Red Scare - Crazy Autistic Asians w/ Tao Lin
Episode Date: November 19, 2023The ladies discuss autism, alt-lit, and more with novelist Tao Lin....
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For breakfast I had my door food from last night that Jordan and Nicletten I made.
It was, it was, wait I'm trying to talk like how I would talk.
Yeah.
I'm not sure what volume I want to talk at, maybe.
This is sounding good.
Okay.
This seems good, yeah. I'll be monitoring the bubble. Talking is sounding good. OK. This seems good.
I'll be monitoring the local.
Yeah, you're not.
But you're not wearing headphones.
No, we're not.
Just me because I was on the sound engineer.
Anna, what did you have a request?
Falk, I don't know.
It's a chocolate chip cookie.
What? I don't know. It's a chocolate chip cookie. Good. I had...
Oh my God, I did eat something weird.
I went to the cafeteria for U-Un delegates.
I went there and they have a hot bar.
And I got eggs and a like a praise salad.
That sounds disgusting.
It was all really gross.
I'm recording but I can stop and pause.
No, no, it's fine.
I, because I wanted to ask our special guest what he,
I thought it might be a good question for him,
what he had for breakfast.
He was just telling us, yeah.
Yeah, I had leftover food that Jordan and Nicolette
and I made food that I got for them for Jordan's birthday,
which was November 13th.
It was just steak.
I'm just steakin' on each side.
He was pretty discreet of me.
It's a just, yeah, humble, self-abnegating person
that inform anybody, so happy birthday, Jordan.
It was steak, you said?
Steak, steak, and onion, and cheese,
and some other stuff.
Yeah.
I made Jordan a Wikipedia page for his birthday.
That's really sweet.
We were working together in the library,
and he was like, I don't have a Wikipedia
page, I should have a good Wikipedia page.
And I have a Wikipedia account that I do stuff on so I made him one.
I felt really good.
Productive.
What kind of stuff do you do?
I should reintroduce.
Yeah.
Girls.
Hi, we're back.
We're back.
We have a very exciting guest, novelist, poet, writer, autism, advocate, nutritionist,
auto-fiction pioneer, needs no introduction, Talyn.
Welcome to RedScare.
Thank you.
This is my favorite podcast that I've been on.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
By far.
Don't get ahead of yourself.
Okay.
You got to wait until the end of the episode.
Yeah.
That's for voting.
Toulin's most recent novel is called Leave Society.
It came out a couple years ago and you wrote an article
this year about carrying your autism. Last year. Last year. And what kind of things do you do on
Wikipedia? Oh yeah. I added pages. I added which pages? Which topics? I've added Gloria Nailer's page.
which pages, which topics. I've added Gloria Nailer's page. She's this author who won the National Book Award with her first book and it was adapted into a TV
series by Oprah. And she's really respected. She's published like five novels.
And her last novel was about being gangstalked. Wow.
And there wasn't that much about that novel
on the Wikipedia page, so I added it.
Oh, you expanded it.
I just added it.
Do you know her personally?
No, no, she died.
Oh.
The gangstalking subreddit's a good read.
But one of those I'm subscribed to. I barely know what gang stalking is. It's been there's coordinated
Stalking attempt. How would you describe it? Yeah, it's online or I know I or I know I or I it's okay
like
Well a lot of the people on the gang stalking subreddit are
paranoid I would say some of
them skits a friend, probably even, and they think like if someone cuts them off in traffic,
that's like a coordinate attack.
It's a narcissistic disturbance, but some people I'm sure it happens to me.
A lot of online communities seem to have that in common.
That's true. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. Yeah, why? Hawaii and
About the gang stocking. It's really hard to dismiss Gloria Nailer
Will you two haven't read it and don't know anything about it. Yeah, I'm not doubting her account I'm just saying. Well, it's a novel. It's a fictional account
Or no, but she says it's it's it's clear that it's totally
Nonfiction if you read it. And the only fictional parts are just, she imagines how this is happening.
She gets into the head of an NSA person.
And she thinks it happens because she accidentally poised into neighbors' cat. And the neighbor's brother worked for the NSA.
Well, you know Freud would say there's no such thing as an accident, but...
Yeah.
That neighbor was delicious talk.
So when I started telling people that you were coming on the pod
Some of them were like whoa that guy's famous and some other people were like I
Could do what he does
Some a combination of both but I was like yeah, right You do it like that. Yeah, exactly, but But I think they're responding to the fact that based on my very recent and flimsy knowledge
of your work, I started reading Leaf Society.
I'm like a third of the way through and I read your autism essay.
You're a very evocative writer in spite or because of being very literal, which you've talked about and which you attribute to autism.
Yeah, yeah. You talked about, I forgot where, that you generally don't like and shy away from devices,
like metaphor or idioms or whatever.
Do you feel like that's like an autistic trait? Yeah, yeah. I feel like I have two styles. One of them is the one you're describing, it's really literal.
And it just describes concrete details and also like some thoughts and feelings. And that one's the one that everyone associates me with.
So they think I like write really simply.
But I also write in longer sentences
with a lot of metaphors and stuff.
Like I did in my book, Taipei.
But I feel like both of them are autistic literary styles.
Like with the long sentences, I'll use like really weird autistic similes.
And you write poetry as well, which is a pretty non-autistic form, I'd say.
Really?
I mean, in that it requires a kind of some degree of playfulness, I think, with language.
That you don't typically, well, I guess we have a lot of questions about autism.
Yeah.
In leaving society, you described somebody as no-mish.
Really?
Yeah.
And I just like, I like some of the...
That's what I'm saying. It's like non-replicable.
I like some of the word choice that no one else could come up with. But we do have a lot of questions about autism.
Have you ever been formally diagnosed as autistic? No. So you just suspect that youoticic? Yeah, yeah. I self-diagnosed.
And I've taken tests.
I'm skinned.
Like I took this test, pretending I was in high school or college, and I scored 39.
And above 31 indicates...
Oh, I've taken this test. Yeah. Yeah. And then you said you retook it from your perspective today and you scored
28. So when you say you were pretending that you were in high school or college, what does that mean? I just sat there thinking like
It's not there thinking like I'm in
What was it like when I was in
11th grade and like mm-hmm a freshman in college and I've written about it so much I feel like I can just
remember it and I just filled out the test okay and
The CDC's definition of it know that DSMM5 definition of it is just that you have deficits
in social interaction and communication and just anything social.
And then you also have repetitive behaviors.
And then a third thing that these things cause quote significant impairment
in your functioning. So it's just those three things. Okay. So it's not like if you go
to a doctor, there's no biological test or genetic test for it. Right. You mentioned
that unlike something like Down syndrome or other forms of retardation which can be localized to like a single chromosome or something. A lot of things like that.
You can they found like the exact gene or whatever but with autism they found
like 500 to a thousand different genes that are associated with it. And even
though they found that many they still think they just still feel it as genetic.
Right. And your point, like basically the TLDR from what I understand is that all these
modern chemicals and technologies are what's making us ill and the genetic explanation is kind of a scapegoat that
diverts away from the environmental factors. And to clarify, the genetic
explanation comes at the exclusion of all other explanations. Whereas if you
attribute some of it to environmental factors. You could say that certain genes or mutations
of genes are like triggered by things that we inhale or ingest or whatever experience.
And now that there's this like push for neurodiversity as like an identity category, you say also in your essay that like, they're sort of trying to destigmatize neurodivergency
and in that way also failing to do the research necessary
to actually attribute it to the certain
environmental or chemical causes that.
But first of all, autism gets turned around a lot.
Yes, it's very broadly applied.
Obviously, people are becoming more autistic clinically, Autism gets turned around a lot. Yes. It's very broadly applied.
Obviously, people are becoming more autistic clinically,
but I also feel like a lot of normative behaviors now
qualify sort of as, like, our times are becoming increasingly
autistic and everyone.
So everyone is sort of on the spectrum.
Do you think that, for instance,
being online makes you more autistic
or do autistic people gravitate toward being online?
Both of those.
I feel like it's not just environmental toxins,
but just literally everything,
like even how you're raised,
or your experiences. Like I feel like I had
something in ninth grade or at least upper-classmen stood in the distance and
made fun of my clothing and they were saying like look at me, things are so cool. I feel like I was wearing those clothes to be cool.
Yeah.
And I felt terrible and like that quieted me a lot.
Like around all these people who were hearing it.
Uh-huh.
Quieted, you may, meaning it like discouraged you.
Like, sure.
Lowered yourself aesteem, yeah.
Well, I wanted to ask you about the link
between autism and auto-fiction.
So in that essay, you're right,
well, normal kids behave unself-consciously,
autistic children observe themselves constantly,
wrote Asperger and autistic psychopathy and childhood.
They observe others too, they seem lost in their own worlds, but they knew what was happening around them.
In the social world, having used their peripheral vision, observed Asperger, whose paper also
focused on the positives of autism, including independence of thought, experience, and speech.
And my thought was, like, isn't this all people now?
Like, especially people who are of a sensitive or artistic disposition, not autistic,
hence the proclivity that we see coming up now for auto-fiction.
And you even went so far as to make an etymological link
where you said there's a connection between autobiographical self-expression
and autism or auto-ism from the Greek word auto meaning self or self-referential.
Pain and discomfort point inward toward themselves,
insisting that something be done.
Yeah, I feel like the increase in autism
must be connected to the increase in auto-fiction.
If there is an increase in auto-fiction,
I don't know if there has been,
but just it seems like autistic people.
Do you think Joan Didian was autistic?
Sorry, don't know.
Yeah.
A little, yeah.
Something was up with her.
She has also the style and clarity of like, yeah.
Yeah, and she's obsessed with trivia and minutia
and making connections between seemingly unrelated trivia and minutia.
She was like obsessed with water works because her dad was like a municipal god or something.
And I had this thought because I watched a documentary that her cousin or her nephew made
about her.
And you know, she has this reputation for being so like chic and stylish, but when you
actually watch her in motion and action, her mannerisms are like what you would describe
as like off-puttingly socially awkward.
Really, I've never seen her act or talk or anything that's really interesting.
I'd like to see that.
Yeah, nobody has, because she's like kind of behind the scenes journalist and then
also kind of like an it girl of literary world but when you actually... anyway. Yeah, when I started
writing that was the kind of writing that I saw it out, writing that showed people being autistic.
writing it and I saw it out, writing that showed people being autistic. When I found it, I would be like, just really happy, not really happy, just like, glad I would add it to like
my favorite writers. I found a lot of writers like that. Like Lydia Davis, her novel, the end
of the story. And not just people who are autistic but also depressed and lonely I
connected with like Lori Moore, Jean Reese, Joy Williams. I liked a lot of women
writers. That's interesting because I have a question about autism which there's
some common sort of perceptions about it, that it's also due to an
excess of testosterone, which is why most autists are male, and that it's, I've someone described it to me as
like being excessively male-brained, and thus lacking kind of the more
and thus lacking kind of the more feminine instincts
for like empathizing and like graciousness.
Sure, that's part of it, testosterone levels. I hadn't heard of it being too high though.
Or maybe low or some imbalance.
I feel like low probably.
Or free.
Cause there's a difference.
A lot of autistic are high T. Yeah, but there's like the probably. Or free. Because there's a difference between. A lot of autistic are high tea.
Yeah, but there's like the idea of like free testosterone
in your blood, which I don't fully follow or understand.
But I don't know, maybe that's a thread.
But maybe a lot of successful and well-known women
writers are of that like rare autistic ilk in females.
I should say.
But they're probably good writers because they have enough of like a,
a feminine, because all of those writers are pretty feminine.
And I think like Carson's one of my favorite female spurred writers also.
But I think like male and female autists also present differently, right?
Present differently. I know that males
Get it right our diagnosed four times as much. Mm-hmm. What do you mean by present differently?
Well, I've just I've read kind of theories and explainers that have talked about how female autists are harder to clock
Because they may just seem like shy or socially awkward, but they can more successfully mimic certain social cues
that we associate with being female in general,
like empathizing or connecting that sort of thing.
And there's just more pressure on women, I think, to conform socially.
And to just be more quiet and...
Yeah, males are...
That's renegade, yeah.
Mm-hmm, expected not to be autistic.
Males, I feel like.
Yeah, but I think if you're like an angry and introspective male genius, that's more attractive
than, say, being an angry and introspective female genius, in which case you're just like
Susan Salantag or Andrea Dwarf.
Weird.
You know, Camille Polly is probably on this spectrum, possibly.
And she's, but she's has, you know, she's actually, you could say she's extroverted.
And social, social, maybe she's not.
Maybe that's what, well, that's why I kind of wanted
to establish sort of a working definition.
You describe it very well in your essay
and in leave society as loneliness causing debilities,
which I think is very concise.
I liked what you were talking about earlier
about how you think everyone's on a spectrum.
That's what I think.
Like definitely now compared to our pre-agricultural ancestors,
everyone now is on the spectrum, I think,
because we're on all the spectrum.
Yeah, just to stick to a sidehuh. We're on all the spectrum. Yeah. Just. Oh, just like suicide. We're sorry. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. Yeah. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiend. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I'm fiendy. I George Catlin in the 1800s he visited two million Native Americans and South American
natives and he didn't meet one he called it idiot or lunatic quote lunatic out of two
million people and he said he heard of three or four but now out of two million people and he said he heard of three or four, but now out of two million people,
fifty thousanders gets a frantic.
Okay, that's hot.
That's insane.
That's insane.
Yeah.
Well, I want to go back to Catlin because I actually found one of his books, like a used
bookstore upstate, and he painted a lot of these Native Americans. So he created
like an anthropological study of the various different tribes, which is amazing. But before I
get to that, I wanted to ask you about this quote from your essay, where, if I can find it,
the United States, which is of 2011, had the highest first day in infant death
rate in the industrialized world, might succumb to autism becoming a cautionary example for
other countries. The autism rate here has doubled on average of every five years since 1970
at this rate. The majority of American boys will be autistic by 2036 and by around 2045
most children here will be non-verbal. Are you being
sarcastic or facetious or do you think that's actually true?
The non-verbal thing, I calculated it. A lot of times, I calculated it. Yeah, it's true.
I mean, I buy it. Yeah, I said it's like on pace to do that.
Mm-hmm.
And last, well, is there any, there's no way to remedy it?
And there is still.
The lonely causing debilities are environment, yeah.
And you like dispute the account that maybe the reason
that autism rates have skyrocketed is because of expanded awareness, which would lead to more frequent misdiagnoses,
and you actually, in the essay, which everyone should read, you go into why that's
probably not the case. But Catlin, you mentioned when he was in the field, like
embedded with the Native Americans, often came across the
theory that the reason that there were less like deaf, dumb, and mute, and insane
people in their population is because they like called, like, killed off the
people-minded ones at birth. Yeah, and you say you say that's actually not the case.
And he, in fact, discovered that when those rare instances
did occur, those people were treated with dignity
and almost elevated to the level of deities
because they were considered to be
a special sign from God.
Because they were so rare.
And I'm sure they did function that way,
as special things that would just,
they would have a different perspective than anyone else.
And they would figure out a way to use that to benefit the tribe, Catlin said.
Yeah, so that's not true.
And 50,000 are schizophrenic.
And like, I think it's 30,000 are severely autistic out of 2 million now.
Severely meaning like, meaning like, like they're...
Because there's also a degree of autism where it's yeah and when we talk about
autism we may not be able to talk about like spurs like people who we encounter in our day-to-day lives who are like a little bit
off or odd but my boyfriend's a guy would you know run me to play a guy gonna be an overman to relate to it. But not like somebody in a straight jacket and a helmet. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's that is that's severe autism, a helmet and like not.
30,000.
Nonverbal, 30,000 per two million.
So there's probably around a million of them.
And these people get focused on the least, I feel like.
Because if you focus on these people,
the genetic theory totally falls apart.
These people don't reproduce,
how would they have existed millions of years ago
and they harm themselves and they end marriages
and it's horrible to have kids.
And it's counter reproductive.
But yeah, they're multiplying.
So these people rarely get seen.
So what you're saying basically is our society will be a population of extreme autists administered
by people on the spectrum who are like more or less functioned.
Yeah, yeah.
And that could be good.
That's kind of beautiful.
Yeah.
It is well, because you end this essay
on a very beautiful and hopeful note.
The more autistic among us, the more injured
and excluded by civilization blessed
and cursed with reclusion and mental independence
bent toward accuracy and numbers and language
would lead society in the gradual rewarding work of healing. Do you feel like it's going to be the functionally autistic who
rescue and heal or are broken in civilization? I think so, yeah. Yeah, they're more motivated
because they're damaged themselves because autistic people also suffer from physical ailments
at much higher levels, which makes sense with the environmental talks and theory,
because if their brain is getting damaged
or their whole body probably is too.
Yeah, and I would probably also say that like,
a lowered quality of life, like mentally speaking,
also exacerbates physical stress and ailment, yeah.
And like loneliness and isolation, also,
excessive things, like not having human contact,
basically causes like inflammation.
That's probably the worst thing,
one of the worst, the loneliness.
Because autistic people have deficits
and social interaction, and that's the thing
where you get less loneliness.
And when people think of autists, interaction and that's the thing where you get less loneliness.
And when people think of autists, they think a of socially awkward people and b of people
who are geniuses, but a lot of autistic people
actually have pretty limited mental capacity.
There's some middleing.
Yeah, there's like, it's like 30% have IQs lower than 70.
They're retarded.
Wow.
That's like us for real.
In the average lifespan of autistic people is only 36.2 years.
Wow.
I'm saying, do you know what like the leading cause of death is for the extremely autistic?
I think it's, I think it's in very, very suffocation or drowning or something like that.
Yeah.
Well.
Yeah, I just read the paper for this again, I it's hard to believe because that means it takes
Like 35 years off your lifespan. Yeah, and people talk about how like whatever thing takes like 10 years off your lifespan
and you're selected against
for
Reproduction as well
So you die. Well, yeah, I have a question about autism and I mean you don't have to answer but how is your
how's your love life? It's about autism.
Because I have a lot of autists in my life have been in relationships with people.
You and Suffangate.
It's a fact that my relationship is definitely significant.
On this fact, John, I was thinking about why. I think I scored like, in 12.
I identify basically as very non-autistic
in a way that also hinders me.
Because everybody is autistic now.
Exactly.
Because I'm in a disadvantage. But I'm like overly porous and emotional, I feel, at times.
But so I think I'm drawn to autistic people because I think they are also very emotional,
but suffer from these debilities.
And so I find it incredibly like tender and attractive
when someone is struggling to connect.
Yeah, I think they have all the same traumas and pains
and sensitivities that everybody else does,
but they have an inability to express them
as one would normally do.
But increasingly, I don't even know what that looks like anymore,
because also if there's more autistic people and they're all kind of colliding against each other,
socialization looks a lot different. It's not like the kind of classic stereotype of being the one
weird maljusted freak who has to go into a room full of popular kids, because now you're going into
a room of other weird mal male-justed freaks.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I didn't answer your question though.
I was in a five-year relationship and it ended a year and a half ago.
And I've just been... I've just been working on myself and working on my book, a book.
It expands on this autism essay into a book.
A non-fiction book?
Mm-hmm.
How interesting.
Been working on that and taking care of my cats.
One of my cats is autistic.
How so?
A lot of autistic compared to the other one. He's really...
He moves really slow and he doesn't touch you. Like the other cats will rub against me a lot.
This one doesn't and he has... he throws up a lot.
He has a weak he got.
Probably yeah and he's picky with food sometimes and he doesn't jump that high.
He's really scared.
How many cats do you have?
I had three but one ran away.
So just two.
Autistic.
Autistic, boyfriends. What do you find difficult with? Have you dated people who aren't autistic?
Don't sub-clinically autistic. Yeah, I have. Not for a while. Adam Friedland's not on to say no, no he's very extroverted and like outgoing. I have in those
we're challenging in different ways.
But I do find... yeah it's hard, it's difficult.
Yeah I've been in six long-term relationships, but I feel like I'm getting
better with not autistic. No, no, I said that's very not autistic of you. Well, not for
like, I don't know, maybe it is. To be a serial man, agamist. Sometimes people pair up or have you know women in
their lives who want to rescue who want to fix that and like drop food in their
mouths like a wet baby bird. Do you know what? No go ahead. Are your GFs non-autistic?
Generally speaking, I think they're not as autistic as me.
Maybe one of them was
Someone's got to be the more autistic. I know I was just thinking that I've never dated an autistic I'm sure they're the autistic one.
I feel like I'm getting worse. More autistic. More autistic. In part because I had never lived
alone until a couple of years ago. I'd always have roommates or like, go habitated with
someone. And when I started living by myself, I feel like it made me more esoteric and unbearable.
Well, I think that that's like the whole...
Now it's harder for me to pair bond.
Yeah, but that's the whole thing now.
Like I think more and more people are just on their own period,
which makes everybody more autistic.
Because you start to like overthink things and live inside your own head.
And that's probably why in Aboriginal societies in addition to, because the real sort of point
of the essay is how you were able to remedy some of the symptoms through returning to basically exiring, like an ancestral diet and taking kind of health measures.
Just taking all kinds of health measures and one thing that helped too was my pharmaceutical drug addiction
and my writing career because they just put me in a lot of situations where
And my writing career because they just put me in a lot of situations where I
Would be talking or giving readings like I've given like probably like a thousand a few hundred readings
Yeah, and done all these interviews and that helped a lot with autism
Yeah, I mean there one of the more touching passages of that essay was when you talked about
How you work a
Introverted and sickly child
You said you never really saw your face as a tool of self-expression and
Viewed it more as like a a locus of self-conscious discomfort
but then when you Went to college and started your blog,
that brought you into contact with people.
And my thought there was that how much of autism
is also just being an intellectual,
introspective person whose bulk rejects the people
that you're forced to interact with outside of your control
when you're a dependent,
like a classroom setting,
and you gain some control and confidence
over your circumstances when you become independent
and can literally select who you socialize
through artistic and or online communities.
I think that that's how we all came into our own.
I would guess that we all have a very similar experience
of growing up and being
kind of like weird, isolated immigrant children.
Well, we do have that in common. I mean, I really, to the self-medicating, I think, in whatever
ways I could code for autistic, I remedied not through organ meats,
but through pills and with alcohol.
Have you tried organ meat?
I've seen you put photos of brain.
How did you get that?
In Paris, at this place, Clown bar,
they have like a Ville brain dish that's exotic,
but not very good. But I like liver and stuff. I do,
but I'm unhealthy due to other like issues with executive function that I have.
I wanted to ask you to how you changed away from being a liberal each of you.
Getting older and making more money for me.
Nothing will make you conservative, like, having something to lose.
Yeah, I think.
But I still am. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm not a liberal.
I don't. I don't on one hand. I don't say I'm not a liberal actually. Yeah, I don't, on one hand, I don't think I'm a liberal.
I'm definitely not a concern for a liberal, but on the other hand, I still am a liberal in many ways.
Yeah, and it makes sense. That's what I'll say about myself, too.
Yeah, how do you identify politically?
I don't think I've ever identified with any party.
Yeah.
For sure.
And also, I think it's very hard to be an artist and be a conservative.
Hmm.
Really?
Like a true conservative.
Yes, not like a right-wing person, but an actual like kind of old classic style conservative.
Interesting.
Because I mean their world view or like philosophy of life, it's not the problem isn't so much
that it's like reactionary or right-wing, but that it's very literal and canned, and they see degeneracy and immorality everywhere,
and it's very hard to make art from that place,
because you have to be more like,
more like, agnostic in order to be creative.
Or not even, you can't like,
shoehorn your immorality into your work.
And that way it's hard to have any strong ideology.
For me, I feel like I don't really have politics.
I just don't want to be hindered creatively.
And that's sort of the driving, you know, animus behind how I orient myself in the world.
If you're not with me or against me.
I don't like feeling lie to or manipulated, so my position is not like a liberal or conservative
one. It's like the position that I feel personally is on the side of truth or my truth or whatever.
Yeah, that makes sense. But that's like, I think most people who have or try to have like a mind of their own. Do you have a strong feeling about the truth?
Yeah, I'm just for looking for the truth.
Yeah, and you wrote that whole essay about...
Well, you wrote a whole book about psychedelics.
Is that connected to your...
To the truth?
To your life's quest, yeah?
For truth? to your to your life's class, yeah, for truth.
Some what yeah, yeah, for truth about like metaphysical things,
but a lot of the time I'm thinking about like the truth about
9, 11 or something.
Because there's this idea that like things are so complicated that there's no truth.
And I feel like that stops people
from investigating things.
I think that's another classic scape quote,
like saying autism is purely genetic.
I think it's meant to like,
the idea of there's no trial and see from that question.
Palmo idea, with that eye sort of do subscribe to a bed.
But that's it's also very artistic to believe in a kind of no
literally leaves and start digging in the details like the the bigger picture loses
its shape and you start to panic because what's that ex what does that expression the forest for the three years ever yeah the forest through the trees
would you say that the truth is in the minutiae of things I feel like I'm
just thinking about the truth of like if you stopped time like every atom would be somewhere.
Yes, it would be living its own truth. Like I guess the danger of seeing
everything from the bigger picture is that then you do become too like literal
and deterministic, but... Yeah, I feel like when I'm looking for truth, I just find like
details
like tons of details and some are more credible than others and I'm always just
Building and changing my model of everything and it's always changing
Depending on like what I just read because I'll forget like a lot of stuff. Uh-huh. So my
few on things is just always changing. But Dasha, you mentioned being alone and getting in the esoteric stuff, isolating.
I feel like that's isolated me.
Like just learning about say vaccines
Just finding out vaccines aren't as good as everyone thinks
Of course, yeah, because those vaccines
Really depend on a kind of social consensus, right that we're all gonna be like of course We are doing you know, we're doing it for the greater good and that's why you're looking into the details so much.
It's like a belief in science, right?
And I think the way they get you there is when you start really digging into that kind
of stuff, it is not only officially but socially censured because you are made to feel like a
weird tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist and therefore like lame and uncool and
socially unacceptable nobody wants that's penicillating.
We spoke about this before, actually.
I have.
Me and you.
I think you asked me because about working in the entertainment industry.
And when they were rolling out the COVID vaccines, there was a totally like homogenous
culture wherever all of my colleagues were just being like, which vaccine are you going to get?
And like, why haven't you done it yet? And you're like sweating because you don't want to get
into it, but you even even have and I don't even
know the facts.
I just have like doubts.
Yeah.
Any natural misgiving that you may have is is build as like anti-surgical.
Anti-surgical.
Mm-hmm.
Like merely for asking questions, but as you mentioned, the autistic have a powerful upper hand in grappling
with these issues because they're less socially conformist. And they can know so many facts.
And they've learned to get satisfaction out of other things besides social approval because they had to. But one thing that is interesting is that
Trump has tweeted like 30 times
about the connection between vaccines and autism.
Uh huh.
Which just made me trust and admire him a lot.
Like why would you say something that's gonna alienate
like almost everyone?
Right.
And keep saying it.
And just from my research on it, it seems true.
Well, what did you find in three or research?
Have you read the real Dr. Fauci by RFK Jr.?
No.
It seems amazing.
It seems like your beat.
It seems very well researched and very thin margins.
It's like jam packed with information.
It's amazing.
He can write books like that.
Well, that's why I also kind of trust RFK Jr.
It's because he's been a very vocal
vaccine truth arm for a long time,
which has like certainly done him no favors and the government killed his entire family.
Mm hmm. Well, what's your take on vaccines?
Because you also mentioned how like, I don't remember when in like 1940 or 1950, there were like three pediatric vaccines that children in America got. and now there are 38, which seems alarming. And we're like one of the more unhealthy countries
and we're at the forefront of handing out pediatric vaccines,
whereas some countries you mentioned
that are considered healthier, like Israel, Japan,
Sweden, Iceland are fairly low on the childhood vaccinations.
are fairly low on childhood vaccinations. People don't talk about this that much.
The US has three times the amount of mandatory vaccines
than the average developed country in Europe and Asia.
And when I was in 1983 when I was born, that meant I got like 10 vaccines.
Right.
So, in the US, it's a way bigger problem than other countries and the autism rates are higher.
Is the US the country with the highest childhood autism rates?
I don't know.
There might be some small countries somewhere but
but probably near the top and also our vaccines the whole story because
presumably the healthier countries that regulate the vaccines are also
regulating other aspects of public health more than we do in the United States. Mm-hmm, that's it.
Yeah, I feel like it's not just a vaccine.
I would say the vaccines might be like 30% or something.
But I guess my question to you, like from your research, is how big of a problem are vaccines?
Sorry.
They don't want me to run my mouth. We're being gang-soaked in silence.
I wouldn't be surprised. Like Gloria Nailer, every day like 50 cars would drive by her house
honking. Yeah. And you want the rest of your girls to speak their true way to you.
But I wanted to say something about that.
What were you just saying?
You were just saying something.
Well, how big of a problem are vaccines?
Because for instance, I have a reputation for being like a rabbit anti-vaxxer.
And I'm really not like I got my kid all the normal like standard pediatric vaccines.
For like practical reasons because they can't continue on in school if they don't I got my kid all the normal, like standard pediatric vaccines.
For like practical reasons, because they can't continue on in school if they don't have them.
And you're literally just shut out from society
and have to become like a tradd cap,
homestead or homeschooler,
if you want to like,
it's a limited average,
you don't try.
Like a thatch hut.
Well, the more I look into it, the worse it seems. And I stopped myself from looking into it too much.
Like, I've got this really thick book, dissolving illusions, that talks about how sanitation and
other things like that were what lowered the infectious disease rates, not vaccines, but I haven't read it.
But it just, I don't know how bad it is. It could be with way worse than what I already think.
But I used to eat dirt and bark and stuff. Yeah, and I think that made me robust.
Yeah, that seems healthy.
Yeah, I would eat ants and dirt and like, we eat.
That's something I call myself when I let the kid run free
in the streets of New York.
That's good.
No, he's building up a strong immune system.
Yeah, but if I had a kid.
Go ahead, put that in your mouth.
If I had a kid, I feel like I'd be fine with them
getting like 10 vaccines. Right. Just because it's like and I just make them
healthy in other ways and they they should be fine. But I wouldn't let them get
like 30 vaccines. But do you believe that there is a definite connection between autism and vaccines?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I feel like I can picture a glyphosate molecule like being breathed in or eaten
or injected and it going into the stomach and binding with aluminum molecules and
going into the blood and going into the brain. And then in the brain, the glyphosate in
the aluminum separates. And they're both toxic. Okay. I didn't just make this up. It's this
and they're both toxic. Okay.
I didn't just make this up.
It's this researcher,
this MIT researcher Stephanie Senef,
she's researches this a lot.
So glyphosate is in vaccines,
this nonprofit organization,
moms across America found out
when they sent vaccines to a lab,
and Stephanie Senef in another researcher confirmed this and publish a paper on it.
Okay.
And it's in vaccines because vaccines contain soey sucrose, egg protein and a lot of other things that are contaminated with glyphosate. For example, in this soy, it just, since they don't use organic soy,
they just use the cheapest soy for it.
It's filled with glyphosate.
And also the gelatin in vaccines comes from cow and pig hooves.
That's contaminated with glyphosate
because the cow's and pigs get fed.
Yeah, and they're like factory farm animals.
Oh, yes.
Today on Twitter there was like a factory farming discourse.
That was a whole video on Greenwald of course, like an awful video, yeah, like of a pig in like a pig's sad eye.
It's like humanoid bear bearing the pain of the world.
And there has been some research. I mean glyphosate rate is the compound that's found in roundup.
Yeah.
In what?
In roundup, which is, it's like a big chemical pesticide that was used after DDT. Is that what it's
called was banned?
Tao talks about this in his essay.
And that's been attributed to increasing the rates
of all sorts of diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's,
et cetera.
I've talked about this before, Eli's dad, my baby daddy,
his father died at age 49 of a now curable cancer
died at age 49 of a now curable cancer non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was spraying on his property and it was a totally avoidable preventable thing that there was
like a class action lawsuit that a bunch of families were involved in. I mean
like really horrible like dark evil capitalist cabal stuff because of course it's companies like Monsanto who are
not only shutting down all like the dissident papers and research but also
paying lobbyists and journalists to go on TV and write op-eds on their behalf.
Yeah and it seems like they've succeeded big time. Yeah. One of the books you talk about in
your essay is called Nursing Tradition written by Sally Fallon, who's part of the Westin
A Price Foundation. I've also read that book. She's a therapeutic proponent of like organ needs.
They share a lot with, I wanted to ask you your thoughts on rapete because while there
is a lot of overlap, they are sort of a beef between them and the rapete people specifically
having to do with fish oil.
Because rapeteers say that the fish oil is rancid and when I heard
that I was like it felt true like I
was like of course how could I wouldn't
it be rancid I know I was horrible for
me it sucks when you're like doing
something that you think is healthy
I used to eat kale all the time and I
was like dying and every day I'd
force myself to like choke down a
bunch of kale and I lived in LA because I thought I was like dying and every day I had forced myself to like choke down a bunch of kale.
And I lived in LA because I thought I was like, God, I eat the right things for my body.
And now I'm finding out I was eating totally the wrong things.
But I have a kind of quirky idea about nutrition, which is that I eat McDonald's a lot
And I make that McDonald's is actually healthy for me. I'm not saying you know people should be eating McDonald's
But because it makes me happy to eat it like a child
It Reduces stress which reduces inflammation and which, if I feel good when I'm eating it,
it can't be that.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I can see that helping a lot.
Well, they're good.
It's a good thing.
Yeah, if it makes you happy, it calms you down.
If you have to, like, we've talked about this too,
because somebody published, like, a long thread on Twitter
that was like, OK, McDonald's is not the healthiest thing,
but it's actually healthier than a lot of the supposedly healthy foods you're
ingesting because it does have like a lot of animal fats and proteins and stuff. It's definitely
edible. Yeah. I used to eat a lot of almonds and turmeric and spinach and a lot of things that I found
out last year to contain a lot of plant anti nutrients.
What is that?
Defense chemicals.
Mm-hmm.
There are these chemicals plants make so that animals don't eat them and that a lot of
these are harmful like oxalates and I feel like that was giving me headaches a lot.
And eczema.
I used to have a eczema.
Just my crotch would be itchy.
Yeah.
A lot.
Because of the food I ate.
For sure.
The skin issues are, I have a suffer from acne and...
Uh-huh.
I've had, I don't know if it was eggs in my butt,
not for a long time actually.
Every time we get closer to the truth,
there's some loud noise outside.
I know.
But where do you come down on fish oil?
You take it.
Does rapeseed say like a certain kind of fish oil?
He says it's all bad.
Well, there's two things.
And the cod liver oil.
It's rancid by the time it gets to you,
but also it like oxidizes in your system.
That's his theory.
But then you look at the example of like Asian countries,
they basically eat rice and fish.
Those are the staples of like
your typical Asian diet and they're some of the healthiest and long-lived people
so it's hard to say what's up. But they're not eating the isolated oil. Right. Yeah.
I've been I've been taking this fermented fish oil in the corn.
So it is, Rancid.
Well, Peter's also hate fermentation.
They're not into like kimchi or grout or anything.
I think that is so bad for her.
That's something that instinctively feels wrong to me.
Of course, kimchi's good for you.
I trust Pete.
I've only read one newsletter by him.
Someone sent me it.
It was about autism and he seemed really informed on autism
and I agreed with him, but I haven't read all their stuff.
But the fish oil, I've been taking fermented fish oil
and they say it's not rancid.
But in, but in, okay.
I guess there's a fermentation in itself, what kind of?
Yeah, I write, or they say it is.
But I guess there's a big difference between like taking fish oil and capsule form versus
like actually eating the fish and getting it in a completely oil, whatever.
That's the way better.
I have a kind of dark race science question for you.
Wait, once I can, could I,
yeah, go ahead, go.
Insert official oil.
Yeah.
Is there a brand?
Can you say, you don't want to?
I want to say bad things about it.
Should I say, okay, no, no, don't do this.
There's only one fermented one,
but in like 2018,
and the West and the price foundation promotes this fish oil Okay, every other one and one of their board members
Sent the fish oil to labs and it came back saying it was really rancid
And then it was like not the right kind of fit that they advertised. And
then it had really low vitamin levels. And I read, I read probably like a hundred pages
of people talking about this. And I can't figure out like who to believe. Yeah.
Meaning. My dermatologist told me to take a for sure. That's helped. I haven't taken
my skin looks amazing. Thank you. I feel like just eating whole liver, whole
organs will probably be safer. But also we're on
track. Have you fucked with track? Track?
Tretenoing. Tretenoing. Tretenoin. I've never heard of that.
It's a topical vitamin A cream that you apply to preserve your youth.
But it's not a health thing.
How did you hear about other interesting traditions? Um, I had a kind of spur
EX boyfriend who recommended it to me
and this was around the time like the
raw milk. I used to really try to
drink raw milk and like, I really was
trying to kind of eat in this
right wing health way.
But it really just stressed me out and didn't
make I didn't I was taking tons of supplements now I basically don't take any and eat McDonald's
and take benzos and I feel better than I have.
Well because you're not stressing. Because I'm being so.
Literally that's like the number one determining factor.
Yeah, and instead I was like, oh my god, I gotta go because um,
Romail is actually legal in New York.
Yeah, so it's actually stressful to procure a wrong guy.
I'm committing a felony by meeting up with these Amish people who are
calling me this milk.
These Amish girls who could go to federal prison for
Giving me this milk I don't even like and then I'd be like chugging
How did I I mean I don't know it was just it was okay
But now I drink muscle milk
Wait, isn't it aren't dairy products in in flammatory?
So if they're pasteurized, I feel like, yeah, but not if they're if they're
unpasteurized and they're good.
They should be.
Okay.
I have to let my raw milk ferment for like, well, 24 hours.
If I drink, I'd leave it out in the sun.
Yeah, in the kitchen, I just leave it there.
And then you drink it.
If I drink it just without doing that,
I get really gassy and sometimes diarrhea.
Mm-hmm, interesting.
Well, you know the thing, one thing that blew my mind
was that I found out that like people in France
don't refrigerate their eggs. They just leave them out because they have different
standards or whatever. We're chickens for sure. I stopped freezing,
or I'm not freezing, but putting my eggs in. Because of that, and it's been fine.
Okay, here's my dark race science question. We live in a time where you can't acknowledge
that race and ethnicity are real, but don't certain people from certain groups benefit from different diets.
Like I feel like a lot of the people I know who have chronic digestive issues are Jewish or Jewish.
And seeking immortality, you know, but they're literally immigrants or children of immigrants who come from different farfungs parts of the world and don't do well with your typical American
diet.
And then you have to pack a lunch to school, you get mocked and humiliated by your classmates.
So true.
Which makes you more autistic.
Yeah, I'm sure my Asianianness contributed to some degree too.
There were only probably one in 25, eight, 20 in asians.
Where did you go to school?
In Orlando, around Orlando, Florida.
Okay.
Which is probably like the hell mouth of the standard American diet.
Yeah.
I'd say that's like everywhere though.
But were you raised eating ethnic food?
I guess they weren't ethnic free.
I did.
Probably half my diet was my mom.
She cooked a lot of meat and like Taiwanese Chinese stuff that was really healthy for me.
I'm grateful for that.
Were you breastfed?
Were you breastfed?
No.
Yeah, they're interesting.
A lot of it.
I was at breastfed either.
That's a big factor, I feel like.
I was but only for six months, which they tell you is enough, but I don't think so.
I think the longer you can go.
And then I probably until the child is seven to ten years old.
Yeah, there's askeolose breastfeed for up to like six years.
In Aboriginal groups, all breastfeed for like at least two years.
Right. I think like two is probably the sweet spot.
So you really subscribe to the Aboriginal model.
It just makes sense because they were really healthy
and they're adapted over millions of years
to their environment, and then the environment has changed.
With agriculture.
Right, that's the pre-agricultural communities, you mean?
Mm-hmm.
Change from then to agriculture, yeah, yeah.
So this seems to be a problem of just, like, modern humans not being adept.
Oh my god.
Damn.
Does that not happen usually?
No, it does.
It's a very noisy street.
But today it feels particularly fraught.
Because you're heightening aroids as a little bit.
It's all more sensitive to sounds.
We, Eric, modern humans are not that different from ancient humans,
fundamentally, and therefore they're not adapted to, like, the rapid fire pace of technological change.
Like,
advent of poison is found, poison is chemicals, yeah.
Which would make anybody more autistic. of poison is found, poison is chemicals. Yeah.
Which would make anybody more autistic.
So it is, I mean, I think the the aborigines, the savages were correct in a way.
As like Catlin says in that they do view any sort of like
aberration or defect as a sign from God, possibly that something's going horribly wrong.
Or as he said that, yeah, that they have, when it's a rarefied thing, they are able to
have this perspective that can assimilate better into a culture versus everyone being
mentally and people might And if they're just like slightly autistic, they could become a shaman
Because in aboriginal societies, people with some mental disorder who are sickly can go to a shaman and they'll give them
psychedelics or something else
and then after they heal themselves
they become a shaman themselves sometimes.
Yeah, that's how I feel when I see
raving vagrants on the street
they're like shaman, they're misallocated
in the modern world
but they're forced to like
beg for alms when they could really be healing other people
That book I got you the mole people
It's from your tweet cuz your tweet. Yeah, your tweet was about like
Do does anyone ever feel like moving on a ground?
And it reminded me of that book. I'd forgotten it.
I read it in college.
And it really struck me.
The girl that wrote it was super pretty.
Yes, interesting.
It sounds like a 90s song.
She's attractive.
It's from the 90s.
Jennifer Toth, the mole people life in the tunnels
beneath New York City, Tau very kindly brought me this book
based on the tweet I had some months
back about how like if there should be like a major catastrophe, I could see myself living
in the tunnels underneath New York City.
Many people have.
They talk about how there were 5,000 people in 1990s, three or something.
There was a documentary about there so many more.
And they had no, no, not anymore because it became so policed and regulated.
And they really got them out of there.
But there was entire flourishing communities of tunnel people living in like makeshift
homes.
I mean, like, aborigines.
Yeah, exactly.
And like, as much as I get blackpilled into solution
about humanity, sometimes, humans are capable of great
ingenuity, and we just like build civilization anywhere
like in prison.
I agree with that. It's amazing.
Like, parallel civilizations. I believe in an aboriginal practice
that I've espoused on this show before, which is menstrual seclusion. I think historically
women were not ostracized. What's the word for ostracized? That's
has positive connotations. They didn't have to participate in society when they were secluded.
Yeah, they had, you know, that women's hormones were more, now that hormones were a bigger part of life that were given the space to like exist.
And now women have to like go to work and go to poetry or eat it.
When they should be like in a high.
And then there's birth control at that.
That's well, yeah
Which is awful. What's your take on birth control?
Net negative or net positive
That neutral. That's an option too. I know it's really unhealthy. Mm-hmm. Super healthy. I read this book called
The Garden of fertility that talks about how bad they are.
She promotes just being aware of your cycle and knowing when you can get pregnant or not.
And she talks about how certain Christian groups, I think, teach this, but like, barely.
Natural family planning.
But it's not that not that many people do it.
But Dalsh, you were saying that Catholics frowned upon us too.
No, it's technically sanctioned by, like, John Paul II.
Because it is a big proponent of it, but it is the oldest form of birth control
which is still technically sinful and you can't like trick God by doing math, but realistically it's just
you'd be imprudent not to which is also a low grade sin. So I had my doubts before you got here, whether you were actually autistic or not, but now
I believe you are because your notes are in tiny print.
Yeah, that's a sign.
Yeah, that's like a dead giveaway.
That's good.
I like being a little autistic. They used to be. They used to little Tested. It's a clinically autistic and you used to be more so you're yeah, I'm a little less autistic
I was gonna get you a book to Dasha. That's okay, but no, I ordered it
I ordered you a book, but I didn't get it here in time. What is that? It's yeah, I'll send it
It's called surviving evil and it's by Karen Wetmore. She's a survivor of MK Ultra
Yeah, and she
Figured this out in her 60s when her therapist told her to write a narrative of her life and she started researching and she found out when she was 18
she started researching and she found out when she was 18, she was captain isolation for like eight months, like often naked and strapped to the bed or something and they gave her a lot of different
drugs. And that continued for like 20 years in and out of hospitals and stuff.
I read a really scary PDF recently that I don't give too much
credence to in my recollection though my memories bad but it was about how the
gate program, the gifted and talented education that children get tracked
into, it was a form of like, I'm killed. And that I in, but I don't have any sinister memories of it.
I just remember like leaving once a week and getting to like read more advanced books.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I have that same memory, but like we mainly learned about American Indians.
Mm-hmm.
And sacred, sacred knowledge, everybody knows it.
But it actually made me feel in retrospect more autistic because I felt excluded from like
the normal
population of school kids. And also I had that same experience that you relay in the autism essay
where you talk about being placed in an ESL program.
Yeah, I think when I was in first or second grade.
Yeah, me too.
And do you have any resentment or bitterness about that?
I kind of low-key do because I remember that while I was like...
Good, I speak English.
Yeah, I'm just shy.
And I was placed in my class was not only English as a second language, children, but
also literal retarded and feeble-minded kids,
and also kids with lists and stutters.
I still have a list and a stutter.
But at the same time as we were doing that,
the other kids were learning how to use computers.
So I was jealous.
Of course.
I see him.
You only went once a week to this.
I don't remember by assuming probably whatever the standard in America was.
Yeah.
So the gate program is for the whole America.
Hmm.
It might have been a, like a part of my, not just my school district,
but like the time that I was in elementary school,
maybe on the west coast, maybe it was maybe regional,
but I know other people have had experiences
with it around my age,
but I think they phased it out
because it was seen as like discriminatory.
I had it too, I was in it.
Yeah.
I just didn't know it was called that.
In my district, it was called gay.
Yeah, I haven't seen it was called that in my district. It was called gay. Yeah, I haven't
seen it. Yeah. Wait, how why were you placed in ESL program? Because you were born in the
United States. I don't know. I didn't start speaking English to all three. I must have
been really quiet. I don't know. But you spoke Chinese? Well, I have a question actually, the pertaining to that,
the way that you dialogue or not, the way that we
dialogue with his parents in leave society,
though this is the case in many of your books,
but it occurred to me in revisiting it
that Chinese is kind of an
autistic language.
Yeah, yeah.
And you speak to them in Chinese, I assume.
Mm-hmm.
Well, some words in English, yeah.
But so that the dialogue in Leave Society is also translated, and I think it's like, well,
also because you're writing it,
there's like a literalness.
But my impression of Chinese in general also is that it's very,
Russian, it's not the case with Russians,
a very like kind of complicated and baroque and kind of,
yeah, it has many, like, yeah, like,
yeah, Chinese is really,
it's a very emotional language with Chinese yeah sorry
yeah Chinese is really terse like it'll often be less words in Chinese and I think Chinese people
in America come off as very terse and autistic coded I send my child to Chinese daycare and he does half the day in Chinese.
So he speaks some Chinese now. Cool.
Very cute.
That's really good.
Yeah.
And East Asian, seem more autistic, just overall.
When I go to Taiwan, everyone seems autistic.
Like they say, a lot as a response.
And you said that they smile when they're placed
in an uncomfortable or unflattering social situation,
which comes off weird to Westerners,
because why are you laughing?
And I kind of do that.
Yeah, and I feel like they're pretty quiet. They're like at big dinners with family like 12
people like often it will be silent. People will just be eating. I see that all the time around here.
Oh really? The restaurants. Yeah, but that that then also becomes like a chicken or the egg problem because
to people determine a language or does the language determine the people, like the language
that you speak really does shape you as a person. Yeah, I think it does shape a person. When I talk
to my parents, I feel limited. Right. You, sorry, go ahead.
Just because I don't know all the words.
And it feels uncomfortable sometimes to use a new English word with them.
But you mentioned that the language that you speak with your parents is basically like
a hybrid, English Chinese, even though they both speak English comfortably and you could
just speak English to them.
But you have this like third secret language that you, which is what I do with my mom, right?
I speak to her in like mostly Russian, but with English words interspersed because I don't
know the Russian words.
So it's easier that way.
But it feels like artificial and awkward to only speak English with them.
Yeah, yeah.
It would feel insane to speak English to my parents,
but yeah, I'm mentally like,
generously maybe like a third grader.
Realistically, my vocabulary is super limited,
so I feel very stunted like you're describing,
and there's just like a chasm,
especially emotionally, because I can't.
I don't know the the Russian word for like
depressed. So I can't tell them how I am.
Yeah, like I don't know the word for lonely. So I just say like bad.
Yeah.
Do you know not know the word for lonely in Chinese?
No, I don't think so.
That's interesting.
I wanted to ask you too about my dad,
a problem with my dad.
Right.
He's really in debt.
He said, my mom says he's $1.5 million in debt.
You're really going to ruin him out.
Yeah. But that really tearing him out.
But that's not the problem.
That's not the problem.
The problem is he keeps getting scammed.
And he spends all his time now going out trying to borrow money from like CD places.
And he's such cases.
And he's fallen victim to the scam where
Someone tells him like they'll give him a ten million dollar loan and then he'll have to pay a fee
And then like after he pays the fee there's another fee and he's done that like
30 times probably with like five different people
And what is he borrowing money for?
To pay the scammers to get the scammers.
The other scammers, okay.
And that's how he's a good dad.
He's a good dad, yeah.
You know, it's really, my mom left,
and I laugh about it a little, but it's also disturbing.
Because he's trying, I think that he just feels
kind of long-haused by life
and is trying to attain a measure of independence from the family unit.
Really?
By like in the beginning when you wanted to finish him.
Yeah, yeah, and reassert himself as the provider.
Because it's like a normal masculine need to be at the top of the...
Also, just I think there is a sense of amperage. I think there's an immigrant thing also with,
like, this idea that you can attain wells in America
in by non-traditional means that there are like opportunities
and immigrants are often fall prey to scams.
I think because they have kind of charmed ideas
about becoming wealthy in America maybe.
But it's in Taiwan.
Well, but it sort of flies in the face of like the view of immigrants is like, um,
heart and incinocal, whereas like Americans are like golden retrievers or whatever.
But I mean, he was, his view is shaped by living here for how many decades to three decades.
Yeah.
So he has an American mind spiritual immigrant.
Yeah.
He's always been obsessed with money.
Yeah.
It's really obsessed.
Those people also often fall prey to it.
Disgames.
What do you think money, well, represents to him?
Just everything like a value,
save self-worth and all that.
I mean, he's not wrong.
He is wrong.
No, he's not wrong in the sense that money
is traditionally what buys you independence
from like social and professional
strictures. Though few people actually like follow through with that because even
the rich among us if you look at like Jeff Bezos or somebody like he just
wants to belong and he cares a lot about his public image clearly even though
he's like rich as dick and shouldn't give a shit.
Well, yeah, unless you leave society being rich is its own kind of like, you're not
freer.
A lot of, you know, very wealthy people, I don't think are more free, they're more beholden
to like a superstructure that they derive their book like.
Yeah.
The thing that you learn very quickly
when you come into any money is that there's no limit
to your unhappiness and like,
the richer that you get the more money you need.
My dad never learned that he just keeps getting pleasure
out of it and he just has no spiritual aspect
or hobbies or interests or friends.
Well, I was going to ask you, that was my next question.
If he has hobbies or friends.
No.
Does he gamble?
He used to.
Yeah.
Oh, no.
My mom told me that recently he started gambling with some people on weather that deal he's working on
is a scam or not.
I'll take that back.
He totally believes it every time.
Like I gave him $20,000 once and I made him write out a plan like if this doesn't work
you're going to do this plan and it was all like you can't take out anymore loans
You have to
Do your normal business stuff like he has lasers and he's like a inventor
But after I gave him the 20,000
We went to the bank together to wire it and the bank
We went to the bank together to wire it and the bank was telling us like this seems like a scam. And my dad was just like, no, no, no, it's not.
My son is scamming me.
And then after that, he figured out just the scammer said like the the scammers actually sent him like a bank account
that was fake from HSBC and they just kept leading him on and he like every time there'd be some
new fee or something that was five months ago when he stayed with me and he's staying with me again
in like a month. The only thing I could think of is to try to give him psychedelics.
You should know.
Because I was going to, my advice would have been to see if you can implant like a taste
for some hobbies in him.
Well, my advice was to just gambling.
Because then you can get the feeling that he gets of
potentially coming into money, but maybe in a more like if you played poker or went to
the horse track, I don't know, he could have like more activity-based.
What's your mom's role in all of this?
I kind of gleaned it from your book, but is she just kind of like humbly sits by and gives them the illusion that
what he's doing is
fine like kind of benignly turns a blind eye or does she like
no no they're fighting about it all the time they live together and and she she's been saying
she thinks he's gonna go insane for like six months.
And it's really hard on her.
Because my dad has also stolen from her and looked through her stuff to find stuff to sell.
Okay, so he's like an addict.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, he has like an addict. Yeah, yeah.
Like, he has a financial addict.
Mm-hmm, he's addicted to this.
Plus, it's his only hope.
Like, he can't just, he's never gonna pay back 1.5 million.
Well, somebody's gonna have to pay it back.
Unless he dies.
Does that suddenly dissolve if he dies?
I think I've seen that.
Aren't you and your mother and your brother liable then?
I don't think so.
Okay.
No, no.
So you have to kill him.
I don't have to kill him.
He's pretty old and not healthy.
My read on it is the financial schemes and maneuvers
is how he asserts independence
from your family unit and specifically your mother.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
That would be my toilet psychoanalysis of it.
That makes sense,
because they're always fighting over a control
of different stuff.
Mm-hmm.
That might have been at first, but then he probably
felt trapped. And he probably thought it didn't work the first 10 times, but it's going
to work one time until 10 million or something.
Was he originally the breadwinner in your family or was it always your mother or it was him him but my mom controlled all the money. Right.
And he's really bad with money. He's been scammed all his life. And we tell him
we tell him all the time it's because he's obsessed with money and try to get
him interested in hobbies and stuff.
Yeah.
And nothing's ever stuck.
You haven't tried like beekeeping or like growing cannabis or anything, but like we just
watched the first episode of that really shitty back-up documentary.
And in the opening series of beekeeper and I was like, oh this is like a nice middle-aged man hobby or like old man hobby for a guy to have.
Yeah, maybe something you could monetize.
Shooting guns.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, anything would be good.
It seems too late for that, though.
But he sounds like a very talented and intelligent individual.
Yeah, really
Dozing him with DMT is gonna be the only way. Yeah
Get on DMT. You could also be horrible like
Like it be suddenly stops denying everything and has to deal with
Now I owe so much money to everyone. Yeah, I mean, I think that's also
a powerful element in him continuing to go down this road because he must somewhere deep down inside know that he's like really seriously
in doubt. Yeah, he was in jail for something else. something else, but yeah, I feel like he must know deep down
That's why it's like
Scary like what's gonna happen when he finally admits it. He might not I mean, maybe it's better for him to never admit it
Yeah, that's what maybe when your mother to act as his like guardians
Sometimes people don't need to be yeah, they don't need to know mm-hmm
Well while giving him like the illusion of some kind of power,
I mean, I think he's better that way.
It's, I don't know.
I wouldn't want to know.
I mean, in a way, he's all of us.
Yeah, I agree.
Like, as you get older, you just become more senile
and infee bold and other people have to step in and take care of you.
And you know, you should be so lucky if you even have people like that around.
So true.
Yeah, I like, I like it in a lot of ways.
It's really interesting.
And my mom and I like talking about how I'll write about it.
And just give it some meaning.
And it's just an extremely good story, I feel like.
Are you a mama's boy? Can you describe that? give it some meaning and it's just an extremely good story I feel like.
Are you a mama's boy?
Can you describe that?
I mean, who are you closer with your mom or your dad?
My mom definitely. Yeah.
Okay.
You identify more with your mother.
I think also your dad's like not retarded and he probably can
into it that you and your mother have what feels like a conspiracy
together against him. Maybe by now.
You're getting stuck in here.
I've wondered if he's been mind controlled in some way with just having voices implanted in his head saying like the deal was real.
Just based on my research on gang-socking, it seems like that happens.
The mind control.
Voice implantation.
It's called voice to skull technology.
Like they've had it for like 30 years or something.
And it is be it into your brain?
I don't think my dad, that's my dad,
just based on looking at him.
But when he visits, I feel like I'm just gonna
give him some more money
because he's gonna keep asking.
Hey, that's sweet of you.
That's the child of immigrant way.
You just throw money at the problem.
And hope that one day somebody will throw money at you.
Pay it forward.
Give him some money, but also like,
they'll have to do something for the money.
I said, let's see.
Mm-hmm.
You have two options basically you can either
covertly microdose him when he's not looking or you can frame it as like a father son bonding activity
I would do the latter. Yeah, that seems good. Yeah, it's very unethical to dose someone
Exactly. Yeah, especially in their big age
But many think become very very young thought that midlife... Did your dad ever have a
midlife crisis? Probably. Well, it'd be interesting to know because
young thought that midlife crisis, you know, it's not a breakdown, it's a
breakthrough. It was a point where a man, in the middle of his life, obviously reaches where he realizes
that he's spent the first half of his life in this very animous pursuit, this very masculine
kind of tip, usually in pursuit of something like money or professional success or things like that
Posty, yeah, and then they reach midlife and then they have this moment where they can kind of integrate as a person
Usually they have some kind of crisis
Most men just throw money at the situation and buy like you know
In a cliche way,
like a sports car or something, but there's a difference.
Yeah.
And so they never have the chance to,
they never allow themselves to actually like integrate
and develop psychologically,
and then they become kind of calcified and hardened.
Uh-huh.
And then it's sort of over with them.
Like post-midlife, there's not much you can do if you don't make the change when you can.
Then you kind of aren't happy.
Yeah, I mean, well, that's the best line about this where he was talking about how
we mistakenly think that we live in a youth culture, which is oriented toward
the worship of vitality and virility and that sort of thing, but actually we
live in a culture of old kids that's like very profoundly afraid of aging
because on the whole life is about getting old and that's the very depressing
reality.
All the Aboriginal people had it right because they didn't really, it never occurred to
them, they didn't overthink it and if it did they knew that they were like surrounded
by a community and more importantly they were part of a longer chain.
And they're not scared of death.
Yeah.
At all.
Do you believe in reincarnation?
Reincarnation?
Yeah, our past lives or whatever you would.
I don't know, but I'm interested in it.
Do you?
I don't know.
Not, I mean, I'm open to it conceptually, but I'm a Catholic.
So I believe in the eternal afterlife.
I can see, I mean, I believe in reincarnation in like a purely technical sense, in that
I believe that there are certain types that repeat themselves throughout time and history
and the will.
Yeah, and like all of us have existed in some iteration throughout time, like our types
or whatever that means.
A lot of people talk about how you choose your next life
and you choose it to work on your soul.
And then you go into that,
and you live like thousands of lives trying to get it right.
To achieve enlightenment.
Mm-hmm.
My therapist is a Buddhist.
He's told me this idea.
And that the, I think, Tibetan Buddhists say that as many,
like, something like, an eagle with like a silk scarf
and it's now like brushes the top of a mountain.
And as long as it takes for that like
silk scarf to erode the mountain is how long how many lives you have to live before you achieve
enlightenment. So Buddhist people believe in reincarnation. Yeah. Yeah. Who else believes in Hindus?
believes in. Hindus? I guess. A lot of Eastern religions. Yeah. I'm not familiar.
It's a cool idea. It's a dead end. There's some comfort in it, I guess. And I think it holds up on the metaphorical level. Yeah, that we're all. I mean, you've done a lot of psychedelics.
I mean, you've done a lot of psychedelics. So, you know, that we're all one love.
That we all return to one love.
One love.
One love.
One love.
One love.
So, you believe in after you die, what happens?
You go to heaven or hell and then but I don't know. I'm open to different metaphysical kind of but
Maybe something happens after that but that basically the point of life is to
achieve
Salvation is to become a saint
Mm-hmm
And the greatest tragedy is the Attaparition
Burnin' hell!
I mean, you could also think like reincarnation works on like a technical functional level if you think of like what having kids is which is like
reincarnating not not even yourself like you can't even think of yourself because you're
someone else's kid
mm-hmm yourself because you're someone else's kid. Like you're constantly reincarnating and remixing
some type of lineage. You're perpetuating your genome. But yeah, then the autism, they're
not reproducing and yet it still is like emergent. That will is really
inborn. The autistic will is eternal. But autism, the way that you describe it, is very symbolic
for me of what's going on in general with like all the um, the flat lining, birth rates
across the board. And historically, people always attributed this to like the West this is like a classically like Western
Problem of modern malaise, but we all we know now that like Asian countries are the hardest hit
Korea yeah
Though I guess you could make the case that
They have exported some like Western cultural influence or whatever.
I don't know why I'm going down this tangent.
Or relevant.
How are they the hardest hit or what is the hardest thing?
They're procreating the lead.
They have the most below replenishment perth rates.
Yeah.
Japan has a lot of hikikamoris.
Japan seems really autistic.
People who stay in their reach.
I've heard Otaku, but I guess that
refers more to fan culture, but there's some overlap.
But yeah, Japan and South Korea are the ones
that are the most often cited,
because they're rich and developed,
and they have a serious loneliness problem. Yeah, but China also, because when people think of China, they think
of a massively, possibly overpopulated country, but they're also in for hitting the population
wall to the quote population cliff. Yeah, Jordan Castro had a good essay on testosterone and pirate wires
about how testosterone was dropping a lot every with everyone.
And he quotes some researcher Nancy Swan or something saying that like by 20
saying that like by 20 or 20 50 or something
I don't remember. Something about this.
Well, we know in verbal and extremely low tea.
Just infertile.
This grubs worms.
Yeah.
Just from testosterone, but everything's affecting fertility.
That's for sure. I feel like veganism is bad for fertility.
Deaf. Absolutely. I don't think we're meant to be vegans. As much as I'm like not a fan of
current forms of meat consumption, production, is I'm like an animal rights truth or but. Yeah, me too.
I feel like most people who are in to meat,
or ancestral diets care a lot
and like, or vegetarian or vegan before.
Were you ever vegetarian or vegan?
And how'd that go for you, that created a lot of
eczema. And like IBS. Yeah, I feel like two years after, or years after becoming
a vegetarian is when I started getting eczema in an autoimmune disorder, back pain.
It's getting pushed so much now with the climate change.
Of course.
The vegetarian veganism.
Oh yeah, like a lot of sources of like mystery me.
It's like grown in a lab.
I'm positive.
I mean, it's found to me.
Yeah, Bill Gates.
Do y'all know about how much money Bill Gates made off stocks
on vaccines?
How much?
Hit us.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We got to read the real doctor Fauci to find out.
I'm sure he gets into all those numbers.
I mean, I'm about a ton.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, but he bought like a lot of stock and then like...
After selling it, he came out and said like the vaccine is not that effective and stuff like that.
Mm-hmm.
And we were all, I mean, I regret getting it.
Did you get the vaccine?
No, I didn't get it.
Good for you.
Oh, thank you.
I mean, I don't feel any different though.
I realized while we were doing this episode that I got a bunch of vaccines in 2019 because I had to go to Thailand.
And maybe I got more autistic after that.
Yeah, I'm sure.
That's also around the time I started living by myself.
How many vaccines did you get?
I don't even remember. I was just, I didn't even think about it because this was like pre-COVID.
I was just like, oh, I guess I have to travel like malaria shot
Like I don't know happy like random ones that they give you like kind of a panel of shots
To go to Thailand
I'm talking about how I got some a bunch of vaccines in 2019
Okay, the pro vaccine and then maybe that's when my
And my wait, what kind of vaccine should you
go to Thailand? Yeah, but what did you got? I don't even remember. I wasn't, I was like,
like, happy malaria random, like, I don't know, jungle disease vaccine. Interesting. And
that's when I'm kind of my mental decline be. You're attributed to that. I'm just, I'm
just making connections.
That totally makes sense.
Getting something infected.
I got really religious after that.
So I was at a young adult round table at the
Ruthenium Byzantine Catholic conference where the spectrum was very
represented and it did make me wonder. You know, like, well, all these people see.
So I'm as burgian with maybe I'm. But when you encounter people who are like
vastly more as burgian than you, does that...
Yeah, you just wonder how you might read to other people, you know?
Yeah.
But does it make you feel relieved?
Like, thank God I'm actually not so bad, or does it make you feel attacked?
Neither.
It just makes you...
Yeah, reflective on the company one finds oneself in. Mm-hmm. You know.
Yeah, but it's not your fault.
Thank you.
It's the vaccine.
None of our faults, yeah.
It's the vaccines they gave me to go to Bangkok.
I'm going to cut this part because my family will kill me
if I say anything about them publicly.
But we were like really like clenched up when you were
going off at your death.
I didn't know.
Like, that's it. Yeah, that's immigrant stuff. I got scammed
recently. My Facebook fan page got stolen. Oh, what? Someone email me saying
asking if I wanted to do a podcast for $2,000. And I said, you know know that's a scam. I should have known all for it.
It was sponsored by Nike.
It just made sense.
It was done by some celebrity Tony something.
Some guy with like 190 Instagram followers.
And then I got on a phone call with them
because they're going to show me how to do Facebook live or something
And somehow they took a screenshot of my screen I showed them my screen and they got my URL and they just used that to take my account
That's so smart. I have I do admire
the scammer ingenuity of scammer. Like they're like pick pockets.
They're kind of like, damn.
They're digital pick pockets.
If you really, you got me.
Yeah.
Yeah, with my dad at like five months ago,
they would ask for like $20,000.
But now they'll ask for like, for like $1,000.
They have like a whole plan like after they've
downgraded him.
Yeah.
No, like after they train him of this money,
they'll be like, now you can just get this.
And my dad will be like, oh, we'll send you a key chain.
Just a thousand dollars.
Do your parents read all your work?
Not my dad.
My mom does.
What did she think of Leap Society?
She liked it a lot.
Yeah.
It has her a lot in it.
Yeah, and it like um, it praises her a lot.
It fuels her, um, it like affirms her vision of the world.
That you had that passage where you were talking about
how one of your parents, I don't remember which one now,
I think it was your dad or it was Lee's dad,
but whatever, auto fiction.
Was Gideon gloating after going to the dentist
because it like confirmed his version of events.
And I also find that that's very like immigrant problems
because all of our parents are kind of like covert narks, you know,
where they are.
The narcissist?
Yeah, where they have like a very defensive and shame-based construct
relation to the world,
and they often nurse these very paranoid
and conspiratorial versions of events.
Well, because they've had to assimilate.
Yeah.
And instead of treating the family like a sanctuary,
like us against the world, they also use it as like a terrain,
like a ground for infighting, to gain supremacy for their particular narcissistic vision.
Is it just your dad or your mom too?
Well my dad's dad, so.
Sometimes in like a weird twisted way, I think it's for the better because he doesn't have
to suffer the degradation of dignity.
He does an exaggeration to do it.
He's a good idea.
Yeah, I know, I probably guessed it.
But yeah, I mean, I love my mom and she's my best friend and I think that she's an unsung
genius because my dad was always the genius of the family.
She's going to kill me for even saying that.
Does she listen to all episodes?
No, but she does listen to some of them, my sister listens to some of them.
Mine doesn't listen to some of them.
I called her Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia,
Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia,
Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia,
Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia,
Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia,
Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia,
Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, Schizophrenia, on the podcast years ago, which I consider a compliment. Meaning what?
She has the same kind of rapid fire,
associative, intellect of like a Donald Trump being a Gemini.
What's your sign, Tao?
What's my sign?
Erestrological sign.
I'm not sure.
I think it's cancer.
When were you born?
July 2nd, 1983.
Okay. I think we can do. When were you born? July 2nd, 1993. Okay.
I think we can do our chart of here.
I'm not going to do the whole chart.
No, no, no.
You don't believe in astrology.
I'm guessing since you don't know,
and do you have any excitedness?
Are your parents proud of you?
My mom definitely is.
Yeah, my dad is too.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I get along with my dad.
Even with this thing, when he stayed with me, we got along well and he was happy.
The weird thing is he seems happy through all this.
Like he has so much meaning.
Well, that's the important part.
Yeah, that's...
Yeah.
My mom's afraid of the mob though, she says that my dad borrowed from the mob
and she thinks he's going to go to jail because he does, he's doing seemingly illegal
things with the scammers like transferring money or something.
But, but I feel like he'll be happy in prison.
Like when he went there in the US, he was happy.
Like he leaned back in his chair when we visited him
and he was like, oh, life in prison was good.
Well, I think that that explains a lot of quote from...
He wants to go to debtors, prison.
Yeah. But people say, like, oh, well, wants to go to debt, a debtors prison. Yeah, but people say like,
oh, well, people who go to jail
habitually are mentally ill or anti-social,
but I think a big part of it is that they just like,
that's their, that's their comfort zone.
Yeah, is like being in prison,
having no responsibilities,
having everything taken care of for you.
Like people who keep going to grad school.
Yeah, exactly.
Which is its own type of prison
that I broke out of.
I know a guy who went to jail for two years and he said that in one way it was the happiest
time of his life because he was very young at the time so he had his whole life to live
still and he managed to read a lot of books and really educate
himself and came out like a better, smarter person.
And do a lot of self-improvement in jail for sure.
And his take was like, what would I have been doing at that age?
Because I think he was like 19 or 20 when he went away.
And like, honestly, I wish I had been institutionalized.
Yeah.
That period of my life. I wish I had been institutionalized. Yeah.
That period of my life.
Do you feel like being like the child of immigrants
contributed at all to your perspective as an artist?
It's kind of a gay and cliched question,
but it also dawns on me that autism
aside having shame-based foreigner parents
also gives you a sense of critical distance.
Shame-based.
You know like immigrants in general like they have a very like shame-based outlook on life. They're very status-oriented in one way or another.
And they...
Yeah, there's drivers. They don't quite feel...
They're in a kind of exile from where they're from.
So they always have this outsider status that they are compensating
for and on some level, a lot of them do. I mean, my parents definitely feel shame about
like having an accent that I find as someone who grew up here very like, you know, unrealist
and kind of unrealistic. But for them, it's a real point of like it's a
mark of shame that they're not Americanized. Yeah, and for us, it's like a not a big deal,
because it's like not something that they could have necessarily controlled for. We have
like four friends and it's all, we're cosmopolitan. And you would also think that like they would be
humiliated by the way that we make our money, but they're all, they're very proud of us.
They call us mullets, see?
They don't go through every episode with a fine-tooth comb, and they probably choose not to
listen to some episodes, but it is a kind of source of status for them that their daughters
get.
Oh yeah.
I think pieces are on their mouth.
I think my mom's very unlike that.
Like she's always just encouraged me to do what makes me happy.
And then my dad just doesn't pay that much attention to me
and he can be competitive with me.
He's gonna write a book.
I think he's telling.
Yeah, I think I always tell him a lot.
He's always telling me to write a book about his time in jail.
Interesting.
But he's encouraging you to write a book because he wants you.
And my parents never stress.
I never felt Asian really. They never just said anything about that.
About race. That's cool. Yeah. And my dad wanted to come to the US to make more money.
It was called getting gold plated coming to the US for grad school and my mom didn't want to come because her whole family is there
Okay, so it was my dad
Came and like just made made her ago. I guess
I mean the thing that comes through and everything that you're right is that your parents are very nice and supportive people at the end of the day
Which is like and you have a good relationship, which is like how you're blessings. Yeah, I'm glad very glad to me. Yeah to each other. They're horrible
Well, right. Of course. I mean, that's like my experience with my parents who were their own and each other's worst enemy
But when it really came down to it, all the the stereotypes about
Eastern block tiger parents did not apply because they also always said the same thing,
which was we just want you to do what makes you happy. And if you can make money doing it
good, no pressure always. My parents told me I was a loser. I just pointed it in to I was like 28 basically, but that gave you know, I had to kind of be like trust the plan.
You know, and you know, they're like you're a loser.
What was red scare like in the very beginning? Did you already have following that to start listening or how did it get more popular over time. Because it seems amazing that you're making so much money.
I honestly don't remember.
And we're also making like basically
the same amount of money that we've been making forever.
We've plateaued, but we had a big period of growth.
We went zero to one.
And we had some, we were both pretty active on Twitter.
And so we had like pretty modest
audiences.
But then, I think, well, I had the Sailor Socialism thing.
I had like a viral video that got us a lot of attention and then I think podcasts weren't the market wasn't over-saturated and
we're based in New York which is like a media epicenter so it kind of like organically I don't know.
And we said provocative things and came out against me too. Very early. We just started the rape apology early on
and on and on and on and we got a lot of negative press.
Yeah.
Initially, which is all presents good bro. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Bernie Sanders supporter. I was a Bernie Crat. What were you?
Like a nothing burger. I mean, I was always low key.
I don't want to say, I'm not a conservative.
You're not an any conservative.
A conservative one, yeah.
But I've always been like kind of low key right wing
because my mom is very liberal in a way that doesn't map
onto the normal American coordinates.
And my dad was always
very right-wing in his own special way, and I never really felt the urge to rebel against
him.
My parents are kind of lifetards.
They're genexors.
And I was pretty able, like I really was not interested in politics.
And then I liked Bernie Sanders and I was really poor.
And so whatever democratic socialists seem intriguing to me because I was like, oh, I could
have a safety net.
My life could be less precarious.
I really know what should be precarious.
I still think this. I mean, I still think to the day that even seeing that clip of could be less precarious. I really know one should be precarious. I still think this.
I mean, I still think to this day that like,
even seeing like that clip of Bernie Sanders
that was circulating on the internet like a week ago,
him addressing like the Israel Palestine conflict.
Like he is like at the end of the day,
kind of no frills and planes spoken and that's his appeal.
Like he's, to me is is not a loathsome character,
even though he's...
I feel betrayed by him.
Sure, yeah.
And that made me, maybe, sort of reactionary,
or at least, I only became political
because of Bernie Sanders, because I liked him,
and then I became dissolutioned.
It's class, it's sort of classic.
Yeah, and there isn't any, and now I don't really
believe in leftism so called as a project at all.
And I don't think that there's any burnings to old.
And there's no one in politics that I feel like I can trust
or like feel any kind of affinity for.
I like our Virginia.
Well, Donald Trump, yeah, I like Donald Trump.
Yeah, I'd be, I'd be happy with either of them being president
But I don't feel enough the way that like I did when I when in
2016 when Bernie was running and I thought like God maybe we'll have a chance
So whatever like
Idealistic utopian kind of ideations I had around him as a candidate. I mean, I don't know
Politics always also was a source of interest,
because to me it's a window onto human nature.
So like, my interest in politics was mainly like
sociological or anthropological.
I was so checked out.
I was so checked out.
I was like, I mean, I still am relative.
And I don't know.
I mean, I think like anybody who comes from like a communist
background has a natural distaste for communism.
Of course, real communism has never been tried
as obviously laughable on its face.
Cause it has been tried and it's failed
every single time with like millions of casualties.
Like millions have died.
Death of despair
Were you ever a Bernie bro?
No Good for you
You just didn't I didn't pay attention that much to politics. Don't it's I feel honestly
That's also partly I feel not just a solution
But like I got scammed into even caring about a political
project.
Like that was, it was like, I was emotionally manipulated into aligning myself politically
with some candidate.
And now I'm like, why did I even, what a worthless, besides it's like sociological and psychosocial insights, I feel like politics is just useless.
And now I'm so, I don't even know what anyone's talking about.
Did that cause or supporting burning?
Did that cause a lot of y'all's early fans to be burning standard supporters? I Think there was already like with Chapo Chapo
I'm not asking for this stuff like there was already kind of
uh, hmm
I don't think we changed anyone's I don't think yeah, and I don't think we've ever been like primarily a political podcast
Cultural commentary yeah
But I think yeah, we had an audience initially that was like
there was just a lot of that
energy and fervor.
Because like I find that overall
sympathetic and forgivable because just like young people who are excited about something
and I saw I went I go to like Bernie rallies and he would talk about
like fixing potholes and youoles and he was just seemed very like
I don't know he said all the right things and I liked his affect and I like he
I don't know and
He seemed like he had like tangible things he wanted to do that felt
Yeah, then Renegged on and betrayed everyone
that felt on Renegged on and betrayed everyone. But at the same time what she's saying is is fundamentally like rings true to me because I think his affect is still endearing even after all these years.
Yeah, I like the old man who yells, yeah. What did you say? I like like old man who's yelling.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
But in like a kind-hearted way, you can tell that he's not like a belligerent or bitter
person necessarily, which also comes through.
I had this thought with Candace Owens, who a lot of people don't like, I'm not like a huge
Candace Owens stand or anything like that.
But one of the redeeming qualities that she has is that in spite of being like a huge Candace Owen stand or anything like that. But one of the redeeming
qualities that she has is that in spite of being like a right-wing
ideologue she never really seems angry or bitter even though she plays that part.
Like she seems like on the whole like a pretty like cheerful person.
She feels very polished.
She presents very well.
Yeah, whatever.
Just as an example.
Yeah.
One thing that's always been a mystery to me is that as long as we've been doing this podcast,
one of the criticisms that we get, but that I get specifically is that like you've changed,
you've become a different person, specifically a more like conservative or reactionary
person. I really don't understand that because I feel like I've been very consistent and dependable
and like literally just a very boring since the beginning.
I think it's because we came to prominence. So we went like the dirt bag laughed, mill you.
And then I think the discourse around us changed.
Yeah.
They'll also kind of, I don't know.
Have you ever thought about doing a podcast?
You're out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Who would you do it on?
I actually had a podcast.
I had like four episodes and I was just like,
I was just like chanting or something for two hours.
Oh, yeah, I want to ask you about the mandalas.
What's that all about?
It's just, it was a good way to do, do something.
It's meditative.
Do something without having to be on drugs. I started after my pharmaceutical drug addiction. I was in my room a lot and just drawing and
listening to Joe Roganalot. Cool. If you went on Joe Rogan with that beer favorite podcast Maybe yeah, I think it would fair. Are you a Joe Rogan fan?
Big time. Yeah, I love Joe Rogan. Are you a Tucker fan?
I like him. Yeah, I've seen so things. Yeah
Yeah, I like him. Jordan and I choked about starting yellow scare
about starting yellow scare. Pistoridon's one fourth Philippine.
Oh right, yeah.
I know, yeah.
I'm sure everyone thinks I'm...
The tea with Tao.
Yeah, everyone thinks I'm just lying about that,
but he really is.
Yeah, I believe that.
Oh, good.
I definitely can be there.
I don't look so far.
I can see a little bit of the Sonic.
Do you look so little Sonic?
Yeah.
So yeah, we've had three Asian writers on this show.
We have, yeah.
Shantar.
Oh, four.
Four, four.
We forgot about Dean Kisal.
Who else?
Shantar Conno.
Mm-hmm.
He's half.
Yeah.
Who else?
So is Dean.
And Jordan, and you?
Then I'm the only four Asian. Yeah, you're actually probably literally our only
full Asian guests that we ever had right. I mean that's also my
feel really honored.
Do you get a case of racism against Asians a lot? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop me in the street, not a lot, but a noticeable amount are kind of like nice Asian like med students.
That's good.
I think when they kind of tried to whip up the stop Asian hate for ever, I feel like
most Asians didn't really take the bait because they're not eager to victimize themselves that in that way.
Really, really. I feel like in a literary role, Asians were taking advantage of that big time.
Well, they should. Because they can paddle their books about kimchi and dumplings.
books about Kim Chi and Dumpley. About racism.
Yeah.
I never connected with that.
Like in college, there was an Asian with like a Asian hat.
And I just felt really alienated.
It was a little too long, don't make a right shirt.
And they had like some fake laundry kind of graphic tea.
That much, it was maybe.
It was just like a carrot.
I don't remember what you're talking about.
That was like a controversial, yeah.
That's not racist to me though.
No, I don't know, yeah.
I think we all lived through the era
where it was a common place and normal
to just gently roast various racial and ethnic groups
for their specific traits and qualities,
and I think it made the culture better.
Yeah, way better.
Like that's how a lot of people connect.
What's the line?
It's like imitation is the highest form of flattery.
It's not just imitation, it's specifically negative imitation.
Yeah.
They're like roasting and mockery.
Yeah, and they're noticing stuff about you.
That's good.
Yeah, and it's like, oh, pressure, it's like releasing tensions.
Yeah, it's a lot of tension.
Now, yeah, and now we're like on the brink of a race war or whatever.
And somebody pointed out to me that like Chris Rock, one of the funniest African Americans,
comedians. His bits were much funnier in the 90s
where like racial relations were like normalized. Because he had that whole bit about black people Black people versus boob. Mm-hmm. And now he just seems angry and bitter.
What that's so age.
That's also age.
Yeah.
You think of he said about any comedian.
I'm not a big fan of like return,
but I wonder how we could go back to that era where it's like,
I think it's comfortable and expected to just make fun
of each other all the time in a light-hearted way.
Well, before that, before the shock-jock, 90s and early odds, there was a culture war as well.
It didn't feel as intense and noisy as it does now because of social media, but there
was a lot of discourse around political correctness that then dissipated into M&M at the
VMA.
South Park and stuff, all this stuff, of there was a yeah an audience emerged for it
Because everyone was so sick of like the PC stuff the woke crap
What was that documentary we watched the Woodstock documentary? It's like 99
Well, yeah
There's like angry white man on stage
Is there anything we could wrap it up?
Is there anything in particular you wanted to...
I'd draw a plug.
I wanted to talk about Jordan more.
Okay, yeah.
Because he told me you had to talk about him a lot.
Jordan has to.
He was joking a little bit.
No, let's put him on the spot.
We're great fans of Jordan past Georgia.
He called his dog, Tao, twice by accident.
What's the dog name?
The past few days when I was there was funny.
Kevin.
I can plug our play, our short film that we wrote yesterday.
Me, Jordan and Nicolette, we took turns, like each person got one minute to write a line and
we wrote a story then we filmed it and it's gonna come out soon. That's awesome.
It's untitled so far. I want Nicolette on the pod but I don't think she'd do it.
She might. Maybe. She has a book coming up in April. Yeah. That'll be great.
I feel like she'd like it.
When Tao came up in here, the first question I asked him was, how did you meet Jordan?
Because as I said to you, we've had many, many guests on this podcast and I'm on friendly
terms with virtually all of them.
But Jordan is one of the few people that I became fast friends with. And I truly love and honor that man. Because he's trying to
convert you to Christianity. He did a little bit. He did his first gesture was
to send me a bunch of Christian books. I'm happy for you. I'm sorry happened, but I ain't reading. Shit. You really should.
You should really believe me.
Just read the New Testament.
Just read the gospel.
He did, Jordan.
Jordan did give me the old Testament, I think.
No, he gave me the New Testament.
And I did read like a quarter of it.
Yeah.
It gets a little, honestly. But I love that little book, and I of it. Yeah. It gets a little honestly,
but I love that little book and I cherish it.
And people have tried to borrow it for me
and I'm like, no, no, no, no, that's,
yeah, but it's called the Bible where you can get one.
And he, but it does get a little.
But you said you met Todd and when he was,
he was messaging you since he was like 15 or 16 and you met him when he was 17. Yeah, he found my blog. I think I met him when I was 17 because I
went on book tour and he invited me to stay at his house. In Ohio. And I hung out with him and I went there with my ex-girlfriend Megan and we hung out and he would come to
New York City sometimes and I liked him a lot immediately. He seemed really mature.
I know I always forget how young he is. Yeah, I'm really mature. He's almost like a paternal presence in my life, but he's younger than me.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's just been great seeing him right and published a novelist, which I think is great,
a great novel.
And I read his next novel, Muscle Man, which is really great too Oh wow, I'm excited for that one. We'll have them back obviously
Where did you live in New York when you lived in Midtown?
29th Street. Oh, interesting. On the East Side or West. East.
We married Marie Hill from like 2011 to 2017 or something.
That's what it looks. That's a stretch. From like 2011 to 2017 or something.
That's what I thought was.
That's a stretch.
That's where all the...
The Indie Raiders live.
The Murray Hill.
Matthew lives there.
Oh, I don't know.
And I'm in like Turtle Bay.
What is that?
It's...
I'm like, um, um, um, mid-touties like higher up.
Everyone knows where I kind of live because they talk about it all the time, but I have a
very, I keep very irregular hours and no one could, I'm hard to gang stock because I'm so
unpredictable.
Cause my whims are, but maybe that's them beaming the mess and the signals into my I'm so unpredictable. Hahaha.
Because my whims are... But maybe that's them beaming the mess in the signals into my brain.
I'm like, dodging doshes and punches.
I think I'm, you know, acting on my impulses, but maybe I'm MK Ultra Pub.
Have you ever been afraid of saying something and like getting government surveillance
or like, a correct censorship or anything.
No.
Probably on some watch lists.
I'm sure vaguely, but I've never been stopped at an airport or anything. There was one episode
that I distinctly were. I think it was a vaccine. I think it was like
when we told the truth about vaccines where I was like because people were getting deplat like people were getting their patreons
Taken away and stuff and I kind of was like I
Forget which episode it was but there was one episode. I was like should we take this down?
I think it doesn't seem worth it there. I can't imagine what we would have said that would have been that bad
We just expressed like basic doubts
Yeah, and it we had the time it felt so charged.
And I was like, we finally gone too far.
But I think I finally understand the death drive
from doing this podcast.
Because we just keep doing that.
I have to say this thing.
Yeah.
That's partly, yeah.
But the secret to podcasting is just letting the intrusive thoughts fly.
Yeah, I think people are still getting shadow banned.
Because after Elon hired the WEF person to be CEO,
and people who talk about... W-E-F person to be CEO.
And people who talk about...
What's W-E-F?
World economic form.
That's one of those shadowy and nefarious goals.
Yeah, so after you hired...
That person, I feel like a lot of people started getting shadowed.
Interesting. I think it's like of people started getting shadowed. Interesting.
I think it's like on a case by case basis.
I notice that whenever I have a problematic tweet, it's not even that people are mad or
I'm losing followers, but it's suddenly the digital version of cars with loud sirens
and alarms going by where my DMs start to glitch and messages start disappearing and I'm just like okay interesting.
I think that might that might be the some faulty code as well.
Yeah, probably.
It's like it can't keep up with the like activity and I mean that's my non-paranoid kind of innocent thought about it.
You're probably right.
I'm in a tweet.
I'm a Zionist later tonight and see what happens.
Yes, see what happens.
I'm not a Zionist, but it could be that they just like they they thought like instead of
just banning everyone from Twitter like they've banned a lot of scientists who
talked about vaccines.
Yeah, I remember that.
Like, Rogan talked about that.
But one thing I do notice that I don't think is just a part of faulty code is that when
you do say something problematic, like people will write you and say your replies are hidden.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, like stuff like that, that's, hmmm.
I mean, I don't think it's anything personal.
I just think that it's a question of like probably certain terms are flagged.
Like internally, after Elon, like you can no longer get banned for saying retarded, but
I'm sure they still have like a list of problematic terms.
Mm-hmm.
But also, I don't know how this works.
None of my business.
Or someone could have thought, like, just we'll get Elon in there and then he'll get
rid of the censorship that was done in the Twitter files revealed in the Twitter
file. And then like everyone will come back, all the band scientists and everyone. And then
they'll just be able to monitor what they're doing better, what they're saying and everything.
Right. I don't know. That's just something. That's um, well, Yashalovian, there's a
book surveillance valley by this guy, Yash Levine, who we had on the show,
and he talks about how a lot of the like, not the VPNs. I don't, I'm, I'm gonna mess it up,
but like if you, like, are using tour or something, that's actually like a way for the government to
survey you more, because they see, yeah, they see that you're trying to do something sketchy online.
And there's really no way to kind of like escape the apparatus.
I just realized something.
I'm like secondhand stone.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
We've had another partly Asian writer on the podcast, Matt Taiibi, because I think he's
part Filipino.
Oh my god.
Look at this.
You just don't want to go away. Ocean my god. Look at that.
Ocean vongier. Gia Tolandino come on the vongous.
There are any agents you want to get on.
You aren't learning the ocean, you want to get on.
Higishen.
Higishen. Well-bex-wife. She wanted to get on. HG Shen. HG Shen.
Well backs wife.
I'm on the spot now. I'm sure there are.
But now my mind's going blank. Lucy Lou.
Are there any agents that you personally want to see on the vlog?
HG would be great. I can't think of anything off that girl from North Korea that went on Rogan
The abnormally huge
Tits they're pretty big
They're not freakish, but she's certainly busty. I love to get her on
No, I can't think of anyone
No, I can't think of anyone for some reason. That's okay.
Well, thank you for coming on.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Thank you so much.
This has been a delightful episode.
This is crazy.
I enjoyed that a lot.
Check out Tows Upcoming, still entitled short film.
And eventually the book about autism and self-heal.
And so it's, is that the title?
What is it?
Self-heal.
How to overcome, and a lot of our listeners will be, should be very interested to learn how
to combat the symptoms of their autism through
and post addiction and ancestral diets. Thank you, Tawi, we'll see you in hell. you