#2431 - Shane Gillis

We kick off laughing about a buddy who vanishes to travel and pops back in like a surprise, then slide into how fame makes that harder, missing friends on the road, and why I backed off heavy drinking because the health bill gets real when you’re staring at age and time flying by.

We talk Jelly Roll dropping serious weight and how sleep apnea sneaks up on big guys; I use a mouthpiece instead of a CPAP because I want silence at night and to wake up fast, and fixing my deviated septum was a game changer for breathing and cardio.

Fighting talk turns rough watching a man beat up a woman in that viral clip, which is just wrong; power gaps are massive even with elite women, though a striker like Dakota Ditcheva is out there tuning opponents up.

Old dojo days had delusional walk‑ins demanding to spar the best, which is wild enough, then we riff on full‑blown skits breaks in a gym and how insane that would feel.

Kurt Metzger gets love for being a hilarious conspiracy encyclopedia who rolls in with two White Claws; we trade cringe stories of meeting comedy heroes and bombing the moment, from awkward questions to getting shut down for a cigarette.

I share a John Stewart story where I tried to make small talk and immediately knocked something over, and we laugh about how celebrity weirdness fades only after you’ve been around a while.

Athletes still star‑strike hard; Aaron Judge had me speechless, and we tell the nine beers, nine hot dogs, nine innings bit, then pivot to one‑meal‑a‑day experiments, bloodwork, and the running joke that a seasoned liver is like a trained muscle.

Stanhope’s still a force on stage, eternally himself in those ridiculous suits, and we remember how scary Bingo’s head injury was during that end‑of‑the‑world era.

On Jake Paul versus Anthony Joshua, I’m at like ninety‑nine percent Joshua either wins a decision or stops him; Jake’s improved and can crack, but this is a giant leap and people only doubt the odds because they suspect shenanigans.

We revisit post‑fight mic moments, from Joshua’s odd speech to the masters of promos; Chael Sonnen cracked the code first with pro‑wrestling‑style heat, and McGregor evolved it into ruthless theater.

Those Trump White House plaques reading like tweets are crazy; it feels like weaponized captions under portraits, and it opens the door for future presidents to do the same, which is a bad precedent.

The Rob Reiner thing hits different; even if you hated his politics or that spook‑y video with Brennan and Clapper, mocking a brutal family tragedy shows zero empathy, and it’s the same mindset that cheered when political enemies got hurt.

ICE making jokey deportation videos is gross; Theo Von pushed back after they used a clip of him, and he was right to say immigration deserves nuance, not banger edits.

Quotas twist enforcement everywhere, from traffic stops to DUIs, and we detour into missing small‑town bar nights and watching friends with one night off go nuclear.

On the Brown University shooting rumors, we caution how fast bad info spreads; people were naming the wrong shooter, and it echoes the Richard Jewell fiasco where a man’s life got wrecked before facts landed.

We look at the Tufts student whose visa got yanked after an op‑ed about Gaza and a Canary Mission profile; unless there’s more, kicking out a legal student over an opinion clashes with the free speech ethos universities claim to protect.

Georgia’s election fight pops back up with talk of early ballots missing poll‑worker signatures; if that’s true, is it legal, and should those votes have counted given the slim margin?

If you’re young and betting, the Jake Paul line is juicy, but those plus‑odds exist for a reason; books would get wrecked if a miracle landed, which is why people whisper about fixes when long shots hang around.

I get why a weird post‑fight speech reads off, but fighters process loss in strange ways; some guys grab the mic and spin, and sometimes it’s cultural or just adrenaline.

That plaque language looks like straight from his tweet factory, which is why it’s so jarring; it’s funny until it isn’t when the empathy’s gone.

On campus cameras and ICE, we saw calls to disable surveillance in an open letter, but evidence they actually cut feeds is murky; this is how narratives outrun facts.

With Georgia, they’ve done hand counts and audits for years; it’s exhausting, but every claim needs receipts or it just fuels the same endless loop.

So what does that Fulton County thing actually mean? They’re saying approximately three hundred fifteen thousand early votes didn’t have poll worker signatures on the tabulator tapes, which is supposed to certify machines started at zero and the totals are legit. If that’s required by statute, are those votes even supposed to count?

Zero tapes confirm the machines start at zero, and workers sign off at day’s end. If those signatures are missing, that’s a chain‑of‑custody problem. Some folks say those ballots were hand counted and audited later, but it’s still unclear what wasn’t corrected and what that implies.

I wanted a clean explanation for how 2020 was supposedly stolen. Instead of a tight case, it’s just fraud claims. You could at least argue propaganda pressure, FBI and Twitter files, the laptop story, all that, but he didn’t even bring that up.

Alright, the Australia thing: a proposed under‑sixteen social media ban hits Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Threads, Kick, Twitch, but skips BlueSky, WhatsApp, Steam, and YouTube Kids. If BlueSky slides through while the rest get blocked, that’s wild.

Some reports say the list could expand and that compliance and filters matter. Truth Social wasn’t listed in what I saw.

They even banned Pornhub in some places, so I checked Reddit and immediately ran into people fighting before I could, you know, get one off. The bigger point is easy porn plus VPNs makes bans leaky, and maybe nonstop porn just sedates dumb guys—give the lowest IQs all‑you‑can‑eat and keep them busy.

John Lilly tried teaching dolphins to talk, and a researcher ended up living with one and, yeah, helping him finish. Dark truth though: male dolphins commit infanticide to bring moms back into estrus, females get promiscuous to hedge against that, and they have a functional clitoris and seem to have sex for pleasure.

Some studies say females favor agile partners in high‑speed chases and use positioning to exert choice, even when males form alliances and coerce. It’s brutal and complex.

Cute flips to terrifying with size—bonobos look soft, but a ten‑foot proboscis monkey would haunt you. Bears are adorable until they’re not, and moose are tanks that will stomp you and your car. I’ve seen deer thrash dogs, and plenty of dogs still chase them like idiots.

Half the wildlife clips online might be AI now, which makes everything harder to trust.

Central PA life can be great in its own way: tough job, local bar, three hours of college football, golf with the boys. I leaned into one‑on‑one sports—wrestling over random hits in football. Puberty wrecked my baseball timing; growth spurts and constant distractions didn’t help.

Same—team sports can blindside you, and I had a season where I couldn’t buy a hit. Getting laid out after a pick was humbling.

Parenting teens is a whirlwind, but if you keep communication open it’s manageable. Girls syncing cycles and friend drama are real, and those betrayal stories hit different.

TV break: that Claire Danes show is good, Ken Burns still rules, and I’ve been deep in a Revolutionary War doc—occasionally pausing for a quick crank, then staring at a British invasion map like, what am I doing. PBS lets Burns cook; he could drop anywhere and people would find it.

I’ll do stand‑up forever, but podcasting is tricky when it’s just me. A history pod could work with real prep or by bringing on experts. The best was a Gettysburg tour guide who lived the battle like it was yesterday.

Let’s do the Alamo or Little Bighorn. The Comanches were terrifying cavalry archers—Empire of the Summer Moon lays out the raids and why no one surrendered. Hostiles captures that brutality. Reenactments are fun, and old state flags and battle colors had serious swagger—Iron Brigade’s black hats, Louisiana Tigers, all with reputations.

Mississippi’s flag changed from the Confederate motif to a magnolia, and monuments keep stirring debate. Also, what’s the deal with those Zouaves?

Zouaves swaggered in French North African‑inspired uniforms—hammer pants, fezzes, bright sashes—some New York units wore them. Period hype had them leaping insane heights and shooting cards mid‑somersault; pure chest‑thumping, but the style was undeniable.

Yeah, that acrobat stuff reads like tall tales, but the look was real.

We go from laughing at dueling at eighty paces to wondering how anyone hit anything with muskets, then land on early rifling, minié balls, and Colt’s revolver arriving in the eighteen thirties while old‑school guys clung to single‑shots.

Ammo only slowly became standardized; some existed before the Civil War, but big war really forced factories to retool.

War supercharges manufacturing and patriotism, so the post–World War Two high made sense, then Vietnam snapped the spell; even those crowded victory photos feel surreal now, like a party with a shadow of trauma behind it.

Fritz Haber is the wildest split legacy: he unlocks nitrogen from air and feeds the world, but also pioneers poison gas, gets chased as a Jew, loses his wife to suicide, and dies on the run; it’s proof that tools that save lives can also become the ugliest weapons.

Gas sounded like the worst way to go; nukes at least end it fast unless you’re at the edge.

A guest told me about a supposed gravity craft that could drop a nuclear payload anywhere instantly, which feeds that Roswell‑era back‑engineering lore around transistors and fiber optics, even as the safer take is that wartime labs just moved mountains.

There’s also messy disputes over who got credit for inventing the transistor, which keeps the mystery alive.

Then it’s headline whiplash: a Portuguese physicist suspected in campus shootings, a fusion researcher as a victim, and within a day a reported Truth Social merger with a fusion outfit; we poke at Epstein docs, get no hits, and remember handwritten pages won’t show up in search.

You’ve got to let the internet sleuths chew through it; the quick search won’t tell you much.

On fights, Jake Paul jumping in with Anthony Joshua is nuts; size and a steady jab can win that, and it’s way more interesting when the pro is a huge heavyweight and the other guy’s the one giving up skill.

Post‑fight mic moments are always unhinged—McGregor’s broken leg and that skeleton look from the old same‑day weigh‑ins show how brutal cuts were, and you see how IV bans and better guidance later changed careers like Aldo’s.

That thirteen‑second knockout still shocks, and Aldo’s run at a lower weight with smart nutrition proved he had plenty left before he bowed out.

Watch the Cameroonian middleweight phenom at one eighty five; he’s young, explosive, and technical, the kind who can blitz elites like Strickland, and it reminds me how Ngannou evolved between Miocic fights while Mexico keeps turning out stone‑tough champions.

I always end up rooting for the gritty underdog look, and that first Miocic win was a masterclass in survival.

People accuse survivors of being actors because shock looks strange on camera, but MKUltra happened and staged optics do exist; think of the Saddam statue or how Benghazi was tied to that anti‑Muhammad video while the attack looked planned.

Talk of Venezuela puts saber‑rattling back on the table, but public appetite for another adventure is near zero.

Skid Row versus Kensington turns into a grim contest; Portland and San Francisco are still beautiful but wrecked by homelessness, and the cash poured into it feels like a leaky bucket that encourages a cottage industry.

Pras getting nailed over foreign money and Jho Low is wild, Haitian prisons are a nightmare, and fact‑checks say the Clintons didn’t personally profit off Haiti even if the projects drew heat.

We end up on culture and politics, from Catholics in the White House to a young provocateur who hooks alienated men with jokes and verbal jiu‑jitsu; that Piers exchange shows why humor is dangerous when it tap‑dances on taboos.

So what about doing anything in a hot tub—does that ever work?

Honestly, it’s nasty and a nonstarter. The chemical stink kills the mood, I’m barely hard, and you shouldn’t be putting that water in your mouth anyway. Those chemicals are not friendly to your endocrine system. Let’s take it inside—I appreciate the energy, just not the setting.

All right, good to see you. Love you, love you, love you.