Joey Diaz

After the Squarespace ad read, the episode opens with surprise at how quickly the guest is walking after another knee procedure. The reply is that it took "like three days," though the knee was aggravated the day before by walking through Newark Airport.

A topical cream comes up next. It is first described as a "liquid cocaine juice" that "became illegal" and is sold over the counter. The speaker cannot pin down the name, trying "Vortemps," "Voltron" and "Voltrax," and adds: "Don't quote me back." The description read aloud on the show says something different. It calls the product a prescription-strength over-the-counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that goes through the skin to relieve joint pain, inflammation and stiffness. That description also says it is widely used for osteoarthritis and muscle aches and "should not be used for acute injuries like simple strains or bruises." The hosts find this restriction odd, since people commonly use ibuprofen for those injuries. The text they read gives no reason for it.

Prescription and strength over-the-counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that penetrates the skin to relieve joint pain, inflammation, and stiffness.

The guest says they could not take any of those drugs after surgery: ibuprofen was ruled out and only Tylenol was allowed. DMSO is mentioned briefly, but the guest doesn't know what it is, and the conversation moves on.

The talk turns to 1970s steroids, which one speaker thinks all came from Germany. That leads to a suspicion that human growth hormone was once harvested from cadavers, which they check with the show's AI sponsor, Perplexity. Before the answer comes back, they guess that modern growth hormone is synthetic and admit they do not know how it is made.

The lookup confirms the suspicion. According to the text read on air, cadaver-derived growth hormone was used from the mid-1900s to 1985. It was dangerous because it sometimes transmitted prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and synthetic recombinant hormone has fully replaced it. In the discussion, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is then equated with mad cow disease, described as "the same kind of disease," and compared to the illness cannibals get from eating human brain tissue. These comparisons are offered in conversation and were not part of the lookup.

Next they read about Alzada, as the transcript spells the name, who is described as one of the first U.S. sports figures to talk about anabolic steroid use. In the last year of his life he was fighting the brain tumor that killed him. In a Sports Illustrated article he said his steroid abuse directly caused his fatal illness. He said he started steroids in '69 and never stopped, called them mentally addicting, and claimed that 90% of the athletes he knew used them. He also described growing violent on and off the field. One example: in 1979 in Denver, after a driver sideswiped his car, he chased the man through the neighborhood, pulled him out of the car and beat him. By the end he wobbled when he walked and had trouble remembering things. He died at 43 of brain cancer.

Now I'm sick and I'm scared.

The hosts don't treat his self-diagnosis as settled. One says, "I don't know if that was that stuff," and they suggest that his walking and memory problems could also come from being hit in the head, "mixed with whatever was going on." They also note that the same source lists him in the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, an organization neither of them knew existed.

From steroid denials in sports, the conversation moves to bodybuilders who say they are natural, which is dismissed outright. The Barbarian Brothers' reported 36 eggs come up as an example of extreme eating. A qualification follows: a few people do have very unusual genetics and get very big naturally, "But that's rare. That's super, super rare."

Nobody's that big without help.

The guest describes an Uber ride in Austin the day before. The driver is said to be the nephew of a well-known figure (the name is garbled in the transcript) and a judo champion, and the two spoke Spanish for 15 to 20 minutes. The guest claims all of Austin's Uber drivers are Cuban. One reply is that they are "all getting replaced by robots."

Both speakers distrust driverless cars. The guest recalls a Cuban driver who got out to yell at a robot car that had cut him off, then realized nobody was inside. Another speaker says the Waymos "get right in front of you" and "I don't trust those cars." A secondhand story follows. A rider left a Waymo's hatch open, a homeless man climbed in, and the next passenger found him in the back yelling at her, "Why are you paying robots?"

The guest's daughter played a weekend tournament in Egg Harbor, about 25 minutes outside Atlantic City and an hour and a half from home. The guest stayed at Harrah's instead of Ocean so they could be with the other parents. They also mention that they visit a weed store on most of these trips.

The week before, at a store in Trenton about a block from the state capitol, a worker supposedly took the guest to a "secret place in the back" to sell packaged mushrooms and mushroom chocolate. Another speaker warns against telling the story, and the guest answers that the police already know what goes on.

I'm not ratting nobody out.

At a large weed store near the Atlantic City casinos, four muscular men in an expensive SUV recognized the guest, some from the Rogan podcast and others from the football movie The Longest Yard. While they talked, a homeless man came over, asked who the guest was, and was told it was the man from the football movie. He then asked for money. The guest was embarrassed and gave him $10, not $1. The man had walked over with a limp but ran off afterward. The guest reads this as part of a hustle and says they enjoy being around "people living on the edge."

hey, Mr. Football Man, why don't you break out a dollar for me?

Both speakers describe the area around Atlantic City's casinos as dangerous. They mention seeing a drug deal on the street and a late-night drive that felt "Sketchy." They agree Atlantic City has some nice spots but is "barely making money" and is "not going to grow like Vegas is." The Borgata is described as the hangout of older Italian visitors, and they recall staying there together when it first opened.

The reasoning about Vegas is a head-start argument. When Vegas was built, it was the only casino city in the country. Today, with gambling everywhere and on phones, it would be a "Tough sell." One speaker had guessed that Vegas grew out of a deal tied to atomic bomb testing, but says a lookup showed Vegas came first, which leads to the conclusion "I guess it was just gangsters." Other claims are offered with open uncertainty: that Vegas began as a pit stop for American soldiers, and a question about whether that was the 1930s.

The hosts link an early Vegas mob figure to someone connected with the Comedy Store, without naming him. In their telling, casino builders borrowed from Chicago unions through Teamster loans tied to Jimmy Hoffa. This man's expenses "never stopped" while he lived like a movie star, "hanging out with Jane Seymour or something." They say he was shot in his house in L.A., hit in "his eyeball or something like that," and that a photo of the body is "allegedly online." They hedge the motive too: asked whether that is why he was shot, the answer is "I think so."

Recalling early trips to Denver, they say legal cannabis money was so good that anyone would take it. Businesses reportedly could not accept credit cards, so everything was cash. One speaker describes cash transfers guarded by former special forces soldiers, Green Berets and Navy SEALs, because millions of dollars were being moved.

The state also earned a great deal, since the tax on legal weed was "like 39%." This number was a guess, and they asked for it to be looked up. One argument is that nobody would accept a rate like that on alcohol or ground beef. Another claim is that during the pandemic, Los Angeles stores deemed "essential" paid an extra 10% tax.

They then say weed stores are starting to close. In New Jersey, the state required costly buildouts, and they cite about $3 million to open one shop. Competition is heavy as well: Los Angeles has a huge number of stores, and Englishtown, New Jersey has four, all on the same block.

Listen, it's a lot of $20 bags to get the $3 mil.

They recall the Englewood Wellness Center from the medical-only years, placed in the conversation "in the 90s." Back then any medical reason qualified. They also recall that the man who ran it was shot in the store, but are unsure whether he survived: "I think he lived. I'm not sure, though."

One argument is that anyone who does martial arts has a ready medical excuse because "everybody's in pain," and that cannabis does help with pain. CBD gummies are called "phenomenal for aches and pains." The evidence offered is a single anecdote: Dave Foley's hand was badly damaged by arthritis, and after he started taking CBD it reportedly regained full function.

Quality is the main caveat. In a gray market, "who knows who's making it and what the quality is," and it attracts bad operators. A comedy bit is recalled about gummies not being made in the same kind of labs as Tylenol, so one feels like a thousand milligrams and another like 100. They describe the old days as the Wild West, when products had no warnings and buyers did not know the dose. One speaker remembers eating a brownie before a red-eye to Pittsburgh and being unable to stop their leg from tapping. They add that they don't think the old high-dose products are still sold.

A shared memory comes next. On a flight, the guest had a panic attack after taking an edible, felt their chest closing in and feared the plane would crash, then took two more about an hour later. The guest explains the habit as boredom at two in the afternoon and wanting "to take a chance Columbus did." The only restraint was having a set that night, when they would keep it to "a couple hundred milligrams."

The hosts disagree over whether to perform with too much in your system. One says no, the other answers "Yes, you do. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you need to." The guest gives a recent example. It was their first time on stage since April 18th, in front of about 50 people. After an edible, a short set grew into an hour, though the guest says they were "starting over from scratch" and the material began with a story about going to the hospital. It was not recorded.

The Blue Chew ad read sits in the middle of this stretch. Afterward, the guest describes using THC on audition scripts. They read the script, put it away, get high, and come back to see "a complete different sheet," then repeat this an hour later after getting higher. They add, "I'm not telling you to smoke pop." They say THC helps them relax because they "live in anxiety naturally." Their example is that morning: at 8:30, having coffee outside the Four Seasons, they felt their heart racing because they thought they had somewhere to be, and they didn't.

Look, I live in anxiety naturally.

Both speakers describe driving into New York as a full day's commitment. It can mean three hours of traffic, with no gym and no other errands. One says they set such days aside and work ahead so they can make the trip without stress. By contrast, Austin traffic is called "a joke" and "adorable," usually costing "10 extra minutes" outside of accidents. Their explanation is that the East Coast is "so thick with people," which they say shows on UFC weekends when they shuttle between New Jersey events and New York.