EP. 102 — Dealer Turned Surgeon

CHRIS [00:01:31] Hello to all my Guanous cool cats. It’s Beautiful Anonymous one hour, one phone call. No names, no holds barred.

THEME MUSIC [00:01:39] I’d rather go one on one, I think it’ll be more fun, then I’ll get to know you and you’ll get to know me.

CHRIS [00:01:55] Hello, everybody. It’s Chris Gethard, your pal on the other end of a mysterious phone line, bringing you the show where you get to eavesdrop via audio on someone else, who shares details about their personal life, oftentime over shares, details of their personal life. Feel very lucky to do this show. Feel very lucky that you’re tuning in. Thank you so much for that. Couple of tour dates up at Chrisgeth.com. We’ve got Bloomington, Indiana and Chicago, Illinois. Check those out if you’re in those towns. I’ll see you in a couple of months. What else? Last week’s episode, a lot of people responded positively to this one. I will tell you, I want to go ahead and thank the caller again. And one of the things a lot of people in the Facebook group were thanking the caller for was talking openly about fertility issues in fertility issues, the fear that comes along with that. There were a lot of people saying, hey, I dealt with this, too. No one really talks openly about it. And it was so nice to hear someone just put it out there. And I think that’s very true. And and thanks. And caller, if you’re if you’re listening again. To our English friend, our English friend thank you. I think it really meant a lot to a lot of people. So thanks for that. You know, didn’t love the call, was Londoners people from London. Caller has said London not not her favorite place to say the least. And I had some fun with that. And I would say, first of all I want to just be clear. Love London. London is a fantastic city. It’s also one of the it’s probably the only place I have ever been that makes New York look laid back as far as how people are rushing around in this high octane get where you going life. London is a fascinating place. I couldn’t keep up with London. I could not keep up with the city of London. And I live in New York. But London is amazing. It’s amazing. I want to be clear on that. And a couple. I had said I felt like they the London audiences didn’t love my career suicide shows when I did my run out there at the Soho Theater and a bunch of people in the Facebook group said, hey, I was there. I liked it. The crowd, as well, seemed like they liked it. And I will say thank you for coming in. And I felt like it was liked. But a, you know, interesting cultural difference, a little more nerves and a little more, people were a little more taken aback maybe then the American audiences. Who cares. Apologies for any Londoners who are offended. I want to come do a Beautiful Anonymous live in London. Met a lot of the fans out there when I was there. And that’s one of the major goals I have for this show. Live London show, if you want to come along on that one Jared. You should come along. Big thumbs up right there. OK. Sounds like we’re going to London. OK. Anyway, this week’s episode excited to bring it to you. This was our first live show from our Bell House residency. The Bell House is one of the great venues in Brooklyn. Do a ton of great comedy, great music podcast tapings. The Bell House is so cool. Huge thanks to the people who run the Bell house. The staff at the Bell House, they took great care of us for three weeks. And thanks to everybody who came out there, there are people who traveled to New York and the New Yorkers stepped up. We had three shows, had a, sold out the first and the third one second one came about five tickets away from the sell out. I was, of course, bummed about that because I’m crazy. But we did we had like 350 to 400 people at every one of these shows and it felt like such a cool, for for a community that’s all about one on one, quiet conversations, empathy. What a cool thing for such it to have like this show of force that over a month over a thousand people showed up to just listen to phone calls. Big thanks to Dan Soder. Who opened the show. You guys aren’t gonna hear that. But anybody who was at the live show can tell you he was hilarious. Good friend of mine. Good show. And the call. I think you’re going to like it. The crowd was really into it. And this guy was fascinating. He, how do you go from from from drug dealing to to what this guy went to? It’s a stunning turnaround. I think you’re gonna like the story. Brace yourself. There’s some stuff about some stuff about animals in here that that’s disturbing, to say the least. But that being said, outside of that, I think a really fascinating call. Enjoy it.

PHONE ROBOT [00:06:05] Thank you for calling Beautiful Anonymous. A beeping noise will indicate when you are on the show with the host. [BEEP]

CALLER [00:06:13] Hello.

CHRIS [00:06:14] Hey, how’s it going?

CALLER [00:06:17] Not too bad, hows that crowd tonight?

CHRIS [00:06:19] Crowds really nice, really nice.

CROWD [00:06:21] Wooooo.

CHRIS [00:06:23] Sounds like they got your back.

CALLER [00:06:25] That’s good to hear, I can hear them.

CHRIS [00:06:26] Yeah. I like, you know it, I think you’re the first live caller to ever take the crowd head on like that.

CALLER [00:06:34] I mean, we got to give em a show, right? They paid.

CHRIS [00:06:36] Yes. Oh, thank God. I like your attitude. Not all the live callers have had this attitude, my friend. Usually, though, I have to explain, oh, there’s a crowd here and they’re very nice people and they’re going to be submitting questions. And you were just like, fuck, yeah. How’s that crowd? Let’s get them. I like that.

CALLER [00:06:53] Wait a minute. There’s submitting questions tonight?

CHRIS [00:06:56] What was that?

CALLER [00:06:57] They submitted questions for me to answer or is that not happening tonight.

CHRIS [00:07:00] No, it is. So the way it works is that there’s a hashtag and they can use it to send thoughts and questions my way and.

CALLER [00:07:09] Oh, oh, got you.

CHRIS [00:07:10] Yeah. So I’ll check in with that throughout. So it’s a very normal call. That’s like the only variation is that is that every now and then you might just hear me say, I’m going to go to Twitter. And that’s just people asking questions.

CALLER [00:07:22] All right. Right on.

CHRIS [00:07:23] And congrats. There were over 12000 call attempts tonight. And you’re the one who got through.

CALLER [00:07:28] Yeah, I was the super duper needy. I’ve been calling since seven. I got through six times, got hung up on six times, but back again.

CHRIS [00:07:36] Look at that. I guess it’s meant to be it’s meant to be. So what did you want to talk about tonight?

CALLER [00:07:46] Well, first, let me just get settled in. I get star struck super easily. I ran into Eric Andre on a date one time and I was speechless for about four hours after that. So give me like 45 seconds to get settled in.

CHRIS [00:07:57] Yeah. The amount of times that people call my podcast and talk about other comedians is staggering. The frequency with which this happens is is getting alarming to me. No, that’s awesome. Yeah. Eric’s a very nice guy.

CALLER [00:08:15] Yeah, he really is. All right. But tonight, I want to talk about let’s do a good old life story episode, how I went from dealing drugs to performing brain surgery.

CHRIS [00:08:29] Wow. Nobody’s ever dropped a thesis like that. So you were a drug dealer. You were a drug dealer at one point your life. Now you’re a brain surgeon?

CALLER [00:08:42] Well, let’s start from the top, right?

CHRIS [00:08:43] Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it. I’m just going to settle in.

CALLER [00:08:47] All right. Well, I am from the East Coast from a good old quiet suburb on the East Coast. And I was a pretty well adjusted kid for a while. Keyword for a while. Then middle school came. And that’s a pivotal point in many of our lives. I was bullied mercilessly. And I should say I don’t trust anybody who wasn’t bullied in middle school like my girlfriend right now, we’re happily together. But she had a great middle school experience. She was super well-adjusted, didn’t get bullied. And I just don’t. There’s something in me that just can’t trust those people fully. So that’s that’s a constant battle we’re dealing with.

CHRIS [00:09:24] Caues logic would dictate they were the ones doing the bullying.

CALLER [00:09:28] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, my my nickname in middle school was The Sideburn Kid, which seems pretty innocuous, but people found plenty of ways to just make my life as miserable as possible. Kids are so just ingenious with the types of torment that they can come up with. They would write my phone number or rather my parent’s phone number on dollar bills like tons and tons of dollar bills and just write like fuck with this kid and just send them out into circulation. And my parents would get like 50 phone calls a day being like, Hey, you got to screw with this kid.

CHRIS [00:10:08] I do love that as an adult. Even you chuckle while telling that story though, I heard that little chuckle in there.

CALLER [00:10:15] Oh, it’s it’s absurd. I mean, again, I give them plenty of credit. They were incredibly creative, but yeah, made for, made for quite the middle school experience.

CHRIS [00:10:24] Yes. Sideburn kid. They’ll just pick anything. That’s not that’s like a cool thing. I was mocked for not having the ability to grow any hair.

CALLER [00:10:35] Well, I should I should say they weren’t real sideburns. I thought that I could trick people into thinking I had sideburns if I just grew the hair higher up in my head, lower down and then just kind of carved around my ears. And people would think I had sideburns, kind of like like Hasidic Jews, but not not exactly. Yeah, it didn’t didn’t quite work, but I still got the nickname. So I guess I kind of half worked.

CHRIS [00:11:04] Yes. Kind of like Hasidic Jews, but not really. I love that.

CALLER [00:11:09] Not really no.

CHRIS [00:11:10] Love it. OK. So, yeah. So this makes you an outcast. This makes you a loner. You got some anger in your gut. I see where this is going.

CALLER [00:11:18] Yeah, exactly. You got the perfect recipe. So from there on, I was around 14 and I’m like, I’m done with this. I want to deal with, you know, being an outcast. I’m gonna become the sketchiest kid I can become. I’m gonna grow my hair out. I’m gonna get in get in to just dirtbag activity, going to become a mall rat, just like as like just adopt the persona that no one would screw with. And boy, howdy. Did that work?

CHRIS [00:11:43] Yeah. And can I ask how old you are?

CALLER [00:11:47] 27.

CHRIS [00:11:48] You’re 27. OK, so you’re young. You’re 10 years younger than I am. But I can still, as an east coaster I’m very well acquainted with the East Coast dirtbag. And as we describe it, like this scraggly, grown out hair, you probably had like the dirt lip mustache, right? Like not quite a full mustache.

CALLER [00:12:05] I kind of still do.

CHRIS [00:12:06] Yeah. Yeah.

CALLER [00:12:09] It never, never leaves you. The dirt bag is always inside you, if not going on above your left.

CHRIS [00:12:15] I love it. I love it. So keep talking us through this. So you’re this. You’re becoming a bad kid.

CALLER [00:12:23] Exactly. And I was, I romanticiz the type of lifestyle. Like, yeah, like I’m a fucking bad ass now and I’m sorry for swearing up top in the first five minutes for those families listening in. And your mother, of course.

CHRIS [00:12:35] Thank you so much.

CALLER [00:12:37] Anyway, yes, anyway. So of course, naturally, when you’re adopting that dirtbag persona, you get into doing drugs yourself, but you realize I gotta take this to the next level. What’s the next thing I can do? Well, you gotta sell them, of course. And being, being fifteen, I had, you know, a few connections. You know, just being in that that dirtbag realm of people I could reach out to. And I finally found a connection of someone who could hook me up with my first first large quantity of marijuana. And I’m like, that’s great. I can get in that way. I know the product myself very well. I know there’s plenty other dirtbags who would like it. So let’s do this. So I set up my first pickup right across the street from a maximum security prison.

CHRIS [00:13:30] So you roll down to the prison, pick up a ton of weed.

CALLER [00:13:35] Well, I didn’t exactly roll down. So it was there was a maximum security prison and then a highway in front of it. Then across the street was a halfway house where people who are, you know, on the way out of prison or hanging out, doing whatever they do. So the pickup point was under a garbage, garbage can at the halfway house, which in retrospect was the stupidest place I could have picked up a felony out of marijuana, especially in a state where it was completely illegal at the time. And that was certainly poor judgment on my part. But I wanted to, want to do this. I want to get into this lifestyle. I wanted to do this. So I ran across that highway, went around the back to the garbage can. Wonder where this guy left it for me. And as soon as I grab his bag, of course, an armed guard walks around the corner being like, hey, what’s going on with you? And I just completely bolted back over the highway. I mean, I was 15 years old, so he probably thought I was just some idiot, which luckily I was. And that’s, he didn’t come further after me. So I got my bag, got the hell out of there, didn’t end up in that maximum security prison. And I hit the streets. I hit him hard.

CHRIS [00:14:50] I have no idea how in 50 minutes you’re going to take us from picking up drugs from the halfway house garbage can to brain surgery. But I’m all ears. I’m all ears. Wow. So that’s it. So you start with weed. Does it stay with weed or does it build?

CALLER [00:15:06] It does stay with weed. Luckily, there was a high enough demand for it for me to stick in there. But yeah, I got in my lane very quickly. I got a little crew together. I got, so there’s there’s three of us. There’s me, I had the connections, a little bit of cash up front. There, there was the dude with the sick phone. He had a sidekick. If you remember the phone was like a 180 flip screen. So dope. He was like the phone connection guy. And then we had the driver who had this like horrible like 1995 Honda Civic with like the lusive stick shift. But he was he was the transportation. And we took over this like four town radius in, well I’m not going to say area. But on the East Coast. And we ran that high school. We ran shit.

CHRIS [00:15:49] It’s like a very sad suburban version of The Wire, huh? And your your Avon. Avon Barksdale.

CALLER [00:16:00] Yeah, more or less. So, yeah, we’re getting in the groove. We’re doing our thing and our our biggest client who purchased the most from us was a mother of a student at the high school. And the deal that we set up. You know, we were like 16 is that we would provide her with marijuana and she would provide us with alcohol. But the catch was she wanted us to drive her because she didn’t have a car herself. But she had the idea in her head that, well, it would looks silly if you have three teenagers were driving a middle aged woman to the liquor store. So she should take the driver’s seat. And that was the biggest mistake because, well, first of all, she’s buying drugs from children. So she’s probably not the most responsible person, but I lent her my vehicle one time or rather my mother’s vehicle, which was a 1999 Dodge Caravan. So like a nice soccer mom car, she gets in the driver’s seat, proceeds to consume like a handful of cocaine like this is she provided her own cocaine. We weren’t in that business.

CHRIS [00:17:10] She provides her own cocaine, that’s always good.

CALLER [00:17:13] Exactly.

CHRIS [00:17:14] Yeah. Well, let’s consider it at least. So she’s got to coked up while driving your mom’s Dodge Caravan.

CALLER [00:17:23] Yes. Yes. Driving the soccer mom car takes it on the highway and is going about 115 miles an hour in a soccer mom car, which I did’t know was possible. So kudos to Dodge. But that was the scariest half hour of my life, crossing a state border to where the the taxes were lower so we could get a better deal on our booze. And you’d think I would have learned my lesson after once that we did about 12 different times.

CHRIS [00:17:48] Wow, all to get booze?

CALLER [00:17:51] Yep. You know, when you’re 16, it’s it’s kind of it becomes one of the most important things. You know, partying. It’s it’s so simple, but it’s just simply because you can’t do it, you just want it all that much more.

CHRIS [00:18:04] Yeah. Someone did just submit a question that I like. Now, did this kid know that you’re you were just roll in deep with his mom? Did the kid from school, was the kid from school, would you like see him in the hallway? And you’d be like, hi. And he’d be like, shut up. Like immediately. Like you, both knew.

CALLER [00:18:22] I wish although it was it was a young girl and she was totally in on it. She was like, yeah, I know my mom is totally like this, like hang out with her mom, do your thing like whatever. She was like over it.

CHRIS [00:18:36] That went from funny to sad awfully fast.

CALLER [00:18:40] Yeah, a little bit. It wasn’t the most functional family setup as you can guess.

CHRIS [00:18:44] Yeah. I will say. You’re like a very good storyteller. And I think all of us have an insanely clear picture of the exact type of town you grew up in, like all of us know either the neighborhood or town near us that was our version of this. You’re doing a great, great job on that. People on the hash tag are trying to guess what state you’re from. One person saying, I’m from Maryland. He definitely sounds like this is Maryland. Whereas in my head I’m like, this is Jersey all the way.

CALLER [00:19:14] Interesting. Well, luckily, I have like the most generic accent. So good luck to all you guessing.

CHRIS [00:19:19] Wow. You don’t have to be cocky about it.

CALLER [00:19:25] Anyway, you mentioned earlier on earlier that I have 50 minutes, is this a half hour call tonight or is this the full hour.

CHRIS [00:19:29] Full hour. You have 46 minutes left.

CALLER [00:19:32] OK. All right. So I know what pace to take us at. OK, cool.

CHRIS [00:19:36] I like that. I like that, because you’re planning you’re like how aggressive and hard hitting do I have to be with the bullet points of this dope ass story. I like it. I see how your brain works. You’re the ultimate live caller. Thank you so much. Sometimes we get these.

CROWD [00:19:51] [CLAPPING].

CHRIS [00:19:52] Yeah. The crowd is appreciating you. I get to just sit in a chair and enjoy this. Sometimes you get live callers and I’m like, hi what do you want to talk about? They’re like, I don’t know. And it’s that for an hour. You’re like strategizing. What’s the best way to drop the bombs in this story? OK. So you’re rolling around with moms doing cocaine, you’re selling weed. How does this build. This doesn’t sound like a thing that ends well.

CALLER [00:20:21] Yeah, you’re right. It didn’t end that well. I mean, it was going well for a while. I mean, I got a job at Rite Aid to like cover my tracks of where all the cash was coming from.

CHRIS [00:20:32] You said Rite Aid, did I hear that correctly? Rite Aid.

CALLER [00:20:36] The Rite Aid pharmacy.

CHRIS [00:20:37] I love that. I’m the town’s biggest bad ass. Welcome to Rite Aid.

CALLER [00:20:47] And Rite Aid’s definitely the bottom of the pharmacy totem pole. It’s like barely better than a 7-Eleven. Like it’s down there.

CHRIS [00:20:53] It is kind of the 7-Eleven of pharmacies. What did you do at the Rite Aid? What was your department?

CALLER [00:21:00] I mean, I sold drugs out of the Rite Aid, but on top of that I was just.

CHRIS [00:21:04] Oh no, so you were a defacto pharmacist.

CALLER [00:21:13] Oh, yeah, exactly. I mean, they sold Percocet in the back and I sold marijuana up front.

CHRIS [00:21:18] I love it. All right. Working at the Rite Aid. Got some cover. People don’t know what people can assume where the big bucks are coming from. No, wait hold on though cause I would imagine if you’re if you’re for real, that you had like a crew of people. It sounds like you were making a decent amount of money. Like how serious was this?Because we all know, like there’s suburban weed dealers who are like nickel bag kids who just want to have their own nickel bag left over. And then there are the people who it’s like that all of a sudden they’ve got like a couple pounds in their house and it’s out of control. Which how far along the spectrum were you?

CALLER [00:21:55] I don’t know, prob- probably in the middle of there probably because the guy who I picked up from after halfway house madness, my my regular guy after that, he was pretty big time like you’d walk into his house. It was like a scene from Breaking Bad, he had a safe. He’d open up a safe, you’d see firearms in there. Pounds of weed, cash. There were always like five naked women just hanging out in his living room. And I was like, sixteen. So I was like, okay. But I was not that big.

CHRIS [00:22:22] Right. You’re at the Rite Aid. You’re like, someday, someday.

CALLER [00:22:28] Someday. Yeah. I’ll work my way up to the naked women in my living room.

CHRIS [00:22:32] So you’re I mean, this is like you’re live in the lifestyle, though. You are a young kid who’s caught up in this.

CALLER [00:22:37] Yeah. I was like 16, like pulling in like a thousand bucks a week, which is like I mean, it’s big for anybody. But for a 16-Year-Old like that was pretty significant.

CHRIS [00:22:46] Yeah. Yeah. So this is going on all through high school.

CALLER [00:22:53] Yeah. This is just in high school. I was a child.

CHRIS [00:22:55] Yeah. And no teachers or principals or cops ever. I mean nobody ever figured out this was you.

CALLER [00:23:02] So I’m sure my name must’ve gotten around. But I mean, I wasn’t the only dirtbag in town there. There were other small time dealers. So like. Yep, police and teachers. I didn’t do it at school. It was strictly an after school extracurricular activity.

CHRIS [00:23:18] Yeah. You put that one on the college resume. Extracurriculars selling weed at Rite Aid.

CALLER [00:23:27] Entrepreneur.

CHRIS [00:23:27] Okay.

CALLER [00:23:27] Yeah. Yeah. You got it. But anyway, you mentioned that this couldn’t end well and it didn’t and I can’t remove the order things that happened. But my driver, his parents became privy to what was going on and they called one of those kind of like scared straight programs where they come in your house the middle of the night and kidnap you and put you in the back of a van and send you off to a farm in, like upstate Maine or something.

CHRIS [00:23:55] Oh, like a bootcamp.

CALLER [00:23:58] Yeah, so my my driver just disappeared one day and I didn’t find out until three years later when he got out or not, maybe two years later, when he got out, he’s like, yeah, I got kidnaped in the middle of the night and like a bag over my head put into a van like the whole deal, like, scare you straight.

CHRIS [00:24:13] Like one of those things you used to see, on the Sally Jessy Raphael show in the 90s, some drill instructor who would get in your face. Holy shit.

CALLER [00:24:22] That’s exactly what happened. Yes. So he disappears. So that was not a good sign. And then my parents’ house got broken into while we were on vaction and I got robbed of everything. So at that point, I decided I should probably hang up the old drug-dealing gloves. I should probably hang my jerseys from the rafters. It’s about time to retire.

CHRIS [00:24:44] When you say it, when you say that they got everything. You mean someone came in and stole all your drug supply and your money and all that?

CALLER [00:24:51] Yes. So they didn’t touch a single thing of my parents.

CHRIS [00:24:54] That’s terrifying.

CALLER [00:24:55] I just I had a little safe that they stole my safe. They got all my cash. They got all my drugs. They got it.

CHRIS [00:25:02] When you’re a 16 year old drug dealer and you’re convincing yourself you’re a big shot, then someone breaks into your house and takes all of it. That must be a very sobering reality moment.

CALLER [00:25:12] It was pretty deflating. It was. Yeah, pretty sobering.

CHRIS [00:25:16] Yeah. Because that means somebody, like, knows who you are, knows what you’re doing, and is like, I’m going to take your shit. Come back at me. Let’s see how real you are. That’s basically what’s happening.

CALLER [00:25:27] Yeah. And I’m not an aggressive person. I hate conflict, which not the best line of work to be in if you can’t handle a little fight. So I think I. I got out definitely at the right time.

CHRIS [00:25:40] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that’s cool.

CALLER [00:25:44] Yeah. That was a that was two years and so that was that was drug dealing and then I wasn’t like too interested in college. I mean you’ve famously said school is for the birds. So I was pretty much in that mindset for for quite a while until one movie changed my life. The 2001 Jake Gyllenhaal drama Donnie Darko.

CHRIS [00:26:08] Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I don’t think I’m the only person in this room who will say that’s one of the last movies I expected. So a movie about a moody teen who can create wormholes in his mind sometimes sees a rabbit. This is what leads to you somehow becoming a brain surgeon.

CALLER [00:26:35] Yeah, that’s the movie. You got it.

CHRIS [00:26:42] Give it a pause. So much crackling live energy you guys probably need to take a breath cool down for a second. We’ve got advertisers, check them out. They got promo codes. You can get cheap stuff discounts. Use those things. It helps the show when you do. We’ll be back with more phone call after this.

[00:26:58] [AD BREAK].

CHRIS [00:30:34] Thanks again. All of our advertisers. Now let’s get back to the phone call.

CHRIS [00:30:40] So a movie about a moody teen who can create wormholes in his mind sometimes sees a rabbit. This is what leads to you, somehow becoming a brain surgeon?

CALLER [00:30:55] Yeah, that’s the movie. You got it.

CHRIS [00:31:00] OK. OK. Break it down. I watched Donnie Darko like twice and I thought it was pretty good. Explain to me how it changed your life so much.

CALLER [00:31:10] Sure. So it wasn’t necessarily the movie itself. Yes. It’s it’s a great drama. Loves me some Jake Gyllenhaal. But it was more of the context that I watched it in. So I was I was kind of just a piece of garbage dirt bag. But I had a good friend of mine who was probably my best friend at the time, who is not a dirt bag. He was set for like a great college. He can be like an astrophysicist, like he was this really brilliant dude. And I watched this movie with him and, you know, Donnie Darko deals with themes of like time travel in different dimensions. So it it is a thought provoker so it got he and I talking about just sort of existential phenomena and through our like hour long kind of stargazey conversation he was like, hey, you know, you’re actually kind of a smart person. I was like, huh! And we kept on talking and he was like you should probably go to college like you’re naturally smart. If you just kind of directed that, like you could probably be doing some good things. And that simple movie and conversation really resonated with me. That was like my last year of high school that I was like, I should turn my game around. I should start trying. And that’s why I realized if you just like if you just pay attention in class and then do the work, you get A’s. It’s that simple.

CHRIS [00:32:27] Wow. Wow. Hold on. So many reactions, first of all. Sounds like you were still smoking weed, huh? You stopped dealing.

CALLER [00:32:35] Yeah. There was. We were. We were. Yeah. We’re definitely vibing during that conversation. I mean it’s sparked that creativity for sure.

CHRIS [00:32:43] Just the break down of that. Put on Donnie Darko and your buddies like, yo, your pretty smart man. Like you can see everyone had that conversation in high school. That’s amazing. Now here’s something that’s making me laugh, though. How many times did, like authority figures sit you down and say, like you have so much potential had that happened and all?

CALLER [00:33:03] It did. I mean, I was I was always naturally just one of those people who didn’t really need to study that hard. And I would do pretty well not trying. So if I just tried a little bit like I would I would do great. So people definitely saw potential, you know, my parents knew I was like getting into a bunch of trouble and they were obviously not happy about it. But, you know, they could only do so much. Anything short of sending me to Maine, getting kidnaped in the middle of a night, anything short of that.

CHRIS [00:33:33] Wow. And then one viewing of Donnie Darko. That Echo and the Bunnymen bong hits in your whole life turns around.

CALLER [00:33:41] Yeah man that’s all it took.

CHRIS [00:33:42] Wow, that’s pretty crazy. It took one person to tell you you might have what it takes. Exactly one person and then you stepped up. You stepped up and it happened.

CALLER [00:33:53] Yeah. I mean, and again, when you’re 16, 17, like you aren’t really listening to anybody over the age of 25, cause they’re just over the hill. You want nothing to do with them. So if a teacher or a parent says like hey you got potential, you’re like. All right. Got it, dad.

CHRIS [00:34:07] But, yeah. No, I get it.

CALLER [00:34:08] But when your peer is like hey, you’re kind of a smart person.

CHRIS [00:34:11] Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Twenty five is super old. Yeah.

CALLER [00:34:16] Well when you’re a teenager.

CHRIS [00:34:17] No, I know. It’s my own insecurities. I’m I’m I’m approaching 40 and I’m looking more and more like it every day and feeling more. Anyway, it’s not about me. Continue with your story. Continue with your story.

CALLER [00:34:31] 40 is the new 30.

CHRIS [00:34:32] They keep telling me that, they keep telling me that. And then some days I wake up and I’m like, oh, my knees. It’s probably gonna rain today. And I’m like, what the fuck is going on? What am I turning into? I was cool like a year and a half ago. What is going on.

CALLER [00:34:50] I hear you man

CHRIS [00:34:53] Okay. So your senior year, you turn it on.

CALLER [00:34:56] I turned it on. Yeah, I got my game together and. You know, S.A.T.’s, did all that stuff applied to schools got into kind of a mediocre school and I was like, OK, that’s fine. Like I can go there and prove that I know what I’m doing and then transfer out. And that’s what I did. I went to some kind of middle of the road school and got straight A’s for a year. Then I applied to better school and transferred and went to a better one. And that’s where I finished out. And I study neuroscience, just as you can see where we’re getting to the brain surgery aspect. Studied that. Did my senior thesis. Got that out of the way. Did some internships. And then my first job out of college was as a researcher where brain surgery was a big part of the job description.

CHRIS [00:35:45] Wow.

CALLER [00:35:47] And I should I should draw distinctions so there’s there’s medical science and then there’s academic science. And in the medical field if you want to do surgery, you need to go to medical school and do residency, internships. You need to be like 10, 12 years into your career before you even think about slicing a person open. In academia, all you need is a can do attitude and that’s it.

CHRIS [00:36:13] All you need is a can do attitude and then you can cut into a brain?

CALLER [00:36:18] So not a human brain, into any animal you want, whether it’s a non-human primate, a rat, a fish, a bird, a housefly.

CHRIS [00:36:30] What?

CALLER [00:36:30] Do, whatever you want.

CHRIS [00:36:32] This is the first time I’ve ever thought that houseflies have brains, they have brains? I guess they have brains. They have eyes. That’s how dumb I am. That’s how smart you are. You actually do brain surgery. And I just said the sentence. I guess they have brains, they have eyes. I said that out loud. I just said that out loud in front of people who paid money to be here. That’s not OK. Wow. OK. So you’ve never you’ve never cut open a human brain, but you through your academic pursuits, you’re cutting open a lot of animal brains.

CALLER [00:37:01] I mean, I could open a few postmortem human brains, but I have cut open over 200 living animal brains.

CHRIS [00:37:09] Living animal brains. Wow. And then this is for research purposes. So just so I can be clear, this is not, are you eventually going to go to medical school and pursue the medical route or this is the context in which you are involved in cutting open brains.

CALLER [00:37:26] So I should say I left the sciences forever last year. So this is in the past. I am no longer a brain surgeon.

CHRIS [00:37:33] Uh, huh. I hope you work at the Rite Aid again. I hope you’re like, I just miss the Rite Aid so much.

CALLER [00:37:43] Yeah, man, I had it so good back then, I’m just chasing that old high.

CHRIS [00:37:47] So what is it like, oK, hold on. I don’t even know where, I’m going to go. You know, I’m going to go to Twitter. I haven’t included the Twitter in a while. And as I formulate the questions, because we’re in a new phase of the call, clearly. Let’s see. Oh, Sam Hodge wants to know, what skills did you take from drug dealing into your later pursuits?

CALLER [00:38:11] That’s a great question. I never thought about the connection. Well.

CHRIS [00:38:18] Yeah.

CALLER [00:38:19] Huh.

CHRIS [00:38:21] Is there any skills you learned as a young hustler.

CALLER [00:38:25] I learned the metric system from being a drug dealer and the sciences deal exclusively in the metric system.

CHRIS [00:38:32] Perfect answer.

CALLER [00:38:33] So that was a pretty easy transference of knowledge.

CHRIS [00:38:37] Getting a lot of Donnie Darko opinions. We’re getting a Donnie Darko sucks from someone whose name is Baby Elvis on Twitter we got. Ah, no, no, no. That was from someone named Brodin. Baby Elvis says Donnie Darko, great soundtrack. My bad on that. Donnie Darko. This guy is my soulmate. Lot of, oh someone asking Samarra, asking how many lives would you say you’ve saved because of a fucked up Jake Gyllenhaal bunny?

CALLER [00:39:06] I don’t know if I saved any. I’ve definitely ended a lot of animal lives, unfortunately. I’m hoping one day my research can inform medical professionals.

CHRIS [00:39:18] That’s a great answer. So I don’t know.

CALLER [00:39:21] The research gets dark, but we’ll get there.

CHRIS [00:39:23] Yeah. Let’s get there because I don’t know how much you want to reveal as far as your pursuits, because I know these are things that are probably published. And, I don’t want you to like blow your anonymity. But what can you tell us about why you’ve been cutting open brains?

CALLER [00:39:36] OK. So, I mean, I got in to neuroscience, sort of through the back door of psychology, like I was really into psychology having dealt with my myriad of mental health phenomena. It’s run in my family. So it always has been close to my heart. And I wanted to get involved somehow. And so I was just just involved in the cognitive aspects for a couple of years. But then the neuroscience door opened itself to me and it was an opportunity. So I was like, hey, yeah, why not? Let’s let’s try this. And I kind of got a little pigeonholed into it. But once I started getting experience in it, I sort of took it and took and ran and that’s how I that’s how I got into it. And an interesting tie to sort of back to my drug dealing days. Within the first week on the job, I got a call from the DEA. And it’s maybe not for the reason you think. It had nothing to do with my past. It was because I didn’t know there were very specific channels through which you had to order drugs like ketamine and morphine. I thought you could just sort of call the drug company and be like, hey, I want this much drugs. Send it to this address.

CHRIS [00:40:46] Dude, you were a drug dealer and worked in a pharmacy. You should definitely.

CALLER [00:40:50] Yeah, I know.

CHRIS [00:40:53] Wow. Yeah. So the DEA had the DEA finally cracked down on you once you got your shit together. If you’re trying to order morphine, they’re concerned. OK. What’s it, OK, what’s what’s the first animal that’s skull you cut open to look at a brain.

CALLER [00:41:09] Rats primarily just because their brain morphology is very similar to humans and it’s they’re much smaller and they’re just they can have litters within a couple of weeks. So it’s the turnover is very quick. You can see generational differences and etc. They’re also very smart animals to do behavioral studies on. So we mostly work with rats. There’s also mice and monkeys and birds and all the other stuff that I mentioned, but primarily rats.

CHRIS [00:41:34] Primarily rats. I will say people heard you say rats and then you’re like mice, birds and then monkeys got an audible gasp. Monkeys was different in everybody’s minds. We rank animals based on how cute they are and how much they resemble us. People did not like hearing monkey. They didn’t like that. So what’s that like? What’s it like to cut in to? What’s that? And it’s living.

CALLER [00:41:59] Well. A few things. You need to learn how to distance yourself emotionally from what you’re doing. And the way that I did that was I listened to comedy podcasts, which probably not the best thing to do when you’re trying to be very steady with your hand listening to something that could potentially make you laugh. But that’s something that I did pretty much every day to get me through my surgeries, to pop on the headphones and listen to some good old Pete Holmes or Tom Segura or of course, Chris Gethard just just to get some chuckles to get through the procedure.

CHRIS [00:42:31] Thank you for including me in the list. That’s very nice of you. Thank you. Thank you for referring to Beautiful Anonymous as a comedy podcast that really takes.

CALLER [00:42:40] Well this is this is before Beautiful Anonymous. I found you through other methods. Don’t worry.

CHRIS [00:42:45] So appearances on other people’s funnier podcasts.

CALLER [00:42:52] At the time, perhaps.

CHRIS [00:42:54] That’s fair. So you put in a good podcast, you’re listing to old Petey pants Holmes, your cutting open a monkey brain.

[00:42:55] Hizzoner so you put in a good podcast, you’re listen until PD pants Holmes cut open a monkey brain.

CALLER [00:43:04] Yep.

CHRIS [00:43:06] And hold on, because I have a cartoon vision in my mind. Are these, these animals are like sedated or are you like poking around in their brains while they’re awake?

CALLER [00:43:19] So we would do many of our experiments while they’re alive and awake. But we would, of course, sedate them heavily, give them analgesics, give them ketamine, give them antibiotics. All these are different procedures to keep them under while we’re working on them. So they weren’t they weren’t aware of anything that was happening during the procedure. So that’s one silver lining. But they were definitely aware when they woke up and they had this giant like metal implant sticking out of their head that wasn’t there before. And they’re like what, what the hell dude.

CHRIS [00:43:50] So they’d realize, oh, I’m a cyborg now and they’d freak out.

CALLER [00:43:56] Yeah. Typically. And what was sad is that after the animals get surgery, very often they are neglected from the pack. So we keep them socialized as best we can. But after they become a cyborg, they get shunned from their society and nobody else wants anything to do with them, which is very, very sad.

CROWD [00:44:14] Awwwwww.

CHRIS [00:44:17] The crowd is turning, my friends. The crowd is shifting. Not against you.

CALLER [00:44:22] I didn’t invent academia.

CHRIS [00:44:23] They’re not turning on you. They’re not turning against you. But they don’t like this as much as the tales of the sideburn kid. They don’t like it. It’s a lot to process, it’s a lot to process, isn’t it? But I’m sure you had those feelings, too.

CALLER [00:44:40] Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s ultimately the reason why I got out of it. But when I when I was there, it became just just normal. You talk about, well, every every animal needs to leave in a body bag so they can be further examined postmortem, which means they need to be euthanized. And the word we would use for that is sacrifice. But for short, we would say sac. So when we were done with an animal we were like. All right. We got to sack him. Go sack number 14 15, which is kind of an aggressive word to use for ending someone else’s life. Yeah. Go go sack him. But that’s the industry standard term and we would sack hundreds of animals.

CHRIS [00:45:21] I can feel the vegans of Brooklyn getting progressively more uncomfortable with this.

CALLER [00:45:28] I became a vegan after after that job.

CHRIS [00:45:30] You became a vegan. Wow. Oh, that. We’ll have to get to that before we do that, because that’s really fastening. Someone put in a question that I really love on the Twitter, someone else who clearly I think works in your field or has studied it. They want to know what’s your fave brain imaging technique, DTI, flair, structural functional dish?

CALLER [00:45:55] So I didn’t really use most of those. We mostly did calcium imaging and two photon imaging. So that means a whole lot to you, I’m sure. But it was basically shooting different lasers of different wavelengths into the optical windows that we put into the brains to see what’s going on in there. Other than that, we would use electronic hyper drives and we would literally plug like a USB stick into their brain and read them in real time with what what they’re thinking all about.

CHRIS [00:46:25] You would put a usb stick in and that would be able to record information and you could then track what they were thinking and how they were reacting to things?

CALLER [00:46:33] Yeah, exactly, so it wasn’t exactly a usb stick, but there would be all these different electrodes that we very specifically dialed down into diff parts of the brain and depending on the task we were doing, we would know if they’re going to get it correct. We knew if they were experiencing something novel for the first time. We knew if they were pissed off, we knew if they were going to get it wrong that we we could tell based on looking at these waveforms, essentially how the animal was going to behave. So it was cool to see this impulse and then the animal would behave that way like two seconds later. It was really fascinating to see that.

CHRIS [00:47:10] Wow. I mean, and is it OK, you’re so smart. And I’m about to ask a question that’s so dumb, but just as an idiot.

CALLER [00:47:20] I mean I might not know the answer, but I’ll try.

CHRIS [00:47:22] No, believe me, this is a very dumb question. But as an idiot, I have to, oh, why am I going to ask this. I’m going to sound so dumb, but I really want to know, could you. So, like, could you, like, put a thing in an animal and then remote control it?

CHRIS [00:47:46] I think now is as good a time as any to pause for a couple ads. Get this, this call is cookin baby. You’re gonna want to come back for more. But before you get more, check out these ads. These people support the show. It’s how I bring you this show every week. And there are promo codes, so you get discounts too, use them. Support the show. We’ll be right back.

[00:48:38] [AD BREAK]

CHRIS [00:49:30] Thanks again to everybody who advertises on this show. Now let’s finish off the phone call.

CHRIS [00:49:37] So like could you like put a thing in an animal and then remote control it?

CALLER [00:49:46] I think in a way you mean like an RC car or like a drone? You mean like that?

CHRIS [00:49:50] Yeah. Like then you could have a monkey that could climb a shelf and get a thing for you and you have a remote control. That’s what I have in my brain.

CALLER [00:50:00] So I’m going to say that’s probably possible. We didn’t do that. But you could theoretically implant some electrodes into the motor cortex and send impulses at different frequencies and you could probably get them to. I mean, you can definitely get them to move various limbs. Don’t know if you could coordinate it quite to the point of your your robot pal. But I hope someone’s inspired to try that now.

CHRIS [00:50:25] No, I don’t want to be responsible for the enslaving of other animals.

CALLER [00:50:30] I mean it will probably happen to us.

CHRIS [00:50:33] They’re probably already working on shit like that, too. Right? The government, black ops man. Is the government doing all kinds of weird shit that we don’t know about in fields like this?

CALLER [00:50:47] I mean, definitely, and granted, I was working out of a university academic context and like the shit that happens behind closed doors there is already like grotesque and like obscene. So the fact that it’s happening on a university level is already bad. I’m sure whatever is happening at like a governmental federal level has to be like mind boggling.

CHRIS [00:51:08] Now we can connect some dots. You saying like the stuff you happening behind closed doors was obscene. I became a vegan after I left that job. You saw some shit go down, huh?

CALLER [00:51:20] I mean, every day.

CHRIS [00:51:22] What’s the type of stuff we’re talking here?

CALLER [00:51:26] How sad are we trying to get?

CHRIS [00:51:31] As sad as possible.

CALLER [00:51:34] Okay. All right.

CHRIS [00:51:37] I know how to do my job.

CALLER [00:51:39] Okay. Let’s do it. In addition to brain surgery, I was also in charge of handling the animal colonies from like animal health and care and reproducing, mating, all that stuff. I was also in charge of euthanizing them and we would have to do that quite often en masse if they didn’t test positive for the various genes that we needed them to possess. So there would be these like mini holocausts like on the weekly where we would have to gas like 50 animals at a time, and this is like mothers with pups, they’re weaning young animals, old animals where they we just didn’t have a use for them. And by law we had to send them out in a body bag. We couldn’t just take them home with us. So I would have to murder en masse hundreds of animals.

CHRIS [00:52:34] Yeah, that’s a shitty gig. Yeah, that’s a bad gig.

CALLER [00:52:39] And not just and not just kill them once. We had to kill them twice to make sure. So every animal had to undergo two forms of euthanasia and the second form was usually decapitation.

CHRIS [00:52:53] Hold on. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? so you would kill the animals in a way with gas, which at the very least, I mean, it’s it’s brutal. The room is clearly reacting in a way like you clearly did, which is like this is this is this is evil. And on some level, it feels like it has elements of that. So at the very least, though, gas is in some way more painless and somewhat more humane. But then afterwards, you would have to chop their heads off and you had to do that.

CALLER [00:53:26] I had to do that. And then I would have to bag them up individually and put them in the freezer.

CHRIS [00:53:32] Hold on. What can you just give us a list of of some types of animals you have chopped their heads off.

CALLER [00:53:44] So it was, like I said, primarily rats. There were mice in there, too. And there were ferrets as well. I didn’t do any of the decapitation on monkeys. I did not have to get through that. Mostly just rodents.

CHRIS [00:53:59] Yeah, let’s not pretend, as New Yorkers, that the image of decapitating thousands of rats bothers us all that much. Let’s not pretend, let’s not pretend.

CALLER [00:54:09] I understand. Although if you spend some time with them they’re like super smart and like have personalities and like they’ll hang out with you, you can feed them, Froot Loops and they’ll eat it like a bagel. It’s super cute. Like they’re actually pretty cool animals. If they’re not like eating pizza out of dumpsters. Like they’re they’re pretty cool to hang out with.

CHRIS [00:54:28] I love that. See here’s why I like you. Here’s why I like you. Because you already sensed people were getting kind of like squeamish and emotional. And then you totally humanized a rat by making it a eat Fruit Loops to make it even more to make it even. Wow. Okay.

CALLER [00:54:45] They love. They love Froot Loops.

CHRIS [00:54:46] Rats love Fruit Loops. We all learned that together tonight.

CALLER [00:54:52] And they have opposable thumbs. So like I said, they’ll eat it like a donut.

CHRIS [00:54:56] Oh, they’ll hold it like a little donut and eat a Froot Loop. And then you gas em and chop their head off.

CALLER [00:55:03] Immediately after, I give them a Froot Loop to distract them and then hack the shit.

CHRIS [00:55:08] Wait you’d give them Froot Loops to distract them?

CALLER [00:55:11] No, no. No that would be.

CHRIS [00:55:14] I misheard you I thought you were saying you’d like give him a Froot Loop and they’d be like, oh, my God, my favorite.

CALLER [00:55:23] I mean, I was being hyperbolic, but it wasn’t that far off.

CHRIS [00:55:28] OK, so here. OK. So I want to know where you would like to take this, because I’m sure we could keep getting gross and graphic about that. Or you could tell. Yeah. You know, you could tell us that it, was this a I guess my the main question I want to make sure we cover whether it’s now or later is, was this just an overall burnout or did you hit an actual breaking point where you were like, done, can’t do this.

CALLER [00:55:58] I mean, it wasn’t it wasn’t any like singular experience for where I was like, I killed two thousand animals today. Like, that’s it. It wasn’t. It wasn’t anything like that. It was just it was just like an additive. Like every day it was just kind of chip away at you a little bit more. And I tried to have as much integrity with the job as possible, but like some people didn’t really have a soft spot for the animals. So they would really just treat them like, I don’t know. It’s like like materials, like they’re just a material in this project. Like, just they’re totally expendable. So like, if people were too lazy to bring them back up to the animal facility, like, ah we’ll just sacrifice them right now. So I don’t have to walk three minutes out of my way if I can go home a little earlier. Like people would people do some really gross stuff like that. And academia is kind of a dirty place to work anyway for the types of like falsification of data and like lies people tell and the way people treat animals. It’s just it’s all kind of gross. So I really just had to get out.

CHRIS [00:56:58] Yeah, I would imagine. And you dropped the number two thousand in a way where it made I think me realize and all of us realize that’s not that you’re not exaggerating. That was like in that that’s not that wasn’t an abnormal amount of animals to die in a day, huh.

CALLER [00:57:13] I mean that would be high. I worked in a pretty small lab and I probably euthanized during my three or four year tenure about a thousand animals. So break that up about 250 a year.

CHRIS [00:57:27] And that’s more than anybody wants to behead. Yeah. That’s still nobody wants to behead hundreds of animals a year. You had to get out. Morally you had to get out of this situation.

CALLER [00:57:40] Exactly. But yeah, I mean, I’m happy to make you guys more sad. I can tell you weird things I had to do there, like I would have to get very close and personal with the female rats and I’d have to swab individually every single one of their vaginas to see if they’re ready for mating. And I didn’t think, if you ask me, at 16 years old, if I thought if someone told me, hey, you’re going to be swabbing rat vaginas when you’re 25, probably wouldn’t believed them. But that became a pretty common part of my my job description.

CHRIS [00:58:12] I wish I love it when like you’re watching Donnie Darko and your friends, like, you know, you have a lot of potential. I bet down the line someday you might swab a rat vagina and then eventually cut its head off. You’d been like, wait. That just sounds like the track I’m already on as a teenage drug dealer.

CALLER [00:58:33] Right? Yeah. Yeah, it was it was brutal. It was weird. It was super emotionally draining. Yeah. It was it was it was a lot.

CHRIS [00:58:45] As you can imagine, a lot of people are sending me a hash tag notes with opinions on this stuff. This made me laugh. This is what the takeaway was for one person out there in the crowd. I personally love rats. I even have this whole life and adventures imagined for the one eared subway rat I see every morning. His name’s Bill. That’s one person has a personal friendship with the New York street rat. There’s some people urging me to make this one happier and more pleasant, to which I would say that’s fine. I’m not gonna force. It’s okay. Yeah, there’s some people saying things like simply that’s so sad or someone actually asking a question that I think is somewhat facetious. But some were saying it was there a mouse guillotine like it was there. Were there devices to make this simpler or did you have to get in there and like by hand?

CALLER [00:59:41] So we did have various little gas chambers set up. So that’s yeah, that was made our lives simpler. But as far as decapitation went, we would have to individually, either with a razor blade or surgical scissors, just get in there and make sure the job was done.

CHRIS [01:00:01] Yeah. You can’t do that for too many years. And how quickly after you got out of that gig did you go vegan? You went opposite direction.

CALLER [01:00:09] Yes. So. Probably like six months.

CHRIS [01:00:14] Yeah, I would imagine that’s quick. I’ll say that I’ll say something here to that I bet you’d agree with because I’ve always bet, you know, I’ve always been a little bit of an ignorant guy. I still eat fish. I gave up the rest of the meat. But my wife has been a vegetarian for a very, very long time now. And you know, one thing that’s eye opening that I just want to put out there and this sounds obvious, but I didn’t realize how easy it is. It’s very. It takes you about 10 extra seconds to check if your products have been tested on animals or not. Takes almost no time. And when you go to any pharmacy, you’re picking out shaving cream. You just turn the cans around until you find one that says not tested on animals and it’s not hard. And then, you know, you’re not participating, at least to the degree that you would be otherwise with stuff like what you’re describing.

CALLER [01:01:00] Yeah. I mean, we all have control over what we consume and put on our bodies, but in our bodies, whatever. I mean, I’m in the camp like, just do your best. Like, you can’t get a hundred percent. It’s impossible. So I would hope you don’t let your life become consumed with this obsessive like it has to be absolutely one hundred percent pure because I don’t think anybody can in good faith claim that. So I just say, you know, do your best.

CHRIS [01:01:26] Yeah. And I would also say, too, like there’s something that you’ll read about cancer research on animals and its like, of course, like if it’s going to improve the life of humans, then there’s certain things that animals are taking the hit for. And we have to like honor that. But then there’s also things where it’s like, hey, you could just go down to the lower shelf and check the other can of hair spray. And maybe you’re not participating in something that’s you’ve seen up close is pretty brutal.

CALLER [01:01:55] Yeah. An extra 5, 10 seconds it’s all it takes.

CHRIS [01:01:59] And we got 10 minutes left. Where are you at now? Where are you at now? You’re vegan. You’re out of that world. Yeah. What are you up to now?

CALLER [01:02:07] Yeah. I mean, a lot happend. I left. I traveled the world for a year. I came back and moved to a new city. I got into advertising, which is totally different and has its own evils of course.

CHRIS [01:02:20] A much more wholesome and aboveboard industry.

CALLER [01:02:23] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

CHRIS [01:02:26] No, it is. Traveled the world, got into advertising, sounds like you did a lot of soul searching.

CALLER [01:02:34] Yeah, I mean, that was that was the goal of it although I didn’t necessarily come to any specific epiphany when I was overseas, I kind of just came back and I’m like, well, I still got to do something with my life. I like Mad Men a lot. So, like, let’s see where this goes.

CHRIS [01:02:47] I love that there’s still a little 15 year old pothead inside of you going, I like Mad Men.

CALLER [01:02:47] It never leaves you.

CHRIS [01:02:47] Do you still smoke weed?

CHRIS [01:02:48] I love that there’s still a little 15 year old pothead inside you. Say I like. It never leaves you. Do you still smoke weed?

CALLER [01:02:58] Not really. I kind of outgrew it in college. Like once in a while.

CHRIS [01:03:03] Yeah. But you’re not that kid anymore. I do love that you’re it. It’s still. That’s so funny to me that when you were 16, you’re like Donnie Darko and now you’re like, oh, like Mad Men. All your major life decisions have been driven by pop culture you like.

CALLER [01:03:19] I mean, kind of.

CHRIS [01:03:22] So that’s cool. I would imagine you must be there. You must be. Being in advertising must wear you down a lot less than the rat murder gig.

CALLER [01:03:32] Well, it ways me down in different ways, like when I was doing research. Like I could take a two hour lunch if I wanted. I could leave at 5:00, like I had no supervision. Like, clearly, I was listening to podcasts and hacking animals in half, like there’s no supervision. But in advertising, you’re dealing with billions and billions of dollars and you’re working to like midnight every night. So like, it’s it wears you down in different ways. It’s it can be soulless. It’s long hours. It’s a lot.

CHRIS [01:04:00] Yeah. I mean, the grass is always greener, right. Do you ever pine for the days of going back to animal holocausts?

CALLER [01:04:09] I don’t miss that part. I mean, I miss, like, hanging out with them. You have to, like, handle them to a certain degree to get them used to being with animals. Sorry. Used to being with humans. So you would put like a cloth on your lap and like, hold them for a while, feed them Froot Loops, hang out, get to know them. So I we miss that part.

CHRIS [01:04:27] Yeah, I get that. I get that. Yeah. Here’s the thing I’ll commend you on too, because I’ve often gone on record on these crazy rants about how college sucks and this and that. But I will say you’re the exact example of someone where I’m like you actively made a decision that it would improve your life and you wanted to go for it. And I will say all jokes aside and all weirdness aside and all like the overwhelming specifics of what your gig was aside, I do just want to say that that’s really impressive to me, like Donnie Darko or not. It’s just really impressive to me that you were a kid who was spiraling in one direction and you were like, fuck it, I’m going to take the reins and change it. I think that’s really awesome.

CALLER [01:05:03] Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I’m still changing, making moves, waiting for the next Donnie Darko to hit me so I can pivot, do another 180 and claim that some other weird, obscure movie made me do that. Still always growing and changing.

CHRIS [01:05:18] And that’s actually a plan of yours. Like you don’t really have a long term plan beyond just get ready to just pivot in a totally different direction when it presents itself.

CALLER [01:05:29] Yeah. I mean, I’m guilty of falling in love with beginnings of things, so. I’m pretty susceptible to that, especially if something enticing comes along.

CHRIS [01:05:39] Yeah, that’s the way to do it. That’s cool.

CALLER [01:05:43] I guess.

CHRIS [01:05:44] That’s cool. What’s. Uh, let’s see what we’re checking in with some last minute. Oh, someone saying now that weeds legal in many states, you should get back in the game. I like that.

CALLER [01:05:56] Not a bad idea.

CHRIS [01:05:58] Not a bad idea. Oh, simple. What are your favorite vegan snacks?

CALLER [01:06:07] Favorite snacks. I mean, pretty simple, like fruit. I don’t know. I didn’t eat fruit much before, but like I don’t know fruit’s pretty kick ass. Like bite into a kiwi, even leave the skin on if you want to get some extra fiber, do that up. I really like those like super salty, like Peapod snacks from Trader Joe’s in those places. Like, I’m pretty sure there’s no health benefit to them at all, but they look like little pea pods and they’re super salty. And I’m all about those.

CHRIS [01:06:36] I don’t know what I expected your answer to be, but I love that it was fruit and super salty pea pods. I like that. I like that. Here’s the thing that I think could be an interesting experiment, is you were a kid who you got kind of pushed to a point where you were a loner. You were one of those people who I think we all knew those kids growing up. Some of us were. Were those kids where it’s like, fuck it. If I’m gonna get if I’m if people are gonna fuck with me all the time. I guess I’ll just be bad. You went down that road. You took it pretty far. Like even the low level drug dealer kid in high school was still, you know, definitely someone who you start to give up on. I’m sure there were a lot of people giving up on you. Is there any, uh, if there are any current teenage dirtbags listening, as someone who went in the opposite direction and took it, you know, you went pretty far in academia, advertising, like you really turned it around. Do you have any message for any other teenage dirtbags who might be listening right now? Maybe something that the parents of some some wayward lost teens might be able to relay to their kids?

CALLER [01:07:44] Well, first cut your sideburns then after that, I’d say. I don’t know take a good, honest inventory of what you what you like doing or what you’re interested in like. It’s it’s really easy to just let, like, weed or drugs or alcohol or some vise, like, kind of dictate your life. And I was there and I get it. But I think there’s a lot more thing, a lot more interesting things out there than just your vice. Like you don’t get rid of it totally. Like you can still spend half your time smoking weed. But I don’t know, spend the rest of your time like developing a video game or volunteering or like working like at a movie theater. I don’t know. Just do something that’s interesting to you and fill half your time. Just half your time with something that’s not your vice.

CHRIS [01:08:38] I love that. I love that any stoner. I love that any stoner teen listening is like, fuck yeah, he said I could still smoke weed half the time.

CALLER [01:08:49] You can still smoke and do the other thing if you can combine them if you want, just like do other things.

CHRIS [01:08:55] That is very realistic advice that a kid might actually listen to. Just cool it down for like a couple hours a day.

CALLER [01:09:03] Yeah, that’s it. The bar’s low man.

CHRIS [01:09:07] Like give it the morning and an hour in the afternoon where you’re not high and see what happens.

CALLER [01:09:14] Yeah. It’s honestly like a couple hours you can accomplish a whole lot.

CHRIS [01:09:18] Couple hours you can accomplish a whole lot. Any parent who is like a oh, maybe this will be the thing that turns my kid her out is like fuck, fuck. Weed is still a central part. Here’s a question I have that’s popped into my head. You do you have any idea what happened to that girl whose mom used to do coke and buy booze for kids? What happened to that girl?

CALLER [01:09:42] I mean, she’s fine. She’s married. She lives in the northeast of the United States. She’s she’s chilling. She’s fine.

CHRIS [01:09:48] Chilling, good answer.

CALLER [01:09:50] I don’t know about her mom. I’m sure she’s not fine.

CHRIS [01:09:51] That’s good. It sounds like in a world that was rife with potential disaster, everybody wound pretty unscathed. Pretty unscathed. Oh, this is nice. Someone named Stephanie suggesting that your next career path should be high school guidance counselor. I think that speaks very well to your character. I like that.

CALLER [01:10:08] Huh? Oh, so I could say back to my psychology roots. Yeah.

CHRIS [01:10:12] Yeah, your psychology roots. Someone says someone wants to know where you traveled when you traveled all over the world when you took that gap.

CALLER [01:10:19] Yeah. I spent most of my time hitting every country in Europe. I also went to India. I was there, I actually went into India twice. I had some family over there. So I had a place to stay. I went all over India. That’s a total culture trip. If you’re looking for that. But yeah, I went to like Hungary and Czech Republic and UK. You know, Italy, all those places.

CHRIS [01:10:42] You really went for it. You really decided to get out there and live. That’s cool. We got 30 seconds left. Is there any message you’d like to send to Brooklyn, New York and eventually the world via the podcast?

CALLER [01:10:55] That’s a lot of pressure. I mean, I guess I’ll just close it to say thank you so much for having me on here. And I’m really glad that this platform exists. And I’m such a huge fan of all the art that you create and it really affects a lot of people. I’m so happy and proud that I could have been a part of it and maybe send a message out to some of those dirtbags out there.

CHRIS [01:11:22] Caller, thank you so much for letting us know about everything. What a cool thing to hear that, you know, to be someone who, you know, when you were young, people were like that wrong path and then you turned it around. What a cool thing. Thanks for all the details. Thanks for being fun and kind. And thanks to everybody in Brooklyn who came out, had my back, showed the show of force that is the army. That is the Beautiful Anonymous community, not an army so much as just hundreds of very, very nice people. Thank you. It’s so nice to meet you all. And thank you to Jared O’Connell and Harry Nelson coming all the way out to the Bell House to organize things. Thank you especially to Justin Linville on this one. Justin works with me on tons of stuff. Don’t always get thank him at the show. But he really was instrumental in this run. A lot of you probably met him there. He’s the best. Thank you justin, thanks to Dan Soder for opening. Thanks to Shellshag for the music. Apple podcast, rate, reviews, subscribe. I’m out of here.

[01:12:16] [AD BREAK].

[01:13:11] [NEXT EPISODE PREVIEW].

CHRIS [01:13:12] Next time on Beautiful Anonymous, somebody is getting married and about to have surgery, explores their strange past.

CALLER [01:13:20] And I said, you know, it’s a real shame that you didn’t do this before because, as you know, a bisexual theater major in college. I’m sure that I would have benefited from an LGBTQ parent. And think of all the annual viewings of The Birdcage we could have done.

CHRIS [01:13:40] You wrote that in the letter?

CALLER [01:13:42] Yeah. Yeah. So I’m a writer. So there’s that.

CHRIS [01:13:54] That’s next time on Beautiful Anonymous.