Biggest Problem in the Universe – Episode 98

Transcription courtesy of: Laurie Foster https://www.patreon.com/lafmodel

Today’s show is brought to you by Audible, who has more than 180,000 audio books and spoken-word audio products!  Get a free 30-day trial at http://www.audiblepodcast.com/biggest.   

(Biggest Problem theme riff starts)

Maddox:  Welcome to the Biggest Problem in the Universe, the show where we discuss every problem in the universe, from Cauliflower Ears to Late Engineers!

Dick:  Oho!!! (laughs)

Maddox:  With over 5 million downloads,(Maddox and Dick crack up) this is the only show where you decide what should or shouldn’t be on the big list of problems. I’m Maddox.  With me is Dick!

Dick:  What’s up, buddy? (grins)

Maddox:  And…

Dick:  (interjects) Yep! Let’s get it started!!! (Maddox laughs)

Maddox:  And missing, is Sean, our audio engineer.

Dick: And the clock is ticking.

Maddox:  Uh-huh!

Dick: He is late, and for every minute that he is late…he is losing that percentage of his engineering fee today.

Maddox: Yeah!

Dick:  I just talked to him! (Maddox chuckles) He said…he was supposed to be here!  He said he’s running late, but we’re starting without him, ‘cause fuck the audio qual…how hard can it be? If Tim Changzzzzz can do it, we can do it.

Maddox:  Tim Changzzzzz…he did a pretty good job of mastering our tracks!

Dick:  He did! (they giggle) He did a great job!!

Maddox: Yeah.  He did.

Dick: You know what?  I have a lot of respect for his drops, too.  I like his a capella DJ style.  You don’t see that a lot.  Like, you don’t see Skrillex just get up there with a mic all on his own…(Maddox chuckles) using only his mouth for audio drops, because, you know, maybe he doesn’t know how Garage Band or audio engineering works, but maybe it’s a stylistic choice, right?

Maddox:  For Tim Changzzzzz, I think that it’s a stylistic choice and also he’s limited by the amount of talent that he has.  I think.

Dick:  Aren’t we all.

Maddox: Skri…(laughs)  Skrillex is a real DJ, Dick.

Dick:  Ah, well, okay.

Maddox: You’re comparing Tim Changzzzzz to Skrillex, no?

Dick:  Real DJs does not make you a real musician.

Maddox: The…the biggest problem in the universe from last week….

(Sound effect: Drumroll…..cymbal)

Maddox:  Was Prank Bros!

Dick:  Prank Bros, really? 

Maddox:  Prank Bros.  Followed by Decision Fatigue.

Dick: That’s shocking!

Maddox: Yeah.  Is it, though?

Dick:  Well, yeah!

Maddox:  Because Prank Bros are SUPER obnoxious.

Dick: Yeah! (scoffs)

Maddox: Then…then Bits and Overpopulation Alarmists downvoted, because I think that people were butthurt.  Bithurt, yeah.

Dick:  Oh, because they make too many bits?  They make too many jokes?

Maddox:  Uh, no.  So I read one of the comments from someone.  Uh, last time I asked if this was a phenomenon that we are more used to.  More exposed to, uh, being in Los Angeles and Hollywood and being in more comedy scenes.

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox: And whether or not it was something that other people outside of this bubble of LA/New York/Chicago experience.  And most of the comments I read was that…saying no.  That was not the case.

Dick: That everyone experiences it.

Maddox:  No, no, they said it wasn’t.

Dick:  They said they didn’t experience it outside?

Maddox:  No, not…

Dick:  Comedy?  I read the opposite online.

Maddox:  Not people…

Dick:  I dunno.

Maddox:  Not people…

Dick:  You read the comments I wanted to read.

Maddox:  The people who were experiencing bits were…you know.  They said that there would be an occasional dad joke or two from a dad who was a little overzealous with his joking.

Dick:  Wait a minute.  Wait a minute.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Dad jokes are very different.  Dad jokes are…are…the succor of life.  Dad jokes are what keeps me going in life.  Dad jokes are unassailable!  These are bits.  These are comedy bits.  This is…see, a dad joke…a dad doesn’t want or need validation.  A dad specifically wants to waste your time the way you have wasted his. 

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Dick:  He wants you to suck on that joke.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Right?  He wants you…he wants to say it, and then just go…look right in your face and say, “You can’t take that back, can you?”  And deep down, you know it’s funny.  A BIT is someone sucking that information…sucking that validation from you.  A dad joke is the opposite. 

Maddox: Yeah, I agree.  I like dad jokes a lot.  I like dad jokes and I like to hang out with dads who tell dad jokes.

Dick: What’s your favorite dad joke?  I got one.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Uh…we’re making fish tonight, just for the “halibut”.

Maddox:  Yep.

Dick:  That’s a good one.

Maddox: That is a good one. (giggles)

Dick:  That’s my favorite Dad joke.

Maddox: Uh, you and I, Dick.  A long time ago, went fishing with your dad.

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox:  And…I decided to look up a bunch of fishing jokes.

Dick: Oh, it was painful.

Maddox: (giggles) Yeah!  If you guys are ever bored and you want to read the WORST jokes.  The WORST jokes.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Just go to Google and type in “Fishing Jokes”.

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox:  Uh, they will put you in a bad mood.  Guaranteed.  Um, I got a comment from Arkhan Black.  He says, “I think Dick brought himself in as a problem with Bits.”

Dick: Oh.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  ‘Cause I’m joking too much?

Maddox:  Too many jokes.  And speaking of jokes and shenanigans, I got a comment from Jessica SK.  She says, “I call shenanigans.  Haters isn’t a problem.”  Because Tim Changzzzzz’s problem was haters, and it came in first last week.  She says, “Calling people haters…”

Dick:  The week before.

Maddox: Oh, the week before.  That’s right.  She said, “Calling people haters is just a way to dismiss any and all criticism.”  That’s right, Tim Changzzzzz!

Dick:  Hmm.

Maddox:  Nice try, bro!

Dick: There is a bit of truth to that.  Here’s one…this is one that I thought was interesting, from Chris Pucknell.  He’s talking about your problem of Overpopulation Alarmists.

Maddox: Y eah.

Dick:  Uh, you said…well, you brought in Thomas Malthus.

Maddox: Right.

Dick:  Some psychic who said that London would be buried under 9 feet of shit.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Of horse shit.

Maddox: Horse shit.  Yeah.

Dick:  Right?  And that…that was ridiculous, right?

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Like, can you imagine, I was like, “Yeah, that does sound kind of ridiculous.”

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Like, why are all these horses shitting in London? How would that…so he says, “London WAS getting buried in manure.  50,000 working horses were despoiling the streets with nearly 1,000 tons of manure a DAY.  Not to mention 100,000 pints of urine and even their own knackered corpses.”  And apparently, New York was twice as bad, it was getting so out of hand.  But then everyone switched to cars, so problem solved.  That’s interesting!

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Imagine that many…imagine how bad dog shit is in LA, except instead of everyone having a little yippy dog, they had a horse.

Maddox:  A stupid fucking horse! Stupid…

Dick: (interjects) It would be much worse.

Maddox: Stupid, beady eyes, dumb, animals.  Uh, look.  I’ve said this in the past.  I brought in Horses as a problem.  I think Horses are a HUGE problem!

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  And had we continued to rely on horse power…

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Instead of glue, say.  You know.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: The problem would’ve been way worse.  I agree with that.  Uh, but yeah.  Again, the point is, though, that you couldn’t predict technology.  Something came along and made horses obsolete.

Dick: Okay. Do you think there’s anything to my comparison with global warming now?  After having thought about it for a week?   Because the horse shit is piling up…like these guys say.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: The CO2…is piling up. Let’s say it is.  I’m betting…there’s no question in my mind that we’ll have something better than what we have now, in, like, 100 years, and this will just be a blip on the radar.  Right?  We’re like, “Okay, well, we’re not doing that anymore.”

Maddox: Well, the problem is with global warming, Dick.  Is that…if the models are true, right?

Dick:  Uh-huh.

Maddox:  The temperature rises to the point where the polar caps melt, and it raises the temperature more, and it becomes a cycle that’s irreversible, then we’re in serious trouble, right? Because then how are you going to refreeze the polar caps? How are you going to…

Dick:  Freeze ray!

Maddox: Undo…(laughs) 

Dick:  Duke Nukem!  It’s even…that’s something that’s been imagined!

Maddox: Yeah.  Yeah, I don’t know, Dick.  It seems like it’s a problem that’s outside the scope of our control right now, and it’s something that…

Dick:  That’s the point. “Right now”.  Man, freeze rays. We’re gonna have all kinds of rays in the future.  Hair growing rays.  Pew, pew!!

Maddox: I wouldn’t use it. 

Dick: You wouldn’t use it out of spite?

Maddox: No.  I wouldn’t use it out of spite.

Dick: (giggles)  Eh.  Uh, let’s see.  I got another one from…Jason Takes.  “The woman in that Craigslist prank came out as an actress.”

Maddox: Oh, that’s right!

Dick: On Drama Alert.

Maddox:  So, last episode…

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  If you haven’t listened to it yet…I talked about Prank Bros.  And specifically, there’s this prank on this channel called Moe and Ethan Bradbury.  These two bozos.  Who do these really mean-spirited, shitty pranks that aren’t funny.  And they do it under the guise of raising…as a social experiment to raise awareness about how dangerous Craigslist can be, ‘cause God forbid you want to go and buy a discounted TV or an iPhone or something.

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox:  So this guy…Ethan Cline from H3H3 productions made a video about this, and talked about how it felt more real than usual, and also the video was deleted a few days after, so it led a lot of people, including myself, to suspect that this video was real.  However, some…

Dick:  (interjects)  This guys says she’s an actress, though, right?

Maddox: Yeeeeah.  She is an actress.

Dick: Hmm. There you go.

Maddox: Her name is…something Moses.  Anyway, she came out and she finally admitted that she was…this was a hired…a paid acting gig.  She saw the casting opportunity on this..

Dick:  Sure.

Maddox: …New York casting website.

Dick:  Mhmm.

Maddox:  And it said it was for, like, some commercial product or something.  So she didn’t really know what she was getting into until she showed up on the day of the shoot.  And that’s when they told her.  And I saw an interview with her on this YouTube channel called Keemstar. Keemstar I think is the guy’s name.  And he interviewed her and she said that…she’s actually on the side of Moe and Ethan.  She said they were really professional and hardworking and did a good job, and they took care of her.

Dick: But it’s all fake!

Maddox:  Yeah, she said it was fake.

Dick:  It’s like prank porn, right?

Maddox: Right, and then…but and then he asked her the same point that I raised last time, which is…”Well, what happens when people who watch this come away thinking that it’s real and they try to duplicate some of these pranks themselves?” 

Dick: Go to jail.

Maddox:  Because there’s a suspension of belief when you watch…you mentioned Beavis and Butthead, Dick, last time.

Dick: Uh-huh.

Maddox:  Beavis and Butthead is a cartoon.  There’s a suspension of belief there.  Movies, there’s a suspension of belief.  TV shows, there’s a suspension of belief.

Dick: Disbelief.  Suspension of disbelief.

Maddox:  Suspension of disbelief is the opposite.  It’s where you’re suspending your disbelief to believe what the narrative is showing you.  I’m saying a suspension of belief…

Dick:  Like you don’t believe that it’s true?

Maddox:  That you…

Dick:  (interjects)  Like, that you know it’s not true?

Maddox: It’s basically a double negative.  Uh, here.

Dick: Okay.

Maddox:  Yeah, it’s getting kinda confusing.  But you get the idea.

Dick:  It’s make believe.

Maddox:  Right.

Dick:  It’s TV.  Movies. Cartoon. Sure.

Maddox: No, yeah. So the suspension of belief in Beavis and Butthead is that you don’t believe it’s true.

Dick:  Right.

Maddox: Right.  So the…you lack that suspension of belief, uh, in these cases, because you see this and you’re not told that it’s fake.  You have no reason to believe that it’s fake.  So…

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox: Essentially…I think it’s a lot more potent.  The message and the takeaway is a lot more potent.

Dick:  Accountability.  Everybody’s accountable for whatever they do.  It’s art. Fuck it.  

Maddox:  (scoffs) It’s art, fuck it.

Dick:  Yeah, man.

Maddox:  I dunno. 

Dick:  You put out a Craigslist ad and, like, if you’re actually doing that.  If you’re actually, I dunno.  Luring some real woman into a house and attacking her.  Uh, with five masked strangers to make a funny video.  And you, like…you CLAIM that you were influenced by a video you saw on the Internet?  You’re going to jail.  Fuck you, man.

Maddox: Yeah.  Of course.  I mean, justice can be served after the fact, but the point is to try to prevent that.  Like, I don’t quite get what the fun in that is, especially ‘cause these guys are calling themselves pranksters.

Dick: What do you mean, you don’t get what the fun is?

Maddox:  Well, a prank is supposed to be fun.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: They’re failing.  At fun. (giggles)

Dick: They’re failing at fun.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Yeah.  Uhhhh, let’s see.  You know what?  I got one more.  Somebody…somebody sent in a package awhile ago, I’ve been meaning to open.

Maddox: Oh, let’s see it.

Dick: Yeah.  (paper sounds in background)  It’s a great one.  “Dear Dick, I was listening to the Biggest Problem in the Universe recently, and upon hearing you bring “Too Long Shorts” to the big list, I became a man convicted.”  Is that right?  Yeah.  “Enclosed you will find a pair of shorts that used to belong to my grandfather while he would play tennis.  I would have kept them for myself but decided that your need was greater than mine, and being from Colorado, I simply don’t have the weather for them 80% of the time.  Please enjoy this kindly gift and since this isn’t a voice mail, don’t go fuck yourself, although I can understand if you would want to…I mean, who wouldn’t.  Regards, Patrick.”  Check it out.  It’s a pair of vintage Grandpa short…tennis shorts.

Maddox: Ohhh, wow, look at that.

Dick: Look at that.  Yeah.  Uh, they got a couple stains in the back and everything.

Maddox:  Huh.

Dick:  Pretty nice. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  So, thanks, Patrick. 

Maddox: You’ll look real hot wearing those at the tennis court, or whatever?  Oiled up?

Dick: Yeah.  If you wanna go to the website, don’t worry, there won’t be pictures of me in them on it. 

Maddox: Oh, thank God.

Dick:  Alright. 

Maddox:  Alright.  Should we get to the problems?!

Dick: Sure.

Maddox:  I got a big one this week, Dick.  Murderers!!

Dick: Murderers?

(Sound effect: Clapping)

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Maddox:  Yeah! 

Dick:  That’s a pretty big problem.

Maddox: Murderers are a really big problem.

Dick:  (giggles) Yeah.  (Maddox chuckles)

Maddox: You know why, Dick?  Murderers are a problem because Murder is a problem.

Dick: Yeah. 

Maddox:  But the reason I didn’t bring in Murder as a problem is because Murder doesn’t murder people.  Murderers murder people. 

Dick: So wait, your problem is Murderers?

Maddox: Murderers. 

Dick: Okay, not murder.  Okay.

Maddox:  Yeah.  Murderers.  Not murder.

Dick:  Okay.  I don’t wanna derail your topic…

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  But is abortion murder?  (Maddox laughs)  Just a quick aside. (giggles) 

Maddox: Thanks, Dick.

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Maddox:  That wouldn’t derail…(they crack up) that wouldn’t derail this topic at all.

Dick: No, why would it?  (grins)

Maddox: No.  (Dick giggles)  And no, it’s not.  Alright, so.  (they laugh) Alright, moving on.  Speaking of types of murder, right? Um…there are a lot of different types of murder.  But I…(stammers) also didn’t want to confuse anyone with the word “murder” for the expression of how difficult something is, like: “This physics homework is murder”, or “Carrying around these heavy balls is murder on my back”, you know, that sort of thing. 

Dick: Oh, your testicles? 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah.  That’s…those are also different types of murder, but I’m talking about different…you know.  The other…the other murders, right?  Like…

Dick:  Right.

Maddox:  Here’s the different types of murders. There’s mass murder.

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox: There’s child murder.

Dick: Yep.

Maddox: There’s first degree.  Mhmm.  There’s second degree murder.

Dick: Sure.  (scoffs)

Maddox: That involves malice, but it’s not premeditated.  There’s ax murder.  There’s attempted murder, which isn’t really murder.

Dick:  Well, that’s not murder.  Yeah.

Maddox:  Yeah, that’s…(giggles)

Dick: Okay.  We’ll leave that off. Don’t be lumping in problems that aren’t really there to part of your problem.

Maddox:  Attempted murder is a type of non-murder!!

Dick: Yeah. 

Maddox: There’s a perfect murder, which is one where the criminal almost gets away, like in every single episode of CSI.  So, not perfect, in other words.

Dick:  Oh.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Okay.

Maddox:  But they always…every time I see a…a drama or a thriller like that about a perfect murder, the guy gets caught, so it’s not perfect! 

Dick:  No.

Maddox:  A perfect murder is one where the guy just gets away.

Dick:  No, a perfect murder is what happens on the show The First 48 Hours, when guys just don’t talk to the cops, and everybody gets away with everything. 

Maddox: Is that what happens?

Dick:  Like, that’s a real…yeah.  In the real world...

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Nobody gets caught if they don’t say anything.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  If it wasn’t…like, if it wasn’t a friend or a family member, you got away with it.

Maddox: Well, what about…well, I guess there’s some movies that have perfect murders, I guess.  Like in Gone Girl. She didn’t get caught, right?  Did you see that movie, Gone Girl?

Dick: No, I didn’t see that.  No.  Thanks for…thanks for spoiling that, though.

Maddox: Uh…(giggles)  Yeah.  She murders someone, I guess.  Anyway, there’s execution-style murder. 

Dick:  Uh-huh.

Maddox: There’s felony murder. That’s murder committed during a felony, so sometimes even accidental.  If you’re robbing a bank or something and someone gets shocked and falls down the stairs and gets killed, you may be prosecuted for that crime as a felony murder.

Dick:  This murder has gotten legal, very quickly.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  A very human and very horrible, visceral problem.

Maddox: Uh-huh.

Dick:  Has turned into law. 

Maddox: Yep.  There’s Dial M for Murder. 

Dick: Hmm. (giggles)

Maddox:  There’s crying bloody murder. 

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: There’s knife-slaying murder.  And then there’s a type of murder and slaying that I do, which is slaying that poon.  (they quietly giggle) Crushing that puss is also a type of murder.  (laughs)

Dick:  So, vote up bits, everyone! (Maddox laughs)  Vote up puns and bits. 

Maddox:  Fuck you, Dick.

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

(Dick laughs)

Maddox: Alright.  Some of the most prolific murderers in history, though, are serial killers. Which is what I want to talk about today.

Dick:  Ohhhhh!!

Maddox: Yeah. 

Dick:  Okay.  That’s a red fl…when I hear serial killers, that’s the red flag that makes me know I’ve fucked up with picking a girl to date, again. 

Maddox: Uh…

Dick:  When she says, “Oh, you know what?” Like she’s confessing a secret to me.  “You know what?  I actually have a…I used to have…I went through, like, a serial killer phase.”

Maddox: Hmm.

Dick: Where I was really interested in serial killers.  I’m like, “Oh, yeah.”

Maddox: That’s like every girl I date is like that.

Dick:  Yeah.  (sighs) We don’t pick well.  (Maddox laughs)  We don’t pick girls well.

Maddox: Yeah, every gi…look.  I’m not holding it against them, ‘cause I’m interested in it, too.  I’m interested and intrigued.  When they bring it up, I’m like, “Alright, great.  I found another one.”

Dick:  Why?!  You’re interested in serial killers, too?

Maddox:  “I’m gonna be dating this girl for another…”  Yeah, it’s kinda fascinating.

Dick: Why?

Maddox:  Not as much as the girls that I date.  The girls that I date are always more interested in serial killers than I am.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Uh, and usually horror movies and shitty movies and cinema and things like that.

Dick: They’re MORE interested in those things?

Maddox: Oh, yeah.  Yeah.

Dick:  What do you like about ‘em?  What do you like about serial killers?

Maddox: I like the, uh…

Dick: (interjects) Like, what’s the last serial killer you learned about?

Maddox:  Oh, I learned about this guy…um.  So I went to the…Museum of Death in…

Dick:  (interjects)  Sure.  Hot date spot.

Maddox:  In Los Angeles.  Yeah!  It was a hot date.  I was going to the Museum of Death.

Dick:  I was being sarcastic…(Maddox laughs)

Maddox:  Fuck you, Dick!

Dick:  You’re probably right.  You’re probably right!

Maddox: Nothing makes these chicks hornier than seeing all this crazy shit that serial killers did!

Dick:  No, you’re…you’re right.

Maddox:  Oh, man.  They get horned up! Um, so…(laughs) we got to this…we go to this serial killer museum, where we’re seeing, like, blood knives, and murder weapons, and pictures of crime scenes, and it’s just, like, ohhh…

Dick:  (interjects) Oh, my God.

Maddox: Oh, yeah. And then they…the chicks always start getting frisky.  They’re like, “Oh, man.  This is really turning me on.  (Dick giggles)  I’m like, this is fucked.  But yeah. This is awesome.  So anyway.  They had this survey that they would give to certain prisoners.  High profiler murderers in prison. And one of them was…(giggles) this guy.  They asked him what he would do if he was President of the United States.  And he said he would…

Dick: (interjects)  Build a wall!! (they chuckle)

Maddox:  Yeah.  He said he would build a wall.  Yeah.

Dick:  He said he would build a wall.  Yeah.

Maddox:  He said that he would rule America with an iron fist and a rock-hard dick.  And…(cracks up)  that phrasing was so visceral to me, and it really stuck with me.  I thought that was really fascinating.  Good writer, I think.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  Had he not been a serial killer. A mass murderer.

Dick: Sure.

Maddox:  Yeah.

Dick:  Sure.

Maddox: Um, yeah.  Anyway.  So how did we get on the topic of…

Dick:  (interjects) What do you like about serial killers?  Are you gonna get to that?

Maddox: Oh, I…no.  I think that the trivia is kind of fascinating, you know.  It’s an anomaly.

Dick:  Hmm.

Maddox: It’s a blip.

Dick:  Oh, in, like, human behavior?  Like, what would make a person do this?  Why would they get off on this kind of thing?

Maddox:  Right.  When you look at a graph, right?  If you look at a line on a graph, the most interesting part of that line is usually where it intersects with 0.  Those are serial killers!

Dick: Okay.

Maddox: Yeah.  (giggles)  Anyway, Dick.  How big of a problem do you think this is?

Dick:  MURDER?!

Maddox: Yeah!

Dick:  Oh, boy!!  Um…for, what is it?  Like, probably in the tens of thousands in America?

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Yeah?

Maddox:  According to the CDC, 16,121 people die from homicides every year in the US. And according to the United Nations, 437,000 people are murdered worldwide every year.

Dick: Huh.

Maddox: That’s half a million people are murdered.  That’s a lot of stabbing.

Dick:  Every year.

Maddox: Yeah.  Lot of stabs, lot of crushed heads.  Lot of arsenic?  Arsenic could be a way to kill someone.

Dick: Poison. Drones! 

Maddox:  Drones.

Dick:  Drones are wiping some people out!

Maddox: Yeeeeeeep.

Dick:  Is abortion included in that figure? 

Maddox: No.  No abortion is fine, yeah.  You’re totally clear.  (chuckles)

Dick: Oh. So the fact that it’s a unique human genetic code at that point, you don’t have a problem with that?

Maddox:  No.

Dick: Okay.  Just checking.  I don’t wanna derail the problem.

Maddox:  I dunno.  Do you? 

Dick:  Uh, yeah, I think it’s a murder of convenience.

Maddox: A murder of convenience.  (laughing)

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: I forgot to add that to my list of types of murders.

Dick: Well, we’re okay with that!  War, that’s a bunch of murders, but, you know…we want whatever they got, so we allow that to happen.

Maddox: Well, murder of convenience implies that it’s kind of like a casual…you know.  Yeah, you know what?  I don’t feel like having this baby, so I’m going to go have an abortion.

Dick:  It would make my life worse to have it, so I’m gonna murder it.

Maddox: Well…also, it could lead to making other people’s lives worse, as in the intro to Freakonomics.

Dick:  Sure.

Maddox: They..they found that there was a huge drop in crime, something like 20 years after the abortion legislation passed in the US,  Rowe vs. Wade. 

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  So you had a dip in the number of delinquent minors who were being raised by shitty mothers who would have otherwise been shitty parents, and then mothers who may resent the children they’re raising because they were raped and inseminated by someone they don’t love.  Then all those children who would’ve grown up to become criminals were aborted.

Dick: Yeah. 

Maddox:  Pretty cool.

Dick:  So…drain on society.

Maddox:  Yeah.

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox:  Flush ‘em.  (laughs)  Go vote up Abortion as a solution, guys.  Anyway, moving on.  The most prolific serial killer in history was a guy named Louis Garavito, who has killed about 140 victims.

Dick:  Mmm.

Maddox:  140 people this guy killed.  He was Columbian, and he was known as The Beast.  La Bestia, I think is the guy’s name. 

Dick:  So many chicks are getting turned on right now.

Maddox: Oh, yeah.

Dick:  Hearing that.  The Beast.

Maddox: Oh, yeah.  These…

Dick:  (interjects)  A Latin American, swarthy Latin…

Maddox:  (interjects) This episode, more than any other, I think is the one that chicks will diddle themselves to.  (cracks up) 

Dick:  And Sean’s missing it!

Maddox: Sean…hey, by the…

Dick: (interjects) As he’s losing money.

Maddox:  Yeah.  We’re 12…what is it? 

Dick:  21…21 minutes. 

Maddox:  Oh, 21 minutes.

Dick:  It’s upside down.

Maddox:  21%, okay?  21% docked.  Sean’s pay on this episode.  (giggles)  What’s left, like 4 dollars?  (laughs)

Dick:  We’ll see. (grins)

Maddox: Anyway.  He’s suspected…this guy is suspected of murdering over 300 victims.  He was only…that’s 140 PROVEN victims that they found, and then he’s…he confessed to more, and he’s suspected of killing about 300 victims.  He mostly murdered and tortured children.  He killed 140 over the course of five years. That’s 28 per year, or just over 2 kids per month, every month, for half a decade. 

Dick:  That’s a lot of kids.

Maddox:  That’s a LOT of kids. 

Dick:  That’s a lot of work, too.

Maddox: Yeah!

Dick: Every two weeks, you gotta go murder some kid? 

Maddox: Hey, so here’s a postulation for you…

Dick:  (interjects) Ugh, pain in the ass.

Maddox:  for you anti-abortionists, right? This guy…(Dick laughs)

Dick:  I’m not anti-abortion!!

Maddox: Just, whoever may be. 

Dick:  Oh, okay.

Maddox: This guy ended up killing 140 kids, right?  This one man killed 140 kids.  What if HE was aborted?  You just saved 140 kids’ lives.

Dick: It’s true.

Maddox: Mhmm.

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox: Mhmm.  Serial killer.  I…I bet his mom.  His mom didn’t give a shit about him, maybe.  A lot of these serial killers, too, have backgrounds where they were abused as children.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  Lot of really dark shit.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  And then they become comedians.  Can’t stop telling bits in cafes at 1 AM.  Anyway.  The second most prolific killer is also Columbian. His name is Pedro Lopez, suspected of killing 300 people.  He…and there’s confirmed 110.  He was active in the seventies, killing mostly young girls between 8 and 12.  He was released from prison in 1998 and his whereabouts are unknown.

Dick: Oh, he’s out there?

Maddox: Yeah, he’s out there.

Dick: Right now?!

Maddox: Mhmm.

Dick: Mmm.

Maddox:  1998.

Dick: That’s too bad.

Maddox: Yeah. Uh, the third most prolific is ALSO Columbian, so that’s…the top three most prolific serial killers in the world…

Dick:  What the hell’s going on down there?

Maddox:  Columbian.  I dunno!  I dunno. There are a lot of really prolific Columbian serial killers. It’s not…they’re not just tied to Columbia, it’s also other South American countries like Ecuador.  You know, some of the neighbors.  Anyway…

Dick: (interjects)  What, they’re touring around down there, you mean?

Maddox: Yeah.  Confirmed 72 murders, suspected of 150, mostly young virgin girls.

Dick: Ohhhhhh, what a dick!!

Maddox: Yeah. (scoffs)

Dick:  Kids you can understand. But young virgin women, come on, man!

Maddox: That’s why you gotta lose it as quickly as possible!

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: So you don’t get murdered or sacrificed. That’s the number one thing that kills people.  Did you know that?

Dick:  Being a virgin?

Maddox: The number one thing that kills people in horror movies is being a virgin.

Dick:  Oh.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Sure.

Maddox: Lose your virginity, people.  Big…big solution.  Get banged.  Um, anyway.  So yeah.  He killed a lot of young girls between 8 and 12.  He was released from prison in 1998…oh, that was another guy, sorry. So he confirmed…there was a confirmed 72 murders for this guy, suspected of 150.  And he was believed to be motivated by his stepmother abusing him as a child. Then in the US, the most prolific murderer in the US was Gary Ridgeway.  Uh, he confirmed killed 49 people, acted between 1982 and 2000.  He mostly killed sex workers and is suspected of killing 90.  That’s a lot of people, man.  One person can kill 100 or so.

Dick: Yeah. That seems a bit lazy, too.  To murder sex workers?

Maddox: Why.

Dick:  ‘Cause it’s a little easy. 

Maddox: It’s a cliché.

Dick: They’re already desperate.

Maddox:  It’s a cliché, man.

Dick: Mmm.

Maddox: You know…why wouldn’t you…why aren’t these serial killers more creative with their victims?

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: You know?  Why don’t you just pick, um, mountain men?  You know?  Make that be your targ…at least a WORTHY target.

Dick:  Lumberjacks?

Maddox:  Be like…be like Predator, at least. 

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: You know?  People who have axes and chainsaws.  Put some…put some hunting…

Dick:  (interjects) Hey, man.  We wouldn’t have any good movies without murder.

Maddox: Without murder?

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Let’s be…we wouldn’t have any good movies. We wouldn’t have any good video games.  We wouldn’t have any good TV. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Without murderers.

Maddox:  Yep!!  Name one good game…

Dick:  (interjects)  Our biggest heroes are murderers.  Indiana Jones.

Maddox: Mhmm.

Dick:  Huge murderer.

Maddox: OJ Simpson.  (laughs)

Dick:  Really, hilarious murderer.  (giggles)

Maddox:  He was funny in Naked Gun.  (laughs)

Dick:  He was.  (grins)

Maddox: Was he in Naked…yeah.  He was in Naked gun, wasn’t he?

Dick: Yeah, he was in Naked Gun.

Maddox: Yeah. Um, anyway.  Yeah, Gary Ridgeway killed a lot of prostitutes.  And then the most prolific Brazilian killer was another guy named Pedro…Rodriguez Filho.  He was sentenced to 128 years for 71 murders.  But get this.  Brazil has a maximum sentence of 30 years, so he was released.  (laughs) 

Dick: Oh.

Maddox: I…I believe he was released, yeah.  He also killed his father and ate a piece of his heart.

Dick: I mean, you know.

Maddox: Yeah. 

Dick:  That’s the dream, right?

Maddox:  Well, it’s there.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: You know, you gotta taste it.  You gotta absorb his powers.

Dick: You gotta get his power.

Maddox: Yeah.  You know, maybe..

Dick: (interjects) Surely there’s a good side to all of this murder, though.  Like, this could be your Death problem. You know? You CAN’T KILL HITLER without MURDERING him!!!  RIGHT?!

Maddox: Yeah. 

Dick: You can’t…you can’t beat the Nazis without mur…you gotta…every once in a while, you just gotta murder some people!!

Maddox:  So, now, if you…know.  Now we’re getting into a little semantic game here, between killing and murdering.  There is a difference.  Uh, killing, people say…is the act of taking a life.

Dick: Uh-huh.

Maddox: Murder, however, they say, is premeditated.  It’s either premeditated or done…if you wanna get into the legal terms, done with malice, or done in the process of a crime, so if you unintentionally kill someone while committing a felony, that’s called a felony murder.

Dick: Okay.

Maddox: So what do you think of that distinction?  Killing versus murder. 

Dick:  Seems like, uh…seems like whoever wins the war is who determines whether it was murder or not.

Maddox:  Whether it was a war crime, right?

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  I mean, you’re training for six weeks, and then you go storm another country’s beaches and start shooting at their guys. Seems like murder.

Maddox: Seems like…

Dick:  (interjects) Seems like a murder you can GET behind!!

Maddox: Yeah. (giggles)

Dick: Seems like murder nonetheless.

Maddox:  Seems like murder. And then people also say that murder…or if you kill someone in the act of self-defense, that doesn’t count as murder.  They say that that’s just an act of self-defense. They don’t even call it killing, but you kill. 

Dick:  Hmm, yeah.

Maddox:  If you take another life, that’s killing. Uh, in China there was a guy named Yang Xing Hai from the early 2000s.  This is, like, 2003.  He killed 67 people by entering their homes at night and killing everyone with axes, meat cleavers, hammers, and shovels!

Dick:  Now wait a minute.  I…I suspect you’re kind of bringing in serial killers, though.  ‘Cause serial killers are scary as shit.

Maddox: Yeah.  Well, they’re the worst types of murderers.  I mean, you can be a murderer who only kills one person.  They’re still scary and heinous people, like OJ Simpson.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Right?

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox: I mean, do you believe he did it?  OJ Simpson?

Dick:  Yeah, of course.

Maddox: Yeah.  Uh, I started watching that stupid documentary thing they’re airing right now, is it on FX, or HBO, or something?  I don’t know.

Dick:  No idea.

Maddox: No idea.

Dick: No idea where to go look for it.

Maddox: No, I don’t know.  I just go to the Internet and I find clips and watch it there.  I don’t give a shit.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: You know, make it EASY for me to watch!  Otherwise people are going to provide it for me in a way that you’re not gonna monetize it, shitheads!

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  And I’m still gonna watch it.  So anyway.  It’s…fascinating, going back to see all the evidence that they laid out, and the argument that the defense was putting out there, which is essentially that there was a big conspiracy by the LAPD to…

Dick:  (interjects)  Frame OJ?

Maddox:  To frame OJ.  Where they went to his house and rifled through his socks and found some, and then got a vial of blood and took it with them, and put some blood on his socks, and then also found one of his gloves, and then expertly placed the glove, with blood, you know, on this property.

Dick:  Mhmm.

Maddox:  And then put a little dab of blood on his Bronco, and all this, like, crazy shit.  It’s like, yeah, of course that didn’t happen.

Dick:  Well.

Maddox: Anyway.  Uh…Albert Fish. There was another guy named Albert Fish.  Have you heard of this guy?

Dick: Yeah, I have heard of that guy.

Maddox:  Yeah, Albert Fish…

Dick: (interjects)  There was a…one of the guys I was in the Dr. Phil house with…was…he was there ‘cause he was a misanthrope, and he ran a business of serial killer memorabilia. 

Maddox: Huh.

Dick: Like, he lived in Utah.  I can’t remember his name. He lived in Utah and he had a little store there that just bought and sold items that belonged to serial killers.  He was…and he loved Albert Fish.  Um, weird guy.

Maddox: Yeah.  Real weird guy, Albert Fish?

Dick:  Cool guy!

Maddox:  Who?

Dick:  Oh, I’m sorry. (giggles)

Maddox: Oh, the serial killer?

Dick: The Utah guy!!!

Maddox: The Utah guy.  (laughs)

Dick: The guy that was on Dr. Phil.

Maddox: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dick:  He was a cool guy.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  A little kooky.  Yeah.  Albert Fish. Definitely a weird guy.  Putting pins and needles in kids’ groins, and stuff like that?

Maddox:  So you’re not calling him cool.  You’re not calling Albert Fish cool.

Dick: No.

Maddox:  Alright.  Okay.  Just wanted to clarify. Yeah, Albert Fish, NOT cool.  For the record.

Dick:  Right.

Maddox: Uh, he was a notorious American serial killer who was active from 1924 to ’32.  He was a real sick fuck.  Uh, from the book, in his own words, listen to this.  “Around 1910 while he was working in Willington, Delaware, Fish met a 19-year-old man named Thomas Ketton.  He took Ketton to where he was staying, and the two began a sado-masochistic relationship.  It is unclear whether or not Fish forced Ketton to do these things, but in his confession, he implies that the man was intellectually disabled.”

Dick:  Oh, God.

Maddox:  Real sick bastard.  “After 10 days, Fish took Ketton to an old farmhouse, where he began to torture him.  The torture took place over two weeks.  Fish eventually tied Ketton up and cut off his penis.”

Dick:  Okay.

Maddox:  Yeah.  “Later on, Fish poured…”

Dick:  The retarded guy, cut off his penis?

Maddox: Yeah, he cut off his penis.

Dick: Okay.

Maddox:  “Fish poured peroxide all over the wound, wrapped it in Vaseline-covered handkerchief, and left a $10 bill…”

Dick:  Aaaaaggh!

Maddox:  “Kissed Ketton goodbye, and left.”

Dick: Okay.

Maddox:  Then he took the first train he could get back home.  Never heard what became of the other guy, and he never tried to find out.

Dick:  Yeah, man. These…serial killers, I’m 100% behind. (Maddox laughs) That they’re a problem.

Maddox: Oh, okay.  (laughs)

Dick:  That they’re a big…they’re a big problem. 

Maddox: Yeah!

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Maddox:  Half a million people dying every year from serial killers.

Dick:  Well, because they’re like terrorists, but with style.

Maddox: Hmm.

Dick:  Serial killers.  Like, they are…they’re making us all terrified!!  But for some reason, everyone is drawn to their weird, sicko charm!  Like Ted Bundy, right?

Maddox: Ted Bundy, yeah.

Dick:  Like…(stammers) everybody wants…everybody is interested in these serial killers.  ISIS, don’t care about…(stammers)  I don’t care what they want.  I don’t care what they’re talking about. They’re all wearing a dumb uniform. No style at all.  Right?  Not interested.

Maddox:  Right.

Dick:  Bad marketing.  Serial killers.  Great marketing! 

Maddox:  Yeah.

Dick: Horrible!  Great marketing.

Maddox: Yeah. Serial…

Dick: (interjects) People are buying their books!!! (yells)

Maddox: Serial killers are randoms.  Uh, they’re kind of like flashes in the pan. You don’t know what to expect. You don’t know when they’ll strike. You don’t know where they’ll strike. They are really fascinating in that sense, and I think that’s why a lot of people are fascinated by them.  They are just kind of curious about what motivates someone to do these things. 

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: You know, where does this come from?  Is it psychological?  I mean…yeah.  (they laugh)  It’s psychological.  That’s all there is to it.  Maybe they should get some ADD medication.

Dick:  Huh.

Maddox: Anyway, uh…Fish started having auditory hallucinations.  He…he would also insert needles into his groin and abdomen. This is why Fish was so famous, I think.  One of the reasons.  Is because after his arrest, he was x-rayed, and they found at least 29 needles lodged into his pelvic region.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  And man, if you look up this x-ray…

Dick: I’ve seen it.

Maddox: It’s…REALLY sick-looking.

Dick: It’s disgusting.

Maddox:  Yeah.  He also has a nail-studded paddle and he put wool doused with lighter fluid up his anus and set it on fire.

Dick: What’s wrong with that?

Maddox:  Well…nothing. It’s real hot. (snorts)

Dick: Yeah.  (they giggle)  Brain damage.  Bad puns!

Maddox: He would sometimes eat dinners consisting solely of raw meat.  He would tell his kids to spank him with that nail-studded paddle.  Uh, there were also group serial killers.  Have you ever heard of this?  Um, in Philadelphia in the 1930’s, there was a poison ring.  It was called the Philadelphia Poison Ring. And they were a gang of 16 people who poisoned Italian immigrants with arsenic to collect their life insurance.

Dick:  Hmm.

Maddox: Uh, yeah.  There was a scam to find recently-widowed women through a matrimony agency that they set up.  Then they would…

Dick: (interjects)  Oh, that’s a bummer.  Come on, guys!

Maddox: Yeah, I guess they would marry them.  Mhmm.  They’d get an insurance policy on them, and then they’d all accidentally be killed in really violent ways, or they’d be poisoned.

Dick:  Huh.

Maddox: And man, some of these descriptions.  I read some of these descriptions. It’s so gruesome.  So graphic.

Dick:  How they killed them?

Maddox:  Well, the…the effects of drinking that much arsenic.  Because…

Dick: (interjects) Oh, oh.

Maddox: Someone dying from arsenic poisoning is really rare.

Dick:  Fat and bloated and disgusting?

Maddox: Yeah, they get really bloated…

Dick:  Exploding?

Maddox: Their eyes bulge out. It’s really nasty.

Dick:   Yeah.

Maddox: Really nasty. Um, this is kind of an interesting phenomenon, but a lot of serial killers have the name “Wayne” as a middle or first name.  Did you know that?

Dick: Ooh, I know somebody with Wayne as a middle name. 

Maddox: Really?

Dick: You think he’s a serial killer?

Maddox:  Well, I was at a party not too long ago…where, um…a friend of mine introduced me to someone whose name was…he had Wayne as a middle name.

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox: And, uh…they said to him, “Oh, a lot of serial killers have the name Wayne in common.”  And he said, “Oh, yeah, well my uncle was a serial killer and he had the name Wayne in it.”

Dick: Oh, cool.

Maddox:  And yeah, his uncle was a…yeah.  (scoffs)  Real prolific serial killer, too.  This guy.

Dick:  Huh.

Maddox: Um, anyway. There’s John Wayne Gacy, of course.  Elmer Wayne Henley.  But there are at least 222 more serial killers, according to this website, newsoftheweird.com.  I’ll link to it on the website.  And according to Freakonomics, in 2006, a woman noticed that in an eight-month period in Texas alone, there were 19 people who were accused of crimes with the middle name Wayne.  Now, I don’t know if that’s just confirmation bias, ‘cause you’re looking for it?

Dick: Hmm.

Maddox: But, uh…

Dick:  (interjects) Not all Waynes? 

Maddox:  Not all Waynes.  (giggles)

Dick:  Are we gonna say that?

Maddox: Yeah.  #notallwaynes.  But it is kind of fascinating that Wayne seems to be a common thing here.  I don’t know if this is corroborated by anything, but the name Wayne became really popular after John Wayne was a huge celebrity, right?

Dick: Sure.  I didn’t know that, but okay.

Maddox: So, yeah.

Dick:  I could imagine.

Maddox: Yeah. When celebrities, during a certain time period, become really popular, you see a spike in the names of children who are named after that celebrity.

Dick: Hmm.

Maddox: Like, right now, there’s a big surge of Maddoxes being born.

Dick: Yeah, well. 

Maddox: Uh…(giggles)

Dick: Could be true. 

Maddox:  See? There’s evidence!

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Anyway, maybe it’s just a coincidence because these are the serial killers who came into adulthood around the time of their most prolific murdering years.  And they were all named at a certain time when they were conceived, when John Wayne was a big celebrity.

Dick: Oh, I see.

Maddox:  That’s my theory.

Dick:  Mmm.

Maddox: It’s probably right. I’m smart. Um, anyway. There’s also the serial killer Corianna Thompson, who was a transsexual strangler.  You ever heard of this?

Dick:  (giggles) No, but that’s gonna stick in a headline.

Maddox: Yeah!

Dick:  The Transsexual Strangler!

Maddox: Yeah.  That’s what it said…that’s what they called her in the New York Post. Newyorkpost.com.  She killed her 86-year-old mother as a woman, and had strangled a nurse to death prior to her gender operation as a man. She is the only serial killer to have killed in both genders.

Dick: Oh!

Maddox: Yeah.  Her birth name was Corey Wayne Balashek. 

Dick:  Hmm.

Maddox: But uh, yeah man.  Murderers.  Big problem!!

Dick: Serial killers!!

Maddox: Serial killers.

Dick: But also…

Maddox:  Well, mass murderers.  School shootings!

Dick:  You’re not gonna throw Planned Parenthood in that, are you?

Maddox: No, of course not.  But…no.  No, of course not.  But, uh…yeah, I mean mass shootings is another big problem.  Terrorists fall under this category.

Dick: Okay.

Maddox: But we’ve talked about some of that other shit!

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  In the past.  I mean, there’s…you know. It’s in the news, obviously.  Every week, there’s something.

Dick:  I just don’t want you to be surprised when Murderers, the vote doesn’t reflect the atrocities that you just read.  ‘Cause murdering goes both ways!! 

Maddox: What are you talking about?

Dick:  That’s what I’m saying.  These serial killers are the bad side of murdering, but civilization as a whole was built on murder!  A whole SHITLOAD of murders!

Maddox:  Well, Dick…so again. We’re playing the semantic game.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  Murder versus killing.  ‘Cause they would say that soldiers, like, US soldiers who go abroad and fight our battles, for whatever premise.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Are not considered murderers.  They’re considered people who are hired killers, essentially.

Dick:  Whoa.  Oh, okay. 

Maddox:  I mean, what…there is an important distinction, there.  Do you think…do you agree, or no? 

Dick:  Well, yeah.  One’s legal.

Maddox:  Between mur…between murdering and killing. Yeah.  One is legal and one is not.  By the Geneva Conventions too.  During acts of war, I don’t think that individual soldiers are often tried for war crimes if they’re not…(stammers) if they’re conducting their duties on the battlefield and they kill an enemy soldier in the process of war.

Dick: Yeah. Unless it was an accident.  It’s like, “Well, the drone accidentally shot up that wedding.”  What are you gonna do?

Maddox: Oh, well that too, actually, yeah. That’s considered…that’s not considered murdered. That’s considered killing.  Murder is usually premeditated.

Dick:  Yeah, the line’s getting a little blurry.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Well…

Maddox:  Well, I’m…I mean, where do you draw that line? Where do you…where do you think…

Dick:  Well, I don’t at all!

Maddox: You don’t have any distinction between those.

Dick:  No, you killed…like, you either killed someone to get something from them.  Like, these serial killers killed someone to get a thrill.  Uh, in the case of war, you’re either killing someone to stop more killing, which is a matter of a scale, or you’re killing someone for an economic benefit.  It’s still murder.  But I don’t personally need to feel better about one type of murder than another.  Like, those…serial killers, throw ‘em in jail.  That’s bad.  I don’t like that. 

Maddox:  Well, what would you say about murder…(stammers) because clearly, the law distinguishes between first and second degree murder.  Second degree murder is murder…like, say you were at a bar.

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox: You get angry at someone.  You punch ‘em in the face, and you accidentally kill them.

Dick: Yeah.  That’s less illegal than coming into a bar and blowing somebody’s brains out on purpose.

Maddox: It’s a lesser crime.

Dick:  Right.

Maddox:  The punishment for that is less, I think.  Because it’s a second degree murder.  It’s not first degree.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  First degree, premeditated murder is where you see your neighbor across the street, you make a plan to kill them, you go over there and kill them.  That’s first degree, premeditated murder, where versus a bar…uh, you know that incident in a bar.  Do you think that one is…is morally better than the other, or do you think they’re equal?

Dick: Uh, oh, morally?

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  I’m fine with the way the law is.

Maddox: Huh.

Dick: Just to be clear.

Maddox:  Okay.

Dick: I’m fine with abortion! It’s legal!

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Make it legal!  I don’t give a shit!

Maddox: Okay.

Dick: As long as I’m not being aborted!

Maddox: Yeah, well, it’s…

Dick: (interjects)  That’s off the table!

Maddox:  Well, not if I became President, shithead! (Dick laughs) That’s my platform!!! 

Dick: What?

Maddox:  Raise the age!

Dick:  200^th trimester abortions?

Maddox: Is that the math?  Whatever…

Dick: (interjects)  I dunno what the math is.  (grins)

Maddox:  Whatever it is, raise the age.

Dick:  Raise it?

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Yeah.  Hey, well I’ll tell you some people you can definitely put on that list of acceptable murders.  Uh, freeway protest…freeway hijackers.  I dunno what to call this.  I don’t know if I want to get cute or not, ‘cause it’s a very serious problem to me.  Uh, but Road Blockheads?  Is that…we get any love on that one?

Maddox:  Road…road blockheads?

Dick:  PEOPLE…taking over the freeway so EVERYBODY has to sit there, and suffer, so THEY can get on the news for their cause!  That’s my problem!!!  And this is…this is…(stammers) this is a type of problem…every once in a while, I have a huge problem with something, but I don’t wanna bring it in right away, ‘cause I’m SO pissed off about it, but it only happened once.  So I wait for stuff like this to happen a COUPLE TIMES before I bring it in.  And THIS finally happened a third time.  Where PEOPLE feel like they…protestors.  ANYBODY!  Doesn’t even necessarily have to be a protest.  Someone feels that they have the right to get on an interstate highway or a freeway and just STOP TRAFFIC completely!  Dead.  For thousands of people!  Backing up FOR MILES!  For what reason?!  Does the reason matter?!  That’s what I’m genuinely asking you. Because I’m incensed by these people.  I see…when I see people blocking the freeway, I don’t wanna know what the reason is.  I wanna see snowplows with rockets on their back and a giant LAPD or AZPD or whatever state they’re in BARRELLING down the freeway like a fucking cannon to take these people off!  Because they’re screwing up everyone’s day!!!

Maddox:  Now, you’re specifically talking about the most recent incident, which is some protestors blocked, uh…they blocked the freeway because there was a Trump rally going on, right?

Dick:  Yeah.  And…and…uh, believe it or not, like, I don’t know if this will sound disingenuous, but I DON’T care what the reason is!  I tried to find evidence of people from the right…the conservative side doing it, and I did find a couple, but yes.  The most recent occurrence of this freeway Road Blockhead…freeway hijacking shit…did happen at the Trump event, where thousands of people are using the freeway to get to an event, and protestors just jump onto the road, and decide that they’re…(stammers) you’re not deciding where you’re going, THEY are!!  And you’re gonna sit there for…until…until I dunno when.  The cops gingerly pick them up and put them in patrol cars, and take them away?  Like…I…I don’t know what the end game is!!!  But it’s happened before that!

Maddox: Yeah, it has.  Uh…so, I guess my question is, Dick. When it happens to a point where it reaches critical mass…because I agree with you, it’s annoying.  Uh…it can be…it can be a hazard for people’s lives if an ambulance is trying to get down that freeway!

Dick:  Tchhyeah!!

Maddox:  Guys, you shouldn’t shut it down.  Uh, people could be having emergencies, or someone could be going into labor. There’s someone who could be having a stroke.  There’s a LOT of reasons NOT to shut down a freeway. It’s a bad way of protesting. However, there could be a point where it reaches critical mass, where, say, the number of people protesting are in the hundreds of thousands of people, and it represents, say, a good chunk of the city, over 50%.  What would you say then?

Dick: Well, we’ve got this beautiful system where a judge can sit there and rule whether or not it’s something that deserved to happen. Like, hundreds of thousands of people might be on the street walking.  Uh, I don’t personally like parades. But it’s gonna happen.  THIS…is not that.  This is a bunch of people making a concerted effort to STOP traffic! Like the…I’ll being in another one that’s not political.  Do you remember that jackass that shut down the freeway to propose to his girlfriend?

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  See….when something like that happens, that combined with these protest freeway shutdowns?  It makes me think that this is no longer…this phenomenon is no longer about raising awareness.  It’s just about people showing that they have the power to do this!  You know what I mean?  Like…(stammers) what is wrong with a person to want to shut down a freeway and mess up…imprison people in their cars for an hour, let’s say, or multiple hours, for attention!!  You’re…like, this is much bigger.  This isn’t a protest tactic anymore.  It’s just people ruining ever…it’s just people trying to ruin other people’s lives!!  To me.

Maddox: Yeah.  I…I don’t agree with shutting down a freeway. Um, but…let’s say that there was a protest that were to occur.  I can see a world in which…a protest…

Dick:  (interjects) I mean, you have a t-shirt that says civil disobedience is still disobedience.

Maddox: Right.

Dick:  Like, let’s..let’s have a cup check. 

Maddox: Right.

Dick:  Here.

Maddox:  But that’s satire.  You know.

Dick:  Right.

Maddox: I’m not actually condoning that cops go around beating people.

Dick: Right.

Maddox: Um…but let’s say it’s a small town, and one of the only roads in that small town is the freeway.  Um, yeah, I guess even then I still wouldn’t condone it.

Dick:  Well, let’s…lemme ask you this thought experiment, because I…like, when I see that happening, I’m like, “Oh, these guys should go to jail FOREVER.”  Getting on the freeway and prohibiting thousands of people from going anywhere?  Go to fucking jail forever!!  Right!?  Like, that’s…or longer than…you know what the penalty for this is? It’s like $2000.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  And a couple of months.  Like, a couple of months, maximum. Which is never gonna happen.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Right?  You’ll be a weekender.  You’ll go to jail for a couple weekends and you’re out, max.  That’s what’s gonna really happen.

Maddox: Okay, Dick. Uh, first of all…the going to jail forever part is idiotic!

(Sound effect: ‘Wrong’ buzzer)

Maddox:  That is absolutely stupid, because the crime…the penalty should reflect the severity of the crime.

Dick: Right.

Maddox: If someone is a drunk driver, which is…(stammers) an act that is far more common than street…highway closures due to protests.

Dick:  Mhmm.

Maddox:  Drunk drivers shut down freeways all the fucking time and I don’t see you complaining about them.  To this severity. Because you are apoplectic right now, but drunk drivers get in wrecks, and they shut down the freeway for hours!  Sometimes five, six hours at a time, versus this fucking freeway that just takes a few minutes!  I get it, it’s annoying. They’re both annoying!  But, uh…look at the severity of the crime.  Why aren’t you also suggesting that these people be put in jail forever?  Or…anyone else who shuts it down? Like people who have accidents.

Dick:  Who, drunk drivers?  Who cause accidents?

Maddox:  Drunk drivers.  People who don’t have proper car maintenance. People who don’t properly tie things down on their car.  A mattress or something that falls off, causes a 10-car pile-up.  People’s lives are destroyed.  Families are destroyed.  Costs insurance millions of dollars.  I mean…

Dick:  You don’t think that a loose mattress is the same thing as a guy, like, stopping traffic to propose to his girlfriend, though?

Maddox: Yeah, but I think that the mattress…

Dick:  (interjects) ‘Cause that’s gonna happen.

Maddox: Yeah, the guy proposing is a jackass, but that’s a…you know, that was news because it happens so rarely.  But the guy with the mattress…there’s debris on freeways all the fucking time that causes huge accidents.  I think that’s a far bigger problem than, say, the one-off protest, or the one-off guy proposing to his dipshit girlfriend.  Who, by the way, what Dick is referring to is this incident that happened where this guy proposed to his girlfriend and he thought it’d be really romantic to get his friends to help shut down traffic, which was fucking awful.

Dick:  It was awful!

Maddox:  And everyone was pissed off at him.

Dick: Yeah!

Maddox:  His girlfriend then, later on, when they interviewed him on the news, ‘cause the guy went to jail, she said, “Oh, I thought it was really romantic.”  (they scoff)  Yeah, fuck you!  (Dick growls with rage)  How about taking some accountability in this case, and stepping back and saying, “Hey, bro?  Thanks for proposing, but you just showed me that you’re not qualified to sow my loins.  Uh, sow your seed in my loins.”  (giggles)

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  I think the worst thing is that everyone would see it like that.  Like that’s what…

Maddox:  (interjects) That it was romantic?

Dick: Yes!

Maddox: No, people were pissed.

Dick:  People were pissed. But I think this is like…like, the idea of stealing people’s time is becoming…uh…is becoming less offensive to people…I think.  Like, the notion of making everyone sit there and witness this spectacle that you’re doing?  Is, like, we’re whittling away at something that should be sacrosanct to me.  Like…the idea of respecting other people’s time and not…not PURPOSEFULLY trying to destroy it.  Trying to cost people their time just so you can get more attention.

Maddox: Yeah.  Well, this incident that we’re talking about specifically, this, over the weekend I think, there was a Trump rally in Arizona.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  And the protestors shut down the freeway, right?  Uh…that’s a bad move.  You shouldn’t shut down the freeway.  Again, like, I said, people have emergencies and they have to get through.  People have things that are going on in their lives.  You cannot shut down the lifeblood of the freeway for your political protest, because both parties could do that, and if everyone just shut down every party all the time, then, uh…then what do we have?  We have chaos and pandemonium. 

Dick:  Well…

Maddox: (interjects) You shut down the country.  And look.  Trump is definitely a threat to America and our civil liberties, and our way of life.  (stammers) Absolutely. Vote up Fuckface Donald Trump, alright?!

Dick:  Oh, boy.

Maddox: It’s a huge problem.

Dick: Yeah.  (annoyed)

Maddox:  I get it.  But right now, he’s not a problem to the point of severity where you’re shutting down freeways and causing traffic jams for miles, and costing us millions of dollars.  That’s a bad move.  But here’s the part that I have a huge problem with.  Because both sides of the equation are wrong in this one.  There was a guy who, in this protest video.  There’s a protest video someone posted.  Where a Jeep was just trying to start to plow his way through these protestors.

Dick: Dude.  He was like, letting his foot off the gas.  That guy was going as slow as you can go, through people that are standing there obstructing the freeway.  You have a problem with that?! Would you not be doing that?!

Maddox: No, I would NOT be potentially running someone over!

Dick: All they have to do is step to the side!!

Maddox:  Well…

Dick:  (interjects) You’re, like, going…you’re going slower than you’re going through a PARKING LOT!

Maddox:  But in the video, it’s pandemonium. There’s so many people, and some of their backs are turned. They’re not paying attention.  It’s loud. You might not hear the car coming.  You might not see.  If someone panics and starts screaming, or falls down, or trips, or whatever, the guy doesn’t have time to react, and you’ve killed someone! Potentially. 

Dick:  They should have brought in a steam roller and gone over these people.

Maddox: Yeah.  You cannot bring…you cannot move your car towards another person, because that’s attempted vehicular homicide.  That’s what that is!

Dick: Well, that’s what….OHHHHHHHHHHH, boy!  Here’s Sean!

Maddox:  Well, well, well!

Dick:  50 minutes in!

Maddox: Yeah.  50….

Dick:  (interjects) 50 minutes in!

Maddox:  50 minutes.  Uh-huh.  Welcome, Sean.  Nice of you to join us, Sean!!

Dick: Was anyone blocking the freeway?  Is that why it took you so long to get here?! (Maddox laughs)  Your mic’s live, by the way.

Sean: (in the background) Oh, yeah?  How nice.

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah.

Sean: You guys started more or less on time.

Dick:  Oh, okay. (scoffs)

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  That’s enough with the condescending tone from you, Sean.  (Maddox laughs)

Maddox: So…

Dick:  We’re talking about people who block freeways and how they should all be shot!  How they should be glued to the freeway comically with Superglue and run over with a steamroller!

Maddox: Okay.

Dick:  That’s my position on it!  I don’t care whose side they’re on!!

Maddox:  So…

Dick:  I don’t care if they’re pro-Trump or anti-Trump!  I don’t care if they’re proposing to their wife, or a man!  I don’t care if it’s a gay proposal!  If they’re blocking the freeway, kill ‘em!

Maddox:  Very progressive of you, Dick. (laughs) 

Dick:  What the fuck?!  Why does it…why…why do I need to tolerate their tantrums?!!?!

Maddox:  Because you are…

Dick: (interjects)  Like, why are we in that society?!

Maddox:  You are being a big babyback bitch right now, because this is specifically a Trump rally they were protesting.

Dick:  I don’t care!!

Maddox:  You don’t have this kind of a reaction…you don’t have this kind of reaction for drunk drivers.  You don’t have this kind of reaction for obstruction. People who don’t tie things down properly on their cars!  All those other things that shut down freeways!!

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Daily!!  This is an anomaly, and I’ve never seen you this pissed off about any of that other shit!!

Dick:  Well, that’s why I brought it in!!

Maddox: Okay. (laughing)

Dick:  ‘Cause I wanna see if ANYONE is…like, I’ve…everyone I’ve talked to is not as pissed off as I am!!

Maddox: No.

Dick: Like, even people who are…well, I don’t know if there are people who are bigger Trump fans than me, but…even people who are on the same side as me, like, “Well, you know.  What are you gonna do?”  Like, (stammers excitedly) throw them in jail forever!  Like, what’s the difference?  You got 1000 people that you’ve…let’s say you got 9000 people that you’ve delayed for an hour.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: 10,000 people. 

Maddox:  Right.

Dick:  For an hour.  What’s the difference doing that and detaining one guy for a year?  It’s the same hours!! At what point does it…like, where does it turn from being a crime you should go to jail for 20 years for, and something that you get put in plastic handcuffs and let out later that day so you can go on Reddit and talk about what a big activist you are!

Sean:  Wait, catch me up.  Who did this? 

Dick:  A bunch of assholes did it at a Trump rally recently.

Sean: Oh, okay.

Maddox:  In Arizona, over the weekend, Sean, a bunch of protestors shut down a freeway, because they didn’t like…they didn’t like Trump and they didn’t want the rally to go forward, and they wanted to raise awareness for their cause.

Sean:  In Arizona?!

Maddox: Yeah.

Sean:  And they weren’t killed?

Dick: Right?!

Maddox:  For the cause. 

Dick: Yeah!

Maddox:  Well, so here’s what happened.

Sean:  Arizona’s like the biggest gun-carrying state next to Texas!

Maddox: Right.

Sean:  Maybe more!

Dick: And by the way, this is basically their version of a PRANK!! 

Maddox: Here’s what…here’s what happened, Sean.  So during this protest..(stammers) you know, again, they’re wrong to shut down the freeway.  I don’t condone that at all.  I think it’s ridiculous.  I don’t think Trump is AS an imminent threat to justify shutting down the freeway.  But, uh…during the protest, a car started to slowly drive through the protestors.  And people were screaming, and jumping, and freaking out.  And they were telling the cop to, you know.  To stop this guy, because it’s essentially attempted vehicular homicide.

Dick: How the hell is he supposed to get through?!

Maddox:  Well, you don’t.

Dick:  What, he just sits there until people leave?!

Maddox: What are you suggesting, Dick?  He run people over and kill them?

Dick: Well, gosh, I don’t know.  If you walk onto a f…like, if you walk INTO danger.  If you just RUN out onto the freeway real fast, and you get hit by a car, that’s YOUR fault!!  That’s the real…

Maddox:  (interjects) Okay, but that’s not what happened.

Dick:  But it’s…it should be the same fucking thing!  It should be more comparable than that guy having to sit in his car and wait for you to end your tantrum that you’re Periscoping to the world!

Sean: You know how sometimes athletes and fans get involved with each other? 

Dick: Yeah, and fight.

Sean:  Like, a fan goes on the field, or an athlete goes into the stands?

Maddox: Right. 

Sean: I heard someone who put it perfectly.  The athletes stay where they’re supposed to be, the fans stay where they’re supposed to be, and if neither one does, anything happens and it’s all fair game. 

Maddox: No, that’s…that’s not legally, that’s not how the law looks at it, Sean.

Sean:  Obviously not.

Dick:  It should be!

Sean:  But it should!

Maddox:  No. No.  Absolutely not.

Dick: Yeah.

Sean:  Yeah.

Dick: It should be!

Maddox:  No, because if you are driving down the freeway, right?

Sean:  (interjects)  Yeah. If you’re crawling, they have time to get out of the way of your car!

Maddox: No, yeah, but Sean, if they don’t, you don’t have a right!

Sean:  It’s illegal!

Maddox:  You don’t have a right to run people over because they won’t move out of your way!!

Sean:  I didn’t say run people over!

Maddox: I mean, that’s essentially what this guy was doing.

Sean:  No!!!

Maddox:  Now lemme get to the crux of this situation.  Why people were upset.

Sean:  It’s not some geriatric in a farmer’s market!! (Dick chuckles)

Maddox:  Well, let’s get to the crux of the issue here.  They were turning to the cops and saying, “Hey man, this guy’s trying to plow through us!  Do something.”  And the cop kinda just…

Dick:  (interjects) They were screaming hysterically!  That’s murder!!!  That’s attempted murder!!! That’s…yeah.  Watch it.  They were screaming hysterically.

Maddox: Yeah, I saw.  I saw.  I mean, essentially it is.

Sean:  (interjects)  How fast was he going?

Maddox: You are not…

Dick:  (interjects)  Dude, he would like put his…

Maddox: (interjects)  About 5 to 10 miles an hour.

Dick: He pulled his foot off the brake. Like, the guy’s going as slow as possible to get through these cry bullies.

Maddox: You aren’t allowed to drive through people, period.

Sean:  (interjects)  You’re not allowed to stage a protest on the freeway!

Maddox: Under any…well, that’s right, Sean.  But the crime shouldn’t be your LIFE.  The crime…excuse me.  The penalty for staging a protest shouldn’t be MURDER.

Sean:  Yeah, true!

Maddox:  The penalty for staging a protest…

Sean:  (interjects)  Nobody got murdered!

Maddox:  No, but…(stammers) they easily could have, if someone panicked.  If someone fell over.  If…if there was a child that the driver didn’t see, or something was going on on the freeway, I mean, it was pandemonium, if you saw what was going on.

Sean:  There might be vehicular manslaughter.

Dick: Because of the dipshits that were on the freeway!!

Maddox: Look…

Dick:  Look…

Maddox:  I agree…

Dick:  (interjects)  The crime should be comparable.  If it’s vehicular manslaughter for me to inch through these dummies, then them being there in the first place should be a comparable prison term!!!  For incarcerating me and thousands of other people when they don’t have the…

Maddox:  (interjects)  It’s not incarceration!  You are so disingenuous, because you don’t have this kind of reaction to drunk drivers, which shut down freeways every fucking day in this country, in every fucking state!  Every day, there’s some shithead drunk driver who’s shutting down the fucking freeway, and I don’t hear a single peep out of you or any of these crybaby dipshits!  So let’s step back off our high horse for a second and get some perspective here, because it’s only political!! This is only because it was a Trump rally and because this dipshit cop didn’t do his fucking job!  Of course…look.  You wanna be an asshole…

Sean:  (interjects)  I don’t care whose rally it is.

Maddox:  …and inch through traffic…

Dick:  (interjects)  Me either.

Maddox: Yeah, I don’t give a shit either, but if you want to be a dipshit and inch through traffic, you’re an asshole, and if you want to shut down the freeway, you’re an asshole, too! They’re both assholes. But the problem I have here is this cop didn’t do his fucking job.

Sean:  Well, here’s the thing, too.  And I do agree with you that the potential damage is not equivalent.

Maddox:  No, of course not.  Oh, sorry you were delayed, bro!

Sean:  The car obviously…yeah.

Dick: (interjects) Why? It’s thousands of people! 

Sean:  Yeah, but…

Dick:  (interjects)  It’s tens of thousands of people!  That’s 10,000 hours!!

Maddox:  First of all, it’s not tens of thousands…

Sean:  (interjects)  No, what I’m saying though, is the car CAN kill someone.  Nobody’s gonna kill you in a car standing there.

Maddox:  Well, sure.  Right, right.

Sean:  So it’s obviously more dangerous to pull through a crowd of people.  But…

Maddox:  (interjects)  Right!  It’s obnoxious. For sure!!  They shouldn’t have done it!  They shouldn’t have shut down the freeways.

Dick:  Uh-huh.

Maddox: I’m totally 100% behind you.  That’s out of line, I think.  I agree with you.

Dick: Oh, yeah.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Vote it up. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Alright. Today’s episode is brought to you by…(Maddox giggles) Audible!!  Who’s got more than 180,000 audio books and spoken-word audio podcasts.  Get a free 30-day trial at http://www.audiblepodcast.com/biggest!  I brought in some…I brought in some books that I wanna check out. ‘Cause they always encourage us to go look at their offering.  So as hosts, we can talk about exciting books that we want to read, right?

Maddox:  Yeah. What do you got?

Dick: Did you know that?  Well, keep in mind that…as a sponsored program, we are contractually…we, as in also you…not allowed to mock any of these titles, before I read them, but these are titles I would really love to…love to listen to.  I’ll go through them.  Um…uh…”The Art of the Deal”.  By Donald Trump.  Is on this lovely service.

Maddox:  (scoffs) Fuck you, Dick!! (laughs)

Dick:  A great…no, no.  Nope!  Nope! You can’t! They’ll take our money away!! (Maddox cracks up)  Crippled America:  How to Make America Great.  Also an audio book that I can’t wait to listen to several times a day!!

Maddox: You know what?  Fuck it!  (Dick laughs)  I will pay to mock this book!  I don’t give a shit!!

Dick: Okay.

Maddox:  Here we go!!! I…(stammers) you know, Dick, you said…(starts ranting…laughs)

Dick: No, hold on!!  Do it in a minute!  You have to be quiet for a minute!!! (Maddox giggles) Here’s another one…here’s another audio book that you can check out.  I really think…I…this is…I listened to a part of it before the show.  It’s called “Your Guide to Adult Coloring Books.”

Maddox:  Oh. (scoffs)

Dick: “Improved focus, mental boun…” 

Maddox:  Such an asshole! (laughs)

Dick:  Here’s another one!  “Adventurer’s Coloring Book”. This is a real coloring book that you could listen to!!

Maddox: Why would you want to listen to a coloring book!!? (laughs)

Dick: Maddox!  Don’t you really want to find out!?  What’s in it?

Maddox: You know, it could be interesting.

Dick: I guarantee you want to at least go, listen to the sample at http://www.audiblepodcast.com/biggest to get a free 30-day trial by signing up there.  There you go.

Sean:  Wait, you can listen to somebody coloring?

Dick:  (stammers) I don’t know, Sean!!!

Maddox:  It may be…

Dick: (interjects) Go listen!  Go download it!!!

Maddox:  It may be ASM.

Sean:  Wup! I went out of the lines!! (Dick laughs)  Oh, hang on.

Maddox:  No, you’re right, Sean. It may be ASM.  Have you heard of this ASM movement?

Sean: No.

Maddox: It’s like auditory sensatory masturbation…whatever it is.  It’s this thing…

Dick: (interjects)  Wait, is that really what it is?

Maddox: It’s something like that.  It’s this phenomenon where people like to hear…uh, sounds that are appealing to them.  So there are all these videos on YouTube. To me it’s super creepy.  It makes my skin crawl.  But if you go to YouTube, there’s all these, like, women, uh, and men, who are whispering, and they’re reading books, or they’re…

Dick: (interjects) Oh, really? (lewd)

Maddox:  …doing things, like scratching a table with a comb.

Sean:  So it gets people off.

Maddox: Yeah, I guess. Or it supposedly relaxes them.  But to me, it’s super creepy.

Dick: Oh, that’s weird.

Maddox: So, maybe that’s what these coloring books are.  Is the sound of a crayon going back and forth on a piece of paper.

Dick: No, it’s not.  I listened to the sample.  WAY better than that.  (grins)

Maddox:  Is it really?

Dick: Yep.  Go check it out!!  30-day trial!

Maddox: Alright.  I am actually intrigued. I’m gonna do that right after this episode.

Dick: I also…here’s another one I thought would be good.  “Beautiful Ruins.”  I thought it was Beautiful Rims.  But I was mistaken.  (Sean laughs)  But…(mumbles)

Maddox: (scoffs)  Beautiful….(laughs)

Sean: You’re preoccupied with rims.  (Maddox and Dick laugh)  Aren’t you?  Ever since the little incident with your…

Dick:  Yes, yes, yes. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Sean:  You know, them putting the wrong rims on the car. 

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox: Yeah.  He got a bad rimjob, that’s the problem. (laughs)

Sean:  Yeah.

Dick: No, that’s…

Sean:  (interjects)  I think you gotta go back to about Episode 2 to…

Dick:  (interjects)  Brain…brain damage…episode 5.

Sean:  5?  Is it really?

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Yeah.  Uh-huh. 

Maddox: Yeah, that was a long time ago.  Alright. Alright, Dick.  Thank you guys.  Thank you for supporting us.  Thank you, Audible, for supporting the show.  It really helps us.  Uh, check it out!  Thank you.  Um, I got another big problem though, Dick.

Dick:  Okay.

Maddox: Moving on.  And this may be a solution based on what you just said with your last problem, but it’s Too Much Junk in the Trunk.

Dick:  Ooh. (giggles)

Maddox: Huh?  (laughs)  (Sean giggles)

Dick: Oh, you walked in at the perfect time, Sean.

Maddox: Welcome, Sean.  Uh, and I’m not talking about juicy asses, Sean.  I know what you’re thinking.

Sean:  Is that a cleverly crafted pun you just…

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  I don’t know.  Is it a pun?

Sean:  I don’t know.  Is it?

Maddox: It’s just a double entendre.  No.

Sean:  Yeah, no, you’re right. It’s a double entendre.

Maddox: Yeah.  I don’t have a problem with juicy asses.  I can handle the biggest ass with a plum, buddy.

Dick: Hmm.

Maddox: Yeah.  I’m talking about literal junk in your car trunk. 

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah.  And I…I heard, Sean.  I have a good authority that you are a person I should talk to.

Dick:  Sean’s the king of garbage!

Maddox: You have a lot of garbage in your car?

Sean:  It’s not garbage!! (Maddox snorts) It’s a bunch of stuff I don’t use!! (Maddox laughs)

Dick: Really?  Oh, okay.

Maddox:  That is THE definition of garbage!! (laughing)

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Sean:  No, there’s…

Dick: (interjects)  Yeah. You don’t use those cracked CDs.

Sean:  There’s microphones back there.

Dick:  That spill out every time I open the door to your car.

Sean:  There’s mic stands.  Oh, no, no, no.  Those are, like, to check mixes.  I clean those out like once a week.  I’m constantly burning CDs and throwing them…you gotta do the car test.  They’re always on the floor!

Dick:  I think you need a hoarding intervention if you think that’s normal, what you’ve got going on in your car.  And I’m guilty of this as well.

Sean: Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah, I’ve seen your car, Dick.

Dick:  Of having trash in my car.

Maddox: You got a bunch of…garbage.

Sean:  You know what I always have?  I have empty Coke bottles.  Er…yeah.  Coke bottles.  And CDs. 

Dick:  I got my car broken into…the day after Christmas one year.  Like, horrible time to break into somebody’s car.

Sean;  (interjects)  I know this story.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Right?  And I came down.  I got a truck.  And it was…the F150, that model, the window is really easy to jimmy open.

Maddox: Right.

Dick:  In the back.  Um, so it would get broken into all the time.

Maddox:  Huh.

Dick:   Like, I knew it was a design flaw.

Maddox:  So they didn’t break the window, they just slid it open.

Dick: No, you just jam a screwdriver in, and then pop it open, and, like, the windows are so flexible, and there’s no, like…there’s no…the sliding window in the back’s so flexible, and there’s no support in the right place, so the whole thing will flex.  So you can just pop it off the latch and slide the window open.  It happened to me so much that I just never left anything valuable in my car.  In fact, I left a screwdriver in the bed, because I would lock my keys in the car so often…(Maddox giggles) that I would have to break into my own truck!  Uh, so the day after Christmas, this guy’s thinking…he pops open my truck, and there is…there looks like the Grinch’s sack of treasures.  In my passenger seat, right?  Like, it’s just…it’s full of stuff. Um, jokes on him.  Because it was all fast food wrappers.  Bags.  (Maddox laughs) Like, he stole…

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Dick:  He stole probably…

(Sound effect: Clapping)

Dick:  Four cubic feet of garbage out of my car.  And I was happy.  I was SO happy about it.  Like, I was disappointed that somebody broke into my car after Christmas. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Thinking they’d steal all my stuff.  And then I was so proud…er, so happy that they’ve got a bunch of TRASH, right?

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  And got totally fucked.  But then I was, like, “Ooh, but also, why did you let it get so bad that you had, like...(Maddox laughs) a treasure trove of garbage in your car.  That’s too bad.

Maddox: Yeah.  Enjoy my garbage, idiot!!  Uh…my car…so that’s interesting that your car got broken into the day after Christmas.  My car got broken into a long time ago on Thanksgiving.  It was either Thanksgiving or the day before Thanksgiving.  But I…I wanted to do some…

Dick: Not after?!

Maddox:  No.

Dick: That’s when all the shopping would be!  Like, you break into cars when there’s gonna be stuff in them!

Maddox: I think it happened just…either on Thanksgiving, or the day before.  Maybe it was the day after.  I don’t remember.

Dick: Huh.

Maddox:  But, uh…my car got broken into.  And I wrote about this on my website, too.  And I was kind of curious, because maybe holidays are a really common time when cars are broken into. 

Dick:  Oh, yeah!

Maddox:  ‘Cause a lot of people are out of town, and that sort of thing.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  So anyway, my car got broken into.  I go…I go downstairs to my car, and I see just GLASS everywhere.  They shattered the window.

Dick: That’s such a bad feeling.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Ugh. 

Maddox:  I felt like shit,  man.  I got that sinking feeling.  It felt like such a violation.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: And I open the door. I couldn’t even sit inside my car, ‘cause there was so much broken glass everywhere.

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox:  And I’m doing an assessment of the damage.  They took my coin…

Dick:  (interjects) Your coin collection?

Maddox:  My coin collection.  My change. You know.  (Dick giggles)  I had some real rare coppers in there!! 

Sean:  Got like 19…

Dick:  (interjects)  I would not be surprised if you had a coin collection.  (Maddox laughing)  Like, a legit…

Sean:  19 pennies all stuck together.

Dick: From what?

Maddox:  From what, Sean?

Dick: What does that mean?

Sean:  There’s always, like, soda.

Maddox: Oh.

Sean:  You never had anything that you dripped a little bit?

Dick:  Oh, you’re saying not a coin collection, yeah.

Sean:  No, it wasn’t a jack off into change joke.  (disgusted)

Maddox: Yeah, my coins were…

Sean:  (interjects)  It’s way too early in the show for that!

Maddox:  No, it’s not, Sean! You’re just late!! (they crack up) 

Sean:  I had a gig!!!! (Maddox laughs)

Dick: Oh sh…you had a gig. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  What was your gig?  Recording someone coloring with crayons?!

(they talk over each other)

Maddox:  He was at a Trump rally.

Sean:  Yeah, exactly.  I do all of Audible’s audio books.

Dick: No, he wasn’t at a Trump rally, ‘cause Trump audio is fucking terr…anyway.  (Maddox cracks up)

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Dick:  Oh, my God!!  (Maddox cracks up)

Maddox: So anyway, I go downstairs and all my shit’s gone, right?  My coin…my coin little tray has been RIPPED out. They ripped it out.

Dick: Aww.

Maddox:  Um, they…they looked through all my stuff.  The glove compartment was open.  They took a bunch of stuff.  One thing, though.  I had this binder of CDs. 

Dick:  Sure.

Maddox: And I went through the CDs.  They cut the front of the CD case, because maybe they thought I was hiding money or something in there?  Uh…

Dick:  (interjects) Oh, huh.

Maddox: But they cut open the front of the CD binder.  And then I was going through my CD’s expecting all of them to be gone.  First of all, why didn’t you take the whole fucking thing?  But then I went through and I noticed that SOME of my CDs were gone.  Which, to me, was even more insulting, because now…

Dick:  It’s judgment!!

Maddox:  Not only are you stealing from me…yeah.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  But you’re judging my taste in music, dickhead!!  Just take all my fucking CDs!  Don’t condescend to me by leaving me a few that you didn’t like!!

Dick: What did they leave?  (grins)

Maddox:  They left me...(laughs)

Dick:  What did they take? 

Maddox: They took…so…

Dick:  (interjects)  They left Ace of Bass?  (Maddox cracks up)  Spin Doctors?  They leave that one?  (Sean laughs)

Maddox: Fuck you!  I had a lot of um…I believe it was…I had some old Cypress Hill CDs.  Some Beastie Boys.  Some metal.  Sepultura, that sort of thing.  And I also had a lot of video game CDs in there.  (Dick guffaws)  Because I listen to a lot of video game music.

Dick: Okay.

Maddox:  And they took some of them.  They left behind the rare ones, thankfully.  But man, yeah.  That really pissed me off.  And then, this is my favorite part.  They stole…I had this huge collection of sunglasses, but they were all the SHITTIEST sunglasses from, like, CVS.

Dick: Sure.

Maddox:  Like the 3 dollar ones?  You know?

Sean:  Yeah.  Because those are exactly the same as, like, you know. 

Dick:  Yeah. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Sean:  A good pair of sunglasses.

Maddox:  Essentially, yeah.  So they took all my shitty 3 dollar sunglasses.  And I loo…I did the…and they took my paycheck from work.  Uh…a long time ago.

Dick:  Huh.

Maddox:  So I did the math, and I added everything up, and I’m like, “Oh, this isn’t that much. I’m actually okay.”  And the most expensive thing I had in my car were my schoolbooks.  Which EASILY added up to 6-700 dollars.

Dick: Geez.

Maddox:  In my back tr…in my trunk.  There were my physics books, my history books, everything.  SO much more valuable than everything they took.  ONE of those books would have brought them WAY more money than everything they took.

Dick: Where, on the black book market?

Maddox: You could just sell it at the university bookstore for, you know, half of list.

Dick: Ugh.  Take it in?

Maddox: Yeah.

Sean:  Did they take your telemarketing manual?  (Dick giggles)

Maddox: You know, fuck you, Sean!!!   No, I still have that.  (laughs)

Dick:  Well, wait a minute.  You didn’t have a fake CD case in your car?

Maddox: No.  (cracks up)

Dick:  With your real one?  Under the floor mat or something?

Maddox:  I…I did have two CD cases.

Dick:  Early Maddox.  Lot of learning to do!

Maddox: Yeah. 

Dick:  (laughs)  Lot of…

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Lot of senility to go through. 

Maddox: Oh, man.  And you know the worst part, too, is after my car got broken into, the next day, it got broken into again.

Dick: Oh, yeah, that’s happened to me.

Maddox: After…after I taped up the window, right?  I just put a plastic bag on it.  They came back to hit my car again.  I’m like, “What are you guys gonna take, you idiots?!  You already took everything except for my schoolbooks, which I removed from my car.  Morons.”

Dick: Yeah.  These…my car got broken into…it was some…it was a half day.  It was a school half day.  And it…I was parked near the mall.  And these…someone…it got broken into.  Um, and they stole a GameCube out of the front seat.  But this was at a time when, like, the GameCube was…you could buy one on Ebay for like 4 dollars, right? 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Like, this was not a big score.

Maddox: No.

Dick:  So I was like, “Hmm.”  So I started doing a little CSI work on all the..on the smashed up window.  And I found…on the window.  Some of the shards.  And on the car.  Had a little bit of chocolate on them.

Maddox: Huh.

Dick:  So from that…from that moment on, whenever I was there, I would look for little fat kids walking around.  (Maddox laughs)  To see if I could go up and interrogate them.  You know.

Maddox: Yeah.  What kind of shithead is walking along eating a candy bar…

Dick:  (giggles)  A big Butterfingers. 

Maddox:  A big Butterfinger. (giggles)

Dick:  He’s like, “Oh, I need that GameCube.”

Maddox: Mhmm. 

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah, well you need it more than we do, buddy.  Anyway, back to the problem.  Too Much Junk in Your Trunk, Dick.

Dick:  Oh, yeah.  Okay.

Maddox:  We all have too much shit in our trunks, which is a problem, because we’re all pissing away money, time, and fuel hauling useless shit around with us, Sean!!  According to autoblog.com, the EPA says that for every 100 pounds taken out of the vehicle, fuel economy is increased by 1% to 2%.  Based on a gallon of gasoline costing $2.58, this translates to a savings of between 3 and 5 cents per gallon.  So for a smaller car, with a 1.6 liter engine, reducing weight by 5% led to an increase in fuel economy of 2.1% on the EPA combined rating.  Eliminating 10% of the weight gave a 4.1% mileage boost, and a dramatic 20% weight at 8.4%.  With an 8.4% fuel economy increase.

Dick:  Oh, I’m drowning in numbers over here. 

Maddox:  So basically…

Dick:  Saving money!  Saving 10% or 20%?!  Of your gas?

Maddox:  Anywhere between 2% and 20% depending on how much weight you remove from your car.

Dick: Hmm.

Maddox:  And also from yourselves, people, too.  Hit a fucking treadmill.

Dick: Yeah.

Sean:  Yeah, throw your wife outta the car.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah, well.  You know?

Dick: Saving money. 

Maddox: Maybe if the…you’re stuck on the freeway.  (giggles)  Maybe she’ll want to join the protestors.  Uh, according to the US Energy Information Administration, we use about 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year, so I did the math here. 

Dick: Okay.

Maddox: So if we’re spending $2.58 per gallon, that’s 354 billion dollars per year we spend on gas.  So…

Dick:  (interjects) Ugh.  Thanks, Obama.

Maddox:  …just by…(giggles) Just by removing some things from your trunk, right?  If you save between 2% and 8% just by clearing out your trunk, that translates to anywhere from 7 to 28 billion dollars in savings every year. 

Dick:  REALLY?!

Maddox: Yeah!

Dick:  Wait a minute.  How much does everybody have to remove? 

Maddox:  About 100 pounds.

Dick:  Dude.  Your problem should have been spare tires.  ‘Cause that’s…what are spare tires? They gotta be, like, 100 pounds.

Maddox:  Nooooooo.

Dick: Are you…

Maddox:  I’d say, like, 40, 50 at most.  With the rim?

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  Spare tires, yeah?

Dick:   Spare tires are big, man.

Maddox:  100 pounds, you think?

Dick: Well, I…definitely.  I would say between 50 and 100. 

Maddox:  ‘Cause I could…

Dick: Okay, let’s say 50…

Sean:  Yeah, I think it’s closer to 50.

Maddox:  I…I can…

Dick:  Let’s say 50.

Maddox:  I can lift those with my pinkie.  I can put one around my dick.  Like, they’re no problem to lift, for me.

Dick:  I mean, but you’re driving, like, a four-banger.  So, what, they have, like, a Hot Wheels car, your spare tire.  (Maddox giggles)  A real man’s car’s got a real big spare tire.

Maddox: I got a three…no, I got a six-cylinder, dickhead.

Dick: But my point is, how much are spare tires costing, by your math?! (stammers)  That’s true, right?!

Maddox: Yeaah.  (hesitant)

Dick:  If everybody’s hauling around a spare tire.

Maddox: Hmm.

Dick: And it costs…how many billions of dollars?  For 100 pounds?

Maddox:  7…it’s about 2%.  2% gas savings, so it translates to about 3 to 5 cents per gallon.  So if you are…if you have a full spare, and you have, say, a 1.6 liter engine.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  And you have…let’s just say, let’s go with your estimate of 100 pounds for a tire.

Dick:  Eh, cut it in half. Sure.

Maddox:  Right?  So it’s about 5 cents per gallon.  Each engine takes about 12…they can…each tank holds about 12 gallons of gas.

Dick: Huh.

Maddox: So that’s…it’s about 60 cents per trip.  Per full load that you would be saving.

Dick:  Well, that’s the biggest thing I can think to take out of a car.  Like, all that fast food garbage that I had in my car probably weighed, like…

Sean:  (interjects)  Well, this begs the obvious question, though.

Dick: …five pounds.

Sean:  What do you do if you get a flat tire? 

Maddox: Yeah.

Sean:  Does everybody get run flats?  Everybody have AAA? 

Dick: Hitchhike. 

Sean:  Hitchhike. (Maddox giggles, snorts)

Dick:  AAA!!  Yeah, like, the savings, I think would be bigger than all those AAA cars driving around.

Sean:  Yeah, maybe so.

Maddox:  What does AAA cost?  I’ve never had AAA.  I always fix my own car.  What does AAA cost, like 12 bucks?

Dick: It’s cheap. 

Maddox:  12 bucks a year?

Dick: Yeah.  Like a year.

Maddox:  So, for those who don’t know.  Who are not in the US.  AAA is a car service.  That a lot of drivers have.  Surprisingly a lot of drivers have it out here.

Dick: Oh, yeah.  It’s awesome.

Maddox: Uh…

Dick:  And you don’t have to wait in line at the DMV.  You can just go to AAA.  The AAA office, and do all your registration stuff there.

Maddox:  WHAT?!

Dick: Yeah.

Sean:  No, that’s the best reason to have it.

Dick:  Oh, yeah.

Maddox: Really?!  Oh yeah!!

Sean:  You can change ownership.  Yeah, like Dick said, do your vehicle registration and stuff.  It’s…it’s the best reason to have it.  If you never use it on the road, it’s worth it for that alone.

Dick: What, do you think everyone’s just locking their keys in their car five times a year?  Like, what kind of fucking idiot would be doing that?  (Maddox laughs)  I do that, everyone.

Maddox:  This is actually…you guys are selling me on AAA. They should be a fucking sponsor! You know what?!  Delete this, Sean!  Until we get AAA to pay us for this!!

Dick: Yeah.  (Sean chuckles)

Maddox: Um, anyway, man.  Yeah.  That’s a lot of savings, potentially.  Uh, 7 to 28 billion dollars per year that America could be saving just by taking a few extra things out of your car.  And by the way…the spare tire?  Sure.  That’s maybe anywhere from 50 to 100 pounds.  If you have a full spare, which nobody does anymore.

Dick: That was our compromise.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  (laughs) It’s somewhere between our initial first guesses.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Yeah. 

Maddox:  (laughs) But even without that, just go through your trunk, people.  Clear out the shit. And also, you’re gonna waste a lot of time.  Every time you have groceries or something you want to put in your trunk, you gotta rearrange everything.  You have to move things around that you’d never touch!

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  People have golf clubs in there.  They have spare…they have their canoe.  (Dick and Sean crack up)  (Maddox laughs)

Dick:  What else?!

Maddox: Anyway.

Dick: Their anvils!?

Maddox:  Their an…yeah…

Dick: Their book of clichés.

Maddox:  Their anvils.  Their big black bombs, the round ones?  (giggles)  Ahh.

Dick: Um, I took a girl home from a bar one time.  A bar/miniature golf course.  It was a great place.  Place Sean and I went to all the time.

Sean:  He had to fill up with gas halfway home.

Dick: (laughs) No, it’s even worse. (Maddox and Sean laugh) 

Maddox:  I get that, Sean!! (laughing)

Dick:  I had so much garbage in my front seat…(Sean still laughing) that I…I just said, like, “Fuck it.”  I put my jacket over the garbage like a Victorian man.

Maddox:  Aw, what a gentleman.

Dick: Putting a jacket over…(laughing) Yeah!!  That’s what she said.  (Maddox laughs) I’m like, “Look, I mean, you’re already getting in, so…so sorry.”

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: “The rest of my house isn’t like this.”  I don’t think.

Maddox:  It’s a bad sell. Well.  That’s a bad sell.

Dick:  Red flag, girls. Don’t go home with that guy.  Just walk away.

Maddox:  Mmm-mm.  I have a lot of friends who have surprisingly messy cars, who get laid…surprisingly a lot for how messy their cars are.

Dick: Well, you can tell when a guy is dating a girl, what stage he is in the relationship, too, ‘cause his car will go from being spotless to…slovenly.  Over, like, a period of two or three months.  Right?  Yeah, you’re nodding, like, you do the same thing.  Right? Yeah.  It’s a good tell.

Maddox: Yeah.  Well, mine gets slovenly if I’m dating someone, because she’s the one making it slovenly!  I always clean up after myself, and then after you date a girl, there’s always fucking hairbands, little bobby pins, Chapstick fucking everywhere, melting on your seat!

Dick: Yeah. 

Maddox:  You get a big pile…you get this, like, oil slick of Chapstick on your seat.  Lipstick smudges everywhere!!  All over my junk.  (laughs) 

Dick: Chicks do love their Chapstick.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  Alright.

Maddox: Anyway, Dick, that’s my…yeah.

Dick:  Here’s my problem. Acne.

Maddox:  Acne!!

Dick: Acne.

Maddox:  Whoaaaaaa!!

(Sound effect: ‘Ding!’)

Dick:  It’s the most common skin condition in the United States, affecting up to 50 million Americans annually.

(Sound effect: Clapping)

Dick:  How about that?

Maddox: Yeah. It can be a big problem. But isn’t this a problem of vanity, Dick?  What’s…what’s the root cause of this? 

Dick:  Uh…what do you mean, isn’t this a problem of vanity?  What’s a bigger concern than vanity?!

Maddox: Yeah.  I guess, like, murder. (laughs)

Dick: I don’t know!! Would you rather be ugly, or be murdered!?!

Maddox:  Uh…(cracks up)  Well, it’s a toss-up!!

Dick: That’s a big choice! (laughs)

Maddox: It’s a toss-up, Dick.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox: Yeah, I don’t know, man.

Dick:  Acne causes significant physical and psychological problems, such as permanent scarring, poor self-image, depression, and anxiety.  It costs…let’s see.  It costs 3 billion dollars a year in treatment.  That’s more than forest fires.  Problem you brought in.

Maddox: Oh, that’s true.  Yeah.

Dick:  2 billion for forest fires.  5..(laughs)

Maddox:  (interjects) Vote down forest fires!! (laughing)

Dick: All I’m saying is acne is a bigger problem than forest fires!  That is objectively true!

Maddox: Ye…uhhh….yeah.  Okay. I’ll give you that.

Dick: Okay.  You’ll give me that. 

Maddox:  I’ll give you that.

Dick: Oh, pulling you in slow…

Maddox:  Yeah.  Mhmm.

Dick:  Never admit to stuff like that.

Maddox:  No?  (giggles)

Dick:  5 million doctor visits in the US. 

Maddox:  5 million doctor visits.

Dick:  I don’t know if that’s more than AIDS, ‘cause I didn’t look it up.  So we’ll have to see how the voting ends up on that one.

Maddox: I think AIDS is a bigger problem than acne, Dick.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  Every problem in the universe, from AIDS, to acne, I guess.  Is what you’re saying.

Dick:  Well, not for teenagers.

 Maddox:  Not for tee…

Dick: (interjects) We got a lot of teenager…maybe we got some teenagers listening.

Sean:  It would be AIDS to Zits, wouldn’t it?  Isn’t it supposed to be, like, A to Z?

Maddox:  Aids to Zits!!! (excited)

Dick: Ohh, you did it.

Maddox:  From Acne to Zits.  How about that?  Acne to Zits.  There’s an actual…

Dick: No, no, no.  Cause then they’re the same thing.

Sean:  They’re the same thing.

Dick:  AIDS is extreme and depressing…

Maddox: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  You’re right.

Dick:   Zits is trivial.

Maddox: AIDS to Zits.  That’s funny.

Dick:  And Z. 

Maddox:  That’s funny.  Fucking Sean.  Figured it out.

Dick: Sean, you redeemed yourself.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick:  You get all 100% of your money back.  For this episode. (laughs)  (Sean and Maddox laugh as well)

Maddox:  Ahh, Burger King on Sean.

Sean: Yeah.  Right.  (Maddox laughs) 

Dick:  So I found out in my research that acne is not caused by diet.  And dirty skin.  Like, people say it’s caused by diet, right?  You’re eating too many greasy foods, or chocolate?

Maddox: I’ve heard that.

Dick:  Not true at all.

Maddox:  No.

Dick: It’s genetic. 

Maddox: Oh!

Dick: So it’s your parents’ fault.

Maddox:  Fucking parents, man.  Vote up Families. 

Dick:  Yeah, vote up families. 

Maddox: Um, Dick, I heard a tip a long time ago, I think I was watching Conan O’Brien WAY back in the day and there was an actress on there talking about how she never gets acne.  And the tip is really simple.  She says just change your pillow sheets regularly.  Which nobody ever does.  Most people I know never change their pillow sheets, and they’re really gross.  Uh, it just collects a bunch of crap and it…and the crap gets in your skin pores and it clogs you up.

Dick: What do you mean, pillow sheets?

Maddox: Your pillow sheets. 

Dick:  You have sheets on your pillows?

Maddox: Pillow case.

Sean:  Pillow cases. 

Maddox: Yeah. Pillow cases.

Dick: Oh.

Maddox: You don’t have sheets on your pillows? 

Dick: No, it’s just the pillow is enough.

Maddox: Ugh, gross, man. All that chili.  (laughing) 

Dick: I’m joking.

Sean:  It makes..it makes sense.  Because you’re getting all the oil and shit from the day…

Dick:  Yeah, but is it true?!

Sean:  I don’t know, it just…it seems like it would be.  It’s one of those things.

Dick:  Acne is like the common cold for yes, vanity. But everybody has all these cockamamie schemes to try to make it better.  But still somehow it’s here! Like…(stammers) have chicken soup.  Like, really?  I still have a cold for seven days.  Like, “Oh, change your sheets.”  Like, oh, well I still look like a pizza face.

Maddox:  Yeah.

Dick:  Like…(stammers) who are you, miss model?  You telling me to change my sheets!

Maddox: Well, I don’t want to undermine the importance of looking good, because for people who have acne, especially severe acne, it does…it does factor significantly into their lives.  Their self-confidence, their self-worth. Their self-image is impacted by their acne.

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  And how they feel about themselves.

Sean:  Oh, yeah. For the rest of their lives sometimes. 

Maddox: Yeah.  And I’ve known people who’ve had very severe acne who have spent a lot of time and money trying to deal with this perceived problem. Essentially…

Dick:  (interjects)  And it’s not really a problem.

Maddox:  No.

Dick: But it is.

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Right?

Maddox:  I mean…you know.  Attractive people don’t have to worry about this, and they take it for granted, like myself.  But people who have acne…for them…

Dick:  (interjects) Do you…did you have an acne problem when you were a teenager?

Maddox:  No, I never have. 

Dick: Oh, wow.  You got good genetics, then.

Maddox:  I had a…

Dick:  (interjects)  You should sell that statement on your store.

Maddox: Oh, yeah.  I should sell my loads.  My…(laughs)

Dick:  Yeah.  Acne-free kids!!  Right here. Maddox Store.

Maddox:  I actually had…a long time ago.  A lesbian couple reached out to me. And they wanted…they wanted me to inseminate them.

Dick: Hmm!

Maddox: They said they wanted a kid, and they wanted me to be the donor.

Dick: Huh.

Maddox: How cool is that?!

Dick: They were serial killers.  (Maddox scoffs, laughs)

Maddox:  They were not serial killers!

Dick:  I guarantee you, they were serial killers!

Maddox: No, they were not.  They told me they wanted to scissor it out of me!! (cracks up)

Dick: Well, what did they look like?  That’s important.

Maddox: Okay.  Scarlett Johannsen…(they crack up)

Dick: No, that’s the kind of email where you get…you know what?  I appreciate it very much.  Do not send me a picture of what you look like!!

Maddox:  Nooooo.

Dick: ‘Cause I wanna fantasize about it FOREVER.

Maddox: I still AM fantasizing about it!!! (Dick laughs)  Are you kidding me?!

Sean:  Probably looked like Larry the Cable Guy.  (Dick laughs)

Maddox:  Get outta here, Sean.  You know what?  Still.  Lesbians.  I…and by the way, I’d still do it.  I think that’s pretty cool.

Dick:  Even if they looked like Larry the cable Guy and Bill Ingvall with mullets? 

Maddox:  Ehhhhh. (Sean laughs)  Fuck it.  ‘Cause here’s the thing.

Dick:  I want to see that offspring.

Maddox: My spawn is gonna be handsome as FUCK.  Girl or guy.  Is gonna be handsome.

Dick: Yeah?! (grins)

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Why? 

Maddox: ‘Cause of my good genes, man!! 

Dick: Does that necessarily work, though?  Do…do…or is this a two wrongs make a right?  Are you saying?  Or this is…one right and a we-don’t-know makes a right?

Maddox: It’s kind of like a +2 and a -1.  (Dick giggles)  Right?  You still get +1. 

Dick: Okay.

Maddox: There you go.

Dick:  Well, Acne.  It’s a big problem.  65 million people.  It affects…let’s see.  It affects 90% of people in Western societies during their teenage years.  It affects 50% of people over the age of 25. That sucks.

Maddox:  50% of people over the age of 25.  That’s interesting.

Sean:  People don’t realize how much there is.  If you look around, like, adult acne…

Maddox: Yeah.

Sean:  …is rampant.

Dick: Oh, yeah.

Sean:  Some of it…that’s the weird thing.  Some of it never goes away.  It lessens after your teenage years, but some of it never goes away.  Now everybody here has pretty clear skin, so…

Dick:  (interjects) No, I have…my filthy Mexican skin.  It may look beautiful and tanned, all year round.  It’s resilient to the sun, right?  And women love it.  But oh, my God.  It’s like the fifth plague is trying to break through at all times.  I wake up as a cyclops all the time!

Maddox: Huh.  Sean, have you ever dealt with acne yourself?

Sean:  Yeah, sure.  I mean, I had…normal teenage acne, I think.

Maddox: Yeah. 

Sean:  I mean, yeah.  Maybe…yeah.  Normal.

Maddox:  Yeah, you know how you fix acne in a generation?  You just cast a bunch of pockmarked people’s faces into TV shows and movies for one generation.

Sean:  Edward James Olmos!

Maddox: Yeah.  For one generation, and done.  Then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

Dick: So you think it’s all a societal thing.

Maddox: Oh, absolutely.

Dick: Well, that’s why I kinda wanted to bring it in.  Because when I was a teenager, I look back at pictures of me as a teenager, and I’m like, “Oh, my God.  This is disgusting!”  Like, this…this child…this boy looks like a leper!  Throw him into the sea!  But I don’t remember it affecting my…like, I never thought of it!  It was just, like…and you know, maybe that’s early signs of a serial killer.  Or something.  It just never had an effect on me…at all.  That’s why I brought it in.

Maddox:  It…it could…

Sean:  (interjects) I always felt bad for those kids.  Like, who just had…their face was one big zit, ‘cause it’s the first thing people see!!

Dick: Hmm.  Yeah.

Sean:  Every…you know.

Maddox:  Well, I noticed there were two different types of those kids, Sean.  In my school, there were the kids who had severe acne who left it alone and they just lived their lives, and it was no big deal.  You never thought of it.  Then there were the kids who picked at it!  And they were constantly, just, like, volcanic eruptions in class.  Coming in, like, blood running down their chin, their head, their eyes!

Dick: Oh, my GOD!! (disgusted)

Maddox:  They just look like they got hit in the face with a paddle board.  And you look at them, and you’re like, “Dude, it was way better before you started picking at it.  Stop…stop digging at yourself.”

Dick:  Yeah.

Maddox: By the way, those little scratches you’re making into your skin are abrasions that may never heal properly!  Cut it out!! You’re in your formative years. Leave it alone. Maybe it’ll clear up.  Maybe it won’t.  It’s not the end of the world.

Dick:  It won’t!  It’s genetic.  Nothing you can do. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Nothing you can do. 

Maddox:  Proactiv.  (laughs) 

Dick: Oh, then I found that there’s, like…um…that doesn’t work.  What I was reading was saying that all these creams and whatever…are just…huge scams!

Maddox: You think?

Dick: Oh, how could they not be?

Maddox: I’ve seen people…

Dick:  (interjects) I mean, think about it from, like, a cosmetics company.  You can’t prove or disprove any of that shit.  Like…anti-wrinkle cream. 

Maddox: Yeah.

Dick: Like, uh, I don’t know, what, did you get every women on Earth?  Do you have a parallel universe where the same woman took this cream for 30 years and this woman, she’s slightly less wrinkly? Like, how can you POSSIBLY make that claim or not make that claim!?  Of course they’re gonna take advantage.

Maddox:  Well, they have the Before and After pictures, which to me, sometimes, if they’re honest, they’re compelling. But…I…this is something that I’m really curious about.  The whole cosmetic industry.  There’s so many claims on these fucking bullshit-ass shampoos and shit.  Anytime I…

Dick:  (interjects) The hair-regrowing shampoos?  Is that what you’re talking about?  (grins)

Maddox: No!!

Dick:  Did you fall victim to a hair-regrowing shampoo?  (laughs)

Maddox:  No.  Because those don’t work!  I know for a fact those don’t work!!  (Dick laughs) Okay?  I read a lot of pamphlets that say they don’t work.

Dick: Okay.  (laughs)  Yeah.

Maddox:  I did very thorough research on those, okay? 

Sean:  I was talking to somebody who works for a huge cosmetics firm, and they also make, like, shampoos and conditioners and stuff.

Maddox: Yeah. 

Sean:  And she’s like, “It’s pretty much all the same thing.”

Maddox: Oh, of course it is.

Sean:  The shampoos and conditioners.  She goes, “Yeah, it’s the same thing.” 

Maddox:  Also, the biggest scam…

Sean:  (interjects) You’re paying for a name.

Maddox:  One of the biggest scams for me is things that claim to increase your hair VOLUME.  Now…this is something that is so…nebulous to me.  Like, how do you increase your volume?  Are you literally coating each fiber of hair with some kind of weird gunk that makes it look a little bit thicker?  Just a LITTLE bit thicker?  Because if so, how long does it stay that way? And why doesn’t it wash off? And why is it only sticking to my hair follicles for some reason?  It’s all really…it seems like…pseudoscience with a pinch of bullshit and voodoo. 

Dick: Yeah.

Maddox:  That’s the entire cosmetics industry.

Dick: Mhmm.

Maddox:  I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while.  Anyway, good problem, Dick. I’m glad you brought that in!!! 

Dick: Thanks. 

Maddox:  Is that all you got?

Dick: Yeah, that’s all I got.

Maddox:  Anything else? Alright, guys.  My problems this week were Murderers and Too Much Junk in Your Trunk.

(closing riff starts)

Dick: My problems are Road Blockheads. (they giggle) and Acne.  See you next Tuesday.  See YOU next Tuesday, too, Sean. 

(Voice mail:  male voice:  “Hey, Sean.  This is Rob Lowe! (they giggle) I’m calling you because I have need of someone who can…”)

Sean:  Uh-oh.

Dick: Oh.  Didn’t work out for him.  (Maddox laughs) 

Maddox: Idiot.

Sean:  Uh-oh.  (they sigh)

Dick:  Ahh, let’s see. Here’s one…oh, this is…Melissa McCarthy called in.  The new…there’s been new Ghostbusters mov…news that came out.

Maddox: Oh, yeah.

Dick: You know?  Here she is.   She called in.

Maddox:  Oh. She’s a big fan of the show.  Yeah.

(Voice mail:  male voice:  (burps)  “Hey guys.  (Maddox laughs) This is Melissa McCarthy.  (inaudible)  problem with Ghostbusters and think you are…(inaudible)”

Maddox:  Is she eating?

Dick:  Oh, gosh.  I mean, well, of course she’s eating.

“It was bullshit!! (they laugh)  And your male tears were salty enough to fill my high-salt diet. (Maddox giggles)  (breathes heavily)”

Dick:  She got a little winded.

Maddox:  Is she laughing? (laughs)

Dick:  No, she got winded.

“Dick…(breathes)”

Dick: I mean, that happens.

“I just wanna say fuck you.”)  (Sean and Maddox laugh)

Dick:  I hope she’s okay.  One last one from Weird Matthew McConaughey.  We haven’t heard from him in a while. 

(Voice mail:  Weird Matthew McConaughey:  “Oh, my hecks. You just made me think of a story, broski.  (they giggle)  So…uh…you got this friend named Stu.  Annnnnnnnnnd, um….me and my other friend a guy, bought, like, I think, like, 50 crickets.  Went over to Stu’s apartment while we knew he was back home.  And he has one of those fucking mail slots on his door.  (giggles) And…(laughs) we just poured the crickets…(laughing too hard)  we just poured the crickets in there.  And, uh….”

Dick:  Wait a minute.  I’m getting confused looks.  Do you hear what he’s saying?

Maddox: No.

Dick:  ‘Cause for some reason, I can understand him.

Sean:  I thought he said tickets.  He’s talking about crickets!

Dick: No!

Maddox:  Crickets.

Dick: He’s talking about crickets!

Maddox: Oh, he bought a bunch of crickets.

Dick: And then when his friend wasn’t home.  His friend Stu.  Him and his other friends…his other…probably great guys, friends.  Went over to Stu’s house and dumped the crickets through the mail slot!!

Maddox:  Oh, NOOOOO!!! (Dick laughs) Oh, my God.

“…we just never said anything.  And then…maybe a weekend or two passed.  (Dick guffaws) and we went back with 50 more crickets. (laughs)  And this time, his fucking roommate came rollin’ up as I was puttin’ em in…(Maddox cracks up)  uh…so I had to, like, pull the bag back and I sneak it in my pocket, and I was like…”Oh, hey, what’s up, Colin?”  And I was like, “Is Stu home?  (they giggle) Oh, he went home for the weekend?  Shit.  Well, uh…see you later, Broski.”

Dick: Master of subterfuge. (Maddox laughs) 

“And then, anyway…I wasn’t as tight with Colin as I was with Stu, but apparently Colin was like, “Yo, I think Trenton was trying to break into our fucking apartment.”  “I mean, I think Weird McConaughey was trying to break into our apartment.” (they all crack up laughing because he revealed his name unintentionally)  And that’s my crazy story.  I wish I lived near you.  I’d fucking…(Dick guffaws) put little parachutes for crickets.  I’d fucking parachute those little bitches right into your place. (they giggle)  And if you’re on the first floor, I’d (inaudible) .”

Maddox:  Fuck you, Trenton! You’re not getting anywhere near my house!! (they crack up)

“I got a fucking (inaudible) machine, bitch.  Don’t doubt me.  Mail you something. (they giggle)  If your fucking P.O. box lady wasn’t so inept.”)

Dick: All the crickets will die. 

Maddox:  (laughing) Yeah, that’s hilarious.

Dick:  (inaudible)

Maddox:  Oh, man.  If I get any packages that chirp, I’m throwing that shit away!!! (Dick laughs)

Sean:  Where do you think he lives?

Maddox:  It’s gotta be somewhere in the Midwest.

Dick: Oh, man.

Maddox: An M-state, for sure.  Mississippi, Mich…

(file cuts off)