Harland Williams

The episode opens with a deadpan bit and never quite drops it. A tattoo reading "Billy" on someone's forehead prompts questions. Billy is described as a "kid" obtained from "a one-night stand", then as a service animal the girl "sold", and finally as a victim of a traffic accident: someone left the gate open, he wandered into the street and was hit by an 18-wheeler. There is also said to be a second memorial tattoo of "his little face over my heart."

The story gets more absurd as it goes. The truck was supposedly hauling medical supplies, and the "final blow" came from a respirator that rolled out of the back. It is described as weighing "a good half ton" and landed on Billy's face, which is offered as life's irony: he "might have survived" the truck itself. The next question, "How does goat taste?", makes clear that the kid in question is a young goat.

From there the talk turns to food and to cockfighting. One speaker first ate goat at a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, where they "were selling goat tacos", and calls them "delicious". They then describe a landscaper friend who lived in a neighborhood "you would swear to God that it was Mexico". Every sign there was in Spanish and roosters were everywhere. In the backyard of the friend's friend were "stacks and stacks of rooster cages," prize birds, and a barn-like area with a fighting pit. The custom was to roast a goat and drink beer at every fight.

The word "cockpit" leads to a pun about dropping a Delta pilot and an American Airlines pilot into the pit to fight. That gets a crack about DEI, reworded as "the D-I-E program". Then someone points out that the country needs pilots, so the idea shifts to throwing in a group that is "overrepresented". The suggestions are politicians and "homeless advocates", followed by a guess that tribal societies once settled leadership with exactly this kind of fight.

The tribal-leader joke turns into a more serious point. Early hierarchies are described as resting on "physical dominance, intimidation". The one participant cast as a natural leader declines: once you run the place, "you're stuck with everything" and "all the problems are your problems." The same reasoning is applied to the 2028 presidential race.

Who wants that fucking job. What normal, healthy person wants that job

Two reasons are given. At least half the country will hate whoever wins. The winner's own backers will also be let down, because "you're never going to be able to do what you're saying you want to do. It's not even possible."

Someone then asks whether politicians could bring back dueling, and a search result attributed to Perplexity, described as a sponsor, is read aloud. It says politicians "fought literally with fists, canes, swords, and pistols". It also says that in the 1700s and 1800s, dueling was a common way for gentlemen and politicians in Europe and the United States to defend their honor. Several historical cases follow. Andrew Jackson killed Charles Dickinson, and the year is read as 1806, before his presidency. That sets off a brief mix-up with Charles Dickens, whose books are then listed: Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Next is the 1804 duel in which Vice President Aaron Burr shot former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton died the next day, and the duel ended Burr's political career. That outcome is read as a sign that "Even in 1804, they were like, that's outrageous."

Out of this comes an argument for bringing back physical consequences. People "say horrible, mean things because they know there's no repercussions". If a senator could be challenged to a fist fight on the Senate floor, "we'd change a lot." The next example read aloud cuts the other way. In 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Senator Charles Summer (as the transcript renders the name) of Massachusetts on the Senate floor and left him unconscious and badly injured. Brooks did it after an anti-slavery speech that insulted his cousin. The hosts point out the irony: the beating defended a slave owner's honor against a man who opposed slavery. The segment ends by tying American gun and combat culture to the coming UFC event on the White House lawn.

The White House fight gets an honest assessment. One participant says they will attend but do not like the concept, because it is outdoors. They argue that "world championship fights should be in a controlled environment" out of respect for how hard it is for athletes to compete for a world title. They still concede it will be "a spectacle" they would watch regardless. They also credit Trump's attitude ("fuck it, let's do it") and call him "fearless". Someone adds a sarcastic note on security: every world leader will sit in one known spot for six hours.

The admiration has a limit: "I don't like the Iran war thing." This starts the episode's clearest disagreement. One side calls stopping Iran from having nuclear weapons "a good concept" and better than a UFC fight. It sets this against Afghanistan, described as sweeping out "goat farmers and guys hiding in caves" and people producing opium. Here, by contrast, the directive is said to be preventing a "rebel country" from getting a bomb.

The skeptic grants the goal but doubts there is "a clear way to get out of this." They point to twenty years in Afghanistan and its cost in taxpayer money and lives. They also cite an earlier podcast guest, Scott Horton, who explained what is involved in enriching uranium to weapons grade and making it into a bomb. Their summary is "It's very difficult", and Iran "weren't nearly capable of doing that." The reply is "Not nearly, but pursuing." The skeptic adds that, by Horton's account, Iran was being inspected regularly. They argue the war is essentially driven by Israel.

The skeptic does not dismiss Israel's position. They offer an analogy: if Mexico and the United States were in constant conflict and Mexico were trying to build a nuclear bomb, America would want to stop it. Israel and Iran are close enough to be "throwing missiles at each other," which makes Israel's motive understandable. Their two remaining doubts are "I just don't know if it's a good thing for America. And I don't know if there's a way out of it."

The other side appeals to "the bigger scope": if America does not clean it up, who has the power to do it? The skeptic raises a practical cost. They say the U.S. has "used like two-thirds of our missiles" and is "underarmed right now", vulnerable if another conflict breaks out. Neither side supports the two-thirds figure with a source in the conversation.

The answer to the vulnerability worry is the U.S. nuclear submarine force. It is first called "Triton," then corrected to "Trident." The claims come quickly: these submarines are "lurking in the oceans 24-7". There is "a fleet of 12 to 24," probably "closer to 12," and each can stay underwater "for up to a year." It is also claimed that most of the government does not know where they are. Each boat is said to carry "something like 24 nuclear warheads", and each warhead splits into 24, later "16 or 24". From this the speaker concludes that "one of these submarines could take out half the world." The source of this knowledge is never given; the only answer is "I know things." The skeptic also pokes at the Canadian speaker saying "we" about America.

Some of this is checked live during the show. The first lookup says the U.S. Navy submarine force consists of about 53 fast-attack submarines, 14 ballistic missile submarines and four guided-missile submarines, all nuclear-powered. That makes roughly 70 to 71 in total and "the world's largest nuclear submarine fleet." On the secrecy claim, the lookup says:

The exact number of U.S. nuclear submarines at sea at any moment and their locations are classified for operational security.

The same result says the Navy does not release real-time deployment figures. Public discussion relies on concepts such as "continuous SSBN deterrent patrols" rather than daily counts. A second lookup says that in open sources, "Trident submarines" usually means the Navy's Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines carrying Trident II D5 missiles, and that there are 14 of them. So the lookups support the existence of a classified, continuous deterrent. They do not confirm the fleet sizes, warhead counts, year-long submersion or "silent," sonar-proof claims made beforehand.

Asked directly whether bombing Iran was a good idea, the submarine advocate says it is right to move against "whoever's the bad player," whether that is "North Korea, Iran, Israel, Canada, Mexico." They frame it as "a society of sophisticated human beings" that no longer has time for troublemakers. A clip of the same speaker as a sonar operator in the film Down Periscope gets a laugh. The skeptic then asks how 9/11 happened if no one can threaten America. The answer is that 9/11 was "terrestrial," a matter of "simple planning and box cutting and hijacking," unlike nuclear war. The deterrence case is put directly: if Moscow hit seven U.S. cities, submarines offshore would answer.

After an ad read for Amazon MGM Studios' Masters of the Universe, the skeptic raises the obvious limit of deterrence: "there's no one left here to celebrate because we're all dead." The reply is that "America doesn't lose," because the submarine crews would survive as "the new civilization."

The idea of submarine survivors leads to UFOs: "Maybe that's why the aliens are under the water." The reference is Tim Burchett, called "a very honest man". He is said to have described spots under the ocean where "things come out of the ocean." These are crafts reportedly moving "500 miles an hour under the water" and acting "transmedium", passing between air and water apparently without resistance. Even here the details are uncertain. The speaker cannot remember whether Burchett said three or five sites. A lookup says he cited five underwater bases, "in some reports it's it's phrased as five or six," and that the clearest reporting has him naming five areas in U.S. waters where such bases could be.

The case for hiding underwater rests on how little of the ocean is known. The speaker says "I think we've only mapped less than 10% of the ocean floor" and adds:

We know more about the surface of the moon than we know about the bottom of the ocean.

Another argument uses James Cameron's 2012 dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench: if a human can get there, a civilization able to cross between planets can too. The other participant says plainly that they are "skeptical" but "not denying it." Their objection is about cost: why would advanced visitors pick an environment three to five miles down? They point to the pressure there and to "that little submarine that popped about three years ago", when they could simply "land on the terrestrial plane and live pressure-free."

The response draws on what is described as a proposal: that such craft use "some sort of a gravity bubble". This would let them move without conventional propulsion, frictionlessly. It would explain why they enter the water with "virtually no splash" at 500 miles an hour. It would also mean the deep-sea pressure is kept off them, because "They're not existing in the same space time as we are." The skeptic accepts this might handle the pressure but repeats the question of purpose. They ask how anything three miles down could observe people. The reply is that the craft are noticed precisely because they keep "rising out of the water in these very specific locations."

The skeptic's persistence earns a joke accusation: they seem like "a disinformation agent from the government" or "what the kids call controlled opposition." The skeptic plays along, claiming to be "pre-programming you to think sideways."

The fullest version of the observation argument is a thought experiment. Suppose humans, perhaps only a hundred or a thousand years more advanced rather than millions, found a planet of cave people raiding villages. They would watch silently from the sky without interfering. They would sometimes tranquilize individuals, take DNA, sperm and skin samples, maybe do "a fucking cat scan," and return them to the jungle confused, "just like they do to us." The speaker says "100 percent" that we would behave the way the aliens are said to behave. The skeptic's last word rejects the comparison:

This isn't mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. We're not wilde beast.

An earlier tangent offered a related idea: a highly advanced civilization might have existed around 30,000 years ago, thousands of years before Mesopotamia, with underwater and space travel. Its only survivors might have been those already in the ocean, which would explain why the reported bases are there. Like the rest of the alien discussion, this is presented as speculation, and the skeptic "not even refuting it" but promising to think it over.

In the middle of the UFO talk, the hosts mention a new "Disclosure Day" trailer in which Steven Spielberg says he believes Earth is being visited. The conversation then fixates on his long fingernails, with crude jokes about nose-picking and a "Coke nail." Both participants say they don't actually think he does that. A picture of the aye-aye is pulled up for comparison. It is described as having an elongated middle digit that it pushes into coconuts and melons, and the hosts dub it "a Spielberg hook." The aye-aye then becomes a pun on submarine crews answering orders with "I, I, I, sir."