Schizophrenia Simulator

Hey man, I'm a little fresh turkey sandwich. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. Today's episode is about a man with schizophrenia who's created a kind of schizophrenia simulator so people that aren't schizophrenic can experience what his world is like. I am interested in schizophrenia simulator. I have not personally had schizophrenia so I've been interested. Is it something that we are positive about? Like, this is a good thing that he's doing? Yeah, I think it's a really good thing. It's sort of an insight into a mental health condition that I think a lot of us don't understand, so I think it's really great. Yeah, well, as we've seen recently, there's a whole bunch of mental health conditions that people don't understand. But we're speaking just after John Davidson, the man with Tourette's accidentally, how do you even say it? He said Rachel Slur at the BAFTA Awards and people are like slamming him, which seems like there's a lack of understanding about that. I think there's, if you don't, it's a funny thing, eh? We're all just meat sex trapped inside our minds, and we can only experience our one brain, and so everyone else is just a locked, unknowable box, and so it's impossible to really empathize it with them, and to know exactly what they're feeling. For instance, I have no idea what fucked up stuff is happening inside your ears between your ears at any moment, and it's such a leap of empathy to sort of see you as a human being. And that's just in my personal life, and I'm sure you feel the same way. And so I like, I think this is a really great thing that he's doing. Hmm. Hey, before you go, I had one other question. Often, when I call you every fortnight for this podcast, I try and get you to go somewhere quiet, and last time I called you, you were in some kind of a windstorm, so this time when I texted you to set up this call, I said, you know, let me know in a convenient time today where you'll be somewhere quiet with no massive winds blowing, and you reply to immediately, the only wind blowing will be through the empty space between your ears, which I thought was quite confrontational. And then you followed it up with, can you call me in three minutes time? And I just, I've just been thinking, what did you need those three minutes for? I'd like to prepare to have a wank, like why three minutes? Why is that, why is that what you would think would take three minutes? You're like, what could he be doing in three minutes? Three minutes is a solid speedwank time. But why three minutes? Like, what was that three minutes? Like, where were you and why did you need three minutes? I just saw that because that would take, I was 942 when I replied, and 945 was a good round number, and I quite like standing on a round number, I want you to call it. But no, it's good to know that that three minutes was sort of a rounding situation, as opposed to you needing three minutes to do something. Yeah, we're in the wink, obviously, but that's one minute. I'm David Farrier in New Zealander accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes his country tick. Now, there's a guy I walk past most days to get my coffee who mumbles to himself under his breath. Without thinking, I tend to walk around him a little bit. I veer, of course, putting extra distance between us. There's something inside me that sees he's dangerous. He's unhinged and unsafe. I don't understand him. Now, I assume this is something to do with a social code that says we're not really meant to matter to ourselves in public. At home, as I pace the house trying to work out an idea, I often talk to myself. But that stops the second I walk out the front door. It also seems that maybe this guy isn't just talking to himself. He's also looking to one side, talking to someone who isn't there, and that's always hard dangerous to me too. I've been thinking a lot about the way I react to this guy ever since I discovered artist Christopher Grant. Chris says schizophrenia. In the videos he creates, a his attempt to let us see the world through the eyes of someone who sees and hears people and entities that aren't there. It's estimated around 3.7 million Americans have experienced schizophrenia at some point in their lives as most common in people age 26 to 44. The age range, Rob and I currently exist in. I figured to understand this condition more, I talked to Chris about what it's like to have schizophrenia, and what it's like to try and explain his condition to other people, and what other people make of his videos, and of him laying himself so bare. So get ready to hopefully see schizophrenia in a different light, because this is schizophrenia's simulator episode. Hi Rob, how are you? Good, how are you? I'm good. I'm going to crack. I haven't promoted cut water in a while, a brand that has nothing to do with the show, but they have a chocolate express on my teeny. This is a drink which is a cut with more water, right? Apparently that's a myth, but I'm just going straight in. I'm going to give it a taste test. Delicious. Coaster is going down. You're learning. And quickly speaking of sponsorship, Invisalign hasn't reached out at all. I put down my credit card. A few people did reach out offering to break your jaw though. There were a few kind of people willing to take me out of the back and smack me in the mouth, which is very kind. Which also other housekeeping live shows. Yes, we have three coming up. March 29th in Salt Lake City, April 2nd in Austin, and April 4th in Dallas. Yeah, if you go to flightlessbirdpod.com, you can buy tickets there, or if you're on our Instagram and the links there, we have tickets as well. So we would love to see you there. Or go to the description of this episode. There's so many places to get the links as well. Yeah, we put a lot of care into the live shows and have a lot of fun with it. So yeah, they're coming together. I'm starting to get excited. I will say we do have an extra special treat as part of the shows, which I think about in Texas. Oh my god, I get so excited. Yes, very special treat. And if you're a taxidermist or no taxidermist or animals, that are dead and stuffed. Definitely not alive. Birds mostly. We want to dress the set. And also we love meeting local taxidermists in town. And so far, when we've done these tours, we've kind of been blown away by the people that have come on board with this amazing taxidermy. Or I guess if you're in any of these cities and you just have large, weird objects, that makes sense for our show. It's a dangerous prompt. Yeah, I'm into it. I think it works. I mean, if like Chicago, we had a giant Frank Thomas bubble hit doll. It's really good. So similar objects, weird things, [email protected]. And one more quick plug over on our Patreon this week, we catch up with what? Who went to New Zealand? You remember him from the parasocial listener episode last year. He is now in New Zealand in some Patreon. We have a bit of a catch up. That's patreon.com/flowersbred. And thus completes our housekeeping. Housekeeping. Do you have any housekeeping? No. Thanks for bringing me this coffee. You got it. See, it's "Enjoy Davey on it", which is slightly annoying. That was for you. Now, today's topic is one of these ones that I would say is, you know, it's loosely based around the concept of what the show is, but I guess like the prompt for me was coming across as incredible artist who makes these videos that make you see the world through his perspective. And I texted you about this guy that I see, and we went back and forth trying to figure out whether it's the same guy or not, because we get coffee at different places, but in the same neighborhood. Yeah, I mean, we live about six blocks away. That's funny. And I think it's fair to say in the area that we're in, we live in a really nice area of Los Angeles. I feel very lucky to be here, which counters with there's a huge unhoused issue and there's a lot of mental health stuff going on. There's a lot of drug stuff going on, sometimes combined, sometimes not. And so I think in our day-to-day lives you do run up against people and you kind of have to do a mental calculation of what to expect and what's going on. Yeah. And with this guy that's always speaking to himself, I always think he does always feel, I feel scared of him, essentially. And when I spoke to Chris and So I started talking to him, it just made me see this guy in a very different light. And so I wanted to talk to him more about that. Yeah. I mean, the fact that there were multiple people within a few blocks that we were describing. Because we were describing several people. Yes. In the end, we figured that out eventually. Yeah. And it could have been one of like four that are regulars around the few streets. Totally. Before we get into it, a few quick facts. And I'll preface this by saying that I'm definitely not an expert in schizophrenia. It was coined by a Swiss psychologist, Yuzhyn Bielder in 1908, very long time ago. And essentially, it's a mental disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions to organize thinking or behavior. And sometimes having sort of a flat effect in your voice, so like speaking like very flatly. And symptoms kind of come up during adulthood, really resolve completely, although there are treatments that can ease the symptoms. Effects, males, more often. they have early onset as well than females, as far as the causes may include some genetic factors but also environmental factors, including sometimes what your parents consumed during pregnancy, that kind of thing. But there's so many unknowns about it and like Hayden was saying at the beginning of the episode, it is so interesting and I think about this sometimes in therapy when I'm trying to get across to my therapist about what I'm trying to talk about. We just don't know how other people perceive the world. We kind of assume people we have the same reference points. I don't know how you come at the same stuff that I come at. It's when I'll never know because we're both in these separate bodies. It's really weird. Until we get those chips, until we get uploaded into the cloud with masks, neural ink and I can jump into your body, you can jump into my body. I mean, would it be shocking? Would you be shocked to be inside my brain or would you just be like, "Ah, mostly like my brain, but with some different information followed away, some things not there?" I guess it's fairly similar. Are you watching the new season of Fallout? I haven't started yet. There's some stuff with what you say you want to do, as far as getting my brain up into the cloud. Yeah, and just like sustaining your head. That is sold Fallout Season 2 for me straight away. My obsession with saving the head. For like 200 years. I love this already. It's also that thing where there is this, I can't remember, it's probably like a very common thought exercise, but this idea of you give any animal the sense of language. What animal would you want to give that gift to? So you could talk to them. Would you want to talk to a lion? Would you want to talk to a cockroach? Would you want to talk to the skunk that's like under your house? And there's this kind of idea that even if those animals could talk, you couldn't have a conversation with them because at that point of reference for the world would be so wildly different to ours. It would just be, even if they had English, it would be complete garbage. Yeah, you would have to download like culture of viewing culture into their brain as well as the ability to just speak. Yeah, and also like understand, we would have to somehow understand skunk culture as well or something. But I think about that in the way of being in other people's brains as well and like how doable it would be. I might get into your brain and have a mental breakdown straight away because it's so weird in there. You seem normal to me and vary together. I don't know what's going on upstairs. Yeah, I mean, you don't know that. I don't know. Same with you. Well, that's Hayden's threat to me that I'm. I just feel like in your brain, it would just be taller and just a taller brain. Just like a bigger vessel. I don't know. Yeah, just a taller viewpoint is what I imagine. Oh my god. We're the little more space inside your head. Do you want to expand on what that means? A little bit more space. Interesting. I also think brains fascinate me because they're so unknown. It's like the ocean. We don't let people get really excited about space. Ocean is where we know the least it feels like and I feel the brain's the same. It's the most important thing in our head and our body. We have no idea how the hell it's working. Confuses everyone. Are there any statistics you have on how drug use and schizophrenia overlap? It is from what I can tell in my short amount of research, drug use and parents can have great outcomes of schizophrenia in children. So cannabis, other drugs, ingested alcohol. That stuff can influence it. As far as drug use and people and whether it brings it on or not, I think it's one of those chicken and egg things where often, and that was the case with the person I talked to, when they started getting these voices, they turned to drugs to kind of quite not making it more so. And so I think they can be interplays there. But it's not like if you're smoking weed, you're suddenly having schizophrenia. I wasn't thinking it was weed. I was thinking more like math. Oh, those going to, I don't know. I don't have any status in front of me about that, whether that factors in or not. Have you ever been worried that you will give yourself schizophrenia? In what way? Expand on that particular prompt. I don't know. Do you have a voice in your head? I'm assuming. Oh, no. See, that's another really interesting thing. I do have an internal monologue. My friend Eddie does not have a voice in his head at all, which fascinates me. It's just quietness in there. You do or don't. I do. You do. Yeah. But it's just my, my voice in my head is just me. It's pretty much sounds the same as when I'm talking about you, but it's internal. I don't have different characters. Internally, he can be a bit depressed or a bit happy like I can be. What's your voice doing? Is it your voice? Yeah. I can't hear it, but I'm assuming. What do you mean you can't hear it? I don't audibly hear it, but in your brain, when he's talking to you, when Rob2's talking to Rob1, he sort of has a similar accent and stuff. Sure. Yeah. But it's one person. Yes. Yeah, totally. Yes. I just remember when I first found out about schizophrenia as like a teenager, since I have an inner dialogue, I had like a fear that I see out of control. Yeah, totally. And because I'm aware of this thing, I could give myself it. No, I think that's, and I talk a bit about Chris, this sort of overlap between, because there are forms of like self-talk in your brain and ruminations that do kind of start to spin off, not just schizophrenia, but into this sort of in-between territory where it's an unhealthy kind of internal dialogue that can happen. Yeah. And like it, not that it has a mind of its own, but it is an internal dialogue. Do you feel like sometimes little Rob inside big Rob, big Robbing, you in front of me now? Sometimes has a different opinion or you get into a little fight with your internal little guy, or you mostly synced up. Mostly synced up. Yeah. And I haven't had that thought in a long time. I think it was more like teenage years. But now it's seated in your mind yet again. Yeah, it's almost like a weird like OCD tick of like a fear of something. So you keep thinking about it. Totally. I can feel that. And the fear of like, I'm thinking about this so much that maybe this is going to come true. Because what we talked about in my childhood, I was a big believer in prayer. And once I realized that I'd be scared, I was going to pray the wrong thing. And like, God would hear it. And then I'd just be like, thinking all these like weird things, like, kill the janitor would come into my head, which makes me sound crazy. I was like, oh no, and I'd be like, pray again, don't kill the janitor. And then because you're thinking about, don't kill the janitor, you're just walking around all day saying, don't kill the janitor. For the record, I didn't kill a janitor, and I didn't want the janitor to do it. But that was the worry. Well, but yeah, your brain knows the worst thing that it can say in a situation. Yeah. And we can get back to the conversation. We had recently where, um, do you control the brain or does the brain control you? Yeah. Carful. And I will say most the time my brain is not going to like the worst thing that can be said in a situation. No, no, no, but is it now in social situations where it's like, don't say this. Yeah, don't say this. But when you do that, you're thinking it, which goes back to what Hayden was talking about, which has been the strimer at the Baptist recently, where yelled out a racial slurrer. And there was this debate like over and over and over again. Yeah, it was loud. And it wasn't censored, which was quite crazy. Yeah. And they censored another speech. Yeah, but there was a certain argument online, which was like, no, yeah, sure. This guy had Tourette's, but also he wouldn't have said that word if he wasn't racist. But of course, the point you made earlier, but we started the show, when you have Tourette's, your brain is thinking of the worst possible thing that's sitting in there to yell at that point. I mean, the main mad thing is that they, it's one situation in the room, whatever that is. It's another thing for the BBC to just air it. Yeah. Well, and I don't think it was the first disruption during the evening. Well, the mad thing is when you, when you look at, I think the censorship for the night, there was what they did decide to censor was someone yelling out about free Palestine. That got censored and yet, um, a racial slurrer just was let through. Yeah. But then that's, I mean, the BBC is this whole of the topic like there and such a free fall of chaos at the moment. Yeah. Used to be such an incredibly respected British newsroom and institution. And now it's just a friggin mess. Similar, similar paths. Yeah. Oh my god. I mean, different topic, but it's February 25th when you record this. Rob and I were both watching the state of the nation's speech. And we both decided you tapped out a little bit before me. Yeah. Um, but it was very long and we both ended up just going not worth watching this because it's just it's sort of unwatchable. It was ridiculously divisive. Yes. Where it was just like a plaza after a plaza. Like, uh, but only half the room would stand up in a plot and the other half wouldn't. And they were just like taking shots the whole time. It was a rough thing to watch in every possible way. It was really hard. And it was the same thing with like the kid rock Super Bowl thing. Where I was curious. Yeah. Of like, what the hell is this going to be? But I didn't want to put it on to give viewership to it completely. So I did not watch any of that. I mean it wasn't really an option for me to watch that over bad bunny but regardless I didn't want to add to the viewership and it was the same with the state of the union because I know he's looking at how many people watch that. Oh, biggest narcissist, biggest fan of television writings on Earth. See it'll be when I will be watching all those views. But a lot of it is like people just tuning in to see what chaos is about to ensue. But you're right. You're right. The main take away was it was just it was the most divisive. He was engineered it to the most divisive thing possible. Yeah. And rough. Really rough. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Pesty. Now Rob I've heard you have recently been involved in some kind of DIY project. Am I correct? I have been for Vincent's preschool. We've got work days every couple months where we've got to go and do physical labor. What do you have to do? I sanded the railings. Good job. Which hours of sanding railings was very satisfying. I am terrible at DIY. I don't do it. The closest I've got to DIY is trying to deal with the cockroaches that get into my apartment. For instance, I created a thing under my door to block off the entrance because I have a suspicion and some of them are coming from outside. Didn't really help. But what has helped? Pesty. I am not a fan of cockroaches and Emily's not a fan of cockroaches. We've also been finding blackwood or spiders in our driveway along the side of the house. I don't like that. So I definitely need Pesty. It sounds like. Yeah, the good thing about it and I got my pack on it's very glad to get it when I had cockroaches last summer. It is easy. It's effective and it's affordable. And it's kid and pet friendly. And with Pesty, you can get started at just $35 per treatment with the customized plan based on your location. What bugs you may have and the climate you're in. And with the DIY kit, there are no strangers in your house or appointments to make time for you to sort it out yourself. Pesty gets rid of 100 different types of bugs. That's a lot of bugs. From spiders, like Rob has a problem with, to ants, to roaches, and scorpions, holy shit, scorpions. Oh, you guys don't have scorpions in New Zealand. We absolutely do not. The kit includes a sprayer, a mixing bag, pesticide gloves and instructions. You can complete in less than 10 minutes. So keep the bugs away with Pesty. Go to Pesty.com/Bird for an extra 10% off your order. That's P-E-S-T-I-E.com/Bird for an extra 10% off. Support for FlightlessBird comes from grow therapy. Now, have you ever tried to Google therapist near me and just ended up way more anxious when you started the whole thing? I do that sometimes with Google Maps. I'll type one thing and I have typed in therapy before and it's incredibly stressful because you just get a whole lot of dots and you don't over know where to begin. Yeah, there's a lot of decision fatigue that happens when you see all of the different options, which is why grow therapy is great and makes it way less overwhelming and way more affordable. Because trying to find a therapist shouldn't feel like online dating with a high deductible, grow therapy gets there. They make finding the dream therapist to get to you way easier and way faster. So whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easy to find a therapist who fits you not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. I've already talked about therapy, how I went on to be diatribe about trying to understand what's going on in my brain and my therapist's brain. But to say, I find therapy very helpful. I recommend it. If you want to get stuck into sorting out your brain a bit more, give therapy a try. Whatever challenges you're facing, grow therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans and sessions average about $21 with insurance in some pay as little as $0, depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com/bird today to get started. That's growtherapy.com/bird. Growtherapy.com/bird. Availability and coverage area by state and insurance plan. Okay, schizophrenia. Before we get into this little conversation with Chris, who I really, really like. He's an American, right? Well, we get into that soon. Another very good question. I thought he was American. But as you may know, if you listen to this podcast, David Ferrier does not always get things 100% correct. He's been known on occasion to get things wrong. But it doesn't change the fact that schizophrenia is a thing in America. I'm just going to say it's the most common psychotic disorder. The frequency of schizophrenia varies across the world within countries, across geographical locations, and by gender. And finally, schizophrenia caused 17,000 deaths in the US in 2015, just as a stat of how problematic it can be if we don't end a deal with it, and things it leads to and diagnosed. So with that, this is Chris. Chapter one. Who is Christopher Grant? I was super stoked that you followed me. I have really good memories. My brother and I bonded a lot watching Dark Forest. I know a lot of people probably bother you about season two and all that. I'm not one of those people. I'm sure you hear it all the time, but I just wanted to say it was really cool. Request for a second season of a thing that Netflix doesn't want more of are both flattering and annoying. And Christopher Grant knows this. But it's always nice to get an ego boost when you discover people who you're a fan of, fans of yours. I wish I wasn't the shallow, but I am. I've followed Chris over the last year as he posts on Instagram and tick talk about what it's like to be inside his head. I'm not alone. Millions of other people also watch his videos. And the most shocking thing I immediately learned from Chris is that he's not American. Look, you could probably tell this from the accent already, but I'm new here. I don't know. A lot of people think I'm from the US, but no, I'm from Canada. I am indigenous. I'm a magma person and I live on a reservation in my own house in the woods. For anyone out there going, "Flight this bird is a podcast about Americans. What the heck are you talking to a Canadian for?" Well, I watched that bad Benny Huff time show in Canada as part of the Americas. So there you go. Classes about time we had a Canadian on the show. As for Chris' part of Canada, he lives in a slightly lesser known province called New Brunswick. My people in an ancestral way are very known for being protective and gentle and mostly to this day still primarily do a lot of things like lobster fishing and mild hunting and stuff like that. And the identity that we have hearing at least for my part of Canada as an indigenous person is we're known as the people of the dawn because we see the sunrise first in the morning on our coast. So a lot of our practices have to do with life, death, rebirth. It's a huge part of my perspective that I took onto my experience after being diagnosed almost a decade ago. That's what I wanted to talk to him about his diagnosis. Chris has schizophrenia. And for the last few years, he's been drawing and animating what he sees in years. So others can start to understand what that word "schizophrenia" means, what it means for him at least. Growing up, Chris didn't deal with any voices, visions, or hallucinations. But he says, looking back, he could see he was a bit different to the other kids. Just like anybody looking back through their life, you can see that life is no different from a novel. You can see like foreshadowing in people you hung out with or experiences you've been through. Sometimes there's very odd, I guess, coincidences that once you're older, it kind of freaks you out because you're like, oh, I didn't see that coming. How could I? He says that as a child, he had a lot of issues with authority and teachers. It didn't come from a place of trying to be difficult, rather from a place of curiosity. So it was very frequent that I would have misunderstandings with teachers, principals, other people, young, been a foreritative position because I asked a question why or what. And it was always taken as like, I'm back talking or being sassy. Before I went through the psychiatry and figured out that I'm schizophrenic. As I got older, I started to realize I actually think it seemed to parallel more like autism. I was a kid who was very obsessive of a lot of very specific things to a point that one may argue is borderline psychotic. He got incredibly obsessed with parts of history involving disasters. Titanic and Chernobyl were big ones for him. I think it was really off-putting to both my parents and teachers around me because I didn't really have a filter. So I would just go to school and be like, did you know that the Chernobyl reactor exploded at this hour and this? And so I was very much a constant info dumper who is very macabre, but joyfully so. I'm very fascinated by the fact that things decay and that people have to deal with darkness and life and all sorts of things. No wonder he loved doctorists. It's like I'd made the show just for him. Chapter 2. Growing up. I wanted to talk to Chris about how indigenous people are treated in Canada versus the US as I realize I have no clue. I think to more fully understand Chris and the way he sees the world, it's important to understand and where he comes from. This isn't to say it explains his schizophrenia, rather the way in which he views it. - Campnida is really good at this in a lot of ways, but I do live in a place where the police pretend that they're okay with everybody, but just this year, like three people have been fatally shot from my ancestry. There's other reserves that are kind of in the province, I'm in, and on multiple reserves, not too far from me. RCMP were sent to do wellness checks on other Migma people and they were unarmed and they weren't a threat on the body cams, but they still got shot because they were perceived as dangerous and insane. - A quick Google search confirms all of this. Police killed two indigenous people in 2020, another in 2024, and another in January of this year. That kind of trauma bleeds into your community and life in a variety of ways. Ever since I was three years old, I've been dealing with the really intense trauma and distrust in adults. I don't want to go too much into it, but I think you can infer. - He trials off. Chris tells me he doesn't want this interview to be derailed by trauma dumping. He doesn't want his work explaining and destigmatizing schizophrenia to be bogged down and things he describes as dour. Now, at the same time, he sees the darker things in his life are important to acknowledge, at least in passing. - Ever since I was a little kid, I was described as melancholic, but happy at the same time. As I wanted to make a lot of friends, I said hello to strangers. I talked to animals and just very excited about life, but every now and then I would just stare off and I would be very in my own place in my head. And I was one of those kids that, even though I would socialize for a long time, I would either go into a bathroom somewhere or I would sit in a corner and I'd have to just reset because there was an overwhelming sadness or an anger or something I had to deal with, but I didn't quite understand yet 'cause I was very young. So I was very used to like taking bathroom breaks at school just to sit in a stall and just think and stare and just wonder, "What does this all mean? Why am I here? What is this?" So there was always a sense of dissociation added to that was what Chris saw around him as he grew up growing up on a reservation. It was very common for me to see the fact that life isn't just things building upon themselves, sometimes things break down into K. Out in the open, I saw people on meth falling into a meth psychosis, inspiring, and you see all the effects of that. And a lot of these people are related to me. There's about a hundred something people in my community on my reserve. They're all related to me in some way. So there's a weird trauma in that too. I don't wanna perpetuate a stereotype or anything, but when the system is pitted against you already, it's very easy to fall into addictions or make poor choices. It just sucks that it's like that sometimes. And so I had to grow up with that as being normalized. Just don't fall into that. I'd walk home from school and there's a car crash in a ditch and people are tending to somebody and it's just something that's always on the side of the road or you're always checking your window like who is that outside and stuff. So peppered throughout my childhood and young adult life is life being normal and playing video games and watching movies and being a kid. And then every now and then there's just a very intense reminder of death or decay or instability. He says it felt like the polarities in his brain were constantly flipping. And by the time he was 16, he was acutely aware that this was a slightly strange state to be living it. That led to him making an extra effort to fit in even more. I started to act as normal as I could, which is funny because to me that meant buying plaid shirts. I don't know why that. I was like, if I wear plaid, I'll look like the other miners in the town. There was a mine in my town where a lot of business came from on the outside of the reservation. And so I was like, if I dress like I work in a mine and I'm kind of wouldsy, maybe I'll fit in. And it fails. It failed very hard because you can dress as you like when someone talks to you and they're like, so how's your day? And I'm just like, oh, you know, I was chilling down by the river and I was talking to a duck. And I think the duck is very friendly today. It wasn't the other day. It depends where you are in the world and who you talk to. But some people look at you like, okay. Chris ended up hitting to university to study geology. His obsessiveness said lead to an interest in all things rocks, which had dovetailed with his childhood love of nature. But during classes, he found himself doodling and sketching, which lead to him swapping to study fine arts. But by his third year of university, it started to hallucinate. Chapter three, seeing things. The way Christopher remembers it, while he's always experienced the world a bit differently growing up. In his third year of study, there was a big change. So it would be a sudden big shift. I felt like I was an arrow being drawn back my old adolescence. And then suddenly it was like, here we are. Let go of the arrow. There was a schism in my brain. All of a sudden, my conscious and my subconscious mind, they split. And I could see both of them as clear as each other. He said that being hence, Beck, when he was at home on the reservation, that all of this was coming. When I was 16, I was listening to Pink Floyd, the wall a lot because I related to it, which to me is another sign like I'm young and for some reason that sticks out. But I remember looking at the ceiling and seeing the ceiling tiles wiggling in my room or seeing little shadowy things moving. And I was just like, oh, I'm just tired probably. But I always downplayed it because being meagma, even if it's not intensified, there's still an aspect of spirituality. And so growing up, it was just, oh, then you got to take care of this, that, or the other. It's not a big deal, like it's just part of daily life. So any time anything was happening in my mind, I just went, ah, whatever. I refused to look at it spiritually, scientifically, biologically. I was just like, no, I don't care. I'm too focused on trying to get laid and stuff. Chris would see ceiling tiles wiggling and moving when they should have been still. He'd be in the woods and he'd hear a, hey, behind him. But when he turned around, no one was there. By the time he was studying fine ash, all of that had just kept progressing. Where I got really intense, where I really noticed it, was when I woke up in my apartment at university one night. And it was like one or two in the morning. And I could hear whispering in the vents of my room. There was a vent above my bookshelf. And it was a whispering windy voice. And it was asking me to go to a place called Waterfowl Park, which was a local marshland walking trailer, whatever in that university town. And I actually got up and went there. And I was, you know, weird fugue state. It was odd. And I'm a curious person. So I'm like, well, let's see what this is all about. He went to the park that the voices had told him to go to. At 2 a.m. in the morning, it was completely abandoned. Chris swocked back to his dorm and went back to bed. Half wondering who told him to go. And why he'd listened for the weeks throughout. Then suddenly voices were getting stronger. I try to eat food. And one voice would come out of nowhere and go eat that. Don't eat that. Not that one. And I was like, oh, OK, there was a point a couple months later where I looked in the mirror. I was like, OK, I think I have to accept it. I think I am insane. I guess I need help. Except he didn't get help. Instead, he entered a manic period in quit school all together. And I was almost complete university. But I decided, well, if I'm going nuts anyway, I may as well go out of burning or whatever. I was hallucinating frequently. And then I wouldn't sleep often. And I started to be very reckless. So I would sleep around with anybody that would accept it. I was drinking all the time. I started to dabble in psychedelics and smoking weed. And I ended up becoming a heavy drug user. Which didn't help that I was already hallucinating. It actually made the hallucinations more vivid. The net result of all of this was a period of homelessness, a blur of hatching rides, partying, and sleeping under bridges, gripping a knife all night long, alone in the middle of the woods. Sometimes Chris would wake up in a ditch, cleaning the spiders off his bag before trying to figure out where to go next. Chapter four, diagnosis. A friend, an ex had met on Tinder of all places, ended up being the one who made Chris realize he needed some kind of help. They convinced Chris to go home. They just went from partying and being and more id or animalistic version of myself. To suddenly I'm back in a house where I have to take garbage out and make sure I'm not like an animal. And it caused a lot of clash between me and my mom. And there was just one night where I'd had a breakdown where I didn't talk, I didn't do anything. I just laid on the ground and I just stared up at the ceiling. And so my family at the time took me to my first hospitalization. Chris says he was catatonic for what felt like a few days. So the polarities of my perception of reality were hitting into each other at such a fast rate that I couldn't even talk. He was given anti-psychotics and was eventually evaluated by Mo multiple doctors who informed him they were diagnosing him with a skit so effects of disorder. In other words, Chris's schizophrenia came package with a major mood disorder too. He had bipolar skit schizophrenia. They speak on the umbrella of schizophrenia because it's not too different. It's just schizophrenia with bipolar menia every now and then if you don't deal with it properly. Chris says that a lot of people assume anti-psychotics cure you that suddenly the voices and visions go away. He says that's definitely not the case. He still deals with paranoia, voices and hallucinations. He views as meds like a crutch a kind of mental wheelchair. Anti-psychotics that are really heavy, they might eliminate paranoia or they might tone it down a bit but you're always going to remember what you've been through and so sometimes even on anti-psychotics, even heavy ones, you still hallucinate or you hear a voice and if you don't hear a voice, you can feel something nudging at you in your core almost like it's trying to get out, which is a very weird feeling. You know when people say there's bugs in my skin, that thing? To me, I never saw it as bugs. I saw it as some kind of an energy or an undulation that because you're on a certain anti-psychotic, you start itching at yourself because there's a part of you that is trying to come out but it can't. I've already accepted visual hallucinations and voices. They're not the worst part of schizophrenia. If anything, they're like a weird light show. It's hard to explain but the worst part is paranoia and delusion. So I'm always keeping an eye out for if those things are starting to grow in me. He takes a few different medications in unison, which includes anti-psychotics and another medication to balance his mood out. It's a combo that's been working well over the last five years. I have voices that can be very dark that I hear and I have some that can be very light. And then in between, it's almost a spectrum of I guess the word would be random. Like I've seen faces that they kind of have a kind quality but they're a little bit more on the spectrum of looking, weirder or shadowy. And then I've seen things that are shadowy but the voice coming from it is more friendly. And so I guess in a way it's random but to me it seems more like one is dark, one is light and those are polar and then in between is the mixture of those. So I see it similar to like a color wheel. It's just hard to talk about because to articulate it in English has taken many years. It's very hard to explain to people that a voice is an echo of the subconscious but that doesn't make it any less characterized and personalized. That's a very odd thing. Eventually he found illustrating and animating what he saw as being far more articulate than English. His schizophrenia simulation video is getting hundreds of thousands of views. Chapter five, acceptance. At this point I tell Chris about the guy I sometimes avoid while getting my coffee and how Chris's work has changed the way I view him. That makes me happy because that was the reason I started was I was tired of people looking at me like that. We all want to be accepted as much as some edgy people might pretend they don't want to be. We all want to find our tribe and a lot of people with schizophrenia that I know are very angry but it comes from a place of there's someone crying in the center of that anger. I understand now why I was angry when I was younger. I wouldn't say I necessarily do what I do because I'm like I'm going to help everybody because I think that mindset can be dangerous too. Do you think you're a savior? Like I'm schizophrenic. I don't need to have that complex. You know what I mean? I do things purely out of love and hope that it can ripple and make a good mark if it does and if it doesn't then I can't control that so the best I can do is just create and do what I love and hopefully maybe by example, you know, it'd be cool if somebody was like I don't have to hate myself. That's a nice little bonus because I get messages from people schizophrenic saying I was angry but now I'm a little less angry because I know that you're sharing this stuff and I think it's important that they also see in some of my videos there's people around me, family, I'm grocery shopping. I'm not just a statistic there. I'm a person living and surviving. So I think it's very important that people get that exposure that I am a human. Yes, sometimes I can hear a voice that's dark but that doesn't necessarily mean I believe it or will ever do anything bad. It's similar to an intrusive thought. It sucks that it has a little bit more of a personalized kind of vibe to it but I try to explain there are ways you can observe and not absorb that and you can move through these things. He says his work which aims to break down barriers and help people understand his experience has not all been met with positivity. I go and look on a social media, his TikTok and Instagram and see that there's a range of reactions he gets to his videos. Depending on who you're talking to you will either get an adverse reaction of fear or an anger at me because I've gotten that a lot or you get people who are just trying to understand and I found when I began doing my videos I was very used to people pushing me into the your evil category or you're a danger and also I would look online at other creators doing schizophrenia stuff and I felt like they were doing schizophrenia light like a light beer almost where they're not really showing you what it is but it's just a little tinge of it. I'm frustrated because I felt like anywhere I went I'm completely misunderstood even in the schizophrenia community because when I tried to open up about the hyper specific parts of hallucinations that I've noticed it was either pushed away or I was told it doesn't help the situation but I disagree. I think understanding what the source of what we're going through is actually a good way to understand yourself and not be so afraid. It sounds sort of simple when he says it understanding the source of what we're going through but this brain stuff is really hard to unpack it took me years to get my ADHD diagnosis and a big part of that was just recognizing my own patterns of behaviors in the first place. We're all trapped in our bodies and brains experiencing the world with very little idea of how it compares to other people's experiences. More recently I've started looking into other stuff I've never really thought about before. On some days it takes me a while to leave the house because I have to check the gas stove tops that turned off along with the taps then I check again and again and again and if something feels out of place or a certain task isn't completed my entire world feels like it's melting I'm crippled in this spiral where everything else in life feels impossible until that one thing is fixed. Intrusive thoughts are so normal I barely notice it even when it's all I notice. My point is the small amount of picking away at my own brain is felt exhausting. I can only imagine what it's been like for Chris. A lot of people in the neurodivergent community say schizophrenia is spicy autism because it's like autism underneath the processing but then you have added things like mania hallucinations and all that so they call it spicy autism which I think is really funny. But I think it's necessary to show people that it's no different from Intrusive thoughts and we all deal with the subconscious mind. That's one big thing I'm trying to relate in my videos is yeah I'm schizophrenic but schizophrenia is just a condition that's a lens of the human condition. So it's not just about schizophrenia isolated it's about being human. Chris says that when he opened up about his condition following his 2020 diagnosis the paranoia and paranoid voices became even more intense. I had eyes on me that were literal now he told me they were sleepless nights and a lot of considerations about whether he wanted to keep creating and sharing his schizophrenia simulations at all but he found the more he talked about it the more he articulated his inner mind that paranoia started to fade and then fade some more. It made me more gentle just in my daily life. It softened my core but it gave me an armor on the outside. I believe in being vulnerable is actually the paradoxical strength. So in my vulnerability I found strength along with plenty of DMs telling him he's satan or possessed or needs Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. He's received plenty of positive messages to messages saying he's helped someone understand a partner, a son or a daughter. For many years I've talked about the importance of meeting people halfway and when you talk to someone with schizophrenia it's not about who's right or wrong it's just about understanding where this is coming from. And then there you can actually find a way to either heal or have a person in your life where you can inspire them to make changes that are better for their mental health. So it's a very delicate thing. While you're being talking to me have you had any voices or presences around or has it been quiet? Of course. I have a blue light in the corner behind my TV there and it started when I was talking about my more traumatic stuff it started forming into a little impish face smiling at me and I just see that as the subconscious is kind of laughing at the fact that I'm talking about my traumas I'm here and sometimes a few voices that reflect almost the cosmic joke or giggle of the situation it's not a sardonic or sinister feeling it's It's just kind of like a isn't life weird and I'm like, yep, I agree. I thank Chris for his time, and for Lucy, my ego with the doctorate stuff. Thank you. This has been a lovely conversation. It actually makes me feel like I knew we were going to have this interview, but it actually just re-inspired me again because I'm like, oh, this was a great conversation. I feel like doing art now. It's at, you should take a look at when you get a chance, I'll put it in the show notes. It's work that gives you a direct insight into what it can be like to live with schizophrenia. Before we wrap up the call, I asked Chris if he'd ever get rid of his schizophrenia and another timeline and another life. At this point, I would not change who I am at all or anything that goes on in my life. I think there's the point and I think all people deal with this in life. You can be so heartbroken not by a person but by reality. Things not really going the way you thought it was going to go and expectations failing and folks giving up. And I've been pushed to a brink of that so extreme and technically, psychotically, that there's nothing to really yearn for, I'm just happy and grateful I'm alive. And so it's given me this new freedom of where I just wake up. I do my art. I'm happy to watch a YouTube video, usually an audio book. I draw. I hang out with my cats. I feed myself and to me, that's like heaven. So I wouldn't change it for the world. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Bombas. What are your 2026 resolutions, Dave? Are you reading more? You're hitting the gym? Are you learning how to crochet, finally? I'm doing none of those things, Rob. My one resolution is to get comfy. Sounds silly, but it's actually very true. And that's where Bombas comes in. They're bringing serious comfort to all my everyday go-to's. Your go-to's? Oh, don't. You're the worst. Yes. Bombas sport socks can fit your toes in there and they're engineered with sport-specific comfort for running golf, hiking, skiing, snowboarding. I wear them for softball, very stylish out there, and very comfortable. You are a stylish man. They also have a new squishy Saturday suede slip-on shoe for comfort that's on the go and they do underwear and t-shirts as well, battery smooth, highly recommended, and for every item you purchase from Bombas, an essential clothing item is donated to someone facing housing insecurity, one purchase one donated, with over 150 million donations and counting. Get over to bombas.com/bird and use code bird for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash bird code bird and check out. Yeah, that was Chris. And in the show notes, I know a lot of people listen to podcasts, I feel like no one knows what show notes are. Yeah. But in your app, if you click, there'll be a list of links to his stuff. And because his videos are, I've been watching him on Instagram for ages, he's on TikTok as well, I think YouTube, but it's just, it's really simple. It's just his point of view, but he animates the faces that he sees and with some really tricky audio editing gives the what he's hearing as well. And it's super, while there's different feedback, like it's super intense to watch. Yeah. I mean, I found it pretty beautiful how he's learned to embrace it and completely insane that he wouldn't change it even if he could know and it's funny because I've been talking to him this whole time and I've been watching his videos for a year and I know that he sees stuff, but it was such an obvious question of like, are you seeing things now when I'm talking to you? Yeah. And in my mind, I was thinking maybe they'd settle down while we were talking, but no, they're the whole time. Faces, voices, and he has to sort through that as he's trying to have a conversation with some weird New Zealander. Well, I mean, it also just speaks so much to how adaptable humans are. And just that like, yeah, he has learned to live and thrive with this completely condition and get with his extra voices around. And it's just a part of him. This is a sort of besides a point, but the fact he's Canadian, there's that one word about a boot that's the giveaway, right? That's the word. A New Zealanders do that a bit as well, they're like, do you want to come around, eh? Not, not like Canadians though. It's different. Yeah. Canadians are more like an A. Yeah. Yeah, there's a few just giveaways in language. Was it, did you ever see the movie bug with Michael Shannon? And I think Ashley Judd, no, and I love Michael Shannon. It's such an intense movie, they're like in a motel and he has like a mental break. Yeah. They both do. And I think they're on drugs and they think there's bugs under their skin that they're trying to get out. Is that a lot of the film? Well, that's a thing. That's like the whole movie. Right. And you're trying to figure out whether they are, whether something's real or whether it's all on their minds. Yes. God, I love Michael Shannon. Yeah. Michael Shannon's incredible. There's sounds of the most Michael Shannon film you could possibly have like very heavy like. Yeah. I think so. It's a guy who's obsessed with a coming storm. Yes. And he's obsessed with his storm shelter. Yeah. And the big question, much like bug it sounds like, is this in his head or is this a reality that's actually going to happen? Yeah. God, it's good. I feel like I'm getting sidetracked a lot in this episode, but I'm trying to be honest with what's going on in my life. You heard how Hayden abused me a lot at the top of the show, like when I was trying to sit at that call with him. Yeah. He did this nothing but junior years, Roosevelt just messaged me as we were recording with a photo of Brian Johnson, that guy that's trying to prolong his life forever who's insufferable. It's a photo of him sort of slouch on the couch with jeans and he just looks sloppy. And Roosevelt just says, has your vibe? This is a kind of abuse I'm getting. Okay, just quickly as far as gets a friend of yours, because I think the thing, I suppose I mean sort of thought is very easy to misunderstand people who have any kind of mental health conditions. Looking back in history, the first half of the 20th century, schizophrenia was considered to be purely a hereditary defect. So that kind of bled into eugenics in a lot of different countries and hundreds of thousands of people in the States and abroad, UK, et cetera, were sterilized without consent. And then you get to Nazi Germany and many there that were diagnosed with schizophrenia were simply murdered in something called the Action T1 program. I feel like every, there's so much about Nazi Germany that's horrific and there's just things. This is the first I'd heard of the T4 program. In October 1939, German psychiatric hospitals were asked to carry out a survey, which established that 70,000 patients would qualify for. The program was known internally is Action T4, for short, the patients were killed, they found to have schizophrenia or what was thought to be schizophrenia, killed with carbon dioxide, which they were given in a closed shower room. So that was a big part of the Holocaust, yeah, obviously Hitler, not a big fan of anyone with mental health problems. I just never associated schizophrenia as part of that, but of course it was from the 1930s to the 1970s. And the US, they practice front all the bottomies on people deemed to have schizophrenia. So 1970, not that long ago, so you can see why today we're still having trouble understanding people with the condition. Yeah, they were doing some wild things that when they did not understand. Did you ever watch that show, going to talk about a show that I barely remember, was about the early stages of surgery where they're just figuring out how to do different surgeries on people, and it was just so the neck, the neck, God, it was rough. Yeah. Do you just don't think about things we take for granted today about how not very long ago, yeah, it was rough, yeah. And other completely deranged things like surgery without any kind of anesthesia, yeah. Okay. So you can see all those videos, Chris is amazing, also very glad to have a first Canadian ever on flight this bird. True. I don't think I've ever taken a serial Canadian, damn you in your, damn you in your fact checking. The third Canadian on the show, are you ready for some feedback? Let's get some feedback. There's a lot. I'll just actually quickly, some feedback that Chris gets for his videos, I went through his social media just to kind of see this stuff. So this is the guy that paints bare what he sees, what his whole life experience is like, someone comments, so basically demons, bro, this is downright terrifying. No match for Jesus. A lot of Jesus stuff be set free in Jesus's name. A lot of people think that he is possessed with demons. And then there's some really beautiful feedback. Thank you for sharing your experience and then someone else writes, this is actually pretty similar to mine, which is cool and wild because so far I haven't found anyone else who has an experience I relate to on a molecular level. I got a little curious that followers of Jesus are finding these videos and then deciding they need to proselytize on the comment section. It is pretty weird. It's pretty weird up there. That's like. Yeah, how are they? I don't expect to go to our comment section. and have people telling us to go find Jesus. - And we don't have that. So it's interesting that they find him. - Yeah. - I wonder why they're watching us. - We're out of ideas. - That was a lot of fun. - That's actually a really good question. - Not to people saying that he has demons and. - I would like to see a few more of those comments in our comment section, to be honest. I'd love to see some of those. Do they not care about our souls? Are they not trying to save us? What the hell? - Okay. I'll be back. A lot of feedback to me seeing an orthodontist a couple of weeks ago and then wanting to break my jaw. So I get the perfect bite. - Mostly the comment on that whole episode. - I mean, when I think back, it is sort of a, I mean, I remember how shocked I was when I had a medical professional say, look, we can give you an invisible line. - Put your hands breaking your jaw. - But as an aside, before we do the invisible line, we can break your jaw. - Well, so I did see some feedback that was about how you could get a thing with the crank that would widen it. And when you're a kid, your jaw can adapt more. And it's because your adult needs to be broken. I got that. I had a thing that needed. - You had the crank. - That had a key that had to be turned. - So I don't mean to laugh. - I don't mean to laugh. - That had a key that needed to be turned that I think would widen when I was younger. - And it had like. - It's so intense. - There was like gears inside my cheeks too. - This wild. How long did you have before? - Probably only a year or two. - Who would turn the key? - Either my mom or the honest probably. - I don't think they're letting you do that. - It's so intense, isn't it? - I mean, I had braces. And the most extent I had was rubber bands, which would basically pull my jaw forward. - Yeah, I hated, I was supposed to get the rubber bands and it was high school and I was like, I'm not gonna wear rubber bands. - The one good thing about them, and I think I did this to Julia Moore, is you could once you got used to them, you could flick them with your tongue and fire them out of your mouth at people. And I hit Julia Square on the face. - I'm sure she loved that. But you were the one that took my job of video easy back in the day. - Mine was for an over bite too. - Yeah. - We're so similar. (laughing) We are, like it's quite weird, some of our things. But you had this wind up key, which I'm sorry, that's just objectively very funny to imagine. - Yep. It was like the roof of my mouth had like a keyhole from some metal gear that they would turn. - Wiles. - And then I also had the like, it's like full gear in there. - It was like a mechanism. - Yeah. - That would, what I would open my mouth, I could open my mouth, mouth like super wide, otherwise it would come off. - Could you eat, okay? - Yeah. - I feel like I'm teasing you now. - I love to see some photos. - I don't think I took photos of it. - I told you. - This is like, I just look like a kid with braces. - This key is blowing my mind. - Yeah, but it was in the roof of my mouth. So you wouldn't, you know what I'm gonna see on photos, I'm gonna like open my mouth and. - Fam rodent speaking of Canadians. I'm a birdie in Canada. I nearly spit out my coffee during this week's episode when David mentioned being offered jaw surgery in his forties for a perfect bite. - I was offered that in the fourth grade. And my first consult, my mouth was so overcrowded, I had to have 60 removed before braces could even start. On top of that, significant over by it and still growing lower jaw. The options presented to my appearance were break and reset the jaw now, then proceed with braces. Or let nature do its thing and keep my braces in forever. Thankfully, mum chose door two and simply did not inform nine year old me that jaw breaking was ever in the equation. Had braces for a few years. I'm eternally grateful. No one wired my jaw shut before middle school. So yes, David, we could just break your jaw. Has apparently been the orthodontist bold opener for decades now. Since I just turned 38 this week, like Rob this year, 88 baby, love the show. Thanks for all you both do. All right, Jenna, I was listening to your episode on Child Stars. You speak about your orthodontics. I got jaw surgery about a year ago to correct some issues with my bite. AKA got her jaw broken. Recovery was gnarly, but I'm very glad I did it. So Jenna comes out on the pro, David should get his jaw broken. What, does she explain any of the pros? Just, she's glad. No, I just better bite, I guess. I mean, obviously some people have more issues than others. I can chew my food fine. Maybe she couldn't chew. Maybe she'd been on liquids her whole life. (laughing) Darn it. Darn it's out. (laughing) Don't, wait, wait, wait, don't know. She wanted to eat. Break my jaw. I want to chew a burger. I think we. Jenna goes on. Turns out, one of the best jaw surgeons in the country operates 10 minutes from where I live in Santa Barbara. If you want the name, just let me know. So Jenna, thank you for writing in. I'm glad the jaw surgery worked for you. I don't want the number. I mean, I'm not getting my jaw broken, Rob. I'm done. I could think of nothing worse in my life. I think getting my jaw, I'm so, no. I think that's not even gonna straighten your teeth either. That's just your bite. You know, there's the thing, it's the break. And then they have to sort the teeth out. Yeah. I would do think about this. Like, what if I get to 70? And I like, fuck, I should've got it broken. Break it now. That's a feeble old man. And then they break it then. I'll do it when I'm 70. I'm not doing it when I'm 43. So just flip it more jaw feedback. Brianna, I just want to say, 10 out of 10 do not recommend. I broke my jaw on the eighth grade, which is lead to a saga of jaw issues and I had a total reconstruction in 2018. So this one, some of the head up for the teeth, they just got their jaw broken, had to get it sorted out. Beyond the fact that they did indeed break both sides, top and bottom to rearrange things around, I also had to have braces and adult for a year, prior to an after surgery and spent three days in an ICU recovering from surgery. Basically, Brianna says, don't get your jaw broken. Yeah. I mean, final thing, whizzly. Some great names coming up in the feedback this week. Good American names. Great American names. You want to do something accent? I have a pretty intense severe under bite and I was also suggested by an orthodontist to have surgery, which would correct my under bite. But it would require them to break my jaw. This happened when I was 18 and I decided not to go through with it. As far as I know, my life is not being adversely affected by not doing this. But who knows? Maybe I missed out by not having my jaw broke. Thanks, Whizzling. Okay, Nikki Rodin, to correct, one of my most embarrassing areas to date, besides getting my A-drong. Oh, this is a good one. Cory Feldman and Cory Hame. Same first name, not last name. Yeah, I had a lot of confusion in something I rushed over last week. I've been in the impression my entire life, as long as I've been aware of sort of Cory Feldman. I thought he had a brother. I'm Cory Hame. I'm called Hame. I thought you were talking about the Hame sisters this whole time. Yeah, right. All right, they're not brothers. Which I went under during the discovery. I mean, everyone listening to this probably already knows this. What I got confused with was the two Cory's, that term? I mean, it's the first name. Yeah, so just to me, I'm saying this to myself, not to anyone else. This is Cory Feldman, who is born in '71 and a Canadian actor. Cory Hame, who died in 2010 and they're often paired together. In New Zealand, do people in families have the same first name but different last name? No, Rob. Okay. So you don't need to be a shit here. I'm just trying to understand you, David. You know, a lot of people wrote in about that and I felt pretty dumb. Okay. Just be aware when you're writing with things I've gotten wrong. Be aware that I'm feeling pretty dumb. So just, just couch those emails or something. Maybe a few compliments in there. Kind of things I've gotten right. Maybe about how good my bite is and my teeth and my jaw symmetry. That one is such a harmless one though that it was, it was enjoyable. You know, it was good. Just funny when you realize like a fact in your brain is just so completely wrong. Forever. Hey, how long have you thought that? Voice, always. Until last week, I haven't done this. But I thought it would be funny to do that when I had kids to just sprinkle in a few weird facts that were obviously not true. That just like in fourth grade, it comes up. That's fun. But I decided against it. The director made the lobster and poor things and all those films. He's going to go one of the early ones. Doctor, it's about a parent that raises their kids with different beliefs. And it's second twisted and very fun. Carrie said, I love the Nickelodeon episode. And I found a very nostalgic. It shocked me that no one in the comments or in the most recent feedback has mentioned the Nickelodeon doc that came out in 2018 called The Orange Years. Apparently it's just an incredibly good doc. It covers how the network got to start, how it developed programming, interviews with some of the actors. So yeah, apparently The Orange Years, if you want to dig deeper, it's really really good. It's on 2B. Jonathan said I was a huge Nick Fang growing up the 90s and at one point they had something called smelly vision, remember smelly vision that you could get a blockbuster video. It was basically a scratch and sniff bingo card where a number would display during a Nickelodeon show or movie and the new scratch and sniff that square at the same time to smell the scene on TV. This is amazing. I remember being very excited to try it out when I got to blockbuster video, probably some random Friday night that were always going, my parents refused to ask the cashier about smelly vision because I was too embarrassed. I'll get broke. hard and I've always wondered what Nickelodeon smelled like. Such a good idea. I do remember that mean a thing where like. Same. People were like, "Well, one day you're going to be able to smell. " Smell everything. What's on TV? There was. In those 40 movies, did they ever have smell? They had smell for 40 films, right? You get shaken around, you get puffed with smoke and water. Yeah. I do remember Alamo and Heritage came out. They did screenings where they did the scent of the pie. Oh, that's fun. In the theater? Smell of vision. Yeah, it was a smell of vision. I remember there was a thing in New Zealand. I feel like it was on Collector's Cards where you could scratch and sniff. It was a scratch and sniff thing. Nothing to do with Nickelodeon. Just scratch. Just scratch and sniff in general. Just in general. Yeah, they were scratch and sniffing here too. I'm saying that it's a revelation, but I didn't know it was synced up with like a scene in Nickelodeon. That's amazing. So maybe we should try to do that with some upcoming episodes of Likeless Bird. We'll mail out some scratch and sniff cards to some patrons. It's a way to bankrupt, I'll show you inside of scratch and sniffing by it. Mail them out. It's really good. Oh, my God. There's so much feedback. It's all really fun. Did you know that Ryan Gosling was in an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yes. Yes. Heartthrob, incredible. Other people start in their Bobcat gold wafe. I can never say his name correctly. Little bit God-free, it was in there. And she also said, you might have told me this already Rob, do yourself a favor and listen to Polaris who did the music for Pete and Pete. Yeah. We didn't mention this either last week, but the older brother from the Avengers of Pete Pete, your favorite joke was in Home Alone. He was one of the cousins. I love that. When you watch Home Alone, were you like, yeah, of course. Ginny said, when I was in high school, I worked as a beach lifeguard, a fellow child lifeguard at the time, got fired for going to hooters during his lunch break and smacking awaitresses, but all while wearing his county lifeguard gear. Dumb move on all counts. Word quickly got back to the beach patrol and he was fired. I found this out after his dad showed up at the beach patrol station with him in a suit asking to talk to the beach patrol chief. It didn't help. Good. You should be fired. Finally? Look, I don't know whether this is particularly significant and accurate, Rob, but I want to kind of get your feedback on this. Sydney seems very, I like an email that's just almost like a bullet point list. There's no hello. There's no like we love the show. It's just fucking straight in. Sydney says Nickelodeon was for entertainment. Disney was for feeding the drama lama. Cartoon network was for sober tripping. Does that make any sense to you? The analysis? Yeah. You can see that. Sydney went on to say, topic recommendations, plant parents. Ah, not really. Summer camp? Definitely. I'm trying to get into summer camp. I'm not trying to get into a summer camp. I'm trying to. We touched on that a little bit on the chat pile episode. We did. This one I do get behind. I'm going to wrap the episode up on this Rob and New Zealand. I think it's a great idea. Someday. I'm working towards it. You know, as we plan these live shows all across America, I'm always thinking, how can I get Rob to New Zealand to do some live shows there? I mean, I'll do it and we just have, we've got to go for like a month, when when you go, you go for a month. You want to make that 12 hour flight worth it. Yeah. You don't go in there for a weekend and then fly back. It's expensive as hell to go that far. It's a long trip. You want to get into the time zone all of it. Yeah. It's like the same with going to New York. I don't go to New York for two, three days. If I'm going to New York, I'm going to New Zealand. New Zealand. New Zealand. Same thing. We have live shows coming up in Salt Lake City, Austin, in Denver. Leave that in. It's really good. No, it's Dallas. No, number. If you want, if you want to come see the show notes, like the spread [email protected]. If you want to criticize me, about anything I got wrong, just be gentle and kind. You know, I'm going through a lot of rough stuff at the moment with my orthodontics. Yeah. My gum grafts. My gum grafts. It's hard. It's really hard. Braces. And we'll see you next week. Yeah. And here is a preview of our parasocial update with Nick. Primarily what I wanted to record this week with you was an update on Nick, who was our final episode of last year, parasocial listener, if you recall, Nick wrote in to FlightisBird saying how he, he liked the show, talked about how he has essentially, inoperables, not the right word, he's got a type of brain tumour that you can remove it, but it just comes back again. So he's in this position where he realizes he has a certain timeline in front of him, refocused how he sees life. I guess the central thesis was a parasocial relationship doesn't always have to be weird. It can sometimes be quite rewarding for both parties. Yeah. And we got a lot of great feedback on that episode. Yeah. And people obviously identified with it like a bunch of listeners have their own health issues they're going through. At the end of the episode with Nick, he talked about how he wanted to go to New Zealand. He'd always wanted to go. And this brain tumour had been motivation to go. Some of these emails that I've been getting, I've just been enjoying them so much from Nick. He said, you probably know this, but I didn't. Apparently, US travelers need a visa to go to New Zealand, oops. And I got this and I was like mortified because I've been emailing back and forth with them, but never mentioned to him the idea of getting a visa. You had to fill out people were going ahead of time to get a visa or is just like, yeah. Usually it's an online form ahead of time. Unless it's just like all baked into the airline stuff at this point. It's not baked in. This was Nick's mistake. He thought it was baked in and he walked up to the counter with his surfboard, very nice attendant explained it to me and in a state of shock, I just about fell over. Desperately googling how to apply for one, I clicked the first link that came up and I realized the hard way that there are a lot of scam websites out there that are happy to take your information and issue you a fake visa. So this is probably the only time I'm going to say this, like kudos to an American bank for flagging a suspicious transaction and calling him in real time just up to he had been banned and this is a very glass half full typical Nick response. He said, I'm already learning from this experience and it's helping me appreciate the bravery of so many people that deal with so much more serious challenges every single day. I mean, fuck, imagine having that mentality. I'll just be in panic and stressed and he's like, I've learnt something from this. [BLANK_AUDIO]