Podbit · 2 Bears, 1 Cave with Tom Segura & Bert Kreischer
Bert Kreischer argues that narcissism isn't inherently bad — he only does things because of how they make him feel, including not cheating on his wife (he'd be miserable without her) and not talking shit about Tom (Tom hasn't done anything worth it). His therapist agrees.
Where this was said
At 55:35 · chapter starts 49:51
Ari Shaffir arrives having just taught a yoga class at the 5K, heat-stroked and bearded, and the dynamic immediately shifts into the philosophical and anarchic. The group swaps Shaq stories — Ari relays Brett Ernst's anecdote about Shaq spending 90 minutes playing with birthday party children and paying their tab — before pivoting to Joe Rogan's stratospheric fame and the odd experience of realizing your friends have become cultural institutions. [1] — Ari Shaffir "Ari Shaffir relays comedian Brett Ernst's story about Shaq at a restaurant: asked to say hi to children at a birthday party mid-meal, Shaq …" 50:20 Bert unpacks his therapist's framing of his narcissism: he doesn't cheat because he'd be miserable without his wife, not because he cares about her feelings, and the 5K itself is a product of that self-centered drive. The gang then reconstructs 'Fat Tom' with forensic glee — the pecan pie spiral, the hot sauce kit, the body that had 'given up' — before Ari casually drops that he regularly passes blood and has no intention of addressing it. [2] — Bert Kreischer "Bert Kreischer argues that narcissism isn't inherently bad — he only does things because of how they make him feel, including not cheating …" 55:35
Ari Shaffir relays comedian Brett Ernst's story about Shaq at a restaurant: asked to say hi to children at a birthday party mid-meal, Shaq finished eating first, then spent 90 minutes playing with the kids and paid their entire tab before leaving.
Bert and Ari reconstruct 'Fat Tom' — a version of Tom Segura who was broke, binge-made pecan pies, and gained 30 pounds in a month before he knew he had money. Today's Tom has a chef and red light therapy injections. The contrast is wild.
Ari Shaffir returns from a world travel sabbatical and surprises Bert Kreischer with a 'Trippy Award' for best episode of his travel podcast You Be Trippin'. The entire crowd expects a prank, but the award is genuine — no turd in the box.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
Every person lives in constant tension between infinite possible selves and the finite, limited self they actually are. Tipping too far toward infinite possibility produces a loss of identity; too much confinement in the finite produces stagnation. Kierkegaard argued that this tension is never solved — only managed.
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