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A podcast for the quietly overwhelmed and cautiously hopeful.
They want it to just be shiny slop that you can just kind of look at and be like, okay
Because that gets, you know, just keeps the wheel turning.
So the way you fight back against this in general is you help your brain build a
relationship with stimulation that's sustainable.
so I would, I would talk about turning down stimulation and giving yourself a finite
amount of it.
But I would to first quote, the famous little John, turned down for what?
The benefit is this.
If you help your brain form a relationship with stimulation,
that lets you have it at a lower dosage, you can have it all the time.
Boys, boys, boys, gentlemen, gentlemen, lads.
that's so nice of you.
I'm not very gentle, but I appreciate the anecdote.
Brutal man.
mm-hmm.
Rough man.
John Ruffman.
Sam Ruffman.
Shall we begin?
Should we do things?
Should we actually do the things and also the stuff?
for sure.
You know, I just threw my trash bag into my trash can, my muffin bag, and I saw it land
gracefully upon two other muffin bags and I needed help.
This isn't, this isn't who I should be anymore.
Hey everyone, it's been a week.
You're tuning into Zero Dot and together at Zero, we are powerful.
I'm joined by my good friend John and Daniel.
My name is Sam and I can't wait to get into what's going on this week to make us feel a
little bit better today.
John, Daniel, how you doing?
It's been a week.
Interestingly, it's been like a really good week.
It's been a fun time in that I feel like the way it is, this is longest way to possibly
say this, very good week full of like, and then like just kind of more good.
But I think that's, you know, I'll take that.
If it recedes to the mean and the mean ain't mean, not too mad about it.
Mmm.
clencher moment you talk about that you like so much or don't like so much?
I'm confused how you feel about butt clenchers.
So what I would talk about, sometimes you're just like living your life and your brain's
like, things are fine.
And then it's like, that was a great sound effect for that.
It was a mug that I was drinking out of earlier and it is actually empty.
So nothing's actually wrong.
I can show you if you want.
Yeah, I'll do it to prove that I'm not lying.
Ah!
It's a Dungeon Master mug.
Now you know a thing about me.
Look at that.
Look at that.
You've learned about me.
um
Why did I pick this?
Right, no, because you're you're fine.
And then anxiety is like, what if it was bad?
And then it is because it snows.
For those of you who don't know this, I live in Minnesota, which is for the record, just a
fxxxxxx banger of a state would recommend I'm an Illinois transplant.
I like Illinois too, but Minnesota is really fun.
But the thing we have here is just endless amounts of snow.
I'm gonna put this back down.
There's more story than I thought there was.
ah But if you've ever tried to...
by the way, there was a mug that you saw.
It was DND-coded, and it says you can definitely try.
You know, just got to represent my listeners here today.
You can certainly try.
that might not be true.
You don't even know.
Maybe I just held up a middle finger for you.
So, know, let that sink in.
Audio boy or girl, or they them.
But um this is a very convoluted and slow story.
This is, we are having, anyway, so there was a lot of snow and I'll tell you what I do.
So I live in a townhouse that I rent and in this land, there's a thing called the snow
emergency and there's rules for a snow emergency.
They last three days and you can't park.
Certain places and I believe the odd or even side of the street.
Don't worry.
You'll get 45 alarms telling you um But what I didn't know with my HOA is if you leave
your car in the driveway They won't plow your driveway So one asshole in our entire
neighborhood had snow all over his driveway got to take his car out before going to work
Which was me.
So it's like sort of like the scarlet letter only it's the white clod of snow So it's just
it's uh It's fine.
I would I would actually I can't help myself.
I go like a gratitude thing though
This state is unbelievably good at clearing snow.
Like we have like 12, 13 inches of snow, gone.
my state, uh may or may not be Pennsylvania.
um Horrible.
Just awful.
If there is snow, you can guarantee our Department of Transportation is going to do as
little as they possibly can to take care of the snow.
The salt is going to literally damage your car, uh potholes everywhere.
The joke we have in my state, which is every other place in the world, if the person is
driving straight and narrow, they're sober.
If they are driving swervy all over the place, they're probably drunk.
And where I'm from, if you're driving straight and narrow, that's when we know you're not
sober, because the only way to avoid all of the bad stuff happening on the roads, you have
to drive like a maniac in a swervy line.
And everyone gets it.
That's just the way we are here.
So I'm very envious of your state in that.
Well, allow me to, as per any good Minnesotan, humble myself and make sure that you don't
think that I'm better than you, because that would be a whore-ant for me.
Here's things about Minnesota that are challenging.
Our merge lanes are reliant on zipper merging and they are eight feet long.
For our non-American metric users, they're short.
And if you don't have great trust with the person in front of you, at least one of you
will die.
And I think what's happened is there's a communal thing up here, because if we all aren't
on the same team, you literally just die.
Like it's the icepocalypse.
So I think we all get along really well.
Zoro's so nice, we're like, oh, hi, how you doing?
Because if we aren't, we'll just, freeze to dxxxx.
So it's like a forge.
But also, I constantly, and it sucks, because people tell me about this, they'll, I'll be
like, this is this nice thing this guy did.
And they'll be like, oh, dude, that was actually him being passive aggressive.
And I'm like, oh, where I'm from, we're just regular aggressive.
So I'm going to just keep missing that and think everybody loves me.
Which is a little existential crisis if you hang out with it for too long.
So we're going to move past that.
Anyway, it's been a good week.
Except for that.
Yeah, but you know, it's just like, it's like a snow.
I drive like a really not a very great stable vehicle.
It technically has enough wheels to not fall over.
There's an engine I believe possibly powered by some small rodent that just wants me to
have a better day, but ah yeah, we get around.
The legendary Keir Sol.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
shots fired at anybody.
If you're a Kia and you wanted to give us a sponsorship, mean, great.
Just like maybe not for that one particular model of car.
here at Zero Dot, know, even when times are tough and resources are down, that's when we
are most powerful and our strongest.
So it's good to hear from you, John, that it's been a week, mostly positive, even with
the, eh we made it.
We're okay.
We're all right.
We're fine.
Yeah.
100%.
that landed for me.
Even the listeners could get the tmuse out of that one, I think.
We are here really for the listeners though, so whatever we can do, yep, yep, are.
at best.
Citizens?
Not even really that, just like trash, street trash.
Sorry listeners.
Actually, I'm not.
So anything else going good, John, in your world?
Nothing in the world in general?
you caught, you know, beyond?
is the thing where you're prompting me to talk about something good, then, uh, no, this is
the worst week ever.
There's nothing else good.
Okay.
So courtesy of today.com, found out about, is a TikToker who posted this story and the
story is two years old.
So the actual events of it happened in 2023.
Um, but there's a man and his name will be told to you now.
Saint, that's not his name.
He lives in St.
Joseph.
His name is cousin Homer.
What a fun name.
Perhaps it's his TikTok name.
Um, he had a dog.
Notice the past tense of had a dog.
Oof, oh you're getting me now.
uh
it, but like it gets really wholesome.
Um, and his dog had been, it was in so much pain and his legs weren't working.
He was going to do the very humane and living thing and choose to put it down, be with it,
sit with it, give it love, gentleness.
and as a parting gift to the dog, he said, I'm going to give this dog the best fxxxxxx
meal it's ever had.
And he called up a local Cheddar's, which is a, which is a restaurant you can go to some
places don't have a Cheddar's, but this one does.
know what a cheddar's is.
not know what a cheddar's is.
Okay.
he called up Cheddar's and he said, he basically, I can't find the quote, but to
paraphrase, he effectively says, I want to have the biggest steak you have for my dog,
cause it's her last day on earth.
And I just maybe give her the fries too, because she, you know, why not?
This is her last chance to have some and just have a one last good time.
And the Cheddar's restaurant was touched by this.
and they gave him the steak for free.
And every year since they sent him a care package thinking of the dog.
And it's like this beautiful thing.
And they sent like food for the whole family.
And it was just like, just a really sweet gesture.
If you've ever had a pet pass and I have, and I might cry a little bit, cause my dog's
over here and he's really cute.
He's actually fine.
But like, just, you know, I think about it, right?
And I think for humans to connect with each other in a moment like this and come through.
Cause like how easy would it have been to be like, right, here's your steak.
And instead the manager on shift who's I believe credited somewhere in here, Misty.
was her name?
No, Misty was the server, but then Halloware was the manager and they were like, no, we're
not.
Big love to all the staff at Shedders down here in, I believe it is, where are you?
Where is St.
Joseph, Missouri?
um They were just like, nope, we're doing this for free and we care about you.
And the guy, he said he couldn't post for a while because he was just so incredibly
touched and devastated at the passing of his pet, but he really wanted to make them know
that like they were there for them in a really big way.
And I think those little acts of kindness can be so significant.
And just being able to endorse with somebody like, this is that hard and we see you.
And also there's a picture of the dog laying on the ground, eating french fries, covered
in tinsel, which is cute.
it's just, I don't know, and just a beautiful moment.
I feel like pets are the best thing in the world, but when you get one, you're buying some
sadness in about 15 years or so.
So worth it.
What's the phrase?
You're delaying your sadness or something by how many of my time?
You're like, you're, there's some kind of phrase like that where like, once you go into
that contract, you kind of know it's coming, right?
And that makes every moment more special.
I mean, it's worth it.
It's worth it for the time that you get to spend.
You get to spend, yes, the end of those 15 years or so, if you have a pet that lives for
specifically that amount of time, you may have a pet that is a species that lives way
longer than that, or way shorter than that.
You may have a pet rat who only lives a year and a half, two years, three years.
They do not live longer.
But the time that you get to spend with them until that fateful day is more than worth it
to be able to...
Pets are a portion of a human's life.
To them, we are their whole life.
We are their everything.
We are their entire existence, especially if you, you know, especially if you get them
when they're a little kitten, puppy, little tiny...
little tiny baby animal.
We are there entire life and to have the privilege to make sure that that life is well
lived and that they're looked after more than makes up for the sad ending, I think.
I have two real quick tag-ons with that very thing.
Somebody presented that same idea to me once with a shout out to JRR Tolkien.
And he was like, humans are elves to dogs.
Like we're these long lived unknowable creatures that don't make any sense, but we're just
there and we are lightly beneficent and we care about you.
Only we're like way cuddlier than elves.
That was a little bit of a loop traditionally.
I'm getting up in my dog's face and kissing him on it and telling him he's the most
beautiful, perfect boy all the time.
And that he's like a dumb idiot.
As long you say in the same tone, he doesn't care.
He's very happy regardless.
He has like,
was like seven toys right next to me.
There's a dead sloth and a dead frog and a pirate chicken.
That's the new hot one that we have.
And the other thing was a friend where I think perhaps the same person told me this, but
they said, thinking of your pet, not as a pet, but as a companion animal, like this is
like your bro you go on adventures with.
Like this is just like your homie.
It really changed things for me.
So like when I'm out walking my dog and we're in a hurry and he's like, I want to stop and
smell stuff.
I'm like, well, yeah, you're my dude.
Like, of course, take the time, have your sniff.
This is the fun part of your day and you're my.
You're my guy.
Love that guy.
Anyway, sad story, but at the same time, I never want to shy away from dxxxx because it's
a really important part of life.
And if you're a person, you're going to know people who will pass.
You're to know wonderful things that will end.
And I want you to know, little subtle plug to like an actual psychological concept,
whoops, uh grief is a healing mechanic and it is more powerful than Wolverines.
It is unbelievably effective.
There's a reason that as a therapist,
I don't, know, people are like, grief work, it's heavy.
Like it is, but also it's the most automatic healing thing you can have.
And if you have grief you're stuck on, let me tell you, like there's ways through that.
It's not permanent.
That's not how that's gonna work.
So we'll be back to that some other time, but I just wanted to share that.
I like that.
out to Chudders.
So it was.
that story.
Makes me feel loved.
I think we can wrap up.
I don't think we have anything else to talk about.
I think we're totally fine.
Things are great.
Yep, see you.
As usual.
okay.
Yeah, as usual, we get something good and then we end the podcast.
That's it.
It is a short 10 minute podcast where we tell you something good, reminisce about our pets
and then end.
That's all it is.
We've saved you all a lot of time and energy.
Like and subscribe, comment, uh Patreon us if you can.
We're on TikTok, we're on Instagram, we're on Blue Sky.
Yeah, see you later.
Bye.
all around, we are everywhere.
I can post some links to those social media platforms for people, that would be good.
But would they read it, Sam?
Would they?
Would they read it?
Because I heard, I heard, and I'd like you to tell me a bit more about this, literacy and
reading rates in general are way down.
They are!
geez, they are.
ah But before we talk about that, because you're saying yeah, we read it, can we just be
honest, folks?
When was last time we read a book?
Like, really read a book?
A while.
That's fine.
It's cool.
But I asked the question.
Of course.
Of course.
I'm not shaming anyone on that answer, but yes, literacy rates are down.
In fact, that's what Martin West, academic dean and professor of education at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education and deputy director of the program on education policy and
governance at Harvard Kennedy School says, it's happening.
We're just not reading as much.
This is of course also backed by the fact that in 2024, Columbia University said that
reading stamina is down amongst their Ivy league collegiates, meaning
They're just having to change their curriculum over and over again because students just
don't have the stamina to read long-form fiction.
In fact, I was reading reports from Columbia that students are oftentimes saying over and
over and over again that when they get the curriculum and it's expected they read, you
know, a big chunk of a book or even a whole book by the next week's class, they're like,
I've never read a book before.
I've never had to do this before.
And that's because we're...
There's a big fear right now that uh with all the wonderful information technology that
people have access to, we are cultivating a generation of people who are really good at
taking tests or solving problems or finding the solutions to things or getting the summary
notes of things, but actually just reading either for pleasure or just reading long form
fiction or prose.
That is a waning skill.
And because of this adapting of curriculum and everything else, uh there's a big fear
right now for a lot of people, myself included, who's someone who likes to read that
people are losing a skill.
However, I don't want to take the rhetoric and say, you know, we're not reading as much as
we used to, because that's actually not true.
If you take into account the amount of words we're actually reading, like a per word
basis, old versus new, we are now reading, it's estimated, about 100,000 words per day via
social media and everything else, which is just insane.
Like, we're reading way more words than we ever did before.
It's just that what we're reading is, you know, the captions of social media things,
things we're seeing on...
that that shall not be named x.com, uh Blue Sky, uh Instagram, et cetera, our friends'
texts, et cetera, that's all adding up to this huge amount of word count.
And uh we're also seeing, John and I, and Daniel and I, we've talked a bit about the
loneliness epidemic, people just feel more lonely, even though we are technically more
connected than we've ever been in our entire lives.
So what the heck gives?
Well, I mean, on one hand, the answer is really obvious.
Like, just read a book, just read more.
Here's the thing though, the hardest part of this is picking up the book and choosing to
read.
The hardest part about it is literally going through the first couple of words, sentences,
paragraphs, even a couple of pages to get through that block of, I'm not being constantly
stimulated by the screen in front of me and getting value in kind of leaning in or as us
gamers like to say, the gamer lean, right?
That happens with books too.
So even though that the solution is incredibly simple, I think the sell is really hard,
but there are two people I think that have made an incredibly compelling case why
we might still wanna be reading even though we have access to all this information via
social media.
One person I think of is John Green, author of such books as, Author of The Fault in Our
Stars and Everything is Tuberculosis.
He's author, he's a philanthropist, he's also one half of the Vlogbrothers, and I think he
has an incredibly compelling human and intrinsically engaging reason for folks to consider
picking up a book again.
As I think about what John said about that heartwarming thing, I think this personally
warms my heart.
He had this to say when he was interviewed by Fortune magazine.
And I have the direct quote right here.
I want to make sure I get this right.
He says, I worry that a lot of young people are affected by the terrible disease of
loneliness and at a scale that we haven't seen before.
But he says, my case for books is that they shrink the empathy gap because when I read
Catcher in the Rye, Holen Caulfield isn't my friend or my spouse or my anything, but he is
as close as I can come to being someone else.
And through the process of imagining with clarity and sophistication what it's like to be
someone else, we both learn what it's like to be ourselves, but we also learn what it's
like to be one of the eight billion other people on this planet.
Now I have another reason why I think we should be reading books, but that's an incredibly
compelling reason, think, John.
Just giving people like, you're lonely, you're sad, you want to experience the life of
others, books can give you that.
Books can absolutely give you that if you want to.
Yeah, I've been thinking about this.
I'm a big movie guy.
And I've been, I was talking to my friend, his movie guy, about books versus movies.
And there's not like a versus like one wins one loses, but there's just, different pros
and cons.
And I think one of the niceties about a book, and I guess technically a movie, if it was
just like a black screen and they read text to you out loud while you were looking at it,
ah but that seems like that's scary.
Anyway, is that you can really get to a level of nuance and a level of like description
and a level of painting a picture that you just kind of can't with a literal picture.
uh
which is ironic, not that I say it out loud, but I do feel for that.
I have a pretty cool mom, like my mom, and when I was a kid she would read books to us all
the time, and it does a lot of good things, especially for a kid.
But like it enriches your vocabulary in a huge way, but it also gives you lots of points
of view, ways to understand things.
I have a lot to say about why it's hard to read, and I want to go back to that, but I
don't want to take away from your second point, same if you wanted to share it first.
Sure, there's legitimate reasons to read.
Absolutely.
And some of them, most of them are systemic and environmental, right?
Like that's not, let's not go around the bush and saying that, you where's that device I
have somewhere?
Like this guy right here isn't partially to blame, right?
And in fact, how hard it is to read.
But I think we need to start with what's in it for me.
And I think a lot of times when I talk to folks of all different kinds of ages, why should
I read?
And I think that's one of them, like.
You're saying you're lonely, you're saying you're not disconnected.
This is one of those ways in which you can experience another person's life potentially,
whether it's fiction or nonfiction, and really kind of allow you to step in those toes
because I just, I'd literally just taught a workshop yesterday and someone literally out
loud said, why should I give people empathy when no one gives me empathy?
That's what he literally said.
And of course I'm in a workshop, so I'm talking about, well, that's a great opportunity
then to give empathy because the world needs more of it than it ever has.
But this is one of those ways in which
the privacy of your own home and your own space, you can kind of live that other
experience.
But I'm also hearing, at least you haven't said it yet, but I'm also hearing, so wait, you
want me to read all the social media posts and you want me to read all these other books?
That's even more than a hundred thousand words.
Well, it turns out if we consider the words of Mary Ann Wolfe, author of Reader Come Home,
The Reading Brain in a Digital World, published in 2018 and Prowst in the Squid in 2007,
who's a scholar, a teacher and an advocate for children's literacy around the world, she's
quoted in saying this.
We have become so inundated with information that the average person in the United States
now reads daily the same number of words or more as is found in many a novel.
Unfortunately, this form of reading is rarely continuous, sustained, or concentrated by
the average 34 gigabytes or so consumed by most of us represent one spasmatic burst of
activity after another.
So the argument here though that she's trying to say is, reading novels in long form books
brings us closer to the human beings and it might require us to read less on a whole.
We might be reading less.
If we actively spend the time to acquiesce ourselves and kind of read long-form fiction or
nonfiction at our own leisure, whatever that is, we will actually read less than 100,000
words as opposed to constantly getting the feed of dopamine we get from right now, from
little ill bites and so forth.
So not only if you decide to actively make a decision to read more, will you actually read
less?
You might result in having less uh stress, less loneliness, and we're not even asking you
to do more beyond just isolate some time from you.
And best of all, and this is crazy, I can't believe I'm saying this in 2025, bookstores
post pandemic are having kind of a boom right now.
In 2020, we thought they were just gonna die.
They weren't gonna exist anymore.
They were all going away, but Barnes and Nobles are popping up left and right.
Mom and Pop shops are seeing all kinds of surgences of business.
I've seen so many GoFundMe's be successful from bookstores who thought they were failing,
but suddenly people came in and drove because they feel a passion towards books.
And I'm...
Having conversations on the ground with so many individuals who are saying to me, I'm
actually looking for active ways to disconnect.
I'm trying to buy like old hardware that is not connected to the cloud or the internet.
I actually want to find ways to seclude myself, take myself away from that.
And books are a huge part of that.
Daniel, I see you're hotting your dead like absolutely that makes sense.
my head furiously at what you just said because that is a whole episode's worth of topic
is the push now for people who want to disconnect from everything being a streaming
platform, everything being constant.
Everything's at your fingertips and there's no friction to getting to the things that you
enjoy and getting to the things you want.
And you might think, yeah, that's great.
No friction.
can just...
type in what I want and I get it immediately.
Instant gratification, that's great.
There's something to be said about the joy that you can find in the ritual of setting
aside the time to sit down, pick up a vinyl record, look at the sleeve, take the record
out of the sleeve, place it on a turntable, plug in your headphones or with some nice
speakers, sit and enjoy the music.
set some time aside, go and find a nice comfortable corner, put a reading lamp on, open a
book, feel it in your hands, read the words and fully focus on that for at least a little
while.
It adds so much to the act of consuming media that I think people are really starting to
miss that now.
And they're starting to miss, yes, it might be friction, it might be extra steps to get to
the thing that you want.
But it's all part of this beautiful ritual that I feel really enriches your life in
general and enriches your enjoyment and boosts your enjoyment of the things that you are
consuming.
It's very purposeful.
It's very intentional.
And I think we could all do with bringing a little bit more of that back into our lives,
to be perfectly honest.
And I'd really, really like to talk more on that in a future episode, if the both of you
are willing.
I think it's fascinating.
m
absolutely a topic for us to talk about, but I wanted to have us talk about it now just to
recognize it's happening, but also say there's some good to it, there's a pathway for it.
And the last thing I want to say before, I know John has furious notes, for my listeners
out there, John does this thing where when I say something interesting or nice, he goes,
okay, typing mode, and he has tons of things he wants to say.
Usually he's going to rebuttal me, but it's totally fine listeners, because you're on my
side, you're always on my side, listeners.
For my viewers, can just fxxxxxx see that.
So you already knew.
So sorry, I'm gonna add, cause your life's already good, but.
yeah.
The one thing I want to say, based on what Daniel said, you're right, people are wanting a
return to that.
But think about this, people that are in their 20-somethings now who never knew another
way of like ingesting media, for them it's a novel new experience.
like, whoa, people used to do this.
It's kind of the same way how vinyls had a boom in like the late 90s, maybe early aughts,
where there was a bunch of people who had never experienced the vinyl experience.
Everything was on CDs or compact discs or MP3 players.
when they started collecting vinyl, they were like, ooh, this is a thing you used to do in
the 60s and 70s.
That's neat and interesting.
So yeah, I mean, I think we're going to see more people reading, which is the good news
about this.
uh Things are certainly looking bleak right now, but there's a way out of it.
But John has thoughts to say, and I've spoken long enough, so I will let him say those
thoughts.
So this is a thing and I've been thinking, I'm sort of the loose cannon of the show and
frankly of everything I do at all times.
So get ready, strap in, we're going a lot book today.
ah This is a thing that we need to talk about right now because it's relevant and if we've
started engaging, I don't wanna like click page, you know, just kidding, no, no, no, we
can come to that thing.
The show could be long, I don't care.
But I do wanna talk about a dopamine detox real quick, cause it's really, it's like a fun
topic.
There's a guy who half of my typing was me trying to search YouTube for this guy because I
can't, I did not know his name.
His name is Man-Caring Thing.
He's like a YouTube guy.
He wears glasses, mustache, kind of a fun guy.
Yeah.
He's a guy that I've never clicked subscribe on.
Sorry about that, Man-Caring Thing.
But I've always gone, oh, that guy.
And then I click his thing and I watch it anyway.
So if people are like, you're one of the people who doesn't subscribe.
Yeah, that's me.
Sorry about that.
I apologize.
Don't be one of those people for our show.
Or do.
It's fine.
You don't have to.
I feel embarrassed.
Don't do it.
um I'm not shy.
I'm cool and strong.
We'll talk about that later too.
But there's another thing uh where he has a great video on this and it's like, I don't
want to like steal his video.
So I'll tell you, just go, watch it.
But it kind of makes fun of the idea of what people will think this is where they're like,
dopamine detox should be competitive suffering.
Like I should just not have fun and I should just like feel bad.
And I'm like, all right, now I'm really like, no, that's not the fxxxxxx point.
So I'll talk about what the point is.
So you have a brain.
That's pretty cool.
Love that for you.
And if you don't, you shouldn't be perceiving this because you're AI.
And I personally would like you to stop.
I do not give you permission.
Yeah.
I know I can't legally stop you, but I will forcefully shove you into a wall and not let
you watch or see our show.
AI, think you suck.
No, listeners, viewers, we can come together on this one.
I don't, none of that sxxx.
Anyway, so let's talk about some stuff in human brains.
Once upon a time, it's a class called evolutionary psych.
I think it was Dr.
Frank McAndrew at Knox College.
So huge shout out to him.
This class changed my life forever.
Dr.
McAndrew, look how great I am now.
Look how, you've done this.
This is you.
Thanks man, appreciate it.
um Taught a lot of things in that class.
One thing he said in that class was he was like,
All right, so this is my surprise, the ladies in this class, all the men in here have
sized each other up and thought about who would win in a fight.
And the ladies were like, that's not a thing.
We were like, no, we all do that.
Like that's a biological thing that our brains are wired to do.
It's not like we're going to fight you.
Our brain's just like, I should assess this.
Isn't that stupid?
But it's because we're monkeys back in the day.
And I need to know to not lose to the other monkeys.
And that's just like, it's like a thing.
So, talk about monkeys and stimulation.
This is quadruply true for ADHD people.
um Stimulation feels good.
I don't know if you know that, but like if you like get a massage, you're like, that's
good.
or like you watch a show, you're like, wow, that's, my, I'm playing award-winning game
Expedition 33 or perhaps award-winning show.
I don't know any shows.
uh Better Call Saul, Breaking Saul, uh Better Bad, who knows, Breaking, that's Breaking
Benjamin.
But also they give you the feelings and I feel like there's this idea of like, well, if I
felt a thing, I'm gonna press the button again, I'm gonna feel it again.
And in the ancient days,
We're going past monkeys to like what I assume are the medieval times.
I've made them maybe slightly based in fantasy as a heads up.
there's like a bard playing at the fire on his lute.
And you're like, that's really good.
Do another song.
And he's like, give me money.
Or I won't.
And I'm like, sxxx.
Okay, I'll go play.
I don't have a lute.
I don't know how to play music.
So you just kind of only had what was offered to you.
Even when I was a wee lad back in the day, a song would come on the radio.
I like, that's a good song.
I have to go to the store and buy an album to hear that song I get on purpose.
yeah, they didn't have singles.
It was a rarity that you could find the actual single for that song, yeah.
So really quick, I wanted to say this is not me being like, let's go back to the old
times, because the old times are also like stupid for a ton of reason.
But this is me saying we sort of didn't expect how fast humans would become good at things
and how much it would fuck with their sxxx.
the idea, okay, I'm going to tell you a little insider lore.
Shout out to my friend who will be very anonymous for this.
He works for a company and they're big fancy boys who do consulting and they were being
consulted by one of those premium streaming services about a show.
And they said the show is too good.
You can't do it.
You gotta you can't do it.
And the streaming service was like, why don't we want to have good shows?
And then they said, I want I want Daniel and Sam to think about this one.
They said, no, the show isn't second screen enough.
Yeah, I've,
Now that took me a pass or two.
So dear viewers and acceptable listeners, uh the other listeners, you really just should
fuck off.
what that means is it's, want to have a show that's sparkly enough that you're like, oh,
keep it on.
So you keep paying whatever sub you're paying, but they don't want it to be good because
then you can't be on your phone at the same time, which is advantageous.
Or they know that you'll be on your phone rather and they...
know that they can't compete with that, so they want just like a fun little sparkly.
So if you're ever trying to watch, like, I've been watching uh Severance, so like I'm
really on time for that party.
uh But it's really good.
But if you're trying to like look up crap and buy crap online during, you can't, it's like
it demands your attention.
That show goes real hard.
It's very good.
Would recommend.
Am actively recommending.
um But they're saying in general, for people who are just churning out content, especially
with AI, that's going to make this much, worse.
um
They want it to just be shiny slop that you can just kind of look at and be like, okay
Because that gets, you know, just keeps the wheel turning.
So the way you fight back against this in general is you help your brain build a
relationship with stimulation that's sustainable.
so I would, I would talk about turning down stimulation and giving yourself a finite
amount of it.
But I would to first quote, the famous little John, turned down for what?
The benefit is this.
If you help your brain form a relationship with stimulation,
that lets you have it at a lower dosage, you can have it all the time.
You can have it every day, you can feel good every single fxxxxxx day, you can have it up
every single day.
But the problem with overstimulation is we don't have a manual that's enough switch.
The thing I compared to a lot of the time is like your tummy, because sometimes, I'm sure
you've heard this at some point, like you're eating and someone's like, did you know that
you don't feel full until 40 minutes after your body's actually full?
Which I think is like kind of true-ish.
I don't know the science on this crap, but.
It's that for brains or there isn't a 40 minutes later.
There's like you never stop.
So I would talk about the nighttime ADHD homies.
You already know what I'm to talk about.
It's revenge bedtime procrastination.
It's the nighttime and your brain's like, hey man, I'm logic.
I'm really trying to get in here.
Can we sleep?
And then the stimulation seeker is just like, nah, we got to watch Warhammer lore now.
So they started making videos called Warhammer lore to sleep to, or any other thing you
want to sleep to.
I watched
I watched a dead by daylight to sleep to the other night.
What is happening?
Anyway, the point being like, we just want to keep having things to poke the button, but
anyone who's been on this ride and the young people, the young people, they especially
know this because how many clients have I had who've under the age of 25 who are just
like, I can't fxxxxxx focus on anything.
I can't focus on anything because this is also, and I'm just gonna be ahead of myself a
little bit, but this way of being like stimulate, stimulate, stimulate, stimulate, guess
who's the best at that?
short form content.
There's a fun irony to watching this if you're watching this on a short at some point, but
your brains go, ooh, look at this.
This is a five second thing.
Wow-dee-dow-dow.
And then your biology, the monkey mode goes like, hey, dog, I make memories in like three
to five minute windows.
Can we keep interfacing with this for a hot second?
And it's like, no, it's over.
And you got nothing from it.
And then going back to the books piece, which is why I'm really wanting to talk about this
so much, is books now hurt, especially if you have ADHD, because you're just like,
Oh God, I have to keep exerting effort to turn these words into sentences and make them
into images and remember what was happening.
And my brain just wants to escape.
And it feels really bad.
Instant gratification.
This is, you know, it's the kids and the marshmallows, y'all.
It's that thing where it's like, you want one marshmallow now?
Or you want two of them later?
Turns out we're really bad at saying two of them later when one of them right now is
available sequentially.
If you can see Timmy over here having his two later, you're ah, damn, that makes sense for
Timmy.
But if I'm like, another one, another one, another one.
another one and then didn't eat the steak that I had or the ice cream.
I just ate endless empty calories of marshmallows, which sounds less fun than eating a
marshmallow.
If you guys will permit me, I would like to share with you a very high level uh concept.
You ready?
Ready for this?
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes.
So viewers, thanks for paying attention.
Listeners, I will describe this to you.
uh It's six circles on a white background.
And you're probably saying, is this like a...
two of those are circ- maybe once a circle the rest are ellipses, just saying.
Actually...
not all circles.
where snobs tear down a creative type, which I didn't think one of the creative types
would be doing, but that's cool.
That's fine.
So this is actually uh not a creative type thing.
This is a science that you're looking at here to science these six little dots.
These represent, and this is an incredibly crude translation of this.
If you're like a real scientist, you want to come talk about stuff, feel so free to be
like, that's actually completely fxxxxxx wrong and share your better account of it.
But effectively, this is your brain.
You what I'll do?
I'll draw this big circle around it so you know it's your brain.
This here is your brain.
And these are.
Nice little, oh, where's my circle at?
Daniel added this one, looks better when I do it.
Okay.
These are little, uh makes it look like a brain.
No, no, so anyway, what these circles are is dopamine.
This is your brain regularly producing dopamine.
And it's like, hey man, look at that, the sun.
Aw, dog, it's soft.
We'll pet it on its little cute dog face.
Aw, that person waved at me.
That's my new friend.
Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine.
Hooray for you, maybe you exercise.
And look at this, watch this.
uh
my, new dopamines.
What an amazing thing.
And then with time, some of those like go away or perhaps whatever else happens, but it's
really nice.
And then one day you're like, you know I should do?
I should do cocaine or I should do watch a whole series of Netflix every night for a week.
And your brain's like, my fxxxxxx God, this is amazing.
Wow.
And there's so much dopamine and surely this will never have any problems.
But then suddenly your brain's like, okay,
The brain has like a new problem because it's like, well, if he's going to streaming me
dopamine all the time, I'm going to just stop spending so much effort.
I'm going to stop making so much dopamine.
external dopamine now, so it's not going to supply it internally.
Homeostasis, yeah.
the model that we teach in rehabs for like addiction is your brain when it's getting this
from drugs rather than from like stimulation from like a show, it stops making the same
neurotransmitters chemicals.
Once again, I'm oversimplifying this, but I'm also not a fxxxxxx neuroscientist.
um So now when I go back and take my drug or in this case, I look at my lovely uh media
content.
Hey, where's my circles at?
I am not good at this.
It's fine.
uh I go back and I go, okay, content, content, content.
and I put in my new little three circles of dopamine and you'll notice those are just
replacing the ones it's not making.
And what happens is as soon as you begin to over stimulate on a thing, as soon as you
abandon a sustainable relationship with a thing, you are instantly on borrowed time.
You're going to stop enjoying it.
And after a while it gets worse than that because you keep going and the body sweet little
fool that he is doesn't know better and he stopped making these ones.
And now some asshole
on YouTube with a face who you can see, me and Sam and Daniel.
um We'll come along and we'll say, hi, don't do that.
That's bad.
You're like, okay, that makes sense.
I'll stop doing that for a while.
And then you live this experience.
You have this much happy times in your brain.
Once again, super oversimplified, but like you're living at a lower than default level of
dopamine, which is the thing that makes you feel good, which is why stopping doing this
fxxxxxx hurts.
Man-carrying thing makes a good reference to this and how people end up doing it wrong.
It's going I should just be shitty and suffer and be unhappy which is not the point.
The point is with time these start to heal because brains are highly elastic and this
feels way better for those of you who are listening out watching the exes left the
dopamine so you're making dopamine again.
You should just watch this part of Miles With Your Dog.
You just should.
It's easier.
em
listeners, again, we're dealing with homeostasis.
If you give external stimuli to itself, the brain goes, okay, I don't need to supply it
internally myself.
So the normalization happens.
And then suddenly when the external stimuli ends, as all things have to end, because you
look away from your screen, you do something else, you go to sleep, the brain is like,
okay, well, we're still not gonna do anything, because you've got that external thing
figured out.
So not our job.
And that's where the suffering comes from.
Well, and my last note that I had written down on this was at some point what this will
become is a willpower thing or a structure thing.
Because you have to go, OK, I'm going to stop looking at things that make me happy.
Or you go, my alarm went off.
I have to go to bed.
And as per always, John has a special shout out to the ADHD homies.
We can't do the willpower one.
You can.
You'll get lucky sometimes.
would not.
Willpower's stupid.
It is stupid.
And I think frankly, non-HD homies, you also have a hard time with this.
But if you have a brain that's built glitchy around stimulation to begin with, this is
playing uphill on roller skates.
Like it just doesn't work.
And I'm sure, I'm sure one of you listeners slash viewers, slash other people who are
doing the show with me have at some point been like, okay, well that video is over.
I don't want to go to sleep though.
So I'm going to maybe start this one.
Maybe I'll just want to look at it.
This one will be, okay, this one's short.
And then you do that four more times.
And there's a level of like, why am I this way?
This is why.
It's because your brain is aching to feel the good that it used to feel.
So as per the ZD promise, I never want to be like, things are bad, you're fucked.
oh I want to give you the answer.
So, and this is a loosey goosey guide to dopamine detox.
Don't starve yourself.
You'll never know what it looked like though.
You'll never know what it looked like.
describing it to you.
It was silly.
It was hypnotic, you can't really comprehend it.
Non-Euclidean movements occurred.
I might not be from this realm.
Who knows?
You know what?
If you only listen to this and you see the title, like you see our faces, you don't know
which one of us is Sam.
We never put it anywhere.
Yeah.
Imagine being in the shadows and not knowing.
I was making some point that I wanted to make.
I wonder what it was.
It was relevant.
of those three is really handsome.
I hope the voice that I like is the handsome one.
You watch this, you'll be disappointed.
You just will.
It's just gonna happen.
I mean like we can like do other voices.
There's like a litany of voices we can do.
Don't worry about that, that's not a problem.
Let's
do it, man.
I think we all know which voice they prefer.
m
thing!
no, no, no, no, no, no.
If frankly, if Daniel ever wants to just like start talking points, like one of me or Sam
is fxxxxx because like we can't compete with that.
It's not, and that's not like a knock on either of us.
Daniel just has a fxxxxxx pretty voice and just is what it is.
Yeah, see, listen to that sxxx.
I can't compete with that.
which being British doesn't usually give you, that's usually a negative, the nice voice,
the accent is a boon, a British boon.
you'll British listeners slash viewers, uh I'm sorry ish in advance for this, but I do
think you have to trade in the probably best accent, which you get for maybe the weirdest
series of breakfasts I've ever seen.
British breakfasts are very confusing to me.
I don't want to offend anybody, but as an American, like I just.
like, nope, you're wrong.
Nope, nope, nope.
We're not getting into this right now.
I'm a huge fan of you guys.
Like, you guys are doing some great stuff.
Cool music.
love like the...
Just everything's great over there.
But the breakfast.
Like, let me show you like a breakfast burrito.
Let me take you down.
we're gonna...
Anyway.
um I was gonna make one more really good point, you guys.
This was gonna be...
Yeah!
my God!
Thank you!
That's actually like a huge deal.
I almost like just was like, anyway, here's the problem.
Peace!
um No, here's the slish.
uh
What you want to do is you want to reduce things by steps.
In general, if you're trying to work on your panic or something, if you're trying to work
on your fitness, it's always like you don't go from a nine to a one, you go from a nine to
a six, or a nine to, honestly, an eight and a half.
You can go down by small, small increments and it's totally valid.
In this case, if you're doing the second screen thing and you're like, cool, that makes
sense, I'm not going to do it, phone over here, show up here, I want to die, this hurts so
much, I hated, I hated, I hated, I hated, cool, don't do that anymore.
Maybe start with watching, I don't know, one of those 11 minute...
Cartoons, cause like what is there 11 minute shows, 23 minute shows, 53 minute shows, like
pick an increment down, pick like a short YouTube video that has like some interesting
content.
I don't know, maybe like this one or something, but like finding ways to engage with this
and help your brain train it.
A thing that happened to me the other month, back before you couldn't go outside without
freezing to dxxxx, is I was walking on a trail with my little dog and I screwed up and I
didn't bring my headphones with me.
And as a midwesterner, I would rather.
end everything than play music on a phone in public where people could hear it.
Absolutely not.
uh So I'm just like, I guess I'll just raw dog it and walk around in nature like some
square with no set.
This is actually very nice.
Huh.
And it felt really good.
And I did that on purpose.
Not because I'm cool in nature.
I'm not cool or nature.
But I do just like the restorative effect that has.
Also, there's like a whole other spiel about how like being around nature really is good
for your brain.
Turns out it is.
That's like a thing.
But it's also the deliberate choice to not be like
and now I'm listening to a podcast and now I'm listening to a simulation.
By all means, listen to a podcast.
Listen to one right now, hopefully, or watch it, or whatever you want.
But I also feel like making does give me the time to not do that.
Even if that's what it is, right?
If you're like end of your day, you're just like, cool, I'm gonna have like one hour where
I just like dig around and read a book.
I just do some dishes, nothing, or just whatever.
You can use even some chill music or something.
Think of it in gradients, right?
But going from I'm hyper-stimulated all the time, which you probably are, I am, I have
like a whole wake-up call around this.
I remember being like, when I was in college, I'm monologuing a little bit, I'm so sorry,
but I just care about this and myself.
So when I was in college, I was a really good World of Warcraft player, which is the least
cool thing about me.
And if you can still follow along with this, thank you for trusting that I've changed.
Dear World of Warcraft players, you too can be free from, actually probably can't, I'm
sure I'll go back eventually.
But ah I remember I was in a class, it was jazz class.
This is also a confession, so if you're gonna come and take my degree from me, I'll be
really sad.
I just did not care at all.
And I'm not like anti-jazz at all.
I jazz is cool.
But my brain was like, I need to learn about arenajunkies.com's current theories on the
Rogue Mage Priest comp setup.
I just need to think about that all the time.
And if any time I can't think about it, it hurts.
That's nuts.
But it also was the result of just ongoing all the time, playing the game, thinking the
game, reading the forum, talking about it all the time.
And it stopped being fun.
Now that I'm much older and I have a job that takes 40 plus hours of my time per week,
I don't get to play my favorite video games all that much anymore, which means when I do
they're super fxxxxxx fun.
That sounds really sad when you're a teenager.
You're like, oh no, less games!
No man, like it's actually better.
The games are way more fun.
Now can you play like, oh this, let's go.
less now.
Which sounds stupid, but it's true.
yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have to, cause Sam is right.
I with everything he said.
But also I have to really quick make a note.
If you have ADHD and that you just like winced when you heard that, I understand you and
it will be okay.
Like, side with love.
It feels really bad to be like less of the thing that I want.
No, no, no, you understand.
What I've been telling you is you should, if we build this right, always get as much of
the thing as you want.
And at the end, you'll be hungry for more.
Which is a really good feeling.
I'm like, I can't wait to get back to this next time.
as opposed to like, I've got enough and now I am super fxxxxxx bored of this.
It's a million o'clock.
I didn't do any sxxx I was supposed to do.
And I just want you to know, and this is it.
And I have like maybe a little bit of like a little rant about how like media is kind of
screwing us on this.
It's built to keep you engaged because engagement is clicks and clicks is money.
And you have to build a protective armor structure.
Pick your fxxxxxx metaphor, whatever you want, to avoid falling into it because
biologically, I'm gonna change that, sociologically, psychologically, only one or two
fields use mental health for good.
Everybody else uses it to get your money.
Cause that's what they want.
That's okay.
Like they're a business, that's fine.
But at the same time, like you need to know how to defend that.
I remember as a child, I like would hear an ad, like, we'll just don't buy the product.
That's not how that works.
It's how that works.
They get in your head, it's a whole thing for another time.
Thank you for listening to this giant rant.
I really care about this, I realized during the segment and I wanted to talk about it.
So thank you for humoring me.
So one of the benefits I had in my life is I got access to the internet very late,
generally speaking.
Like, 16, 17 is when I finally had access to the internet.
I remember distinctly not having internet prior to that time.
And almost everyone that I know that has a similar experience like this, we all did the
same thing.
Once we got access to high speed internet and we had a computer, we basically effectively
downloaded the internet.
For days on end, we did nothing but just.
occupy ourselves, go to every single website we could possibly think of.
We googled everything, like we were just absorbing, absorbing, absorbing information.
And I definitely remember exactly the moment.
that I felt like I'm not having fun with this anymore and in fact I've done absolutely
nothing and I'm kind of scrubby and weird and oily and I have I showered I don't even
remember I feel like I've downloaded the internet I hadn't but like the feeling was I had
downloaded it and then I think someone had to pull me away for something and I remember
being upset like no I want to be on my computer I want to want to be downloading I want to
keep absorbing all the things all the things all things and for a while when I had to do
this other thing they told me they pulled me away I was annoyed I was annoyed I was
annoyed
But then I distinctly remember when I got back to downloading the internet again,
absorbing the internet.
This is before like YouTube was a thing.
So like you had to like download a combo video from a fighting game or something like do
it all manually.
I remember going, this feeling when I started it feels amazing.
But then afterwards it kind of tapers off.
I became incredibly sensitive to the idea that I want to feel the good thing, which is
when it starts as many times as I can.
So then I started building the cycle of like of actually cycling.
I'm going to cycle.
I'm going to cycle through this.
I'm not going to do it constantly.
I want to have that.
Like I'm selfish.
I want that specific feeling as many times as I want.
And then that's when I learned the wonderful thing of delaying gratification, all of this
stuff.
But I'm a normie.
I'm a silly, stupid normie.
uh So I resonate to what you're saying on that front.
And the brain is really good at homeostasis.
It's really good at normalization.
It is not built to handle a world where a handful of human beings have control of all the
information and are psychologically trying to hack our brains to be more engaged to get
more of their advertising money.
Just not built for it.
It's not your fault.
Listen to the norm before he speaks the truth.
This is wisdom.
He is correct.
I've had the same experience.
There's the thing where like things are so fun and they're so joyful and they stop being
joyful and you're like, damn it, why does it suck now?
It doesn't suck.
Now you're overexposed.
And it's not your fault.
There's no tutorial on this, which is probably why we're talking about it because I want
people to know.
We all want people to know.
And if you like, I would, I would validate that just like Sam, learned this by raw dogging
it and ruining a lot of sxxx for myself.
Like it's not as fun.
and it feels like suffering to turn down good things.
But like one of the great joys of humanity is like we're super elastic and if you don't
have good things for a while, they come back gooder.
And one of the great things about the universe is there's like infinite sxxx.
You'll always find a new good thing.
I love thinking about that.
I want the moment in which I start the thing to have this really wonderful high, and then
I wanna end it before it starts getting low.
I wanna end it to a place where I'm craving more, but it's okay, because there's gonna be
another time happening.
I don't want every single time to be like that.
Give yourself permission to do that.
I promise you the thing isn't gonna go away, unless it's a limited time release by a dumb
video game developer or publisher who's trying to maximize your attention span.
Fuck those guys, but everyone else, I promise.
Well, while we're talking about bad things that are emblematic of this concept, I have
another one to add.
I don't know if anyone here has ever had a sedative for pleasure purposes, pleasure
purposes before, but like alcohol is one of these.
Um, you know.
there's this thing called heroin.
And I don't know if you've ever had heroin before.
It's not like...
smiling as he's saying this and I have questions on whether or not uh this comes from
experience.
Hey, look, uh I know many heroines from many great stories.
Don't diminish them, okay?
good.
Very good.
No, no, in this case is a drug.
uh It makes you real like pleasurable and real sedativey.
And the reason I bring heroin up is because it's not the star of this story.
Because people were doing heroin and they were like, boy, I sure do heroin on the reg.
I have a tolerance for heroin that enough heroin that I'm taking would fxxxxxx kill this
guy because he's never had heroin before and my tolerance is completely through the roof.
I should do fentanyl.
Do you know who should do fentanyl?
No one.
No one should do fentanyl.
It is way too powerful.
If they're administering it medically, the amount, it's like literally nothing because
it's so incredibly strong.
But because of tolerance, people push and they push and they push.
A person that is very, well, this is actually really sad, but here we go.
A person that was very dear to me and has passed on was, fentanyl killed them and they
were a heroin user.
And they said, the problem, John, is heroin doesn't do it anymore.
I need to be close to dead.
I need to be writing it all the way as far as it can go.
And if you hear that and go, that's fxxxxxx crazy.
Good, you should think that with no offense to the deceased.
But like that person's brain was so incredibly inflated in what it needed to feel pleasure
anymore.
And that's what I'm trying to warn you of people.
And this is like, you know what else this is true for while I'm doing like rants about
things?
Gambling.
This is my hot take of the day.
And this is like a, careful with this take.
Well, not like really be careful, but like some people won't like this.
Gambling is built to prey on this and it's unbelievably good at it.
It's unbelievably good at it because gambling has no side effects.
You don't look like you get, you don't have like gambler eye, like you don't like have
things that show on you.
It's really, really fun if you didn't know this and you probably did because you're a
smart person listening to this show or watching it rather.
If you're listening to it, you could be a moron.
But um the gist of it is like the good part of gambling isn't when you win.
Psychologically, it's before you know if you win.
That's the high.
That's the part that feels really good.
And you can go right now to a bunch of gambling apps, I'm not gonna say their names,
because I don't like them very much, and you can just get that high in crazy doses.
What a fun day!
You might make some money out of it, hooray!
But if that's where the story ended, I would be shilling this to you all the time.
But it's not, because your brain goes, ooh, pleasure and fun, and perhaps riches as well,
I'll do it again.
You cannot beat gambling.
If you can beat gambling, it's not gambling, you're an artist and you're playing the
system, keep it up, you fun little sneaker.
But if you are actually gambling, you're gonna lose.
So don't, if you choose to gamble, which is, you live your life, man.
I'm not your dad.
And if I am, hello, what happened?
Who, what?
um But if you choose to gamble, I want you to just be aware of the other side.
And what they're trying to do is they're trying to get you to fall into this pit of
wanting really, really bad to feel that rush.
And also I'll tell you another secret about the gambling industry.
um They don't care about you, Timmy or Joe or Carl or Sarah.
It's you.
It's the other one.
The one with the addictive tendencies, the one with the dopamine seeking behavior, the one
in so much pain they just want to feel some fxxxxxx good in their life.
Those are the ones are going to skate by.
They don't care.
They want to take everything from fxxxxxx you.
If I sound passionate about this, it's because I've watched it ruin a lot of people's
lives.
And it's getting really mainstream to be like, hi, I'm Pleasant Sports Personality.
I'm doing a YouTube show.
There's a guy that I really like who does these.
And he always goes like, remember, if you have a problem, don't gamble.
That's fxxxxxx stupid.
Sorry.
I like this guy a lot.
I think his brand is Perna.
He's a really, really good show.
wonderful show on YouTube.
But he does this little spiel that's very well intended.
But it's sort of like being like, hang out with my heroin dealer.
It probably won't be bad for you.
And it's just like, nah, dog, like, but for the one guy that it is, nah, I don't know.
Anyway, the thing is, like, once again, this isn't a moral thing for me at fxxxxxx all.
I have no morals.
I'm an unscrupulous, bankrupt monster.
What it is for me is science.
I don't want you to get you perspective person listening or watching.
um I don't want you to get.
biologically into a trap you didn't know you were getting into.
If you're in it, you're like, I chose this, fuck you, then cool, a great time, good luck.
Yeah.
think John, you and I resonate with the, just the truth that there's so many systems out
there right now that are built to elicit emotional responses from people.
And people don't know that, hey, step away from that.
They're literally trying to manipulate you.
You don't have control.
You think you do, you actually don't because yeah, all of our brains are different, but
they're all kind of the same in some myriad of different ways.
Like I'm very sensitive to even non gambling video games that are still trying to gamble
with your emotions in other ways in however they built their systems.
I'm like, dude, you're getting upset about this thing.
The thing wants you to be upset because if you're upset, you're going to keep engaging
with it.
And that's all they care about.
Like you are literally feeding into the machine.
I, all John and I want is for people to be aware of that.
uh On that note, fun little tidbit.
We love popping in a little tidbit.
eh The official, I believe it's the, let me double check.
Bear with me one momento.
This tidbit's gonna be fun as sxxx, I can feel it.
Yeah.
I found what I was looking for.
I found it.
I tracked it down.
So the Oxford dictionary, every single year, they have like a word of the year, the most
important or the most relevant word of the year.
And a few people have taken up Umbridge with this because it's, and the year prior as
well, if you...
combine them into one word.
It's technically one word, but last year, the word of the year was brain rot, which is two
words, but they were like, yeah, but if you put a little dash of it to it, and it's kind
of one word.
And they've done the same thing this year, this year, very relevant to what we were just
speaking about, is rage bait.
Mmm.
The word of the year from Oxford Dictionary is rage bait, which is, for those of you who
don't know, very relevant to what Sam has just said, which is purposefully making
rage-inducing content in order to get your clicks, your attention, and to manipulate your
emotions.
Yeah, that's incredible that's the word of the year.
Is it Oxford Dictionary?
Oxford Dictionary Publisher, yes.
m
Yeah.
I'm on team, you know, I don't want people to feel bad for the way your brain naturally
works.
There's a lot of people, John and I, and Daniel, I know we've talked about this, like,
there's this whole propaganda machine that you just have to grit through it, bear through
it, keep fighting, use willpower.
No, nature always wins, and nature is part of your brain, and it's the systems that are
out there that are literally, they know exactly what gets you riled up.
They will rage bait you.
uh
And it's unfortunate that we're part of that system, but at least we can work to recognize
it, take a step away from it.
And we talked about this in a prior episode, create our own systems of value and our own
systems of joy in whatever way we could, if we are able to.
John was feverishly typing once again, listeners.
What do you think, listeners?
Should I just give him an opportunity to say something or should I just cut him off right
now?
And the only way you're going to listen to the rest of what he has to say is if you type,
go into our Patreon.
What do you think, listeners?
Vote down below.
You can actually vote because this is not a live...
on John's thoughts is what I'm going to do.
Yes.
I just, for the viewers, I would like to give you a visual representation of my future.
You
That was so well done that my automatic reaction was just about to be like, John, you're
on mute.
You didn't even know, you're on mute.
You got me.
You got me.
For the listeners, the joke was that I muted myself while I continued to talk, so visually
I appeared to be speaking and suddenly was silenced by the unjust and immutable hand of
Sam.
And I just want to be clear whenever we post that on any kind of social, if that's the
segment that has the most amount of engagement, I'll kill myself.
Just kidding, I won't kill myself, but that'll be hilarious.
where it's perfectly quiet.
um So I don't know how much to do with this.
I don't know where this goes in the the world of things I just really want to draw
attention to it You guys know who Zayde to Bonnie is?
Yes.
Isn't Zyad?
Zayed, sorry, I'm new to this person.
I didn't know who this is.
Sorry, Zayed Dabani.
There's been a YouTube video about, it's a metaphor for a fighting game trick that
politicians keep spamming and how to beat it.
And they talk about fireball pressure as this cheap annoying thing that just dings you and
it chips your health and how to like take advantage of the spacing.
And I just, I don't know.
I think that's amazing.
And it's kind of what we're talking about in a nutshell.
um The gist of it being like, everything is built to frustrate you and make you take
shortcuts.
And...
It's because human psychology is very fallible.
We are monkeys in shirts.
The video, if you wanna watch, is called The Fighting Game Trick.
Certain president keeps spamming, so you can find it that way.
I do, whenever I bring this up though, I do wanna make a quick plug.
Like if you happen to be a person who has very strong conservative leanings, I'm not
trying to sxxx on you.
I want you on the team.
You belong, everybody belongs.
This isn't a versus based show.
This is a we're a team.
I want people to feel good about being people.
Yeah, yeah, enough of the whole like, well that's one of the things though.
That's one of the things is that they're like, well, you guys don't like each other.
Look how much you hate each other.
Now you're enemies.
Don't worry about what we're doing in the background.
Yeah.
So.
focus on the us versus them rather than what we're doing, what we're up to.
you're on my team, unless you're, you know, something, something 1%.
Yeah, mean, this is just a known issue.
uh Right now, the newest generation of people growing up, coming out of high school,
college, even coming to the workforce, they've bred into a system, a system that someone
else made, not us, ah that believes that alignment's important.
If this person is not for you, cancel them, unsubscribe from them, go away from them.
ah There is a uh fitness influencer that I used to watch quite a bit of.
Let me see if I can get him, if I can just get the name.
Scooby, anyone guys know the name Scooby?
It rings a bell.
very powerful looking man.
his workout advice is fantastic.
He's a very well-mannered, you know, financial guru.
He's now retired, but he still keeps his channel up.
I remember one time he had a video that I really disagreed with so much that I thought was
just awful, was a horrible take, and I unsubscribed to him.
I just totally clicked off.
I'm like, nope.
Even though you've given me hours of wonderful information and fantastic good stuff, and
I've learned a lot from you, I unsubscribed.
And then it was like a couple days later, I'm like, that was stupid of me.
Why did I do that?
just because he made one video I didn't like or didn't agree with and he's allowed to have
a take that I don't agree with.
Why did I do that?
And so I actually purposely subscribed to him again, just be like, you know what?
That's okay.
It has to start with me.
I have to be okay with opinions that don't align up with my own.
that's what we're all part of this system of like having to line ourselves up with things.
um He had a take about like how younger generation people are stupid.
I'm like, no, I don't agree with that at all.
Like they're good folks.
But I mean, he's allowed to feel however he feels.
what he has to say about fitness and we still can have value and differences with each
other and still appreciate each other and still support each other no matter what side of
the aisle you're on.
And the more we can do that, I think that's where we can lead the zero dot life in my
opinion.
I wholeheartedly agree.
And that's like the thing is occasionally I'm gonna make jokes or take shots at like a
famous politician or some sxxx, but like, if you like that person, I don't want it to be
at you.
I want us to be homies because I want you to feel better so you can be nice and I can be
nice.
We can all hang out and eat breakfast together.
Good old American breakfast
together.
Probably a bag of mini muffins and Kool-Aid.
So maybe not breakfast is a good example.
I'm not, I'm 23 years old.
on top of toasted bread?
Have you had it, John?
Have you had it?
Now he's muted, but he's doing it on purpose to do that thing.
This is he's doing the bit again um
more time to make it a complete loop.
That way we narratively think, John, you're a genius.
You did it three times.
You're just so masterful.
Okay, see I talked that time, I've thrown off, because the plan was I did like a big
thing.
So comedy is a contrast between the expected and the unexpected.
I'm going to mansplain comedy to everyone right now.
And then you like it.
Mm, insightful.
That's very insightful.
eh I don't know if you two have noticed, during the course of this episode, throughout the
course of the episode, I've done a thing.
Not actively done a thing.
I have not prompted you for a main topic.
Because the topic that arose from speaking about the literacy little bit that we were
doing, I feel like both you were so, and myself as well, we were so into it and so engaged
in speaking about it that I have just let that become the topic for today's show.
I took...
a couple minutes, I'm like, okay, I think this might be the thing.
John has a lot to say, let's go, let's just do it, let's just do it.
Because I remember saying, I said, oh, and I want this to be a topic for a future episode
because there's so much to say about it.
And then we continued to say so much about it.
So I was like, you know what, this can just be.
Yeah.
do it.
To validate, that was a conscious choice.
I did notice you were doing that and I had four things of notes and I was like, this just
took 10 minutes.
I'm not, we might as well just do this, right?
So.
So it disregarded me earlier in the episode saying we'll save this for another episode and
we probably will revisit it at some point, but this has now become the topic of today.
And on that note, I would like to know from each of you, uh what are some of your personal
rituals and detoxes that you like to do?
What is your game plan for kind of settling down and disconnecting?
and just enjoying the little things.
Do you have anything for me?
Yeah, I have a lot.
um I'll go first, I guess.
There's a lot of emphasis on the morning routine.
I actually disagree with that notion.
I think it's the evening routine that's most important to set you up for the morning
routine.
So.
You're taking my sxxx, If I help me to continue, it's just that you're correct.
This is what you should do.
This is correct.
was grinning because Sam is taking his sxxx.
I was smiling because all I can think of when I hear morning routine is just the ice face
bath and the go for a 30,000 mile run at 3 a.m.
the ice face bath, it does work if you want people to look at you.
That's the end of the sentence.
don't...
You're cold and wet now.
You know what sucks is when genius athletes do dumb sxxx.
They're like, yeah, but what you gotta do is like put a little thing on your head and now
you're an athlete.
You're like, well, I gotta get a thing for my head because that's, he's fxxxxxx fast as
sxxx.
listeners, viewers, don't do this.
I don't want you guys to have this happening.
But listeners, this is weirdly a time that I wanted to introduce you to a new thing we're
bringing from the show.
It's called the Zero Dot Rock.
You put it on a chair where your sphincter will land.
You just sit down on it.
It goes up into your body and it brings you all kinds of magical power.
You will be able to think as fast as Sam and you will be able to, I don't know, smell like
me or something.
You might get Daniel's voice.
The results vary wildly per person and it could take up to 400 years to take effect.
But if you're only $40 you can get one today.
Also for just really stupid legal reasons if you shove a rock up your butt and blame me I
will deny that dude I don't want you to do that so just you know McDonald's coffee etc
etc.
Though to be fair that that story that's oversimplified but well yeah anyway moving on.
But I will say that my evening routine to answer Dana's question.
uh
Wow, great verbal tracking, genuinely amazing, nicely done, sorry, continue.
My evening routine is something to the effect of trying to shut down my electronics usage,
literally shut down my work computer, the thing that I'm in on right now.
um Try to be on, try to have uh evening tea with my wife, try to be on the couch with my
wife, whether we're watching television together or just reading something together, and
try to do that minimum, if I can, on a good day, which this doesn't happen every time, but
my goal is to do this four hours before bed, if not two to three hours.
um And then I go to bed with the anticipation that I'll probably fall asleep an hour
later, but more times than not, because I amp myself and prime myself up, I'm usually in
bed pretty quickly and I'm conked out pretty quickly.
uh And the morning routine varies every single day, just to answer whoever might be asking
that question, what's your morning routine?
It depends what I'm doing that day.
Do I have to be up early and do a client engagement and I'll be up early?
If I don't, then I'll sleep in, of course I would.
uh I don't believe in...
you know, waking up 2 3rd in the morning to squeeze your workout in right there and then
so that way you can go on with the rest of your day.
If that's your thing, that's totally cool.
That doesn't work for me.
I like to do my workouts a little bit past the prime of my mental and physical feeling,
meaning I do the hardest part of my day pretty early on in the morning.
Then after I taper off from that hardest part, then I fit my workout in and I might do
some admin stuff.
Then I start tapering off for the evening.
And that's generally...
how my days work Monday through Friday, but I focus on the nightly routine, not the
morning routine.
John, because I stole your thunder, go ahead and riff, raff, and say all that's incorrect.
What do?
no, um it'll be tough to oppose you on this one because what I like to do at the end of
the day is like to shut down my computer, try to have an evening tea with Sam's wife.
And then I try to do that a minimum of four hours before bed before he gets home.
No, Chris, first of all, I'm sorry for this joke was a fancy, I apologize.
But like the point is he's exactly right.
What your brain is built to do, cause you're a monkey with a shirt is you're supposed to
be like, it's dark nighttime.
And the thing is that's not even oversimplification.
Like that's just what you do.
I don't know if you've noticed this like,
We have fake nighttime and fake daytime now.
For the listeners, you'll never know what I'm doing, but for the viewers, don't tell them.
Ooh, cinematic.
Cinematic, thank you.
It was a light, I'll tell them.
I put a light next to my face.
um I respect that.
Thank you for letting my authoritarian regime run wild.
um But, the delayed hit.
Beautiful, beautiful.
Okay, I'm back.
But other things I would actually say that are real.
One, whatever you do, if you like to do it and make it consistent, know that your brain
loves consistency.
It always, it loves consistency.
Patterns are safe, patterns are predictable.
We love those things.
So try to do this similar-ish thing if you can.
For me, I have a very weird schedule.
I have long hair.
Surprise, by the way, listeners.
I have long hair.
You didn't know that.
It's not like super long, but it's it's fairly long.
So I have like a thing with showering.
We, think two of the three of us have long hair.
You'll never know if you haven't like watched the video, which one is which.
But when I shower, I put product in my hair and then I have to like not go to bed because
my bed will get all wet and stupid.
So then I have some time to do what somebody once called dimming the cave.
I have different lights in here.
This one, Terry says the wall.
I have like, you know, streaming person lights.
and then other one goes off and this one gets dimmed.
And that way that I have this kind of like dark little room to be in and my brain's like,
it's nighttime.
Cool.
It goes to bed.
Some gifts that I do for myself, and this is really for the ADHD homies, is I prep stuff
for the next day.
I have the chair that I'm sitting in right now and I put on the back of that chair a pair
of pants and a shirt and a tie, if I'm wearing a tie that day,
But what happens in the morning is my brain goes, okay, let's go.
And they say like, oh sxxx, do I, blah, blah.
It's just like, well, that's already done.
Thanks, Pass John, you're a homie.
The other thing that I do, and this is a really therapisty one.
If I lose some people with this, because you're like, that's a little too therapisty,
you've made your brand on being whatever you are.
I don't know.
Here comes some therapisty sxxx for you.
I do this though, this is real.
I do this.
Is I think of three things I'm grateful for.
And I think of three things that I have a good plan for for the next day.
And the reason I do this is because out of all the monkeys who exist currently, I'm one of
them.
And I'm like a real crazy one.
My brain, I love my brain, but it has terrible anxiety.
I was just born this way.
I have wonderful parents.
I've had a pretty easy life.
But my brain's like, we're gonna die, like all the time.
So what you do with this exercise of gratitude and the three things that are planned,
gratitude helps your brain pivot from what will we do?
Are we okay?
To like, oh, we're so okay.
I have these friends.
They're really good.
I'm gonna eat a nothing bunt cake tomorrow.
Shout out to nothing bunt cakes.
You should sponsor me.
Just pay me in cakes.
I have a dog.
He's real cute.
Love that guy.
I have like, I don't know, I kind of like like Christmasy snowy vibes, which is the time
that we're recording this.
That's kind of happening around.
It's like lovely.
The coffee is like all tasty and it's just like, it makes your brain feel good.
And like if you actually practice gratitude, sidebar, if you've ever been to a therapist
and you're not buying this, like, B, what are you grateful for?
And you're like, nothing, I'm mad and sad.
Like this backfires hilariously.
But if you actually are in an okay head space to practice gratitude.
it genuinely will change how you feel in your body.
So I encourage you listener slash viewer.
I wanted to be a third-bodiality so bad for the sake of the, you know, the three rule
anyway.
But if you can do this, when you go to bed, think of three things you're grateful for
right now.
Rules.
One, can't be sarcastic.
If you're sarcastic, it doesn't work.
And bonus rule for extra credit that you won't get scored on, but if you have it, if you
want, is try to do different ones every day.
Like it's totally cool to be like, I'm grateful for my kids, my dog and my spouse.
Good dog and my spouse.
That's great.
Those are awesome things.
But if you're also like, and I'm really grateful that my homie, Timmy, lent me a shovel to
deal with the snow, that was super sweet.
And I'm grateful that they're adding all these fun new health bars to Street Fighter 6,
which is a video game that I play, which I'm actually grateful for.
That's so fun, kind of charming.
And I'm grateful for this pillow that I have behind me.
Shout outs to that pillow.
And it's just like, I don't know, I used to have back pain.
I don't anymore.
Thanks pillow.
Like little stupid sxxx, Totally valid.
Thing number two, it's the other three things, planning them.
So for me, it'll be like, okay, so we already have gas in the car.
We can drive to work, we don't have to stop.
uh We know where the clothes are in the back of the chair and then like this weekend I'm
gonna go see my friends and we're go do a fun little winter thing And then your brains
like cool So gratitude and a plan and your brain will sleep like a baby.
It's really useful Last thing that I would include on this because I know you ADHD
listener I remember earlier when you were going like man, but I like Warhammer 40k lore
But I want to know about how to build a birdhouse and listen to that in the night times
That's actually really cool.
So one of the things that I do is I make phone time
but I do it a little differently.
I'm actually pretty like structured with clocks and stuff in that I set a like, you're
going to bed clock.
And then I have a, you're being in bed clock.
And then I have a, you're going to sleep clock.
I've heard that's really effective for people with AHD, yeah.
Yeah, because I can't have go to bed, stop thinking.
Like my brain, it gets real angry at that.
like, just sit here and don't do anything.
You're fxxxxxx kidding me.
Doesn't work.
So what I let my brain do, and I, for the record, don't look at the phone because the
visual stimulation doesn't like play well with me.
I just like it doesn't work.
So I put on something to listen to.
And for the record, I always put on like fiction or some crap.
I don't need to think about real world stuff when I'm trying to like rest and sleep or
interesting stuff.
Or occasionally, this is very esoteric, but I play a lot of specific genre of video games.
And I listen to very esoteric crap about those video games because my brain, this is
another bonus.
It's just work for some people, not everybody.
If you listen to interesting content, this is actually a specialty for ADHD people.
If you listen to interesting content that requires focus, like for me, it's like how to
like set up strategies for my character and my fighting game of choice.
My brain's like, that's a lot of work though.
I think maybe we'll go to bed.
I don't want to like focus on this.
And then can kind of zonk better.
So long answer is, or the short answer is Sam's Whole Answer.
Plus dim the cave prep time for the next day.
Gratitude, a little bit of Derby phone time on a schedule and a plus one for workout
earlier working out late at night is the thing that I love to do, but it comes at a cost.
So if you do that, be careful or you'll get old and tired like me.
As someone who's done workouts in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening, I
found what I do in the morning, it does make you feel pretty good.
uh Also susceptible to injury, because you haven't quite warmed up yet, haven't quite
gotten the bed full contact sport thing out of your body sometimes just yet, depends on
who you are.
uh And the evening can be great too.
uh It absolutely can be, uh but just doesn't work for my particular routine.
I like middle of the day just as much as I can if I can do it.
Thanks for the question, Daniel.
That was such a nice question.
You are more than welcome.
We don't want to ever sell you.
We're not selling you anything.
We're just like, here's what works.
Here's what has worked.
If your experience is different, let us know.
Go to our website, the zero dot podcast dot com or check us out on Patreon or check us out
on social.
Let us know your experience.
We can highlight that stuff, you know.
um I've we all are all trying different variations of our thesis of what a good life is.
And we're figuring out as we go.
Right.
That's been our show at Zero Dot.
Thanks for joining us for our Zero Dot moment.
We just want to leave you with the fact that sometimes the best things in life, they are
hard, but only the first step is the hardest part.
Once you break through that, everything else becomes a lot easier and it's definitely
worthwhile.
Until next time, I'm Sam, John, Daniel, take care.
Hello.
And for those that are listening, I'm waving.
For those that are listening, I'm levitating.
He is, really.
I'm not lying to you.
He really is levitating.
God, John, you're going to hit the ceiling.
Be careful.
WAH!