Biggest Solution in the Universe - Episode 01
Transcription courtesy of: Laurie Foster https://www.facebook.com/LAFModel
(Heavy metal theme riff)
Maddox: Welcome to The Biggest Solution In The Universe! I'm Maddox. With me is Dick Masterson…(grinning)
Dick: Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, buddy!!
Maddox: Yeah!
Dick: That was a kick ass intro! (grinning)
Maddox: Annnnnnnnnd Sean, our audio engineer, thank you for joining us, Sean.
Dick: Hey, Sean. Put the cap back on that soda and say hello. (Sean in background: Hello!) You spicy, spicy, son of a whore.
Maddox: Yeah. So, The Biggest Solution In The Universe, Dick. We're doing something a little bit different here. So we decided to bring in the biggest solution that would benefit mankind or has already benefitted mankind, right?
Dick: You know, that's the thing about the solution. That's what we're trying to find out. The Biggest Solution…maybe it's the biggest solution the future. Maybe it's the biggest solution right now. Maybe it's the biggest solution no one has even thought about before.
Maddox: Or, we've stumbled upon it and no one is using it.
Dick: In this show.
Maddox: Yeah. So, that's the show in a nutshell. We decided to make it similar to the original show, but we didn't want to have the solutions be part of the large problems. And sometimes, the solutions we bring in WILL be solutions to problems we've mentioned in The Biggest Problem In The Universe. Uh…
Dick: (interjects) Well, you know, you can't make an omelet without breaking a shitload of eggs. That's how the saying goes. So sometimes a solution is a problem in and of itself.
Maddox: Very philosophical, Dick. (amused)
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah. The…so…we also have something very special. Because this is our very first bonus episode. Thank you for purchasing. Thank you for supporting the show. A lot of people have asked in the comments, because we kind of mentioned it. Dick and I teased that we recorded six episodes of this show a long time ago, about…over a year ago.
Dick: (scoffs) Oh, God.
Maddox: Yeah. (grinning)
Dick: That's what you've been working on?
Maddox: (giggles) Yeah.
Dick: Ohhhhhh, shit. (laughing)
Maddox: Yeah. So.
Dick: Alright.
Maddox: I brought in a supercut of our very first episode. It's just about a minute of just some…
Dick: (interjects) Oh, my God.
Maddox: Just some cut up bits and pieces of our very first ever episode when Dick and I were kind of fumbling through the dark, not knowing what the hell we were doing.
Dick: Yeah. I'm so glad you didn't tell me that this is what you were doing before.
Maddox: So, without further ado, let's hear this…it's our very first episode supercut. Here we go.
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(Supercut starts Ritzy theme music starts up and plays throughout)
Maddox: Bums masturbating. I think it's a huge problem.
Dick: When you see a bum, you think, "If I were a bum, where would I masturbate?"
Maddox: Yes!
Dick: I think that's your first thought.
Maddox: Yeah! That's exactly…okay, yeah, you figured it out. Yeah.
(Dick and Maddox laughing in background)
Maddox: So I was passing this bum, and I thought, "Well, why not masturbate?"
Dick: Then I started thinking about how annoying potheads are.
Maddox: I guarantee five minutes ago when you first mentioned this, we lost 70% of our listeners right there. Forever. I mean, that's it. This is something we should have mentioned…
Dick: No! 'Cause they're too stoned to change and turn it off. (Maddox laughs) They're just sitting there listening.
Sean: What's 70% of zero?
Maddox: Yeah, lazy idiots. (laughing) This is the first time I've ever told this to anyone…
Dick: Your anus…fissures in your anus from eating too much produce?
(Maddox and Dick cracking up in background)
Maddox: They tear up people's assholes.
Dick: Are you like Winnie the Pooh? Like, you can't stop eating your tasty treats? (laughter)
Maddox: They tear up my asshole. I am curious to see if I can poop blue.
Maddox: My pooper was all cut up.
Maddox: I got a hairy ass.
Dick: You and your effing studies! That's the problem. That's the problem.
Maddox: Do you…want to be an ass doctor?
Dick: Uhhh…everybody's got…
Dick: Diarrhea.
Dick: You should be encouraging.
Dick: Diarrhea.
(They crack up again in the background)
Dick: You don't want to have people coming in at all times to get…
Dick: Diarrhea.
Dick: Both of your problems are really gross.
Dick: Podcasts are in your face all the time. They're on Facebook. They're on Tweeter.
(Dick cracks up….:"Sorry, I can't stop!!!")
Maddox: Tweeter? Are you on Tweeter?
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: How can people follow you on Tweeter?
Dick: Go to…goeffyourself.com. (Maddox laughs)
Maddox: You drink more than anyone I know.
Dick: How would the semen get from the bum's clothes behind a dumpster into the middle of the street?
(Dick cracking up)
Dick: Like what are you, like a geyser over there?
Maddox: I hate to make him look at my asshole, but I dunno.
(Dick still laughing, clip ends)
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Dick: I remember that. (laughing) You were talkin' about a doctor. Going into a doctor…you feel bad going to a proctologist and making them look at your asshole. Right?
Maddox: No, it wasn't a proctologist. This was my general doctor.
Dick: (cracking up) Oh, that's right! That was why it was so weird!
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah. 'Cause I was afraid that my pooper was all cut up. 'Cause I was eating too many blackberries. And you were like "Well, how much is too much?" And I'm like "I dunno. A couple pounds a week." (laughing)
Dick: No, no. Too much is when your asshole gets shredded because you're eating them! That's too much!! (Maddox laughing) You've eaten one too many blackberries the moment that happens. What, Sean? What are you thinking?
Sean: I just remembered that was early 2012.
Maddox: Yeah.
Sean: Two and a half years?
Dick: That was a long time ago.
Maddox: Long-ass time ago.
Sean: I saw the files the other day.
Maddox: Clearly not the well-oiled machine it is today. (laughing)
Dick: (grinning) That was a great supercut.
Maddox: Yeah, thanks. Yeah. So that's what I've been working on all afternoon. But Dick, uhh…no more tomfoolery.
Dick: Alright.
Maddox: By the way, we'll post this clip online so you can hear the whole thing without all the interruptions and stuff. But yeah. Dick, we got some comments.
Dick: Yeah. I got one from Jen. This came in an email. Uh, she wanted to thank you…thanks me and Maddox for talking like regular human beings during the show. She says, "I don't know where the hell it started or when, but it seems like three-quarters of podcast hosts these days have the affected cadence of a hipster William Shatner and it's fucking annoying."
Maddox: Yeah, man. I can't listen…first of all, there's two types of podcasts. Two things I hate in most podcasts. First of all, it's just aimless rambling. They don't have any direction they're going in. Every single one of our shows, we have content that we bring it. We have research.
Dick: Oh, yeah.
Maddox: We know what we're doing and we have a structure to our show. It's not just, "Well, let's just shoot the shit for an hour because we can."
Dick: Yeah, like, verbally, just jerking off for an hour.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: No, nobody wants to hear that. You gotta put something out there. You gotta put a real opinion out there. I think that. And I think we do that.
Maddox: Yeah. We do that. We have points of view. And we also don't have that bullshit, like she said…what is it, the hipster William Shatner cadence?
Dick: Yeah! And I don't know what that is. 'Cause I don't listen to other podcasts. Is it, like, the radio DJ voice?
Maddox: No. The radio DJ voice sometimes. I've seen that performance voice come on sometimes. But it's more like…"This…Dick…where…you're…thinking…and you're…trying to come across…as…more intellectual…" (Shatner imitation)
Dick: No, I get that. Because when I listen to our podcasts, I'm horrified at the number of, like, flubs and fuckups that you and I have, or that I have on any given episode…
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Like, that is not…that's not how you say that, Dick. You idiot. (Maddox laughing) It's not blowing sunshine up someone's ass. That's not the right saying. But…
Maddox: Yeah…no. It's funny. I always cringe when I hear it afterwards, too.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: And we get more right then we get wrong. And our asshole fans are very quick to point out when we get it wrong.
Dick: You know, and it makes me respect George W. Bush a whole lot more. 'Cause he was able to speak eloquently on so many topics…(Maddox sighs)
Maddox: Ugh..(laughing)
Dick: Geopolitical…global politics. So eloquently for so many years. (grinning)
Maddox: Yeah. Almost as eloquently as you got that sentence out. (laughing) (Dick cackles) Hey Dick, speaking of awesome podcasters, I got one from Yosef Skaad. He says, "Dick might be the worst podcaster I've ever heard." (cracks up)
Dick: What the fuck?! (yells)
Maddox: "And I've heard Jesse Ventura's podcast!"
Dick: What am I, getting shit from someone who listens to Jesse Ventura all the time!? (yelling) (Maddox laughs) What was that guy's name?! Yosef? Joseph!?!
Maddox: Yosef Skaad!
Dick: Fuck you!!! Is he a foreign guy?! Yuck you, Joseph Skaad! Fuck this guy!! (Maddox laughing)
Sean: He's not buying this episode.
Maddox: No, he's not buying this episode. We can talk all the shit we want. Let's dedicate the rest of this episode to talking shit about Yosef. (spiteful)
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: What do you got?
Dick: I got…oh, oh. THIS is a great one. I've been waiting for this episode to bring this in. Ethan Habirel says, and this…I bring this up because it came up that your mom listened to a couple of our episodes.
Maddox: Yeah. (grinning)
Dick: And he asks, "Did Maddox's mom listen to the episode about her not giving his dad blowjobs?" (laughing)
Maddox: Ooh. Uh…I don't know. I haven't heard. She called me tonight and I didn't answer. I assume it's about that. Because she called late. It's late at night and it's never good if a mom calls late at night. It's always just like…something tragic, or…
Dick: (interjects) Oh, that's true.
Maddox: Yeah. You never want a late night phone call from anyone in your family.
Dick: No, I'll give you that.
Maddox: Or during the day. Um, I got a comment from Matt Bertram, he says "Maddox, you got me laid the other night. My friend and I were listening to the episode where Dick raged about Tinder, and I said 'I would never use Tinder. That's only for desperate people. I'd much rather date someone like you.' Or some bullshit, I really wasn't paying attention. But it got out that I kind of liked her and we went to her room and banged. It was so cool. Thanks." (Sean laughing)
Dick: He's dedicated that to you!?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: That was MY PROBLEM and MY rant, you motherfucker! That's one for me!
Maddox: Yeah!
Dick: I got that guy laid. Goddamnit!! (yelling)
Maddox: Eh, I don't know. Sounds like I got him laid. (grinning)
Dick: Goddamnit.
Maddox: Yep.
Dick: Alright. I got one from, oh, this is one from @maddoxrules. It says. "@dickmasterson guest I-Mockery pusses out when challenged to drink hot sauce. The challenge remains. You are being called out, both of you." And then there's an emoticon that looks like a vagina. (Maddox laughs) This is you! You wrote this on Twitter. Are you calling me out on the Internet with emoticons that I have never seen before!? (incredulous)
Maddox: Yeah. I invented the pussy emoticon! It's open parentheses, pipe, closed parentheses. (|) It looks like a vagina!
Dick: How fuckin' dare you!!! Anyone can read this on Twitter.
Maddox: Uh-huh.
Dick: Oh, you motherfucker. Well, if the challenge is on, it's fuckin' on.
Maddox: Oh yeah.
Dick: I didn't know this was a thing.
Maddox: Oh, yeah. It's on, buddy. You're on. You're gonna drink some hot sauce?!
Dick: Yeah!!
Maddox: Okay! You're on!
Dick: I'm not gonna let some asshole call me a pussy on the Internet!!! (yelling) Are you fuckin' kidding me?
Maddox: Yeah. It's not just some asshole. It's the BEST asshole in the universe! That's me, buddy!
Dick: It's on. What do you want to do?
Maddox: Great. We're gonna drink a bottle of hot sauce by the…at the end of this episode.
Dick: What's at stake? Something's gotta be at stake.
Maddox: Yeah.
Sean: Sounds like new upholstery in their car.
Dick: Yeah. You wanna reupholster my car after we shit our way home in my fucking car? (laughing)
Maddox: See, that's the thing. That's a myth. I never shit after I eat spicy food. The only time that's ever happened to me is that episode I have in YouTube where I ate the world's spiciest pepper. That actually…that actually did happen.
Dick: Yeah, I'll drink your fuckin' hot sauce.
Maddox: Great.
Dick: I'm half Mexican, man.
Maddox: Yeah. (scoffs) Which half?
Dick: I hope it's the inside half. (laughing)
Maddox: I think it's from the chest down. (giggles)
Dick: You got any more?
Maddox: Umm…yeah. I got one last comment. This is from Kenneth Tan. He says. "Was Dick really serious, or was he just spinning a yarn about bringing a depressed guy back to live in his house? That's really awesome if it happened for real." What do you say, Dick? From Burning Man. So, for people who haven't heard that episode. Dick brought back something worse than an STD from Burning Man.
Dick: (laughing) Yeah.
Maddox: Which is a living dude.
Dick: An unemployed man.
Maddox: Yeah. (laughing)
Dick: It didn't work out, by the way. That poor guy shipped back home.
Maddox: Oh, he's not here anymore, huh?
Dick: Look, he had just been cheated on multiple times by his girlfriend. He didn't have a job. I wanted to give him a shot in LA, in a new, exciting place. But, to the point that this guy is making, everything that we say on this show is true.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Everything.
Maddox: Yep.
Dick: For better or worse and even worse, everything is absolutely true. So, if you were wondering if any of this is bullshit, it's not.
Maddox: Yep. Well, so, yeah. Dick absolutely did bring in a live-in guest. Anyway, Dick, let's get to the solutions, yeah?!
Dick: Yeah. The solution for that guy wasn't moving to LA.
Maddox: No. (giggles)
Dick: As it turns out.
Maddox: Or even going to Burning Man. I mean, there are so many solutions that guy needs.
Dick: I dunno. But I got a real solution. Okay?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I'm kicking this show off with The Biggest Solution In The Universe right away.
Maddox: Great.
Dick: We don't even need to continue after this problem.
Maddox: Okay. Well, you mean solution.
Dick: Solution. (giggles) Right.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: After this solution. You guys, Sean and Maddox, you both know how much I love the environment. (Maddox and Sean laugh) Right?
Maddox: Big, big fan.
Dick: Excuse me. I mean how much I hate the fuckin' environment.
Maddox: That's correct, yes.
Dick: It's been…the environment has been fuckin' with us for 100,000 years.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Ever since whenever our species first deviated from monkeys, or whatever the correct word for that is…the environment has been fucking with us.
Maddox: Yeah. It's monkeys.
(Sound effect: Monkey sounds)
Dick: The environment fucks with you before you're even awake in the morning. It's making you too cold. Or it's making you too hot. Or it's shooting sunbeams in your eyes when you're trying to sleep.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: And you're hung over. It's fucking with you.
Maddox: I can't argue with that.
Dick: No. You can't. Fuck the environment. However, I'm gonna save the whole fuckin' environment. On this show.
Maddox: How's that, Dick?
Dick: Alright? With NUCLEAR FUCKING POWER.
Maddox: Alright.
Dick: That's The Biggest Solution In The Universe.
Maddox: Okay. (accepting)
(Sound effect: Clapping)
Maddox: Bravo. I'm on board with this, Dick. Okay? 'Cause if it's going where I think it's going, and I hope it is, I'm gonna back you up on this.
Dick: Yeah, yeah. So, um. I was doing a shitload of research on nuclear power, right?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: And…you know those…my first thought was, "Hey, why don't we have nuclear power in cars?"
Maddox: Yeah. Because it's a terrible idea. (laughing) If a car crashes and you have a potential nuclear reactor and a meltdown.
Dick: Well, that's what I found. Apparently that's why. (Maddox giggles) However. You know those gigantic cargo ship containers?
Maddox: Yes.
Dick: Yeah. How many cars do you think one of those pollutes worth?
Maddox: What are you asking? I don't know…rephrase that. What are you asking?
Dick: Uh, like…like…compare a gigantic cargo ship container to a car. A regular automobile driving around.
Maddox: So how much pollution the engine that drives a giant cargo ship produces compared to a car?
Dick: Yeah. Compared to a car. What do you think, like 10,000 cars?
Maddox: Pfff. Boy, probably around that. Yeah. About 10,000.
Dick: More? Maybe 50,000?
Maddox: No. 10,000 seems reasonable.
Dick: Okay, well. Then this is really gonna blow your balls off. This stat's really gonna blow your balls off.
Maddox: Okay.
Dick: According to some insider maritime data, the top 15…the 15…one-five, tankers in the world, cargo containers in the world. Pollute as much as ALL of the cars.
Maddox: Wha?!
Dick: All of them.
Maddox: Every car on Earth combined?!
Dick: 760 million cars.
Maddox: Holy shit.
Dick: Yeah. Because they use this shitty, low-grade ship bunker fuel that has, like, 2,000 times the sulfur of the diesel that they use in gas, or the regular stuff that they use in gas.
Maddox: Oh, wow. Yeah, you know, when they pull those barges up to the gas station, they're not filling it with unleaded, are they?
Dick: No.
Maddox: They're just doing whatever bullshit, 'cause they don't need to…there's no regulation. Also, because they're travelling through international waters, no one can regulate them, right?
Dick: Well, that's how they fixed it. So, they found this out, and they're like, "Well, why don't you guys just sail around a little further away from us?"
Sean: They never would want to fix it. Commerce would just grind to a halt.
Dick: Well, Sean, I got a solution for you! Nuclear fucking power!! (Maddox laughing) You can't put reactors on cars, 'cause they're being driven around by shitheads and teenagers!
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Why don't we throw 'em on 15 tankers. There we go. All of this smog reduction shit that we have to go through every year to go get our cars checked, it's all gone!! (yelling)
Maddox: Dick, first of all, I feel like you would be safe carrying a nuclear reactor in your car, because you drive so fucking slow, and you don't use your horn, so you're, like, the safest driver on the road.
Dick: Buddy, I will race you anywhere. (Maddox laughs)
Maddox: Yeah. I'll race you on my bike, my friend. I'll kick your ass.
Dick: Anywhere, I'll fuckin' race you.
Maddox: I'll be drinking hot sauce on my bike racing you. And, by the way, Dick, so, here's the problem with that. That solution of yours. (skeptical) Who's gonna pay for these nuclear reactors? They're not fucking cheap. Especially if they're gonna try to retrofit these giant barges. These giant tankers.
Dick: I don't know. How much are we spending on fixing all the pollution coming out of cars? Wherever that's going, buy these goddamn reactors! How much are we spending on fuckin' windmills?
Maddox: Yeah. How do we regulate other countries, Dick? If you want, say, Belgium to chip in on this solution, how are you gonna…what, is America just gonna come in with Mr. Bossy Pants, and say, "Listen up, Belgium."
Dick: Dude, I actually found that a shitload of people are dying in Holland because of the pollution…because it's, like, a huge shipping place.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: There's a shitload of people, like, dying of cancer because these gigantic tankers come in out of there all day.
Maddox: Ehhh, that seems like there's a number of steps missing in between logically.
Dick: Is your problem money? Is your problem with this money? How about we take all of the reactors that we have on submarines and put 'em on these cargo containers? How about that?
Maddox: (laughing while talking) Dick, you realize reactors are very specific? They're engineered specifically for the vessel that it was made for. Like, have you seen the nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers? They're fucking ridiculously huge. The pistons themselves are about as tall as two or three people standing on top of each other's shoulders. They're giant. These things are huge. So if you put a nuclear reactor on these barges…first of all, you would have to either retrofit it or create an entirely new barge. Who's gonna pay for that?
Dick: I…I don't care.
Maddox: Okay. (laughing) Well, there's that.
Dick: Look, that's a whole different solution.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: How to pay for it? Make a Kickstarter. I don't fucking know. (Sean laughs)
Maddox: Kickstarter. There we go.
Dick: Yeah. A Kickstarter to fix all car pollution in the whole goddamn world. That's the…you guys? People pay 2 million dollars to make a dumb digital pen that draws shitty plastic shapes in the air that none of them will ever use. Did you see that thing?
Maddox: Yeah…that was…yeah.
Dick: That Kickstarter? 2 million bucks! Fix all pollution. How much money do you think that'll raise?
Maddox: Yeah. This Kickstarter with this, like, stupid 3D pen, that essentially just goops out plastic and you can just mold it.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: You know what it is? It's that Dairy Queen chocolate shell. When you did the ice cream in the chocolate shell and it comes out and you get that nice delightful chocolate shell on there? Seems like the same concept, except for a 3D pen.
Dick: It's like a chlamydia pen.
Sean: That's Foster's Freeze, isn't it?
Maddox: The Foster's Freeze is another company that does it. And I don't know which international ones do it, but you guys, you Brits and stuff probably know. You probably have something similar.
Dick: Listen to me. It's nuclear power, right?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Okay. It's not just cargo containers that it could solve.
Maddox: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Dick: It's all fuckin' energy. Why is…so, I looked at, like, the global energy usage…
Maddox: Right.
Dick: …And out of all the types of energy, nuclear power is trending down.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: 'Cause people are terrified of it.
Maddox: People are afraid of it.
Dick: People are afraid of it! It should be fuckin' skyrocketing!
Maddox: Yeahhh, but then it…what if you have another Fukushima reactor, where an earthquakes comes…you can't proof those things against earthquakes, entirely. So what are you gonna do?
Dick: What, nuclear reactors?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I'm gonna make 'em better.
Maddox: Make 'em better. (scoffs)
Dick: Look. That's the road to progress, to me. Okay?
Maddox: Yeah. (skeptical)
Dick: You gotta have some enormous catastrophes along the way (Maddox laughs) and we're not gonna get anywhere with windmills.
Maddox: Dick. Okay. (stammers) I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate here, your favorite, I know. But you've seen the Somali pirates, what's that stupid Tom Hanks movie about the Somali pirates?
Dick: Captain Phillips.
Maddox: Captain Phillips. Based on the true story. So let's say you have one of these barges going through one of these pirate places, and they hijack it. Suddenly, they have access to nuclear fuel. These pirates.
Dick: Well, put a rail gun on it, then.
Maddox: Ookay.. (cracks up)
Dick: To keep them away. (grinning) I don't know! But let's take all our submarines and aircraft carriers and just follow those 15 cargo ships around! (yelling)
Maddox: Dick, are you talking about…now, there's two types of nuclear reactions. There's fission and fusion. You're talking about fission. Fissionable material. It's highly dangerous because it…
Dick: Yeah. I'm talking about light water nuclear reactors. Like regular water nuclear reactors. The ones that we have that exist.
Maddox: Yeah. So, if there's a spill or if one of these tankers gets attacked by pirates, or something. They just ram a boat into it. Terrorists ram a boat into this…
Dick: (interjects) You know what?
Maddox: What?
Dick: If guys like you ran this shit, we would never have a Jurassic Park.
Maddox: Yeah. (laughing)
Dick: You would be sitting there in the board meeting going (nerdy voice) "Uhhh, guys! What if these dinosaurs get out of control and they eat the tourists?!" That's you. (Maddox laughing) That's you.
Maddox: Dick, we don't have a Jurassic Park.
Dick: BECAUSE OF GUYS LIKE YOU! (yelling) You're like Jeff Goldblum. You are Jeff Goldblum.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Hey, hey. I (stammers) I got an argument for you, then.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Uhhh, you like space so fuckin' much.
Maddox: I love it.
Dick: You think we're gonna get there by strapping propellers on our heads? Like Dennis The Menace? And sailing around shooting? (Maddox laughs) Nukes are gonna get us into space, buddy.
Maddox: Okay, sure. Except we haven't used nukes to get into space. We've used conventional rocket fuel.
Dick: How's that workin' out?! (grinning)
Maddox: Pretty great!
Dick: (scoffs) I disagree.
Maddox: Yeah!? Check the moon, buddy. We got prisms, and Go-Karts, and all sorts of crazy shit up there! We got a…
Dick: (interjects) Space, maybe. But we're never gonna get beyond that without some gigantic nuclear rockets…(laughing)
Maddox: (laughing) You're so horny for nuclear energy. Why? Is this a libertarian thing? What's going on?
Dick: No, no. It's really not. It's really not. That's why I brought up the environment first. So, what originally attracted me to this solution was recently, recently, California shut down our San Diego San Onofre nuclear power plant.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Okay. Shutting that plant down set California back 20 years when it comes to low-emissions energy.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: So, like, we've been ramping up…we've been putting these ugly windmills everywhere…and these stupid solar plants everywhere. Simply shutting down that plant negated 20 years of building out low-emission energy. And that, to me, is insane.
Maddox: But it's because the nuclear plant was built on the ocean…it's basically built on the coast.
Dick: They have to be. Nuclear plants have to be built next to, like, a shit load of water.
Maddox: Right. And they found that it was leaking. So…
Dick: No. It wasn't leaking. It was because when it was operating at 100% power output…it was actually made too well. There were vibrations, in cooling pipes, I think, that don't have anything to do with radioactivity. Like, they don't vent radioactive gas. They're just, like, a cooling system.
Maddox: Uh-huh.
Dick: That aren't essential to the plant. They would vibrate in such a way on ONE reactor that there would be…1 in 10,000 of these pipes was long enough to, like, collide with another pipe. However, if they ran at below 70%, it was totally fine. Like, it was totally fine and impossible to cause any problems in that nonessential part of the power plant. So if they'd have just said, "Okay, we'll run it at 70 forever."
Maddox: You know, Dick, that's a nice explanation, and I buy it, but the entire time you were talking, you sounded like the professor from the Simpsons.
Dick: (laughing) (Sean laughs) (silly voice) Profressor Frinkle?!!? Would that be better, if I did it in, like, a silly voice like a fuckin' puppet? (silly voice) Hey, kids!!
Maddox: (laughing) No, yours is silly enough. Uh, Dick. Okay, that's a good solution. I could see that. However, the nuclear fusion reactor is just inherently dangerous. If it has a meltdown, you have another Chernobyl. So the cost of a mistake, right? It happens infrequently, but the cost of a mistake is pretty fuckin' catastrophic. Chernobyl still isn't inhabitable and won't be for another, what, 150 years?
Dick: Yeah, so let's build one there. (Maddox laughs) Let's get a bunch of robots in there and build one there, as a Kickstarter. There's…people are volunteering to go on a one-way mission to Mars, they'll probably volunteer to go on a one-way mission to build a nuke in Chernobyl. Here's how I address that.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Everything is always fucked when we start doing it.
Maddox: Okay. (giggles)
Dick: Okay?
Maddox: Yeah. (giggles)
Dick: Ships were…remember the pilgrims and Christopher Columbus sailing around and Magellan sailing around on their shitty ships?
Maddox: Hey, even this podcast was fucked when we first started doing it. (laughing)
Dick: Yeah. It took us six podcasts to even get one that we would show anybody.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: So the way you fix that is not by shying away and investing in windmills and solar plants and whatever other garbage you've got. You gotta charge full steam ahead.
Maddox: Dick, I want to be on board with this, but I think the future is FUSION REACTION, buddy! Fusion reaction. 'Cause once we get fusion down…which we have. We just haven't created fusion reactors that quite create an energy surplus. We're basically generating enough energy to keep the fusion going. But once we get that going really efficiently…and I read this BBC article awhile back where they were actually able to create a net positive return on energy through fusion, but I don't think it was enough to, like, power anything. But, once we get that going, we're gonna be creating our own elements, buddy. We're gonna make gold. Yeah.
Dick: Uhhh. You. You're crazy.
Maddox: Yeah. We're not making gold.
Dick: No.
Maddox: We're making hydrogen! Huh?!?
Dick: No, that's too big of a step.
Maddox: No, we can make…
Dick: It's too big of a step to go straight to that.
Maddox: Yeah, what's the second…deuterium!
Dick: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I got some…lemme see. I got some more stats for you. I actually read…I read this really interesting study that spelled out how many nuclear plants we would need to run the entire Earth?
Maddox: Yeah. How many?
Dick: Well, hold on. It's more complicated than that. So we've got about, like, 15 terawatts of global need. Right now, there's like 375 gigawatts that we currently have, of nuclear technology. We'd need 15,000 nuclear reactors.
Maddox: 15,000?!? (incredulous) How many do we have now?
Dick: Uh, I think like…in the…100. So…(Maddox laughs)…we'd need 10% more every year until 2050.
Maddox: They'll just be building nuclear reactors on top of nuclear reactors.
Dick: Wouldn't it be awesome?
Maddox: No!
Dick: We'd have skilled labor! We'd have…we'd be shipping Americans all over the world building nuclear plants.
Maddox: Okay…
Dick: (interjects) It would be like the British Imperial Age, except times America!
Maddox: (laughing) Great. And where are you gonna put these nuclear reactors, in Los Angeles? Can you imagine that? With all the fuckin' earthquakes here? Or in Hawaii, with the volcanoes? Where…I mean, there's just places where you can't put nuclear energy, period. Montana? What, are you gonna put one in Yellowstone? Yeah. I know your answer is yes. (Dick cackles maniacally) You know they have…they're drilling for oil in Yellowstone? There was an oil spill in Yellowstone a couple of years ago. The news toooootally buried it!
Dick: Have you ever been to Yellowstone?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: (stammers) Okay. So, you don't need it anymore. I'll probably never go. Fuck it!
Maddox: (laughs) Dick! Oh, man. So dismissive of everything. But…I will…you know, back to your very, very first statement about this solution.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: I do have contempt for the environment. I do hate the…I feel like the environment is here for us to completely use to every last ounce and capacity.
Dick: And molecule!
Maddox: Yes. EVERY last molecule of this Earth belongs to us and we need to use it to get the fuck off his planet because it's doomed, you idiots.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: So, if aliens came around here and saw what we're doing right now.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Do you think they would be more impressed with 15,000 nuclear power plants and a bunch of atomic American G-Men running around the Earth stopping meltdowns at the last second? Or are they gonna see a bunch of solar plants and going, "Oh, you guys are just sitting around, like plants? That's how you get your energy?" (Maddox laughs) "Uh, fuck you. We're going somewhere cool where they're doing cool science stuff."
Maddox: Yeah, I don't know, man. Plants just kind of evolved and figured out how to use energy that was just in the AIR. Versus building these expensive-ass reactors that melt down and then create mutants and people who have cancer.
Dick: You're gonna shit on mutants?!?! (Maddox giggles) That's the craziest thing I've ever heard!! How else are we gonna get women with three tits without nuclear reactors melting down all over the place?
Maddox: Yeah. Prosthetics and they'll fake it. Alright, Dick. You got anything else on this?
Dick: I think I do. Well, I wrote…this dude put all these reasons why you can't have 15,000 nuclear power plants, but I don't know how many of them are interesting. Uh, he did say that if we had that many reactors, there would be a major accident somewhere in the world every month, statistically.
Maddox: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
Dick: Yeah, but it's like…you can't base your statistics on…
Maddox: (interjects) Facts.
Dick: These early numbers. (Maddox laughs) No, no, no. Well, uhhh…okay. So the first women who tried to fly around the world crashed. I guess we shouldn't have any women pilots, then.
Maddox: Well…(giggles)…I mean, no one's saying no. (laughs) (Sean laughs) But, no. Was she really the first woman?
Dick: I have no idea.
Maddox: No. She wasn't the first woman pilot.
Dick: Amelia Earhart?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: No, she was the first woman to try to fly…
Maddox: To try to fly around the world, yes.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: But not the first woman pilot. I think the Wright brothers were the first women pilots. (giggles) Hey. No one verified their gender. And…anyway. What other problems does he have with this…(scoffs) solution of yours?
Dick: He's got…uh, let's see. You already mentioned how long it would take to build all the plants.
Maddox: Yeah. And also, Dick, if one of these melted down, there would be a nuclear reaction zone. Like, a meltdown zone that you couldn't inhabit at least 10-mile radius, right?
Dick: Well, then we'd better come up with something to fix that! (Maddox giggles) 'Cause that's gonna be a problem in space, where you wanna go so bad, isn't it?
Maddox: Yeah, I don't know man. I think ugly windmills don't sound too bad when the alternative is cancerous tumors growing out of your fucking eyeballs!
Dick: Well, here's something I did find that was interesting. (grinning) Uhh…apparently, we'd run out of uranium in, like five years?
Maddox: Yeah!
Dick: However! However, there's a different type of reactor.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: A Breeder reactor…I wrote it down somewhere. Some kind of weird reactor that can create more fissile material than it uses, but it's more dangerous. (giggles)
Maddox: (laughs) Yeah. In Utah, there's this company called Waste Manage…I think it was called Waste Management, or something. They took over the Delta Center, where they played basketball. Anyway, this company's entire business model. Their entire business is they take nuclear waste and they have this sophisticated system to get rid of it. So, I looked into it one day. I'm like, "Wow, how do they get rid of nuclear waste?" You know how they get rid of it? They just bury it in sand! They're not getting rid of it. They're just putting it underground in these drums that leak, eventually. I mean, these drums aren't gonna be able to contain nuclear, fissionable material. After time, they're always gonna leak! And it just…you'd just have radioactive waste in-ground that is also susceptible to terrorist attacks, and then you have to hire security and military…
Dick: (interjects) Uh-oh. Terrorists. (sarcastic)
Maddox: And you have to hire third-party companies to guard these sites where we're just dumping nuclear waste!
Dick: You know what, I just realized why this solution is never gonna work?
Maddox: What.
Dick: Because high-level scientific solutions like this are no longer made by intelligent scientists. They're made by Twitter. They're made by assholes on the Internet who have opinions! That's who's making these decisions!
Maddox: Yeah. Well…
Dick: But this isn't a show about problems, is it?
Maddox: No!!
Dick: It's a show about solutions. If it was a problem, it would be "Every Fuckhead In The World Has A Voice Now" instead of, like, the old days, when nobody could hear you if you were stupid and you didn't know what you were talking about.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: 'Cause nobody was fucking listening!!
Maddox: That's true. Yeah.
Dick: That's true, isn't it?!
Maddox: I do miss the good old days. (grinning) Well, so…since this is a show about solution…don't you think it's about time that we had one?
Dick: (laughing) Go ahead.
Maddox: Yeah. Here's my solution. Kay, buddy? "Kicking Ass"!!
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: Yeah!! How's that for a solution, huh?!
Dick: Pretty good.
Maddox: You got a problem? You kick its ass!
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah. (giggles)
Dick: I think uh…Devo wrote a song like that.
Maddox: Oh yeah? I don't know. I don't listen to Devo.
Dick: Whip it. You gotta…I know you've heard that song.
Maddox: Yeah, I have heard that song.
Dick: There's a problem comes along, you must whip it?
Maddox: Yeah, so kicking ass…(snickers) That's the song, Dick. Yeah. That's exactly what my solution is.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: So I want to give an example of kicking ass. My dad. My dad has kicked ass his whole life. And life has kicked his ass. Uh…he's deaf in one ear. He is basically a lumbering piece of meat that kind of just works together. It's just a bunch of different pieces of a body that come together to form a whole where all he does…he's a machine that chops lumber and welds. That's what he does to be happy.
Dick: Wow.
Maddox: He's…I have never seen this man listen to music. This man is a machine. He's never watched TV. He's not sensitive at all. His hands are rough and calloused. I would rather rub my hand over splintered wood than…(laughs, trails off)
Dick: Than your own father's hand?
Maddox: Than my own father's hand. (laughing) 'Cause the splintered wood is gonna be softer. He's one of the toughest guys I've ever met. He's 84 years old now and in the last 10 years alone, he has survived the following: He's fallen off a roof three times.
Dick: (cracks up laughing) Okay.
Maddox: Always comes home banged up and bleeding from his forehead and from his face and his nose and he looks bruised and beat up and my mom always says, "What the hell were you doing? What happened?" and he said, "Nothing." (laughing) He just lies.
Dick: This is normal.
Maddox: Yeah! He's like, "It's nothing, don't worry about it."
Dick: What is it really?
Maddox: He fell off a roof.
Dick: Oh, that's how he gets his head banged up?
Maddox: Yeah. He falls off a roof and gets his head banged up.
Dick: This sounds like a late season of Married with Children. (Maddox laughs) Everybody's falling off roofs all the time.
Maddox: Yeah. No, it's happened multiple times with my dad.
Dick: Why is he on roofs all the time?
Maddox: He's always patching something. Fixin' something. Choppin' something down. I don't know what the fuck he's doing. He's always on the roof.
Dick: What kind of roofs do you guys have in Utah? (incredulous)
Sean: He's trying to get Channel 6. (Maddox laughs)
Maddox: See, Sean? It's not true, actually, 'cause he's never watched TV! The guy doesn't watch TV.
Dick: Wow.
Maddox: The only…except…unless there's boxing on. He used to be a former boxer, right? So…
Dick: Wait a minute. So you said he's 84?
Maddox: He's 84, yeah.
Dick: That's fascinating to me. So, you were raised by a different generation than all of your peers.
Maddox: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Dick: That's interesting.
Maddox: Yeah. My dad is very old school. So, yeah. He's fallen off the roof multiple times and he comes in and just lies about it. He doesn't believe in medicine except for one thing. It's this medicine called Corona. Have you ever heard of this?
Dick: The beer?
Maddox: No.
Dick: Oh.
Maddox: I think it's spelled like the beer. But it's called Corona. That's because it's horse medicine. (Sean laughs) My dad would go to K-Mart and buy this tub of horse medicine. It's for healing hooves, hoof injuries, and gashes in horses. And it smells god awful. And he would put this stuff on himself and then to save money on Band-Aids, he would use masking tape. So he'd always walk around…
Dick: (interjects) Jesus Christ!! This sounds like a…it's like a Mexican Frankenstein!
Maddox: Yeah. (laughing) That's my dad.
Dick: Horse balm and masking tape holding him together.
Maddox: Yeah, that's it. It's horse balm and masking tape keeping my dad together. And he just, like, wraps it around…(Dick laughs) He eats cloves of garlic all the time and drinks jugs of vinegar.
Dick: Yeah. (grinning)
Maddox: It just smells awful. And that's why my mom and my dad have not slept in the same bed for years and years. So, he's survived falling off the roof at least three times. He survived having a heart attack. We took him to the hospital when he was having a heart attack, and (laughs) while he was still suffering from a heart attack, he pinched the nurse's ass. (Dick laughs) And he survived a stroke.
Dick: What did the nurse do?
Maddox: Uh, the nurse, you know. Dirty old man. She was…yeah.
Dick: Ohhh man. He could get away with that. That's great.
Maddox: Yeah. Yeah. She just kind of, like, giggled, 'cause he's, like, this old harmless-looking guy. Little does she know. But he survived a stroke. He survived a heart attack. He survived cancer.
Dick: Oh my God!
Maddox: Yeah. And then…at 82 years old, a couple of years ago. He was outside working on a snow plow because he still plows his own snow, and he was lifting the plow up and he dropped it on his leg, shattered his ankle, shattered his shin. So what did he do? He lifted it up, set it aside…it's gotta be at least 400 pounds or so. I don't know how much these plows weigh…they're insane! They're just pure metal. Pure iron.
Dick: Right.
Maddox: So he lifted it up, set it aside, like, dragged himself home…and when he came inside, my mom…(laughing)…my mom was like, "What's going on? What's wrong with your leg?", and he goes, "Nothing." (all three crack up laughing) So my mom figured it out pretty quick, 'cause his leg is like, flopping. And so, she puts him in the car, takes him to the hospital, and says, "Wait right here, I'm gonna go get a stretcher for you."
Dick: (laughing) Yeah.
Maddox: Okay? Wait right here. She runs inside and tells a doctor. And while she's explaining to the doctor what happened, my dad's in the car, whatever…the doctor turns around and he's like, "Is that him? In the hospital?" and she turns around and my dad's jumping into the hospital! Hopping on one leg…and my mom's like, "Yeah, yeah, that's him." And so they rush over a wheelchair to my poor dad.
Dick: Yeah. (grinning)
Maddox: He sits down in the wheelchair. They take him upstairs and put him in bed. He turns to my mom and says, "So how much is this gonna cost?" and…(Dick laughs)…my mom said, "I don't know, like 5000$?" and he says, "WHAT?!" and he starts getting out of bed!!! He's, like, climbing on the scaffolding of the hospital bed…and it took three nurses to wrestle him back into bed and they sedated him. And of course, he hit on the nurses as well.
Dick: It was probably just a trick to cop a bunch of feels.
Maddox: Aaaaaah, yeah. I wouldn't put it past him. So, yeah. That's my dad. He kicks ass and life has kicked his ass.
Dick: Sounds like the solution should be your dad, not "Kicking Ass". (Sean laughing) That's a lot of…I mean, that's a lot of different things.
Maddox: Yeah. My dad's always been just a big hardass. Any time I've ever driven his truck, I get in and I turn on the radio (snickering)…every single station is set to static. (Dick and Maddox laugh)
Dick: Uhhhh…go ahead.
Maddox: We went to a grocery store one time and my dad was about to pull into a parking spot. And this guy, I guess maybe my dad didn't see him or maybe the guy didn't see my dad, but this guy was gonna pull into the spot and flipped my dad off. MY DAD lost his fucking mind.
Dick: Oh, yeah.
Maddox: Which means, it's just his normal reaction.
Dick: Right.
Maddox: My mom…I've never seen her panic so much in my life…(grinning) 'Cause she knew what was coming. I guess she's witnessed this before. My dad got out of the car, slammed the door. Followed the guy up to the front. He goes, "Hey!!!" and the guy turns around, my dad comes up to him, takes his shirt, pulls it over his head…(laughing)
Dick: (cracks up) Like a hockey fight?!
Maddox: Yeah, like a hockey fight!! (yelling) And he just starts pounding this guy's head!!
Dick: Was that a legal boxing move when he was a boxer, to pull someone's shirt over their head?!
Maddox: Oh, yeah. Oh, he was disqualified. I'll tell you that. (Dick still laughing) So yeah. He beat this guy's ass. This, like, 22-year-old punk. And then finally my mom, like, pulls him off this poor kid. And his girlfriend was watching too. So we go back into the store and we're walking up and down the aisles and we see this…(giggles)…we're walking down one aisle and we see the kid my dad just beat coming around the corner. (Dick laughs) And he saw my dad and he stopped, turned around, and walking in another direction. (laughing) Yeah. "Kicking Ass".
Dick: So that's "Kicking Ass".
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: No, I agree with you. I mean…do you remember when we did the show? When we were working on that show for uh…for Spike?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: And we had…it was up to Maddox and I to find a host to host this…it was a format show. It was a show where you have a host and they introduce bits and they have guests and stuff like that. It would have been a great show. But one of our questions for our potential host was, "When's the last time you've been in a fight?"
Maddox: Uh-huh.
Dick: Because it's just…it doesn't happen anymore.
Maddox: Right.
Dick: It's imposs…it's very difficult to GET in a fight.
Maddox: It is difficult to get in a fight. I even…a few times when I was drunk, I would walk up to some dudes in a bar and just put out my feelers. I'd say, "Hey man, if there's a bar fight tonight, you got my back?" And everyone's like, "Nah, I don't really…I don't know. I got a sweater on. And my girlfriend's over there." And I'm like, "Yeah, it sounds like HER girlfriend's right here."
Dick: Yeah. (scoffs)
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I don't know what you mean by "Her girlfriend's right here." Oh, HER girlfriend, the guy.
Maddox: Yeah. The guy I'm talking to.
Dick: Yeah you gotta really dumb down your insults if you're gonna walk around bars starting fights with…it sounds like, these obtuse meta girl jokes.
Maddox: Yeah. It's really hard to get in a fight these days, isn't it?
Dick: Yeah, no, it is. And this is…like, I run my mouth all the time and I'm just not afraid to, ever.
Maddox: Yeah. I feel like it's harder to get into a fight in big, urban cities. However, if you're in Texas, you start fuckin' around, someone's gonna punch you.
Dick: Is that true, or is that just, like, what Texas wants you to believe with their marketing?
Maddox: Well, did you see that video of that DIPSHIT recently, who…(laughs) Yeah. The Texas marketing. That video recently of the dipshit who was bullying around that gay guy in an airport. Did you see that?
Dick: No. I don't watch that shit. When it pops up on Facebook, I'm like, "Eeehhh, I don't need it." Like, I don't need to be either outraged or heartwarmed by this.
Maddox: Yeah. I agree. Well, I have a rule…
Dick: What was it about?
Maddox: I have another rule where if I see something three times on Facebook, I'll eventually click on it, because it's not gonna go away and I have to look at it.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: But this guy was bullying around some gay dude. And eventually…he just looked like a trashy piece of shit and he's just lookin' to start a fight. He kicked…he cheap shotted this gay dude, like, kicked him in the balls…
Dick: (interjects) WHOA!!! (yells)
Maddox: Yeah. Really fucked up. And then a bunch of people just tackled him and put him down and kicked his ass. That solved that solution! That was the solution to that problem, wasn't it?
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah. Kicking ass.
Dick: What's the…do you think that guy wouldn't do it again? Probably not.
Maddox: Uhhh…you know what's interesting, is he was so homophobic, but it looks like he was just ready to race to jail! Where…
Dick: What do you mean, race to jail?
Maddox: Well, by assaulting somebody.
Dick: Oh, right.
Maddox: He's going straight to jail, where there's a real good chance he's gonna get raped. (snickers) (Dick cackles)
Dick: And it's not gonna be gay.
Maddox: No.
Dick: It's just gonna be something that happens. (laughing)
Maddox: Yep. So, interesting that he had that reaction.
Dick: (interjects) No, I…go ahead.
Maddox: One other thing. Kicking ass…like, the modern version of kicking ass…you can kind of kick ass in video games.
Dick: I'm gonna stop you right there. (Sean laughs)
Maddox: Yeah, okay. (laughing)
Dick: You are…you just gave this 10-minute (stammering) honorific of your father and what a badass he was…
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: And you immediately transitioned into how you are good at video games. (Maddox laughs) That is an insult to your father, sir, and I'm not gonna let you do it.
Maddox: Okay. (grinning)
Dick: Let's keep this about kicking ass and actually kicking ass.
Maddox: Yeah, well. What is the modern equivalent? If you have a whole bunch of pussies sitting in their parents' basements playing Call Of Duty, the modern equivalent…all you have is video games. You have to kick ass at video games. What else do you have?
Dick: Well, and…the more surveillance that there is, the harder it is to kick ass. Like, do you remember recently, those Dropbpx guys kicked those poor Mexican kids off of their soccer court in San Francisco?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Did you see that?
Maddox: I did.
Dick: These guys…so there was…okay. This is San Francisco, right?
Maddox: Right.
Dick: There's the ultra poor, who have been there forever. And there are programmers. Who are rich, newly rich, and think that the world is run by machines and apps, right?
Maddox: Right.
Dick: They've got their…they've never experienced anything real. So these assholes use an app to reserve a city park that they think they're gonna go play soccer on.
Maddox: Oh yeah, they used an app, didn't they?
Dick: They used an app. So they show up at the park and there's a bunch of Mexican kids playing on it.
Maddox: Mhmm.
Dick: Like, you know. The poor youths that the park was built for.
Maddox: Right.
Dick: So they go, "Hey…I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but uhh…we reserved this park on our iPhones." (Maddox laughs) "So, get the fuck out of here." And the guy…one of the Mexican guys walks up, and in his thick accent goes, (Mexican accent) "I need to see your papers." (Maddox cracks up) It's the most ridiculous thing! (laughing)
Maddox: Yeah. Bureaucracy meets bureaucracy, buddy! From a little Mexican kid.
Dick: Little Mexican kid!!
Maddox: That's hilarious.
Dick: (Mexican accent) "I need to see your papers!" It's like…WHAT?! (incredulous)
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: So, sure enough, they have them.
Maddox: Uh-huh.
Dick: And these douchebags are just astonished that this is happening to them. However, the reason I bring it up is because the whole thing is being recorded. Right?
Maddox: Mhmm.
Dick: So one of these Mexican kids cheap shots these guys, just cold cocks him, like he deserves.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: He's going straight back to fuckin' Mexico!
Maddox: (laughing) Well, he might be a citizen, Dick.
Dick: There's no…sorry. Sorry! He's going straight back to…
Maddox: He might be put in juvy or something.
Dick: Straight to jail.
Maddox: Right.
Dick: So how…how can you kick ass anymore?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: You know? All of these…all of these…I feel like a lot of the problems with sexism, too, can be helped a little bit with a couple of good ass kickings. Every once in a while.
Maddox: Every once in a while. Yeah.
Dick: You know? Because…with some people…I feel like out-of-control sexual aggression is directly linked to needing to fight.
Maddox: Oh yeah.
Dick: Needing to fight and not being able to have a fight.
Maddox: You know, Dick, that's a really good point. Because I was thinkin' about it. This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. And I'm writing about, actually. Is the modern hero. I feel like a lot of men and a lot of women may have missed their calling because there aren't opportunities for us to be heroes! You see someone fuckin' around with someone. You see that gay guy who is bullied in the airport. You gotta step up to the plate and stand up for somebody.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: But we don't have those opportunities because society is so safe. So maybe…yeah. Maybe it's showing itself in different, weird ways because we don't have those opportunities. I also think that I might be a good surfer. I may have missed my calling. I don't know. (Dick laughing) I may be.
Dick: Equally possible. (laughing) Two equally poignant statements from Maddox.
Maddox: Okay, but real quick, I just want in on this…about video games. (laughing) That is the modern…that's the only way that you can kind of exert yourself if you're just a kid in your parent's basement. But there's this guy named…I think his name is Daigo. He was playing a Street Fighter III championship back in 2004.
Dick: This is…oh, my God. Does your dad listen to this podcast? I hope not.
Maddox: No. He doesn't listen to anything. (laughs) He's, like, partially deaf because a grenade blew up next to him in Korea.
Dick: Oh, my God. (incredulous) Not in Call Of Duty, like for you?
Maddox: No. (laughing) (Sean laughs) Yeah, a grenade blew up on me in Call Of Duty and a grenade blew up my dad.
Sean: And he didn't drop his Tesla on his leg, either! (Maddox and Dick laugh)
Maddox: Yeah. Different generations, my friend. But what do you got, man? We're pussified youth and all we have are video games. You gotta exert your kicking ass in video games. But Daigo is one such person. Back in 2004, he was playing the Street Fighter III game and he was down to a sliver of health.
Dick: Mhmm.
Maddox: And in Street Fighter III, when you're down to a sliver of health, you can't block anymore because any attack will kill you.
Dick: Right.
Maddox: Any special attack. Whatever. So, the opponent he was playing had, I think, three-quarters of his energy left, right? And (grinning) launches into a Super Attack. (Dick cracks up) Now, Dick. Why are you being such an asshole!?!?
Dick: (dying of laughter) I'm sorry! It's just so funny how you describe it like you're describing, like, a battle…like the Battle of the Bulge, except it's, like, video games. And I understand EVERYTHING that you're saying. That's why I'm laughing.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I'm, like, totally engaged in this.
Maddox: These are athletes fighting in the arena of Street Fighter!! (yells)
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah. Street Fighter III. Third Strike. Um, so he's fighting…I think it was Ken versus Chun Li. (Sean and Dick laugh) Chun Li…
Dick: Wait, who was down to no health?
Maddox: Ken.
Dick: Ooooohohohoh! Alright.
Maddox: Yeah. And that's Daigo.
Dick: Chun Li. That's a cheap character, man.
Maddox: So. Chun Li, when she does her Super Attack, she does this lightning kick, right?
Dick: Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Maddox: Where it's just, like, a whole bunch of rapid fire…
Dick: (imitating Chun Li) Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah! Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah, exactly. Machine gun kicks, right? And in Street Fighter III, and I believe in Alpha as well, but you can carry…
Dick: (cracks up) I'm sorry! Go ahead. (high-pitched voice)
Maddox: Dick!!! I'm not even saying your name. You can parry attacks in this game.
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: By pressing towards the attack in just the right moment. I read somewhere online where you have…there are 30 frames of animation and you only have 4 of those 30 frames of animation to execute a parry attack.
Dick: Oh!
Maddox: So she launches into a volley of attacks, right?
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: There's probably 10 or 15 attacks in a row, followed by an air attack. Daigo parried every single one of them exactly at the right moment. Then came back with a Super and finished her off. Down from a sliver of health to winning the match.
Dick: To three-quarters of the other health gone.
Maddox: It's…it was unbelievable.
Dick: Oh, my God.
Maddox: It was an unbelievable moment. I have the audio here. You have to hear this.
Dick: I've seen…I've actually seen…As nerdy as it is, I've seen this fight.
Maddox: Oh, it's incredible. I'll link to it on the website. But listen to this audio. Listen to this happening.
(Clip starts: "Rare footage of Daigo actually angry." (sound effects, yelling, screaming, cheering (Maddox: "That's the parry.") "Unbelievable!" (Dick: "Is there more parrying going on?") "Unbelievable parry!")
Maddox: I kind of cut up the clip because it's a longer clip, but he parried every single attack.
Dick: That's what a hero sounds like. (Maddox laughs)
Maddox: Hey, it's all we got! It's all we got! (yelling) What are we supposed to do!?
Dick: I know. It's so sad. Well, I gotta tell you. I used to box and do a shitload of, like, martial arts stuff.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I don't know if I've told you about that before.
Maddox: No. And I wouldn't have guessed. (laughs)
Dick: What the fuck? What is that supposed to mean? I'll fight you right now. (Maddox still laughing) But it…dude. I feel like it is an essential part of being a man. Maybe be…I don't think it's a part of being a human. I think it's a part of being a man. Getting into fights or some kind of, like, physical altercation regularly? Because I felt great when I was fighting regularly. Like, not drunken fistfights in the street, but, like, boxing matches and kung fu fights where you get hit and you hit somebody. Like, the minor wins that you get every time that you make the decision to throw a punch or block a punch or do whatever you're doing…it just makes you feel like a man. And I do think we're missing that in a big way.
Maddox: Well, it does take discipline to be able to take a hit and then stand up and shake that guy's hand. Someone who just punched you in the face and kicked your ass? You stand up and you shake their hand. I think that's one of the hallmarks of manliness. And women, too. Women who fight do that as well. If they have that…if they have that discipline to fight somebody and then stand up and shake their hand afterwards…like, hey. Thanks for the match. Good match.
Dick: I don't know what women who fight are doing. I honestly don't.
Maddox: They do the same thing.
Dick: Yeah?
Maddox: Yeah. Like Ronda Rousey? Of course. She's a great fighter.
Dick: Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. I just don't know what's going on…I just don't know what draws them to it. Like, it's hard for me to imagine that the same thing that draws me to fighting is what draws them to fighting. I'm not being sexist, I'm just saying, like…I find…(Maddox laughs) I'm not! I'm saying, "Okay, it's different." But, like, I wonder if it is different and how it's different.
Maddox: Yeah. I don't know. That'll be a solution for another episode. What's your next solution, Dick?
Dick: My next solution iiiiiiiiiiiiiiis…this is a big one!
Maddox: Mhmm.
Dick: "Surge Pricing".
Maddox: Surge Pricing.
Dick: "Surge Pricing".
Maddox: Okay. What specifically, and why is that a solution?
Dick: You know what it is? Surge Pricing?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: So…it's the way Uber prices things.
Maddox: Okay.
Dick: Right?
Maddox: What is Uber?
Dick: Uber is a taxi service where regular people sign up to be taxis via an app on their iPhone.
Maddox: Oh. Yeah. (Sean laughs)
Dick: Then other…
Sean: So no Mexicans.
Dick: Whooooooooooa!!!!
Maddox: Whoa!!!!
Dick: Whoaaaaaa!!
Sean: Hey, hey. I was making a soccer reference in San Francisco.
Dick: Well, I dunno what you're doing, Sean.
Maddox: Oh, the Dropbox guys. Yeah yeah yeah. (Sean and Dick laugh) The Dropbox guys. So the Dropbox guys would probably be big Uber users.
Dick: Uber users. Right. And this is…you're leading into what I'm talking about.
Maddox: Uh-huh.
Dick: So regular people can grab a car, grab the driver app, and they sign up to be drivers on Uber, right?
Maddox: Why would anyone use this? What is…
Dick: Well, then other people, instead of using a cab, who everyone hates, you call an Uber on your phone. You say, "Come pick me up." The thing figures out how far you're driving and how much time it's taking, and it takes money from your credit card and gives it to the regular person who is there driving you around.
Maddox: Okay. But, why would I use this over a taxi?
Dick: 'Cause taxis are awful. Everybody fucking hates them. They never know where they're going. They're always assholes.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: They're…it's working for millions of reasons, some of which I can't even…like, I wouldn't even think of if I listed them all.
Maddox: Okay.
Dick: Right?
Maddox: So you got "Surge Pricing". What…yeah.
Dick: Surge pricing means that when there's enough regular dudes that aren't coming out to drive around, you gotta pay more. They raise the prices. You gotta pay double to get what you want.
Maddox: Alright. Yeah.
Dick: If you want…if you really want a cab, like, let's say it's 2 in the morning when all the bars close. On Halloween!
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: It says, "Oh, surge pricing". You gotta pay double.
Maddox: Okay.
Dick: Right?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Sounds reasonable, right?
Maddox: No.
Dick: To lure people out. To get you home, you're not gonna pay double.
Maddox: No…(stammers) in that case, I think I would just get a cab, because it would be cheaper.
Dick: Good luck. There's no cabs.
Maddox: Alright. (laughs)
Dick: That's the point. Nobody wants to come out and drive at this time. Right?
Maddox: I don't know, man. I feel that you could find an Armenian. (giggles)
Dick: This is a pretend world that you inhabit that no one else does.
Maddox: But your Armenians, man! Cool guys! (grinning)
Dick: Have you honestly tried to get a cab and it's been easy to do on like, the worst possible times of the year?
Maddox: It's a pain in the ass. Especially on Halloween. You're right.
Dick: But you're able to do it?
Maddox: I have before, actually because I am Armenian and I was able to flag down another Armenian, 'cause he's like, "Hey, hey bro, get in my car." And uh…yeah.
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: But otherwise, yeah. So you want to use Uber and they do the surge pricing as double. How's that a solution? That seems like a problem. Why is that a solution?
Dick: It's a solution because it gets you a ride home. Imagine if everything worked like this! You're at the grocery…you're ALWAYS talking about being a hurry. Right?
Maddox: Yeah. Yeah.
Dick: You're at the grocery store. Uhh…oh, great. It's a 20-minute wait to buy all my shit. Well, you know what, sir? Why don't you pay a little more?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: We'll open this lane up for you. "Uh, great. Great."
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I'll do it.
Maddox: Wow.
Dick: You're on the freeway. You're driving to LAX to pick somebody up. Hey, why don't you pay a little more. We'll open this lane up for you.
(Sound effect: 'Wrong' buzzer)
Maddox: Dick…
Dick: That's wrong?
Maddox: I'm about to torpedo this whole fucking solution.
Dick: Okay. Lemme just say this.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Everyone's always saying the rich have too much money. Right?
Maddox: Uhhhh…well…
Dick: Everyone's…what was that whole 1% shit about?
Maddox: Yeeeaaahh…(skeptical)
Dick: It was that wealth collects with a certain number of people. Right?
Maddox: Yeah. Sure.
Dick: So how the fuck are you supposed to hit 'em? With luxury shit like this. Those Dropbox guys dropping 300$ on a taxi? No fuckin' problem.
Maddox: Mmmm.
Dick: How else are they gonna get rid of that money?
Maddox: Yeaaaaah. Alright, Dick. So here's the problem with this. 'Kay? 'Cause it's already happened to an industry and it's RUINED the entire fucking industry!
Dick: Don't you dare say video games!
Maddox: Nope. Airlines, buddy.
Dick: Airlines?
Maddox: Now, you can pay a premium to check in first, 15$. You can pay a premium to check luggage. 25$. You can pay a premium for extra leg room. 50$. You can pay a premium for extra extra leg room. 75$. You can pay a premium for first class. 1000$. And it NEVER fucking ends! And guess what? Peanuts are a premium on Spirit Airlines. Water is a premium. (yelling) It's a premium if you just bring a carry-on and you just want to put it in the overhead compartment that's sitting there fucking empty!!! They won't let you use it unless you pay a premium!! That's the industry you've created, Dick!! That's the industry this bullshit-ass solution has created! It's a problem and I'm calling you on it!! (still yelling) (Sean laughs)
Dick: Let me tell you why you're insane and stupid. (Maddox cackles) Airlines are…airlines just subsist on tax money. Lemme just throw that out there.
Maddox: Mmmm…(skeptical)
Dick: It's not even a business. Nothing that they do functions like a real business. They get in trouble, give 'em some free money! Fuck it. We gotta have airplanes, right?!
Maddox: Right.
Dick: Yeah, they do absolutely nothing for you as the consumer. They do as much for you as the consumer as the fucking cable company. They don't give a shit.
Maddox: That sounds like you're strengthening my argument, Dick.
Dick: No, 'cause they have you hostage, alright? This is…this surge pricing that I'm talking about it bringing regular guys in off the street to help you out. Right? It's very different. They have…airlines have a limited amount of space…
Maddox: Right.
Dick: To give away. And they're just raping you with it. As soon as they start getting free money, any, ANY kind of reasonable behavior goes right out the window.
Maddox: No, but…I got an example counter to that. What about farm subsidies? Farm subsidies…farmers aren't charging you premiums for all this other bullshit. They're not nickel-and-diming you…yeah! Farm subsidies! Because that's an industry that works, and if we didn't have farm subsidies, guess what? We're gonna start shipping in corn from Czechoslovakia and wherever else in Europe. It's gonna kill our industry. And that's why we subsidize the plan industry, because if we don't, guess what? (excited) Plane manufacturers in Britain or China or Russia are going to outbid us and then they're going to start selling us planes over here and we lose the entire industry.
Dick: It's not the ones making the planes; it's the ones running them.
Maddox: Well, they're both shitty, but…I mean, what are you gonna do?
Dick: Farm subsidies have created high fructose corn syrup.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Like, the thing that's killing everyone and making them fatter than fuck?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Farm subsidies have directly created that. 'Cause they had a bunch of leftover corn, and they said, "Hey! We could make sugar out of this!"
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Fuck it! Fuck you, sugar guys! Now we got a replacement for your natural product that didn't addict everyone to it!
Maddox: Okay. That's definitely a problem. But uh…
Dick: We're not talking about problems.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: We're talking about solutions.
Maddox: Yeah. We're talking about solutions. I still don't hear a solution in this, uh…this uh…wolf you brought in in sheep's clothing, here.
Dick: Lemme tell you…I'll tell you why I brought it in.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: You wanna know why I brought it in?
Maddox: Yeah. Let's hear it.
Dick: Because it's right after Halloween, as you know.
Maddox: Uh-huh. Yes.
Dick: And everybody is fucking flipping out over their "SURPRISE" surge pricing bills that they got from their Uber rides home.
Maddox: Right. How much are we talking?
Dick: Uhhh…well, surge pricing can go up like nine times, so..
Maddox: Nine times the normal rate?! (incredulous)
Dick: Yeah. So this…this stupid girl got hit with a 360$ cab ride.
Maddox: Holy shit.
Dick: For a 20-minute cab ride. And she posted this really bitchy, I guess, I don't know. An email about it? Or some kind of Kickstarter thing? Some kind of thing that you can set up to get free money.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: You wanna hear what she wrote?
Maddox: Yeah. I…(stammers) Yeah. What did she say?
Dick: "Last night was Halloween. Great time. Today is my 26th birthday. Not so great time. I live in Baltimore and I went out with my friends to celebrate my birthday at midnight. When 3 AM rolled around, I suggested we take an Uber home to avoid drunk driving. #responsibility."
Maddox: Ugh, barf! (Sean laughs)
Dick: "#MADD. I live 22 minutes, tops, from the party I was leaving. When I awoke this morning, I heard a friend talking about how outrageous Uber rates were the night before! Nine times the original rate. I checked my bank account, when unbeknownst to me I see a charge for 362$." Unbeknownst to me.
Maddox: Unbeknownst to me.
Dick: Unbeknownst. You have to type in the surge price.
Maddox: Yeah. It makes it really difficult for you to just agree to the rate without acknowledging the surge price.
Dick: Yeah. Really difficult for a sober person and even a person who's drunk out of their mind.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: You have to be black out intoxicated to not see what you're doin'.
Maddox: Yeah. It's very difficult.
Dick: Or to do basic math.
Maddox: Right.
Dick: Uhh…"The rent is today. My rent is 450$ and I can no longer pay it due to this completely outrageous charge."
Maddox: Mmm. (skeptical)
Dick: "I've had little to no luck in disputing this transaction."
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: "I work at blablabla, bla bla bla." And then she thanked…oh, yeah. "I feel taken advantage of and cheated by the Uber name for a 20-minute ride…" blabla. "This is bullshit and very, very depressing at the same time. Thanks for the ride, Mohammed."
Maddox: Whooaaaaaaahohoho.
Dick: That's how she closes it out.
Maddox: Wow.
Dick: You know why this is a solution?
Maddox: Huh.
Dick: People like this don't deserve any fucking money.
Maddox: Yeah, but, isn't there the end of the story, Dick? Didn't she raise enough money to cover her Uber fare?
Dick: Yeah. She raised 500$ to pay for her Uber fare. This is a person who, on Friday night, they don't have 400$ in the bank, but their priority is going out and getting shitfaced.
Maddox: Yeah. This moron. This PIECE OF SHIT going out and getting shitfaced when she can't even pay her rent!!! She's down to her last dollar and she's taking Uber home?! Fuck you! You know who this is? You remember Save Karen? Huh? You remember that website? Savekaren.com?
Dick: No.
Maddox: It's this irresponsible moron who raised something like 25,000$ in credit card debt just by buying expensive luxury purses and shoes and then she realized one day, "Oh shit, I'm in a lot of debt and I'm never gonna be able to cover this." So she created a website called savekaren.com that was a donation site before Kickstarter and all this other bullshit, and people ACTUALLY DONATED!!
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: They bailed her out! And then what did she do? She said, "Well, I learned my responsibility by going through this ordeal." No you haven't! (yells)
Dick: No, you didn't.
Maddox: People came in and bailed you out. And then she got a book deal out of it.
Dick: Ohhh, good. I guarantee you she's through that money.
Maddox: Man, it made me so mad. I broke my back so I could gnaw my own nuts off. (Sean laughs) It fucking pissed me off.
Dick: Yeah. These people don't understand surge pricing. Okay? This hits these entitled assholes and rich assholes at the same time. You get rich people's money. You get stupid people's money. And it's not about…it's not about planes. It's not about companies ripping you off for something that they can't provide. Right? It's not about making you bid on what they have. Like, do you remember last Christmas when UPS said they guaranteed they'd have everything delivered by Christmas?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: And then they didn't?!
Maddox: Of course.
Dick: And everybody lost their fuckin mind!!!
Maddox: Right.
Dick: And even though…even before that happened, everyone was pretty sure they would fuck up and wouldn't have it delivered. And everyone was living in fear of getting their last-minute Christmas presents delivered. Right?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Okay. Throw some surge pricing on there, assholes. I will pay double, triple, quadruple, whatever. Just get…get…this is how you get rich people to fund the buildout. To fund the extra drivers that it takes to do it!!!
Maddox: No, Dick. Because to a rich person, this extra surge? The surge is only expensive to somebody who's middle class or poor. Rich people will ALWAYS pay extra, because it's nothing to them!
Dick: Of course!
Maddox: That means…
Dick: (interjects) You want their money!!!
Maddox: But…no, but the money is going to the corporations! It's not going into poor people's hands, except for, yeah, I guess the Uber driver makes a little bit extra.
Dick: The Uber driver makes the entire amount, dude. 80% of Uber money goes to the fuckin' driver.
Maddox: Yeah. You know, Dick, I'm a believer that you're…what you pay should reflect the service that you get. So I left AT&T. I used to be an AT&T customer. For over, I believe 12 years. And one time I had a dispute. It was something like an 80 dollar overcharge because I went over my minutes, or whatever, and…to a phone call in San Diego. I was calling from Los Angeles to San Diego. (excited, yelling) That's a two-hour drive. That's a 45-minute plane flight. By the way, I could buy a round-trip ticket on a train DOWN to San Diego, have that conversation in fucking PERSON, get back on the train, and go back to Los Angeles for LESS than it cost for that fucking phone call!! So I'm sitting on the phone with them, I said, "What service are you providing me that costs more than a flight and delivers less service?" On a flight you have to pay for insurance. You have to go through security. There are people employed. You get snacks. There's all this entire logistical nightmare that they have to go through with air traffic control. (excited, angry) That's cheaper than your fucking phone call that you didn't even lift a finger to make happen!?
Dick: Well, again. I'll say that's another industry that's just propped up by tax money.
Maddox: No.
Dick: They're not…there's…no one can compete with those assholes.
Maddox: Well yeah, but they're making money hand over fist.
Dick: Oh, yeah!!
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: They get money to build out networks, to improve calls, and they just pocket it.
Maddox: Right. Right. How would surge pricing help that?
Dick: Well, it wouldn't help that. That's fucked, though. That's like the corn subsidies. Like, I don't even want to start with that one. That's not the solution.
Maddox: Yeah. Doesn't sound like it's any kind of solution, Dick. Except for maybe Uber drivers. But. But, Dick. The one example you brought in…
Dick: UPS!
Maddox: The chick got bailed out!
Dick: UPS, it would work for! Groceries!
Maddox: No. Yeah. These are all theories, Dick. These are on paper.
Dick: Bartending it would work for!
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Dude! I would pay WAY more to have enough bartenders to drink fast enough.
Maddox: (snickers) Great, Dick. You know what?
Dick: Anything where people…look. There's a shitload of people sitting at home in America right now that aren't doing shit that CAN work. This works for any instance where somebody can just get up and do something normal to serve.
Maddox: Wow.
Dick: That's it.
Maddox: Wow.
Dick: It's MOBILIZING unemployed workers. That's what I'm doin' over here, and that's a big solution!! (laughs, yelling)
Maddox: Yeaah. (skeptical) Wow. Great, Dick. You..(stammers)…says the guy who would pay more to drink more, by having more bartenders, or more access to bartenders! You know what? You can pay less to drink more! Just buy the booze in a fuckin' store and flask it, buddy! How's that?
Dick: This is…that's awful!
Maddox: (laughing) What's awful about it? You're saving money!!! (incredulous)
Dick: Drink out of a flask like a homeless person!
Maddox: (yelling) What do you mean, like a homeless person! You just pop into the bathroom and just take a swig of your flask! Chicks love it!
Dick: Man, I dated a girl who did that, and it was so bad, going out with her, where she's fuckin' ordering Cokes and pouring whiskey into them, like out of her purse.
Maddox: Oh, that's cool man.
Dick: No, no, no.
Maddox: That would give me the biggest boner!
Dick: Get the fuck out of here.
Maddox: That chick is subverting the system! Yeah, she's not waiting in line like a chump! Like a moron. Like a monkey! (disgusted)
(Sound effect: Monkey sounds)
Dick: Well, that's my solution. "Surge Pricing".
Maddox: Yeah. (skeptical) Yeah. (disgust)
Dick: Just imagine where it could work for you.
Maddox: Yeah. I'm trying REALLY hard and I can't even think.
Dick: It may not be someone winning at video games, but it's a pretty good solution, I think. (Maddox and Sean laughing)
Maddox: Alright, Dick. (Dick laughs) I got a real solution. Huh? How about this. "Meat"!!
Dick: Oh, shut the fuck up. Meat.
Maddox: Meat is the solution!! MEAT is actually a solution. Okay? This is…this is…so listen to what happened to humanity. They found…this study. This is from this website called http://www.livescience.com and this article is titled "Meat and Cooked Foods are Needed for Early Human Brain".
Dick: Right.
Maddox: Yeah! This is actually a noncontroversial study. They found…two new studies came out. They said that a lot of people are vegetarians and vegans and these diets seem natural for humans, but in terms of evolution, it is a bit of a stretch according to two recent independent studies. "Eating meat and cooking food made us human", the study suggests. "Eating meat made us human." I think that's worth repeating. "Enabling our brains of our pre-human ancestors to grow dramatically over a period of a few million years." They can trace our brain growth to the exact moment where we started developing tools to hunt animals and eat them. Eat their cooked meat. You know why? It's because…and by the way, this isn't just, like, one branch of science. "Archaeologists and evolutionary biologists have found this. The new studies demonstrate, respectively, that it would have been biologically implausible for humans to evolve such a large brain on a raw vegan diet and that meat-eating was a crucial element of human evolution at least one million years before the dawn of humankind."
Dick: I actually knew all that.
Maddox: Yeah. Yeah. I saw this, actually, I went to the Natural History Museum and they had this little placard in front of the evolution tree. It showed, like, all the apes, all the simians evolving, whatever. And it talked about that. And you can see the exact moment we started eating meat, because our heads exploded.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: That's my head. My head's exploding. (grins) (Dick laughs) Yeah. So this one study published last month in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. "Examined the brain sizes of several primates. For the most part, larger bodies have larger brains across the species." Right? That's generally true. "Yet, humans have exceptionally large neuron-rich brains for our body size, while gorillas, three times more massive than humans, have smaller brains and three times fewer neurons." (taunting) "Why? Well. The answer, it seems, that gorillas' raw, vegan diet, devoid of animal protein, which requires hours upon hours of eating only plants to provide enough calories to support their mass." (cocky)
Dick: Yeah. I do feel like there's…I don't want to jump the gun, here.
Maddox: Uh-huh. (grinning)
Dick: But I do feel like there's something unsophisticated and almost primitive about vegans in general.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I would say.
Maddox: Oh, yeah. They're closer to monkeys than we are. 'Cause we…you eat a burger and that puts you one step above a vegan and two steps above a monkey. A monkey and a vegan are just, like…they could basically date. (Sean laughs) You wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. They probably speak the same language.
Dick: That's the missing link. Is a vegan. (grinning)
Maddox: Yeah. Vegans are the missing link. (Maddox and Sean laugh) Evolution solved!
Dick: Do you think Bigfoot is a vegan? I guess so! He must be!
Maddox: Yeah, must be a vegan!
Dick: He must be!
Maddox: Or. Or. Still stuck on the raw diet. Which is also…you're just foraging all fucking day long.
Dick: Yeah!
Maddox: Yeah. These fucking…these stupid apes. Listen to this: "For gorillas to evolve a human-like brain, they would need an additional 733 calories per day, which would require another two hours of feeding, the authors wrote. A gorilla already spends as much as 80% of the tropics' 12 hours of daylight eating." So, you have 12 hours a day. Those are hours that you could use building huts, building oil platforms. Playing video games. (Dick laughs) You know. Fighting against Daigo in Street Fighter III.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: These are things that these apes could be doing with their time. Instead, they're just foraging for nuts and berries and vegan bullshit! Instead of roasting a pig!
Dick: It's almost like…it's almost like vegetables and foraging and nuts and plants and stuff like that are windmills and solar power…(laughing) (Maddox groans) And meat is, like, nuclear power. It's got…it's so much denser with energy for you, right?
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: And it makes us evolve…
Maddox: Uhh…
Dick: Into something better.
Maddox: Wow, Dick. I'm trying to connect the dots here, and I…
Dick: Very simple dots. They're right on top of each other.
Maddox: I think you're the simple dot. (laughing)
Dick: So meat caused evolution? It's a great solution.
Maddox: Meat caused us to be human. We have…you know, if it weren't for meat, you. Right now. You, the listener, listening to this show right now, wouldn't even understand the words coming out of my mouth. You would understand this:
(Sound effect: Monkey sounds)
Maddox: But you wouldn't understand me. (giggles) How does that make you feel, huh? You're welcome. Humanity owes itself to meat. And cooking.
Dick: That's pretty good.
Maddox: Yeah. Thank you.
Dick: That's some passion.
Maddox: Yeah. That's my Oscar speech.
(Sound effect: Clapping)
Maddox: That's for myself.
Dick: Have you ever gone off meat? Have you ever…for any reason, have you ever gone, like, on a partially, I dunno, vegan diet, or anything like that? For even a medical reason? Like, anything.
Maddox: You know, I did notice. So, I've lost a lot of weight. About eight years go, I decided, after I wrote the Alphabet Of Manliness, no more. I wasn't going to put my life in jeopardy like I did, because I gained a lot of weight and I had high blood pressure and cholesterol and that sort of thing.
Dick: Mhmm. Lost your hair, too.
Maddox: So, I decided to…I did. I lost a lot of hair.
Dick: Don't forget that.
Maddox: (scoffs) I did. I sure did. (Sean and Dick laugh) Yeah, laugh it up, Sean. Shave your fuckin' head. So, I did. Yeah. This all happened to me. And I decided to eat healthier, and I cut a lot of stuff out of my diet. And through no conscious decision, I found myself accidentally eating mostly eggs and almonds and fruit. And that was my diet for a long time. And chicken. And I noticed that…and that was not…that was actually for a health reason. I tried to cut down on cholesterol. Now I'm to the point where I can eat cholesterol again. I eat it, like, every day. I eat, like, just mostly cholesterol.
Dick: Good.
Maddox: Yeah. Big bricks of it. Um…
Dick: And then you scream until your veins are popping out. (Maddox laughs) I think these are pretty good. These are all good for your heart.
Maddox: You know, Dick, I work out every day and I eat healthy just so I can abuse myself with cookies and beer. I love it.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Anyway, yeah. So for a while, I found myself almost eating no meat for a little bit. And that was, like, just a couple of days. And I realized that my farts weren't smelling like they normally do.
Dick: Mmm. Mhmm.
Maddox: Yeah. Which pissed me off.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: And I went back to eating meat normally. And I feel great. I always feel great when I eat meat.
Dick: Yeah. If I've ever had to go off of it, I feel weird. I had to stop eating meat for, god, I think it must have been a month after I had this surgery.
Maddox: What?! (incredulous) Oh.
Dick: I had, like, this horrible surgery where I couldn't eat. Like, they would have had to wire my jaw shut, but they don't do that anymore for that kind of stuff.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: They just put plates in your face. Uhh…and it was driving me insane. Like, the hunger would just never go away.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I felt like a zombie or, like, a supermodel. I don't know which, but I was just constantly craving something. I would eat six-seven times per day, just trying to get any…trying to get it to go away.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: It's all you think about!
Maddox: Yeah. When I don't eat protein. When I don't eat enough protein, I always feel hungry. You can't get it…and these fucking…you know, a lot of vegans and vegetarians say they get enough protein through eating algae, like spirulina. You know what spirulina is?
Dick: Is it algae?
Maddox: It's like…yeah. It's like pond scum. It's pond scum. And you can't get Vitamin B12, enough Vitamin B12 through a vegetarian diet. Many vegetarians die from malnourishment…well, I wouldn't say many, but, like, some of them do die from malnourishment. If they stick to a strict vegan diet. I talked to this dipshit in a bar one time. Who was a hardcore vegan. He wasn't even vegan. He was a fruitarian. You know what he eats? (Dick laughs) This is all he eats. Bananas.
Dick: I thought you were gonna say other guys.
Maddox: (laughs) No. All he eats are bananas.
Dick: He eats bananas?
Maddox: Bananas. Every day, he eats bananas. I said…
Dick: Oh man. Come onnnnnnnnnnn!!
Maddox: I asked him. I said, "Well, how do you get enough protein?" and he said, "Your body creates enough protein for you." I said, "No it doesn't." and then I said, "How do you get Vitamin B12?" and he says, "You don't need B12, that's a myth." It's not a myth. There is a vegan couple. There's…actually, every once or twice a year, you'll see some vegan couple in New York or Connecticut, where they tried to raise their son or daughter on a vegan diet and then they find that their son or daughter died. Because they didn't get enough Vitamin B12.
Dick: Classic SIDS. Classic case of SIDS.
Maddox: Yeah. (laughing)
Dick: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. We have no idea how it happened, ma'am.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Could have been all the kale you were cramming up his ass. (Sean laughs)
Maddox: Yeah. And then now, people are trying to do this to their poor fucking pets that are omnivores and carnivores. Like dogs. Dogs are carnivores. Don't feed them your vegan fucking bullshit diet, 'cause it's gonna die.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: You need to feed it meat. In fact, the best diet for a dog is raw animals, because that's what dogs eat.
Dick: Yeah.
Maddox: Traditionally. Cats, too. Like, they need to eat this kind of stuff from time to time. If you're trying to feed your poor pet or your poor human pet…whatever it is. If you're trying to feed it just vegan, it's going to die. Let it grow to an age so it can make a decision on whether or not it wants to be an ape for the rest of its life eating bananas. Or…having a steak like a normal human being and joining the rest of humanity.
Dick: Yeah. I…I agree with you.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I hate vegans, too.
Maddox: Well, this isn't about hating vegans. (Dick and Maddox crack up) This is about finding solutions to humanity and the biggest thing that has helped humanity thus far is meat and cooking food. But speaking of food, Dick.
Dick: Yeah, Speaking of eating.
Maddox: We got a couple of bottles of hot sauce we gotta put down.
Dick: Alright. Did you figure out what we're betting on this? I do want to bet something for real, and not tattoos, like your last fuckin' bet.
Maddox: Dick, you won't do anything. You just puss out on everything. What, shave our heads?
Dick: I'm not getting a tattoo of "Dick was wrong" on me. Wasn't that your suggestion?
Maddox: I just said "Diet Dick", like the Coca-Cola logo, and it can be any size, anywhere you want.
Dick: Diet Dick.
Maddox: Diet Dick.
Dick: Did you…do you have the double meaning on purpose? Like are chicks gonna see that and go, "Oh, this is Dick Lite." Tattooed on my body? (Maddox laughs) Oh, great.
Maddox: Dick. I thought about that tattoo a lot. I thought about it in the shower. And that was the perfect tattoo for you.
Dick: No. I'll do something. I'm not gonna tattoo myself, though.
Maddox: Yeah. You won't do anything. You won't shave your head. What, you wanna make a monetary bet? 25$?
Dick: Ummmmmm, I'll bet you 20$.
Maddox: Anyway. Let's do this. So, here are the rules. Here are the ground rules.
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: Let's agree to these ground rules. We drink the hot sauce entirely. First one to finish wins.
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: And no water or drink afterwards.
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: I feel like we should have to recite something after we drink it. Because that tricked you up last time, if you don't recall.
Maddox: It didn't trick me up, dude.
Dick: There were problems. (grinning) With the…
Maddox: Yeah. Well here's what we're gonna do. Here's what we're gonna do. (Sean laughs)
Dick: Right, Sean? You're the audio engineer. Did you detect…I know you weren't there, but did you detect some anomalies in Maddox's…
Sean: (interjects) I wasn't there and I knew exactly what was going on. It was like the part of Maddox will now be replaced by a Saint Bernard. (Dick cracks up)
Maddox: Great. You guys are so fuckin' cool.
Dick: They're known for slobbering.
Maddox: Yeah, I know. I get it, Dick! (annoyed) I know what dogs do! (Dick laughs) Dogs and monkeys, both of 'em.
Dick: So am I allowed to drink it out of a Tom Collins glass over here? That's much more natural for me.
Maddox: No. We gotta both have the same thing. Gimme one of these bottles.
Dick: I haven't drank from a bottle like this since I was like, two years old, though.
Maddox: Oh I'm sorry. Do you want a catheter so you can shove it right into your vagina? Here.
Dick: No, I'd like a glass!! (yells)
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Like a glass like you drink poison out of!
Maddox: You don't get a glass. I don't get a glass.
Dick: Here.
Maddox: Okay, Sean. You're going to moderate this. And make sure that neither of us cheats. And make sure that Dick actually drinks his. 'Cause he might try to pull some shenanigans and say he's a puppet master like Roger to get out of drinking the hot sauce.
Dick: 20 bucks? You wanna put 20 bucks on this?
Maddox: 25.
Dick: Why a weird amount?
Maddox: It's always 25.
Dick: I gotta go get fives.
Maddox: 25 is my standard amount that I bet. (grins)
Dick: (laughs) Why?!
Maddox: 25 is a good number.
Dick: Uh, I want to hear you read something after we do this.
Maddox: Great. What are we gonna read?
Dick: Let's read that girl's bitchy Uber review.
Maddox: Okay. Yeah. Let's do this. What are you doing? What are you shuffling around over there? Dick is procrastinating. He is delaying. These are delay tactics. He's hoping that the hard drive fills up before he has to drink this hot sauce.
Dick: (burps) No, I just had to get that out.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Alright. Sean, are you gonna watch? Are you gonna determine who finishes first?
Sean: Yeah. Just put it down as soon as you're done on your little end tables there.
Dick: Okay. We're going for speed, right? I've never done this before.
Maddox: We're going for speed and also who holds it together the best afterwards.
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: Alright? So, I mean, it's not just entirely speed.
Dick: Okay.
Maddox: Alright.
Dick: It's also style. Also style. You're also judging for style.
Sean: Okay. Style points. Got it.
Dick: Right. This is a solution on its own.
Maddox: Oh yeah, nice solution. Yeah.
Dick: When someone calls you out on the Internet, you fuckin' rise to the challenge. No matter what it is. (sarcastic)
Maddox: Alright Sean, give us a countdown.
(Ritzy game show music starts)
Sean: Alright. On your mark, get set, go!
(Drinking sounds in background)
Dick: (sputters) Oh my fucking God!!!
Maddox: Done! Ahhh. Dick is still drinking!!! (six seconds or so pass)
Dick: Ahhhh. Alright. Um.
Maddox: How'd that go?
Dick: Um. That was intense.
Sean: How'd that go?
Maddox: Yeah!
Dick: That was intense.
Maddox: Yeah. Was it now? (sounds like he has too much saliva)
Dick: Yeah. You want me to read first?
Maddox: Go ahead (swallowing saliva) (Dick laughs)
Dick: Alright. My eyes are watering a little bit.
Maddox: Yeah. A lot bit.
Dick: Alright. Here's the girl's letter. (slurring) "Last night was Halloween…" (chokes, voice cracks) (Maddox cracks up) "Great time. Today is my 26 th birthday" (talking in a weird voice) "Not so great of a time. I live in Baltimore…" (sounds like he's crying a bit) (Maddox laughs)
Sean: I think he scorched his lungs!
Dick: "And went out with my friends to celebrate my birthday at midnight." (voice cracks at the end) (Maddox and Sean crack up) Here. You try it. You try it.
Maddox: Okay.
Dick: Oh, my God.
Maddox: Ahhh.
(Ritzy game show music still going)
Dick: Is this the last of this hot sauce? Is this…(chokes on his saliva) (Maddox cracks up) Does this exist on Earth anymore?
Maddox: Yeah. "Last night was Halloween. Great time. Today is my 26th birthday. Not so great time. (sounds like he has too much saliva, but holds it together) I live in Baltimore and went out today with my friends to celebrate my birthday at midnight. When 3 AM rolled around, I suggested we take an Uber to avoid drunk driving. #responsibility." (grinning)
Dick: Alright, you fuckin' win. (Maddox cracks up)
Maddox: Yeah!!! Winner!!!
(Sound effect: Game show "ding!" and clapping)
Sean: Dick's opening his wallet immediately.
Maddox: Alright! 25$, baby!
Dick: Yeah, I always pay up. (voice is hoarse, talking quickly)
Maddox: I'm gonna buy a steak and be a human!
Dick: Can you…can you talk…can you wrap this…(swallows, chokes) can you wrap this show up? (Maddox cracks up) Ugh.
Maddox: Oh, my gosh. This is hilarious. Alright, guys. So that's it for our first ever bonus episode. We hope you enjoyed it. (swallows) We went a little bit long.
Dick: Because we certainly didn't! (laughs, chokes) Here! Here's your 25 bucks, you asshole!
Maddox: Thanks. (Dick groans) Alright. Yep. This checks out. It's real money.
Dick: So our solutions…you're gonna be able to vote on them on the website the same way you normally do (breathes heavily, swallows)
Maddox: Yep.
Dick: Except not in the problems area.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: It's gonna be a solutions area.
Maddox: And we'll be doing this once a month! It'll be the first Monday of every month.
Dick: (swallows) Yeah.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: Yeah. (sniffs)
Maddox: So your solutions were, Dick?
Dick: My solutions were…(swallows) "Nuclear Power" (Maddox laughs) "Nuclear Fuckin' Power".
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: More powerful than this hot sauce.
Maddox: Yeah. (laughs) Barely.
Dick: By a little bit.
Maddox: Yeah.
Dick: And, uhh…"Surge Pricing". (hoarse, coughs)
Maddox: "Surge Pricing". Yeah. (grinning)
Dick: And your problems were?! (struggles) (Maddox laughs) This is…if we got kudos for talking like real guys on the podcast before, this is as real….this is as opposite to William Shatner hipsters as you can get.
Maddox: Yeah. This is hilarious. (grinning)
Dick: Ugh. It sounds disgusting.
Maddox: Yeah.
Sean: There's a stupid amount of sweat going on this room now.
Dick: Yeah. We sound like two talking vaginas. (sounds like he's about to cry)
Maddox: (laughing) Speak for yourself, buddy. I'm fine!! I feel great right now. I could talk the rest of my fucking life! So, my problems are…(chokes on his saliva a bit) Excuse me. Excuse me.
Dick: Oh, there we go.
Maddox: (laughing) Shut up! My solutions were, "Kicking Ass", which I just did.
Dick: Yep.
Maddox: And…
Dick: Meat!
Maddox: Meat! (laughing)
Dick: Meat, which is what's become of my tongue.
Maddox: "Kicking Ass" and "Meat" were my solutions this week. So, tune in…
Dick: You got a hell of a hot sauce here, Maddox. I gotta give you that.
Maddox: Thank you. Yeah! Professor Maddox's Hot Sauce And Chest Hair Tonic. I put…I drank some of that stuff…(swallows)…and I got some hair on my back. I grew some chest hair on my back. It's incredible.
Dick: How did you know it was chest hair?
Maddox: Oh, you can tell, buddy. You look at it…you can comb chest hair.
Dick: You look at enough guys' hairy backs and you know, right?
Maddox: Yeah. Well, I see it every day. (Sean and Dick laugh) I see it every day. 'Cause I wake up sometimes and my head is completely turned around, so I just see my back. Anyway…
(Closing theme riff starts)
Maddox: So thank you for listening to our very first ever Biggest Solution In The Universe!! Vote for these solutions on the website. We've got more coming!!