Irresistible Stepsister, Book Plugged

[00:00:02] You're listening to Questionable Material with Jack and Brian, a mostly improvised podcast produced in New York by Jack Helmuth and Brian Sack. QMPodcast.com

[00:00:19] Brian? Brian? Brian? Okay, it looks like Brian- Oh no, hold on, I just got a text from Brian. He can't make the show today.

[00:00:34] He is giving away food to storm victims. I get man, that guy's heart is in the right place. That is really awesome. Unfortunately, though, that means he can't be at the show today. I'm looking at the map. I don't really see, I see like light rain on Long Island. Maybe that's what it is. I don't know what he's doing, but it looks like he's giving away food. So this means that I guess we're stuck with a kind of sort of a very special episode of the show that I guess I'll be hosting alone.

[00:01:04] Now, fortunately, as it so happens, Brian and I had booked two sort of high level guests to be on the show today. And I guess I'll just sort of have to talk to them alone. And, you know, let's get right to it. But these are two members of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the Elon Musk's program to trim government. DOGE is on the lips of everyone in Washington and really all across the country.

[00:01:33] This is the biggest political sort of event and movement outside of an election itself that I can remember. It's a really big deal. Everyone's talking about it. We have booked two members of the DOGE team to talk with us today about what is going on within that organization. So let's welcome our two guests right now. I don't know their names. I just know that they work for DOGE. Gentlemen, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we can. Oh, wonderful. The gentleman who just spoke, can I get your name?

[00:02:02] I'm Chaz Billings, but I go by Big Balls 580 on Discord. So if any of your listeners are really into StarCraft, which is how I met Elon, I'm Big Balls 580. But you can call me Chaz if that makes you feel better. Hey, man. I mean, I don't it doesn't make me feel better or worse. I don't care about your feelings. I don't care about anybody's feelings. OK, there we go. You're I can see why. How long did it take you to get hired?

[00:02:29] Uh, God, it was I it was this thing where me and Elon were playing StarCraft for like 72 consecutive hours and we had a lot of caffeine and he did some ayahuasca. And some program came up. I don't remember what it was. Was it NASA or something? And I just shouted gay.

[00:02:51] And he went, you, you are going to be my scalpel to surgically remove bits of unwanted government. And I went fucking egg. That's awesome. I'll drop out of Stanford right now. Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm sorry. How old are you? Nineteen. I'm 19 years old that I'm in charge of. I'm in charge of the committee. Well, that's awesome. And our other guest, sir, can I get your name? Yes. Timmy Swift. Timmy Swift. It's like Taylor Swift, but it's Timmy.

[00:03:20] Yeah, I mean, then it wouldn't be like Taylor. It's just the same last name. Yeah, we have a similar last name. No, it's not similar. It's the same. It is the same. But no relation. We have no relation. No, I'd like to, but I don't. What sort of relationship would you like to have? Stepsister would be ideal. Well, that would be an ideal relationship for Taylor Swift. Yeah, because, you know, then she'd be like the laundry machine would break and she'd be

[00:03:48] reaching inside trying to figure out where her sock is. Maybe the sock got stuck and I just kind of walk in and she's in her tight shorts. And and then, you know, you know what happens. I mean, I just I mean, in case for people who don't know what is having a stepsister is like, what happens next? Well, there's a knock on the door and it's Ted Bundy, the serial killer. So, of course, I'm there as the male and I do outperform women in sports and I would take

[00:04:18] Ted Bundy and I would throw him outside and get into a fisticuffs. OK, so there's no sex stuff. No. No. OK, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to ask. With my stepsister? That's unheard of. Yeah, it is completely unheard of. Thank you. What? I'm sorry. I had sex with my stepsister and it caused nothing but problems. I really regret it. Really? First of all, she's 28 years older than me. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with it, per se.

[00:04:46] But it just like and then also like everybody knows it. So when we do Thanksgiving now, everybody just kind of stares into the middle distance for a little bit. And we all just like, you know, that we're thinking about the penetration and it's just you don't want to be thinking about penetration when you're eating turkey. Right. It's like, do you get the wishbone together? That you know what? We should do that. We should do that. And then you just make a wish. And whoever breaks off the biggest piece of the wishbone has sex with the other person.

[00:05:19] Take a note. This is good advice. Thank you. That's really good. Timmy, have you made it into college yet? What's your backstory? I'm in college. Yeah. Okay. Where do you go to school, Timmy? I am a sophomore at Rainbow University. Oh, that's great. I'm not familiar with that school. Well, it had been called Flaming Rainbow University. It's in Utah. It's on an Indian reservation. But because of the connotation of Flaming Rainbow, they just dropped the flaming and now it's just Rainbow University. Okay.

[00:05:48] And what's your major? Stars. Stars. Okay. So we got Chaz or Big Balls 580. We got Timmy. Guys, we're so excited to learn more about Doge. Big Balls, let me start with you. Famously, Elon Musk sent an email to every government worker that's on the books and had them come up with a list of five things

[00:06:15] that they have done either today or this week, I forget which, to sort of show what it is they actually do. And if they can't list five things they've actually done at work, then maybe they shouldn't be working. Tell us about how that idea came to pass. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were playing StarCraft and we were talking about, like, how are we going to send the herd on this, right? Because, like, Doge, I don't know how much you know about the

[00:06:43] innards of this, but Doge has two pillars. There's two, like, two pillars that we're using to try to cut down federal bloat. Pillar one is gay. Like, we just say the program out loud. And if you say that, if you're, like, gay, then we're probably going to cut it. And then the other one is fuck ton of Adderall. Just so much goddamn Adderall, you have no idea. Like, 100 milligrams a day. That's actually our long-term plan is to give 100 milligrams of Adderall

[00:07:11] to all surviving federal employees and just kind of burn through them. So that's the plan that we've got, right? Wow. We were playing StarCraft, doing Adderall, and we were thinking about how do we make this more efficient? And, like, Elon had this great idea, which is, like, Elon thinks that a quarter of the federal employees are not, like, actually there. He thinks that, like, a quarter of them are scams or something. Yeah. And I've got a theory that some of them are vampires. Like, so I, like, in a way, agree with him.

[00:07:41] They're dead. And so he was like, well, we'll do, like, a dead man switch where they have to, everybody has to email me, Chaz, their five bullet points, which was a pain in the ass. I did not like that. I got an email from every one of the federal workforce, and I just, I don't tell anybody I didn't do it. So nothing happened. Yeah. So, so, so, Timmy, in a situation like that, how are you going to pare down, you know, I mean, like, no offense to big balls, but he's sort of, you know,

[00:08:10] that's a lot of emails to go through. I get it, but he's not exactly doing his job. How are you then thinning the herd, other than killing people off by purposefully, you know, giving them too much drugs? How are you thinning the herd of government employees to help eliminate the bloat that is in government? Well, we, initially we were hoping a lot of them were illegal aliens, and it turns out that they're not. So we were hoping we could deport them, but we realized we can't deport them because they actually have citizenship. Ah, that's too bad. So until we can overcome that hurdle,

[00:08:40] okay, and deport them to the countries they don't come from, then, you know, we're not going to be able to deal with that. One of the thoughts, oh, you have a question? Yeah, I do have a question. Just real, I would love to hear that thought. But so, but it is still on the table that we will deport Americans to countries that they're not from. That still is on the table? Yes. Yes. It's an, you know, it's, uh, Mr. Trump came up with the idea in a little, we had a little meeting afterwards and he thought, well, what, you know, if, if we have people we don't like,

[00:09:08] why don't we deport them to countries they don't come from? Right. Hmm. So he's pretty straightforward. Yep. When we broke out the risk board and we're like, okay, who's going to come Chaka? Or Mordor, if you have Lord of the Rings risk, like I do. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I didn't even know that was a thing. Oh, it's, of course it's a thing. So like, um, a lot of people from Delaware will probably go to come Chaka. And, uh, and we've got other things too, Jack.

[00:09:35] So like, even though I didn't technically read all of the emails, like one of the things we're trying to do is just how can we kind of irritate people into self leaving? That's the technical term, self leaving. Self leaving. What we came up with was 80% humidity. So moving forward, all federal offices are going to have a humidifier and 80% humidity. And what we think is a lot of people are going to leave. And those that don't will breed semi-aquatic federal employees over a couple thousand years. So we'll get these like cool, like, like,

[00:10:05] like moist dolphin people that might be more efficient. Which presents a problem if we drain the swamp. Yeah. Yeah. Man. Government's hard. It is. Government's so hard. That's what we're learning. Well, you know, it's, it's seat of your pants and we're, we're learning as we go. Every day is a learning adventure. It's a learning journey. Well, I, but, well, I'm really excited about these, these dolphin people. That's very exciting. Now, Timmy, I'd cut you off with, with sort of the, the, the, the fix there.

[00:10:34] So go, go ahead, Bill. I don't remember. Can I, can I elaborate on my colleague's position of how hard government is for a second? Can I just elaborate? Please. So I don't know how closely you guys follow the news, but, uh, I became secretary of agriculture and it's horrible. I hate it. So when they, when they, they were like, you're doing a bang up job on does, you should be secretary of agriculture. I was like, great. I assume I can plant corn wherever I want and it'll be up to me to determine which crops

[00:11:04] are green lit and which ones are red lit. So I was like, well, how about this? Instead of poison Ivy, why don't we plant more corn? That seems like a win for everyone. No, no. All I do is paperwork. All I do is paperwork. I'm basically an accountant. Here's another thing I didn't know. Food stamps. I'm in charge of that. Sounds like the post office should be in charge of that. That's bullshit. But I have to do that. I have to read all these goddamn five point emails and I don't get to plant corn except in the parking lot. The site I can paint in the parking lot.

[00:11:32] And, and I, and I also have to be in charge of food stamps because the post office doesn't handle stamps. I don't know what's going on, but he does get 20% off at all farm to table restaurants. Oh, okay. Article five of the U S constitution. Wait a minute. That has already made its way into the U S constitution. You know what? This is a fun fact. No one has ever read it. So like you just kind of flip it open and you're like, oh, that's cool.

[00:12:00] Whoever's secretary of agriculture gets 20% off any farm to table businesses. Yeah. 82nd amendment. That's, that's really exciting. I just, can I really quickly, some people think you guys aren't qualified to be doing this sort of thing. So just really quickly, let's prove them wrong right now. Obviously that's the 82nd amendment. Could you guys just prove your knowledge? I'm just going to ask you a couple of easy questions. Big balls, 580. Tell us what the 44th amendment is. That's an easy one. Yeah.

[00:12:29] The 44th amendment says that if your name tag falls off, so does your name. So you have to be really careful about that. Yeah. If you have, if, if you have, if, if it's been notarized, if you have a notarized name tag and it falls off, you're nameless. Now you don't have it anymore. You can still technically have a pronoun if you want, but I could, I couldn't even legally address you. That's the 44th amendment. You can't legally address. So if you're working at a big boy, at a Bob's big boy and your name tag falls off, you are

[00:12:58] a nameless entity. You're a non-person and I don't want to like jump the gun here, but probably going to go to Kamchatka because we don't need any more nameless people in America. See, I, a lot, this proves, okay, big balls, you're credentialed. I know you're the real deal. Timmy Swift. Could you just really quickly, obviously the 57th little controversial as a, as a, um, amendment. Could you go ahead and tell us what the 57th amendment is and then we'll move on. Well, I don't see how it's controversial.

[00:13:27] It just requires that all toilet seats be soft clothes. So, okay. So expand. You don't want the thunk. You know, the idea being the thunk creates a lot of stress and, and, uh, you know, unnecessary noise. And as you know, uh, president Trump is against noise pollution. He's against thunking. Uh, he doesn't want thunking sounds emanating from the bathroom or scaring little children or midgets. That's the great, or I'm sorry, or midgets. Just small people in general.

[00:13:57] I mean, I think very protective. He's a great president. He looks at these little people and he goes, I want to save you. Well, I mean, is there something that president Trump could do? Because I would like to point out that it is a little person's dream stretch of four months. If you're a little person actor at a remake, uh, movie of the wizard of Oz and a remake of snow white comes out and there are no, there are no little people actors that are through those movies.

[00:14:26] Is there something president Trump could do about that? Yeah. Well, that's the 33rd amendment. What? That's going to, that's so, you know, it's, it's kind of DEI ish in a way because we're requiring little people to be in all films and television shows here going forward. Yeah. Oh, no, of them. Yeah. It's yep. They're like every, every film now has to have a little person in it. And on top of that, and like, by the way, chamber of commerce, we're meeting you fucking

[00:14:56] halfway because originally what we were going to do was just ban child labor. And we were just going to have them all played by chimps, robots, or little people for children. So like Macaulay Culkin, like, no, no more of that. No, just going to be a little person like smoking a cigarette going, ah, my parents left me or whatever. Right. Right. And we, when we scrapped that now, you just have to have one. You can still have the kids. You can still make them work for some reason. That's, that's on the books in our country.

[00:15:23] You can still force them to be on camera, but you also have to let me, yeah, you have to have a midget. That's wild. Well, God, you guys, you guys know civics. That's what's exciting about talking to you two. Thank you. Pretty much all Hondas. It's so dumb. Here's, here's the thing. Okay. Are we particularly competent? No.

[00:15:52] Are we doing a particularly good job? No. Here's the deal. Oh, the people we replaced were also incompetent and bad at their job, but they were less fun and preachy. So there you go. Maybe we'll cut taxes. You're going to get a shitty government either way. Maybe we're going to cut taxes. Do you get to keep a little bit more of your money and have a shitty government as opposed to having a shitty government and throwing your money in the bushes? That's the doge promise. Little people. What? Well, that's really exciting. Now, you guys have certainly, you sort of just alluded to it. You guys have certainly caught some heat.

[00:16:22] You know, certainly some members of the press, some members of the, of the Democratic Party or the left do not like what you were doing. And I know you guys have brainstormed a lot of ways to be, to become sort of more appealing to maybe fire people and in more entertaining and, and, and happy ways. Could you guys each tell me sort of a, one of the programs that you guys have come up with to, you know, um, increase doges, uh, likability nationally. Squid game.

[00:16:52] Oh, tell me. Yep. So we have a squid game, but instead of killing you, which we learned is illegal, uh, we basically just fire you. So we take 500 people and we put them in various competitions. And then the one survivor of those competitions gets to keep his job. That person could be really bad at their job. That's okay. One of the, one of the other things that we, we tried to do, this is actually really smart

[00:17:21] and I think a lot more humane than our original plan. So our original plan was called the firing slide. And the way that worked is like, we built a billion dollar slide. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's a billion dollars. We spent on the slide and you might be like, that's a lot of money. And my answer to you is not when we take the whole thing out of the department of education's budget, which we abolished. So like we got rid of the department of education. That's $280 billion. We use 1 billion to build a slide. Great slide. Right. So that's actually very efficient if you think about it. So what we were going to do is we were going to have people go down the slide.

[00:17:50] It's about three miles long. And the problem is that your skin just comes off. It just comes right off. So like it was, it was basically like, like this, like if you could imagine kind of like, like if you somehow made horizontal the gates, they slaughter cows at, like imagine that that's basically it. It wasn't good at all. And so, you know, so the, the squid games one where I want to stress this. We don't kill you. No, we don't kill you. We only fire you.

[00:18:21] Nope. We can't leave. If I kill you, I have to fill out so much paperwork. I'm probably not going to do it. I mean, we did have, we did have one in because we learned that Hunter Biden could kill people because he's got a blanket pardon going back. Yeah. So he's, but you know, we didn't want to bring him in. People seem to be kind of anti Hunter. Hunter. Oh yeah. Yeah. I've read that. He's a good guy. Like real quick.

[00:18:46] I play Starcraft with Hunter Biden and he's not great at it, but he's cool. He's cool. Everybody's giving him shit. He's fun. He's awesome. He's fun. I like that guy. He's great. And it was his Coke in the white house. Oh, for sure. Oh yeah. Yeah. We know. Yeah. We saw the footage. Yeah. Oh, you saw footage. With the security cameras. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it turned out that the, I'm not going to say who it was, but the previous president, I'll let you draw your conclusions.

[00:19:16] The previous president thought that some of the maids were stealing his jewelry. So he started putting these nanny cams around the white house, but then he forgot that he even put the nanny cams in. Also, he was just misplacing the jewelry. He kept putting it in the air vents, but he forgot like a squirrel. So the jewelry was fine. They fired these, they fucked up the maids. They all got sent to Kamchatka because they were foreigners. So they were all deported. They got like completely screwed. Right. And then he forgot about these nanny cams. There's just, from our perspective, there were a lot of teddy bears that were in the white house.

[00:19:45] And then we, we opened them up one time and we're like, oh, no cocaine. That's what we're rooting for. But camera played it. Hunter Biden. Okay. Right there. Right there. Guys, this is, this is a really great interview. You guys are both doing, thank you so much for being so open and forthcoming. Thank you for giving me something to put in my email that says that I did last week. You are welcome. Now, last question.

[00:20:14] People always like to know what's to come. You know, it sort of softens the blow of, you know, some of, some of these big headlines. Some are popular, some maybe not so much. What sort of is a, is a big thing in 2025? It doesn't have to be in the next couple of weeks, but what's something big that you guys know is coming that you can share with people now. So yeah, maybe just to remove the shock value of it all. Whoever wants to go first. Yeah. I, I, the big one, I think I can go ahead and say this, you know, we, we, we've been

[00:20:43] vested by the president with making America more efficient. And what is less efficient than having two Dakotas and two Virginias? That's stupid. So we're going to be merging them into one state, Virginia Cota. And so West Virginia, Virginia, South Dakota, North Dakota are going to be one state. And we, maybe we'll connect them with a tunnel. We haven't worked out that bit yet, but in terms of naming shit, that's there also no more Baja California. I know that it's not in our country, but it's very confusing to me.

[00:21:12] So it's going to be like, it's called California's Dick. I didn't come up with it, but it's California's Dick from now on. They're not going to call it Baja California. As you might say in the office, that's, that's super gay. Oh yeah. But, but good gay. Oh, that's good. Cause I, cause normally that's a, uh, you know, obviously it's a pejorative. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's complex. It's complex. Now, now Timmy, I don't know if they've taught the word pejorative at rainbow university. Yeah. But that sort of means like a bad thing. We're working up to it.

[00:21:42] It's not a word you probably use in regard to stars. Most of my vocabulary is star focused. And that's what originally brought me into Elon's orbit, pun intended, because I, you know, SpaceX and a guy who studies stars and he saw the natural connection there and he brought me on board without even thinking about it. That's, that was your qualification. Yeah. Timmy, Timmy does our horoscopes.

[00:22:11] We get our own customized horoscopes from Timmy. That's lovely. Timmy, what, um, I'm a Libra. I was born on October 3rd. My friend, Brian, who is the guy who left the show earlier, he's October 4th. So same, same star sign. Uh, do you have a, a, a horoscope for, for me? Yeah. Well, I mean that October is a month in the fall and, uh, and, and October we have the moon. Okay.

[00:22:36] So when you look up at the sky at night, if you see the whole moon, that's a full moon. Right. And that means your lifespan will be between 70 to a hundred years. Okay. Unless you're hit by a truck, which could happen, but it depends where Mercury is. And I don't know where it was cause I can't see it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, you know, good luck with your degree.

[00:23:01] Timmy, is there another big, uh, is there another, another big, um, thing that, you know, we should warn people about that's coming down the pike? Probably. But okay. I'm sorry. I know you maybe don't do a lot of podcasts up there, but, um, are podcasts legal in Utah? Uh, podcasts are legal in Utah. Yes. Uh, but you know, they, they have, they're limited, uh, kind of like the alcohol. Um, you, they, they have to be small portions.

[00:23:30] You can only have four minute podcasts. Joe Rogan is actually hated in Utah. I would imagine. So you can have one ounce martinis and four minute podcasts. That's the max. That's a Mormon thing. Okay. Again, it's Timmy, you were teaching us the way podcasts typically work. When someone asks you a question, I guess I wanted a little bit more detail. Yeah, no, I was, I was gearing up to tell you. Oh, see, I didn't, I don't know. You're a little green and I apologize. Go ahead.

[00:23:56] Well, um, as you know, we've had Canada on the menu a little bit and, uh, we've, we've been joking. It started off as a joke, but now the president's really serious. He really, really wants Canada. So we're doing a deal. Uh-huh. And the deal is, uh, we're going to take over Canada and make it the 51st state, but, uh, they have agreed that they will do it only if we get rid of all the French people in Canada. Oh.

[00:24:23] The Canadians, the, the non-French Canadians aren't fans of those people. So those people. I know that's true. Will be moved by slide to Greenland. Mm-hmm. So. Made it. It's a three mile slide. And from like the, the east, most eastern point in Maine, which is what I would imagine is closest to Greenland. It's definitely not three miles to Greenland. Well, no, what you do is you do a two mile drop and then a one mile angle. Exactly. And the idea being.

[00:24:53] You're not, you're not taking the force of this into it. We can, we could really like leap over a mountain with that thing. Yeah. We learned our lesson. Once the skin's gone. Yeah. Once the skin's gone and you're just this giant crumbling fetus that's slick with blood shooting down the slide. Like you can get, you could really clear a lot. But part of the deal is we're going to, we're going to oil the slide with canola, which is a Canadian export. Oh, oh. We're dropping the tariffs. It's actually called rapeseed, but it just doesn't sound like a good name. So we call it canola oil.

[00:25:24] So we're going to pour that down. That's going to slick up these French people like nothing you've ever seen. And hopefully they're going to make the jump. Hopefully. Well, it's a science. Also, we're planning on renaming Greenland red, blue and white fuck yelling. And so that like, it's kind of a mouthful, but it's more patriotic than Greenland. See, this is why we voted for Trump. This is why he's in office. Yeah. And I can't, we can't elaborate on his foreign policy too much.

[00:25:53] I don't, I'm not going to say exactly what it is, but there's a thing that we're working on right now called Operation Glass Parking Lot, which has to do with the Middle East. I can't elaborate a whole lot more on it, but like some shit's going to go down. So that's exciting. That way to leave us at a cliffhanger. Uh-huh. Well, that's great. I would love to have you guys back on the show at any point. This has been so fun, you guys. I would love another bullet point to tick off. Now, Chaz, big balls, final question is to you.

[00:26:22] There is a book that I heard about this and it makes me angry because I don't like the government interfering in personal lives. That's just sort of my beliefs. But apparently the government is going to be forcing people to buy this book that is coming out and to read it. And can you tell us about this book that is coming out that everyone is going to have to go on Amazon and buy? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great book. It's called The Little Orange Book.

[00:26:51] So it's kind of, you know how Mao had the little red book? Mm-hmm. Right? So The Little Orange Book is like that for Trump. Now, I have read an advanced copy of it and it's fantastic because basically what he did is just plagiarized Lolita and changed the word Lolita to Trump. So it's all smut. It's great. He didn't write any of it. He just added the word Trump in it. And like sometimes verbs, it's weird. Like it'll say like, then he trumped up the stairs to Trump her. Like, but it's great. You can like kind of fill it in in your mind. Yeah.

[00:27:20] So like it's very like Trump focused. But again, it's it's it really is just literally plagiarizing Lolita. That's that sounds awful. Um, thank you for that. Um, I guess I was thinking there's a book by Andrew Heaton. Do you know the comedian Andrew Heaton? Oh yeah. That guy, that guy. So I was trying to talk about his book that everyone's going to have to go out and buy. Oh, I big balls am not the guy to pitch this particular book.

[00:27:47] I do not feel that I would be a good association to have with this particular book. I have heard of the book and my more intelligent, well-endowed friends have all really enjoyed it. And that book is called Tribalism is Dumb. Oh, that sounds good. Mm hmm. That sounds good. So Tribalism is Dumb by Andrew Heaton. By Andrew Heaton.

[00:28:11] So theoretically, if you wanted to get a comedian's take on why America became partisan and irritating in the world of politics and wanted to find out why we're wired to be partisan and why everybody became irritating. If you read this book, Tribalism is Dumb by Andrew Heaton, which literally exists and is available on the Internet right now.

[00:28:32] If you go to Amazon, you would be less baffled by why politics got awful in America and you'd understand the underlying things going on. But that guy's a comedian, so it's not particularly dry. It's kind of he went through a lot of anthropology, so you don't have to. Then he added jokes, just like President Trump added himself to Lolita. That's right. Timmy, have you read it? I have read it. How is it? I agree. Tribalism is dumb. It's stupid. Man.

[00:29:02] So he talks about there's a red team and a blue team. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Don't give away too much. He actually means like, you know, Republicans and Democrats. No, I know. I know, Timmy. And he uses words like duopoly, which, you know, I thought was a board game, but then I looked it up and I devil verified it with chat GPD and Deep Seek. So he verified that duopoly is the two party system.

[00:29:32] And Deep Seek wanted to know if I believed in Tiananmen Square. So Jack, you know, a lot of people in these years that we live in right now, they're struggling in their relationships because of politics and they're struggling with their family members because of politics at Thanksgiving. And like we've had that in my family. Now, a lot of that, as I previously mentioned, is because I had sex with my stepsister who's 28 years older than me. Frankly, I think that's the majority of it. I think that's doing the heavy lifting.

[00:30:00] But when we remove that we had sex and it was our grandmother's funeral, it wasn't at the funeral, but it was the same day. When we remove that from the equation, I think it's politics, Jack. That's kind of souring those relationships. I'm on Doge. She's she's a Democrat from Vermont. We just we don't have a lot. But I'll tell you this much. Yeah, we read tribalism is dumb. And after we finished that, the sex was amazing. Really amazing, Jack. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:30:29] We were able to get through the politics and find our love. What was your big takeaway from that book? My big takeaway from the book as Chaz, the person in this interview, was just how wired everybody is to be part of a tribe and be partisan. And what a big motivator that is for people. And it explained why all the people in my life had gone crazy, unlike me, Chaz.

[00:30:57] Why do you think people do that? Get all partisan. Hmm. Hmm. Uh, OK, so the guy that wrote it, Andrew Heaton, that dude, Andrew Heaton, you know, he is a comedian by trade. He is. Yeah. He says in the preface that he went into comedy knowing that everybody related to sex and death, that we're all kind of wired to be afraid of dying and we're wired to want to reproduce.

[00:31:26] And what surprised him when he started doing stand up was that like supporting your tribe and promoting your tribe was just as strong. That the only times he ever offended anybody in a comedy club was when he questioned their tribal identity of like, why are you rooting for the jets or whatever? People would get really worked up about that. So there there seems to be millions of years of evolutionary pressure to get along with people in your tribe, but to go look for another tribe to fuck up. That's he says it more eloquently than that. Yeah.

[00:31:54] Basically, the way he described it is that there were like millions of years where cavemen would have a drought and they'd be like, well, we got to murder the other cavemen because there's not enough resources now. So they'd go proactively doing the cavemen that had the thing in their brain of like, I'm gonna go fuck up other cavemen. Those tribes survived and we're all descended from those tribes. So everybody has this desire to be on a tribe and go find other tribes. And it's healthy if it's in sports, stuff like that. But it's increasingly manifesting in politics.

[00:32:20] So it's this kind of dumb caveman energy that we're putting into something that really ought to be making badass slides to kick people to Greenland. Does this author, Andrew Heaton, does he have any theories on why it seems to be so much worse these days than it was 20 years ago? I didn't finish the book, but my stepsister, who's real fucking chatty when we're done doing stuff, wanted to talk about that.

[00:32:48] What she said was that he seems to think it's technology because it's the tribalism thing's a constant, right? So what she thought he thought was going on was that kind of like when the printing press came out, like Martin Luther hadn't had any new ideas. Those would all be done previously. It's just the Catholics could usually catch the guy and set him on fire. And then the ideas wouldn't spread, right? But Martin Luther could just crank those ideas out.

[00:33:16] So that's what she put in Europe in this big war for centuries, working that out. We're kind of living in something similar to that. The gatekeepers are dead. Like they don't have the same if like the people that control networks, they don't have the same thing anymore. And Lara Logan's kind of crazy now. And great plug.

[00:33:38] We're able to interact in this online medium like Twitter where we don't actually see the other people so we can be more nasty and we get rewarded for being tribal. We get rewarded for being really emotional rather and evocative rather than being substantive. And on top of that, that like society is just kind of shrunk where there's a lot fewer places people are hanging out like church and Elk's Lodge and things like that. Starcraft discussion boards.

[00:34:07] And the one thing left is politics. And so everybody that's lonely drifts into politics and turns it into a religion. That is interesting. That's what happens to my brother. Well, big balls, 580. That was your big takeaway from the book. As Timmy asked you, what's your big takeaway from sleeping with your stepsister? For those who are thinking about maybe doing that themselves.

[00:34:34] You know, I think my biggest regret is telling everybody about it. I think that was really the issue. Like, yeah. In retrospect, I don't think my family was ever going to be cool with that. Why would they? Right. So like. Mentioning it at the funeral was also bad. Like that was a pre-funeral bone. What kind of made sense at the time? Because it's like, hey, our grandmother is dead. But look, new life has come. Yes, grandma died. Murder, suicide. Very sad. Kind of intriguing.

[00:35:04] But also new love has blossomed at the same time and not technically incest or technically not incest. Right. So. So like kind of thought that was like the chain of life goes on that everybody got really worked up about that. Yeah. The priest said you're not allowed to just like go up to the podium and talk about stuff. You have to like clear it. That you have like a committee meeting or something. Sounds kind of inefficient to me. Doge needs to get into the church if you ask me. Yeah.

[00:35:34] Yeah. So, yeah, I think that was kind of a mistake in retrospect. We should have played it. We should have done it like under the what do you call it? Kept the cards close to our bleachers. Yeah. Kept it under the bleachers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much. This has been an unforgettable memory. Good luck with those. Good luck with them cutting the government. Yeah. I'm not Andrew Heaton.

[00:35:58] I'm Chaz, a disreputable 19 year old Stanford dropout who does a lot of Adderall plays Star Craft. Andrew Heaton is a separate guy. That dude who would not say any of the stuff that I just said. Sure. That guy wrote a really good book that you should read called Tribalism is Dumb. Tribalism is Dumb. And where can you find it? You can find it on Amazon and it's on audible. So if you like baritones that kind of sound like me, you can hear it.

[00:36:26] So like theoretically, if you're really interested in this topic, but you're a fucking illiterate, you could go on audible. If you could have one of your friends go like find it for you. You can hear all these highbrow concepts, not have to learn any letters. And who does it? Who reads the book? Andrew? Yeah, that guy does. Wow. That's fascinating. Well, gentlemen, Doge is the department. Tribalism is Dumb is the book. Thank you both for being here. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:36:58] So, Brian. Yes, Jack. Man, I'm telling you, we just had the most killer interview with a couple of guys from Doge. Where were you? I was giving burritos to people who are affected by the thunderstorm. But I checked on my weather app. The thunderstorms didn't even come in. It was barely a passing shower. That's pretty much what people kept saying. And I just kept offering them the burrito from my new charity organization called Food Give. So what's the what's the concept of Food Give?

[00:37:27] In times of crisis, Food Give will deliver food to people who need it as long as there's not more than four of them. So you sprung for four burritos. Yeah. And and sort of think yourself to be the equal of some of the great charity organizations that feed people across the world. I had a Moe's gift card and that was able to cover four burritos. And I offered it to people who are slightly moist. Oh, God almighty. OK, well, all right.

[00:37:56] Well, very good. Well, we missed you. It was a really fascinating. And you brought your friend. It's so funny because we were just at the end of this last interview. We were just talking about Andrew Heaton. Now, you brought Andrew here for the good nights of the show. Yes. Andrew, how are you, buddy? No, you know what? With the storm has been kind of touch and go. But but, you know, it's passed. So I feel it. OK, that's a relief. And it's so funny because we were just I wish you guys were here for it because we were just talking about your book, Andrew. Just one more time for people.

[00:38:25] First of all, they before they buy your book, they should like our show and give it five stars. Ready to review. Doge. No, not Doge, Brian. This is a separate bit. OK. Do you understand? You're not playing a character now. You're Brian. Right. And we're trying to plug our friend's fucking book. You understand? Yes. Yeah. I forget the guy's name, though. Heaton. Oh, OK. I thought you were saying balls face to 80. No, that's the character he played in the make them up thing we just did. I'm having a lot.

[00:38:55] I'm having a hard time keeping up with this, to be honest, Jack. So I didn't realize Andrew wrote a book. Is this all true? Yeah. That's real. It was a whole thing. Oh, my God. Never doing that again. So by this, it's not going to happen again. It's called Tribalism is Dumb by me, Andrew Heaton. And it explains where it comes from, why it got bad and what to do about it. But I'm going to read it because I enjoy your sense of humor. Me too. Thank you.

[00:39:20] I'm going to say it's like maybe 50 percent less funny than our conversation, but maybe 400 percent more substantive. So if you want something significantly more substantive, but a little bit less funny, which is pretty good for a book. Yeah. That's what you want to do. Sold. Sold. You are really one of our funniest friends, and we are fortunate enough to have many funny friends. You are an exceptionally talented writer and comedian. And I hope everyone goes out and checks out your book. Thank you, Jack. Thank you.

[00:39:50] No, no, no. You wrote a book, Brian. You wrote three books, two by yourself and one with me. Yeah. We didn't. We took the wrong deal. We should have taken more money up front. Oh, we blew it. Yeah, we did get screwed on that third book. Yes, we did. We made three thousand dollars each on that goddamn book. Yep. Yeah, that was a bad idea. You guys made three thousand dollars. Oh, my God. Who's your agent? Can you put me in context? That was the book that came out the same day they canceled my show. Yes. The timing was perfect.

[00:40:20] It was great. Oh, my God. It's true. Gentlemen, super fun show. Andrew, thank you for being here. Super funny as always. So I'm going to record this now? No, you should have been recording this whole time. Fuck me. That was Questionable Material with Jack and Brian. Subscribe on any podcast platform. Visit us at QMPodcast.com.

[00:40:56] So don't answer me. Okay. Hey, Brian. Hi, Jack. You're such an asshole. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you for letting go.