The Science of Autism with Brace Belden and Dr. Ben Rein | Oct 2, 2025

Summary

Macrodosing Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: The Science of Autism with Brace Belden and Dr. Ben Rein
Release Date: October 2, 2025
Host(s): PFT Commenter & (absent) Arian Foster, with Big T
Guests: Brace Belden (journalist/podcaster), Dr. Ben Rein (neuroscientist)
Theme: Exploring the science, culture, and misconceptions around autism, plus wide-ranging discussions on sports, technology, deepfakes, neurodiversity, and neuroscience, with classic Macrodosing irreverence and humor.

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the evolving conversation around autism: its scientific underpinnings, recent media and political controversies, and public perceptions. The first half features a loose, comedic chat with Brace Belden, touching on everything from deepfakes and sports conspiracies to internet culture and public figures’ oddities. In the latter half, Dr. Ben Rein joins to provide a scientifically informed, accessible primer on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), environmental/genetic risks, how it's diagnosed, and broader questions about human social brains and neurology.

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Key Topics and Discussion Points

1. Autism and Cultural/Scientific Shifts

• Changing Terminology: Early discussion on why 'Asperger’s' is no longer used due to Hans Asperger’s Nazi collaboration (04:21–05:17).

  "He worked closely with the Nazi government, evaluating children... there would be children that would be like, well, they're not really heavy on this spectrum. They're Asperger's... He also referred Some children to the clinic that decide if you lived or died." – PFT Commenter (04:29)

• Autism in Media and Sports: Citing the Notre Dame running back whose mother disclosed his (undiagnosed) autism on television, highlighting discomfort and public awareness (06:13–06:53).
• Recent Political Drama: Discussion about RFK Jr. and Trump making headlines by suggesting Tylenol—not vaccines—as a potential autism risk, and the confusing, inconclusive science behind it (71:18–73:21, 137:22–142:29).

2. Deepfakes, AI, and Identity (w/ Brace Belden)

• Brace describes his foray into generating deepfakes for art and journalism, his ambivalence about the legality and ethics, and the technology’s current limits (07:23–10:55).
• Discussion spirals into commentary on AI “finger mistakes,” the cultural dysphoria generated by filtered images, and references to bizarre public figures like Ali London and Rachel Dolezal (11:00–16:59).

3. Sports, Scams & NIL

• Carbon Credit Scams: Kawhi Leonard’s alleged $49M “no-show” deal paid by a Clippers sponsor (Aspiration) to circumvent NBA salary rules and the scammy world of carbon offsets (21:27–27:30).
• Rich People, Philanthropy, and Sports Fandom: Macrodosing-style thought experiments about GoFundMe campaigns for billionaire team owners and “philanthropic” sports scams (27:30–30:15).
• Saudi Influence in Sports & Entertainment: Candid takes on “Saudi money laundering through pop culture,” their purchases of EA Sports and push into comedy, and the ethics of taking Saudi offers (32:22–36:50).
• NIL and College Football: Alabama, Auburn, and others’ “do anything to win” attitude, turning paying college athletes into an open secret, and the wild salary landscape (41:00–43:57).

4. Diagnosis & Social Perceptions of Autism (with Dr. Ben Rein)

• How Science Understands Autism:
  • Autism = persistent deficits in social communication and repetitive/stereotypic behaviors, with a broad spectrum of expression (123:21–125:01).
  • No singular cause, but genetic factors (hundreds–thousands of genes), combined with some environmental risk factors (e.g., valproic acid, maternal illness, pollution). Some cases remain unexplained (idiopathic) (128:42–135:13).
  • “It is a man-identified condition… we've arbitrarily said these things go together and we call it autism.” – Dr. Rein (125:01)
  • The brain science: likely alterations in the connections (synapses, excitation/inhibition balance) between brain areas, not just the types of brain cells (128:42–134:46).
• Current Diagnosis:
  • Spectrum model post-DSM-5, “once you've seen one person with autism, you've seen one person with autism.”
  • Diagnostic practices and social criteria, plus discussion of potential gender differences in how ASD presents and is masked (103:24–105:10).
• Controversies:
  • “Is it a problem to be fixed or an identity to be understood?” Science largely sees value in understanding, with ethical debates about “curing” autism (121:22–122:21).
  • Media/political pushes to attribute blame for autism rates to vaccines, Tylenol, or other causes often outpace solid evidence.
  • Emphasis on how increasing rates are partly due to changing diagnostic criteria, not just incidence (76:54–78:50).

5. Internet, Socialization, and the Neurodiverse Brain

• Technology Alters Social Brains: Dr. Rein explores the evidence that in-person interaction is more rewarding and empathy-generating than digital; more internet > more loneliness and aggression (146:29–150:14).
  • “People barely benefit from texting each other... the more we spend on social media, the lonelier we feel.” – Dr. Rein (146:29)
• COVID Lockdowns, Social Development: Effects of early childhood isolation on brain development and prefrontal cortex; children’s socialization took a documented hit, which may have lasting impacts (152:09–157:18).
• Mask Usage in Early Childhood: Unclear impact, challenging to study ethically; speculation that limiting facial exposure could affect social-cue learning (157:18–158:20).

6. Psychedelics and Empathy Research

• Dr. Rein’s lab mice on MDMA (Molly) demonstrated greater empathy, possibly due to serotonin release in specific brain areas; extrapolation to possible future therapies for PTSD, couples therapy, etc. (160:34–163:49).
• “MDMA is helpful for people with PTSD. That doesn't mean someone can go to Coachella and take Molly and be cured.” – Dr. Rein (164:20)
• Ketamine therapy, online prescriptions, and the risks of “rolling out” these drugs en masse without robust support (167:11–169:58).

7. Sports, CTE, and Brain Injury

• Dr. Rein’s perspective on NFL helmet technology and brain trauma; Guardian Caps, lessons from woodpeckers, and the elusive science behind CTE (170:10–174:14).

8. Dogs and the Social Brain

• Liked by Dr. Rein, dogs are shown in science to offer real neurochemical benefits to owners, not just “Stockholm syndrome” (as co-host Aryan alleges); mutual evolutionary adaptation between humans and dogs (175:10–178:27).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Diagnostic Shifts in Autism
  "Within 10, 15 years, we would capture there was a change in the diagnosis... when that became the DSM5, it changed the diagnosis for autism and it became autism spectrum disorder…" – Dr. Ben Rein (118:32)

• On RFK Jr/Trump Autism Announcement
  "I was shocked a couple weeks ago when RFK Jr. and Trump said, we've got a major announcement... and it didn't really have anything to do with vaccines at all. It was Tylenol." – PFT Commenter (71:18)

• On Technology and Friendships
  “People don't feel as good after interacting online… the less lifelike the interaction, the worse those benefits are… People barely benefit from texting each other.” – Dr. Rein (146:29)

• On Empathy and Drugs
  "When we are interacting online, those empathy centers in my brain are not going to realize that they should turn on… that's why we're so aggressive to each other online." – Dr. Ben Rein (149:00)
  "If we can figure out what MDMA hits on in the brain to enhance empathy, maybe we can create a different drug that enhances empathy..." – Dr. Rein (162:32)

• On the Breadth of Autism
  “Once you've seen one person with autism spectrum disorder, you've seen one person with autism spectrum disorder…so many different ways that it can manifest.” – Dr. Rein (125:15)

• Funny and Memorable
  On deepfakes: “I’ve also figured out... it can't do the side curls. This technology is not there yet.” – Brace Belden (09:37)
  On NIL deals: “Just stop making them go to school… I just want a football team with the best players we can find.” – Big T (41:47)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 04:21–05:17 | Why Asperger’s label was dropped, Nazi history | | 21:27–26:43 | Kawhi Leonard, Aspiration, and carbon scams | | 32:22–36:50 | Saudi Arabia investments in sports, EA Sports | | 71:18–73:21 | Tylenol and autism controversies—media, politics | | 123:21–128:24 | Dr. Rein outlines autism diagnostic criteria | | 128:42–134:46 | The neuroscience of autism | | 137:22–142:29 | Tylenol, research limitations, and Dr. Rein’s take | | 146:29–151:36 | Social interaction, technology, and loneliness | | 152:09–157:18 | COVID, kids, and brain development | | 160:34–164:20 | MDMA/empathy mouse research and implications | | 170:10–173:13 | CTE, helmets, and football brain injuries | | 175:10–178:27 | Dogs, the brain, and why furry friends matter |

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Tone

The Macrodosing hosts combine lighthearted, tangential conversations with knowledgeable, sometimes irreverent, commentary. Everything remains honest and open—both in skepticism and curiosity. Dr. Ben Rein’s segments offer clarity and distillation without dumbing down, complimenting the more comedic, probing approach of the hosts and Brace Belden.

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For Listeners: Why You Should Listen

If you want a blend of real, up-to-date neuroscience insights on autism, empathy, and technology—along with the usual Macrodosing banter about scams, sports, and internet weirdness—this episode covers a ton of intellectual ground with humor and memorable digressions. The autism segment, in particular, gives practical, fair-minded context to a diagnosis that’s often debated but misunderstood, and Dr. Rein’s contributions are packed with takeaways for anyone interested in the real science behind brains and behavior.

Transcript

[A]

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[D]

Well, you do know who the current senator is, right?

[C]

No.

[D]

Tommy Tuberville. Who was the head football coach at Auburn?

[C]

Oh, I didn't. I knew who Tommy Tuberville was. Which is, by the way. You got to talk to your people. You guys cannot be named like that.

[A]

And Tommy Tuberville.

[C]

We cannot have an Alabama football coach be named Tommy Tuberville.

[A]

Welcome back to Macrodosing. It is Thursday. It's October 2nd, and today's show is brought to you by Game time. College football season is back. That means tailgates, cheering crowds, and the excitement of being in the stands before kickoff are all back too. Ever find yourself at a tailgate and decide to grab tickets at the last minute? Well, that's where game time comes in. The Game Time app gives the advantage back to the fans. It's a hack for unlocking amazing tickets and experiences in just a few Taps. It's so easy to use. And the Game time guarantee means that you can Trust you'll get 100 authentic tickets on time at the best price. But plus fees are always included. So what you see is what you pay. Big T, can you pull up a college football game for this weekend?

[D]

I've got college game day. Vanderbilt at Alabama. Vandy on college game day. Who would ever thought that?

[A]

Huge game.

[D]

I can get you into a ranked matchup in Tuscaloosa for $125 on game time.

[A]

Love that, love that. Big game. Huge game for Kaylin DeBoer. Is it Alabama for real?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, this is a game.

[D]

Lose to Vandy twice.

[A]

This game, you got to win.

[D]

That should be in your contract. Regardless of what else happened, if you lose to Vanderbilt twice, you're gone.

[A]

You gotta. You gotta win these easy ones. Even though Vanity might not be an easy game this year.

[D]

Yeah, we'll see.

[A]

But check it out on game time. Take the guesswork out of buying college football tickets with game Time. Download the Game time app, create an account, use code macro, get 20 bucks off your first purchase terms. Apply again. Create an account, redeem code macro. M A c r o. 20 bucks off. Swipe, tap, ticket. Go download the Game time app today. All right, welcome back to Macrodosing. It's Thursday. It's October 2nd, and we got a big show today. Aryan had a family emergency so we couldn't make the show. We got Bryce joining us. It's going to be a brace episode. And then we also have Dr. Ben Ryan, who is a neuroscientist, to talk to us about neuroscience and brains, some crazy stuff. And we're also going to get into autism interview. We're also going to discuss autism with brace and with Dr. Ben Ryan. One thing I didn't realize until today, because I'd always heard the term Asperger's as like a milder form of autism, apparently. You don't say that anymore.

[D]

Yeah, canceled because it woke.

[C]

Well.

[A]

Do you know why?

[D]

Well, I think Brace said, was he a Nazi?

[A]

Yeah. So he worked closely with the Nazi government, evaluating children and determining whether or not they were fit to exist and procreate.

[D]

Well, there you go.

[A]

And so he'd evaluate them for the what we call Autism spectrum disorder. And then there would be children that would be like, well, they're not really heavy on this spectrum. They're Asperger's, we'll call it. His name was Asperger and so he tough. By the way, he would also refer to Some children to the clinic that decide if you lived or died. So I'd say maybe.

[D]

Good cancellation, as cancellations go. That's fair.

[A]

And also the. The name Asperger sounds a lot like Ass Burger.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

If we got to get rid of one, I think we can agree this is a.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

No one's. No one's out there, like, protecting the Asperger statue. Bring back Asperger. Why can't we say Asperger anymore? Right, but we're going to get into autism with. With Brace and some other stuff. We're just. We're gonna chop it up on the news, talk sports with Brace, too. We get really, really into sports with them. And then Dr. Ben Ryan coming up in. In just a little bit to talk to us about the brain and studies that he's done in the brain. So let's bring Brace on. Big T. You good?

[D]

Was born good.

[A]

Is that true?

[D]

Yes and no.

[A]

In Christian doctrine. I don't think that it is.

[C]

We're talking autism today a little bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It's interesting that there's one person mysteriously missing from this discussion.

[A]

Yeah, it is very interesting. Where's Jersey, Jerry? I don't know. No, yeah, you're right, Aryan. He decided to duck out at the last minute.

[C]

He's like, that shit's not real.

[A]

It's interesting because there's. There's a running back for Notre Dame, and his mom just went on a pregame show last week and said, yeah, he's. He's definitely autistic. We've never had him diagnosed. We didn't really know how to tell him, but we just kind of always knew that he was, so we would tell his teachers, hey, just so you know, our son's autistic, but he doesn't know, and there's no formal diagnosis. But just keep that in mind. And then. Then they did a pregame show where his mom went on national television to tell the world, hey, he's autistic. Just so you guys know. It's kind of strange they should have.

[C]

Cut to him just, like, not reacting in the locker room.

[D]

They kind of did.

[A]

They did.

[C]

It's like watching the TV and going, huh?

[A]

I get that. I understand.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Brace, before we get into. Into any of the autism talk, I just want to check in with you, see how you're doing. You gotta check in on your friends sometimes. It's been too long since we've had you on the show. I know you've been very busy and you've been. I don't I don't even know how to describe the levels of deep fakery that you've been. How many hours a day do you spend learning how to do deep fakes?

[C]

Well, so I just want to preface this with saying it's for a project. And in particular, the things that I'm working on right now are for our live show that we're doing next week. But in general, a lot of the. More, I would say risque pictures that I've been making have been for a long term, semi journalistic project and slash art project. I spend, probably last night was a little bit of an outlier. Spent about three hours doing it because I discovered some new technology to make people Chinese, but probably an hour a day generating images because I'm banking a lot of them for a particular let's enterprise that I'm going to engage on.

[A]

I love how shady, I love how, how shady you're being about describing the project.

[C]

The thing is, it makes me want to know, you know, it's a tough time. As Big T always says, it's a tough time for the Jews right now. You know, we're not exactly covering ourselves in glory. And I feel like adding to the pantheon of Jewish pornographers is I'm doing a disservice to the entire history of my people. However, I can't help it. And I'm not making pornography. It's not exploitative. Well, it is exploitative, but it's exploiting somebody that a lot of people don't. In fact, two people that a lot of people don't like.

[A]

So it's someone who deserves to be exploited.

[C]

Yes. And, and the, the laws are. I think deep fake should be illegal. However, I don't think anything I do should be illegal. And so I'm a bit, I waffle, I waffle. But yeah, I spent, I spent a little bit of time doing it. I still don't really know how it works, but I'm still, I'm doing it.

[A]

And see, I, I think what you can always say is that I don't think it should be legal. That's why I'm going so far with it.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

To show everybody else how dangerous this can be if it fell into the wrong hands. Not me, I'm not the wrong hands, but I'm, I'm pretending to be the wrong hands to show you how bad it could be.

[C]

Yeah. No, precisely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've also figured out, you know, speaking of bias, the, the, I've been trying to make myself a Hasidic Jewish in In various applications I've been using. And it can't do the side curls. This technology is not there yet.

[A]

It's too close to fingers.

[C]

I think fingers, it can do pretty well now, but the, the Payettes can't do.

[A]

It can't do. Interesting. I, I always thought that the whole thing about AI not being able to do the fingers was just the, the guys that are pioneering AI saying, hey, you don't have to be worried. You can identify a fake a mile away because we can't do hands. We can do anything else, but the fingers really give us problems. So if you see bad fingers, that's how you know.

[C]

And then they just. It still struggles with fingers, but I, I've gotten really good at, for instance, making myself come out of a butt.

[A]

That is really good.

[C]

It's pretty good, right?

[A]

Yeah. That's as far as people coming out of butts go. That's. That's probably the best. Yeah.

[C]

I mean, never seen anything like this. This is, this is a side project. I was just. It. I was working on anatomy stuff, but. And diapers. I've really mastered being Chinese. African. I've mastered. Although I. That's gonna, you know, stay in the, stay behind the scenes. That's sort of for personal use only. But it's given me a kind of dysphoria because I, I do think sometimes I make myself into something else and I think, what could have been? Yeah.

[A]

Then you look in the mirror and you, you get disappointed for a second, but then you feel ashamed that you were disappointed.

[C]

Exactly. And then I say, I should love myself. I should love myself. I should love myself. I think it's a similar feeling to how like 14 year old girls feel when they put on like the Instagram glam filters. They're like, I wish I. I'll never look like this. I wish. And then they get, you know, that eating disorders, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Except there's nothing really, because I would like to be Chinese, but there's nothing I can really do to get there. There's one guy, I'm not sure if you're familiar with this guy, this guy Ali London, who is a British right wing, big T, he is perking up. A British right wing, like Twitter guy, I guess you could call him. He's like, he's like Ian Miles Chong, but from Britain, who just like posts like a picture of like a Muslim. Be like, London has fallen or whatever. But he moved to Korea a number of years ago and became Korean.

[A]

How do you do that he got.

[C]

Surgery to look Korean.

[D]

Wow. He sure did.

[C]

Yes. And I believe he was trans for a second, although I don't think he ever went through, like, any. The Korean thing really took precedent over that. I think the trans thing was just kind of. He threw that one in, but then he d. Transitioned and d. Korean, although not really effectively. And it is now like, a important voice on the right wing.

[A]

That's. That's a fascinating.

[D]

Like, is there a picture of this guy before he became Korean?

[C]

I don't, I don't know if I've ever actually seen one.

[A]

That's shocking because.

[D]

Because I'm curious how. How one becomes Korean.

[C]

Well, I think. I don't want to. How do I say this? I think he gets surgery on your eyes. Yeah, I'm going to be real on that. I think he gets surgery on your eyes. He became round in a similar way as Psy, the famous gingham style singer. And so his roundness stopped resembling sort of the porcine, you know, sort of pear shape of your regular sort of overweight Brit, and became a kind of. I would say. I don't mean this in a. In a racist way at all. An Oriental roundness. And I mean that in the classical sense of the East. Uh, he, his, his roundness became sort of the roundness of a. Of a merchant, perhaps in, like, an incense store and something I've been working on myself with technology. Emma Stone, for instance, has recently become Chinese as well. She.

[A]

She did go Chinese on him. Wait, what happened? She, she turned.

[C]

I don't know how to say it. Besides, she went a little ch. She got a look.

[A]

Little Chinese looking.

[C]

She got a little Chinese looking. What did she do, a lot of plastic surgery?

[A]

Hold on. So was it. Was this, like, accidental Chinese? It seems to be accidental Chinese. Did you know that they use the same word for crisis as they do for opportunity in China?

[C]

They think it's.

[A]

So maybe. Yeah, so maybe she can. Maybe she can capitalize on this.

[C]

I would say the Emma Stone stuff. I was looking at it last night. I felt really caddy. Not caddy. I guess that's not the word. I, I felt ashamed looking at it because, you know, I don't like to be rude about women's appearances. And I, I think she's still beautiful in a certain sense, but she is Chinese. And I don't. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with being Chinese. I like. I, I, I. There's, you know, there's. There's no shame for the Chinese people for me saying that. But Emma Stone, as far as I can tell, is not Chinese. Although she does appear to be slightly Chinese now.

[A]

Huh. I mean there's, there's some examples of people that are. That have like tried to turn Caucasian before. Like Sammy Sosa, he like bleached his skin. Have you seen Sammy Sosa recently? Yeah.

[D]

He's back, right?

[A]

I think he went back. Yeah. Yeah, for a while. It was, it was shocking obviously the, the speculation about Michael Jackson, even though he claimed it was some sort of skin ailment.

[C]

Yeah, I don't know about that.

[A]

I'm not sure about that. He also had the plastic surgery addiction.

[C]

Thing famously, you know, Dolezal. Although it was mostly a hair based race. Race fakery. She did tan in a way that, that felt. What are we doing here? You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah. It wasn't the standard like orangish. It was, there was, there was some other hues that she, she had them mixing.

[C]

She was, she was slightly melanated and it was an artificial melanation.

[A]

What's she up to these days?

[C]

She sells her pussy on Onlyfans. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean that is just fully factual. You can see a picture of her vagina and butthole on the website Only fans.

[A]

It's good to know that no matter what happens to you in society, if you're exposed as being a fraud, if you're, you know, publicly shamed and embarrassed, you can always just put the. Put the pussy up and you'll have a retirement plan based on.

[C]

I feel like I couldn't if I. For something. God forbid. Right. Something happened to me. Or really something happened to you. But it was my fault, which is how I would prefer it. But I was. Something so bad happened to you that I was sort of cast out of, you know, the sports media sphere which we both inhabit. And I had to get another job. I feel like my penis. I think I could charge people. If I was able to get my penis on a website that people looked at anyways, but. But they had to pay to not look at it. I feel like that could be lucrative. However, if there was a website that you visited purpose built to see my wiener, I think that it would get. It would get traffic in the low teens, mostly bots. Not teenager people. Teenage. No teenagers involved.

[A]

Exclusive audience. Maybe you could just charge a lot of money to those like 15 people that wanted to see your penis. Put a premium on it.

[C]

I. I have a crazy dick pic I'll send you after that. Not of mine.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

But that a friend got sent. It is crazy. And the penis itself is gross. But there's. It's really. It's like a hidden detail in the picture that is I've been puzzling over for a long time.

[A]

Okay, I'll have to check that out. Yeah. You would have to be a website that was a. It was a good website or a website that had a lot of people who were actively engaged in it that needed this website. And then doing a reverse paywall for your penis on it. That's. That's an interesting idea.

[C]

Yeah, I know. It's. There's a lot of ideas that I have that I think you could term interesting, but very little purchase.

[A]

Monetization.

[C]

Yeah, monetization of it. I have a lot of. I have a lot of great ideas, but they don't want to hear them.

[A]

So. So, Bryce, do you have any sports takes for us before we get started and everything else? Like, what do you know about what's going on in the sports world?

[C]

Wembiana.

[A]

Yeah. Wimby. Wimbiana. He looks good. He looks really good.

[C]

He looks good.

[A]

He's put on a lot of muscle. Did you know? So I don't know how familiar you are with his story, but he was, what, 17 when he was drafted from France?

[D]

I'm not. I think he's 18 or something.

[A]

Something like that. But he's what, 7 4. And his wingspan is like 8ft? He's an absolute freak. He can dribble the ball really well. He can run. He's athletic. You've never really seen anything like this guy before. And he had. I think he had deep vein thrombosis last year, so he had to exit the NBA to get treatment on that. Then the off season, here's what he did. He went and studied with Buddhist monks.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Kind of like a Kareem Abdul Jabbar type thing.

[C]

He went to China.

[A]

Yeah. And he studied with these monks and learned about self and learned about the universe and spiritualism. I feel like that's a. That's a breakout year waiting to happen for this guy.

[C]

Yeah. I think that if I was. If I played in, like, a major league, I would. I don't think I would even use an injury as an excuse. I would just leave for a year, Michael Jordan style and. And. But study, like, go to a monastery and take a vow of silence. Because when I came back. And not. I wouldn't actually do it, you know, but I'd let everyone think I did it. And when I came back I feel like people would be afraid of me because I gained some spiritual, some divine power.

[A]

Yeah, they would. They absolutely would be afraid of you. And then the reporters would probably be. They'd take it really easy on you, and you could always just fall back to the. I'm not going to answer that question because of my religious beliefs.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And just not have to deal with the media at all. And. And all the reporters would be like, okay, I respect that. What a. What a. What a competitor, What a leader.

[C]

What else. What else is going on in sport? I frankly, you know what, the whole sports thing, I just don't get it.

[A]

Okay, so let's get your reaction to this story, because I feel like you'd be. You'd be zoned in on this. Are you familiar with Kawhi Leonard?

[C]

Kawhi Leonard Kawhi?

[A]

Yeah. K A W H I. Kawhi.

[C]

What? Don't take this the wrong way. What race is this, man?

[A]

He's an African American.

[C]

Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not familiar with him.

[D]

Laughs weird.

[A]

Laughs weird. He actually might fit into the topic of this episode.

[C]

Give me the laugh.

[A]

Potentially.

[D]

Ha ha ha.

[A]

He's like a robot.

[C]

Doesn't really.

[D]

No emotion. No emotion from this guy ever.

[A]

Doesn't show emotion. Doesn't use the appropriate inflection when he's speaking sometimes, but he's really, really good when he plays. He signed with the Clippers a few years ago, and he took, what was it, like $50 million total less than what he could have gotten if he stayed with the Raptors. And everybody was like, that's interesting. But it was over. It spread over the course of like five seasons. So it's like 10 million less a year. He still makes a lot of money. Yeah, but the Raptors could offered him more money than the Clippers could have. He signed with the Clippers. And then there's been an investigation done by Pablo Torre, who's a really good sports journalist, and Pablo kind of put together some of the pieces around his deal with the Clippers and. And found out that a major sponsor of the Clippers is a carbon credit company, a tree planting company called Aspiration. And Aspiration paid Kawhi Leonard. I think in the contract, it was like the total, the exact total of $49 million. The difference between what he got with the Clippers and what he could have gotten with the Raptors for no show job to be. To be the face of their company and to appear in marketing materials, things like that. Except in the description of the contract. There was absolutely nothing that Kawhi had to do to fulfill his obligations to receive that money. Besides, I think he had to sign like five jerseys a year or something like that.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. He was by far their number one expense when it came to marketing. Didn't have to do anything for the company. And what's fascinating to me is just the whole business model of the aspiration tree planting company. It seems like it was a company that was created just so that people could feel good about themselves. If they fly in private jets, if they use a lot of carbon, they. They pay this company hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions at times to offset those emissions by planting trees in the Amazon rainforest or South America somewhere. And then the company itself, there's really nothing that you can point out and be like, these are the trees that they planted.

[C]

Exactly. Dude, the whole carbon offset thing is such an insane scam. I feel like zero trees have ever been planted by one of those things. At one point they were offering. I'm sure they still are. If you. If you buy a plane ticket, you can pay extra to have your carbon offset.

[A]

Yeah. And then you can. Then that money goes to a company like Aspiration that they contract with some business down in South America, and then they pay that company to plant trees, and then that company does not plant trees.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, that company might just be a shell company for the first company, and they. All the money goes to Kwai Leonard. It's in. I know. There's so many fucking scams like this. The problem with scams like this, though, is that you have to have a significant amount of startup capital to even begin to do them. And so these scams are like, kind of off limits for the 99%.

[A]

And it's, it's.

[C]

I mean, we can be victims of them, but you can never perpetrate them yourself. And so I think a large part of my politics is I want to bring the ability to do such scams to everybody. Democrats I did read about this is. Isn't quite letters, like they're denying it.

[A]

Yeah, they had NBA media day a couple days ago. And so you have to sit in front of the press and answer questions. And I think it was Ramona Shelbourn from ESPN Camera kept asking Kawhi, can you. Can you name something that you did for this company to get that money? And he was just like, you know this. I'm not going to address these click, clickbait allegations. The fake news that's being made up about me. He just kept going back to being like, this is like a blogger trying to do clickbait on me. He very clearly could have if he had. If he had ever done something for that company, he could have very easily just been like, oh, yeah, you know, I actually went to, like, these events for them. He didn't do for that company. And so, yeah, it was, it was funny to watch him try to deny without. Without denying.

[C]

You should, if you are doing that, like, lie, scam, whatever. Like, this is a. Some. This up. So many people, if you're gonna lie, you should have a little something in case you get caught. And like, they should have had some, like, at least like, had a media guy be out there and like, go like, all right, Kawhi. Like, you got to tell. You got to tell a fib and be like, I did this event, this event, this event, this event. I met with private donors and they were, you know, it was. I was securing funding for the company, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because I guess the way that they could probably not, but maybe could lie about it at least buy some time is be like, well, we used him to, like, talk to high profile donors to get even more money. So it paid off.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, we. We were using his Rolodex. He was doing network marketing for us. Or at the very least, he could have just posted like a picture of him wearing a shirt that said Aspiration on it like three, three times a year on Facebook.

[C]

Yeah, it's. It's. That's incredible. Is that. So this is illegal, I assume. Yeah.

[A]

In terms of like, United States laws or in terms of the NBA rules?

[C]

Well, whichever is more important in this probably.

[A]

So NBA rules. Yeah. You're not allowed to do this because. And, but I do think that it, it does happen across sports where a team. Because there's salary caps in the NBA, salary cap in NFL, NHL. The only league that doesn't really have one is baseball for now, but they might. But yeah, in the NFL, if you. If you're trying to sign a guy, be like, hey, we need to fit you under our salary cap. Here's what we'll pay you. But also on the side, here's what we can hook you up with in terms of easy endorsement money to cash in on. I do think that happens a lot. But you're not allowed to do it in the NBA. And it seems like. I don't want to say they did a bad job covering their tracks. I think it was an unlucky break for them that the company Aspiration was sued for fraud. I think they were even charged with fraud. So the company dissolved, and then all the bankruptcy filings went public. And you could go through those and credit to Pablo Torre, who's a great journalist, and he's been, like, just attached to this story. It's like every time somebody says something about the case, which is, this is probably why Kawhi didn't even want to, like, make up something or tell a lie. Every time somebody says something, Pablo dives into it, and then he brings up all the reasons why that can't be true and what it leads him to now. Yeah, so it's like every. Every time they talk, they dig a deeper hole for themselves. But it's. It's a fascinating, fascinating company. I. I just. I love the idea of a company that's built up just to make rich people feel better about the insane amount of carbon that they produce.

[C]

I think that's a lot of the green energy stuff is like. Like. Like that. Not. I'm not talking about, like, solar panels, but, like, these weird and, like, ancillary tertiary industries that are just, like, attached to, like, greenwashing, they call it, I guess. But, like, there's so much. I mean, this is also, like, all, like, charities and NGOs, and, like, if you look at how much actually goes to whoever they say is going to. They're supposed to help, it's like 1%. Everything else is spent on fundraising, which is like a net, you know, or salaries, which is. Is the operating expense or whatever. It's just. It's. I mean, there's so much. And like, it's probably. There's tax shit, too, that people are doing these things.

[A]

Yep. They can run them as a nonprofit, maybe at times. Yeah.

[C]

Have a nonprofit.

[A]

We do not have a not. Well, Dave had one for a little bit during COVID when he was doing the. The Barstool Fund to. To help small businesses and restaurants that were being closed. And so that money got distributed a few years ago. I don't know. I don't know what we have going on right now.

[C]

That was like. That was that. That people liked that.

[A]

Yeah, that was Dave going mainstream.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I think you guys should do, like, a nebulous sports fund where you just spend it on sports.

[A]

Okay. Like taking people to sports games.

[C]

Nah, it's just sports, you know? I mean, it's. If you want to, you can do that. I mean, because you have some sway in the company. Right? You're like, what, CTO at this point?

[A]

Basically, Yeah.

[C]

I think head of hr, you or at least make like the. The PFT fund or something like that.

[A]

You know, I'm trying to think what.

[C]

You help people in need.

[A]

Here's what I could do with it. I. There's. There's a lot of owners out there that are very cheap about how much money they spend on. On their rosters. So their teams always suck.

[C]

Okay, we don't got to get racial about this. I'm just saying, by that, yeah, they're cheap, what they spend on their rosters.

[A]

I actually don't even think the guy that I'm referring to is what you're implying. But, yeah, there. There are teams. That is mainly true for baseball, but it happens in other sports, too, where you don't have to spend money on your team to make money. You can get the. You get a share of the TV rights deal that comes in across the league. You get. You get, you know, all the merchandise sales. You get concessions, tickets, parking. And you don't have to have a good team. You can. You can intentionally feel a bad team and, you know, basically be like, fuck you to your own fan base, knowing that you're going to make money on your investment. So there are some teams, I'm thinking right now of the Bengals, whose owner is. He's. He does not like to spend money on anything. They just recently, I think, got a practice field that's covered, so they can practice in the rain now. But they. They have a bad quarterback situation because their starter got hurt, and their guy does not want to spend any money on a backup. And I was thinking about doing some sort of gofundme to get an entertaining backup quarterback for them because they're going to be playing, like, primetime games. We're going to be subjected to watching this shitty team over the course of the next two months nonstop. I think it'd be good for America if the team was actually competitive. I didn't think about doing a nonprofit.

[C]

Yeah, nonprofit. To replace to maybe for situations like this where you can add players to teams. It's just one of those things like, we'll give you a free player. Like, you got a guy injured. We have a roster. He'll do it. We'll pay him out of the nonprofit shit. And he's just doing. He's volunteering his time on the Bengals.

[A]

Yeah, I like that. Because nobody ever thinks about giving money to billionaires.

[C]

No, exactly.

[A]

They're people, too.

[C]

It's. It's interesting. They're people, too, and they pay most of the taxes, as I'm sure Big T is Thinking to say right now.

[D]

Overwhelming majority.

[C]

Overwhelming majority of the taxes. Exactly. And so my other. My other proposition is this. You know how, like, sometimes rich people, like, you know, like, Jamaica has a bobsledding team. I mean, obviously not talking about cool runnings here, but, like, Jamaica will have a bobsledding team. It's like two white Swiss people.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

If I. Because, you know, barstool does stunts on occasion, I was like, you should go to the Olympics.

[A]

I don't know if. Well, what. What event would I compete in at the Olympics? What would.

[C]

There's so many. It's like, you know how they did the breakdancing?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Find one of those. Find a country that you're like, I'll.

[A]

Give you $300, you know, dual citizenship.

[C]

Yeah. Gets it. Go. I buy a golden passport and then. But, like, you know, to somewhere that's kind of cheap and fucking go to the Olympics if you're not gonna do it. I might do it.

[A]

That's a good idea. Like a. Yeah. Maybe a curling team from a really warm weather climate.

[C]

It's also. It's also probably because you know how there's like, the Math. The Olympiad 2 for math.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Do you actually know that?

[A]

I. I have heard about it. Yeah.

[C]

You guys should. First of all, you guys should start covering that.

[A]

Is it. Is it like, pet.

[C]

You guys should have a pen and paper on barstool.

[A]

I mean, we. We do have some guys that I think would be, I guess that's true.

[C]

Entertaining to watches.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

There's a lot of math going on in sports. But I'm like, it was. If I can't afford to become like, you know, the Barbados, whatever, Winter Olympics, you know, salami or whatever you call it, where you walk on the skis champion. I'm like, maybe I could do, like. I could be like, I don't know. I'm trying to think of a country that probably didn't have one, but every country probably has math because it's actually really cheap to do that. But I'm like, I should be able to buy my way onto, like, a math team.

[A]

I agree with that. I. I wanted to ask you about Saudi Arabia, what they're getting into these days, because they're. They're incredible.

[D]

You get invited to the festival.

[A]

The comedy festival.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

I did not get invited to the comedy.

[D]

Would you have gone?

[A]

I would not have gone unless they paid me 100 mil.

[C]

Dude, they're not even paying 100 mil. I was like, there's no way that these guys are like, like Dave Chappelle. Is like, getting paid, like, $50 million. I read $1.2 million.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of money, but that's a nice Dave Chappelle. Yeah, it's, it's a lot of money to. But not in terms of the people that they're inviting.

[C]

Exactly. It's a lot of money in abs. The abstract, but it's not a lot of money to somebody who has a lot of money.

[A]

Right. They, they, they reached out to me, like, three years ago when the live tour was starting. No, the golf tour. And they, they asked about being a brand ambassador for the live tour.

[C]

That would be so funny if you, you should absolutely do that. I, I, they were probably going to kill you, but they were like, fuck it, we'll do Khashoggi.

[A]

Yeah. I said, I don't, the answer is no. Please don't tell me how much the offer is.

[C]

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Unless it's a hundred million. But if I don't want to know what I'm saying no to, because then I'll maybe think about saying yes.

[D]

How did that offer come in?

[A]

It was.

[D]

Get an email. Did.

[C]

It was a, it was a hot, A hooded hawk came into the window delivering it.

[D]

Was it direct to you or did it go through something?

[A]

It was a DM from what appeared to be a hot chicken bikini saying that she represents live tour.

[D]

Right.

[A]

No, no, it came through somebody and then that somebody asked me if I was interested. I said, do not tell me how much they're offering me. But the answer is no. Unless it's 100 million, in which case the answer is yes.

[C]

Actually, it was a note tucked into a passport that was recovered intact after 9 11.

[A]

Yeah, it floated down directly into my hands, dude.

[C]

It's crazy. Like, so, I mean, they're doing, they've been doing this, like, Saudi Arabia 2030 bullshit for a while to, like, yeah, revamp the image, which is not working, I don't think. But you can just buy people off, which is sort of what they're settling for. But, like, I don't think the average person's assessment of Saudi Arabia has changed because of, like, the culture stuff they've been doing.

[D]

In fact, also, every time they do this, everyone is like, oh, this is what they're trying to do. Then the, then the people who take the money and do it immediately come back and they're like, yeah, sorry, I did that. Like, I know those people suck, but they gave me a ton of money.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

It's like, you're not even Getting. They don't even pretend to be in on it.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I think the idea behind it is that they. They want to ingrain themselves in all facets of American and European pop culture and then have enough people that are somehow connected either getting paid directly by Saudi Arabia or part of their business does brand deals and. And advertisements with a company that does take Saudi money. And eventually if that money touches all these different places, then they're less likely to be brought up in the public discourse in a bad light. I think that might have something to do with what their main goals are. But recently they just bought EA Sports.

[D]

Yes, they did.

[C]

They did.

[A]

They bought EA company. Yeah, yeah, the public investment fund. And it was Jared Kushner's company too, Right? It was like a partner. Yeah, yeah. So they teamed up together. Kushner is married to Ivanka Trump. He. I don't think he has a White House job now. Right. But he did in the first term.

[C]

No, no, no, no, no, he doesn't. I don't think he does. But he was special envoy.

[D]

He's the Middle east guy. Yeah.

[A]

And job well done.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

I think now they've got so many. We've got. Listen, Big T, we're both Jewish. We've got so many goy slaves in this White House right now that it is. We're good. We don't need Kushner anymore.

[A]

Yeah. So they bought EA Sports. They make Madden. They make the college football video game. They do a lot of it.

[C]

Yeah, they do a ton of video games. Don't they do all sports? Because I remember I used to play a hockey video game on 64 when I was a kid and it was. I remember ea. It's in the game.

[A]

Yeah, EA Sports. It's in the game. So, yeah, they. They just bought EA Sports. EA Sports was a publicly traded company. They're taking it private now. So they don't have to answer to investors or anything like that. I don't know what they're going to do with video game company in terms of inserting vaguely pro Saudi propaganda.

[D]

But what if you can like, buy your roster in nil with the public investment fund and you can. The Rose bowl is now played in Riyadh.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

There's like sports management video games and shit.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

They should be one where you just are a Saudi prince and you can just like. It's just. It's not even sports necessarily. It's just like, you know what, Buy things, see what happens.

[A]

Like the Sims.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. They should be Saudi Sims.

[D]

I loved NFL Head coach as a kid. A game that I think nobody else played. I loved it. So maybe we do that with the.

[A]

The Saudi prince they did that for. That's a really popular game for soccer, right?

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Football manager.

[C]

In Europe, they own a bunch of soccer teams too, right?

[A]

Yep.

[D]

Yeah, that's every. I don't know if the Saudis, like, the Qataris own a bunch.

[C]

Uae probably. Yeah.

[D]

Like the. Like.

[C]

Yeah, Emirates. They have all the jerseys.

[D]

Yeah, man. Cities is. Their ownership. Is. Are they Qatari? Yeah, they're one of those. It might be uae. They're one of those countries.

[A]

So funny. Yeah.

[C]

The west has fallen.

[A]

I'm looking up on. On Reddit right now because I just googled Saudi Crown. Saudi Prince simulator video game. Apparently, MBS is a gamer.

[C]

Oh, yeah, no, it's true. He is. I think he used to game with Kushner. I might be making that up, but it was either. It was something crazy. It was like. And this could be completely apocryphal, or I could just literally be making it up. But I seem to remember that he gained with, like, Baron or something like that.

[A]

They're getting on the stage.

[C]

Imagine how sick that would be. The ovon mbs, Barron Trump were fucking squatted up in Fortnite just. And just chopping it up. Right? I would just regular imagine a stream.

[A]

They hop on Twitch, they go live for it.

[C]

You know, Baron has, like. Baron has an interesting affect because. Because statistically, he probably wasn't molested, but he kind of, like, moves like he was. You know, I'm saying.

[A]

You mean, like, in what way?

[C]

He just looks like he's been touched on.

[A]

Just glides.

[C]

He kind of like, he had no. He cringes in this. Or he has the stare, you know, I've noticed.

[A]

I've noticed. Yeah, he. I think he's adopting a lot of his dad's mannerisms intentionally. And he's doing the glare, he's doing the. The points. And you. You can just tell that, like, Don Jr. And Eric, they're. They're hopping on. On a text message thread afterwards, being like this.

[C]

Our brother's so gay, dude. Our little brother Baron is so gay.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, that's. And just like, they're trying to, like, trying to offer him a key bump.

[A]

Yeah. Come on, man. It's cool.

[C]

Come on. It's cool. You're in college, man. Have fun.

[A]

Big T. Are you concerned at all? Because you're a big gamer. You love the college football game this year.

[D]

It stinks. I honestly haven't played it very much at all. But yes, on general, I do like, like video games.

[A]

Now is. Do you think that Saudi Arabia is going to start actually doing nil stuff? Like what college do you think that Saudi Arabia.

[D]

Auburn would sign up for the PIF in a heartbeat.

[A]

You think they're the most likely?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Why is that?

[D]

They'll do anything to win. LSU as well, famously stole money from a children's hospital. Look up that one.

[A]

They got.

[C]

They got some.

[A]

Some oil connects down there.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

A and M, they don't.

[D]

They don't need to do it.

[A]

Yeah. But A and M, you know that Texas A and M would do it. They.

[D]

They already have.

[A]

They already know the.

[C]

Probably got. You got a link through Bush there too.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

CNA and M guy.

[C]

No, but he's Texas.

[A]

Yeah, he's Texas. I think that the dads. I think George H.W. bush's presidential library might be on the A and M campus.

[D]

Okay. But they already have money.

[A]

They got money, but they could. They could always use more.

[D]

The answer is Auburn. Auburn would do anything.

[A]

I think it also matters how much money do you owe a coach that you hate in a buy a buyout? Yeah, like if you owe.

[D]

That's becoming a big thing now with firing coaches is like it used to be. All right, pay them whatever. We'll pay the new guy. You got to pay your players.

[A]

Yeah, but like Alabama turned on paying players now.

[C]

Yep. How much are you getting for that?

[D]

Depends. But some of them a lot.

[C]

Like. Or what are we talking, like millions of dollars?

[D]

Like the top players in college football this year are making four, five, six million dollars.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Oh.

[C]

If I get to live in the coolest dorm, they.

[A]

They definitely live.

[C]

Like, I bet they get the prettiest girls in school. Get to talk to them too. Oh, man. And they probably get to pay to do their home. Pay some guy to do their homework. Could you imagine being a professor of a guy who's making $6 million? No. You're just like, you, dude. He's just like sitting in class looking at Tik Tok sound on.

[D]

And you just like, I think. And I've said this for a long time, but now it's so self evident. Just stop making them go to school.

[C]

Stop making them go to school.

[D]

I don't care.

[C]

What are we doing here?

[D]

I just want a football team with the best players we can find that put on an orange jersey that says Tennessee on it. I don't care if they're going to class. They're not going to class anyway.

[A]

They can go to class if they want.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, if you want to. I think that would be. That'd be great for you to do. Yeah, but, but if you don't, I don't care. Like, especially now with the transfer portal. Like, you can just transfer in the middle of the school year like nothing matters. Just stop making them go to school. It's stupid.

[C]

Big T, let me ask you this, because what's your. What's the school you like?

[D]

Tennessee.

[C]

Don't you feel that maybe Tennessee players should get paid more than, like, Harvard players? Because the Tennessee players are getting probably a worse education.

[D]

All right, well, they do get paid more than them. But run, run this exercise through with me.

[C]

Well, for instance, say.

[D]

So you're saying because they're. They're ear potential later if they don't play, professional football will be less.

[C]

I play for Harvard and I get out and okay, I can't play football because I tore my acl, but I can get a job at an investment firm because I went to Harvard and I can hang out with Vivek Ramaswamy. However, I go to Tennessee, I go to the college that you like, and I get out and they may. They sent me back to high school.

[D]

Well, first of all, I would note. I would note that the University of Tennessee's admission standards have gone way up since we got good at football. But also anybody that's playing football in the sec, their only thing is trying to play professional football anyway. Yeah, they're not. And if you're great at Tennessee and you don't end up being able to play professionally, there's a guy who owns a car dealership or something that will give you. That will give you a Kawhi Leonard job making 100 grand a year. You don't actually have to do anything just because he loves Tennessee, but you.

[C]

Just do some eastbound and down shit where you just go like, throw the fucking football through a. Through like a Tesla or whatever, which.

[D]

Is actually another thing I find interesting with the whole transfer portal thing is there's a lot of guys who leave school, go transfer for an extra 50 grand to play one season of football, whatever. And you're ruining connections that could have made you hundreds of thousands of dollars later in life.

[A]

Right? Maybe not millions, sure. But yes, it would. It would be worthwhile if you just stuck around for a little bit longer.

[C]

Big off on a cyber truck. If there was like a 20 chance that Grok was listening to it.

[D]

All right. There's a lot to unpack there. Why?

[B]

What?

[D]

What, Why I guess.

[C]

Which part is why?

[D]

Why am I in a cybertruck? Why am I masturbating?

[C]

You own one, you're horny poor.

[D]

Okay, presumably it's parked right.

[A]

Self driving, autopilot mode.

[D]

Yeah, no, I'm too paranoid for that. Also, if it's parked, it's either in public, in which case no, or it's at my house, in which case I.

[A]

Could just go, no, it's.

[C]

But you. All right, Your house burned down. There's been a horrible, horrible pandemic that has killed 99% of the world's population. Okay, that itself, those two events.

[D]

Well, at this point, nothing else. Then nothing matters.

[C]

I know, but those two events happen concurrently and they've so, like, fucked you up that you haven't jacked off for two months because you've been so busy. Like, fuck. Like the hospital, like everything is just falling apart. Falling apart, falling apart, falling apart. Finally you're like, fuck it. I'm hitting the open road. I have to find some other survivors. But Grok is still working, of course. And you, you're like, all right, I'm parked outside of Mobile, Alabama. I'm going to head in in the morning to hopefully find other of people there that are still living. I'm going to whack off. But Grok is like, hey, Big T, what you thinking about?

[D]

In the scenario you've laid out, it just seems like the. The rules of society have gone by the wayside at this.

[C]

So you're doing it again.

[D]

I don't understand the necessity, but I. I'm not. I don't. I'm not a po. I don't know. I don't know.

[C]

Yeah, life is. There's all sorts of mysteries, right? I think I would do it probably like in traffic.

[D]

There's no traffic.

[C]

No, no, no, no. I'm talking the pandemic. That. That shit ain't happening.

[D]

Oh, this is just normal.

[C]

Just normal. Like I'. Trenton.

[D]

There's a catcher for. I want to say he plays for the Red Sox now. He was on the Blue Jays at the time. He got arrested for jerking off in his car.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

Oh, my God. I would never. I. First, I don't know how to drive, but second of all, where was he?

[D]

I want to say he was parked at like a gas station or something. His name's Reese McGuire. I'll find the story. And then when they played, like his first game that next season, I think was at the Braves, and the organist played beat it when he came up to the plate.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[A]

He was jacking off in a Florida strip mall parking lot.

[C]

Yeah. Wow. Maybe he had like a meeting he had to go to or something.

[A]

Yeah, I.

[C]

He's like, I got.

[A]

People don't really talk about that. People kind of forgot about that story. Big T, thank you for bringing it back up.

[D]

I don't think baseball fans forgot.

[A]

Yeah. But, yeah, it doesn't get talked about.

[C]

Baseball itself. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of you going on there with the bats and the mitts and everything.

[D]

I'm looking at the arrest video. It was February 7th, 2020. What a year for that guy.

[C]

2020. Wow. Well, he must be pretty stoked because that kind of got knocked out of the news cycle pretty quickly, right?

[D]

Yeah. I mean, in baseball circles, it's lingered, but that's true.

[A]

If you're going to get caught jacking off, February 2020 is. Is maybe the best time in the history of the United States to do it.

[C]

Yeah. Because if it's like. If it's. If it's like a week after the pandemic starts, it's going to be in the news, but like, if it's right before the pandemic starts, it's getting knocked out.

[A]

Yeah. If it's. If this was like the second week of March, we'd be talking about it because we had something as a nation to discuss during the. Like Tiger King. Well, it's not a great documentary, but everybody knows it because it's all that we had.

[C]

Yeah, it's. And that guy really is. He really did think he was going to get pardoned by Trump.

[A]

He did. That's. I feel bad for him.

[C]

Yeah. Well, he did kill someone, right? Right. Yeah. Isn't that why he's in prison? Why is he in prison?

[A]

Tiger King guy, It was either killing somebody or. Or like paying somebody to kill somebody.

[C]

And then they made two dramatization TV show that was. There was too much going on in Hollywood. They made two different TV shows dramatizing an already fairly dramatic documentary with pretty good. It's like, why are you gonna have a guy just play an already insane, entertaining guy to watch?

[D]

By the way, Tiger King sucked. Can we all admit that now?

[A]

I think it was. It was okay, but it was an.

[D]

Opportunistic release by Netflix.

[C]

Here's the deal. A lot of people have never dealt with a tweaked out gay guy before. Big T, you and I have. It's all bread and butter, but it is, it is. I think a lot of people were just like, wow, this Guy is so crazy. He was a crazy interesting guy to watch, but again, I don't remember anything that he did except abuse animals and then like, try to get some lady killed.

[A]

Yeah. So he, he ran for president in 2020 or. Sorry, yeah, 2020. And then again he tried to run as a libertarian with Vice President Andrew Tate.

[C]

Okay, I can see it.

[A]

He did not get. Yeah. In August 2024, he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

[C]

Yeah, I think he was really looking for a, I think he's looking for a pardon from Trump pretty heavily. And it's just like Trump didn't watch that dude. Like, Trump's not like watching Netflix. What do you think he does watch though?

[A]

The news? I think he's got the news on.

[C]

Big T. Can I ask you something? Because you still like Trump, right?

[D]

Yes and no.

[C]

What the was up with him posting that AI video of the med bed.

[A]

Thing we talked about?

[D]

So I actually didn't see that until we talked about it on Monday. Yeah, I don't know.

[C]

It's, I want J.D. vance to. Because you know how J.D. vance is always like, you know, like, you know, clapping back at people that he thinks of being mean to trump. I want J.D. vance to like, have to like sit down across to someone and answer what the fuck that video is.

[D]

Yeah. And I don't.

[C]

That's like Biden shit where you're like. Because he didn't do anything like that. But it's like something a senile guy.

[D]

Would do because he talks in the video.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Like, did he think I, I, I really, I don't know. Did he think that? He really said that?

[A]

These are the questions I would.

[D]

Did he think it was funny? I don't, I don't know.

[A]

Did he do that?

[C]

Not even funny. It's like a real 60 minutes hit me up last year and was like, do you want to go try a med bed? And I was like, how the did you. I've never done anything like that before. Like, no news organization has ever hit me up before. I was like, yeah, I would love to go try a med bed. And we were going to go to this place called like Tesla Med Bed in I think New Mexico, Arizona. And then I think they might have heard the show and some comments that I made revolving around certain events in the Middle east. And that was.

[D]

Hang on, now I'm confused. Are these are real?

[C]

So there's fake. No, just to be clear. No, they're not real.

[D]

To clarify my question, I understand the thing in the video isn't real. I didn't know if there was something that's in production. Production that, like, maybe does a scan of your whole body or something.

[C]

So that's what you would think, that there's, like, some, like, weird, you know, tech, like a Theranos kind of, like, fake thing that's like, we scan you for cancers. No. There are beds in Arizona you can go sleep on for an hour that have a black box that contains, I believe, nothing in it underneath the bed that they say will cure all your diseases. It's called, yeah, look up Tesla med beds. And I was really excited. I was gonna get to go do it. I think they were gonna pay me, like, 300 bucks, which is. That's how much you get paid if you don't have a manager. But, yeah, they said. They said no.

[A]

Yeah. So my understanding, because I didn't know anything about med beds until Sunday morning when I saw the video, I didn't know that it was a deep QAnon thing that they had been talking about two years, that it's like the. The Cabal has stored this technology. They've kept it away from the masses, and Trump is going to take that technology and make it available to the. To all the United States citizens, and all you have to do, just lay down in this bed, and all your problems are going to be solved. I didn't realize that it was such, like, a deep reference to that. Then I thought maybe he put that out there just as, like, a wink to the Q and on people to say, hey, everything you believe about me, it's still going to happen. Keep following. Trust the plan. Right?

[C]

It's funny because he does just post Q shit sometimes, but this one was like. This was. Because this is, like, deep Q. This is like. This is like, side, like. Like, it's not even. It's. It's kind of mainstream QAnon, but it's like a side. It's like a. It's like a tentacle off of QAnon. Yeah. It's like my whole thing with the med beds is I'm like, well, wouldn't they use it on Bill Clinton? He looks like.

[A]

Or. Or Biden or B. Yeah, or Biden.

[C]

Get him in the med bed. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, a regular bed would have probably been good for Sleepy Joe.

[A]

That's true. But, yeah, like, before the debate, just charge him up in the med bed for a couple hours. He's good to go. Now, do you think? Because I. I was looking at the post, and it looked like he. He embedded the video himself.

[C]

Yes. So it's saved on his phone or.

[A]

Like so since iPad, somebody sent it to him or was that somebody that works with him that has access?

[C]

I. So I bet a lot of really insane Florida people just have his number because of Mar? A Lago. And so someone probably sent that to him and he was like, wow, I don't remember doing it, but this is great. I love this. And, and uploaded it. And I guarantee if you ask him about it, he will just do that thing where he kind of like, he's really good at it because sometimes he doesn't know what people are talking about. And Biden would just kind of be like, yeah, you know, like, sort of like do like a deaf guy nod. But Trump just starts talking and just like kind of changes the subject. And like you, by the end you're like, oh, he answered the question. You're like, actually he just talked for like two minutes, but I have no idea what the he said.

[A]

Yeah, he just like start talking about his social media in general and yeah, he, he'd figure out a way to not. That's why I'm interested to see what, what Levitt's talking points are going to be if somebody brings up the med beds to her.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she, I think that's maybe how she got, she got all that set of work done. She should do the Emma Stone thing and become Chinese.

[A]

Just gets a share of tick tock.

[C]

Yeah. Carolyn Levitt. What is she, 26? That's a tough 26, huh? 27. She's 27 and married to a 59 year old.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Wow. Oh, I bet he's got a wrinkly old thing. But she is, that is, she's from Florida. Right.

[A]

I know that she went to school in the, in the Northeast somewhere.

[C]

Yeah, I believe she's from like, I.

[A]

Think she's from like Rhode Island.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah, I think Rhode Island. Well, he might be New Hampshire. New Hampshire.

[A]

New Hampshire.

[C]

New Hampshire. And correct me, she recently turned 28.

[A]

Okay. You, you seem excited to announce that.

[C]

She barely looks 37.

[A]

No brace. I got one other thing that sports related I'd like to just educate you about because I don't think this has come across your desk yet. Have you heard about the open Senate seat that's going to be up for grabs in Alabama?

[C]

No.

[A]

So there's, there's two guys that are, are speculated to be potentially running for the seat. One would be Bruce Pearl. He is the head coach of Auburn basketball.

[B]

Former.

[A]

Former. Yeah, he just recently stepped down from that like a Week ago. And then he was also the head basketball coach at the University of Tennessee where Big T is an alum. And he's been very political, outspoken. He's a big, big pro. Israel guy wears it on a sleeve, talks about it a lot.

[C]

Alabama needs that.

[A]

Yeah. People are, are thinking that, that Bruce Pearl might run. And then like two days ago a guy by the name of Paul Fine Bomb said that he's considering running for that seat now. Paul Fine Bomb, he is a sports journalist, a sports radio call in talk show host who also has television shows now. But he became famous by doing like a Monday morning weekend wrap up college football call in show where people would just call in and scream at him about how they want their coach fired and he would just kind of sit there being like okay, like very dryly, like let them do all the comedy. He just responds to it. So he's considering also running for this seat. My thought when I heard about this was just that we're going to have every like everyone who's been on a sports talk show at some point reaches a part of their career where they want to transition to politics. Like Stephen A. Smith.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Is thinking about doing it too. But this guy Fine Bomb, I think he's very popular in Alabama. I guess it goes back and forth. It really depends on how good their team is at the time. If their team is really, really good, then they like Paul Fine Bomb because his show is always gassing them up if their team sucks. They hate Paul Fine Bomb because they think that he's biased against their team.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

For saying bad things about him.

[D]

I would guess people living in Alabama might feel about Fine Bomb like he's kind of a sellout now. Like he's a national guy.

[C]

Oh. Cause he's not just an Alabama sports guy.

[D]

He.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

He was like a Birmingham radio guy. Now he works at, he has, he's like ESPN's one. They're top college football guys.

[C]

Who do you got, Big T?

[D]

What do you mean?

[C]

In this, in this race, who do you got?

[D]

Oh, I don't care because.

[C]

Oh, so you don't even like the Tennessee guy. You don't even like Pearl even though he was a Tennessee.

[D]

Oh, I, I actually what I wanted to happen was Bruce Pearl to run for this senate seat lose. Cuz our coach who's very good is going to retire in a year or two. Lose. And then Bruce Pearl comes back.

[C]

Gotcha. Okay, so he's a great basketball coaching.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Is, is fine. Fine. But they're both running as Republicans. I assume yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I think we got to get some other sports figures in there.

[A]

I got one.

[D]

Well, you do know who the current senator is, right?

[C]

No.

[D]

Tommy Tuberville, who was the head football coach at Auburn.

[C]

Oh, I didn't. I knew who Tommy Tuberville was, which is, by the way, you got to talk to your people. You guys cannot be named like that. You cannot have an Alabama football coach be named Tommy Tuberville. And you know what? Technically, I should find out what. What it was because I realized my stepmom's dad was a Tennessee assistant football coach.

[D]

Really?

[C]

Yeah. But I don't know where. But let me. I'll ask my dad about that.

[D]

And what's his name?

[C]

I. I. First of all, I'm not saying that on a podcast. And second of all, I actually don't know. He died, like, in the 80s. Got it. But. And she never.

[A]

She.

[C]

I don't know. He was a very good dad. She didn't like to talk about him, but. Wow, I didn't realize. So there's precedent here already for a coach.

[A]

A lot of press.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

This.

[D]

This seat is reserved for Auburn football, basketball coaches and commentators.

[A]

Now, Tuberville, he was. Was he placed or did he win election.

[D]

He won the election.

[A]

He won the election. It's. It's shocking, too, because Tommy Tuberville not. Not a good coach either.

[C]

Really. Well, maybe they'll be like, we don't want him back in coaching. We have to make sure he has another job.

[A]

That's not. That's actually a good point. It's like, keep him away from.

[C]

That's the kind of guy that's like, he. That's like the kind of guy who offers butter subsidies.

[A]

Yeah. Tommy, Hi, it's me, Mr. Tuberville. I think that they should, if you want to throw another sports name into that. That race, Charles Barkley. He's an Alabama guy.

[C]

Is he now?

[A]

Yeah. That would be amazing if it was Paul Fine bomb against Charles Barkley for the United States Senate.

[D]

I would love Tommy Tuberville. Also, by the way, Brace, when he was the head coach at Ole Miss, said, they'll have to carry me out of here in a pinewood box. And I believe, less than a week later, took the Auburn job.

[C]

I love it. I love it, I love it. This is. This is why. So there's another guy, speaking of politics, that's been saying shit like this, Curtis sla, who I like. I like Sliwa, but he is, like, refusing to drop out of the New York mayoral race, and he said a Similar thing. They'll have to carry me out here in a coffin. And I think he does mean that. And I did text him a few days ago to see if he'd come on the show and he has not written me back. Even though he said he would come on the show before.

[D]

Well, he runs like every time, right? Because he was running when I lived in New York.

[C]

He's a perennial guy. Yeah.

[A]

How many cast.

[C]

And I met him once on the Coney island boardwalk. And you've never seen a man that was this magnetic. For women. It was. And for. I mean, for women of a certain age who live on Coney island or in Coney Island. So it was rather leathery type of.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But they were surrounded. It was, it was like seen. I mean, it was, it was. I've never seen anything like that. It was like. It was. Who's that? Austin Butler? It was like seeing Austin Butler walk by a, you know, a sorority. It was insane. He was surrounded. He had his little guardian angels. He like about 4 foot tall. 4 or 4 foot tall Puerto Rican guys in the low berets around him, like having to like bat away these sort of leathery breasted women who are. Who are slimming all over him. But I read in New York Post that he is impotent. He said to the York Post, I am impotent. And he kind of implied that it was because he cheated so much.

[A]

He had.

[C]

He.

[A]

He fucked himself out.

[C]

It was like, it's a divine. It's divine justice. No, no. He was like, I feel bad for what I did. He also did get shot in the leg by, I guess a John Gotti associate in the 90s. But he's like, I was so unfaithful that God sort of cursed me with my penis not working anymore.

[A]

That's fascinating. Doesn't he also have like 13 cats?

[C]

19 cats? And I asked him about that when I saw him. I said, Curtis, you have 19 cats and your wife in the studio apartment. How do you do it? And he said, mark Twain had one more cat than me. He had 20 cats and he was a genius. I'm not quite Mark Twain's level, but I'm like, that doesn't answer your question. My question? I'm not asking who has more cats than you. I'm asking you why you have so many cats. And no answer.

[A]

It's.

[C]

Imagine the stink in there, man.

[A]

Yeah, that's a concerning amount of. He hopes that he gets carried out in a coffin because those cats are going to eat him after he Dies.

[C]

Well I'm saying too he hopes he gets into Gracie Mansion so he's placed for the cats.

[A]

Yeah, that would be very funny. Like the. The next mayor to move in after Curtis Lewa steps into that mansion is like we gotta. We gotta bulldoze this thing.

[C]

His rent has to be like $5 a month or something. There's no. It's like, it's. It's. You know. I think he lives in like South Brooklyn too. I'm like, you get like probably a one bedroom for not that much there.

[A]

Yeah. He's a fascinating guy though.

[C]

I know. Totally fascinating.

[A]

We'll get back to Brace in a second. He's being brought to you by Sax. Sax is the original Pouch underwear. Changing the game since 2006. It's got patented ballpark technology. It's the most comfortable underwear for men, period. Think about it. You change your oil, you upgrade your phone, you rotate your sneakers. But you're still rocking those stretched out boxers from college. Your underwear is the one thing that you wear every single day. Sax underwear gives you breathable fabric, no ride up legs and a pouch that keeps everything in its lane. I. I tried a pair of these on day and a half ago. I'm going to say life changing.

[D]

Tell them what. Tell them what I did. I don't bullshit about sponsors and especially not about underwear. Correct. I tried these on and I immediately texted Madeline. Can we get more?

[A]

Yep. This is a winner.

[D]

And I actually found. She was. I have it right here in my backpack. She was hiding another pair from me. We got two. She only gave me one. But then I went and found the second one.

[A]

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[D]

How can you preempt that?

[A]

So nothing.

[C]

Not.

[A]

Not that I can think of nothing do we had. I'm still fascinated about the med beds actually.

[C]

Well, are we. Maybe. Maybe we should Do a med bed episode.

[A]

Yeah, I want to know more about them. I want to know like, are there different companies that are putting out different brands of med beds? Is this med bed technology going to be run by the government thing?

[C]

I'll text it to you right now. There's an FDA thing I gotta find first about Tesla med beds where people are complaining that they don't work.

[A]

So is this company actually producing things that they're calling med beds?

[C]

Like they have them here? Dear Mr. Lou, during inspection of your firm located in Milford, Delaware through on March 20, 2023 investigator from the FDA determined that your firm is a manufacturer of Tesla med bed generator and Tesla Biohealer medical devices. Your website states Tesla biohealing OTC medical devices create their own environment of pure life force energy offered a much higher concentration of this natural healing force than is available in everyday environments. And once the body is given enough life force energy to work with cellular self repair mechanisms can begin to activate much faster and more profoundly than previously was possible. These product under section blah blah blah blah blah of FDA Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. These products are devices because they are intended for use in diagnosis of disease or in other conditions or in the cure mitigation. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. And it's just like these are fake. Like there's nothing in, in here. Like you're, you're selling them for medical reasons and they're not medical devices. And there's a lawsuit I believe as well. God. I claim, I, I claim and this is to the fda, it's complained. I claim I purchased your two Tesla biohealers. I claim that I had several conversations with a party regarding all of my mom's medical conditions. I was hopeful results would occur. We started. She had already been through microchronic strokes along with three larger strokes. She had lost the vision in her left eye. She had abnormal aortic aneurysm, blah blah blah blah. And she has dementia. The big hope was nothing more would grow and small issues would go away. I had hoped her tremors and balance issues would resolve and her short term memory would start to come back. Nothing ever happened happened. It's like all these people bought this and then just like it did not work obviously because it's just a fake box.

[A]

And the company named Tesla, are they getting, they're being sued by Tesla for using their name?

[C]

No, because it's. I don't think so, but it's, it's after Nikolai Tesla also. But I think actually they might be getting sued. But maybe if it's called Tesla biohealing. People are like, it's not the car.

[A]

I don't know. I feel like there's the people that would believe in this, would probably believe that Elon had something to do with it.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you get him on enough ketamine, that's kind of like a med bed. You take a bunch of ketamine and lie down for a while.

[A]

Yeah. Are they just talking about sleeping? Just getting a solid eight hours of sleep.

[C]

And that's tough for me, to be quite honest with you. I don't sleep well.

[A]

All right, Brace, actually, one more thing. Have you paid any attention to the Tucker CARLSON Investigation into 9 11?

[C]

You know, I haven't yet. I should, but I have not had the time is what's his determination?

[A]

So I watched the first video that he put out last week. So far, not a lot that we didn't already know.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

But it's just kind of drawing light to some of the things that if you paid attention over the years, you already knew about. Like the. The intelligence officer from Saudi Arabia that came over looked like he was scouting.

[C]

Out a couple of guys. Yeah.

[A]

Videotaping the. The redacted pages. And then he. He talked a little bit about how the 911 Commission Report was engineered by John McCain to make George Bush look bad because he beat him in the election.

[C]

Oh, I actually hadn't heard the primary before.

[A]

Yeah. So that he. He kind of behind the scenes, steered it and made it just as a big you to. To George Bush. I don't know. I don't know. I need to watch the second video because he left it on kind of a cliffhanger there. And I'm sure he got to the bottom of it.

[C]

I've been watching only. I've only been watching the Candace stuff.

[A]

Yeah. What are your thoughts on the Candace stuff?

[C]

I think she is beautiful.

[D]

Did you see her? There's a video going around of her kind of doing a little weird, crazy thing. And some people are into it.

[C]

She kind of always is. Like, she's got a sort of like a serpentine charm to her. I genuinely. Some guys, I think are opportunistic. I genuinely think Candace believes everything she's saying, but she. I, I was following closely her sort of theories about the Charlie Kirk assassination, which I don't think have borne out. And I do think, on a basic level, I understand reacting strangely because they were really close and they were good friends. Like, they were legit good friends at a point. I don't Know, maybe at night, the end, but it seems like they were very close at a time. I will say it is a little kind of crazy. I understand having a strange reaction to a friend's death, but then to, like, go completely integrated into your show's mythos like that, like, to kind of add the McCrones as, like, factors to this kind of shit. I was like, there is actually something, like, kind of really mentally ill about this. Like.

[A]

Yeah. And it's been funny watching Megyn Kelly try to, like, say I disagree with Candace, but also like, hey, we're. We're fighting on the same team here. So I don't want to, like, trash her, but if Megan Kelly truly, truly believes in what she believes in, she should be like, fudge you, Candace. You're a piece of shit. Yeah, this is absolutely disgusting what you're doing right now. But she doesn't want to say that because she's like, well, we kind of share some of the same audience.

[C]

Candace's audience is fudgeing bigger than Megan. Megans. It's way bigger. Candace's big dog, dude. She's getting like 5 million views a video.

[A]

It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah. All right.

[C]

She is gorgeous. My God, she is beautiful. And Megyn Kelly, I think so too. Except she should put on a little weight.

[A]

She has. Yeah, she's working out a lot.

[C]

Yeah, she's on too much. We Govi, man.

[A]

I'll tell you what, when you're hungry.

[B]

Out there, you start acting like a.

[A]

Rookie quarterback in his first game.

[D]

Making bad decisions, messing up the basics.

[B]

Being all out of sorts. That's where Snickers comes in, man.

[A]

That thing is packed.

[B]

Roasted peanuts, nugget, caramel, milk chocolate.

[A]

It's like the MVP of candy bars.

[B]

And when you bite into it, boom.

[A]

It sorts you out.

[B]

Get your head back in the game.

[A]

Of life, satisfying your hunger.

[D]

Remember this.

[B]

Snickers handles your hunger so you can handle everything else.

[D]

Snickers satisfies, man.

[A]

That's a winning play. Brace, you want to talk a little autism?

[C]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes.

[A]

I was shocked. I was shocked a couple weeks ago when, when RFK Jr. And Trump said, we've got a major announcement to make regarding the causes of autism, and it didn't really have anything to do with vaccines at all. Yeah, that was a big time zigzag because I had thought for the last six months, okay, they're going to figure out a way find some studies, highlight those, and then switch everything up with the vaccine schedule. But it was. It was Tylenol.

[C]

Yeah. Which I was, I was kind of like, this is it. And they were like, it's probably Tylenol.

[A]

Yeah, but maybe it's not.

[C]

And I was like, this isn't really. And Trump was kind of. I mean, he always does this, but he was kind of like, this is like the biggest announcement we're ever going to make. And I think everyone was just kind of like, okay, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Because I think at a core level, many people just don't believe that to be true. Like on a level that's like, not even necessarily logical or having. I mean, I'm sure I have no idea the science behind it whatsoever. I think a lot of people like Tylenol doesn't do that. You know what I mean? Like, there's no way Tylenol. Tylenol does not make my kid, like, non verbal autistic.

[A]

I think that the, the main thing I took away was, yeah, if you take high doses of Tylenol while you're pregnant, there's probably a reason why you're taking high doses of Tylenol. There's probably something going wrong with you medically.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And then that could probably contribute to, to higher autism levels and probably taking any drug, no matter what it is, while you're pregnant, not gonna be, not gonna be great for the development of a fetus. So if you take a shitload of Tylenol, there's probably gonna be some sort of side effect or some way that it makes its way into the bloodstream or development of the child. But, yeah, I, I saw the press conference and then I saw Trump saying, yeah, you know, some people think that it could be Tylenol. I think it could be Tylenol, but maybe it's not. So it was like a big announcement for, for really not that much. They were just, I guess if you're Tylenol, this sucks for you because they're making you put like a big warning label on the box now. Right.

[C]

Warning your kid will either do really well in tech or be non verbal autistic and like, possibly violent.

[A]

Roll the dice.

[C]

Yeah, it's a roll of the dice here. My, my thing is, I've always understood, I don't know if this is autism, actually. I don't really even know what autism is, to be honest. It's too broad of a diagnosis now. Because they split off Asperger's because of woke. They were like, asperger's doesn't exist anymore. It's all autism spectrum. Because Asperger was like a Nazi or something. I don't know. But I always thought it had to do with ancient spermatosa. Like if you're, if you're to. It's because they used to blame the woman. They were. Like, if a woman's old and you have a kid with her, that kid's gonna be a little simple.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Of some kind. But recent studies have shown that if you're, if your nuts have been dangling for many decades that the sperm inside of that is really good at math or bad at math.

[A]

Right. And yeah, it's. It presents itself as. It's. I guess it's a brain wiring thing. Like your, your brain connects differently if you're on the autism spectrum than if you're not. And there's no, you can't, like, do a test for it and.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

There's some genetic things that you can. You can test for and see. Okay. Yes, this is true. And then you can connect that back to certain things, like with the fertilization and the development. With autism, it's just like. Yeah. From, from the get go, the brain developed differently than most people.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, I, I, for me, I think this is personal for Trump because of his child, his latest, you know, sort of gangly son. Although his other sons do also seem to be chromosomally. Chromosomally, whatever. Divergent, let's put it that way. Particularly in the chin. A sort of Habsburgian, Spanish line, Hapsburgian kind of thing going on with some of those kids that actually. No, because that guy had a really big chin and some of his kids are just. It just didn't. They kind of were birthed before the chin kind of came in there.

[A]

Ivanka did not. Ivanka seems untouched.

[C]

Yeah, Ivanka does seem untouched. This. This is. There's another Tiffany.

[A]

Oh, yeah, I forgot. I always forget about Tiffany.

[C]

Tiffany is not really. Yeah, she's there. It's. I get a, I get a. I get a whiff of the Lenny about her, you know, but. But nothing. Nothing concrete so far. It is. It is funny because I feel like the two things that people associate with RFK Jr. Is, of course, the noises that we all imagine he makes when he has sex with Cheryl from Cribb youb enthusiasm. But also, like, I guess his idea. He's like, he's like into the vaccines now. He's not into the vaccine.

[D]

Well, he's out on the vaccine.

[C]

Out of the vaccine. Not taking that shit. And so I think there was a kind of, like, I, I thought. I think people kind of thought he was sort of put in there as like a SOP to like the anti vaccine crowd to like really get their support. And then this announcement was like, I feel like, kind of met with like nothing. And they've talked about, because you know how Biden was always like, we're going to cure cancer. RFK Jr. And Trump have talked about how we're going to like find the cause of autism. I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea. I just don't think that these guys are going to find it. You know, it's like the two, like, it's like, you know, it's like if you guys said you were going to do it.

[A]

Yeah. And we just read a bunch of posts.

[C]

Yeah. You're like, oh yeah, you watch some video. I mean like, that's the thing is like, it's tough, it is tough to make a major announcement on what causes autism and then post the med bed video a few days later.

[A]

That is.

[C]

Yes. It does not really necessarily engender a lot of optimism from me that, that, that I think that these guys are, are serious about finding the cause of it. And people say like, okay, people, there's just more broader diagnostic criteria now. And it's like more people are autistic than ever because we have way more ways to tell if people are autistic. I kind of like, I feel like there's more autistic people now, but also I feel, and this is maybe not so woke of me to say, but I feel like many of the behaviors that people learn, young people learn from the damn cell phones kind of make them functionally autistic.

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

You know.

[A]

In what way?

[C]

Well, I don't, I mean again, there's a bunch of different ways to be autistic, but like sort of short attention spans, lack of eye contact, irritability, which is again, this is some autistic people and you know, a kind of like flat affect that a lot of zoomers have that we associate with some of the more sort of, I don't know what stereotypical forms of autism because again, there's many forms, others. It's a spectrum. Right? Yeah, but, but I feel like that is really. I, I think that there's a lot of people who are basically functionally autistic from their phones without necessarily their bra and maybe their brains are rewired from just like, you know, being like an iPad baby or whatever. But that's my, that's like sort of my RFK Jr take on things.

[A]

I, I don't see that as Being like that outlandish that maybe it's not actually autism, but maybe.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It, it like lends. If you become a phone zombie or a screen zombie, it lends itself to having the same, some of the same characteristics as someone who actually does have autism, like, from birth.

[C]

And this is the problem with autism thing, too, is like, there's so much. First of all, autism has become kind of slang for just being like, I'm a little weird, but there, there's. Or like, I'm interested in something. I have a hobby.

[A]

I just like planes. Okay. I'm just. I, I am fascinated with military airplanes. There's nothing wrong with that. Everybody has their own interests.

[C]

Every. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like, you know, it's like Big T's thing around certain numbers involving World War II. Like, every. It's a special interest. It doesn't mean anything.

[D]

But stop. They. They shoot people for that now.

[C]

They do.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

But. But according to you, they didn't back then. I'm just playing. I'm just playing. I'm just playing. Big T. Big T believes in it. But.

[D]

But when I get shot, this is on you.

[C]

Oh, okay.

[A]

I think you're pretty far down. That.

[C]

You're pretty far down. I know. It was never. No, I, I did have a couple people be like, after Charlie Kirk Dr. Shot because we had a live show the next day. They're like, are you, like, worried I'm like, that no one's gonna, like, take revenge on me?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, there's a couple of other people that I could and will, if necessary, name that would be a few steps ahead in line.

[A]

I had a few people put me on their list after that because I did not, I did not tweet a note of condolences or sympathy when it happened. Like, first of all, when something like that happens, I don't think people need to hear from me.

[C]

No.

[A]

People don't know about what's going on. That. But the person, the people that were tweeting at me being like, you're on this list. I've noted your lack of sympathy. You're part of the problem.

[C]

You.

[A]

You're going to get got next. Like, I'm so far down that person's list. If you're mad at PFT commenter for.

[C]

Not, you're down the list at barstool.

[A]

Yeah, probably. Yeah. So I, I think I'll be okay.

[C]

Yeah. I, I, you know, my whole thing is. Listen, nobody gives a. Like, it's. I don't want to do this. What is it? Called what do you do it when you. What do you do when you. You act valorous in public to get performative. Activism. No, no, not activism. There. We all know this phrase.

[A]

I just white knighting.

[C]

I don't know. But you know what I mean, I'm. Nobody wants to hear from me, right?

[A]

Like, do you want. What if I hopped online and I was like, this is incredibly sad. I feel bad for him and his family. What a bad day for America. If I'd posted that online is, do people feel better? Does that make things happen?

[C]

No, but I think people just. People go crazy when they see sad videos, you know, or crazy up videos.

[A]

Because I think even if I had posted because like when I saw the video, like everybody else, I was like, Jesus, this is an awful thing. Like, holy. The all that would happen would be people would then start replying to my post and then argue with each other in the replies and then that would turn into a whole thing. And then I, I'd feel worse reading all that.

[C]

So what better way to pay tribute than to engagement?

[A]

That's true. That's true.

[C]

You know, you know, that's. That's one of the. If I. Guys, if I'm assassinated, I want you guys to each just make the most engagement based post about it. Like, Brace was about to come out as pro Israel. You know, like, be like, he told me we had this conversation. The text got deleted because I dropped my phone in the Charlie Kirk drink I ordered from Starbucks and unfortunately it did blow up my damn phone and burn down my house, which obviously has led me to masturbating the cybertruck, which is why I'm being arrested in saying this directly into a body cam. But he's, you know, I. He was about to come out as pro Israel. No, so with autism, I think that the problem is, is the spectrum is too wide. So we've got like guys who work at open AI and then like people who like have to live with their parents their whole life because they like can't, you know, clothe themselves or whatever. And I, I don't, you know, listen, I'm no expert on this. I don't think any of the people who made that announcement were expert on this. No, but. But I'm like, maybe I guess they should try to figure out a reason, you know.

[A]

Yeah, I, I think that'd be probably a good thing. But I did notice that the reaction from people that are autistic was more along the lines of, this is actually not good for us because you're the the way that you're talking about autism makes it seem like everybody with autism, there's something deeply wrong with them that needs to be fixed and cured. And that if you have autism, you can't contribute or lead, like, a fulfilling life. And that's not, that's definitely not the case.

[C]

I mean, listen, I mean, every, I feel like should at this point know most, most of these guys coming up with things, you know?

[A]

Right.

[C]

I, I, it's, it's, you really gotta be. You have to have, like, 1950s level of prejudice against, like, people, you know, with disabilities to be, because it's not even at certain, certain point, it's not even really a disability. You're just like, you know, you're good. But then people also think that, like, everybody who's autistic is really necessarily good at math or something. I, I feel like, because you remember that guy who would always steal the subway trains in New York?

[A]

No.

[C]

There was an autistic guy who was obsessed with the subway system in New York. And he would, he knew how to do it perfect perfectly because he would just watch these guys all day, every day, and he would steal the train or, and there was a bus guy in Chicago that I think did it. He would, he stole the bus. And I'm like, I think that there should be, like, a workforce program where they bring those guys on to the transit system and just like, let them.

[A]

Do it, you know, I mean, if you, if you look back, the most famous example was, in my opinion, was Temple Grandin. Now, not trains, but this was livestock. Do you know Temple?

[C]

No.

[A]

So I think Claire Danes portrayed her in a movie that was on HBO back in, like, the late 2000s. She was really fascinated with how cows thought and how, like, you can herd cows. And she was autistic and she was like, non verbal. At first she would only scream. But then she was diagnosed in 1950.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

And her, they told her parents, you need to put her into, like, an insane asylum. But she got a PhD in animal science from the University of Illinois, 1989. But she said that the way that she would think would be in pictures. She would think in pictures and it would allow her to understand how livestock saw the world and then came up with systems on how to, like, get them herded into different pens, how to manage large groups of them at the same time, and, and, like, change the way that people interact with their livestock in a much more efficient way. She said, autism helped me understand animals because I think in pictures, since animals do not have language, their Memories have to be sensory based instead of word based. In my early animal behavior work, I noticed that cattle often balked and refused to walk over shadows or pass a coat that was hung on a fence. In the 1970s, it was a new way to look at things that cattle were seeing. And she said that a white cowboy hat was safe, a black hat was scary, and he was looking at a black cowboy hat when this one bull would hesitate to walk past.

[C]

Interesting.

[A]

So, yeah, I mean, that's. There are, like, a lot of contra. If your brain is wired differently, can be like a super superpower that you have that other people don't have. So it's like saying, we need to fix everything on this autism spectrum could end up actually being a bad thing for. For society as a whole.

[C]

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, again, like, obviously, there's a lot of autistic people who are, like, cannot take care of themselves, and that is. It's tough on the families. Like, I've known people like, you know, who lived. Sometimes it's violent. I mean, I don't want to stereotype here, but, you know, sometimes kind of violent people who are pretty very, very autistic. But, yeah, again, it's like, it's so. I mean, it's also just like, that's what you guys are doing in there. You're, like, trying to figure, like, it's like, I have a feeling that RFK Jr. Is just, like, talking into Grok on his phone every day. Be like, is there any new stuff? What have you seen lately about autism? Yeah, you know, why don't you try physician heal thyself. Right. Fix the throat thing, then I'll take your advice on medical issues. If you're a guy. If, for instance, if our, like, if our surgeon general had a giant goiter on his neck, I'd be like, well, I'm not going to take your advice until you figure that thing out. You know what I'm saying?

[A]

Like, but you're forgetting RFK Jr. He can. He can bench press, like, 225 pounds.

[C]

Well, that's the other thing. So what is this guy juiced on?

[A]

I think probably testosterone. I think he's. He's on the table. I wish I was on the T right now. You see that? With, like, a lot of podcasters have gotten on the T. Really? Yeah. I think Joe Rogan on the tee. I think what's his name, Bert Kreischer might be taking some of that stuff, too.

[C]

You, big T. You hooked up with all those dudes. Stop. No, I, I, Bert Kreischer for sure is. I feel like you can tell when someone's on t. When they seem like they're bursting out of their skin, like there's too many organs and like they got new muscles that like are, it's like they have, they like are going to explode or something. But I feel like it makes you, it makes you bald and horny, which is no disrespect to the many listeners and watchers of barstool that I'm sure that those. It's a tough life to live when you're bald and horny.

[A]

You also get, you get redder though.

[C]

You get so red. I know it's. And Bert Kreischer is, well, he's also an alcoholic.

[A]

He's naturally red.

[C]

Yeah, he's naturally. Well, that's not, it's, that's well for.

[A]

Him, for his body, but his body needs it.

[C]

It's. I, I do it. I do find it interesting that these guys are all like. Cuz if you do enough testosterone, it makes you. Or if you do it, I think if you start taking trt, you become infertile as a guy for a while, for like a year. And so I'm like, you guys can't really be like weighing in on like what makes a baby happen because you can't have one.

[A]

Right? Like rfk, he's injecting testosterone into his body and he spent years like slamming h putting heroin in there.

[C]

Oh, listen, okay, so yeah, I can't, I can't judge.

[A]

I can't. But I'm just saying, brace, as a man who has injected poison into your.

[C]

Body, well, it's from the earth, but.

[A]

You know, potato from the majestic Poppy. Would you feel comfortable being like, hey, I think I, I think there's. We shouldn't be shooting vaccines into babies because that might not be healthy. Does that give you better insight?

[C]

You know? No.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

You know, I'm like, my whole thing, I'm like, yeah, you know what? Put whatever in those babies, it probably is fine, right? No, I, I think that it gives me insight, I think, into guys who take steroids because I genuinely, when I first started taking heroin, well, it was really OxyContin. I was like, this is incredible. Like, I can clean my house and like not be like anxious. I can go to a party and feel like completely smooth. This is, it was like a performance enhancing drug. You can get a, you can get a boner that lasts for hours, which actually is really. You think it's cool the first time you have sex and then you realize that it never ends. And then. And you know, also, you just don't care. But, you know, it was. It. I really felt like it actually improved my life in many ways. Similar to trt, where I think these guys start taking it as like a kind of, like, this is gonna fix a lot of what's wrong with me. And in a way, it's. There's a sort of. There's a. There's a. A dysphoric aspect, I think, to a lot of guys like Rogan or RFK Jr. Where they're like, they, they. I mean, you know, there's something wrong with all these guys, right? Like, Rogan's 4 foot 10, RFK junior talks fucked up and is fucked up. Like, I think just mentally is a little unstable. And I think that there's, like, this way and this happens, you know, you're like, how can I be? Like, you look at yourself in the mirror, you're like, am I enough of a man? And you start taking this shit, and then your balls dry up. You're. You're. You're busting dust when you, when you nut. And like, you know, it's like a fake cigarette. When you blow out, there's just a little puff of powder, and then you start sort of like bursting out of your own skin and it becomes this thing where it's like, I think you guys would all be happy if you weren't on this.

[A]

They might be, but then they. I feel like they, they. They think that they've achieved, like a. A superpower at an old age. Yeah, but, like, they found the fountain.

[C]

If you're Joe Rogan, like, what do you need to take TRT for? You host a podcast past, I think.

[A]

I think with Rogan, it's being in the MMA world so much.

[C]

Yeah, but you're not in the ring.

[A]

That's the thing. Listen, I went. I went to UFC fight in Chicago like a month ago, and looking around the arena, you see just everybody jacked up. A lot of testosterone in that room. They all kind of look the same. That same. Like. Yeah, their skin feels like it's about to pop and burst and so tight. They're red, they're sweaty. They're like 55 years old, but they're jacked up with huge biceps and a tight shirt. If you're in that room all the time, you feel like there's something wrong with you if you don't look like that.

[C]

Yeah, I get that. Did you see that? One battle after another.

[A]

I Haven't seen that yet.

[C]

Sean Penn in that. I was like, that really kind of reminds me of RFK Jr. Because I'm like, it actually looks up when you're wrinkly, but you have veiny muscles.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. On. In the elbow area especially. I've noticed it's just.

[C]

Yeah, the elbow, I mean. And that's. That reminds me like, like RFK junior's elbows when I see that. Of course, you guys are all familiar with the ancient practice of foot binding that they used to do in some areas of China.

[A]

I am familiar.

[C]

Big T. You know, there's a bit of apocryphal, I guess, stories about these. Where the loose flaps of skin in these disfigured feet that these people would do were actually used for coitus. Right. That people would make love to lose flaps of skin. Obviously a repellent practice misogynist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. However, when I see RFK Jr down at the beach, shirtless, fucking, working out, pumping iron, and I see that elbow make the little. I see it, I see it extend out, I do feel a unspeakable attraction to the skin flaps in his elbow in a way that now I'm not going to say, you know, this is a bisexuality or gay thing at all. It's the rest of the guy I don't care about. But I would like to have sex with RFK Jr's flappy elbows.

[A]

Yeah, fellas, you look at that. How many beers. How many beers would it take?

[C]

How many beers would it take for you to make love to RFK junior's elbows? And the answer is none. I don't drink, and I would do.

[A]

It just straight up sober. Have you, have you noticed that recently when it comes to autism, I want to be careful how I say this. It's become. It's definitely become more accepted to discuss. I do feel like people use autistic in place of just being weird about stuff sometimes.

[C]

Definitely.

[A]

But like people saying that, alluding to themselves having autism.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

When they don't. I don't know if it's for clout or if it's just like a. A way to make fun, like be self referential and self disparaging about like a weird habit they have. But I almost feel like I don't want to say that it's become cool to say that you have it, but I do think that there's more examples of people implying that they have it when they might not.

[C]

I know what you're saying because it's like, yeah, you're right. It's not exactly, like, cool to say that you have it because none of these people have it. I mean, some of them, maybe some of them have it, but, like, the people that are saying this don't actually generally have it. It is sort of in a placeholder for like something that I am a little self conscious about, maybe like a hobby or something. Sometimes, you know how it's like kind of, you don't want to say you know a lot about something because, like, you. You feel like people might judge you in some way or whatever. Like, like genuinely, if you knew a lot about World War II fighter planes, you're like, people will think that's like a dorky thing to know about. So you have to kind of couch it in this way that it's like, I know it's weird, you know, and it's kind of a stand in for quirky as well. Or it took a stand in for just weird. Like, he was weird and autistic to me when, like a guy, you know, is. Is sort of blunt or something like that. And I think that there's these sort of stereotyped images of what we have autism, of somebody who's like, you know, young Sheldon or whatever kind of which is. I actually, you know what? Straight up, that's a Baron Trump. Baron Trump's watching that on the iPad from birth. But representation, it's like you have like a Sheldon to think of another, like, autistic or. What was that TV show about the autistic doctor. I never seen it, but I used people.

[A]

Good doctor.

[C]

The good doctor. You're like that guy where you're like, I ain't telling how it is. Like, sometimes people act like that, but they're just rude and like, which is different than autistic people because they're not trying to be rude. Sometimes people are just rude. And so they're like, yeah, it was weird and he was autistic. About, like, my shirt. When someone's like, you have a stupid shirt on, which no one ever say.

[A]

Right, that is an awesome shirt that you're wearing right now.

[D]

I think it has become the white man Daishiki Middle School knee brace over the pants of the Internet.

[C]

Yup.

[A]

Go on.

[C]

No, this. This is good.

[A]

It.

[D]

It has become a. A way to garner attention for an ailment that you don't really have.

[A]

Got it, Got it. So people ask you about it.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

You feel like you have authority to speak on something that you might not be.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah, I did Read that. Autistic people, they prefer to be referred to as autistic and not a person with autism.

[D]

And that's anti. Woke. That's not person first language.

[A]

Yeah, it's not. And I think the reason why is because it's just something that you're going to be born with it, you're going to die with it. It's not going to be cured. So by saying a person with autism, it kind of implies that it's some. It's a transient thing that they might not always have.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense to me. You know, it's. I would say I'm trying to think of autistic guys. I know a couple guys are straight autistic. Yeah. I just, I guess I would call them autistic. But it sounds, it sounds, sometimes it sounds like you're being rude in the way that like when, like you know how someone sounds. Sometimes someone says like, yeah, he's a Jew. And you're like, what do you mean by that? But like, it's true.

[A]

Yeah, it depends on the inflection.

[C]

Like he's autistic. Kind of feels like the same way where it's like, it's a literal descriptor, but it feels insulting.

[A]

Don't put the word in front of either one of those two things.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess that's true. With the modifier, it becomes incontrovertible. But, but you're right. There's. There's a bit of ambiguity before that. I don't know. It's. It's. I'm at least glad they're focusing on something they can't try to cure, if that makes sense. Because, because like, if you had, if you told me that like RFK Jr. Was going to cure AIDS, I'd be like, well, hold on now. Like, I don't know if that's the right man for the job there.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, his. He'd probably just say like, you have to get. Everyone has to get tested. And then if you don't have aids, those are the only one. Those are the only people that you're allowed to sleep with as a female. You'll get a, you'll get a card. An AIDS free card.

[C]

You have an. A free guard. Yeah, it's. It's. Man, you know about the stuff in his ex wife, right?

[A]

I don't. I'm not sure that I do.

[C]

He cheated on her so much she killed herself.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah, I did hear about that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Not great.

[C]

Not great. Not great. Not great, not great. We don't love that.

[A]

What about the bear thing? Have you ever put a bear carcass in your car as a prank?

[C]

Aren't bears like £800?

[A]

Some black baby?

[C]

Yeah, it was a baby.

[D]

I'm.

[A]

It was already almost certain.

[C]

I know it was already. He didn't kill it. You know, it's funny because people really judged RFK Jr. For a lot of the. Like, you know, whatever he found, like a dolphin or a seal or something to put in his car too. I'm like, that's just some weird California. You know what I mean? Like, that's like, if a friend of mine's dad did that, I would be like, I find that insane but charming. And so I'm not going to judge him too harshly for that.

[A]

It's actually very. It's a. Almost a spiritual Native American ethos that use every part of the bear. Like, this bear was dead. I. I should at least use his corpse as a prank.

[C]

He would kind of rule if he wasn't so, like, prominent, you know what I mean? Like, if he was just like a guy around. It's the same way like Trump sort of would. Like, if he was just like a guy that I could kind of like check in on sometimes but had no real say in society, I'd be like, this guy rocks, you know? However, I also may a culpa here. I've been under like three different impressions that were completely wrong about why he talks like that. One, it's that he got a bad flu vaccine and his voice developed in that way, which is not true. Someone just told me that, and I believe them. The second is that he threw up so much that he burned his throat. He has a titanium band in there, which is.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

The first part of that might be true. The second part is definitely not true. And the third is that he got so nervous that he had so much bile from acid reflux that he. He scorched away his throat. I don't know if that's true. It's probably not true. But why does he talk like that?

[A]

Vocal cord damage. I'm not. I'm not exactly sure either. But from what I just kind of. I. I just accept really quickly. I accepted the fact that this guy's just got a fucked up voice.

[C]

Just.

[A]

I didn't really. I didn't really look into it. Mad dog. Yeah, it says from NPR that RFK jr's voice is caused by spasmodic dysphone dysphonia, which is a rare neurological condition.

[C]

And it has affected his voice. For decades. Yeah. So it's a rare neurological or.

[A]

Yeah, neurological condition. It's causes involuntary spasms in the muscles that open and close a person's vocal cords, resulting in a voice that presents with breaks and strained slash strangled quality or breathy quality.

[C]

It.

[A]

Only 50,000 people in North America are.

[C]

Believed to have it and the cause.

[A]

Of the condition is unknown. So that's, that's very rare.

[C]

Why don't you cure that? Yeah. It says on here that he.

[A]

Kennedy told the Diane REM show in 2005 that he was receiving Botox shots.

[C]

Every four months, I can tell, into.

[A]

His vocal cords as one of the more common treatments. So he's injecting poison into his vocal cords to cure his fucking.

[C]

Botox is a health. It's a health.

[A]

It's a supplement at this point.

[C]

Supplement. It's a supplement. Would you ever get Botox? Me? You've got a little bit of work done.

[A]

No, I've gotten this face is from the scalp. From the scalp up? Yes. From the scalp down. No. The face is the face.

[C]

The face is the face.

[A]

You can't touch the money maker. I don't want to look like Meg Ryan.

[C]

I've been thinking about getting lip filler.

[A]

That look good and you never mention it.

[C]

Just a little bit of lip filler.

[A]

Well, the, the beautiful part about what you're working on now, Brace, is that you can just. You can create models of yourself and you can take it for a spin. What would I look like if I had the lip filler? If I had the threaded eyebrows?

[C]

What would I look like if I had. Yeah, yeah. Or if I had the little eyebrow cut? Actually, I barely have any eyebrows. Check that out.

[A]

Yeah, they just stop.

[C]

They just stop. And they never really. Didn't really finish, you know? Yeah. I also don't have a lot of armpit hair. Maybe I have low testosterone. I never. Because people, you know, people in middle school were growing armpit hair. All of a sudden a guy would have like a giant thing. But you're like still 11 and you're like, it hasn't grown yet. My armpit hair just kind of grew in initially and then just stopped.

[A]

Yeah. So the, the guy that I had a locker next to in gym in like seventh, eighth grade was this big, tall. He was like six foot three. His name was Ali. He had full body hair, like chest, back, armpits. And I had armpit hair under one armpit. And we would have to get changed in the locker room next to each other.

[C]

Stand with that weight that right Arm towards him.

[A]

Yeah. I would only put deodorant on the armpit that had armpit hair like. Me too. I got it too. Just a couple hairy guys hanging out, having a chat. Back to autism real quick. Did you know that. That men and women, they present the signs of autism differently?

[C]

Listen, we've all seen the videos. Yeah, we've all seen the videos. I actually know, I think more autistic women than I know autistic men. Like formally diagnosed.

[A]

Really?

[C]

Yeah. And I would say way more common.

[A]

To, for, for men to be diagnosed.

[C]

I. Yes, well, yeah, yeah, I think it is. But I know like three. I mean, I probably know more people are autistic than this, but I know like three different autistic women, I would say. Yeah, but what, how does it present. How it's supposed to present women?

[A]

So, so women do a, a better job of masking it so they learn how to mimic the like, facial responses and, and inflection in their voice at a much higher level than men do. So if a, a man has autism, it, it's way more apparent because women are, they're, they can figure out how to like, you know, pretend to not have it.

[C]

Well, it, it'd be tough for you to tell around the office too, because I famously, you know, a little behind the scenes here, PFT does not let women at barstool make eye contact with him. And so it would be, it's. It's a religious thing, he says, and so you wouldn't even notice if everyone walked in here. Autistic.

[A]

Yeah, that's true. I make everybody present with those signs. I think the studies have said that they, Women in general have a, a much greater drive to be sociable and so that sometimes can override some of the tendencies that they have, I guess, the, the wiring that's different in their brains. Whereas men, you know, we can just live in a cave by ourself with a television. And so if, if we have autism, then it's like way easier to tell because we're not going to even like it. I don't care if my neighbor makes good eye contact with me. Yeah, we have a good relationship because I'm in my cave, he's in his cave. Leave each other alone.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I, I've, I've seen that, like, I think there's a sort of. Also people do perform this autism sort of on the Internet too, where they wear like the headphones and like, you know, they have the, it's. There's a sort of subcultural tinge to it, I think among zoomers or out gen alpha or whatever. But in the women I've known in my life that are autistic, they just kind of like, it's the same as guys. So they just like are really. They get kind of obsessed with. Obsessed with something.

[A]

Yeah. And I think at the very least, even though there are people that kind of put on affects or claim to have effects of autism that sometimes might be kind of borderline, it is, it's becoming, I think it's good for autistic people that it's a broader conversation to have that people are like more accepted. Like if you say to somebody I have autism, I don't think you're immediately looked at as an outcast like you were 50 years ago.

[C]

Yeah, definitely.

[A]

Right.

[C]

You know, it's funny, I, I was diagnosed as a child with something called nonverbal learning disorder, which I thought at the time was just like a generic thing for like he's kind of dumb. But I learned later because I got re diagnosed with it as an adult because I did this like battery of this. They did all these tests on me in this one rehab I went to and they were like, oh, you have non verbal learning disorder? Like do you go to college or anything like that? I was like, no. And they're like, okay. And then I looked it up and I, I'm kind of like physically stupid. Like my brain makes it so that I can't do certain like math things and, and, and stuff which was, which was somewhat gratifying to learn after a, a rather poor academic career. But, but so listen, anyone's going to get mad at me for any of this stuff, I'm with you. I'm. I'm. I'm neurod. Divergent.

[A]

So you didn't talk as a kid?

[C]

No, I talked too much as a kid. No, no, it's like it doesn't, it didn't affect my. No, it was like non verbal as in like it didn't affect my verbal skills.

[A]

It presents its itself in non verbal ways.

[C]

Yeah. So like, but I couldn't like, I couldn't like tell shapes apart as a kid or like it was like a couple other things like that where like I, it was like that you should be able to. I couldn't tie my shoes for a really long time. It was like a bunch of like that. But that can all kind of be in the category of like sort of. You have a stupid kid.

[A]

Yeah. But they were able to, to like put a name on it at Least, Yeah. And then did they give you like different ways to learn as a child where it's like, okay, we're not going to do shapes with Brace, but we can figure out how to apply this lesson in a different way?

[C]

No, no, no. I just did. I just got straight Ds in school until they kind of made me stop. I went to a special high school. So I went to special ed, basically.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

It wasn't like. I shouldn't say that. Well, maybe it was. It wasn't like full special ed. Like there wasn't kids who were like, were just like being babysat in there. But it was. I went to a high school where you only had to go for. It was a public high school. You only had to go for three. I only had to go for three hours a day because I had a job and there was no homework and you could smoke cigarettes on campus.

[A]

That's awesome.

[C]

In California in the 2000s. And I, my grades were my entire life. D's, C's, D's and F's until high school. Well, I went to a bunch of different high schools, but this is when I went to the most time until I got to this high school where I got A's because it was all like, spell caterpillar.

[A]

It was way easier.

[C]

It wasn't like easy.

[A]

They didn't apply the lessons.

[C]

I got to graduate early because I talked to the principal about the who and he was, he was British and he, he was like astounded that a 17 year old, which is like actually not that crazy, that knew who the who was. And so I didn't, I basically just didn't go to the last six months of high school.

[A]

That's awesome.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You swindled your way out of high school.

[C]

Yeah. And I negotiated your way. I only had to go for three hours a day. I went to high school from 9am to noon and then. And there was no homework. I just left.

[A]

That's awesome. Also kind of an indictment of special ed where it's like we're, we're just. It was, it was the classes way easier.

[C]

This high school was for kids who were both really stupid and who were really bad. And I sort of was able to, you know, straddle the line there.

[A]

You think they had like a different bucket for like each kid that came in, they'd be like, should we put this guy in the dumb or bad category?

[C]

Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, there was only like six classrooms.

[A]

So you were.

[C]

No matter what category you're, you're, you're in the same ones, but every kid there was kind of bad. But some kids were really stupid, too.

[A]

Big T, you got anything else on autism?

[D]

What a question. I don't think so.

[A]

Any other. Any other big T. Have you been diagnosed with anything?

[D]

Not yet.

[C]

Have you. Have you had allowed a doctor the opportunity to do so?

[D]

Probably not.

[B]

Why are you.

[D]

Are you trying to.

[C]

Well, I might. I don't think you have anything. All sports guys are a little. And I mean this in the colloquial way, a little autistic in a certain way because.

[D]

But see. But now you're doing the. You're doing the. The Internet thing.

[C]

Exactly. And I. That's why I said meaning the colloquial way. But there's. There's. It's funny because you can't really, like, no, no sports guy can ever really rag on anyone for, like, being one of those guys who steals the trains or whatever, because everyone's like, I know what this guy. You know, this guy scored in this game, and this. You. You know, there's. There's. There's few things like that in life.

[A]

But sports, because I think that you get fixated on, is like a very traditionally masculine thing.

[D]

I reserve a significant portion of my memory for things like that, for sports facts.

[A]

You do that consciously?

[D]

Yes and no.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, when it comes to the front offices in sports, there's a lot of people that would colloquially. Colloquially be referred to as being autistic that are looking at the spreadsheets and figuring out, okay, like, in baseball, baseball is just a numbers game. And so if you can see something in the number. By the way, I feel like the movie the Accountant, was that a net positive for autistic people or a net negative?

[D]

The. Which one?

[A]

The Accountant with Ben Affleck.

[D]

Never seen it.

[A]

You never saw that? I don't see.

[D]

I don't see.

[A]

He was like a spreadsheet whiz. He was like a finance guy.

[D]

Forensic, like, kill people.

[A]

He was a forensic accountant that was also trained to be, like, a hitman man.

[C]

Oh, I see this. I see this pop up on streaming services sometimes.

[A]

Yeah. So Ben Affleck didn't really have too many lines of dialogue in the movie, but he was able to trace, like, financial crimes by looking at a spreadsheet overnight. And then he was also able to enact vengeance on the people that had committed those crimes. I feel like that's a net positive.

[C]

What about Moneyball?

[A]

Moneyball, Billy Bean. Yeah. I think every team.

[C]

That's a real. I never seen it. That's a real guy. Billy Bean.

[A]

His name's Billy Bean. Yeah. And he's still in baseball. So he was, he was working for one of these franchises that had a very cheap owner that didn't want to spend money.

[C]

The A's.

[A]

The A's. And he was looking at the different on base percentages and zeroed in on that. He's like. All you guys talk about is like batting average and you talk about a bunch of statistics, rbis, that don't make any sense because they're relying on other players to do their job. But I found that if you just get a guy that gets on base and you get a lot of those guys, they're cheaper. And you can win games over the course of 163 game season.

[C]

Jesus.

[A]

With those guys. Now, also in that movie, they did not address the fact that they had the best starting pitching rotation in baseball and the league MVP for power. But we can brush past that and.

[D]

Just see like eight All Stars.

[A]

They can. You can see that what he developed for baseball changed how front offices look at baseball players. And so now that evolved into every team, like hiring guys that were able to find like the smallest statistical advantages around the margins. And if you look at the course of a long season, that really helps. But then you get into the playoffs where it's like a three or five or seven game series and you're going up against teams that just mash home runs. That might not always be the best way to win a championship, but you'll get to the playoffs.

[C]

The A certainly sucked entire life.

[A]

Well, they had that brief. That's what Moneyball was about. They had a little window where it was like Jason Giami and Miguel Tahada and some of those guys that they, I mean, Derek Jeter crushed their hopes and dreams when he decided to flip that ball backwards in the infield.

[C]

They should have kept. They should have kept Billy Bean in the coffee pot. Yes, that was tough.

[A]

They should have.

[C]

Fellas, I gotta go.

[A]

Yep. We got to let you go.

[C]

It's been a pleasure.

[A]

Thank you, Brace. Thank you for joining us. We're going to have you back on again soon. Hope everything goes well. Keep keep me informed about your. Your deep fake.

[C]

I'll send you some shit journey that.

[A]

You'Re on right now. I can't wait to see what you come up with later. Follow Brace at true anon pod. You will not regret it. Maybe the funniest account online Brace was brought to you guys by Shady Rays. I've got my Shady Rays right here. In my hand. Warm yesterday out on the golf course. A little side note, Aryan's not here. I would love to tell Aryan about this. Can you just. Big T, can you just pretend that you're interested in this for a second? Because Aryan would be. I don't think that you will be.

[D]

Got it, dog.

[A]

I shot an 87 yesterday. Broke 90 for the first time.

[D]

Hell yeah.

[A]

That's good. That. That was a good Aryan impression.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Shot an 87. Had a birdie. Should have been an eagle. Drove the green on a par three. I'm so back. Had like a seven foot putt for eagle. Missed it by like half an inch. A lot of pars. I think I had six pars yesterday. Felt great out on the golf course. And I was wearing my Shady rays at the time. That probably helped me out a lot actually. The polarized lenses let me see the golf ball in the air. Sometimes I struggle with that. Not yesterday. It was partially because I was hitting it straight. Partially because I was wearing my shady rays. Mr. 87 is what they call me. If you want to shoot better at golf. This. That took. That took 10 to 12 strokes off my game.

[D]

Nice.

[A]

Was wearing a pair of Shady Rays yesterday. And the wild part about Shady Rays is if you lose them or if you break them even on day one, they will send you a brand new pair. No guilt trip, just replacements. So now I actually wear my sunglasses without fear. On hikes, at concerts, on the boat, wherever on the course. I'm rocking the Shady Rays. It's the eyewear that has your back. We've teamed up with Shady Rays to bring you an exclusive offer. Go to shadyrays.com use code macro get 35 off polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself the shades rated 5 stars by over 300000 people. Try for yourself. The shades rated 10 to 12 strokes off your handicap if you wear the Shady Rays on the golf course. That is a recent sample size but it's true for me. I love Shady rays. Promo code macro get 35% off. Dr. Ben Ryan, a neuroscientist is going to be brought to you by. Part of my Cheesesteak Part of my cheesesteak has teamed up with Penn Station east coast subs to offer a new cheesesteak that raises the bar even higher for cheesesteak lovers. Introducing the mega cheesesteak. A limited time offer. It's only this football season. It's a one of a kind sub. It's built with a mega portion of steak, pepperoni, provolone and American cheeses. Sauteed onions, mushrooms, banana peppers and mayo. Oh, it's so good. My mouth is watering right now. Pin station Pensation. East Coast Subs has been around for 40 years. It's huge in the Midwest and It is the OG in craveable grilled subs. Available exclusively at all 320 Penn Station locations. You can literally watch your mega cheesesteak sizzle and melt on the grill. The mega cheesesteak with fresh cut fries, fresh squeezed lemonade and. And a fresh baked cookie that's an undefeated combo. Pen Station Subs is the only place where fans can get the mega cheesesteak. Order in store online or through the Penn Station app for delivery. And now, here's Dr. Ben R. Okay, we have a very special guest on macrodosing today. It's Dr. Ben Rhein. He just mentioned that if you say Ben Rain, his name is Dr. B. Rain, which is Dr. Brain, which is appropriate because you were a doctor of neuroscience.

[B]

That's right, yeah. I'm a neuroscientist.

[A]

So is that. Let's just start there. When did you decide that you were going to become a brain surgeon?

[B]

So glad you said that. I'm not a brain surgeon. I'm a neuroscientist. So I don't. What you're describing is a neurosurgeon. Neuroscientist. I do experiments on the brain. Not usually human brains, but trying to figure out the neurobiology of stuff. You know, I study social behavior, so I've studied things like empathy and MDMA or Molly and how it enhances empathy. I've also studied autism spectrum disorder. So all my research is all about social behavior and. And trying to understand the brain systems that sort of guide those behaviors.

[A]

Okay, so that's fascinating because I feel like we're talking more about autism these days than we have in the past. There's probably some good and some bad that goes along with it. In your opinion, as somebody who studies this stuff, do you feel like the social conversation and discussion around autism has. Has improved over the course of the last 10 to 15 years, or do you find that it's become less helpful than it was in the past?

[B]

Both, I think. You know, 10 to 15 years is a huge span and a lot has changed regarding autism in that time. You know, I think within 10, 15 years, we would capture there was a change in the diagnosis. So when the DSM 4, which is like the diagnostic manual for psychiatry, when that became the DSM5, it changed the diagnosis for autism and it became autism spectrum disorder. So it broadened because it's a spectrum. It can manifest in so many different ways, and we could definitely talk more about that. And so I think what we've seen is partially because of that, partially because of other things. More autism diagnosis or diagnoses and more public discussion around autism generally. I would say more like, tolerant and more accepting conversation where people are starting to accept. Understand. Sorry, people are starting to accept and understand autism. And we have, like, the. The rise of terms like neurodivergent and recently neurospicy. And people are starting to talk about autism not as, like, a disorder, which is classified as autism spectrum disorder, but as, like, just a thing, a way that the brain can be different.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But in the same vein, you know, at the same time, I should say we also have had a lot of discussion, public discussion, especially lately, from very, you know, senior public officials, government officials, about autism and talking about treatments and, you know, sort of, how do we get rid of this problem or how do we take care of this and solve this issue? And, you know, what I've learned through my experience as an autism researcher, and I do a lot of public messaging on social media, so I kind of. I talk about autism, I talk about neuroscience on the Internet. I experience the, you know, the wrath of the Internet, and I get all different opinions. And what I've discovered is that there are a lot of people who have autism or who have children with autism that when they hear about a new treatment, they're like, oh, my gosh, like, if this is a clinical trial, sign me up. I will do anything. Right. Like, my kid needs this or I need this. And there are also a lot of people who are like, the suggestion of even, like, considering this as something that needs to be treated is disgusting. And that you think I need to be treated because I'm happy with who I am and how this, you know, makes me myself. And so there's a whole lot of. I don't know, just as it's, you know, autism spectrum disorder, there's a spectrum of how you can sort of get to autism. There is a massive spectrum of how autism is discussed. And I think it's. It's. Yeah. Good and bad.

[A]

That's interesting because, like, referring to it as a problem, I know that there are some people that would. Would agree with that, some people that would disagree with framing it as a problem. How does the scientific community as a whole look at it right now as a problem to be solved or as something to be understood?

[B]

Definitely something to be understood for sure. I mean, I think every. Every scientist can agree that, like, you know, if this is something that's in the DSM 5, this is like a diagnosis. Right? Like depression or anxiety. Right. It's something that we should understand. Right. But I think when it comes to the question of something to be solved, I think that there's a equally diverse array of opinions. You know, some scientists think, man, I should study how to treat autism, and others, you know, they think this is pointless. But I think that there's a. Probably a scientific sort of agreement that it's at least worth studying. Right. Because although not all people who have autism want treatment or agree with the concept of treatment, there are no treatments available for the social symptoms of autism. So for those who do want treatment, there should be something available, but the idea of imposing that treatment on all people is not necessarily the right move.

[A]

It's a good point. So maybe let's start at the baseline here. So what is autism? What is Autism Spectrum disorder, and how does that present itself in the brain?

[B]

Well, first off, let me just pause this whole podcast and just say, I think this is so cool that this is a barstool sports podcast, and you have me here talking about autism. Kudos to you guys. I, you know, I'm a fan, and I appreciate the work that you're doing, and I just think it's cool that you're creating space for this discussion. So thank you.

[A]

Yeah, of course. It's a. It's a fascinating discussion, and I feel like we've been talking about it more like the national discourse around it has. Has gotten so much bigger recently, and there's a lot to dig into, there's a lot to learn about it, and a lot of misconceptions and a lot of things that we don't know. So, yeah, happy. Happy to have an expert on, because I don't think anybody wants to hear, like, me and Big T just speculate about autism.

[D]

We can do that, too.

[A]

We could do that, too.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You guys are open to. Please do that during this. You know, I'd love to just sort of sit and watch, but. Yeah. And probably comment, but.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To answer your question, though, so autism is. It's what we call a neurodevelopmental disorder. So it's a condition that is driven by changes in how the brain develops. So it's, you know, often diagnosed in childhood, and. But it can also be diagnosed in adults, and it has two diagnostic criteria. So there's two things that you need to sort of check the boxes to be Diagnosed with autism. One is persistent deficits in social communication, aka, you know, having challenges with socializing. And two is stereotypic or repetitive behaviors, which is really, I think this is so interesting that those two things are paired together because, you know, neurobiologically they have nothing in common. And I'm sure some scientists would argue with me, sure, that maybe there's something in common, but like, socializing is a, a really complicated behavior. It involves so many different brain areas and brain systems. Repetitive behaviors are like a totally different thing. Like this is just a, just different areas of the brain. And so I always think it's interesting and I want to, I always like to note that when the human beings who came up with these diagnostic manuals decided how we were going to diagnose autism, they clustered those two things, even though they're super diverse, you know, in the brain or super distinct in the brain, I should say. And to me that just sort of shines a light on this fact that autism is just a like man made condition. It is like a, like a, that can be taken out of context very badly. It is a man identified condition. Right. We've just sort of arbitrarily said like these two things go together and we call it autism. And I don't know that always just fine. I always just find that so fascinating.

[A]

Yeah. Because it is, it's a spectrum. Right. So I, I've heard the term Asperger's before. I don't know if that's still what, what people refer to it as.

[B]

Yeah, so that's what, that's what changed. So it used to be Asperger's and now it's just Autism spectrum disorder.

[A]

Okay. And so what are the different sides of the autism spectrum disorder and how does that present itself in the brain? Like the wiring of the brain?

[B]

Oh, gosh, massive question. So I don't, Okay, I don't see patients. I'm not a doctor, doctor, medical doctor, I'm a Ph.D. doctor, you know, scientist doctor. And so I, I can't tell you, I can't really describe to you, like here's what the continuums of, you know, the spectrum looks like. But what I have done is I have spent some time in clinical settings shadowing and working in these, you know, pediatric psychiatrist's office where they see children with autism and diagnose children with autism. And there was one day where I spent, and we did this diagnostic assessment and at the end of the day we were kind of talking about it and I was like, wow, this has just been so illuminating for me. And what the doctor said to me was, don't think that you know anything now because basically once you've seen one person with autism spectrum disorder, you've seen one person with autism spectrum disorder, there's so many different ways that it can manifest. And really again, kind of pointing to the man made diagnostic criteria part, you can go into one of these assessments and behave in so many different ways. And depending on how you're classified in these checklists of what we're looking for, what those providers are looking for, you may or may not be diagnosed with autism. And so, you know, I think that the broad capturing things are the two I mentioned, you must have both. There must be some sort of challenges in social communication. And sometimes, you know, the way these things are assessed is interesting. Like the one I watched, they had them, for instance, the provider, the doctor set up some blocks in a certain way and then said, okay, now you do the same. And so the person, you know, the patient had to set up the blocks just the same way that the doctor had. And you know, you don't think of that as being a very social sort of design, but it is, right? It's, you have to put yourself in the other person's shoes and use theory of mind and imagine what it, you know, with the hand motions that they did and stuff. And this is a part of sort of social information processing. And so there's all these little tests like this that happen. And depending on what's going on in your brain and how your brain operates, you know, you may or may not be scored a different way. So as for like the second part of this question, which is a huge question, right? Like what's going on in the brain? There's so many different things that we think one of them is altered connectivity. There's a bunch of studies showing that all of our brain areas, and there's tons of brain areas in our brains, they interact, they connect, they communicate. Our brain is a big network of highways with all these different cities and they're all communicating all the time. And basically there's evidence that the connectivity between brain areas differs. And so the communication between these different brain systems is altered. And that may alter social behavior on a sort of region to region basis, I guess, if that makes any sense. And you please stop me at any point, like ask any clarifying questions. Another thing.

[A]

Sorry, what I was just saying that makes sense. Yeah. Different parts of your brain that are responsible for different activities, they don't have the same connections as others do. So it Manifests itself in somebody behaving differently. Because that's not the standard or typical way that those connect. Don't work out for them. Yeah, yeah, I think I follow that.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, because it might be helpful to add, if you think about social interaction, there's so much to it. You know, it. Our brains are. It's a heavy lift for our brains, right? You're processing. The first thing you might think of is the words, right? What are they saying? And you have to interpret what do they mean, right? And in order to do that, you're adding the context of their intonation. Was it a question? Was it an exclamation? Right. Are they angry? You're adding that emotional valence. Then you add their body language, you add their facial expressions, you add the context of the interaction. Are you at work or is this a casual setting? You know, is your boss there or is it a friend there? Are your parents there? There's so many layers to social interaction that your brain is just doing this, like, epic exercise, right? It's. It's really processing a lot. And because of that, there's a bunch of different brain areas involved. And so you can imagine that if you change the function of, you know, this brain area or that brain area or this brain area, whatever, that can alter the way that you are processing social information and responding to cues and therefore behaving and interacting, right? So there's so many different routes to autism. It could be a bunch of different things. And in that kind of proving that point, There's a big known risk factor for autism is genetics. It's very well established that certain genetic changes can increase the risk for autism. And when we're talking about genetic factors, this is not like, oh, there's two genes that if you have a change in that gene, I'm talking about hundreds or maybe even thousands of genes. So we have like 20,000 genes total. And I've seen studies, reliable studies, implicating like, 1,000 genes in autism. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because you think about the fact that if you have a mutation in any one of 20 genes, there's a likelihood that it will change the way the brain processes social information, because there's, again, so many different routes, there's so many different systems involved. And so, you know, you might have. Within those 1,000 genes, there's a lot of different systems. And, you know, it's like, gosh, I always struggle to think of an analogy when in my PhD, I used to think of this analogy that you have, like, a chain of links, right? And, like, picture, like a bike chain, right? And there might be like a thousand links in a bike chain, in a massive bike, I guess. But you can have a break in any of those 1,000 links, and it will still result in the bike not working. Right. It's sort of like that. There's so many different ways to get to the same thing. And what I think is also important to note. Sorry, I'm, like, hesitating on this. I'm just. This is like, a huge question to answer it. I feel like I have this weight of, like, carrying the entire, like, autism research community and representing our work. But what's important to note, too, is that something called synaptic transmission. So you've heard of a synapse, right? The interaction. The way the place that brain cells interact, right? You have these little junctions between neurons where they send neurotransmitters, right? Dopamine's release, it binds to the dopamine receptor. That's a synapse, that interaction between neurons, which is massively important. A lot of the signals on these genes, these risk factors for autism, seem to converge on that. That the interactions between neurons, which basically constitutes the way that the brain processes information and does things, and I mean, can trace everything back to this, that those systems seem to be disrupted. And there's a variety of ways. You know, it could be dopamine, it could be serotonin, whatever. You know, there's so many different things involved or that seem to be implicated, but a really, really important one seems to be this idea of excitation, inhibition imbalance. And I'm sorry, there's no other term for that. I hate using jargon like that. But the idea is sometimes when neurons interact, brain cells interact. They are increasing each other's activity, Sometimes they are decreasing each other's activity. Okay, the increasing, that's excitation. The decreasing is inhibition. And so what the idea is you want to have a general balance. There's a certain sort of homeostatic point where the neurons aren't too active and they're not too inactive. Because you might think like, oh, if my brain was just more active, I'd be smarter. No, not necessarily. Right. That can just sort of get in the way of things. There's a sort of teeter totter, where it's balanced and it's operating at the right level. And a lot of the research on autism points to this concept that that balance is thrown off. So the neurons are either too active or not active enough. In certain brain areas that are important for social interaction, like the prefrontal cortex, which is that the area at the front of your brain that is involved in focus and attention and planning and decision making and all these things, but also social cognition and so making decisions, interpreting information, even like I mentioned before, that theory of mind, putting yourself in someone else's shoes and understanding from their viewpoint, that involves the prefrontal cortex. So this really important sort of executive brain area for social interaction, if it's sort of disrupted and either pushed too active or not active enough, that can maybe, you know, increase the risk for an autism diagnosis. And the way that you get there might be through altering one of any of these thousand genes.

[A]

Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly, and feel free to tell me if I'm just, like, completely off the mark on this. There's nothing that's different about the brain cells. It's mostly about the way that the brain cells talk to each other, the points of connection between them in the.

[B]

Context that I'm describing. Yes. And I'm sorry for this, like, super scientific, like, nuancey answer, but I want to be clear and just in saying that, again, autism, it's an autism spectrum disorder. There are other risk factors or sort of. There are other things we know that can happen in autism that don't involve what I just described. Right. Like, you can also have changes in the cells. The cells might be, like, you might have more cells or less cells. I mean, there's. This is very broadly speaking, but like the density, size, things like that.

[A]

Okay, so it's a genetic disorder. And are there any environmental factors that you've seen that contribute to it?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So it's. It's established that environmental factors do contribute to autism. You know, those are things like.

[C]

I.

[B]

Don'T know, like pollution or like diesel exposure in utero. Right. Like, obviously, I think we can all agree that sounds like a bad idea. Right. You don't want to be like, huffing fumes while pregnant.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Another is maternal immune activation. So if your mother gets really sick and has a strong immune response while pregnant, that's linked to autism. Also, there's a drug called valproic acid. It's an antiepileptic drug, and exposure to that drug in the womb specifically is associated with autism. So there's a handful of these environmental causes that we do know, and then there's a bunch of stuff that we kind of don't really know about yet. And there's a. The way that autism risk is classified is like, we know that a big chunk of people with autism get there because of some genetic factor. Another big chunk of them get there because of some environmental factor, and then the remainder is what we call idiopathic, which is a fancy medical term for we have no idea. And so there's literally like a segment of autism that we just don't understand what's going on. And I think when we talked about the public discourse, I think there's. Obviously, we don't have to skirt around this. There's a obvious push from the current administration to clarify what that is, and there's a lot of hypotheses being thrown around about what they may be. Vaccines, Tylenol, all these different things. But we could talk about that in great detail if you want. But I will just say, if we knew that vaccines or Tylenol cause autism, like, I would just be telling you that right now. Right. I'm like, I'm.

[A]

You might be big pharma, though.

[B]

I'm not big pharma. No, I'm not. I. And I know that's. That's. I don't even know how I could be big pharma, but. No, I mean, you can look into my research and stuff, and there's. You know, I've never been funded by big pharma or anything like that. And truly, honestly, as a researcher who's worked in this field for a decade, I legitimately have never met a scientist who has had their research supported by big pharma. And I know that sounds so big pharma of me, but I swear to God, that's like, I've never that.

[D]

But you do. You do recognize that's what a big pharma guy would say?

[B]

100%. I know. And I don't know how to prove it to you, you know, but I don't know.

[D]

I believe you. I'm just saying that is what. That is what someone would say.

[B]

100%. I get that.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

There's no way out of this. You know, I looked myself into this hole, but, I mean, yeah, I don't know. You could trust me or you could not trust me.

[A]

Let's. Let's talk Tylenol real quick, because that was in the news last week. Yeah. There was a study that was highlighted that said that there might be some sort of causation there with Tylenol or at least a correlation between Tylenol usage when you're pregnant and then later on an autism spectrum disorder in the child. Have you read that study? And what do you think that implies. Do you think that it's. It's worthy of highlighting as a potential cause?

[B]

All right, so here's. Here's my thoughts on this. There are. There's a new recent study, you know, the one you're talking about, that suggests a link between. Yeah, what you just said. Using Tylenol while pregnant with autism risk, increased autism risk. There's also other studies from other countries showing with, like, larger sample sizes showing that there's no correlation between Tylenol use and autism. So at this point, I genuinely would say the data are inconclusive. Right. If you have one study with 2.5 million children saying there's no link, and then you have another study with some. Some hundreds of thousands or however many people they had saying there is a link, I mean, something's going on, right? Either one, somebody made a mistake, or there's a really, really weak link that sometimes pops up and sometimes doesn't pop up. But more importantly, I think it's easier to talk about this by setting the data aside, which isn't something you often do in science, because usually it's like, let's really interrogate the data. Do we believe the study? But let's just talk about this concept. So I was just mentioning that maternal immune activation is one of the known risk factors for autism. So if a study comes out that says taking Tylenol while pregnant is associated with an increased risk of autism, which pregnant women are taking Tylenol? Probably those who are in pain or uncomfortable and. Or fighting a fever. They are sick. Right. Tylenol is a fever reducer. So there is almost. It's almost impossible to say it's Tylenol when we can't control for whether or not the mothers got sick. Right. Because it could be either. So that's, you know, data aside, just like, conceptually, it's really difficult to make any conclusions from this study. And again, then you stack on top of that, there's another study with 2.5 million children showing no result. It's like, well, okay, I'm getting a little bit skeptical. The other thing about this is even if this turns out to be true, that Tylenol is a, is a risk factor, how do we even enforce that? Because if you have a woman who's pregnant, and let me just add, my wife is currently nine months pregnant, so I'm in the thick of this right now.

[A]

Congrats.

[B]

Thank you. If you have a woman that's pregnant, let's say my wife gets really sick and she feels like dog shit. And she has a fever and it's horrible. Am I going to tell her not to take Tylenol? A, I mean, first off, that's just like cruelty, but B, by not suppressing that fever, we are exposing our, our daughter, our unborn daughter to a known autism risk factor, which is maternal immune activation. But by taking Tylenol, I am exposing my daughter to a maybe, I don't really know risk factor for autism. I'm gonna go with the maybe, I don't really know, especially. Cause that means my wife gets relief, you know. And I posted a video about this on social media. It went like super viral. And obviously I got every different opinion you can possibly imagine in the comments. But I just want to add like some more nuance to that. Like, obviously I'm not telling my wife. Oh yeah, go ahead and like down the whole bottle of Tylenol, right? It's like take a normal person dose and then yeah, like probably don't take like 6,000 milligrams a day. That's excessive and ridiculous. But I think, you know, this actually literally just happened to me this past weekend. She wasn't feeling well, she was like, should I take Tylenol? And you know, this is on our consciousness, all this stuff. And I was like, yeah, like definitely take Tylenol. I'm not worried about it. And again, you know, I could be big pharma, but I'm not. But I am a guy who did his PhD research in neuroscience or in the neuroscience of autism and has a nine month pregnant wife. So it's like, you know, that's not medical advice, that's just my opinion. It's not something I'm worried about. And truly I want to make it very clear that like, you can hold me to this. If more research, more reliable research comes out that suggests that Tylenol really is a link, I'll change my opinion. Like that's, I think the, the hallmark of science and trustworthiness in science is that like, I genuinely am just guided by the data. And right now the data suggest a really questionable link. And so I'm not gonna follow that data and let it inform my life. And, and you know, I, as impossible as it may sound, I really work hard not to be led by like political voices, right? Because we, everything has been politicized, especially science where, you know, we have this argument right now about like data, we're talking about science and people will sort of neglect the data on either side and say, well, no, it definitely causes autism, or no, it definitely doesn't. Cause autism. And I think the correct answer is, well, let's just wait for more data and let's actually start investigating this more thoroughly so that we can make stronger conclusions. You know, like, that seems to me like the obvious correct answer.

[A]

That makes sense. Big T, what do you got?

[D]

Well, you. If you have any more on autism, finish up, because I have some that aren't autism.

[A]

Yeah, I. I do have a question about a term that you used earlier that I want to know more about. What is neurospicy?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I don't even. I'm afraid to even try to define this. I think this is sort of like one of those, like, modern lingo things where it's like, I don't really know. I think neurospicy is neurodivergent. I'm pretty sure. And neurodivergent is, you know, a term direct refer to, like, any sort of. The idea is neurotypical is what is often described as, like, our healthy controls. Right. Our controls. And so neurodivergent would be any divergence from that. It could be, you know, bipolar, it could be autism, whatever. There's a divergent from typical. And I think neurospicy is like the more sassy modern way to say neurodivergent.

[A]

I think, yeah, it's a rebrand. It's taking the power. Yeah, I'm neuro. Spicy. I do have one more question about, like, diagnosing autism, especially in adults. Do you ever find that if adult. An adult is. Is being diagnosed or doing the tests to. To have a diagnosis one way or the other of autism, do you find that they will know the criteria going into the test and then are they able to then cheat the test?

[B]

Oh, like I said, I don't. I don't administer the test myself, but I think anybody who's signing up to go to a doctor's office and be screened for autism wants a legitimate answer. And I think, like, this is not something that's like, mandated, right? Like, your employer is not going to be like, we think you have autism. You got to get tested. Right? Like, it's. Someone's going in there on purpose. And so I would imagine that that would be a bad idea to try to, like, beat the test. But I don't know. I mean, I guess the. Maybe a better answer to this is, like, if these tests are genuinely designed to identify changes in how the brain functions, then it shouldn't be something that you can just sort of like, do and like, overcome. Right. Because it's not like, autism is something that people just, like, act. Right. Like, there's, like, a legitimate change in brain function and how social interactions happen. So I. I don't know if that's even possible. Right. It's like, can you beat a lie detector test? Like, I don't.

[A]

I don't know. I was watching the most recent season of Nathan for you when he was. He was doing the faa, like, screening thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And watching him try to figure out what the eyes. Like, he was looking at different sets of eyes, trying to say what emotions they were trying to convey. And he was, like, trying really hard to figure out, like, he did not want to be diagnosed with autism. And so I was thinking that, like, in a case of somebody like that, if you did have Autism Spectrum disorder, you might be more inclined to do intense amount of research as to what the signs were and then figure out how to not be diagnosed as autism. I just didn't know if that was something that. That ever presented itself, like, in your experience or something that you'd heard about.

[B]

Yeah, no, I don't think so. That sounds like a Nathan Fielder specifically thing. And by the way, that actually is a real thing. It's called the Reading the Mind in the eyes test, and it's a measurement of empathy, actually.

[A]

Interesting. All right. Yeah. Big T, what do you got?

[D]

Yeah. So the book that you have coming out is called why Brains Need Friends. So I was just. I have a couple questions about that. Number one, obviously, I think talking about brains and people having friends, nothing has changed that more than technology and phones and everything. Do you think? I think people would say now, most people anyway, would say, like, oh, it's so much easier for me to connect with so many people because I. You can talk to them across the world in an instant. Whatever. Is there any research or data that would indicate that people are, like, actually worse off now neurologically that. That, like, socially, whatever than previously?

[B]

Well, I mean, definitely people are worse. Worse off socially. Like, there's a ton of research on how socially engaged people are, you know, how much time they spend alone, how many friends they have, how lonely they are. All those metrics are all going in the wrong direction. And it's, like, pretty bad, you know? Like, I'm sure you saw that the couple years ago, the US Surgeon General announced, like, a loneliness epidemic. You know, it's. It's legit. It's a real problem because the health consequences of being very isolated are bad. And so when it comes to virtual interactions, I actually have a whole chapter in the book on digital interactions. And to summarize it briefly, people don't feel as good after interacting online. There's a lot of science showing that people feel better after interacting in person better than they did before. I mean, and part of that is because we have these social reward systems built into our brains that make us feel good around others. One of the reasons why brains need friends. But when we interact online, people don't get that strong of a hit. And the less lifelike the interaction is. So for instance, a text interaction is less lifelike than even a phone call, which is less lifelike than a video call and so on. The less lifelike it is, the worse those benefits are. So people barely benefit from texting each other. And so you're totally right. We've unlocked this incredible thing in social media that we have hyper connectivity. How amazing is it that we can interact with almost anybody on the planet? But the problem is the people who use social media more show actually, like the opposite effects of people who socialize more. And I think it's kind of ironic. That's called social media. I'm doing air quotes that the more we spend time on there, actually the lonelier we feel, the more depressed and anxious we feel. Or at least there's correlations between. Who knows if it's, you know, are the loneliest, most depressed people spending more time on social media or is spending that time making them lonely and depressed? We don't really know, but it's not good. And my kind of general take on this is, like, when we interact in person, like I said before, you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. We have so much to process. Facial expressions, vocal tone, you know, all this stuff and that stuff, all those cues that tells the brain I'm interacting with a human being. And what that does is kind of fires up those social systems, those social reward systems, it fires up our brain's empathy systems. And so when we are interacting online, let's say on a. On X or Twitter, where I'm just seeing a slap of text that you threw out there and I can't see your face, I can't hear your tone, how you're trying to explain this or pronounce it, those empathy centers in my brain are not going to realize that they should turn on. And so what happens is we experience the impression of what you're saying, but without all the emotional cues that would tell you how. That would tell me how you feel, and therefore I would sort of understand better. Right. Empathy is like understanding we understand each other's emotions. It's one of the reasons why we are not like super hostile in person all the time. Because if I say something really mean to you, I'm going to feel bad because of empathy, right? I'm taking on your experience. So when we don't have that empathy online because of those social cues are missing, we are much more prone to being hostile. And so actually I have a published theory on this. I call it the virtual disengagement hypothesis, referring to this idea that online or these empathy related areas disengage. And I think it's actually one of the main reasons why we're so aggressive to each other online. And if anybody listening doesn't believe me, just go look at the comments on this video or any video. I'm sure you guys get it all the time. I don't know how aggressive people are towards barstool. Probably less aggressive than they are towards me. Talking about, you know, autism and neuroscience.

[D]

I don't know what you get, but I suffice it to say less aggressive is not how I'd care.

[A]

Big T dabbles in the world of college football fandom. And they're. Those people are not exactly known for having good governance of their emotional reactions to dissenting opinions.

[B]

Fair. Yeah. I mean, so. Well, I'm sorry to hear that first off that you guys get it too, but. Yeah, I mean, everybody gets it, I guess. And it makes sense, right? Why, why would I be nice to you if I can basically virtually punch you in the face and feel nothing? I don't have to be there, watch your, your eyes swell up and you start crying and you be in pain, right? Like that's basically what's happening. We're inflicting emotional damage on each other without having to witness the consequences. And that's extremely powerful for a brain that desperately wants to just attack those that we see as a threat. And so on social media, what we see all the time is like these in group out, group dynamics, right? It's often political. Sometimes it's college fandom, right? Like rival teams, they will come at you for saying that you think the other team's going to win and they'll probably throw horrible insults, right? And they probably wouldn't do that in person. I guarantee the people who say mean things, if they met you in person, they'd probably be like, oh my gosh, I'm a huge fan of your show. Right? Like, I love what you guys do. It's just different online. And so I think that's one of the many factors contributing to why the hyper connectivity that we should be benefiting from just isn't really all that great.

[A]

Is that similar to road rage, to being in cars and you, you treat somebody that's in a different car way differently than you treat them. If you were talking to them face to face, they become like enemies. Like, what the fuck is this asshole doing? You get, you know, actual physical fights sometimes with somebody because they had that separation. They're in a different box than you are. That sense that they're human. Yeah.

[B]

You can't see their social cues. Right. They are just a vehicle. Right. On Twitter, they are just a text. Right. They're just a tweet. Yeah. Very similar. Yeah.

[A]

Big T. What else you got?

[D]

Yeah, my other one was about kids post Covid and like what kind of information there is about maybe places where schools shut down for longer. What kind of long term consequences is that purported to have? That kind of thing.

[B]

Purported, Nice. That's a good one.

[D]

Well, I couldn't figure out what word I wanted to supposed to have. I guess reported is projected, I guess would be the best.

[A]

You nailed it with purported.

[B]

Yeah, that was sweet.

[D]

Purported would be like things that have happened in the past, whereas we're projecting either way. Yeah, just whatever you want to. And you can answer.

[B]

Yeah, feel free to throw any more sweet vocabulary at me. I love that. Oh yeah. So I mean, no doubt there's research that like COVID lockdowns were bad. People felt like shit and horrible. And the more severe like the lockdown was, the longer they were isolated or the more isolated they were. So for instance, if they were locked down by themselves versus with family, the worse it was, you know, the worse their depression was. Everything you would expect from isolation. But when it comes to kids, you know, I have this kind of like theory about this sort of. So social interaction in early life is very, very important. It's actually thought or it seems to shape certain brain areas and like guide the development of certain brain areas. Specifically that area I mentioned before, the prefrontal cortex. And so there's evidence that for instance, like if. If children are isolated in early life, their prefrontal cortex isn't quite as large. And if you isolate mice in early life where you can really dive into the neuroscience and really get in there, they show all these different unfavorable differences in their prefrontal cortex that there's not as many synapses, the synapses are less mature, which suggests that I mentioned the beginning. Socializing is an Exercise for your brain. That exercise is good. Just like when you do bicep curls and you're building up your biceps. When you're exercising the brain, you're, you know, strengthening it and. And supporting it. It's very similar to a muscle in that way. So without that exercise, you're not getting that interaction in early life, those brain areas may not, like, strengthen and mature. And so what. What I've noticed anecdotally, there's very little science on this that I've seen, but anecdotally, it seems like the. The generation of kids coming out of COVID Like, when we got back to school, I heard a lot of teachers talking about how the generation of kids is just, like, totally different. They are most of all kind of inconsiderate. Like this one college professor told me about how he was. This is a college professor. He was on a class, teaching a class virtually. And one of the kids just kept, like, unmuting and like, insulting him, like, verbally insulting the professor, like something that you would never do. And what's interesting is that that shaping of the prefrontal cortex through social interaction is. Seems to be associated with, like, building mental models of the world and what's acceptable, right? So, like, imagine you're four years old and you're at recess or five years old, I don't know, and you push a kid down the stairs or the slide, and he tumbles and he gets hurt, and everyone's like, you're a jerk for that, right? Like, that's a major milestone for your brain where you're learning, okay, that's not really acceptable. I'm not going to do that. And so your prefrontal cortex is developed and you understand, you know, you develop these, like, suppression of these impulses that you're not going to push that kid down the stairs again because that was not socially acceptable. Right? And so what. What has been shown is that kids with. Who are isolated in early life and have this, like, weaker prefrontal cortex, they're much more prone to, like, conduct disorders and doing things like stealing from people and harming people, assaulting people. And, you know, so I'm not like, I don't. This is. This could be really sensationalized and be like, this neuroscientist is saying that the next generation of kids is going to be like, criminals. No, but I do think that they missed out on some important window of social interaction that, you know, again, I don't want to sound like, extreme, but it may, like, permanently alter the development of their Brain, because there's a social critical period, sensitive period, it's called in early life, where the brain is really, really especially sensitive and responsive to social information. And it uses that information. Just like there's a sensitive period for language, right, where you can learn, like if you have, like I might have my daughter learn like Chinese or Spanish for no reason, just because she can, when she's super young, because the brain is so receptive to that information. I could never learn Chinese at this point. Same way. The same thing is true for social interaction. And so that's kind of where I stand on that. It's like I worry about the missed opportunity there. It's almost like, you know, the analogy I use in my book is like, if you have a piece of clay spinning on a wheel, right? Like, you need the massaging of the hands to shape it, right? The prefrontal cortex is sort of the same. You need this massaging of experience to shape and develop it. And if the wheel just spins in isolation, the clay will never take form and eventually it will harden and it will just stay what it is. And so I think it's definitely something that we should be looking at in the long term of, like, how does this generation of kids affected differ behaviorally from and probably neurologically? You know, we could study the prefrontal cortex. How does it differ from other generations?

[A]

Do we know anything about mask usage? Like, if kids at a young age are unable to see the facial expressions because of another child or an adult wearing a mask, how that's, has that manifest manifested itself in a way that you can, you can see now?

[B]

Not that I know of. I remember seeing like some study on this, but I can't remember what it says. I, I don't really, I've got nothing on that. I, I can hypothesize.

[A]

But one of the challenges of like, especially the Tylenol study is like, doing that research in an ethical way. Right? Because I imagine that there's, there's a lot of reasons why you wouldn't want to set up a study where you told pregnant women, hey, take four tile, four pills of Tylenol every day over the course of your pregnancy so we can study what happens to your child. Is that, is that a big challenge that you have in your field where it's like trying to find things that are already occurring to study as opposed to setting up these like, double blind, traditional research methods?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a big, like, topic or concept in science in general. It's a Good. It's a good call. I mean, yeah, because you could never do that, right? Like, hey, pregnant woman, take Tylenol, right? We think it might cause autism. Right? Let's see what happens. You can never do that. The best you can do in humans is what's already been done. Observational studies, Right, okay. Hey, you had a kid. How much Tylenol did you take? You know, self report, let us know what you did. Or, I mean, you could, you could set out from the beginning to do that and ask them throughout their pregnancy, how much Tylenol are you taking? How often are you getting sick? Things like that. That's probably the next logical step. But in the end, the big question is how does that differ from what's already been done, that they've done these correlational studies and they found? Yeah, there's a link, but we don't know if it's sickness or if it's Tylenol. And you equally can't say, oh, you're sick, don't take Tylenol. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But what can be done is animal studies. And this is where I know animal studies are controversial. Nobody wants animals to be harmed, obviously, including scientists. But this is where it makes perfect sense to do a biochemical study where let's say you have a pregnant mouse and you intentionally give that mouse acetaminophen, Tylenol, and you have some control mice pregnant that are not given Tylenol. And you could even do a dose response of seeing how much Tylenol they each give. And then when the pups are born, the babies, you can wait for them to grow up to a adolescent age, and then you can test their social behavior. We have behavioral tests for this in mice. Like, you can put a mouse in a box, and on one side of the box is another mouse that they can go hang out near, or on the other side is. Is like an object. They can go play with this object. And most of the time, the mice will prefer the hanging out near the other mouse. They will show a social preference. But if you have a mouse that has, let's say, a genetic change that's associated to autism in humans. And yes, this is real. Like this happens. I've done this research myself. If you create that same genetic change in the mouse, they will not prefer the other mouse anymore. You can literally see a change in their social behavior. There's a correlation between mouse neuroscience and human neuroscience. That's why we study them. And sometimes it doesn't happen. There's a thousand genes, like I said, linked to autism. It's not that all 1000 of them will produce that effect in mice, but some will.

[A]

It's fascinating. So tell me about. I think you covered this in your book why Brains need Friends, the research that you've seen on mdma.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Molly usage. Like, what. What are we studying when it comes to mdma, and what results have you seen from those?

[B]

Well, I'll tell you about the research I did myself. So I. When I was working at Stanford as a. Doing research at Stanford, I guess I'm still working there. I'm teaching now, but I did a study on the. How MDMA enhances empathy. And again, this was a. This was a mouse study. You know, there were no humans involved aside from me. I was not taking Molly, though the mice were. And what we did is we would. We basically created a behavioral test in mice to study empathy, and then we would give the mice mdma, and we found that it increased their demonstrated level of empathy. Um, and then what we did is we were able to, like, really get in there and figure out what's happening neurobiologically. And this is a big question. It's been hanging around for a really long time, like, it's been known since, I don't know, the 70s, 60s, that MDMA enhances empathy. It's one of the only drugs in the world that's called an empathogen, meaning it enhances empathy, but we don't know how. And, you know, obviously MDMA has been, like, illegal for decades, and now it's resurfacing for. For ptsd, post traumatic stress disorder. But now that it's, like, available for research again, scientists like myself are like, well, we should probably figure out some of this other cool stuff that MDMA does. You know, even though it's not necessarily, like, probably no one. Well, almost certainly no one's ever going to be given MDMA to enhance their empathy in a clinical setting. But if we can figure out what MDMA hits on in the brain to enhance empathy, maybe we can create a different drug that enhances empathy. Right. And that could be interesting. Maybe that could be useful for enhancing the therapist patient alliance so that they could really connect and do deeper therapy. You know, maybe it could be useful for couples therapy. Maybe it could be useful for presidential debates to take before the debate so that everyone can actually understand each other.

[A]

Yeah, that'd be great.

[B]

But. So what we found is, you know what? MDMA hits a bunch of different stuff in the brain. What it does directly is it hits three neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine or noradrenaline. That's already known. We already knew that before, but what we found that was new is that if we take everything else out and we just hit this one signal that it does, which is serotonin release in a brain area called the nucleus accumbens, that one single thing was enough to make the mice more empathic. And if we blocked that. Well, actually, sorry, we didn't actually do that experiment, but if we stimulated that without mdma. So if we just simulated serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens, the mice became more empathic, which is helpful because it tells us, A, that's probably what MDMA is doing to enhance empathy, and B, now we do have a, dare I say, purported mechanism for understanding what it's doing that we could use to develop a similar drug. And again, like I said, not big pharma. I have no hand in the, the follow up of that research. I don't know if anyone's even doing anything with it, which is kind of sad. This is kind of happens inside sometimes where we find something really cool and then nothing happens because there's just like, I think so much stuff out there.

[A]

At the very least, it adds to the, the growing body of evidence where md. Because I've heard MDMA and ketamine, things like that talked about more in a clinical sense, like, hey, this could actually be really useful for, for people with certain, like you said, PTSD or things like that. So I feel like that the tide is starting to shift a little bit on that where it's like, yeah, if, hey, if we have something that can help, let's study it and let's figure out, like, what, what, what advancements we can make in that field, as opposed to just saying, oh, it's ecstasy, it's a party drug, we're going to throw this all away.

[B]

Yeah, No, I mean, I'll be honest, like the scientific consensus around psychedelics, which I'll include, like ketamine, MDMA in there, also the classics like psilocybin, which is shrooms, lsd, dmt, like scientists, totally. I don't want to speak for everyone, but the ones that I've met, they totally believe in these drugs as clinical trials tools. Like when I was working at Stanford, I don't think I met a single scientist at Stanford who said, I don't really believe in them. Like, the data are very, very strong on psychedelics. I think the holdup is how do we safely implement These, because obviously there are considerations. We've seen what happens at music festivals and stuff. And MDMA, that stands for 3, 4 methylene dioxy methamphetamine. MDMA is very similar to method chemically and the way it works in the brain. And so, you know, it's a stimulant. It can have serious adverse effects. If you have heart problems, you don't want to be taking mdma, you definitely don't want to be taking meth. And so not that meth is being explored for clinical trials, but, you know, there's, there's considerations for all these things. And if these drugs are going to get rolled out, which personally I actually hope they do, they need to be done. They need to be rolled out responsibly and carefully. And I really hope that's what happens because there's a super high likelihood, especially given sort of the way things are going right now at the federal level of like, medical decisions, there's a super high likelihood that they get approved and it turns into like, kind of like what happened when, when weed got approved. Whereas, like, you just had like head shops all over the place, like, popping up everywhere. Like, it's entirely possible that we can just have like ketamine and psilocybin and MDMA clinics popping up all over where, like, you don't need a medical degree to administer and supervise people in these experiences. But the truth is the experience itself and the therapeutic, the therapist, right. You. All of these drugs are being studied with a therapist present for talk therapy. That person and the job that they provide is really, really important. Like you. MDMA is helpful for people. Ptsd. That doesn't mean you can, like, someone with PTSD can go to Coachella and take Molly and like, they're cured. Right. Like, they need to be in the right setting. And so I really worry about, yeah, like, you know, some random person who does like a, a six month program and now they can administer MDMA and like be a therapist. Like, that's not how it should be done. I think it should be really carefully monitored because there's risks. Right? You don't want to throw somebody into a bad trip and then all of a sudden their PTSD or their depression's way worse. You know, we need to have like, actual medical professionals on hand in case things go bad.

[A]

Yeah, no, that's, that's a good point. I don't, I don't know how you would even begin to solve that problem where, yeah, if you, if you legalize it for some usages, there's going to be people that figure out a way around, and all of a sudden it's just like the streets are flooded with.

[B]

Yeah. Like, I mean, right now you can get ketamine on the Internet. Like, are you aware of that?

[A]

I know I wasn't.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's just like, sorry, this is not an advertisement, but actually, no.

[A]

I think I was. I think that there were. We might. There may have been a sponsor that asked us. Yeah.

[D]

Wait, is this real?

[B]

Yeah, this is for real.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

There's. There's plenty of companies where you can get prescription ketamine online, like, without meeting a doctor face to face, and they literally mail it to you. It's like this telehealth loophole from COVID that still exists somehow. It's pretty crazy. And like, don't get me wrong, the evidence for ketamine on depression is pretty good. But it blows my mind that everyone's talking about, like, oh, when are these drugs going to get approved? Like, we don't know what's going on. It's like, you can literally just get ketamine in the mail, like right now.

[A]

That's kind of wild.

[D]

I hear the word ketamine all the time. What does it do?

[B]

It's so. It's a sedative, I guess. I mean, you call it that so mechanistically. It's what we call a NMDA receptor antagonist. Probably no one gives a shit what that means, but it hits the brain a certain way and it's often used in surgeries as an actual anesthetic agent to put people under. But if you take it at a sub anesthetic dose or at a dose that you don't go unconscious, you like, you kind of trip, I guess, and you have like a psychedelic sort of experience. And I mean. Yeah. And those experiences can be very therapeutic and helpful. And obviously, by the way, when you do. When you do the male version, you're not. You don't have a therapist there, Right. Like, they. They come with instructions and it's like, put on an eye mask, put on your favorite music, lay on your couch, and make sure you have someone there in case, like, hits the fan. But, yeah, like, just lay there and kind of like think and set your intentions beforehand. It's pretty interesting. But it blows my mind that this is just out there because I, like, I'll be honest, I've done it myself. That's how I know so much about it, because. Partly because I was so curious about it. And I will also admit that it Wasn't very difficult to get. Again, this is not an endorsement, not medical advice, but it blows my mind. That's like, okay, I'm a neuroscientist. I've worked with people who have studied ketamine, like in the lab. I was working in Stanford. We had ketamine in a, you know, safe in the lab. Like, people were using it around me in this, in this context. Like, I know a lot about it, but like, I think of, you know, 60 year old Susie who gets ketamine in the mail and is like, all right, like, let's try it. And they don't even know what to expect. And then they just trip balls for like an hour on their couch with their, you know, husband. They're like, freaking out. And it's just, I don't even know. Like, I'm sure there's so many wild stories out there about, like, what's going on with this stuff.

[A]

Yeah, no, it is, it's a crazy time that we're living in right now. And I agree with you that there's, there would be a lot of unintended consequences if drugs like that were just massively, widely available to anybody on the street.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I got another question for you. This is more about football and more about, like, brain injuries and CTE and how we're studying that. I've been hearing for the last several years that we're getting closer and closer to finding a test that can be done on living patients for ct. I don't know if you've ever dabbled in any of the CTE research or anything like that, possible treatments for it, but I wanted to ask you about it since it's not often that we have a, a neuroscientist to, to talk to on the program.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I have to admit, I, I don't think we, I, I also. Okay, sorry, let me start over here. I don't know that much about cte and I don't know how much we know the field about cte. I remember learning something really, really fascinating years ago about it, but I don't even want to repeat it because I, I don't even know if it's true. So, sorry, let me just give you nothing there.

[A]

But I like, I like, I don't know response. I like, that's, that's a better response than. Let me, let me just bullshit you on this for a second.

[B]

I know, and it's, I'm so tempted to give you that bullshit answer, but, like, because I learned, I remember learning about it in undergrad and being like, that makes perfect sense. And then recently, I've, like, searched through the literature and trying to find the papers that explain what I learned, and I've never been able to find it. And so I am so tempted because it makes perfect sense. But I don't want to say it because I don't know if it's true. But, I mean, yeah, the absolute reality is CTE is definitely a thing in case anybody has a doubt about it. There's clear pathology or sort of disease evidence in people who experience repeated head trauma. I know they have those Guardian caps, actually. It's funny. A couple weeks ago, I was sitting on a plane, and the guy next to me was the chief operating officer of the Philadelphia Eagles, and I overheard him say that, and I was like, I got to talk to. To this guy. So I started chatting him up about the Guardian helmets, and he said that it's required for them to use in practice, but it's optional during games. And I didn't know that. Which I thought. I mean, I think that's great. You know, if. If it can absorb some of the shock and reduce the, you know, head trauma, great, because obviously, you don't want repeated head trauma, right? It just makes sense that. Because that's all what a concussion is, is your head shaking or slamming into something and your brain slamming into the walls of your skull. And that's obviously bad. And so, you know, we think about, like, Chris Olave, you know, getting, like, decked over and over. That's him, right? He's the guy who keeps getting concussed, or to go by loa. But the people who are like, I'm kind of worried about are, like, the offensive lineman, right? Where every single snap you're engaging, boom, with a collision, right? And sure, it's a tiny little collision, but I don't know. I mean, that could be a problem. And so it's good to have those Guardian caps, I think, and to just be aware of it and, like, recognizing it. And I think the NFL has done a pretty good job of waking up to the fact that, like, we can't just kind of ignore this anymore.

[D]

I've very recently had a. Like, a dumb guy thought on the Guardian caps, and I'm curious. I don't know if this is in your expertise at all. Why can't we just put those on the inside of the helmets?

[C]

Dude?

[B]

I honestly think the same thing. I were. I wonder about that, because I. I saw those, and I'm like, I know the players Hate that. I know the players hate wearing that thing. I mean, it looks a little bit goofy, you know, and obviously, like, hardly anybody wears them in the games, probably because they look goofy. But. Yeah. Like, why can't we just redesign football helmets? It's.

[D]

I thought about the helmet a little bigger and put that on the inside.

[B]

Sure.

[D]

Or just like, am I, Am I off there?

[A]

Well, I don't know if that's. But I. I have seen, like, people looking into the skull design of woodpeckers, because woodpeckers don't get cte. Woodpeckers slam their heads repeatedly into a tree all day. And the way that they. They have, like, an extra support mechanism that's built into their. Their skull that keeps their brain more stable. And so when you see players that are wearing, like, the. Those collars.

[D]

I've seen those.

[A]

Have you seen those? It's supposed to help with that by keeping, like, more blood up in your. Your head area, which makes the skull or the brain less likely. I don't know the exact science behind it, but I know that they studied birds. They're like, how can we. They should study those rams. The actual rams.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

That had Los Angeles rams.

[A]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[D]

I've got. I just got one more for you. This is a hard pivot, but Aryan unfortunately couldn't be here today. He.

[A]

He.

[D]

I don't know if you know about this. He hates dogs, and he hates people who like dogs. And I think you mentioned there's something in your book about dogs.

[B]

There's a whole chapter in my book about dogs. Unfortunately, I can rip that chapter out.

[D]

When I can, you just confirm that people who like dogs are better and superior intellectually provably by science than people who hate dogs, that those people are assholes.

[B]

So I could say this. Interacting with dogs is super good for the brain and has a ton of measurable benefits for, you know, all sorts of systems. And. And when we interact with dogs, our brains process it. And, you know, you could say in a similar way to interacting with another human. And so having dogs in your life, in my opinion, can be a really terrific way to supplement a. And protect against isolation, especially in old people. But I cannot tell you that people who don't like dogs are assholes. Unfortunately, there's no evidence.

[D]

You just won't.

[B]

Look, I love dogs, but I also, I mean, why doesn't he like dogs? Is he afraid of dogs?

[A]

He's.

[D]

That's part of it.

[A]

He's got a whole thing behind it. Yeah. Where he's like, oh, you kidnapped them from their moms and now you're. He looks at everyone who owns a dog as being colonizer.

[B]

Well, I can add. Okay, I can comment on that. Dogs love us. So when dogs, like, interact with or look into the eyes of their caregiver, they show a rise in oxytocin, this like, love hormone, which is, you know, similar to what happens in like romantic couples or in parent children bonds. So there is the evidence that dogs do not see us necessarily that way, but see us as actual, like, caring, loving beings that are just sort of this like, motherly presence.

[A]

Yeah, Aryan would say that Stockholm syndrome.

[D]

Yeah. He also says that if you died, they'd eat you.

[A]

As a neuroscientist, have you ever has that come across your desk, that your dog will eat you after you die?

[B]

Honestly? Yeah. I mean, it's funny because my dog, I have a dog. She's probably around here somewhere. Yeah, she's on the ground next to me. I. I did this thing once where I fell. Like, I collapsed on purpose. Like, I fell to the ground and I was like, what would you do? Right? Like, does she really care? And I hit the ground and my hand was outstretched next to me, and she came over and just put the ball in my hand and just stood there and looked at me. It's like, this dog does not give a shit about if I die. It just wants me to. It just views me as a vessel to throw the ball.

[A]

Yeah, but they do love us. Dogs love us. We're doing them a favor. That's how we got to look at it. Like we're, we're both helping each other out.

[B]

The reason that dogs love us is not Stockholm syndrome. It's because like 40, 30, 40,000 years ago, humans domesticated dogs. We don't really know how exactly that happened. It may have been that they just like ate our poop and kind of stayed near us, and then the ones that were friendlier got to eat poop and so they like kind of diverged off from wolves and stuff. Or it may have been that we actually. There is a theory, Aryan, that humans actually captured wolf pups and raised them. So there is a possibility of that could be all the way back then. But anyways, what turns out to be true is that humans and dogs survive really well together. So evolutionarily, it was actually favorable for us to exist together 30, 40,000 years ago. And so dogs have like, basically evolved to love us and, and because it's good for their survival. Like, they. The reason they show that oxytocin rise is because being around us makes them more likely to survive. So it's actually a genuine thing rather than. But I guess it could be like a long evolutionary form of Stockholm syndrome. I guess if you look at it that way.

[A]

I love that. I love that. That makes total sense to me. Well, thank you very much for joining us, Dr. Ryan.

[B]

Ryan.

[A]

Dr. Ryan. You can get his book. Is it out right now?

[B]

It's out in, like, two weeks. Yeah. Okay. Why Brains Need Friends.

[A]

Why brains need friends. Dr. Ben Ryan, thank you very much for talking to a bunch of idiots about. About brain science. Because. Because I feel like. I don't know, I. I learned a lot, and I appreciate you taking the time to put it in terms that we can understand.

[B]

Yeah, no, man, this has been fun. And I. Like I said, I really appreciate you having me and your openness to this conversation and. Go. Bills.