View Episode 258
Originally aired 02.10.11
1:06:30
10:05 – UYD: Pulped and printed
1:03:01 – UYD: The biologic of podcasts
17:36 – When Seth gets scared, he turns to his advice guru on Good Morning America, Liz Pryor. Robin Roberts asked her, “You believe in being straight-forward.” Liz responded, “I shoot from the hip – but with a lot of heart.”
2:51 – Seth just found out from a listener south of the border that Pepsi Max in Mexico goes by the name “Pepsi Kick.”
13:52 – Jah wants to know what’s up with the new crazy-ass drug that’s prescribed for psoriasis where you shoot it up yourself. The trials for it haven’t exceeded two years and the shit they’re saying it could do to you could make it the most dangerous drug ever.
19:12 – Jah finds the name of the crazy psoriasis drug: Stelara. Jah says to keep talking while he pulls up a list of the side effects.
33:55 – The Los Angeles County Public Health Department is beginning to distribute flyers at rave events that give tips on how to “minimize potential harms of ecstacy, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) … take frequent breaks … let your body cool and rest … stay hydrated … sip or take small gulps of water and non-caffeinated sports drinks like Gatorade to replenish your electrolytes … keep an eye on your friends and say together … aim low, dose and frequency. Risks increase with larger doses. Stacking. … Re-dosing when you start to come down. … You could also just stay away. The only way to completely avoid the risks of ecstacy is to avoid the drug entirely. Enjoy the music and the dancing instead.”
38:51 – Employer drug testing firm Quest Diagnostics reports seeing dramatic increases of on-the-job use of prescription opiates such as vicodin and oxycontin.
1:02:24 – Jah touches back on Stelara. It’s a biologic where you’re injecting yourself with biological stuff. It’s a problem because biologics tend not to show their effects until they’re on the market for a while and this one hasn’t even been trial tested for more than 2 years.
21:39 – This is probably the best time for Seth to come clean. There’s been a lot of talk about his knee and impending surgery. He admits that he’s getting a nose job, and it’s all been an elaborate ruse and façade to try to trick listeners. He did not strain his knee doing basic yoga principles or any Jack Lalanne-inspired military squats. He has hated his nose since he was a boy, and he has finally found the courage to take the necessary steps to remedy it. When he came walking down the hallway holding a bag of his own piss, the building he was in in Beverly Hills featured every single office as a facial reconstructive surgery place. He got on the elevator and there were 3 different women, then he got off the elevator and there were girls walking down the hallway – all of them with crazy black eyes and bandaged faces. Seriously though, he is getting surgery this week and he wants everybody to think good thoughts for him. He wants to see if they can do it with no anesthesia.
25:06 – Seth had to do Catholic confession one time. Jonathan used to do confession even though he wasn’t baptized, but they wouldn’t let him take communion. All of Jah’s friends in school were altar boys. Jah’s sins that he confessed were always about beating off. Seth’s salty language is what did it for him. He had a summer where all he did was go up to people’s cars and take off the caps that covered their tire air pumps, and he would have shopping bags filled with them.
29:27 – All Seth hears all day is people talking about having been to Subway, currently while he’s talking to them eating a Subway sandwich or going there later in the day. Jonathan says it’s the same situation for him. Jah thinks it’s a pretty solid joint if you get a clean one where the people working there aren’t disgusting.
42:58 – Jah is a late-night person who is often out walking his dogs at night. He sees delivery contractors in their makeshift mail trucks around Santa Monica. Sometimes he’ll see 1989 Chevy vans with a Mexican dude in it and his wife and 17-year-old son in the back. He’ll also see creepy white dudes who clearly live down by the docks and have no teeth. It happens during an hour, where, if Jah were to open his door and this man was coming toward him, the first thing that would come to Jah’s mind is, ‘You have to beat this dude until he stops moving because he’s going to kill you.’
49:40 – Jah saw his first Starbucks Trenta the other day. You can fit a whole bottle of wine inside of one, so Jah envisions a lot of homeless guys claiming it’s raspberry iced tea.
57:07 – Seth admits he got a massage during halftime of the Super Bowl. He was in Bel-Air with Clint Eastwood and he got a Kabbalah massage during halftime of the Super Bowl game.
1:03:56 – The next time we speak, Seth will have a new knee. It will be the whole new Seth. Seth’s not looking forward to the rehab, however.
3:56 – Computer security company Ivira surveyed nearly 15,000 people and found that 39% of them admitted having cursed or yelled at their computer out loud. Seth says he did this about an hour ago.
9:29 – 70 percent of states in the United States require telephone companies to make and distribute phone books to all of their landline customers. 5 million trees are pulped and printed into white pages every year.
18:54 – MGM Resorts International released their odds to win next year’s Super Bowl. The Green Bay Packers are 6:1 favorites, the New England Patriots are 6:1 favorites and the Dallas Cowboys are 8:1 favorites.
20:11 – The FDA has approved a software app available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch that allows physicians and surgeons to view images and make medical diagnoses off their mobile devices of MRI and CT scans. They have not approved it for X-rays or mammograms. A team of radiologists have approved that under variable lighting conditions, the software offered very clear and crisp images quality enough for diagnostic interpretation.
23:34 – The Catholic church has a new app called “Confession,” making confession easier for your iPhone. It will walk Catholics through the confession process. It is the first known “imprimatur” to be featured in an app.
30:41 – Two former McDonald’s execs and an Oprah Winfrey celebrity chef named Art Smith are starting a restaurant called Life Kitchen in Palo Alto. It’s supposed to be a healthy chain with no cream or high-fructose corn syrup where they bake their fries. Jah thinks there’s a market for that in major metropolitan areas like LA, New York, Denver, Portland, etc.
41:32 – An article in Newsweek talks about newspaper delivery and how it used to be done by paperboys, whereas now it’s done by independent delivery contractors – adults who drive around the routes in pickup trucks.
47:36 – Denny’s is doing a whole new ad campaign, branding what they are. They’re not really a family restaurant anymore, they’re just trying to be an old-school diner. In the commercial, the waiter asks, “Anything else, hon?” The patron asks if she calls everybody that, but then every other patron in the place calls out a pet name she has for them. There are 1,600 Denny’s in the nation. They’re not calling these commercials; they’re calling them “dinersodes.” … “People think of the brand as a diner with great comfort food at a great place. They feel incredible warmth and an incredible connection with their servers.” This is not the first time Denny’s has evoked diners. In the late 1990s it tried to adopt the slogan “America’s Original Breakfast Diner,” and it made their franchisees remodel the restaurants with stainless steel exteriors, chrome interiors, neon lighting and checkerboard tile floors. When many balked at the cost of the renovations, the company suggested a less-expensive option with flourishes such as juke boxes and outfitting all of the servers in bowling shirts.
55:11 – Jamie Masada, owner of The Laugh Factory comedy club in Los Angeles, has a psychologist on hand four nights of the week at the club to offer free therarpy to the stand-up comics.
57:34 – Jah touches on prison guard corruption (Episode 254, 16:58) after Seth hands him an article today. Lawmakers who are struggling to keep cell phones away from California’s most dangerous inmates say a main obstacle is the politically powerful prison guards union – whose members would have to be paid millions of dollars extra to be searched on their way into work. Prison employees, roughly half of whom are unionized guards, are the main source of smuggled phones that inmates use to run drugs and other crimes according to the legislative analysts who examined the problem last year. Unlike visitors, staff can enter the facility without passing through metal detectors. While the union officials’ stated position is that they do not necessarily oppose searches, they cite a work requirement that correction officers be paid for “walk time.” Walk time is the minutes it takes for them to get from the front gate to their actual post behind the prison walls. Putting metal detectors along that route with an airport-like regime involving removal of steel toe boots and equipment-laden belts could double the walk time and thus add several millions of dollars to officers’ collective pay each year. … A couple facts: There were 10,000 cell phones confiscated in 2010; inmates will pay up to $1,000 for a phone; Charles Manson had 2 cell phones confiscated from him last year.
2:30 – Seth and Jah just stalled eight minutes so they could start the show at 4:20 a.m. Seth realized they could’ve just said it was and no one would’ve known, but that proves the authenticity with which they run their show.
51:59 – Seth reads from an abstract (a study that’s not a study yet) from The Food Quality and Preference Journal called “The Effect of Background Noise on Food Perception.” … “We investigated the effects of auditory background noise on the perception of gustatory food properties: sugar level, salt level, food crunchiness and food liking. Participants blindly consumed different foods whilst passively listening to either no sound or quiet or loud background white noise. The foods were then rated in terms of sweetness, saltiness and liking; in terms of overall flavor, crunchiness and liking. Reported sweetness and saltiness was significantly lower in the loud compared to the quiet sound conditions, but crunchiness was reported to be more intense. This suggests that food properties unrelated to sound – sweetness and saltiness – and those conveyed via auditory channels – crunchiness – are differentially affected by background noise. A relationship between ratings of the liking of the background noise and ratings of the liking of the food was also found. We conclude that background sound unrelated to food diminishes gustatory food properties (saltiness and sweetness) which is suggestive of a cross-modal contrasting or attentional effect whilst enhancing food crunchiness.”
6:10 – Seth pulls out a People magazine from this week in February 20 years ago. “Birds and bees are not the only ones doing it. So are Julia and Kiefer, Winona and Johnny, Bruce and Demi, Tom and Nicole, and Harry and Nicolette. Cupid is working overtime in Hollywood these days, slinging arrows at just about everybody and almost always hitting his mark. Veteran Hollywood publicist Warren Cohen says, ‘It’s no longer chic to be living an unmarried free life.’ USA Today celebrity columnist Jeannie Williams says, ‘These are uncertain times with AIDS, the economy and the war. A lot of today’s couples come from a divorced generation, so they want to create a stable life.’ Late last winter, Kiefer Sutherland gave his sweetie Julia Roberts a diamond ring. She has said he bestowed it on her ‘without questions and without response.’ Then, for her 23rd birthday in October, he presented her with a tattoo on her left shoulderblade. It’s a red heart inside of a black Chinese symbol that she has said means ‘strength of heart.’ Beyond that, Roberts, 23, keeps her sensuous lips sealed tight when it comes to discussing her 24-year-old Flatliners co-star – with whom she began co-habitating late last spring. ‘We’re together all the time. We work together, we’re in love with each other. That’s a life; you can’t ask for more.’”
12:33 – Seth failed to mention that the novel Futility (Episode 257, 8:20) featured a ship called “The Titan.” 13:24 – Statistically, the safest age of life is 10 years old.