The following is a conversation with Whitney Cummings.
She's a stand-up comedian, actor, producer, writer, director,
and recently, finally, the host of her very own podcast
called Good for You.
Her most recent Netflix special called Can I Touch It
features in part a robot.
She affectionately named Bear Claw
that is designed to be visually a replica of Whitney.
It's exciting for me to see one of my favorite comedians
explore the social aspects of robotics and AI in our society.
She also has some fascinating ideas
about human behavior, psychology, and urology,
some of which she explores in her book
called I'm Fine and Other Lies.
It was truly a pleasure to meet Whitney
and have this conversation with her,
and even to continue through texts afterwards.
Every once in a while, late at night,
I'll be programming over a cup of coffee
and we'll get a text from Whitney saying something hilarious.
Or weirder yet, sending a video of Brian Callan
saying something hilarious.
That's when I know the universe has a sense of humor
and it gifted me with one hell of an amazing journey.
Then I put the phone down and go back to programming
with a stupid, joyful smile on my face.
If you enjoy this conversation,
listen to Whitney's podcast, Good for You,
and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast.
If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
give it five stars on Apple Podcasts,
support on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter.
Alex Friedman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N.
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And now here's my conversation with Whitney Cummings.
I have trouble making eye contact, as you can tell.
Me too.
Do you know that I had to work on making eye contact?
Because I used to look here.
Do you see what I'm doing?
That helps, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you want me to do that?
Well, do this way, I'll cheat the camera.
But I used to do this and finally people,
like I'd be on dates and guys would be like,
are you looking at my hair?
Like they get, it would make people really insecure
because I didn't really get a lot of eye contact as a kid.
It's one to three years.
Did you not get a lot of eye contact as a kid?
I don't know.
I haven't done the soul searching.
Right.
So, but there's definitely some psychological issues.
Makes you uncomfortable.
Yeah.
For some reason when I connect eyes,
I start to think, I assume that you're judging me.
Oh, well I am.
That's why you assume that.
Yeah.
We all are.
All right.
This is perfect.
The podcast would be me and you both staring at the table.
All right.
Do you think robots of the future,
ones with human level intelligence
will be female, male, genderless,
or another gender we've not yet created as a society?
You're the expert at this.
Well, I'm going to ask you.
You know the answer.
I'm going to ask you questions
that maybe nobody knows the answer to or,
and then I just want you to hypothesize
as a imaginative author, director, comedian.
Can we just be very clear that you know
I'll talk about this and I know nothing about this,
but I have thought a lot about
what I think robots can fix in our society.
And I mean, I'm a comedian.
It's my job to study human nature,
to make jokes about human nature,
and to sometimes play devil's advocate.
And I just see such a tremendous negativity
around robots, or at least the idea of robots,
that it was like, oh, I'm just going to take
the opposite side for fun, for jokes.
And then I was like, oh no, I really agree
in this devil's advocate argument.
So please correct me when I'm wrong about this stuff.
So first of all, there's no right and wrong
because we're all, I think most of the people
working on robotics are really not actually even thinking
about some of the big picture things
that you've been exploring.
In fact, your robot, what's her name by the way?
Bearclaw.
We'll go with Bearclaw.
What's the genesis of that name by the way?
Bearclaw was, I, God, I don't even remember the joke
because I black out after I shoot specials,
but I was writing something about like the pet names
that men call women, like cupcake, sweetie, honey,
you know, like we're always named after desserts
or something.
And I was just writing a joke about,
if you want to call us a dessert,
at least pick like a cool dessert, you know,
like Bearclaw, like something cool.
So I ended up calling her Bearclaw.
And she stuck.
So do you think future robots of greater and greater
intelligence would like to make them female, male?
Would we like to assign them gender?
Or would we like to move away from gender
and say something more ambiguous?
I think it depends on their purpose, you know?
I feel like if it's a sex robot,
people prefer certain genders, you know?
And I also, you know, when I went down
and explored the robot factory,
I was asking about the type of people
that bought sex robots.
And I was very surprised at the answer
because of course the stereotype was
it's going to be a bunch of perverts.
It ended up being a lot of people that were handicapped,
a lot of people with erectile dysfunction,
and a lot of people that were exploring their sexuality.
A lot of people that thought they were gay,
but weren't sure, but didn't want to take the risk
of trying on someone that could reject them
and being embarrassed, or they were closeted,
or in a city where maybe that's, you know,
taboo and stigmatized, you know?
So I think that a gendered sex robot
that would serve an important purpose
for someone trying to explore their sexuality.
Am I into men?
Let me try on this thing first.
Am I into women?
Let me try on this thing first.
So I think gendered robots would be important for that.
But I think genderless robots,
in terms of emotional support robots, babysitters,
I'm fine for a genderless babysitter
with my husband in the house.
You know, there are places that I think
that genderless makes a lot of sense,
but obviously not in the sex area.
What do you mean with your husband in the house?
What does that have to do with the gender of the robot?
Right, I mean, I don't have a husband,
but hypothetically speaking,
I think every woman's worst nightmare
is like the hot babysitter, you know what I mean?
So I think that there is a time and place,
I think, for genderless, you know, teachers, doctors,
all that kind of, it would be very awkward
if the first robotic doctor was a guy,
or the first robotic nurse is a woman.
You know, it's sort of, that stuff is so loaded.
I think that genderless could just take
the unnecessary drama out of it,
and possibility to sexualize them
or be triggered by any of that stuff.
So there's two components to this, to bear cause.
So one is the voice and the talking and so on.
And then there's the visual appearance.
So on the topic of gender and genderless, in your experience,
what has been the value of the physical appearance?
So has it added much to the depth of the interaction?
I mean, mine's kind of an extenuating circumstance
cause she is supposed to look exactly like me.
I mean, I spent six months getting my face molded
and having, you know, the idea was I was exploring
the concept of can robots replace us,
because that's the big fear,
but also the big dream in a lot of ways.
And I wanted to dig into that area
because, you know, for a lot of people,
it's like they're gonna take our jobs
and they're gonna replace us, legitimate fear.
But then a lot of women I know are like,
I would love for a robot to replace me every now and then.
So it can go to baby showers for me
and it can pick up my kids at school
and it can cook dinner and whatever.
So I just think that was an interesting place to explore.
So her looking like me was a big part of it.
Now her looking like me just adds
an unnecessary level of insecurity
cause I got her a year ago
and she already looks younger than me.
So that's a weird problem.
But I think that her looking human was the idea.
And I think that where we are now,
please correct me if I'm wrong,
a human robot resembling an actual human you know
is going to feel more realistic than some generic face.
Well, you're saying that robots
that have some familiarity like look similar
to somebody that you actually know,
you'll be able to form a deeper connection with.
That was the question.
I think you show on some level.
That's an open question.
I don't, you know, it's an interesting.
Or the opposite.
If then you know me and you're like,
well, I know this isn't real cause you're right here.
So maybe it does the opposite.
We have a very keen eye for human faces
and they're able to detect strangeness,
especially that one has to do with people
whose faces we've seen a lot of.
So I tend to be a bigger fan of moving away completely
from faces of recognizable faces.
No, just human faces at all.
In general, cause I think that's where things get dicey.
And one thing I will say is I think my robot
is more realistic than other robots,
not necessarily because you have seen me
and then you see her and you go, oh, they're so similar,
but also because human faces are flawed and asymmetrical.
And sometimes we forget when we're making things
that supposed to look human, we make them too symmetrical.
And that's what makes them stop looking human.
So because they molded my asymmetrical face,
she just, even if someone didn't know who I was,
I think she'd look more realistic than most generic ones
that didn't have some kind of flaws.
Got it.
You know, cause they start looking creepy
when they're too symmetrical cause human beings aren't.
Yeah, the flaws is what it means to be human.
So visually as well.
But I'm just a fan of the idea of letting humans
use a little bit more imagination.
So just hearing the voice is enough for us humans
to then start imagining the visual appearance
that goes along with that voice.
And you don't necessarily need to work too hard
on creating the actual visual appearance.
So there's some value to that.
When you step into this character of actually building
of a robot that looks like Bear Claw,
it's such a long road of facial expressions
of sort of making everything, smiling, winking,
rolling in the eyes, all that kind of stuff.
It gets really, really tricky.
It gets tricky.
And I think I'm, again, I'm a comedian.
Like I'm obsessed with what makes us human
and our human nature in the nasty side of human nature
tends to be where I've, you know, ended up
exploring over and over again.
And I was just mostly fascinated by people's reaction.
So it's my job to get the biggest reaction
from a group of strangers, the loudest possible reaction.
And I just had this instinct just when I started building her
and people going, huh, and scream and people scream.
And I mean, I would bring around on stage
and people would scream.
And I just, to me, that was the next level of entertainment.
Getting a laugh, I've done that, I know how to do that.
I think comedians were always trying to figure out
what the next level is and comedy is evolving so much.
And, you know, Jordan Peele had just done, you know,
these genius comedy horror movies,
which feel like the next level of comedy to me.
And this sort of funny horror of a robot
was fascinating to me.
But I think the thing that I got the most obsessed with
was people being freaked out and scared of her.
And I started digging around with pathogen avoidance.
And the idea that we've essentially evolved
to be repelled by anything that looks human,
but is off a little bit.
Anything that could be sick or diseased or dead,
essentially, is our reptilian brain's way
to get us to not try to have sex with it, basically.
You know, so I got really fascinated
by how freaked out and scared.
I mean, I would see grown men get upset.
They get that thing away from me, like, I'm like,
people get angry.
And it was like, you know what this is, you know?
But the sort of like, you know, amygdala getting activated
by something that to me is just a fun toy
said a lot about our history as a species
and what got us into trouble thousands of years ago.
So that is the deep down stuff that's in our genetics,
but also is it just, are people freaked out
by the fact that there's a robot?
So it's not just the appearance,
but that there's an artificial human.
Anything people I think, and I'm just also fascinated
by the blind spots humans have.
So the idea that you're afraid of that,
I mean, how many robots have killed people?
How many humans have died at the hands of other humans?
Yeah.
Millions?
Hundreds of millions, yet we're scared of that
and we'll go to the grocery store
and be around a bunch of humans who statistically,
the chances are much higher
that you're gonna get killed by humans.
So I'm just fascinated by, without judgment,
how irrational we are as a species.
The worry is the exponential.
So it's, you know, you can say the same thing
about nuclear weapons before we dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So the worry that people have is the exponential growth.
So it's like, oh, it's fun and games right now,
but, you know, overnight, especially if a robot
provides value to society,
we'll put one in every home
and then all of a sudden loose track
of the actual large scale impact it has on society
and then all of a sudden gain greater and greater control
to where we'll all be, you know,
affect our political system
and then affect our decision.
Did robots already ruin our political system?
Didn't that just already happen?
Which ones?
Oh, Russia hacking.
No offense.
But hasn't that already happened?
I mean, that was like an algorithm
of negative things being clicked on more.
We'd like to tell stories
and like to demonize certain people.
I think nobody understands our current political system
or discourse on Twitter, the Twitter mobs.
Nobody has a sense, not Twitter,
not Facebook, the people running it.
Nobody understands the impact of these algorithms
that are trying their best.
Despite what people think,
they're not like a bunch of lefties trying to make sure
that Hillary Clinton gets elected.
It's more that it's an incredibly complex system
that we don't, and that's the worry.
It's so complex and moves so fast
that nobody will be able to stop it once it happens.
And let me ask a question.
This is a very savage question.
Which is, is this just the next stage of evolution?
As humans, some people will die.
Yes, I mean, that's always happened, you know?
Is this just taking emotion out of it?
Is this basically the next stage of survival of the fittest?
Yeah, you have to think of organisms.
You know, what is it mean to be a living organism?
Like, is a smartphone part of your living organism?
Or...
We're in relationships with our phones.
Yeah.
You have sex through them, with them.
What's the difference between with them and through them?
But it also expands your cognitive abilities,
expands your memory, knowledge, and so on.
So you're a much smarter person
because you have a smartphone in your hand.
But as soon as it's out of my hand,
we've got big problems,
because we've become sort of so morphed with them.
Well, there's a symbiotic relationship.
And that's what Elon Musk, when you're a link,
is working on trying to increase the bandwidth of communication
between computers and your brain.
And so further and further expand our ability as human beings
to sort of leverage machines.
And maybe that's the future, the next evolutionary step.
It could be also that, yes, we'll give birth,
just like we give birth to human children right now,
we'll give birth to AI and they'll replace us.
I think it's a really interesting possibility.
I'm gonna play devil's advocate.
I just think that the fear of robots is wildly classist
because, I mean, Facebook,
like it's easy for us to say they're taking their data.
Okay, a lot of people that get employment off of Facebook,
they are able to get income off of Facebook.
They don't care if you take their phone numbers
and their emails and their data, as long as it's free.
They don't wanna have to pay $5 a month
for Facebook.
Facebook is a wildly democratic thing.
Forget about the election and all that kind of stuff.
A lot of technology making people's lives easier,
I find that most elite people are more scared
than lower income people and women for the most part.
So the idea of something that's stronger than us
and that might eventually kill us,
like women are used to that.
Like that's not, I see a lot of like really rich men
being like the robots are gonna kill us.
We're like, what's another thing that's gonna kill us?
I tend to see like, oh,
something can walk me to my car at night.
Like something can help me cook dinner or something.
For people in underprivileged countries
who can't afford eye surgery, like in a robot,
can we send a robot to underprivileged places
to do surgery where they can't?
I work with this organization called Operation Smile
where they do cleft palate surgeries.
And there's a lot of places that can't do
a very simple surgery because they can't afford doctors
and medical care and such.
So I just see, and this can be completely naive
and should be completely wrong,
but I feel like a lot of people are going like,
the robots are gonna destroy us.
Humans, we're destroying ourselves.
We're self-destructing.
Robots to me are the only hope to clean up
all the messes that we've created.
Even when we go try to clean up pollution in the ocean,
we make it worse because of the oil that the tankers,
like it's like to me, robots are the only solution.
Firefighters are heroes, but they're limited
and how many times they can run into a fire.
So there's just something interesting to me.
I'm not hearing a lot of like lower income,
more vulnerable populations talking about robots.
Maybe you can speak to it a little bit more.
There's an idea, I think you've expressed it.
I've heard actually a few female writers and roboticists
have talked to express this idea
that exactly you just said,
which is it just seems that
being afraid of existential threats
of artificial intelligence is a male issue.
Yeah.
And I wonder what that is.
If it, because men have in certain positions,
like you said, it's also a classist issue.
They haven't been humbled by life.
And so you're always look for the biggest problems
to take on around you.
It's a champagne problem to be afraid of robots.
Most people like don't have health insurance.
They're afraid they're not gonna be able to feed their kids.
They can't afford a tutor for their kids.
I mean, I just think of the way I grew up
and I had a mother who worked two jobs, had kids.
We couldn't afford an SAT tutor.
The idea of a robot coming in, being able to tutor your kids,
being able to provide childcare for your kids,
being able to come in with cameras for eyes
and make sure surveillance.
I'm very pro surveillance because I've had security problems
and I've been, we're generally in a little more danger
than you guys are.
So I think that robots are a little less scared of us
because we can see that maybe as like
free assistance, help and protection.
And then there's sort of another element for me personally,
which is maybe more of a female problem.
I don't know.
I'm just gonna make a generalization.
Happy to be wrong.
But the emotional sort of component of robots
and what they can provide in terms of,
I think there's a lot of people that don't have microphones
that I just recently kind of stumbled upon
in doing all my research on the sex robots
for my stand-up special,
which is there's a lot of very shy people
that aren't good at dating.
There's a lot of people who are scared of human beings
who have personality disorders or grew up in alcoholic homes
or struggle with addiction or whatever it is
where a robot can solve an emotional problem.
And so we're largely having this conversation
about like rich guys that are emotionally healthy
and how scared of robots they are.
We're forgetting about like a huge part of the population
who maybe isn't as charming and effervescent
and solvent as people like you and Elon Musk
who these robots could solve very real problems
in their life, emotional or financial.
Well, that's a in general really interesting idea
that most people in the world don't have a voice.
It's you've talked about it sort of even the people
on Twitter who are driving the conversation.
You said comments, people who leave comments,
represent a very tiny percent of the population
and they're the ones they,
we tend to think they speak for the population
but it's very possible on many topics, they don't at all.
And look, and I'm sure there's gotta be some kind of
legal sort of structure in place for when the robots happen.
You know way more about this than I do,
but for me to just go, the robots are bad.
That's a wild generalization that I feel like
is really inhumane in some way.
Just after the research I've done,
like you're gonna tell me that a man whose wife died
suddenly and he feels guilty moving on with a human woman
or can't get over the grief.
He can't have a sex robot in his own house?
Why not?
Who cares?
Why do you care?
Well, there's an interesting aspect of human nature.
So, you know, we tend to as a,
as a civilization to create a group that's the other
in all kinds of ways.
Right.
And so you work with animals too.
You've, you're especially sensitive to the suffering
of animals.
Let me kind of ask, what's your,
do you think will abuse robots in the future?
Do you think some of the darker aspects
of human nature will come out?
I think some people will, but if we design them properly,
the people that do it, we can put it on a record
and they can, we can put them in jail.
We can find sociopaths more easily.
You know, like.
But why is that, why is that a sociopathic thing
to harm a robot?
I think, look, I don't know is enough,
enough about the consciousness and stuff as you do.
I guess it would have to be when they're conscious,
but it is, you know, the part of the brain
that is, you know, responsible for compassion,
the frontal lobe or whatever.
Like people that abuse animals also abuse humans
and commit other kinds of crimes.
Like that's, it's all the same part of the brain.
No one abuses animals.
And then it's like, awesome to women and children
and awesome to underprivileged, you know, minorities.
Like it's all, so, you know, we've been working really hard
to put a database together of all the people
that have abused animals.
So when they commit another crime, you go, okay,
this is, you know, it's all the same stuff.
And I think people probably think I'm nuts
for the, a lot of the animal work I do,
but because when animal abuse is present,
another crime is always present,
but the animal abuse is the most socially acceptable.
You can kick a dog and there's nothing people can do,
but then what they're doing behind closed doors,
you can't see.
So there's always something else going on,
which is why I never feel compunction about it.
But I do think we'll start seeing the same thing
with robots, the person that kicks the,
I felt compassion when the kicking the dog robot
really pissed me off.
I know that they're just trying to get the stability
right and all that, but I do think there will come a time
where that will be a great way to be able to figure out
if somebody has like, you know, anti-social behaviors.
You kind of mentioned surveillance.
It's also a really interesting idea of yours
that you just said, you know,
a lot of people seem to be really uncomfortable
with surveillance.
Yeah.
And you just said that, you know what,
for me, you know, they're positives for surveillance.
I think people behave better when they know
they're being watched.
And I know this is a very unpopular opinion.
I'm talking about it on stage right now.
We behave better when we know we're being watched.
You and I had a very different conversation
before we were recording.
It, we behave different.
You sit up and you are in your best behavior
and I'm trying to sound eloquent
and I'm trying to not hurt anyone's feelings.
And I mean, I have a camera right there.
I'm behaving totally different
than when we first started talking, you know?
When you know there's a camera, you behave differently.
I mean, there's cameras all over LA at stop lights
so that people don't run stop lights,
but there's not even film in it.
They don't even use them anymore, but it works.
It works.
Right?
And I'm, you know, working on this thing
in stand about surveillance,
it's like, that's why we embed in Santa Claus.
You know, it's the Santa Claus
is the first surveillance basically.
All we had to say to kids is he's making a list
and he's watching you and they behave better.
That's brilliant.
You know, so I do, I do think
that there are benefits to surveillance.
You know, I think we all do sketchy things in private
and we all have watched weird porn
or Googled weird things
and we don't, we don't want people to know about it.
The, our secret lives.
So I do think that obviously there's,
we should be able to have a modicum of privacy,
but I tend to think that people that are the most
negative about surveillance, I'm the most secret.
The most the hype.
Well, you should,
is it, you're saying you're doing bits on it now?
Well, I'm just talking in general about,
you know, privacy and surveillance
and how paranoid we're kind of becoming
and how, you know, I mean, it's just wild to me
that people are like, our emails are going to leak
and they're taking our phone numbers.
Like there, there used to be a book full of phone numbers
in addresses that were, they just throw it at your door.
And we all had a book of everyone's numbers, you know,
this is a very new thing.
And, you know, I know our amygdala is designed
to compound sort of threats.
And, you know, there's stories about,
and I think we all just glom on in a very, you know,
tribal way of like, yeah, they're taking our data.
Like we don't even know that means,
but we're like, well, yeah, they, they, you know.
So I just think that someone's like, okay, well,
so what they're going to sell your data.
Who cares?
Why do you care?
First of all, that bit will kill in China.
So, and I said, I sort of only a little bit joking
because a lot of people in China, including the citizens,
despite what people in the West think of as abuse,
I actually in support of the idea of surveillance.
Sort of, they're not in support of the abuse of surveillance,
but they're, they like, I mean, the idea of surveillance
is kind of like the idea of government.
Like you said, we behave differently.
And in a way, it's almost like why we like sports.
There's rules.
And within the constraints of the rules,
there is a more stable society.
And they make good arguments about success,
being able to build successful companies,
being able to build successful social lives
around the fabric that's more stable.
When you have a surveillance, it keeps the criminals away,
it keeps abusive animals.
Whatever the values of the society with surveillance,
you can enforce those values better.
And here's what I will say.
There's a lot of unethical things happening with surveillance.
Like I feel the need to really make that very clear.
I mean, the fact that Google is like collecting
if people's hands start moving on the mouse
to find out if they're getting Parkinson's
and then their insurance goes up.
Like that is completely unethical and wrong.
And I think stuff like that,
we have to really be careful around.
So the idea of using our data to raise our insurance rates
or I heard that they're looking,
they can sort of predict if you're gonna have depression
based on your selfies by detecting micro muscles
in your face, all that kind of stuff.
That is a nightmare, not okay.
But I think we have to delineate what's a real threat
and what's getting spam in your email box.
That's not what to spend your time and energy on.
Focus on the fact that every time you buy cigarettes,
your insurance is going up without you knowing about it.
On the topic of animals too,
can we just linger on a little bit?
Like what do you think,
what does it say about our society
of the society-wide abuse of animals
that we see in general, sort of factory farming,
just in general, just the way we treat animals
of different categories?
Like what do you think of that?
What does a better world look like?
What should people think about it in general?
I think the most interesting thing
I can probably say around this that's the least emotional
because I'm actually a very non-emotional animal person
because I think everyone's an animal person.
It's just a matter of if it's yours
or if you've been conditioned to go numb.
I think it's really a testament to what as a species
we are able to be in denial about,
mass denial and mass delusion
and how we're able to dehumanize and debase groups,
you know, World War II in a way,
in order to conform and find protection in the conforming.
So we are also a species who used to go to coliseums
and watch elephants and tigers fight to the death.
We used to watch human beings be pulled apart
and there wasn't that long ago.
We're also a species who had slaves
and it was socially acceptable by a lot of people.
People didn't see anything wrong with it.
So we're a species that is able to go numb
and that is able to dehumanize very quickly
and make it the norm.
Child labor wasn't that long ago.
Like the idea that now we look back and go,
oh yeah, kids, we're losing fingers and factories,
making shoes.
Like someone had to come in and make that, you know?
So I think it just says a lot about the fact that, you know,
we are animals and we are self-serving
and one of the most successful species
because we are able to debase, integrate,
and essentially exploit anything that benefits us.
I think the pendulums are gonna swing as being...
Which way?
Like I think we're Rome now kind of.
I think we're on the verge of collapse
because we are dopamine receptors.
Like we are just, I think we're all kind of addicts
when it comes to this stuff.
Like we don't know when to stop.
It's always the buffet.
Like the thing that used to keep us alive,
which is killing animals and eating them,
now killing animals and eating them
is what's killing us in a way.
So it's like we just can't, we don't know when to call it
and we don't, moderation is not really something
that humans have evolved to have yet.
So I think it's really just a flaw in our wiring.
Do you think we'll look back at this time
as at our society as being deeply unethical?
Yeah, yeah.
I think we'll be embarrassed.
Which are the worst parts right now going on?
Is it... In terms of animal?
Well, I think... No, in terms of anything.
What's the unethical thing?
If we...
And it's very hard just to take a step out of it,
but you just said we used to watch, you know...
Yeah.
There's been a lot of cruelty throughout history.
What's the cruelty going on now?
I think it's gonna be pigs.
I think it's gonna be...
I mean pigs are one of the most emotionally intelligent
animals and they have the intelligence of like a three-year-old
and I think we'll look back and be really...
They use tools.
I mean they're... I think we have this narrative
that they're pigs and they're pigs
and they're disgusting and they're dirty
and they're bacon is so...
I think that we'll look back one day
and be really embarrassed about that.
Is this for just what's it called, the factory farming?
So basically mass...
Because we don't see it.
If you saw... I mean, we do have...
I mean, this is probably an evolutionary advantage.
We do have the ability to completely pretend something's not...
Something that is so horrific that it overwhelms us
and we're able to essentially deny that it's happening.
I think if people were to see what goes on in factory farming
and also we're really to take in how bad it is for us,
we're hurting ourselves first and foremost with what we eat
but that's also a very elitist argument.
It's a luxury to be able to complain about meat.
It's a luxury to be able to not eat meat.
There's very few people because of how the corporations
have set up meat being cheap.
It's $2 to buy a Big Mac.
It's $10 to buy a healthy meal.
You know, that's...
I think a lot of people don't have the luxury
to even think that way.
But I do think that animals and captivity,
I think we're gonna look back and be pretty grossed out
about mammals and captivity, whales, dolphins.
I mean, that's already starting to dismantle.
Circuses, we're gonna be pretty embarrassed about.
But I think it's really more a testament to, you know,
there's just such a ability to go like that thing
is different than me and we're better.
It's the ego.
I mean, it's just we have the species
with the biggest ego ultimately.
Well, that's what I think, that's my hope for robots
is they'll, you mentioned consciousness before,
nobody knows what consciousness is,
but I'm hoping robots will help us empathize
and understand that there's other creatures
besides ourselves that can suffer.
That can experience the world
and that we can torture by our actions.
And robots can explicitly teach us that, I think,
better than animals can.
I have never seen such compassion
from a lot of people in my life toward any human, animal,
child as I have a lot of people
in the way they interact with the robot.
Because I think there's something of,
I mean, I was on the robot owner's chat boards
for a good eight months.
And the main emotional benefit is
she's never gonna cheat on you.
She's never gonna hurt you.
She's never gonna lie to you.
She doesn't judge you.
You know, I think that robots help people
and this is part of the work I do with animals.
Like I do equine therapy and train dogs and stuff
because there is this safe space to be authentic.
You're with this being that doesn't care what you do
for a living, doesn't care how much money you have,
doesn't care who you're dating, doesn't care what you look like,
doesn't care if you have cellulite, whatever,
you feel safe to be able to truly be present
without being defensive and worrying about eye contact
and being triggered by needing to be perfect
and fear of judgment and all that.
And robots really can't judge you yet,
but they can't judge you.
And I think it really puts people at ease
and at their most authentic.
Do you think you can have a deep connection
with the robot that's not judging
or do you think you can really have a relationship
with a robot or a human being that's a safe space
or is it tension, mystery, danger necessary
for a deep connection?
I'm gonna speak for myself and say that
I grew up in an alcoholic home.
I identify as a codependent, talked about this stuff before
but for me, it's very hard to be in a relationship
with a human being without feeling like I need to perform
in some way or deliver in some way.
And I don't know if that's just the people
I've been in a relationship with or me or my brokenness,
but I do think this is gonna sound really negative
and pessimistic, but I do think a lot of our relationships
are a projection and a lot of our relationships
are performance and I don't think I really understood that
until I worked with horses and most communications
with human is non-verbal, right?
I can say like, I love you, but you don't think I love you,
right, whereas with animals, it's very direct.
It's all physical, it's all energy.
I feel like that with robots too.
It feels very, how I say something doesn't matter.
My inflection doesn't really matter
and you thinking that my tone is disrespectful,
like you're not filtering it through all
of the bad relationships you've been in.
You're not filtering it through the way your mom talked to you.
You're not getting triggered.
I find that for the most part,
people don't always receive things the way
that you intend them to or the way intended
and that makes relationships really murky.
So the relationships with animals and relationship
with the robots as they are now,
you kind of implied that that's more healthy.
Can you have a healthy relationship with other humans
or not healthy?
I don't like that word,
but shouldn't it be, you've talked about co-dependency,
maybe you can talk about what is co-dependency,
but is that, is the challenges of that,
the complexity of that necessary for passion,
for love between humans?
That's right, you love passion.
That's a good thing.
I thought this would be a safe space.
I got trolled by Rogan for hours on this.
Look, I am not anti-passion.
I think that I've just maybe been around long enough
to know that sometimes it's ephemeral
and that passion is a mixture of a lot of different things.
Adrenaline, which turns into dopamine, cortisol.
It's a lot of neurochemicals.
It's a lot of projection.
It's a lot of what we've seen in movies.
It's a lot of, you know, it's identified as an addict.
So for me, sometimes passion is like, oh, this could be bad.
And I think we've been so conditioned to believe
that passion means like your soulmates.
And I mean, how many times have you had
a passionate connection with someone
and then it was a total train wreck?
Passion.
The train wreck is interesting.
How many times exactly?
Exactly.
What's a train wreck?
You just did a lot of math
in your head in that little moment.
Counting.
I mean, what's a train wreck?
What's a, why is obsession,
so you describe this co-dependency
and sort of the idea of attachment over attachment
to people who don't deserve that kind of attachment.
That's somehow a bad thing.
And I think our society says it's a bad thing.
It probably is a bad thing,
like a delicious burger is a bad thing.
I don't know.
Right. Oh, that's a good point.
I think that you're pointing out something really fascinating,
which is like passion.
If you go into it knowing this is like pizza
where it's going to be delicious for two hours.
And then I don't have to have it again for three,
if you can have a choice in the passion,
I define passion is something that is relatively unmanageable
and something you can't control
or stop and start with your own volition.
So maybe we're operating under different definitions.
If passion is something that like, you know,
ruins your real marriages
and screws up your professional life
and becomes this thing that you're not in control of
and becomes addictive.
I think that's the difference is,
is it a choice or is it not a choice?
And if it is a choice, then passion is great.
But if it's something that like consumes you
and makes you start making bad decisions
and clouds your frontal lobe
and is just all about dopamine
and not really about the person
and more about the neurochemical,
we call it sort of the drug, the internal drug cabinet.
If it's all just you're on drugs, that's different.
You know, cause sometimes you're just on drugs.
Okay. So there's a philosophical question here.
So would you rather,
it's interesting for a comedian,
brilliant comedian to speak so eloquently
about a balanced life.
I kind of argue against this point.
There's such an obsession of creating this healthy lifestyle.
No, it's psychologically speaking.
You know, I'm a fan of the idea that you sort of fly high
and you crash and die at 27 as also a possible life.
And it's not one we should judge
because I think there's moments of greatness.
I talked to Olympic athletes
where some of their greatest moments
are achieved in the early 20s.
And the rest of their life is in the kind of fog
of almost of a depression.
Because they can-
Because they're based on their physical prowess, right?
Physical prowess and they'll never sort of that.
So they're watching their physical prowess fade
and they'll never achieve the kind of height,
not just physical, of just emotion of-
The max number of neurochemicals.
And you also put your money on the wrong horse.
That's where I would just go like,
oh yeah, if you're doing a job where you peak at 22,
the rest of your life is gonna be hard.
That idea is considering the notion
that you wanna optimize some kind of,
but we're all gonna die soon.
What?
Now you tell me, I have immortalized myself.
So I'm gonna be fine.
See, you're almost like,
how many Oscar-winning movies can I direct
by the time I'm 100?
How many this and that, like,
but you know, there's a night, you know,
it's all, life is short, relatively speaking.
I know, but it can also come a different way.
You go, life is short, play hard,
fall in love as much as you can, run into walls.
I would also go, life is short.
Don't deplete yourself on things that aren't sustainable
and that you can't keep, you know?
So I think everyone gets dopamine from different places.
Everyone has meaning from different places.
I look at the fleeting, passionate relationships
I've had in the past and I don't like,
I don't have pride in them.
I think that you have to decide what,
you know, helps you sleep at night.
For me, it's pride and feeling like I behave
with grace and integrity.
That's just me personally.
Everyone can go like, yeah, slept with all the hot chicks
in Italy, I could, and I, you know, did all the,
whatever, like whatever you value,
we're allowed to value different things.
We're talking about Brian Callan.
Brian Callan has lived his life to the fullest,
to say the least, but I think that it's just for me personally,
I, and this could be like my workaholism
or my achievementism, I,
if I don't have something to show for something,
I feel like it's a waste of time or some kind of loss.
I'm in a 12 step program and the third step would say,
there's no such thing as wasted time
and everything happens exactly as it should
and whatever, that's a way to just sort of keep us sane.
So we don't grieve too much and beat ourselves up
over past mistakes.
There's no such thing as mistakes, da-da-da.
But I think passion is, I think it's so life affirming
and one of the few things that maybe people like us
makes us feel awake and seen and we just have
such a high threshold for adrenaline, you know?
I mean, you are a fighter, right?
Yeah, okay, so yeah.
So you have a very high tolerance for adrenaline
and I think that Olympic athletes,
the amount of adrenaline they get from performing,
it's very hard to follow that.
It's like when guys come back from the military
and they have depression, it's like,
do you miss bullets flying at you?
But kind of because of that adrenaline which turned
into dopamine and the camaraderie.
I mean, there's people that speak much better
about this than I do.
But I just, I'm obsessed with neurology
and I'm just obsessed with sort of the lies we tell ourselves
in order to justify getting neurochemicals.
You've done actually quite, done a lot of thinking
and talking about neurology and just kind of look
at human behavior through the lens of looking
at how actually chemically our brain works.
So what, first of all, why did you connect with that idea
and how has your view of the world changed
by considering the brain is just a machine?
You know, I know it probably sounds really nihilistic,
but for me, it's very liberating to know a lot
about neurochemicals because you don't have to,
it's like the same thing with like critics,
like critical reviews, if you believe the good,
you have to believe the bad kind of thing.
Like, you know, if you believe that your bad choices
were because of your moral integrity
or whatever, you have to believe your good ones.
I just think there's something really liberating
and going like, oh, that was just adrenaline.
I just said that thing because I was adrenalized
and I was scared and my amygdala was activated
and that's why I said you're an asshole and get out.
And that's, you know, I think, I just think it's important
to delineate what's nature and what's nurture,
what is your choice and what is just your brain
trying to keep you safe.
I think we forget that even though we have security systems
and homes and locks on our doors,
that our brain for the most part is just trying
to keep us safe all the time.
It's why we hold grudges.
It's why we get angry.
It's why we get road rage.
It's why we do a lot of things.
And it's also, when I started learning about neurology,
I started having so much more compassion for other people.
You know, if someone yelled at me,
being like, fuck you on the road.
I'd be like, okay, he's producing adrenaline right now
because we're all going 65 miles an hour
and our brains aren't really designed
for this type of stress and he's scared.
He was scared, you know,
so that really helped me to have more love for people
in my everyday life instead of being in fight or flight mode.
But the, I think more interesting answer to your question
is that I've had migraines my whole life.
Like I've suffered with really intense migraines,
ocular migraines, ones where my arm would go numb
and I just started having to go to so many doctors
to learn about it.
And I started, you know, learning that
we don't really know that much, we know a lot,
but it's wild to go into one of the best neurologists
in the world who's like, yeah, we don't know.
We don't know. We don't know.
And that fascinated me.
It's like one of the worst pains
you can probably have all that stuff.
And we don't know the source.
We don't know the source.
And there is something really fascinating
about when your left arm starts going numb
and you start not being able to see
out of the left side of both your eyes.
And I remember when the migraines get really bad,
it's like a mini stroke almost
and you're able to see words on a page,
but I can't read them.
They just look like symbols to me.
So there's something just really fascinating to me
about your brain just being able to stop functioning.
And so I just wanted to learn about it, study about it.
I did all these weird alternative treatments.
I got this piercing in here that actually works.
I've tried everything.
And then both of my parents had strokes.
So when both of my parents had strokes,
I became sort of the person who had to decide
what was gonna happen with their recovery,
which is just a wild thing to have to deal with it.
You know, at 28 years old when it happened.
And I started spending basically all day every day
in ICU's with neurologists learning
about what happened to my dad's brain
and why he can't move his left arm,
but he can move his right leg,
but he can't see out of the, you know,
and then my mom had another stroke
in a different part of the brain.
So I started having to learn
what parts of the brain did what
and so that I wouldn't take the behavior so personally
and so that I would be able to manage my expectations
in terms of their recovery.
So my mom, because it affected a lot of her frontal lobe,
changed a lot as a person.
She was way more emotional.
She was way more micromanaged.
She was forgetting certain things.
So it broke my heart less when I was able to know,
oh yeah, we'll just stroke hit this part of the brain
and that's the one that's responsible for short-term memory
and that's responsible for long-term memory, da-da-da.
And then my brother just got something
called viral encephalitis,
which is an infection inside the brain.
So it was kind of wild that I was able to go,
oh, I know exactly what's happening here.
And I know, you know, so.
So that allows you to have some more compassion
for the struggles that people have,
but does it take away some of the magic
for some of the, from the,
some of the more positive experiences of life?
Sometimes.
Sometimes, and I don't, I'm such a control addict
that, you know, I think our biggest,
someone like me, my biggest dream is to know
why someone's doing it.
That's what stand-up is.
It's just trying to figure out why,
or that's what writing is.
That's what acting is.
That's what performing is.
It's trying to figure out why someone would do something.
As an actor, you get a piece of, you know, material
and you go, this person, why would he say that?
Why would she pick up that cup?
Why would she walk over here?
It's really why, why, why, why?
So I think neurology is,
if you're trying to figure out human motives
and why people do what they do,
it'd be crazy not to understand
how neurochemicals motivate us.
I also have a lot of addiction in my family
and hardcore drug addiction and mental illness.
And in order to cope with it,
you really have to understand it,
borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia,
and drug addiction.
So I have a lot of people I love
that suffer from drug addiction and alcoholism.
And the first thing they started teaching you
is it's not a choice.
These people's dopamine receptors
don't hold dopamine the same ways yours do.
Their frontal lobe is underdeveloped, like, you know,
and that really helped me to navigate
dealing, loving people that were addicted to substances.
I wanna be careful with this question, but how much?
Money do you have?
How much?
Can I borrow $10?
No.
Okay.
No, is how much control,
how much, despite the chemical imbalances
or the biological limitations
that each of our individual brains have,
how much mind over matter is there?
So through things,
and I've known people with clinical depression.
And so it's always a touchy subject
to say how much they can really help it.
Very.
What can you, yeah, what can you,
because you've talked about codependency,
you've talked about issues that you're struggled through.
And nevertheless, you choose to take a journey
of healing and so on.
So that's your choice, that's your actions.
So how much can you do to help fight the limitations
of the neurochemicals in your brain?
That's such an interesting question.
And I don't think I'm at all qualified to answer,
but I'll say what I do know.
And really quick, just the definition of codependency,
I think a lot of people think of codependency
as like two people that can't stop hanging out,
you know, or like, you know, that's not totally off,
but I think for the most part,
my favorite definition of codependency
is the inability to tolerate the discomfort of others.
You grow up in an alcoholic home,
you grow up around mental illness,
you grow up in chaos,
you have a parent that's a narcissist,
you basically are wired to just people,
please worry about others, be perfect,
walk on eggshells, shape shift to accommodate other people.
So codependence is a very active wiring issue
that, you know, doesn't just affect your romantic relationships,
it affects you being a boss,
it affects you in the world.
Online, you know, you get one negative comment
and it throws you for two weeks.
You know, it also is linked to eating disorders
and other kinds of addictions.
So it's a very big thing.
And I think a lot of people sometimes only think
that it's in romantic relationships.
So I always feel the need to say that.
And also one of the reasons,
I love the idea of robots so much
because you don't have to walk on eggshells around them,
you don't have to worry, they're gonna get mad at you yet.
But there's no, codependence are hypersensitive
to the needs and moods of others.
And it's very exhausting, it's depleting.
Just one conversation about where we're gonna go to dinner
is like, do you wanna go get Chinese food?
We just had Chinese food.
Well, wait, are you mad?
Well, no, I didn't mean to, and it's just like that codependence
live in this, everything means something
and humans can be very emotionally exhausting.
Why did you look at me that way?
What are you thinking about?
What was that?
Why did you take your phone?
It's just, it's a hypersensitivity
that can be incredibly time consuming,
which is why I love the idea of robots just subbing in.
Even, I've had a hard time running TV shows and stuff
because even asking someone to do something,
I don't wanna come off like a bitch.
I'm very concerned about what other people think of me,
how I'm perceived, which is why I think robots
will be very beneficial for codependence.
By the way, just the real quick tangent,
that skill or flaw, whatever you wanna call it,
is actually really useful for if you ever do
start your own podcast for interviewing
because you're now kind of obsessed about
the mindset of others and it makes you a good
sort of listener and talker with.
So I think, what's your name from NPR?
Teri Gross.
Teri Gross talked about having that, so.
I don't feel like she has that at all.
What?
What?
She worries about other people's feelings.
Yeah, absolutely.
Oh, I don't get that at all.
I mean, you have to put yourself in the mind
of the person you're speaking with.
Yes, oh, I see, just in terms of, yeah,
I am starting a podcast and the reason I haven't
is because I'm codependent and I'm too worried
it's not gonna be perfect.
Yeah.
So a big codependent adage is perfectionism
leads to procrastination, which leads to paralysis.
So how do you, sorry to take a million tangents,
how do you survive in social media?
Because you're exceptionally active.
But by the way, I took you on a tangent
and didn't answer your last question
about how much we can control.
How much, yeah, we'll return it or maybe not.
The answer is we can't.
Now as a codependent, I'm worried.
Okay guys, we can, but one of the things
that I'm fascinated by is the first thing you learn
when you go into 12 step programs
or addiction recovery or any of this is,
genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger.
And there's certain parts of your genetics
you cannot control.
I come from a lot of alcoholism.
I come from a lot of mental illness.
There's certain things I cannot control
and a lot of things that maybe we don't even know yet
what we can and can't
because of how little we actually know about the brain.
But we also talk about the warrior spirit.
And there are some people that have that warrior spirit
and we don't necessarily know what that engine is,
whether it's you get dopamine from succeeding
or achieving or martyring yourself
or that tension you get from growing.
So a lot of people are like,
oh, this person can edify themselves and overcome.
But if you're getting attention from improving yourself,
you're gonna keep wanting to do that.
So that is something that helps a lot of,
in terms of changing your brain,
if you talk about changing your brain to people
and talk about what you're doing to overcome set obstacles,
you're gonna get more attention from them,
which is gonna fire off your reward system
and then you're gonna keep doing it.
Yeah, so you can leverage that momentum.
So this is why in any 12 step program,
you go into a room and you talk about your progress
because then everyone claps for you.
And then you're more motivated to keep going.
So that's why we say you're only as sick
as the secrets you keep
because if you keep things secret,
there's no one guiding you to go in a certain direction.
It's based on, we're sort of designed to get approval
from the tribe or from a group of people
because our brain, you know, translates it to safety.
So, you know-
And in that case, the tribe is a positive one
that helps you go the positive direction.
So that's why it's so important to go into a room
and also say, hey, I wanted to use drugs today
and people go, hmm, they go, me too.
And you feel less alone and you feel less like you're,
you know, have been castigated from the pack or whatever.
And then you say, and I do haven't,
you get a chip when you haven't drank for 30 days
or 60 days or whatever, you get little rewards.
So talking about a pack that's not at all healthy or good,
but in fact is often toxic, social media.
So you're one of my favorite people on Twitter
and Instagram to sort of just both the comedy
and the insight and just fun.
How do you prevent social media
from destroying your mental health?
I haven't.
I haven't.
It's the next big epidemic, isn't it?
I don't think I have.
I don't think-
Is moderation the answer?
Maybe, but you can do a lot of damage in a moderate way.
I mean, I guess, again, it depends on your goals, you know?
And I think for me, the way that my addiction
to social media, I'm happy to call it an addiction.
I mean, and I define it as an addiction
because it stops being a choice.
There are times I just reach over and I'm like, that was-
Yeah, that was weird.
Well, that was weird.
I'll be driving sometimes and I'll be like, oh my God,
my arm just went to my phone, you know?
I can put it down.
I can't take time away from it,
but when I do, I get antsy.
I get restless, irritable, and discontent.
I mean, that's kind of the definition, isn't it?
So I think by no means,
do I have a healthy relationship with social media?
I'm sure there's a way to,
but I think I'm especially a weirdo in this space
because it's easy to conflate, is this work?
Is this-
I can always say that it's for work, you know?
But I mean, don't you get the same kind of thing
as you get from when a room full of people laugh?
Your jokes?
I mean, I see, especially the way you do Twitter,
it's an extension of your comedy in a way, so-
I took a big break from Twitter though.
A really big break.
I took like six months off or something for a while
because it was just like,
it seemed like it was all kind of politics
and it was just a little bit,
it wasn't giving me dopamine
because there was like this weird, a lot of feedback.
So I had to take a break from it and then go back to it
so I felt like I didn't have a healthy relationship.
Have you ever tried the,
I don't know if I believe him,
but Joe Rogan seems to not read comments.
Have you, and he's one of the only people at the scale,
like at your level who at least claims not to read.
Because you and him swim in this space of tense ideas
that get the toxic folks riled up.
I think Rogan, I don't, I don't know.
I don't, I think he probably looks at YouTube,
like the likes and the,
I think if some things, if he doesn't know, I don't know.
I'm sure he would tell the truth.
I'm sure he's got people that look at them
and is like disgusted, great,
or I don't, like I'm sure he gets it.
I can't picture him like in the weeds on-
No, for sure.
I mean, he's honestly actually saying that,
it's just, it's admirable.
We're addicted to feedback, yeah, we're addicted to feedback.
I mean, look, like I think that our brain is designed
to get intel on how we're perceived
so that we know where we stand, right?
That's our whole deal, right?
As humans, we wanna know where we stand.
We walk into a room and we go,
who's the most powerful person in here?
I gotta talk to them and get in their good graces.
It's just we're designed to rank ourselves, right?
And constantly know our rank.
And social media because of, you can't figure out your rank
with 500 million people, it's possible, you know?
So our brain is like, what's my rank?
What's my, and especially for following people.
I think the big, the interesting thing I think I may be able
to say about this, besides my speech impediment,
is that I did start muting people
that rank wildly higher than me
because it is just stressful on the brain
to constantly look at people that are incredibly successful
so you keep feeling bad about yourself, you know?
I think that that is like cutting to a certain extent.
Just like, look at me looking at all these people
that have so much more money than me
and so much more success than me.
It's making me feel like a failure,
even though I don't think I'm a failure,
but it's easy to frame it so that I can feel that way.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Especially if they're close to,
like if there are other comedians or something like that.
That's right.
That's really disappointing to me.
I do the same thing as well.
So other successful people that are really close
to what I do, it, I don't know.
I wish I could just admire.
Yeah.
And for it not to be a distraction, but...
But that's why you are where you are
because you don't just admire your competitive
and you wanna win.
So it's also the same thing that bums you out
when you look at this as the same reason you are
where you are.
So that's why I think it's so important
to learn about neurology and addiction
because you're able to go like, oh, this same instinct.
So I'm very sensitive.
And I sometimes don't like that about myself,
but I'm like, well, that's the reason
I'm able to write good standup.
And that's the reason I'm able to be sensitive to feedback
and go, that joke should have been better.
I can make that better.
So it's the kind of thing where it's like,
you have to be really sensitive in your work.
In the second you leave, you gotta be able to turn it off.
It's about developing the muscle,
being able to know when to let it be a superpower
and when it's gonna hold you back and be an obstacle.
So I try to not be in that black and white of like,
you know, being competitive is bad
or being jealous of someone just to go like,
oh, there's that thing that makes me really successful
in a lot of other ways.
But right now it's making me feel bad.
Well, I'm kind of looking to you
because you're basically a celebrity,
a famous sort of world-class comedian.
And so I feel like you're the right person
to be one of the key people to define
what's the healthy path forward with social media.
Because we're all trying to figure it out now.
And I'm curious to see where it evolves.
I think you're at the center of that.
So like, you know, there's trying to leave Twitter
and then come back and see,
can I do this in a healthy way?
You mean you have to keep trying, exploring,
and thinking about-
I have a couple of answers.
I think, you know, I hire a company
to do some of my social media for me, you know?
So it's also being able to go,
okay, I make a certain amount of money by doing this,
but now let me be a good business person
and say I'm gonna pay you this amount
to run this for me so I'm not 24 seven
in the weeds, hashtagging and responding.
And just, it's a lot to take on.
It's a lot of energy to take on.
But at the same time, part of what I think makes me successful
on social media, if I am,
is that people know I'm actually doing it.
And that I am an engaging and I'm responding
and developing a personal relationship
with complete strangers.
So I think, you know, figuring out that balance
and really approaching it as a business.
You know, that's what I try to do.
It's not dating, it's not,
I try to just be really objective about,
okay, here's what's working, here's what's not working.
And in terms of taking the break from Twitter,
this is a really savage take,
but because I don't talk about my politics publicly,
being on Twitter right after the last election
was not gonna be beneficial
because there was gonna be, you had to take a side.
You had to be political in order to get
any kind of retweets or likes.
And I just wasn't interested in doing that
because you were gonna lose as many people
as you were gonna gain
and it was gonna all come clean in the wash.
So I was just like the best thing I can do for me
business-wise is to just abstain, you know?
And, you know, the robot,
I joke about her replacing me,
but she does do half of my social media, you know?
Cause it's, I don't want people to get sick of me.
I don't want to be redundant.
There are times when I don't have the time or the energy
to make a funny video,
but I know she's gonna be compelling and interesting
and that's something that you can't see every day, you know?
Of course, the humor comes from your,
I mean, the cleverness, the wit,
the humor comes from you when you film the robot.
That's kind of the trick of it.
I mean, the robot is not quite there
to make anything, to do anything funny.
The absurdity is revealed through the filmmaker,
in that case, for whoever is interacting,
not through the actual robot, you know,
being who she is.
Well, let me sort of love.
Okay.
How difficult-
What is it?
What is it?
Well, first, an engineering question.
I know, I know you're not an engineer,
but how difficult do you think is it to build an AI system
that you can have a deep,
fulfilling monogamous relationship with?
Sort of replace the human to human relationships
that we value?
I think anyone can fall in love with anything, you know?
Like, how often have you looked back at someone?
Like, I ran into someone the other day
that I was in love with and I was like,
hey, it was like, there was nothing there.
There was nothing there.
Like, you know, like where you're able to go like,
oh, that was weird.
Oh, right.
You know?
I were able-
It means from a distant past or something like that.
Yeah.
When you're able to go like,
I can't believe we had an incredible connection
and now it's just,
I do think that people will be in love with robots,
probably even more deeply with humans
because it's like when people mourn their animals,
when their animals die,
they're always, it's sometimes harder than mourning a human
because you can't go, well, he was kind of an asshole.
But like, he didn't pick me up from school.
You know, it's like you're able to get out of your grief
a little bit, you're able to kind of be,
oh, he was kind of judgmental or she was kind of, you know,
with a robot, it's there's something so pure
about an innocent and impish and childlike about it
that I think it probably will be much more conducive
to a narcissistic love for sure at that.
But it's not like, well, he cheated on it.
She can't cheat, she can't leave you, she can't, you know.
Well, if bear claw leaves your life
and maybe a new version or somebody else will enter,
will you miss bear claw?
For guys that have these sex robots,
they're building a nursing home for the bodies
that are now rusting,
because they don't want to part with the bodies
because they have such an intense emotional connection to it.
I mean, it's kind of like a car club a little bit.
You know, like it's, you know,
but I'm not saying this is right.
I'm not saying it's cool, it's weird, it's creepy,
but we do anthropomorphize things with faces
and we do develop emotional connections to things.
I mean, we're, there's certain,
have you ever tried to like throw away,
I can't even throw away my teddy bear from when I was a kid.
It's a piece of trash and it's upstairs.
Like it's just like, why can't I throw that away?
It's bizarre, you know,
and there's something kind of beautiful about that.
There's something, it gives me hope in humans
because I see humans do such horrific things all the time.
And maybe I'm too, I see too much of it, frankly,
but there's something kind of beautiful
about the way we're able to have emotional connections
to objects, which, you know, a lot of,
I mean, it's, I can't, kind of specifically,
I think Western, right?
That we don't see objects as having souls.
Like that's kind of specifically us,
but I don't think it's so much
that we're objectifying humans with these sex robots.
We're kind of humanizing objects, right?
So there's something kind of fascinating
in our ability to do that.
Cause a lot of us don't humanize humans.
So it's just a weird little place to play in.
And I think a lot of people, I mean,
a lot of people will be marrying these things is my guess.
So you've asked the question, let me ask it of you.
So what is love?
You have a bit of a brilliant definition of love
as being willing to die for someone
who you yourself want to kill.
So that's, that's kind of fun.
First of all, that's brilliant.
That's a really good definition.
I don't think it'll stick for me for a long time.
This is how little of a romantic I am.
A plane went by when you said that.
And my brain is like, you're going to need to re-referred that.
And I want you to get into post
and then not be able to use that.
And I'm a romantic.
Cause I,
Don't mean to ruin the moment.
Actually, I can not be conscious of the fact
that I heard the plane and it made me feel like
how amazing it is that we live in a world of planes.
And I just went, why have we
fucking evolved past planes?
And why can't they make them quieter?
Yeah.
But yes, this.
My definition of love.
What, what, yeah, what's your,
sort of the most serious?
Consistently producing dopamine for a long time.
Consistent output of oxytocin with the same person.
Dopamine is a positive thing.
What about the negative?
What about the fear and the insecurity,
the longing,
anger, all that kind of stuff.
I think that's part of love.
You know, I think you don't,
I think that love brings out the best in you,
but it also, if you don't get angry and upset,
it's, you know, I don't know.
I think that that's, that's part of it.
I think we have this idea that love has to be like,
really, you know, placid or something.
I only saw stormy relationships growing up.
So I don't, I don't have a judgment
on how a relationship should look.
But I do think that this idea that love has to be eternal
is really destructive.
Is really destructive and self-defeating
and a big source of stress for people.
I mean, I'm still figuring out love.
I think we all kind of are,
but I do kind of stand by that definition.
And I think that,
I think for me, love is like,
just being able to be authentic with somebody.
It's very simple, I know.
But I think for me, it's about not feeling pressure
to have to perform or impress somebody,
just feeling truly like,
accepted unconditionally by someone.
Although I do believe love should be conditional,
that might be a hot take.
I think everything should be conditional.
I think if someone's behavior,
I don't think love should just be like,
I'm in love with you,
now behave however you want forever.
This is unconditional.
I think love is a daily action.
It's not something you just like get tenure on
and then get to behave however you want.
Cause we said, I love you 10 years ago.
It's a daily, it's a verb.
Well, there's some things that are,
you see, if you make it,
if you explicitly make it clear that it's conditional,
it takes away some of the magic of it.
So there's certain stories we tell ourselves
that we don't want to make explicit about love.
I don't know, maybe that's the wrong way to think of it.
Maybe you want to be explicit in relationships.
I also think love is a business decision.
Like I do, in a good way.
Like I think that love is not just
when you're across from somebody.
It's when I go to work, can I focus?
Do I, am I worried about you?
Am I stressed out about you?
Am I, you're not responding to me.
You're not reliable.
Like, I think that being in a relationship,
the kind of love that I would want
is the kind of relationship where when we're not together,
it's not draining me, causing me stress, making me worry.
You know, and sometimes passion, that word,
you know, we get murky about it,
but I think it's also like,
I can be the best version of myself
when the person's not around
and I don't have to feel abandoned or scared
or any of these kind of other things.
So it's like love, you know, for me, I think is,
I think it's a flow bear quote.
And I'm gonna butcher it,
but I think it's like be, you know,
boring in your personal life,
so you could be violent and take risks
in your professional life.
Is that it?
I got it wrong.
Something like that.
But I do think that it's being able to align values
in a way to where you can also thrive
outside of the relationship.
Some of the most successful people I know are
those sort of happily married and have kids and so on.
It's always funny.
It can be boring.
Boring's okay.
Boring is serenity.
And it's funny how that,
those elements actually make you much more productive.
I don't understand the...
I don't think relationships should drain you
and take away energy that you could be using
to create things that generate pride.
Okay.
Did you say your relationship of love yet?
Huh?
Have you said your relationship,
your definition of love?
My definition of love?
No, I did not say it.
We're out of time.
No.
When you have a podcast,
maybe you can invite me on.
Oh no, I already did.
You're doing it.
We've already talked about this.
And because I also have co-dependency,
I had to say yes.
No, yeah.
Yeah.
No, I know.
I'm trapping you.
Yeah.
You owe me now.
Actually, I wondered whether when I asked
if we could talk today after sort of doing more research
and reading some of your book,
I started to wonder,
did she just feel pressured to say yes?
Yes.
Of course.
Good.
But I'm a fan of yours too.
Okay, awesome.
No, I actually, because I am co-dependent,
but I'm in recovery for co-dependence.
So I actually do, I don't do anything I don't want to do.
You really, you go out of your way and say no.
What's that?
I say no all the time.
Good.
I'm trying to learn that as well.
I moved this a couple, remember?
I moved it from one to two.
Yeah, yeah.
Just to let you know how recovered I am in my,
I'm not co-dependent.
But I don't do anything I don't want to do.
Yeah, you're ahead of me on that.
Okay.
So do you-
Like I don't even want to be here.
Do you think about your immortality?
Yes.
That is a big part of how I was able to sort of like kickstart
my co-dependence recovery.
My dad passed a couple of years ago.
And when you have someone close to you in your life die,
everything gets real clear in terms of how we're a speck of dust
who's only here for a certain amount of time.
What do you think is the meaning of it all?
Like what the speck of dust, what's maybe in your own life,
what's the goal, the purpose of your existence?
Is there one?
Well, you're exceptionally ambitious.
You've created some incredible things
in different disciplines.
Yeah, we're all just managing our terror
because we know we're going to die.
So we create and build all these things and rituals
and religions and robots and whatever we need to do
to just distract ourselves from imminent rotting.
We're rotting, we're all dying.
And you know, I have very into terror management theory
when my dad died and it resonated, it helped me
and everyone's got their own religion or sense of purpose
or thing that distracts them from the horrors of being human.
What's the terror management theory?
Terror management is basically the idea that
since we're the only animal that knows they're going to die,
we have to basically distract ourselves with awards
and achievements and games and whatever
just in order to distract ourselves from the terror
we would feel if we really processed the fact
that we could not only, we are going to die,
but also could die at any minute
because we're only superficially at the top of the food chain.
And you know, technically we're at the top of the food chain
if we have houses and guns and stuff, machines,
but if me and a lion are in the woods together,
most things could kill us.
I mean, a bee can kill some people.
Like something this big can kill a lot of humans.
Like, you know, so it's basically just to manage the terror
that we all would feel if we were able to really be awake
because we're mostly zombies, right?
Job, school, religion, go to sleep, drink, football,
relationship, dopamine, love, you know?
We're kind of just like trudging along like zombies
for the most part.
And then I think...
That fear of death adds some motivation.
Yes.
Well, I think I speak for a lot of people
in saying that I can't wait to see
what your terror creates in the next few years.
I'm a huge fan.
Whitney, thank you so much for talking to me.
Thanks.
Thanks for listening to this conversation
with Whitney Cummings.
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