Rob.

[Rob]

2025.

[David Farrier]

Do you sometimes think. Think. We had a show called Beyond 2000 Growing Up. Did you have that?

[Rob]

I don't know that one. No.

[David Farrier]

It was basically about all the futuristic. Futuristic stuff we were going to have in the year 2000 and beyond.

[Jason Pargin]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

And it was really cool. It was like flying hoverboards and, like, the future felt really crisp and clean. And I feel here in 2025. I feel like I'm looking around our studio. There's cables everywhere. There's, like, this, like, junk all over the place.

[Rob]

I don't think that's. It's, like, pretty clean and cable is pretty, pretty.

[David Farrier]

It is tiny. But I'm just saying, like, sometimes I'm like, we're in 2025. It feels like we're not in the future. Or do you feel like we are? We've just been talking about AI Frogs.

[Rob]

Yeah. I mean, I have moments of both. I think it's that thing where, like, as we're living through the progression, it's hard for us to see the difference. But then we're also talking about LiveJournal and MySpace. I know from 25 years ago, and.

[David Farrier]

I just spent my new year watching Creed, who had pretty much a full show, so. So, like, we're at that age now where we're starting to loop back through trends, because there are kids now who, like, genuinely love new metal. Like, Corn is back. That's crazy. So, like, we're living through these cycles now. So that feels strange.

[Rob]

I think the thing that is strangest to me is when you look back at movies and it's like, Back to the Future taking place at a certain time or the Jetsons take place, and.

[David Farrier]

Now it's in El Paso.

[Rosabelle]

Yeah.

[Rob]

And we were nowhere near that. But also, like, you expected the screenwriter from this movie to accurately depict what the future looks like, but the future was kind of painted in this picture based on that completely.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. I guess Our expectations were set up by Hollywood and by the fiction we were reading and watching. And so not all of that is going to be correct. I just wanted flying cars by now.

[Narrator/Host]

That's all.

[David Farrier]

That's all I want.

[Rob]

I mean, we have planes.

[David Farrier]

We've got planes, which are amazing.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[David Farrier]

All right, 20, 25. Let's do some good episodes and I can't wait to see what we come up with.

[Jason Pargin]

Yeah.

[Rob]

We've got some Australia stuff coming up.

[David Farrier]

We do. I recorded three episodes when I was in Australia, so it's the idea of this flightless bird being, like, thrust into a new country. Got three quite weird episodes to bring you. So looking forward to those.

[Rob]

I spent some of my Christmas with an Australian.

[David Farrier]

How is that?

[Rob]

I had Australian meat pie, which. Or an Australian sausage roll. Sausage roll, which I have been craving since we had them.

[David Farrier]

And aren't they the best?

[Rob]

They made them again and dropped more off.

[David Farrier]

Yeah. New Zealand sausage rolls and Australian sausage rolls. Same thing. Isn't the pastry the fluffiest, nicest casing for that little, like, sausage middle?

[Rob]

And then I doused in sriracha, which you don't know about, but we'll. We'll figure it out.

[David Farrier]

It's going to be an episode. We'll get there. All right. Happy New Year.

[Rob]

Happy New Year's.