Episode 7 - Pounding Off Before Dates

If you're a source of constant problems, the guy who's good at solving problems doesn't want you.

Can we abolish speed dating and replace it with jigsaw slow dating? You do a puzzle over an hour together.

I don't want that to be the Genesis story of my relationship ever. Is, you know, I I was doing cold outreach. Welcome back to the Handsome Hour. As always, I am Wes Myers. I'm joined today by Stoney Gruneau.

And Cody Zervas.

Yes. And we're here. And on this episode, we talk about my dating experiences lately and that part's kinda boring, so

That's what we just got done talking about.

Yeah. I'd say, probably the first forty minutes or so, you can look at the show notes. We talk about my dating experiences in New York City.

We do talk a lot about your dating experiences on the farm.

On the farm. On the farm. So probably skip to about forty minutes in and we'll talk about how to not die while plucking feathers from your chicken. We have a this is advice for farmers on this episode. This episode gets spicy.

Yeah. We get into agriculture, so we're discussing deep agricultural topics of interest to Deep. You have shepherds and farmers and all types of livestock handlers. So, yeah, we go deep on animal husbandry. Stay tuned, you're gonna love it.

We should get like some kind of like a monitor or something we could put up to put the when we're talking about stuff, could put

I could bring I I have a TV. Who

works for Joe Rogan? Jamie. We'll just say Jamie. Pull that up.

Yeah. We need our we need our young Jamie.

Okay. Yeah. There's a post on the timeline here. Maybe you've seen it. It's going it's I don't know if it's viral.

It's a woman. She's holding a baby. It's an attractive young woman, and she's crying. It's her first time holding a baby and now she wants eight. And people are saying things about this, one person said, I have a theory that many young women are indifferent towards motherhood simply because they're hardly exposed to babies.

Your heart melts when you hold a baby. Someone else writes, children used to be everywhere. Now they're hidden in daycares and gated play areas, invisible until you choose to have one. Unless you had younger siblings, most women never hold a baby until they have one. Engineered ignorance.

This rings true to me, think. I've been I've been dating in New York. I've been dating women who who maybe want children and they're what they're saying to me is that all of their friends and their sisters are getting married and having babies and now they want babies. And I think the question is, who will be the first to bomb a dog playground? You see, you know, they've what they've

done Dog culture is out of control.

Well, dog culture is out of control. People are we know women especially are dumping their mothering instincts on tiny dogs now that are that are miserable, that have no business being in New York City, these dogs. And they've torn down the playgrounds, they've built dog parks, and maybe the ethical thing to do is bomb them.

I got attacked by three dogs in 2025. Okay. It's three separate dog attacks. And on the one hand, it's like, I'm because look, I like dogs, you know, as much as the next guy. And on the one hand, it's like, I can see how we we would say, Cody, why do dogs just not like you?

Are are are you like, you know, you know how dogs famously bark at ghosts? It's like, maybe I'm a body maybe I'm the vampire.

Maybe you smell like meat.

Yeah. No. I don't think I'm the problem. I think it's the dogs. I think it's the children who are the problem.

I can't I can't remember the last time I was attacked by a dog. I think I was, like, nine years old.

One of them got me really good. Mean, I still This have a was why I was just, like, walking in in my parents' house in Colorado visiting them, just, like, taking a stroll around the neighborhood, and out of nowhere, this just maniac dog comes in, just just barrels at me jumps at me and bites my leg, and barely escapes my life. I'm gonna tell you what. No. I it it did it got she got me good, though.

I've been bit by more women than dogs.

Look, on the one hand, I'm tempted like, I I I'm I'm sympathetic with too much dog culture, it's gone too far. On the other hand, this woman is like complaining, I feel like it's the she's the same type of person. It feels a little hypocritical. Like, here's the thing, alright, maybe she in particular, but this type of woman is exactly the type of woman who led to the culture that we have now around kids where they constantly have to be the world has to be sterilized and everything has to be she's the exact kind of woman who, when her toddler gets a, you know, falls down at school and scrapes their knees, she sues the school district, And these militant sort of clean the world type of women, high neuroticism, high conscientiousness women, like, they are exactly who have, like, led to this hyper sterilized, hyper fenced off, like, world of of of children that we have today, I feel like.

I'll agree with that on a personal perspective. So my daughter has come to me and said, daddy and she'll mention one of her friends, and she'll say, this girl really needed a dad. And it's surprising that she can articulate it, but she can go through, you know, some of this lovely, I've met her, young girl's issues that are high in neurosis, and it's it's it's the impact of, I think, not having a dad who's just going say, no, we're not doing that. Get over it now. Go.

Yeah. Like, think that's one of the most fundamental things women look for in a man is, like, a sense of steadiness or a sense of, like, a lot of what women will do is, like, they try to test you to see if they can get you to break your, maybe they call this breaking frame. I don't know. Don't remember what they call it, like the manosphere, but it's like, I had a girl that I was talking to and it was really windy here in the city yesterday. I was like, oh, did you blow away in the wind today?

You know? And she goes, she goes, no, I couldn't blow away in the wind. I'm like, well, I almost blew away. She's like, oh, well, you calling me fat? And I just said, cut it out.

And she said, good, I was testing you and you passed.

It's like, she came out and said that.

She said that

She needs to be in a This was yesterday. And she needs to be in an asylum. This girl needs to be

Wait a second. Everything needs

to be taken away from her. She she needs to be put in a padded white room.

I'm gonna say, if she did that with a sense of humor or some dry irony or or for the shits and giggles, I support it.

Was it a sense of humor?

It was a text message, so it's kind of hard to say, but like When you learn to recognize this stuff, like, can tell.

No. No. I know. Yeah. But I think here's the thing is, like, this is tell the the kind of thing where, like, yeah, she'll say she's doing it.

It's like, she means like this. No. It's just the mat that's a mask off moment.

Yeah. I mean, I don't

think Even if she's joking Right. She's not joking.

I feel to limit oneself from that is you're just you're going to be fishing in an empty barrel. There's no one left. You know, pick what do they say? Pick pick two out of three, sane, single, and attractive. So you're if you

Be better, woman.

If you're going to do that, which my assumption coming in is that women are going to do that to you, and usually they're not going to tell you, but I do appreciate the instant feedback. We can make this the West, we can make you know, because I've been dating pretty prolifically in New York the last couple weeks. We can make this episode about that if you want, we don't have to. But I had another recent experience where I went on three or four dates with a girl, and then she just said, I just don't really feel a connection here. And I'm like, good, like that's what I want you to say.

I want you to tell me that. And then I I messaged her back. I'm like, you know, like I would really like feedback on what I'm doing wrong if there's anything I'm doing wrong. And she's like, oh, no, like I can't because you're actually just a great guy and I love you and you're awesome, but I just I'm not feeling it. I'm like, I that's that is not what I want.

What I want is I want the Cody online feedback box that where you can submit anonymous feedback to tell Cody he's gay and he sucks, which he has on his website, and I put I submitted that feedback a couple weeks ago. By the way,

I knew it was you from your signature writing style.

There's

You know, you know that thing where you call where you say everything is gay and everything sucks? Yeah. It's

Yeah. Well, a lot of people might say that. It could have been anyone.

But

I don't know. I don't like living in a transactional world, like I don't we've talked about this plenty on the show, but I don't like taking the romance out of dating. But like, if you are going to reject me, I would like to like hear the reason at least, you know, and I do this objectively for other people when I'm doing matchmaking, like, collect feedback and it's, like, very enlightening and honestly beneficial for me in the dating sense to be hearing women give feedback to their dates on other men, and that's helpful to me. But, like, I you never get personal feedback, and that's a big problem because it's, like, is there something I did to turn you off? You don't get that anymore.

And so the the to coming around back to the original conversation, that girl, like, if you are going to test me and I do pass the test, I don't hate you telling me you passed the test. Right? Like, I would rather be tested and then told I passed the test than tested and then, like, we're gonna pretend it wasn't a test when I obviously recognize it as such.

Sure. Sure. It just always goes it comes back to the same sort of hierarchy as always. It's like, yes, if you're gonna do bad things, best to do them and admit them. Still better though to just simply not do bad things.

So yeah, I would prefer the girl who just isn't crazy and doesn't feel the need to test their partner like a fucking psychopath. But sure, if I can't have that, then I'd like the one who's honest about it.

But we've been on two dates. I mean, don't think that that's I think that women have been doing this from time immemorial.

Yeah, they have and they need to stop.

Yeah. That's

enough. Twelve thousand years is too many women. Wits and wits, but let's let's bring it to an end.

I'd love to imagine that our podcast is gonna shape humanity from here on out, but I'm gonna go out and live and say it's gonna keep on happening.

No. Of course it will. Of course it will.

We will change nothing. We will have no impact. We could be Joe Rogan and we're not gonna change anything. You can't you can't this is the thing is you can't change things, like

No. Yeah. We're not gonna change anything. I feel like my perspective on this kind of stuff is like, yes, there are behaviors that are like intrinsic to human nature or whatever, like most people are gonna do them forever, but insofar as they are contributing to the problem or whatever, it's like, I wanna call that out. Like, I wanna have a coherent worldview on dating.

I have no illusion that, like, people are gonna do this stuff or, like, change their behavior, right? But, if you're a man or a woman and you're confused about why because I think that's the position most people are in, right? It's like they're dating and they're just living life, and they don't understand why they're getting the results they're getting. They don't understand, like, they're just kind of out there, they're searching, they're trying to find somebody, and they're doing their best, and they're not getting the results they want, or whatever. I feel like there's a lot of value in just explaining things and just saying, here's what's happening.

And so, yes, maybe I shouldn't make a moral judgment, but really, what I'm trying to say is, like, it's like, I'm joking. I'm trying to say it in a sort of jocular way. What I'm really saying though is that like, if you're a woman and you're testing men, you are exerting a cost on that relationship. You are taking a withdrawal from the relationship bank account. That is not a high trust maneuver.

That is not a high trust way to behave. And so you are going to be filtering intrinsically for low trust people. Like that's that's you are doing a thing that is having an effect on the world. Don't be surprised when you get results that are consequent to that effect. That's all I'm saying.

So it's like, sure. I mean, yeah, guess. You know, it's like

I want to explore that. So how should

they I feel like we have talked about this before.

Yeah, but we we have. We've talked about We've talked testing. We've talked about shit testing, but you're framing this in a really interesting way. You're framing this as something negative happened, and something was withdrawn from the emotional bank account. And I largely agree with that, though I think the cost was small.

But then what would the flip side be in a positive manner to help someone evaluate a prospective dating partner?

You mean what behavior should they do instead?

Yeah. Yeah. Instead of the don't do that, which is good advice, but even better would be you should do this instead to reach the end goal that you want even if you can't, as a confused person, articulate that.

It's like a virtue ethics thing. It's like, I don't want to get too philosophical or too moralistic, but I that's how I think about it. It's like it's like if you are engaging with the world and with other people in a way that is fundamentally, I think manipulative, Even if that works locally, like it might work in as a tactic, might actually be efficacious in the short term. In fact, that's of course it is. That's why people do it's expeditious.

That's why people do immoral behavior always because it's expeditious. So, like, yes, that might be an effective way of testing somebody in the moment and get and on a particular dimension. Right? On one particular way you might be able to see, like, is this man emotionally stable or whatever. But I would say there's the two problems with that are, a, are you over indexing on something that actually isn't important?

Like, maybe emotionally emotional stability actually isn't that important. Like, may maybe maybe if somebody has a really icy cold that's actually, like, pretty fucked up, and they're like subdued, they're like engaging in all sorts of like suppressive, like maybe what maybe healthy emotions mean that like sometimes your man's gonna cry in front of you, and like that's okay. It's like not it's like maybe you shouldn't be selecting for psychopaths. That's sort of separate. The other reason it's bad is because you are behaving in a way that is instrumental with other individuals.

You're treating them as like it's it's too tactical. You can't be that tactical with people. Otherwise, on a meta level, even if it is momentarily and locally expeditious, you are an instrumental person, and you're engaging with the world instrumentally on a virtue ethics level on the longest time horizon. I mean, you don't have to be spooky, I do believe in the spooky stuff, but you don't have to be spooky, it doesn't have to be woo, it doesn't have to be It can just literally just be people will observe that. Like, objectively, if people get to know you long enough, they're gonna see that like, oh, you're not speaking with me honestly, you are communicating with me in a way that is disingenuous, that you're trying to, you know, you're false, you know, you're conveying a false truth about how you're feeling, you're, you know, you're trying to poke me and nudge me to try to get a reaction to see.

You want to be engaging with, like, the real person. You you don't want to be engaging with, like, a facade of, like, I'm going to present myself to you in a particular way to see how you deal with that. It's like, no, I want you to present yourself to me as yourself.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I mean, does anybody want to feel like they are?

It would be like if I was on a date with a girl and I was like, do you want to come back to my apartment with me? And she said, no. And I said, good. I was testing you to see how easy you are on, like, a first date.

Sure. Something like that. Or or another example might be something like, I show up to pick up a a girl up in a really nice car, at the end of the night, I tell her, oh, it's a rented car. I rented it just for this day. I actually drive a a shitty sedan.

Yeah.

It's like, I was honest about it. What's wrong with that? And it's like, okay, but what was I doing? I was like, trying to you even if I was honest about it, it still fucked up that like I was trying to manipulate the situation so as to create an emotional response so as to like get something out of you.

So I'm gonna I'm gonna take this sideways, but it but bring it right back. I think we all want to live in a society where stuff is not stolen. And Japan is a great example of a place where people will famously leave their phone on the bench and come back to it, and two hours later, it's still there because no one takes it. No one wants their stuff stolen. But unfortunately, a small number of people and in different, you know, geographies and cultures, varying levels, will take stuff.

And I think we all have that desire to live in a high trust, low theft culture. But to do that, you also need to be a high trust, zero theft person. And if we all go around optimizing for the short term, oh, look, free phone, someone left it on the bench, we're gonna end up not living in the society we wanna live in. And you can't can't engage in petty theft and demand other people not. And likewise, in a relationship, you can't do exactly what you're talking about.

You can't come at it with a short term, I'm gonna over optimize on my own, not even needs, but my own shortcuts and hope the other person and the society doesn't too. And it's hard when it feels like everyone else is, and I don't have a solution to that. Well, I

think that women are looking for certain traits in a man that are hard to demonstrate just in like a modern environment. Like, a woman wants to see that you can handle yourself under pressure, and she wants to see that you can navigate a complex social situation or maybe, like, a social challenge in a real life setting, and that you can demonstrate, like, a certain prowess diplomacy dealing with other people or solving a problem, and you don't really get, like, you're not getting that in on a first date or a second date where you're just going out to dinner, you're getting drinks or something, like, there's no, you know, like, if you can demonstrate a good rapport with the bartender or something that demonstrates something specifically, but, like, I do think that in modern dating culture, like, there's you've I I empathize with women because the the things that men are looking for in a a woman are I think are generally somewhat easy to suss out compared to the things that women are looking for in a man. But one thing you can do as a man is to schedule dates or activities with a woman that you're seeing early on that can show, like Okay, so one important thing is is, being able to, like, solve a problem together, right?

Like, if you and a woman can plan a vacation together effectively, like, that's like a usually like a stepping stone in a relationship, right? Like, several months in, you're going to go on a trip together and you're going to plan a trip together and you're going to, that's going to be like a trial run for can we raise a family together, right? It's like a very like simple simplistic version of that. Can you book an Airbnb?

Right.

If you can't do that dog together, right? It's like getting a dog together is a lot like, can we raise a child together? Because if we can raise a dog together, that's a good sign. Now, I'm not saying these are I just spoke out against dogs a minute ago. But I I will say that my my most recent long term relationship, on our first date, we ended up building a jigsaw puzzle together.

And I thought that was actually one of the things that maybe, like, helped us hit it off immediately is because we sat down and we're like, this is a group problem solving activity. Like, you're going to assemble you're going to collect all the side pieces and put them together, and I'm going to look for parts of the buildings or whatever. And it's like, can can you and I as two people sit down together, divide tasks separately, trust each other to carry out our individual tasks, and then come back together once those are done and, like, contribute to finishing this overall, like, literally this puzzle that we're building together?

Right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And the reason is that like, that is a microcosm of the type of dynamic that you want to be in with this relation, with this person forever. Here's a better analogous example.

I want a smart part, a smart girl, a smart wife, right? Who doesn't? Okay, what if I show up to the first date and I gave you an IQ test? What woman would like that if I just showed up and I sat down at table said, great, go ahead and fill out this form, and then we'll continue the conversation. I And no woman listening wants No no woman wants that.

Right? That sounds horrific, but what Isn't that not valid to assess?

I feel like the kind of woman that would be your soul mate particularly is, like, the only woman in the world who would appreciate that.

Yeah. Maybe maybe they won.

I think you should filter on that, Cody.

But here's the problem. Yeah. Maybe it's right. But every most people will will recoil at the at the image of that. And the re it's and and I would never do that.

And the reason I wouldn't do that, it's like, I do believe in IQ, and I do believe that I want an intelligent partner, but the reason I wouldn't do that is because I don't want to be the guy who creates problems for my wife. I don't want I if I want to create a microcosmic situation, a microcosm of the type I want to be the kind of person who creates the experiences for my partner and for us together that I want us to have. I don't want to be the kind of person who who administers paperwork to my wife. Because if I'm willing to do it once, I'm willing to do it a million times. And guess what?

Who wants to be in a relationship with somebody who gives you paperwork? So same thing, it's like, this is why you don't want to do it, because no man wants to be in a relationship with a woman who gives him problems. Even a guy who's good at solving problems. You want to find a guy who's good at solving problems, the guy who is good at solving problems does You part of what constitutes a problem solving skill set? Not taking on unnecessary problems.

If you're a source of constant problems, the guy who's good at solving problems doesn't want you. That's the problem. That is the problem.

Yeah. Well, to to what this girl did in particular, I I as far as is it ethical or not, I I think that my belief is that women are going to do these things instinctually, and I think it's just part of who they are and what they do, and when they meet a man, there's some part of their animal brain telling them, like, I need It's to totally instinctual. So I don't think that, like

But so is murdering people. I I don't murder, so I wanna murder a lot of people. That's in my instincts. Yeah. But So so maybe maybe we stop telling women that all of your instincts are okay.

If if men have to suppress a third of our instincts, maybe women can suppress a third of theirs too.

Murder is a full third of your your human emotional repertoire.

You know what? It is.

Yeah. It's only a quarter for me, so I'm doing

If it could if you could repress the instinct to have a baby, you can definitely repress the instinct to be really

on women to to to use their, you know, super ego a little bit and and and maybe we don't have to structure all of civilization to kowtat to all of their base instincts.

Yeah. Well, it's there's like a paradox in that the the thing that leads to me having the most success on date is like turning off the governor in my brain that controls thinking about what I say at all. Yeah. Like, the dates where I go on and I'm hitting it off, I am saying dumb things. I am not be I am not thinking about what I say.

I'm speaking completely extemporaneously and I'm doing a little bit like what I do on this podcast where I just sit here and I'm just like, whatever comes to my head, I'm gonna say it.

Yeah.

Right? And and sometimes I'll say something and I'll immediately be like, I shouldn't have said that or I'll be like immediately, I'll be like, that was incorrect or that's wrong or I should hedge that. Right. And I just don't do it. And women seem to love that.

Yeah, they do.

It's it doesn't make any sense.

I discovered that in high school. I remember specifically, I was dating this girl in high school. I specifically remember having the thought of like, though this relationship is easy if I just don't think. Yeah. That was a dark real was a dark day.

That was a good day, no?

I mean, it led to a lot more sex over the next ten years.

Okay. Well,

yeah. I don't think I realized that until was like 27 years old and I really wish I I picked it up earlier.

One of my favorite things is I used to I always used to tell girls I was gonna murder them on our first date. That was always one of my favorite things. Yeah. This is like a just to see what I could get away with. Yeah.

I would tell them I would tell them I'm gonna go take you up on the roof and push you off the balcony.

Or one thing I do, this is something I do, I I always show up if I'm getting a drink with a girl, I always show up about ten minutes early, so I get there before her, and then I ask her, I'll text her, I'll say like you know, I'll tell her like where I'm sitting, and I'll be like, hey, just sat down at the bar, I'm on the end, Do you want me to order you something? And if they say no, it means they're coming in and they don't trust you. Because women think, first of all, how many women in their life have really had something slipped in their drink?

Usually, it's alcohol that slipped in their drink. Yeah. They ordered a vodka tonic and someone put vodka in it.

Yeah. I think that I think that drugging happens incredibly rarely. If you're like if she trusts you to order a drink for her and set it on the bar so she can show up and immediately have a drink.

First date, though, I could see some hesitation.

They almost always say yes. The girl I went on a date with, I did the drink, you know, I did the drink gambit, and she said, yes, I ordered her a martini, and I came, and she told me, she goes, you know, I demonstrated a lot of trust by letting you order me a drink. And I said, yes, thank you for making the social implication just completely explicit here. I really appreciate that.

Yeah. You should have told her that you're welcome, and in exchange for that thank you, you'll take the roofie out.

Yeah. I said I won't murder you afterwards

just for that. One of my favorite places in London to go on a date, you had to walk through what I can only describe as, you know, the the rape alley under the bridge. And I try to kind of politely joke, okay, this is gonna look really sketchy, but this is how we get to the coolest bar in London.

Yeah. I like I always like doing that on dates. It's like just trying to get all of the feel, like, just the scary stuff like on the table in the bright light as fast as possible. So it's like because I feel like that's just one of the easiest ways to just like establish trust and safety where it's like, look, if I if I wanted to murder you, I totally could have, but I didn't, so we're fine. Right?

Okay. Cool. Let's move on.

I think it's charming that

in cities, you can still have colloquial names for places like rape was it? Rape alley?

Or it was it was a rape tunneler. That? No. But you could it was it was pretty gross. There was pigeon netting above.

It was dark. It was drippy. There was usually a decomposing pigeon in it. It was it was it was what you'd expect.

How did the pigeons get in it for the pigeon netting?

The netting is never perfect. Okay.

They're also going there to rape.

Yeah. We're talking about I mean, ducks ducks rape. I mean, if you really look into duck reproductive strategies

Cats rape. Cats have I mean, we don't do we

wanna talk about this? We have

the cats have barbs on their penises so they can

We got a whole episode of different types of penises and the animal

This is wild back to the spiral penises, the animal dicks.

Should we make this episode all about your the dating your your We could do that. We could keep I

have some stories, maybe. Let me think about it.

What are you're tired of dating?

I'm tired of dating. You're you're a little burned out? I think I'm gonna not date for a little while.

Why are you tired dating, Les?

I'm tired of dating because it's okay. First of all, it's expensive. Second of all, it takes three hours of every night at a minimum. And if I go on a date at seven, I'm going to get not drunk, but I'm not going to be sober, and I'm not going to come home in a mindset to do work, so it's costing me productivity. And then I'm also gonna feel bad the next day.

Not drinking isn't really an option on a date. Like, I I I mean, I don't know. I I I drink on dates, right? That's just what I do, and there are reasons for that. But really, it's just like this it's this constant experience of getting not getting your hopes up, but I don't wanna be single, you know?

And, like, I want to go to a date and be excited about it, and I feel like I now can't do that because I've had this experience in the past few weeks of, like, there's a few girls that I've gone on several dates with and maybe thought there was something there and then just found out that there wasn't, there wasn't going to be, and then by a certain point, that becomes evident, And it's very just like it doesn't feel life affirming. It doesn't feel it contributes to like a certain like anhedonia or just like, I don't want to dull my ability to like be excited about meeting the right person. And it feels like that's what's happening.

Right. They all it starts to feel formulaic and it's just like a revolving door of people.

Yeah. Or like it really teaches me like I don't want to be a person who looks at a situation or meets a new person and is like instantly like trying to look for what's wrong. Like, I wanna be able to look at the positive, but like you get punished for that because Right. You know, like, I'm filtering on dating apps, I get plenty of likes, I don't have that problem, I have a really great dating app profile, I'm able to go on dates with women I find attractive, but I need to be discerning because dating is not all that I want to do for all of these other reasons. But it puts me in this scenario where I'm having to look for negatives, and I don't like I like to look for positives, I don't like to look for negatives, But if I look at positives and I give everybody the benefit of the doubt, then I'm going on lots and lots of dates and second dates and third dates and I'm spending money and I'm spending money on women who it's probably not going to go anywhere.

So I'm having to be discerning. I'm having to say, oh, I I I went on a date with a girl and we got along great and then we hung out with us a couple more times and it's like, we felt great and it felt fine. We got along with each other. It's like not perfect, you know, like there's a little awkwardness or whatever, but there always is early on, I guess. Then I did some research on her, you know, I did some osint online and I found pictures of her where she used to be very very fat and that instantly, like, ruined it for me and it's like, well, I don't wanna be having to, like, run facial recognition search on the women I'm going on dates with, like, I don't wanna do that.

Once fat, always fat. Yes. She's got a fat soul.

Yeah. Exactly. She's fat souled.

This is

like she's a bug man.

Can we dive into the tech for the listeners who don't know how to do this?

Yeah. If you it's called Pym Eyes. It's really good. I went on there, I put a picture of myself and I found a picture of me when I was 12 years old that I've never seen before. That was a cute picture, you know, I'm like a little kid.

It was a little bit eerie to find that, but it's incredibly good. And if if you put if a girl is an OnlyFans, you will find it. Like, if a girl has I use it for Keeper all the time. It's like, if you like, just take like, literally take like three screenshots of any picture where her face is clearly visible, you pay like $20, you go on the site and you upload three pictures of her and it will find any picture of her anywhere on the Internet. If there's a wedding website where, you know, some some couple got married three years ago and they hosted their wedding pictures somewhere and she is in the background dancing on one of those pictures, it will it will find that picture.

It's really incredible. It's called Pim Eyes, p I m e y e s. Sponsor of the show, use promo code handsome for 20% off your first creep search.

They didn't really give you that promo code, did they? No, I

don't think they even have promo codes.

It was slightly handsome. That was the that was the promo code, Westgarden. Yeah.

It's just fundamentally why I don't date or haven't been dating. I don't want to date a kind girl who dates.

Yeah. Or like, I want to date okay. So the same girl I think I can say this because we're probably not going to end up seeing each other. She came over to watch a movie last night and we watched a movie. So I think that it's not gonna happen.

We've really watched a movie. But she was she was showing me something on her phone when we were on a date and she got a message on Hinge while I was talking to her or while she was showing me her phone. I'm like, oh, show me the conversation. She like she clicked on the the notification and the message she had sent him on Hinge was almost the same as the message that she had sent me on Hinge. And sure, am I doing the same thing?

Yes. But it was one of those moments that's just like, I don't want this to be a mechanistic process. I don't want this to be an assembly line. We've beaten this horse to death on the show, but like, it's so unromantic and it's so like, I don't want that to be the genesis story of my relationship ever is, you know, I I was doing cold outreach. It's no fun.

Right. Yeah. No. It's it's bad. Another one that I have is is that I was thinking about this is we were talking about the things that you want we were talking about having to test someone early on in a relationship or in dating for particular traits that you're looking for that just aren't going to be exposed in the modern dating landscape naturally.

And so that's the reason that women are creating artificial dramatic situations to see how you react in them, is because, you know, no man is going to come and try to encroach on your territory while you're on the date, and she's not going to be able to see how you handle that situation. So she has to manufacture some kind of situation like that. So on my dating profile on Hinge, I use Hinge, there is a screenshot of when when Jake was on Fox News, and my photo is on the screen because I made b roll footage, and I put myself in it, obviously. And so it's like it's it's it talks about Keeper. It's on the Chiron.

It's like keeper.a I finds your best match or whatever. And I would say that, like, one eighth of the women who reach out to me are commenting on that post, and they're saying, if you have your own dating service, why are you on Hinge?

Right.

And I'm sure that they all think that that's an original comment. And it's like, that but that is useful to me. And our guest who was going to be on this show also reached out to me that way, which is ironic because she was also on Keeper and I knew who she was.

Sorry. Sorry. Just really quick. Where where did you say this was?

This was on Hinge.

No. That there is, like, a respond, like

There so women comment on my profile and they're looking at there's this photo of me on Fox News and in the photo, it's, like, giving context on Keeper.

Okay.

So they're reaching out to me and saying, if you have your if you run your own dating service, why are you on Hinge? It's a legitimate question. It is a legitimate question. But the the traits that I'm looking for in a wim woman are, like, number one, like, be nurturing and be kind to me. Like, I want someone who's soft.

I want someone who makes me feel, like, not safe is not the right word for it, but, like, someone who's, like, emotionally kind to begin with. Sure. And then, like, maybe number four or five on that list is someone who challenges me intellectually. But if your idea of reaching out to me and sending your first message to me is to like challenge me in some way, shape or form or like do like a pseudo call out of my behavior or be like, oh, why are you doing this? It's like, well, hey, I probably know that this is probably not going to work, so it like is serving me well in Wow.

That

I have totally taken that a lot of different ways, but that's such a I don't know. If someone asked me that and it was my dating app, I would have been like, yeah, nothing nothing's perfect. Let's let's go on a date and see what happens. I don't know. You might be just you might be assuming intent.

Well, she's let's just say if she's good looking enough,

I look past that. But a lot in fair I I I in fairness, I mean, I do I do agree to you, Serena. Like, a lot of people, like, they and they're forced into it. Like, I'm not even blaming them, but this is a really common thing at AMH, where they read it so much in the tiniest thing where it's like, you said hey and not hi. Oh, god.

Clearly, means you're a Taurus, and Tauruses are are not all Nazis. We all know that. So this is doomed to begin. It's just like this insane extrapolation. Not that you're obviously doing that, but, like, you might be extrapolating a little bit

Maybe. But Erroneously? I don't know. Do you think so?

You're I think you're going to be wrong sometimes. Sometimes you're going to be right. Sometimes you're going to be wrong. But if you make the assumption all the time, then you're guaranteeing

you're catching. I think it correlates a weak signal. So I do think there's some signal there, but it's just it's going to correlate mildly.

Because I've had relationships in the past where, you know, I've maybe I have an idea or I wanna share a business idea or something, you know, not related to the relationship and the I say, here's this idea I have and the first thing they do is start trying to poke holes in it and it's like, you have criticisms of the idea, that's fine, but like, I don't like the instinct to find fault. I don't like the instinct to find flaw.

Sure.

Right? Like, I want someone who looks on the sunny side. I want someone who is presented with an idea and their first instinct is to look for the good in that and to find why might this be right or why might this be a good idea. Because at the end of the day, like, if if I'm not looking for validation without meaning, but I'm looking for someone whose first instinct is to validate or to take me seriously enough to think that the thing that I am doing is right and correct, and we'll start with that assumption and not start with, what can I find that is wrong with this? What can I find that is not right?

Where can I poke a hole? Where can I find fault? I don't like that instinct.

I think we're going a little bit back to the puzzle, the the jigsaw puzzle. I was even wondering, can we abolish speed dating and replace it with jigsaw slow dating? You you do a puzzle over an hour together.

Yeah. You could do something like that. I mean

I wish there could be just like a service, like an escape room. It's like a service. You you go there, and they give you some it's like an hour long experience, something, you know, two hour long experience, and they put you in a bunch of situations on it with your date that, like, simulate a life together, so you can both evaluate each other.

This is supposedly why golf and business go so well hand in hand, because you get three hours on a golf course in a situation where there's success and mishap and competition. Cheating. Yeah, tons of stuff. So golf is supposedly this great window into the business soul. So maybe we need a a golf or even pitch and putt.

I think there's a pitch and putt in Queens.

I'm I'm often surprised at people's inability to read other people. That feels like such a fundamental skill, and it feels like, I mean, not to like be a some weird egotistical dick, but I feel like one of the still skills I've always had like a talent, it's not a skill because I didn't have to train it. I've just always been really good at reading people. I feel like that's still true. Like, and it's it's often shocking to me when people can't and they don't have that.

Like, just recently I was talking to this girl who I'm like friends with and she's been like there's been like a whole saga in her life, this whole drama that's been unfolding where she was like dating a guy who I was able to recognize as I'm quite proud of this one. I made this call from a thousand meters away. I was able to recognize immediately without ever having met him that he was like no good. Psych, you know, psychopath type. Right?

And right away, I was like, I tried to like warn her, I was like, get bad vibes from this guy, and you know, whatever whatever things, and then it went down exactly as I said it would. Every single part of my prophecy came true, and it's and and and it just it was like, and this isn't me tooting my own horn, it's like, it's more just like, I'm shocked at like, the fact that she couldn't see it coming. Even when it was called out, like, there's a train. Can you see the light? There's a train coming.

There's no train. You're talking Splat.

You're talking about two different things. One of them is the ability to read people, which I would also agree. I hope we all have. But the number of people who have told me their latest dating challenge, and you just take away the name and you realize that this is the same challenge as the last three people, what they have is attraction to a characteristic or type that isn't good for them and they're not able to let alone see that, certainly not able to break it.

That's so weird to

me. People subconsciously chase patterns that validate their own internal view of themselves. Like, you have a fundamental drive to be correct. If you don't like yourself and you think that you deserve punishment on some very deep level, you will seek out abusive partners subconsciously because they give you the punishment that you think that you need. And so you will say out loud, I don't like the way this person is treating me, but you are systemically seeking people who treat you that way because they, in a way, validate your own feelings about yourself and it's like a very dangerous pattern and there's like less dangerous versions of that.

But like, if you like, I think that men do this where men are like, just to use one example, men are afraid that women are going to use them for their money. But in some ways, men do also fetishize that or they want to be used for their money in a way because it is validating. So they seek out without probably even realizing it most of the time, women who are gold diggers more or less because it sort of like validates this fear that there's not really a fear even. Does that make sense? I I'm I there's Yeah.

There's there's the research behind this, but I'm not putting it in the best terms.

To quote Jung, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you'll call it fate. Yeah. Right? It's that.

That's very beautiful. Yeah, that was well said by this young guy.

No, it's Jung.

I've seen that with a friend. Just, you know, there was a little window into her soul when she had a very difficult moment and how she reacted towards it and how she reacted towards going beyond blaming herself, but really just castigating herself and seeing that in full force was like, oh, this connects the dots to a lot of the decisions you've made in life that haven't helped you move forward. It was just completely eye opening. If you have this view of yourself, then everything else makes sense. And I imagine it was there below the surface the whole time, but just was finally exposed.

Sometimes I wonder if it's easier to be insensitive. Are the suicide rates among artists? And it's not just, I think, the exposure to drugs and alcohol that come with the absolutely cooler life of being an artist, but I think that sensitivity must be crushing. And as a guy who's often been described as not the most sensitive one on the planet, sometimes it's kind of nice just having the emotional range of a tree stump and going through life where everything's pretty much Okay. Maybe the sun and the sky isn't that beautiful today, but also everything's going to be Okay.

Right. No, I think that's very true. I mean, it's like a known thing. It's like right brain activity correlates very highly with depression and anxiety and neuroticism generally. So it's like, yeah, the artist types tend to be, yes, very very depressive, etcetera.

And maybe it's amazing how much more they can feel in that capacity and that range. I'm not sure I want it. I've had a girlfriend who kept on telling me to be more emotionally available, and then she would cry a lot. And I was like, you're not selling this emotional available thing. You know?

It doesn't look good from the outside. It just looks like it's going be more tears. So I'll pass.

Do you like poetry?

No. I I have to confess. One time, my mom for Christmas gave me a book of poems, and my first thought was, how long do I have to wait before I can throw this out without feeling guilty? And I didn't mean to have that thought, but that was the first thought that went through my mind. Because I was like, I I can think of few things I want to do less than read a book of poetry.

I've never understood. Because like, I will be moved by architecture, you know? Like, Hitler wanted to build that giant dome and I found that moving. Sort of he wanted to build the Superdome in in Berlin. Sure.

Are are you moved by the Vegas Dome?

No. No. But it looks like a vacuum cleaner. Sure. The Vegas It's

gonna be beautiful architecture.

It has to well, okay. I'll be moved by something visually, but never like a painting. And so like but I've but what people are like, I like poetry and I I think that that is a 100 I don't think anybody likes poetry. I don't I think that is a that is a 100% jazz.

I think jazz is totally fake. Everybody likes jazz.

So I I had this almost existential crisis. I was in a museum with some friends. I forgot what it was called. It might have even been the Museum of Everything, and nothing was even the most that had the slightest interest to me. I could have just I did not care about a single thing in that museum until we came to an exhibit that happened to have a cool light bulb illuminating it.

And I stared with fascination at this light bulb because it had been engineered differently. And I thought, you know what? I am just attracted to engineering beauty. I am not attracted to this artificial maybe artificial is not the right word, but the supposed idea of constructive beauty, I have very little interest in it. But I am absolutely drawn to engineered, architected beauty.

I mean, fairness, I am one of the I am an artist, and I am one of those people who, like, is very sensitive and feels very deeply. I also hate museums. I mean, they are, like, curated to be full of the worst, in my opinion, art, unfortunately.

There is an amazing museum in Hobart, Tasmania that was built by a professional gambler. And that was one of the most amazing museums I've been to, almost everything in it was great. But aside from that, yeah, I can pass.

Bill, is that just a casino?

Cody's such a manipulator. He's like, I'm I'm so deep and artistic. I'm so tortured. I feel so deeply. Why is that what?

Yeah. Feel like Who am manipulating? I'm such an art artist. I'm I'm just I feel so deeply.

Is that does it sound like I'm I'm I'm just telling him I'm tooting my own horn?

I know another artist who fell very deeply.

Got you Maybe he's

don't know if you're a history buff. I

think we need to bring Norm MacDonald in here to help. You're talking about Amy Winehouse, aren't you? Yeah. That's exactly I'm talking

about Kurt Cobain.

I don't I don't ever I give my daughter the don't do drugs lecture. I just show her the before and after pictures of Amy Winehouse. I'm like, you know, it's up to you. Yeah. She was kind of thick before.

She was also didn't look like death walking.

She's a really good I really like Amy Winehouse. I like Amy Winehouse. She's a good singer.

She's she's dead, right? She's she she descended into death rather spectacularly, hence the before and after pictures. But her voice was incredibly deep. Was like

just Very gravelly. Very Yeah. She's like a crooner. Yeah. Yeah.

I like that. You have a fire dating story. You're going on a first date with a girl. Beating off beforehand. Yes or no?

I think it's different for every guy. What what I've been AB testing this.

So testing. This must be optimized. So

You're you're focusing on on the mechanics. Let's talk about the goal. The goal I'm

not focusing on the mechanics. I do it the same way every time.

Focusing on

The engineering of it all.

You're focusing on you're talking about a tactical nuclear weapon. I'm talking about a strategic nuclear weapon here. The goal is to the goal is to exude zero neediness. That is the goal. So what you're really doing is you're trying to say, I'm going to try to jump start my hormones and reduce my horniness and get myself into a state of not exuding neediness because women smell neediness

Does that

take a while away? I don't know if there is

a goal. I I Then you're just jerking. I just You just wanna lurk.

I'm trying to figure out. I'm like the guy who cracked the knuckles on his hand, won, you know, one hand for eighty years and won the Nobel Prize. I think that if I I'm if I maintain a spreadsheet of, like, how my dates go and whether I beat off before it or not, you know, and how long before, like, maybe I can win a Nobel Prize. But but you because you had mentioned you're like

Cracking the knuckles is the thing, but you're doing the beating off to change the outcome of the date. So you're you're you're having a two step phase here. Therefore what's the outcome? What's the

On the large enough sample What's the dependent variable? Tease out the effect of

Sure. But but the effect is is

What's the independent variable is he's asking?

Yeah. Well, the independent variable is beating off. Yes. We got that. That's

Thank you. Can we can we talk a second?

Is clearly established.

The dependent variable, I suppose, is, like, the outcome of the date.

Yeah. But there must be some middle thing. Now It's like a qualia. I don't believe it's pheromones, but it could be theoretically possible that you exude different pheromones, you know, if you have or haven't charged off recently. I don't think that's it.

I think it's your where your brain chemicals are behaving differently.

Based on my anecdotal experience the last couple weeks, I think that the way moving forward is to keep it in the chamber.

It Oh. And the out is the outcome did you did did you end up having sex with her? Or is the outcome like, oh, you you married her?

The out no. It's very qualitative.

Like And of one it's like a The self assessed Nobel Prize winner jerked off before he met his wife.

Yeah. All right. So we have just found today's explicit advice for podcast listeners. And as always, you should never follow this advice. The explicit advice is when you go on a date and it seems like it's going well, you tell the woman that you alternate between perjerking off and not jerking off before dates

And you keep it in and

she has to guess which one you did. You're like, come on, do you have any guesses? And when the date ends badly, it's totally not our fault.

It's not your fault because you clearly did the wrong one.

Or you listened to her advice. I think that was the wrong thing to do.

Sure. Eisemet Eisemet, when she responds poorly, that's you immediately you say, she looks at horror, you go, see, I knew I should have jerked off before this does.

We need to get an incredibly successful podcast that has millions of listeners, and then we do this. We ask everyone

We run it to do

a double crossover, cross the blind We

can our

audience do tons of experiments.

Yes. Okay. By show of hands, who jacked off before recording the podcast? Handsomebody's hand is up.

No. My hand My My hand

are down. Is down. But but but

leads to the gremlins challenge defined before. We weren't supposed to feed them after midnight. It's always after midnight. So what is before the podcast? What's the time frame?

Two hours? Four hours? This is like That's

a good question, actually.

This is like when

Same day.

When the Jews are like, you can have milk before meat, but not meat before milk unless it's two hours or four hours or six hours depending on which rabbi you

listen problem with this is that it is not following rigor enough experimental design.

Well, I can tell you

I just wanted to define before.

The the question of should you jerk in my life? Would say four hours. Think that's the refractory

period. Refractory.

Alright. Yeah. I think that four hours if it's two hours, I'm too, like can't you cannot talk to another human being within two hours of jerking off.

Maybe it's a half life thing. What if it's twice in five hours, but not once in four? Like, what if you, you know

If you're jerking off twice in five hours, then you should not you you have something else to

look into. Or you're 16.

Even when I was 16.

Alright. No comment.

Did that I mean, that's that's impressive at that point. Yeah. Your virility is is impressive.

Do remember that kid in Brazil who, like, jacked off 19 times and died?

And died.

This is why I love being a guy Yeah. Because I can only laugh upon hearing that. Right. I mean, I'm sure it's sad and everything. I'm sure his parents miss him, but it's just so funny.

They jacked him so fucking to death.

Because he was doing what They

probably don't.

Was it his life essence just came out through his semen? Did he dehydrate himself?

Yeah. His his fucking organs are coming out of his dick.

He nudged his, like, lower intestine. It was like

You would think on the eighteenth time.

It was like peanuts that you woken up.

Or you should have slipped into a coma and then not not been able to do it.

Right. I was saying, you think of the 18 times there have been some pros

And from some also, we all came from the genetic stock of people who managed not to jerk themselves off to death. And I'm pretty sure some of my ancestors must have gotten close, but those who did, at least in early age, never reproduced.

My understanding is that no one jerked off before, like, 1960. It was frowned upon.

For those of

us You

could tell us.

Are listeners not listen to us.

What do people do in the Stone Age, Stoney?

Well, I have an answer. Don't think it's a I

think they jerked off. I mean, you look at any of the temples or hieroglyphics or, you know, Japanese art, they were they were up to some pretty crazy stuff.

There's lots of weird stuff in there. You never see pictures of a jerking off though. You see all sorts of weird depictions of like sex and a lot of snails, but no jerking off.

I never noticed the snails.

Have you seen the rosetta snails? It's particularly in medieval in

the The rosetta sounds like bird, eye, cane jerking off. It's this and then they're like, oh, that means jerking off.

That's why it took them so long to crack his. It was mostly just like

They were getting so horny every time they saw it. That's why a woman had to decode the Rosetta Stone. It's because the guys were getting Hold on. I I have to go to

the bathroom again. I'll be I'll be right back. Give me give me the Kleenex.

What are we talking about?

I don't I I think we I think we just hit the best moment of our of our episode, and maybe we should just erase the first 40 and only

I totally agree. We gotta be looser. Like, we gotta find ways to to find these loose topics and

Okay. Well, just talked about jacking off, and we can't do that on every episode.

No. But let's always I think

we do. I think we

Let's always start with the jacking off injury in the news.

The jerk of the week. Stroke? Today's Stroker of the Week

is I can't wait to build that automation, that fun that curates news stories for us about jacking off.

Yeah. I mean, want to play with Sifton, which is this developer focus

No, I use Sifton. We use Sifton for Keeper.

Okay, so yeah, I to start using it. And I was going to use it for work, but I think we can easily add It's not that good. Jacking off and injury as a keyword. Maybe we'll get a case study, and we'll get on their website as look look at the amazing things people were doing with our tech product.

You have to look up you have to you have to use a euphemism for no no reputable news source. Trenzied. Teenager jacks off to death.

Well, do the he could have pulled

funny about blank to just, like, jacking up to death. It's so, like, I can't imagine the intermediate. It's like it's like it was fine until the nineteenth time.

And also, how do how do they know? Because maybe he just had a heart attack that happened to happen while he was jacking off. So really, it's he died while jacking off, but we don't know. What is funny is the guy who is having sex with a chicken, and then there was an earthquake, and the the building collapsed on him, and he's pinned to death, crushed by these stones with a chicken in his crotch. I kid you not, you can look this up.

Oh my god.

Dude, I served with this guy from Afghanistan, and he was like a he he had become American citizen, he like helped the Americans in Afghanistan, then he went to like the officer school with me in the army and he he had this very vivid story he would tell people when he was drunk about fucking a goat and it was fake, but he would tell it in such a convincing way that people thought it was real and then he used it as like a litmus test to like tell how people thought of him by like whether they they believed his story or not.

What? That seems ill advised.

No, dude. He was I went I hung out with him a few years ago and he he was short. He wasn't very good looking and he had like a super hot girlfriend. And I was like I was like, did tell her that I'm not gonna say his name. I was like, you tell her the goat story?

He's like, oh, I have to tell you the goat story.

It's like

He's like, I forgot he forgot.

Right. The one girl he forgot is the one who became his girlfriend. He's like

Yeah. Well, I can say so from my empirical from my empirical inquiry here that I've been Do I wanna see this? Do I wanna see it? What is it? Is this a picture

of man who was crushed to death? It turns out I got it a little bit wrong. It was a falling rock. I don't know if it was an earthquake or not, but he was having sex with a chicken. And that is how he died.

Dude, have you ever seen the video of the guy in a in, like, Dubai having sex with a car?

No. It was funny. I'm

not sure I

want to,

but

It's so

funny. The the silence that

you hear that's what he was doing before.

Because the chicken is in a rather

opposed to somebody came by, found his body just pulling chicken there.

What if he was just, like, picking the feathers from the chicken and was

this naked? And I think I think the chicken was

fell on him. If if if a stone can crush you, it can pull your

pants down. Look, you're just trying to come up with some excuses. I think we all know what this guy was doing with the chicken.

I'm just saying Yeah. If you own a He was framed. You have the instinct to, you know you're you're not reaching for the chicken first. Right?

Yeah. He he think he was he was framed by the the the chicken the chicken rape interest group, like the the, you know, the the the down with chicken rape advocacy Well,

first of

all, we don't know if it was rape. This is a false flag.

It's very

instant. We do not know if it was rape. We what is the chicken's expression in the photo stoning Kizumin? Well, I think that like, you know, the Epstein files are out and people are asking, you know, why do the elite why are they why are they doing this? And it's I think that that's sort of just the last thing.

Once you've done everything else in life and you're a you're a powerful person, it's like, what's the last bridge you can cross? And I I mean that I don't mean to be silly about this.

I would I would never have that as my last bridge. My last bridge would be a chicken. Well well,

that's what I'm saying. It's like if you have a farm, you probably have goats and you probably have sheep. And so, like, by the time you get to chicken, you've tried everything else. Right? Like, that's what that's how you get to chicken.

Right? It's a slippery slope. Like, guys That's really

what mean. Is so inevitable. It's just it's like, well, eventually, it's gotta

One one thing led to another. Right.

Like I that think if you go to Wales

Once you once you fucked and goat, what are gonna do? Fuck the chicken?

Yeah. Like, it's like I've got standards here. The reason you don't fuck a sheep is because next thing you know, you're fucking a chicken.

So a sheep is a gateway gateway drug to chicken is what you're saying?

Yeah. Don't don't even start with sheep. I don't care how big your pasture is.

Well, the advice that we're able to provide to our listeners is just second to none. It's the Handsome Hour.