Ari Shaffir is a stand-up comedian and also hosts the podcasts “Ari Shaffir’s Skeptic Tank” & “Punch Drunk Sports.”

Ari is a long time good friend of Joe, usually when Joe and his friends get together they talk about a lot of random topics, lets see if they have anything interesting to say in this podcast.

Folding phones, they spoke about how the latest folding phone is out which costs $2000 US! If that wasn’t enough you also can’t use a pen or your fingernail to touch the screen, the screen is really sensitive due to it’s flexible nature. Folding phones are in their early designs though so this will likely be amended over time, keep an eye on these for sure.

Marriage was pointed out to be a bit silly, one of Ari’s friends had not been alone in his own house for ten whole years! As an introvert myself that sounds pretty bleak, you need a break here and there. Joe spoke about how he had a friend live with him for half a year which turned out fine, this appeared to be because the house was pretty big and his friend was excellent at cleaning up behind himself (very important).

“Woke” ideology was compared to evangelical ideologies in that both seek to make others behave in a certain ‘correct’ way. Which is an interesting take, I think forcing behaviors on people or forcing them to use certain words is quite ridiculous.

They spoke a bit on the public’s sensitivity to race relations jokes these days. Is it healthy for us to take away the ability to joke about sensitive topics? Being offended is subjective and if we try to control speech based on what people find offensive then who is controlling what is offensive? Sounds like a dark path to me.

Ari asked where Joe and Jamie would go if they could, Joe said he would love to go on a real African safari which would be pretty unreal.

They spoke about a bloke who repaired his own Tesla car using another junk Tesla but Tesla wouldn’t give him a new key or the software updates because they don’t support doing independent repairs. Whereas Ford would fully support that kind of ingenuity, Tesla seems a little protective of their inventions at this stage in the companies life.

They spoke a little on how overcrowded some tourist destinations can get, it really takes away from the reason you go on vacation in the first place. Specifically Venice.

Ari pointed out how we are doing so well as a society now that people are looking at each other to find things to create conflict over, with how good our lives are today it’s never been so easy. Maybe all these situations where people are getting upset over what would historically be trivial matters is a phenomenon of boredom as a society? Or a deep down desire to have some soft of conflict in our lives. I think this topic deserves more study and I suspect we will look back 10-20 years from now and be a little more wise.

Quite a loose podcast because of their relationship but a nice chill time with some interesting talking points.

Check out Ari’s comedy special on Netflix.com