Moby (00:10):

Hi Lindsay.

Lindsay (00:11):

Hi Moby.

Moby (00:12):

So we are here for another episode of Moby Pod, and I think this one might need to come with a caveat.

Lindsay (00:19):

Big caveat.

Moby (00:21):

Or Aka some sort of, a little bit of a cautionary warning <laugh>, because we are gonna talk about some lighthearted stuff

Lindsay (00:30):

Like pickup lines and our first records.

Moby (00:33):

Yeah. First record, ridiculous pickup lines, but how sometimes ridiculous pickup lines can yield lasting love in romance.

Lindsay (00:40):

Uplifting.

Moby (00:41):

But we might also have a very long conversation about quantum mechanics and the unknowable nature of the universe.

Lindsay (00:52):

So it, it's, it's not a short conversation. I'm gonna say we go pretty deep, you know, if that's something that is difficult for you to think about as it is for me. I mean, I got through that. I actually, I had, I thought it was a good conversation, but, you know, just caveat, we do go deep into physics and, um, I'm not a physician, <laugh>. is that what a physics person is called? That's a doctor.

Moby (01:17):

The physicist is a,

Lindsay (01:18):

A physicist.

Moby (01:20):

<laugh> <laugh>. Yeah.

Lindsay (01:21):

Anyway, so that's kind of how this conversation goes. Um, so just sit back, relax, and get ready to go into a realm of subatomic question marks

Moby (01:29):

And the unknowable nature of existence. Or at least from my perspective, the unknowable nature of objective existence.

Moby (01:47):

Okay. So Lindsay, I have a question for you.

Lindsay (01:50):

Ask away.

Moby (01:50):

What's the first record you ever bought? Or was given to you that first record you ever remember bringing home? What was it? And do you still have it? And tell me about it.

Lindsay (02:00):

Okay. I think the year was 1996.

Moby (02:06):

Okay. I had already been making records for six years at that point? Yeah.

Lindsay (02:09):

I was in elementary school. <laugh>

Moby (02:13):

I'm so old. <laugh>.

Lindsay (02:16):

And I was in love with Lauryn Hill and they had

Moby (02:23):

Fugees,

Lindsay (02:24):

The Fugees had a record come out with that song "Killing Me Softly" on it. And I saved up my money from mowing the lawn, from picking weeds from doing whatever. My mom needed to go to the Best Buy with a Ziploc baggie full of coins and dollar bills. And I bought that Fugees record.

Moby (02:48):

And this was, I mean, CDs were expensive.

Lindsay (02:52):

It was expensive. I mean, I can't remember how much it was, but I think it was like $16.

Moby (02:56):

Whoa.

Lindsay (02:57):

And I paid for it in mostly coins. And the person there, honestly, I don't remember them having a negative reaction to it. I think they were probably kind of, um, impressed that a nine year old was coming in there with a Ziploc baggie used to buy a Fugees album. <laugh>.

Moby (03:12):

Okay. So you cut your parents' lawn and did weeding. What were the other chores that you did that you got paid for?

Lindsay (03:19):

Sometimes dishes, sometimes babysitting my brother or his friends if I stayed home with them. Or sometimes babysitting other kids in the neighborhood, which I don't think I was old enough to, I'm like, I should have probably been babysat at that point. But, you know, I was very mature for my age. Um, yeah. I can't remember anything else. I would've cl other, like vacuuming a certain room, you know, my mom would give me a dollar here, a dollar there.

Moby (03:41):

Okay. So you get your Fugees CD. You bring it home. Uh, and then what happened?

Lindsay (03:47):

And then I had a real, I think it was the summertime when this happened, I would just lay on the air conditioning, vent <laugh>, and play the, play the CD.

Moby (03:57):

Cause this was in Texas?

Lindsay (03:59):

This was in Georgia. Okay. And it was very hot. And I would put a blanket over me and create a sort of cool tent in above the air vent and bring my little, um, CD player into my, uh, cool tent and just play Fugees in the summertime

Moby (04:16):

Over the air conditioning event. Exactly. What else did you, did you do during the summer?

Lindsay (04:21):

Well, at that time when I was living in Georgia, we had, um, we had like a little pool and tennis court at the bottom of the neighborhood that we lived in and behind it there was like a fort that the kids made some other neighborhood kids, like older kids. And we would go swim in the pool, you know, dive for coins and such. Which by the way, there's no better food than the sandwich your mom brings you after you've been swimming in the pool for six hours.

Moby (04:50):

I would say as an adjunct to that, the only thing that's better is the Popsicle that you have after the sandwich.

Lindsay (04:57):

Oh, <laugh>.

Moby (04:57):

Like a pool. A pool Popsicle with like the sticky paper.

Lindsay (05:01):

Oh!

Moby (05:01):

And like, and you end up sort of chewing on the wooden Popsicle stick.

Lindsay (05:06):

Or we had the ones that were in the little plastic pouch, the like icy sticks. Those were so good. Yeah.

Moby (05:13):

A pool Popsicle is one of the most delicious things when you're seven years old.

Lindsay (05:17):

Oh my God. I remember that pool sandwich that she or one of the other moms would bring. And just being like, if food is ever tasted better, and it was just like, whatever, like a plastic cheese and mayo and white bread sandwich. And I would just be like, this is absolute heaven, <laugh>. But then we would go down to the fort that the older kids made and there was a, a secret box full of like eighties Playboy magazines. Wow. And that's how I learned what human bodies look like. <laugh>.

Moby (05:45):

That sounds idyllic. So like your,

Lindsay (05:47):

It kind of was.

Moby (05:48):

So your neighborhood had kids and a pool and a tennis court. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and a fort and a box with old water damage Playboy magazines in it.

Lindsay (05:57):

Exactly. Yeah. It was pretty great. I gotta say.

Moby (06:01):

Wow. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I mean, I know this is a while ago, but I'm kind of jealous.

Lindsay (06:05):

And then all the pa the parents would have parties a lot and then all the kids would come and we would just go play in the playroom and like play video games and like play with everyone's different toys.

Moby (06:14):

Wow.

Lindsay (06:15):

That's where I tried my first wine cooler. <laugh>. <laugh>. Um, okay. What about you? What about your first record?

Moby (06:23):

Okay, so at the end of my first record story, I feel like my mom should have figured out that I was going to be an alcoholic <laugh>.

Lindsay (06:35):

Okay.

Moby (06:36):

So the year, okay. I'm almost hesitant to say the year cuz it makes me feel so ancient. The year was either 1974 or 1975

Lindsay (06:47):

<laugh>. Don't you mean <old-man-voice> "the year was" <laugh>?

Moby (06:50):

Yeah. And my mom had a great record collection, so I used to listen to her records. I mean, she had everything from Crosby, Stills Nash and Young To The Doors, to John Coltrane, to Baba Olatunji, to Dvořák. Like I just constantly, from the time I was maybe five years old, would just go through all her records.

Lindsay (07:08):

Your Mom had some taste?

Moby (07:09):

She had some really,

Lindsay (07:10):

Your mom was an artist. She sounds like she was cool.

Moby (07:12):

Yeah.

Lindsay (07:12):

Kind of a cool lady.

Moby (07:14):

Yep. And so I of course would listen to her records. But the first record I ever had of my very, very own So I was in Stratford, Connecticut and my best friend at the time was a little boy named Ron Little. So one day he and I were walking around Stratford, Connecticut where we both lived and somehow we looked down a sewer drain. And there was, in this storm drain, the greatest thing anyone has ever discovered in a storm drain, apart from a murderous clown, there was a $5 bill. Oh my God. And I don't, I still don't know why we looked in it, but like we saw this $5 bill. We were like, oh my God. But we couldn't get it. So then we had to like find a long, long stick. We went in someone's yard, we got a long, long stick.

Moby (08:07):

We put some like, we're like, well, what if we put some mud on the end of the stick? It'll stick to the $5 bill. And so he essentially speared the $5 bill and as he pulled it up, I grabbed it and somehow this work, or like MacGyver stick with the mud on the end of it, got the $5 bill, which we both understood was his, cause he had seen it first. And we ran home. And I remember him running in my house. He called my mom by her first name Betsy. And he's like "Betsy! Betsy! We found $5." So my mom, Betsy, took us to Bradlees, which was, are you familiar with a discount store called Caldor's? Okay. Caldor's was very low rent. Bradlees was the lower rung of Caldor's. Like, let's say Caldor's was the 99 cents store. Bradlees would've been the 9 cents store. <laugh> like filthy, dirty, cheap. But it's where we went cuz we were poor. We were all on food stamps, we're all on welfare. So my mom drove us to Bradlees and my friend gave me a dollar cuz it seemed fair.

Lindsay (09:11):

Wow. Cool kid.

Moby (09:12):

And I ran to the record section in Bradlees. It was a 99 cent, seven inch single of Convoy by CW McCall. You might not know this song, very few people do. It was what created the CB radio craze of the seventies. So it was a song about truckers and CB radios and, oh, did I love this song.

Lindsay (09:34):

Why? What are the truckers saying to each other? They're,

Moby (09:36):

They create a convoy and they like the police try and stop 'em and they keep breaking through.

Lindsay (09:40):

What's a convoy?

Moby (09:43):

Oh, you don't know about a con. You're from the south, you don't know convoys.

Lindsay (09:46):

I do have a cousin that's a trucker and yet I find myself unaware of a convoy. <laugh>.

Moby (09:52):

A convoy is a long group of vehicles.

Lindsay (09:55):

Okay.

Moby (09:56):

So it's like a lot of trucks would, I guess they would like get a bunch of trucks together and they would drive

Lindsay (10:02):

Together as a best friends

Moby (10:04):

As friends. But this,

Lindsay (10:05):

And then maybe kiss sometimes at the stops.

Moby (10:08):

So in this case, the song is a story and I highly recommend go listen to it.

Lindsay (10:13):

I love a story song

Moby (10:14):

Because it's a country western spoken word song that also has a sung chorus. So it's almost like a proto hiphop song.

Lindsay (10:21):

Okay. I like this. But wait, why are they running from the cops? What did the convoy do?

Moby (10:25):

That's the thing they just, they create this convoy and they don't wanna stop for anybody. But the cops keep trying to stop their convoy. This song was such a cultural phenomena. They made a movie after it.

Lindsay (10:36):

What was the movie called?

Moby (10:38):

It's called Convoy.

Lindsay (10:39):

Jeepers Creepers?

Moby (10:40):

No, the movie is called Convoy. Kris Kristofferson was the lead in the movie Convoy about these truckers who just, they're not gonna stop for anything and the police keep trying to stop 'em and they keep breaking through when the police are trying to stop them. So the song was about that. Then the movie with Kris Kristofferson was about that. So this was phenomena and my friends and I were so obsessed with CB radios. We couldn't afford a CB radio so we would just talk to each other as if we had CB radios.

Lindsay (11:07):

Like, uh, "This is Moby coming in. I got a schnauzer on the big top!" <Laugh> <laugh>.

Moby (11:14):

I got a schnauzer on the big top? <Laugh>. Yeah, we would, we were in what, third or fourth grade walking through the halls, a Birdseye Elementary school in Stratford talking to each other like we were truckers.

Lindsay (11:25):

"Over and out!" Like that kind of thing?

Moby (11:26):

We'd be like, "Ah, this is Moby. And I got a 10 20 come at you big breaker over" <laugh>. "I got a schnauzer on the big top" <laugh>

Lindsay (11:35):

<laugh>.

Moby (11:35):

So I, I got the seven inch home and I listened to it and I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard. I picked up the needle and I listened to it again. I listened to it 40 times in a row.

Lindsay (11:46):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah, that makes sense.

Moby (11:48):

I only stopped because my mom concernedly came and said, "Oh it's time for dinner." Cuz every time the song ended I was like, "That was the greatest three and a half minutes of my life. I wanna do it again." And I feel like I applied that same logic to drinking and drugs <laugh>. So yeah. So my long-winded story about a first record was Convoy by CW McCall and you don't need to watch the movie cuz the movie maybe has not held up very well. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But the song, oh, what a great song.

Lindsay (12:16):

I'm interested in both. And let me just say, I think that anything you do, you do with great verve and commitment and unfortunately that also includes alcohol and drugs.

Moby (12:25):

And I remember my mom being sort of curious and endeared, but a little concerned when I kept listening. <laugh>, oh 40 times is a lot to listen to one song over and over again. Like she would, after like maybe the 15th time she'd be like, "Hey, don't you wanna do something else?" Or like, "Don't you think 15 times is enough?" And I would ignore her and just keep playing Convoy over and over and over again.

Lindsay (12:51):

Do you remember that song Love Fool by The Cardigans?

Moby (12:54):

No.

Lindsay (12:54):

It's like <sings> "Love me, love me."

Moby (12:56):

Oh that one. No, please don't sing it. Cause that's such an earworm now. No, it's gonna be stuck in my head.

Lindsay (13:00):

I'm so sorry. Okay.

Moby (13:02):

That's okay.

Lindsay (13:02):

So when I first heard that song,

Moby (13:03):

I didn't know I had the name. I thought it was just "Love Me" song,

Lindsay (13:06):

Love Fool, Cardigans. This was around the same, same era. I was obsessed with this song, but the problem was it would get stuck in my head and I really didn't like the feeling of the song being stuck in my head. And this guy who I was friends with, who I really liked, um, his name was Corey Schnucky and he was like, there's only one solution. And I was like, what? He's like, you have to listen to the song until your brain rejects the song. And I was like, what? And so I listened,

Moby (13:35):

How old was Corey Schnucky?

Lindsay (13:37):

We were like, I don't know, 10 or 11?

Moby (13:40):

Corey seems either very sadistic or wise.

Lindsay (13:43):

I think he was very wise and I dunno what he's doing now, but I'm sure it's something really cool cuz he was cool. He was a very good friend. Whatever happened to Corey Schnucky? I'm gonna look into this. Anyway, he was like, "You have to listen to it over and over until your brain rejects it." And I did it. So I listened to this song so many times. I had my little Walkman, the the CD player with the thing that you had to keep perfectly upright or else the whole thing would, so it was a commitment on my part. Um, I, so I had that CD and I just had to listen to that song on repeat over and over and over again.

Moby (14:11):

Did it work?

Lindsay (14:11):

It did, I don't remember. Which I think means it did work.

Moby (14:15):

Because my assumption is that if by listening to an ear worm song over and over again, it would just further burrow itself into your brain. Which is why when you started singing it.

Lindsay (14:23):

You got upset.

Moby (14:24):

I was like, oh not upset. I was just like, oh no. Cuz it's such, there's certain songs that are just such torturous, it's not even a bad song but it's just such an earworm.

Lindsay (14:32):

It just gets into Yeah. That's what I remember one time my girlfriend and I got in a fight because she was really annoyed and frustrated because she had that Avicii song stuck in her head and it was making her so angry that she was like lashing out at me. <laugh>,

Moby (14:45):

Do you know a funny story about that? And I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this. This is the story that I was told.

Lindsay (14:49):

Okay,

Moby (14:50):

That's the big of Avicii hit.

Lindsay (14:52):

<sings> "So wake me up when it..."

Moby (14:53):

Yeah.

Lindsay (14:53):

Yeah.

Moby (14:54):

So here's the story that I was told my friend Mike from the band Incubus, who's had a very interesting life in addition to Incubus. Like he's actually studied classical composition. I think he went back to college at the height of Incubus's success to go back and study classical composition. But he's also produced a lot of music. So he had two sessions in his studio that day. And again, this is the story I was told. One was with this up and coming singer named Aloe Blacc.

Lindsay (15:22):

Yeah.

Moby (15:23):

So Aloe Blacc came to his studio, they're working on music I guess, who knows, maybe not much happened. And then Avicii came over. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and Mike and Aloe Blacc started playing their song and Avicii put drum underneath it and in 30 minutes it was done.

Lindsay (15:38):

Wow.

Moby (15:39):

That's the story I was told maybe 45 minutes. Like so it was just this happenstance meeting between Aloe Blacc and Avicii at Mike's house. And apparently Avicii debuted it at, I believe the Ultra Music Festival. So this big moment in front of like a hundred thousand people. And apparently they hated it cuz it's a very unconventional dance song. Like people didn't get it. But then it obviously went on to become one of the biggest dance songs of the last 50 years.

Lindsay (16:05):

Yeah.

Moby (16:06):

Yeah. Just because Mike and Aloe Blacc happened to be there when Avicii came over.

Lindsay (16:10):

That's incredible. It's kind of magical, honestly. The fate involved and even the timing, you know?

Moby (16:16):

Yeah. It's a wonderful song. I gotta song. The first time I heard I was like wow, this is really,

Lindsay (16:19):

It's special soulful. It's so special. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Well I love, I love your first record story but I also love that it was an indication of things to come in a way. Yeah.

Moby (16:29):

Yeah. The obsession,

Lindsay (16:30):

But also it goes to show that your like interest in in music and how things work and that that it was a story and all of that. Like I think that it also says a lot about your artist mind

Moby (16:44):

And the obsession with music. Cause I remember the first song I ever heard was Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Lindsay (16:52):

Ooh.

Moby (16:52):

The year was 1968.

Lindsay (16:54):

Oh my God.

Moby (16:55):

And I was in the car with my mom. I was three years old and we were living in Danbury, Connecticut and this weird, scary Victorian rooming house next to a prison <laugh>. And it was cold like one of those like February like Connecticut, New England, depressing gray, muddy like cold, wet snow on the ground that's turning to mud. And our car was this beat up old car that had an AM radio cause I don't even know if FM radio existed at that point. And Proud Mary came on the radio and I refused to get outta the car until the song had finished. Wow. So we were sitting in the driveway freezing cold. Our car didn't have heat cuz it was a secondhand crappy car that didn't have heat. It had a barely functioning AM radio and holes in the floor. And my mom was kind of annoyed but also I think intrigued at her three-year-old who refused to get outta the car until this piece of music had ended.

Lindsay (17:47):

That's amazing.

Moby (17:48):

Yeah. I remember it very, very clearly sitting there in my little wet, I don't know if it was like this when you were growing up, but everything was wet in the wintertime. Just like your clothes, your socks, your shirts, your everything just had this like damp cold wetness to it.

Lindsay (18:05):

Terrible, awful. We lived in for a little bit when I was little. We lived in La Porte, Indiana, which is like northern Indiana, which is desolate and cold. And, and we had moved there from Hawaii and I remember when we moved there it was like December and my, I was wearing jelly slippers cuz we had come from Hawaii and we were just not prepared for it to be snowy there. I dunno how that happened. But we were wearing jelly slippers in like the snowy parking lot walking through it. I, you know, I learned my lesson.

Moby (18:29):

Yeah. And not to malign Indiana, but I've been in Indiana in the wintertime. Like one of my first, I think the only time I ever played in Indiana, I was on tour with the band The Prodigy and we played a food court in Indianapolis on a Sunday night <laugh> to about 30 people.

Lindsay (18:45):

Yeah. <laugh>.

Moby (18:46):

And it was cold and sad and grim, but nothing against Indiana. Just like, definitely like yeah. So you know, of what I speak when I talk about like cold, wet, sad,

Lindsay (18:56):

But also from living in New York, I just remember there was a rare moments when I actually felt fully dry and comfortable throughout the entire winter.

Moby (19:05):

Okay. So thank you for telling me the story of your first song and thank you for letting me ramble on about the story of my first record.

Lindsay (19:11):

No, that's It's really interesting. And now I need to look up Convoy.

Moby (19:15):

Convoy by C W McCall

Lindsay (19:16):

And Convoy movie

Moby (19:17):

Watch the trailer for the movie. Cause I think they, I think the video for the song is the trailer for the movie.

Lindsay (19:23):

Love that.

Moby (19:24):

Oh, it's very good.

Lindsay (19:25):

<laugh>.

Lindsay (19:34):

So we talked about records, but earlier we were joking about funny pickup lines.

Moby (19:39):

Yeah.

Lindsay (19:39):

And I think that we should share our favorite funny pickup lines.

Moby (19:44):

<laugh>. Okay. I also have a funny pick line story.

Lindsay (19:47):

Great. Let's start there.

Moby (19:49):

Okay. And it involves someone who listens to our podcast.

Lindsay (19:53):

Oh God. Okay.

Moby (19:53):

But I'm not gonna mention his name cause again, I don't want to get people in trouble.

Lindsay (19:57):

Okay.

Moby (19:59):

Um, but he'll know

Lindsay (20:00):

Will I know?

Moby (20:00):

You know him as well, sort of.

Lindsay (20:02):

Okay.

Moby (20:02):

He's a fan. He's a big fan of yours. In fact, he kind of wishes the podcast was just you talking <laugh> and like me sitting in the background like engineering and occasionally playing guitar. Okay. So, okay. My friend who shall remain nameless cuz I don't want, I've already gotten him enough trouble in the past, but he, in the mid nineties, we had both sort of grown up as weird Christians. Like nerdy Christian awkward kids. But he somehow started and I guess in his twenties, turning into this incredibly handsome, charismatic, charming man. And he'll, I'm afraid.

Lindsay (20:38):

The old bate and switch.

Moby (20:39):

Because his ego is already like, he, he's like, "Oh really? Tell me more about how. Handsome I am" <laugh>. But yeah, he became this very handsome sort of like, looked like a more approachable version of Tommy Lee sort of.

Lindsay (20:49):

Wow. Okay.

Moby (20:50):

Like Tommy Lee meets Colin Farrell.

Lindsay (20:52):

Wow.

Moby (20:53):

Yeah. Very, very handsome man. And as a result, his dating life was a, a happy thing for, I'm trying to say that Diplomatically <laugh>. And so 1996,

Lindsay (21:04):

The year I was buying my Fugees album.

Moby (21:06):

The year you were buying your Fugees album, there was a bar on Orchard Street, no. Ludlow Street in New York called Luna Lounge. Did you ever go to Luna Lounge?

Lindsay (21:15):

No. I mean, if I did, I don't remember.

Moby (21:17):

I don't remember when it closed, but, so Luna Lounge was, they would have performances like Bob Odenkirk and David Cross.

Lindsay (21:23):

Wow.

Moby (21:23):

Used to perform there all the time.

Lindsay (21:25):

Cool.

Moby (21:26):

Bands would play, but it was just like across the street from Max Fish. Did you ever go to Max Fish?

Lindsay (21:31):

Mm, I don't think so. That might've been before my time.

Moby (21:33):

Well, Max Fish closed like 10 years ago, so it, it

Lindsay (21:38):

Oh. So no, it was there when I was there, but I didn't go there.

Moby (21:41):

So Luna Lounge, so my friend and our friend Paul went into Luna Lounge on a Tuesday night and there were only two other people in the bar, two women sitting at the bar. And so my friend who shall remain nameless and our friend Paul walked up to the bar, I think they were already kind of drunk, ordered drinks and walked over to these two very attractive women sitting at the bar. And my friend turned to one of the women randomly, it's like 11:00 PM on a Tuesday night and an empty bar. And he said, "Are those space pants you're wearing?" And she said, "Please leave me alone"

Lindsay (22:16):

<laugh>.

Moby (22:16):

```And he said, "Because your ass is outta this world." And she said, "Seriously, I have a boyfriend. I'm just here with my friend having a drink. Please leave us alone"

Lindsay (22:26):

<laugh>.

Moby (22:26):

And he said, you know, if I could rearrange the alphabet. And she said, no, come on please, I have a boyfriend, please leave me alone. He said, I'd put you and I together. Oh wow.

Lindsay (22:35):

Those are, those are old school. But I like them. I mean those are classics

Moby (22:41):

From that random encounter on a Tuesday night at Luna Lounge with these old school pickup lines. They've been married ever since. They have two kids, they run a business together. So Oh

Lindsay (22:54):

My God. They worked. Yep. So she didn't have a boyfriend.

Moby (22:57):

She did. She broke up.

Lindsay (22:58):

She broke up with him because of pickup lines were so good?

Moby (23:00):

I think that night she broke up with her boyfriend and has been with my friend ever since. Whoa. So random. They walk into a bar they'd never met before. There's no way they would've ever met. Cause they're from very, they lived in different states. So somehow pickup lines, which are awkward and uncomfortable led to these two friends of mine who've been married since basically nine. Yeah. Like, I think they finally got married in 99 or 2000. Wow. So they've been together for almost 30 years because of two drunken pickup lines in a bar on Ludlow Street in New York.

Lindsay (23:35):

I mean that's incredible. And also now I guess I'm gonna be pro pickup line.

Moby (23:41):

I guess a lot of it is context like whoever's using the pickup line, what's the environment?

Lindsay (23:46):

Theres delivery? There's a whole, yeah, there's a lot.

Moby (23:48):

It helps my friend was charismatic and charming and looks like a cross between Tommy Lee and Colin Ferrell.

Lindsay (23:54):

Yeah. That doesn't hurt.

Moby (23:55):

If it had been like someone who looked like a cross between Chris Christie and Wally Shawn? <Laugh>

Lindsay (24:00):

Might have been a different story.

Moby (24:02):

Yeah. Okay. So now please tell me some of your favorite pickup lines.

Lindsay (24:06):

Okay, so two of them are prop lines where you have to have a prop. Okay. So the first one is you grab a sugar packet from like the little thing of sugars, preferably the one that says sugar on it in like big blue lettering. Okay. And then you have it in your hand and you act like you've dropped it on the floor and you pick it up and you go, oh, I'm sorry, you seem to have dropped your name tag <laugh>.

Moby (24:29):

Um, for sound effects we might wanna put some cricket sounds in there,

Lindsay (24:34):

<laugh>.

Lindsay (24:35):

Okay. And then the other one is you're standing with someone and you go, oh my gosh, I just need to check something. And you check the tag on the back of their shirt and then you go, yep. Just what I thought 100% Angel,

Lindsay (24:47):

<laugh>, <laugh>.

Lindsay (24:50):

And then, and then sometimes if you're, if you're walking behind someone and they look behind you and they, you know, they look again, you can say, you know, my parents always told me to follow my dreams.

Lindsay (25:03):

<laugh>.

Moby (25:05):

Wow. Oh boy.

Lindsay (25:09):

And then sometimes if you're on a train with somebody, you can say, is this the Hogwarts Express? Because I feel like you and I are headed someplace magical.

Moby (25:18):

<laugh>.

Lindsay (25:22):

Um, okay. So that one's pretty good. But

Moby (25:24):

All of them are fantastic. But that the Hogwarts Express one is pretty special.

Lindsay (25:28):

Okay. I have one more that I really like, which is where you act like, oh, like you're really hurting and you're talking to someone and you just like, suddenly are like, oh God. And you go, I think I'm gonna need your insurance information because I've been blinded by your beauty.

Moby (25:41):

Yeah. The Hogwarts Express one was great.

Lindsay (25:43):

Yeah. That one got a real chortle out of you.

Lindsay (25:46):

<laugh>.

Moby (25:48):

Um, also, I haven't been on a date in seven years <laugh>, so, and I never, I I never had the confidence to use pickup lines.

Lindsay (25:57):

Well I mean, they're not, they're not, uh, natural for everyone. You know, some people it kind of fits with their sense of humor.

Moby (26:04):

I feel like at some point, mainly by hanging out with my friend who's now been married to the woman he met at Luna Lounge, like he used to have this, all these great pickup lines and I don't, I could never use any of them cause I was too nervous. But I feel like at one point I had quite a lot of pickup lines that I, but now I've forgotten them because I'm so old and out of practice. And my memory,

Lindsay (26:27):

There's also one that's like, you must be so tired cuz you've been running through my mind all night. Yeah. <laugh>,

Moby (26:35):

That feels really old school. Like it's 1970 at a bar in Lubbock, Texas.

Lindsay (26:40):

<laugh>. Yeah.

Moby (26:42):

Or like a private investigator in Oakland in 1957 walks up like drinking brown liquor, smoking cigarettes and wearing pork pie hats.

Lindsay (26:51):

Ooh! A pork pie hat!

Moby (26:53):

Is that what they're called? Like?

Lindsay (26:53):

I think so, yeah.

Moby (26:54):

Okay. So pick up lines. Maybe at some point I'll try and remember some of the other, there were a few, but they were kind of racy and you know, I'm not comfortable with that sort of thing.

Lindsay (27:06):

Yeah. Those are uncomfortable.

Moby (27:08):

Okay, let's talk about a question you asked me.

Lindsay (27:22):

Well, right, so I was thinking about stuff I don't know, uh, which is a lot <laugh>. And one of the things I don't know about or know very little about, because every time I think about it, it makes my brain hurt. Like taxes or mutual funds. Like every time I think about them, they make it, my brain starts to hurt. But another one of those things is quantum physics or quantum mechanics. Because I know the ba like, okay, so this is what I know quantum means teensy tiny things like a grain of sand in a desert or a water molecule in the ocean. Tiny and mechanics is kind of how they move function or whatever. And then I know that there are, there's a lot of confusion about quantum mechanics and they try to keep it as simple as they can, but basically like if you identify one particle, then you can't identify where it is or when it, like, there's just a lot of like confusion basically. It's unknowable. Is that correct?

Moby (28:16):

Okay. So presumptuous, I think I know a little bit about quantum mechanics just because I've been fascinated by it for such a long time.

Lindsay (28:23):

Didn't you write a song about it?

Moby (28:25):

Well, We Are All Made of Stars is sort of based on astrophysics.

Lindsay (28:29):

Okay. Okay.

Moby (28:31):

So if there's any really smart quantum mechanics out there who take issue with what I'm about to say, by all means, please let us know. Cause I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to know more, but I'm, I will hopefully not too pedantically let you know what I know about quantum mechanics.

Lindsay (28:50):

Okay, great.

Moby (28:50):

So let's put it in a little bit of context. I'm speaking great generalizations. Before quantum mechanics, there was Newtonian physics, Isaac Newton and Isaac Newton knew that Newton, he sort of invent, I mean, you know, he's, the apple fell on his head famously, like he just sort of quote unquote gravity discovered gravity and he to an extent proposed some laws of physics that governed the material world. It was like how, how big stuff moved around. you know, it had weight, it had mass, it fell out of trees. It, if you drop a feather and a bowling ball, gravity still affects them the same way largely So Newtonian Newtonian physics is the, the physics of the observable world or the world. It's kind of easy to observe. And what's fascinating is that Isaac Newton knew that they were limited. Like he's, he's intellectually, scientifically one of my heroes.

Moby (29:48):

Like really remarkable man. Like his expression was, I'm describing the beach while looking at the ocean. Mm-hmm. The idea was like, he's like, we're describing something small, there's something a lot bigger out there, we just don't know what it is yet. So then along comes the 20th century, and this is where I get a little, like the, the historical aspect of it. I mean, I know there was like Einstein obviously who was a patent clerk in Switzerland. So he was a pat, a patent clerk who also wrote about physics. And turns out he wrote some remark. He had remarkable insights and was incredibly smart. And around this time a lot, like a lot of early 20th century physicists, and this is where someone much smarter than me could just like rattle off a bunch of names. But I think of like Max Planck and Schrödinger and uh, people who started observing the nature of very small things.

Moby (30:47):

You know, on especially being able to start observing things on a subatomic level. And what, and, and sorry if any of this is really self-evident, but hopefully maybe people to you or people listening, it's not that obvious is the more they observed things on a subatomic level, the stranger things became, meaning the old laws of Newtonian physics sort of no longer applied on a subatomic level. I think Antman sort of deals with this in a very uncomfortable, wrong way. but on a subatomic level, which is, you know, on a subatomic level, it's the building blocks of everything. all of a sudden it seems like the laws of gravity fall apart. And the strangest thing to me is like, and it basically means that almost all of human physics can be practical, but are pointing us in a very wrong direction, is the nature of light. Cuz for the most part, like Einstein positive, that nothing in the universe can go faster than light. There's a good chance that's wrong. That there might be some things out there that quote unquote move faster than light. Um, I think Higgs boson maybe, uh, or.

Moby (31:58):

But also dudes to my yard when I start using my pickup lines.

Moby (32:02):

Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. When you start using Hogwarts pickup lines.

Lindsay (32:05):

Yeah. <laugh>.

Moby (32:06):

So here is something in terms of, like, you were talking about things that make your brain hurt like taxes and mutual funds. One of the things that I find almost liberating in its that it's so confusing is that light can either be a particle or a wave means the nature of light is unknowable to us. And apparently the observer can, to an extent, influence whether it manifests as a particle or a wave. How do they do that? No one knows. On a quantum level, having an ostensibly sentient conscious observer affects the outcome of the experiment. Is

Lindsay (32:48):

That like Schrödinger's cat?

Moby (32:49):

Yeah, like the observer is a part of the experiment, but not in an anecdotal way. Not an abstract way, but an actual real way that apparently, and I've never done this, maybe we should get some magic device that enables us to turn light into a particle or a wave and the observer affects the outcome. I remember this is what first sparked my interest in quantum mechanics years ago. I read something about how in a vacuum, you know, in a vacuum, there's nothing, not not a Dyson vacuum, but a a a vacuum in space where there's, there's nothing, there's no matter, there's nothing. Physicists were able to measure a vacuum and they found that on a subatomic level, particles just started appearing. They compared it to the equivalent of a Volkswagen bug appearing in your living room for a hundredth of a second and then disappearing.

Lindsay (33:44):

But why? And from where?

Moby (33:46):

The majority of the universe is dark matter and dark matter, such a misnomer cuz we call it dark matter, simply cuz we don't know what it is, we can't see it, but the weight of the universe is unknowable to us. And so then it sort of begs the question, well then why are we even talking about the observable universe when the majority of the universe is unobservable?

Lindsay (34:06):

Yeah. Interesting. Well, I mean, I guess there's nothing we can do about the unobservable, but I can do something about a VW bug, like drive around and be the coolest girl in town. <laugh>.

Moby (34:16):

So another really cool idea is superposition which is when you have two particles that are connected, they can be very far away from each other. And this is something moving faster than the speed of light. When one spins in a certain way, the other will respond to that. But they can be very, very far apart. They can be the equivalent of the sun and the next sun apart. And somehow they're connected. Like, how, how, so they're these connections, but

Lindsay (34:42):

What makes it, why, why isn't that just a random thing? I mean, there's all these particles, they're all spinning some direction. What makes them think that they're connected?

Moby (34:49):

I guess maybe in like the Large Hadron Collider or places where they can isolate individual particles, they'll have, like, they'll split one particle into smaller particles. And those smaller particles, when one spins in a certain direction, the other will spin in the opposite direction or the same direction. Like they're, they're connected even though they're the equivalent of a hundred million miles apart.

Lindsay (35:10):

Let me ask you this, do you think that the Hadron Collider is changing the course of our lived experience on this planet? Because there are people that do,

Moby (35:19):

I know that there are some people who are afraid that they're gonna create a singularity or a black hole. it's within the realm of possibility. So maybe, who knows, they might create, what's a stable singularity that suddenly eats up the entire planet? That would suck. No pun intended. <laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>. So one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated with quantum mechanics, but clearly don't know what I'm talking about to a large extent is what bigger question is there than what's the nature of existence? There's no other question. I mean, everything else is like a fun question or a practical question, but like, what other question is there? The nature of existence.

Lindsay (35:59):

I mean that's what every religion since the beginning of time has been trying to figure out. Right.

Moby (36:04):

And every philosopher right, every spiritual tradition, every scientist. So I I I enter the realm of thinking that has humans. I don't think that we are capable of understanding the nature of existence

Lindsay (36:19):

With our little brains.

Moby (36:21):

And I had this conversation a few years ago with some physicists where I asked them, I was like, is there a model of the universe that doesn't involve time matter or gravity? And they, they're like, um, sort of, but that's, it's like basically if you remove every way in which we traditionally measure the universe, I think that's what the actual truth of existence might be.

Lindsay (36:45):

Like our spirits, our spirit like, like <laugh>, like a spirit isn't held by that.

Moby (36:50):

Yeah. Like I, I think, I think

Lindsay (36:51):

But we also can't observe a spirit.

Moby (36:53):

I think if we remove time, I don't think there's such a thing objectively as time. I think it's just something we observe. But if you think about it, my question about time is first of all, you can't really ever point to time, we can talk to the, the effects of aging. We can talk about entropy, but time itself seems like no one's ever able to define. Like we can talk about the past, but there's never been a present. The moment we say the word present, it's already gone.

Lindsay (37:22):

It's already gone.

Moby (37:24):

And my feeling is that things are, there's no before, there's no after. There's just simply existence. Which is really interesting because that's actually the Hebrew word for God kind of describes that.

Lindsay (37:42):

How do you mean?

Moby (37:42):

Do you know why Jesus was supposedly crucified?

Lindsay (37:46):

Um, because he was too outspoken?

Moby (37:48):

Because he said two words that you're not allowed to say. And it's so fascinating. So the, I believe the sades or the Pharisees came to Jesus and said, "Who are you?" And he supposedly said, "Who do you say I am?" And they said, "Well, some people say you're the son of man. Some people say you're this..." Here's why he was crucified. And a lot of people don't know this. He said "Before Noah, before Abraham, I am." It's the most interesting thing. He didn't say "I was" he said "Before Noah, before Abraham, I am." And he was crucified for those two words.

Lindsay (38:23):

I Am?

Moby (38:24):

I am. Which is roughly a translation of Yahweh.

Lindsay (38:27):

Interesting.

Moby (38:28):

So it's so fascinating that the Hebrew name of God is an entity removed from time and that that's why Jesus was crucified

Lindsay (38:35):

Because he said that he was an entity removed from time.

Moby (38:37):

Yeah. "Before Noah, before Abraham. I am." So this is what obsesses me when I go hiking. Cause I love our physical anthropomorphized experience of existence. I love the world that we perceive where there's color, there's air, there's delicious food that we can eat. There's Bagel to play with like the physical Newtonian world. I love it. I think it's so interesting. But the question is, is there any part of it that points to the actual objective nature of existence?

Lindsay (39:13):

Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

Moby (39:16):

<laugh>, Neither do I.

Lindsay (39:17):

Uhoh my brain started to hurt thinking about all of it.

Moby (39:20):

Yeah.

Lindsay (39:20):

Oh no. What do we do? I need to kiss Bagel.

Moby (39:24):

<laugh>.

Lindsay (39:25):

Come here Bagel. I gotta kiss you. I thought too much about particles.

Moby (39:28):

<laugh>. Thank you. Well that's, I had this philosophy professor years ago called Bill Fink and he was my favorite teacher of all time. Bill Fink. Yeah. So Bill, if you're listening, you're professor Bill Fink, PhD, doctorate of philosophy, the greatest philosophy professor I ever had. Because he was so lighthearted about all this. He would say he's, he's like, yeah, sure I can deconstruct Newtonian physics. I can on a quantum level prove to you that nothing exists. I can prove to you that there's no metric by which humans observe or describe the universe that's objectively real. He's like, but I'm still gonna enjoy eating a delicious apple. And when that bus comes down the street, I'm still gonna get outta the way. Yeah. So it's, he, he called it naive realism. And I guess the phenomenology is sort of inspired by that as well.

Lindsay (40:21):

So I was listening to this podcast by this like very fancy swami type guy and he was talking about how everything, we learn, everything we do, everything we touch, everything we eat, everyone we know are meaningless unless it changes the unknowable part of your spirit. So his kind of thing I think on a quantum level is saying, unless it shifts the particles inside of you or gets you closer to the particles inside of you that make you who you are, then maybe it's meaningless. Like the books you read won't matter. But how it changed your spirit will matter if it changes your spirit.

Moby (41:00):

It's a beautiful idea. I, I won. I mean I have no idea if it's true or not.

Lindsay (41:05):

I don't either. But I really loved it because it makes me like, okay, yeah. If it's not changing or shifting or expanding whatever I deem as my own spirit, then what's the point in doing it?

Moby (41:15):

And I guess there's a really interesting aspect to that, which is the majority of us, including me, including you, including everybody, for the most part, we are wedded to the material world. And I started singing that Madonna song in my head. <laugh> But without material food we starve without material water, we die without material air we die. Like it's clear that like we are very wedded to the material world with the understanding that the material world doesn't really exist. So it's such a paradox. How can we be fully in this material world that a little bit of scrutiny proves doesn't exist?

Lindsay (41:56):

Well it exists in a way that sustains the particles inside of us to an extent.

Moby (42:02):

Yeah. Bill Fink called it naive realism. Yeah. Like, like I'm like that bus might not exist, but I'm still gonna get outta the way.

Lindsay (42:08):

But also if we are experiencing the particle or the wave, then the particle or wave does exist, right?

Moby (42:14):

Yeah.

Lindsay (42:15):

So then we would in turn exist for making the particle exist and everything else around it.

Moby (42:20):

It makes me think of one of, one of my favorite spiritual texts. I've talked about the Tao Te Ching? Um, and how when I was 15 years old, I had a crush on Louise Stoner and she didn't like me, but she got me interested in Daoism. And so I still love the Tao Te Ching

Lindsay (42:37):

Which until I met you, I called "Taoism" <laugh>.

Moby (42:39):

Most people do. I probably did as well. I think. I think I called it "Taoism" for a few decades until someone corrected me. Yeah. And there's a restaurant called "Tao", so like Yeah. Taoism, Daoism.

Lindsay (42:50):

Yeah. <laugh>,

Moby (42:51):

Can I read you the, what I think is the best description of the non-corporate quantum world?

Lindsay (42:58):

Sure.

Moby (42:58):

That was written 5,000 years ago.

Lindsay (43:00):

Great.

Moby (43:00):

Okay, here you go. "The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of things. Ever desireless one can see the mystery and ever desiring one can only see the manifestations. These two come from the same source, but they differ in name. This is darkness. Darkness within darkness is the gate to all mystery." It's 5,000 years ago!

Lindsay (43:30):

Yeah. I might need to go back and read that slowly, once or twice to kind of really get the <laugh> grasp that puppy <laugh>.

Moby (43:37):

Yep. It's, yeah,

Lindsay (43:39):

It's fun being me because everything is unknowable <laugh>.

Moby (43:43):

Well I think that's just the nature of humanity and like, and the alternative is to be like Trump and to think that if you have enough stuff, if you can just have enough gold and enough hamburgers and enough wigs, <laugh> that everything's gonna be fine.

Lindsay (44:02):

Yeah. But also I think where things get tricky is when you lose the flexibility of knowing that it's impossible to know and you think you know everything and you become rigid in that and you become, brittle.

Moby (44:15):

And it's understandable because like we get old and like people are constantly trying to figure out how do you, how do you make this existence as comfortable and meaningful as possible? And maybe the only answer is to enjoy playing with Bagel.

Lindsay (44:33):

Enjoy your cool tent and the Fugees

Moby (44:35):

<laugh>.

Moby (44:36):

And But also to have compassion for yourself and others because existence is confusing. you know, we get old, we get sick, we're lonely, we're scared, we're confused, we're alive for a couple of decades in a universe that's unknowable. So of course everybody's confused and having compassion, even for as hard as this is like the Trumps of the world, who are clearly just like they're waging war against the universe. They're trying to hold onto some desperate, physical, corporeal idea of what life is. And it's making them miserable, it's making them sick. But we can, if possible, maybe, I don't know, maybe that's too much to ask for compassion for a Trump or a Steve Bannon.

Lindsay (45:18):

Well I think that's the ultimate exercise in building your compassion muscle because it's very hard to when they kind of go against everything that you believe.

Lindsay (45:39):

So since we talked so much about quantum physics and we mentioned We Are All Made of Stars, which has to do with

Moby (45:46):

Quantum mechanics. Sort of. Yeah. Astrophysics.

Lindsay (45:49):

Astrophysics. Um, I thought maybe you could do and we just, cuz we just did a Bossa Nova version of beautiful, maybe you do a Bossa Nova version of We Are All Made of Stars. That's fine. Right?

Moby (46:00):

Okay, I don't have the fancy Bossa nova drum machine. So how about just on, on acoustic guitar?

Lindsay (46:05):

Yeah. Great.

Moby (46:06):

Okay. But let's, let's give it a try.

Moby (46:17):

<sings> Growing in numbers, growing and speed. I can't fight the future. Can't fight what? I see

Moby (46:32):

<speaks> You ready?

Moby and Lindsay (46:34):

<sings> Cuz people they come together. People, they fall apart. No one can stop us now. We are all made of stars.

Moby (46:53):

<sings> Effort of lover us left in my mind. I sing in the reaches. We'll see where we find

Moby and Lindsay (47:11):

<sings> People, they come together, <laugh> people, they fall apart. No one can stop us now cuz we are on all made of stars.

Moby (47:37):

<speaks> Right Bagel?

Moby (47:46):

<whispers> We are all man of stars.

Lindsay (47:51):

That was so good.

Moby (47:52):

Should we say goodbye?

Lindsay (47:54):

Yeah. Thank you so much. Um, if you're still here, you are unknowably cool because you've stuck around like a real one. Um, so thank you for listening. Go rate and talk about this to your friends. Thank you so much to Jonathan Nesvadba who edits and does the music production on this podcast like a boss. Um, and thank you to human content for, uh, for getting this podcast out into your ears. And I'd also like to thank, uh, Irwin Schrödinger, uh, sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for helping us figure out what we're talking about in the very most basic way.

Moby (48:39):

Well, helping us to recognize that there's nothing about the observable universe that has any sort of objective truth. Did I just ruin our ending <laugh>? We were like singing our nice little song, kissing Bagel, saying thank you, and then all of a sudden I had to come back along and be like, "oh, but and, just a reminder, there's nothing about the universe that can be known". Thanks and goodnight <laugh>.