Mixed Mental Arts

Dave Colan is an improv comedy teacher at the legendary Second City which gave us alums from Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Dave is working with us on the #CultureMatters series and will generally be calling me (Hunter) out regularly and often ;) You can follow Dave on Twitter at @davecolan or his other Twitter account @nexttokimdavis. http://www.pride.com/entertainment/2015/09/03/17-genius-tweets-person-who-allegedly-sits-next-kim-davis

Street Epistemology is a dialectical approach intent on helping people reflect on the reliability of the methods used to arrive at deeply-held beliefs. Reid Nicewonder is an independent filmmaker seeking to promote critical thinking and skepticism through entertainment. He conducts in-person interviews using at various public parks around Los Angeles. SE Resources: Top 10 SE Videos (Anthony Magnabosco) Cordial Curiosity (Reid Nicewonder) SE Website SE Facebook Page SE Facebook Group (Private study group) SE Twitter Profile

Download For Eternity Cate Fogarty is the Callenphate's Chief Artillery Officer and has been making pretty amazing knowledge bombs for MixedMentalArts.co. If you want to help Cate in her work as The Callenphate's Chief Artillery Officer, you can contact her on Twitter at @cateclysmic or find her in the Mixed Mental Arts Facebook group. You too can make #knowledgebombs! In this #knowledgebomb, she covers The Dunbar Number. You can read the original article at mixedmentalarts.co/thedunbarnumber As always, all t-shirt sales and Patreon.com/mixedmentalarts donations go to fund intellectual terrorism. So many minds need to be blown and with people like Cate on the team...nobody's pre-conceived notions are safe!

A week ago, a group of fellows who had never met before showed up at Beer World in Columbus, Ohio. What happened at Beer World remains known only to Adam Hansen, David Foust, James Miller, Nate Fourman, Jeremy Hewett and Drew Sample. What happened afterwards everybody will know because Adam, James and Drew recorded a podcast.   This is what the internet is for. People with shared interests and a shared sense of purpose coming together to learn from each other and figure out how to take our collective insights and solve problems. There are a lot of awesome people out there from whom we never really get to hear. We have the tools to change that.   And so, have your own meet up. This all came out of Adam posting on the #MixedMentalArts meet up group that he would be in Columbus and asking if anyone else wanted to meet up. You can do the same in your neck of the woods: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1289087351149018/   Let me know if you're doing one and if you record a podcast we can drop it in the Mixed Mental

Martin Totland is a journalist and photographer from Bergen, Norway, who's lived in the US for more than seven years. He got involved with Mixed Mental Arts to improve his cultural understanding, and to fight mental atrophy. You can find him on Twitter (@mtotland), Instagram (mtotland2) or in the Mixed Mental Arts Facebook group. If you read this article at MixedMentalArts.co, it includes a picture of a cat with a Viking helmet on it. Download For Eternity

Cate Fogarty and I met a few months ago when I gave a talk at Second City about how to communicate across America's red/blue cultural divide. Why did Cate and I connect after that talk? Because Cate is a Cultural Mutt. She has moved between enough cultures in her life to know how powerfully culture shapes our thinking and how it both binds us into groups and blinds us to the fact that we don't always see the world so clearly. Cate also came up with the idea of the cultural confession so it's only fitting that Cate should be the first person to officially give her cultural confession on the podcast. In the evolving improv game that is Mixed Mental Arts, Cate and I have now been feeding off each other for a couple of months. As we move this from being the Bryan Callen (and Hunter Maats show), I thought it was important to introduce the other people who are getting involved and to make it clear why their contributions are so vital. And here is where Cate's strengths come to the fore. She has been taking my 5000-

About a month ago, Hunter was on Chris Ryan's Tangentially Speaking podcast. (It's episode 234 if you're interested.) I can't speak for Chris but I had a really great time. Some people on Twitter enjoyed the convo too. Someone even said they were happy that I'd finally found my soulmate. I was disappointed that my soulmate would be a married DUDE...but Twitter don't lie! And so, Chris and I scheduled a second conversation. Two plus hours later my faith in the wisdom of crowds is greater than it has ever been. Chris not only is my soulmate but he succeeded in bringing me to the point of tears. Legitimately, my eyes made water. Chris Ryan extracted my cultural confession from me. One of the patterns that Chris drew out in this conversation is that so much of humanity's cutting edge thinking rests on looking back to how Hunter-Gatherers lived to see what lessons we can learn from them. In short, humanity is trying to return to what it knew before. This is the nature of the Hero's Journey. A hero leaves the tribe

Mitch Evers is a Dutch university student who grew up in the south of the Netherlands. When Hunter first claimed that Donald Trump was culturally Dutch, it triggered Mitch's patriotic duty to attempt to save his country's reputation in the eyes of the Mixed Mental Arts community, which led to his involvement in the project.   Little does Mitch know that Hunter "The Shitty Dutchman" Maats would be reading his post in a terrible Dutch accent. Will the Dutch King revoke Hunter's passport based on this or will they practice gedogen and simply turn a blind eye? Probably the latter. Some things just aren't worth fighting over.   You can find Mitch on Twitter at @kipislekkerME.

If anyone doubts the power of Motivation 3.0, they should listen to this episode. In the last couple of months, people from all over the world who have jobs, kids and lives have volunteered to help evolve Mixed Mental Arts and get the ideas that have been trapped in books for decades out into the world. Bryan and I have never met most of these people. Matt Maurer has worked on the website for no money. Nicole Page and Matt "Unicorn" Madonna have set up our t-shirt store and provided endless advice to improve the website. Cate Fogarty has been taking Hunter's wordy ramblings and distilling them into #knowledgebombs that in under 500 words sum up key mental tools to upgrade your cultural software. And even though Brian Otoya makes basically zero dollars he is personally funding ads to drive traffic our way. Chris Price and Jake Brady have stepped in to help teach Hunter how to not screw up the sound. Milk Toast reached out on Twitter and even offered to fly out to LA to help with that. There are a lot of people

Apparently, this whole merging of quantum field theory and general relativity business was a little more complicated than we initially thought and so we extended the podcast into a second hour. All of which is released on a single day! You're welcome humanity. And don't worry. We didn't entirely solve the problem. We just warmed it up for you. Any listener who can unify the four major forces wins...a Nobel Prize! Congratulations!!! In practice, the most important takeaway of the second part of the conversation is how we think about truth--it's about a series of practical tools that do better jobs of approximating reality--and the fact that because we both are super keen to democratize knowledge and make all of this accessible...Spiros is joining the Mixed Mental Arts dojo. In the car, he was super excited to have convos with Mixed Martial Artists, chefs, comedians and anyone else. So, get ready for that world. We're going to all roll together and evolve the best set of beliefs the world has yet seen. The fun

In an utterly pleasant surprise, Spiros Michalakis reached out to me and said he wanted to get lunch. Actually, he wanted to buy me lunch. The result was a three hour lunch conversation and a two-hour podcast during the course of which we covered everything from Spiros' own work trying to unify quantum field theory and general relativity to everything that has been going on with Mixed Mental Arts. In short, we compared notes on the many kinds of idea sex that we've been having. You don't get to hear what happened in that three-hour lunch which is probably fortunate. For one thing, Spiros talked about being Greek, moving to America and finding out it wasn't culturally appropriate to wear a speedo in public. You do get to hear what happened in the two-hour podcast where we have our own convo about what it means to be a scientist. It is an approach to life. You also get to hear about why we both feel so strongly about making ideas accessible. We both have gone between worlds. For Spiros, growing up in Greece and

Recently, I appeared on Chris Ryan's Tangentially Speaking podcast and afterwards had a conversation with Euan Grant in the Mixed Mental Arts Facebook Group. Euan said something really interesting: "Have started listening to Hunter Maats on Tangentially Speaking and like the thought of podcast hosts being on the MMA pod, those that have interviewed many experts, what have they 'the common person' learnt? Like when Hunter does a review show with Bryan." I liked Euan's idea a lot and, fortunately, I had an interview already scheduled with Jordan Harbinger of the Art of Charm podcast. And so, off we went. It turns out that although on the surface our podcasts seem very different there are a lot of common threads there. Jordan started his podcast to answer his own questions. I highjacked Bryan's podcast and turned it into a show where we could both talk to our intellectual crushes. And, inevitably, in doing hundreds or in the case of the Art of Charm probably close to a thousand episodes, we've learned a lot that

With the sounds of Bryan's offspring gently playing in the background, Bryan's thoughts turn to how to prepare the progeny he has sired from his loins for a world of constant technological disruption. Obviously, Bryan has already prepared them for the apocalypse. They're both proficient in using compound bow and dressing their own kills. They can also strip a firearm and set a bone. And thanks to Bryan's beautiful wife they have (like Alexander the Great, the Comanche, Mongol warriors and slightly foppish aristocrats) they have been rigorously trained in equestrian. These are basic skills that every Callen must know. But what if the apocalypse doesn't happen? What if society more or less continues as is and Bryan's children rather than stalking deer through the shattered wreckage of our civilization and leading conquering hordes on horseback instead find themselves getting jobs. What jobs can they get and how should he prepare them for that? And that, ladies and gentlemen, turns out to be a question we should

In Part 1 of "What Does Your Hinky Meter Tell You?", Bryan and Hunter explored the controversy that the Frying Dutchman, Hunter Maats, had created in calling out Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. In Part 2, we look at why that behavior is so problematic: it creates an emotional climate that divides cultures rather than uniting them. At the end of a great stand-up comedy show, something truly wonderful happens. People's differences fall away and people of all races, genders, colors and creeds come together. In that moment, there's a possibility in the air. The possibility that people from totally different experiences strike up a conversation and connect because they realize that beyond their superficial differences that they can learn things from each other. The spirit at the end of one of Bryan's stand up shows is the Spirit of '76. It's the spirit of curiosity and possibility that fills garages where great start-ups are born. It's the spirit of openness, curiosity and possibility that filled the Caliphate in

You know that feeling that something is off. It's the feeling that things don't quite add up. Something bugs you and you can't quite put your finger on it. That is what detectives call your hinky meter. We all have a hinky meter. The only question is what has your hinky meter been trained to detect. Great auto mechanics can listen to a car and figure out what's off. Doctors like House M.D. can suss out that a seemingly plausible diagnosis doesn't quite make sense. And Hunter Maats a.k.a The Tutor of Death can quickly find holes in people's mental game. That's what sets his hinky meter off. And Fundamentalists drive his hinky meter wild. However, just because you sense that something is off that's not the same thing as putting your finger on it let alone fully revealing to people what is off. In this first part of a two part series, Bryan and Hunter unpack why people like Alex Jones, Tom Woods, Sam Harris, Donald Trump and Joseph McCarthy send our hinky meters wild. Who sends your hinky meter wild? Tweet us an

A guest who needs no introduction...Big Mike is back!!!

Mixed Mental Arts: The Two Paths to Power: Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

Living in America, Bryan and Hunter constantly hear demands for Muslims to call out the fundamentalists in their own midst. We think this is a great idea. However, before you can do that, you have to be able to spot a fundamentalist. And that it turns out is quite easy when you're looking at a fundamentalist in someone else's tribe and quite hard when you're looking at the fundamentalists in your own tribe. It's easy for Westerners to see the fundamentalists in the Arab world and quite hard to see the fundamentalists in their own midst. Recently, we had Jordan Peterson on The Bryan Callen Show and the community cheered Jordan Peterson on for calling out the Social Justice Fundamentalists on college campuses. How great? A lot of listeners knew these college kids had gone nuts. Thank goodness someone was standing up to them. That is not the reaction Jordan Peterson has gotten on college campuses and from his fellow Professors. Some people in his own community have cheered him on but many have attacked him. Hunt

Bryan and Hunter were feeling pretty manly. Bryan was punching imaginary enemies of freedom. Hunter was being tall and Dutch. And then…in walked John Durant, author of The Paleo Manifesto. His hair was luxuriant. He was wearing camo. And he had a stride best suited for stalking and taking down meat sources with only his bare hands. What were one-two cutie pies to do? Fortunately, John was wearing some really cute little shoes that utterly undermined everything else he had going on. Probably, he was just trying to set Bryan and Hunter at ease. Good thing he did because John Durant was leading them into the kind of territory that constitutes thoughtcrime in the Blue Echo Chamber. Fortunately, as Mixed Mental Artists, Bryan and Hunter fear no idea. They take it all in stride and they welcome intellectual diversity. They like idea sex. And let me tell you these three dudes had some serious idea sex. And it totally wasn't gay at all. 'Cause it's idea sex. You can just come all up in another person's brain and it's

I'd strongly recommend viewing this episode and episode 226 with Peter Schiff as an exercise in contrast. I didn't design it this way but it worked out that way. Here you have two individuals who both are saying that they care about American democracy and yet their behavior and approach couldn't be more different. In fact, this interview goes a long way to answering why. Yascha Mounk is Jewish and grew up in post-war Germany. When you have that kind of experience, you know firsthand just how fragile democracy and economics are and how carefully they must be guarded. There is no room for complacency or arrogance or behaving in any way that might put your own narrow, selfishness at odds with the health of the system. Instead, you try to figure out ways that your personal desires for profit and success can align with the larger goals of the health of the system. I'm sure Yascha wants a nice house or apartment and a nice car. I certainly do. But when you've been to places like Libya like I have or when the hellsc