Drunk History (2013) s06e06 Episode Script
Drugs
1 John Lilly starts a dolphin laboratory.
He's on acid.
Everyone's on acid.
And the dolphins are, like, learning.
We can talk, now you talk.
John Lilly realized, wow, this works.
God, I wish I was born in the '60s! John Fitzgerald Kennedy, he's like, I'm riddled with Addison's disease.
Dr.
Feelgood's like, you're gonna get my super special magic elixir.
Pow.
This was wild.
[PATRIOTIC MUSIC.]
[PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC.]
How cool is this? Dr.
Drew, thank you for doing this.
Uh-uh.
- It's a great honor.
- I just want to say, like, it's not just cool.
It's surreal, 'cause, you know, before we were friends, obviously I was aware of you, Dr.
Drew, but I had been frantically preparing to get in an argument with you over, like, psychedelics.
You thought I was the no party guy, the bummed guy.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And then I realized, oh, yeah, you're cool, he doesn't he's not he's just a scientist.
Yeah, I'm a clinician.
I don't want to hurt anybody, and I want to give good advice.
You like pushing the limits.
I can't do that.
But I'm fascinated that you do it, and I want to hear all about it.
Can you say, "I'm Dr.
Drew, not let's get fucked up"? - He's not gonna say - [LAUGHS.]
All right.
- I'll say that.
- Ahhh.
And then he'll move his lips? I'm Dr.
Drew.
Let's get fucked up.
[LAUGHS.]
Greetings to you, children of the world.
It is I, Duncan Trussell, and tonight on "Drunk History," we're gonna talk about LSD and dolphins.
Cheers.
Cheers.
So in 1961, Dr.
John Lilly published an amazing book called "Man and Dolphin.
" He wrote, wow, these dolphins are smart.
They're not like what we thought.
They're not just sea rats.
They're talking to each other.
They're social, they're advanced, and we don't even know it yet, but I bet we could talk to these sweeties.
So yeah, there was a big dolphin boom.
Everybody's reading Lilly's book, and Carl Satan Carl Carl Satan is a cool name.
Carl Satan is so much cooler than Marilyn Manson.
[LAUGHS.]
I so hope someone watching this starts a fucking bad-ass band and renames themselves Carl Satan.
All right, Carl Sagan's reading this book, and he's like, whoa.
If dolphins can fucking talk, what the fuck, man? This book is blowing my mind.
So Sagan calls a meeting.
SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, their members before it even existed are like, shit, we all wanted to talk to these fucking aliens.
And they're all like, dolphins are these fucking mammals, man, and they live in the sea, they can talk.
If we can figure out how to talk to them, maybe we can figure out how to talk to aliens.
NASA's like, fuck man, let's do this shit.
NASA gives John Lilly a shit-ton of money.
So John Lilly starts a dolphin laboratory in St.
Thomas in the Caribbean in 1963.
It's called the Communicating Communications Research Institute, CRI.
So somehow John Lilly gets three dolphins.
And he's looking at them, he's like, all right, I'm gonna name you Pamela.
I'm gonna call you Sissy.
And I'm gonna call you Peter, and we're gonna teach you how to speak English.
So someone who works there, her name's Margaret Howe Lovatt, he says to her, listen, I wanna give you Peter.
You teach Peter how to talk.
Margaret says, I am going to teach you English.
He's like [IMITATES DOLPHIN NOISES.]
She'd be like, my name is Margaret.
And he'd be like [IMITATES DOLPHIN NOISES.]
- And like - Doesn't sound like her name.
No, it's a fucking dolphin.
Give him a break.
Imagine if somebody took you out of the Earth onto an alien spaceship and they're like, hey, listen, talk with your ass.
- [LAUGHS.]
- That's Peter's situation.
So so she wanted to be around the dolphin all the time.
Her bed is next to the dolphin aquarium.
She built her desk in a platform above the tank.
She basically moves into Peter's apartment.
So Peter seems to be learning, and Lilly's like, shit man, Margaret, I think you and Peter are hitting it off.
But here's the problem.
- Dolphins are sexual creatures.
- Uh-oh.
So it's like rubbing up against her, it's humping her leg.
He's like, look, look what's happening to me.
And and she's like, oh, wow.
Like, he needs to fuck.
So when Peter would get horny, they would, like, lift him out of the tank and put him in the tank with the two other girls, dolphins.
Nice.
And sure as shit, afterwards he started learning English better.
Margaret's like, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk time.
We can talk.
Now you talk.
Peter's like, fuck, I think they want me to say their monkey talk.
[IMITATES DOLPHIN CHATTERING.]
But I'm horny.
She's like, goddamn it.
Here we go again.
But moving a dolphin sucks.
And she's like, I didn't know I was gonna become a fucking Uber for dolphin fucking.
And at some point [LAUGHTER.]
At some point she's like, listen, guys, listen, we can't do this.
We don't have the time.
I'll jerk him off.
What's the big deal? Margaret started jerking Peter off in between lessons.
Do you think the handjob had a special allure for him? 'Cause dolphins don't have hands.
I think as a dolphin Peter was not stuck on hands or no hands.
He was just like, I'm from the ocean.
You, I don't know what the fuck you're from.
You're some kind of monkey thing.
I think I know what will make you happy though.
That's making me cum.
[LAUGHTER.]
- My career is over.
- What? My career is over, tonight.
[LAUGHTER.]
So where'd the drugs get into the story? Okay, so John Lilly's at a party.
He meets the wife of the producer of "Flipper," who gives him LSD.
Everyone's on acid.
John Lilly gets the idea, if we start giving acid to dolphins, I bet they'll talk to us.
[LOUD SIGH.]
- You all right? - I'm fine, man.
- You spinning? - I'm not spinning.
Yet.
I hate spinning.
Is there Do you have a solution to spinning, Doctor? Vomiting.
God, God, that's so evil.
So fucked up.
There's nothing else? Not drinking so much.
Goddamn it.
Where where did we leave off? So the lab, so the LSD.
[SIGHS.]
All right.
One of John Lilly's dolphins was traumatized.
It'd been hit by a spear gun, and it was afraid of humans.
He goes in the laboratory with a bunch of acid.
This'll be great.
We can talk to the dolphins! Let's talk to dolphins! He gives the dolphin acid.
The dolphin that was formerly scared of humans swims up to him and looks him in the eye.
There's a moment where it's like, wait, maybe this isn't about language.
Maybe it's something deeper than language.
And John Lilly realized, wow, this works.
Fuck this blowhole communication.
- This is something bigger.
- Exactly! It's not just the guttural sound you make out of your fucking hamburger tube.
[LAUGHTER.]
So John Lilly starts giving the dolphins acid.
Margaret is like, hey, John, do you mind not injecting Peter with acid? That'd be awesome.
I don't think he wants acid.
I don't want you to give it to him.
Margaret's like, I love this dolphin.
I don't know.
And Lilly's like, no, I'm gonna give Peter acid.
It makes them it seems to make them a little more, like, communicative, they're a little it seems to excite them in some way.
And he gave it acid.
So John Lilly is on acid.
So they're both tripping.
[PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC.]
So, ugh Eventually "Hustler" catches wind of the fact that Margaret is, like, jerking off dolphins and writes an article.
They made it like "Hustler" style.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Someone at NASA opens it up and they're like, what the fuck? I paid a million dollars to that asshole, and they're out there fucking the dolphins.
And so Carl Sagan comes in one day, and he's like, uh, I'm Carl Sagan, and I'm a very respected scientist.
I love space.
You know that.
I think space is amazing, but there's a couple of things I think are weird that are now happening in the universe.
Number one, jerking off dolphins.
And number two, giving them acid.
And you know what, John? When I said let's talk to fucking dolphins, I didn't mean let's teach them to speak English.
Let's learn their language! You don't go to Japan and kidnap a Japanese man and start jerking him off and giving him fucking acid and then ask him to learn English! John, I'm sorry, I'm angry, but really just think about it from my perspective, man.
The next time I go to fucking NASA, they're gonna be like, oh, yeah, sure, Carl.
Who you gonna jerk off in this experiment, aliens? An owl? A partridge? What's it gonna be, Carl? Oh, yeah, sure, we'll give you money.
Get the fuck outta here! [LAUGHTER.]
So the lab shuts down, 1966.
Peter went to another laboratory.
It wasn't a lab like the one he was at.
This was just a fucked up basic, shitty, goddamn dolphin lab.
Peter's heart was broken.
He loved Margaret.
So Peter swims to the bottom of the aquarium, and he dies.
He drowns himself.
Dolphins can choose not to breathe.
Yeah, Peter, especially.
And Margaret's heart was broken.
She was so she was really hurt by that.
- This is like the important point, man.
- Hmm? John Lilly's work led to a world-wide recognition of dolphins and whales as intelligent life forms.
And thanks to his work, they passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which kept dolphins and whales safe.
In spite of the peculiar twists and turns of this story, why was this important history? I think Peter taught us that no matter how bad it seems, like, you could make it better.
Right, like, he's like, if you believe in yourself, if you truly believe in yourself, you can get a monkey descendant to make you cum.
[LAUGHTER.]
Oh, God, I wish I was born in the '60s.
All right, so what are you gonna have tonight? I'm gonna have a Dr.
Feelgood Pepper.
- That's nice.
- What a drink.
Alcohol is a drug like any other, but it is given such special place in our culture.
Imagine if it was like, this cocaine, why, it's a one oak it's made in oak, one kind of oak, one barrel.
I don't think it's the best point I don't think it's the best point I've ever made.
[LAUGHS.]
Hello.
[LAUGHS.]
Something about saying hello that feels so fake.
Hey! [LAUGHTER.]
That's how I would do it, it's so terrible.
[CHUCKLES.]
Hello, I'm Jon Lovett, and today we're talking about JFK and Dr.
Feelgood.
- I wanna feel good.
- Let's feel good.
- You know? - Cheers.
Cheers.
So [CHUCKLES.]
JFK is running for president, and he's about to debate Richard Mother Trucking Nixon, and he is a mess.
He's sitting there and he's like, I'm riddled with Addison's disease.
He could barely speak.
His back hurts.
He's got one of his classic migraines.
Terrible set of symptoms.
Classic Addison's disease.
[LAUGHTER.]
So he's like, I can't go out there.
And his buddy is like, I know somebody who can help you, and his name is Dr.
Max Jacobson, aka Miracle Max, aka Dr.
Feelgood.
JFK's like, cool, get that doctor on here.
So in comes Dr.
Feelgood.
He comes in, and JFK's like, hey, I've got Addison's disease.
And Jacobson's like, I have the cure for that.
He's like, what? No one has the cure for Addison's disease.
And Jacobson's like, bah-bah-bah.
- You know, 'cause he's Jewish.
- Yeah, bah-bah-bah.
And he goes, bah-bah-bah.
Bah-bah-bah.
Bah-bah-bah, you're gonna get my super special magic elixir.
Give me your butt cheek.
And he gives him a, pow, shot.
And then JFK is like, holy moly! My body is working.
I feel like my old self again.
Hey, one question, um, maybe it's late to ask, but, hey, you know, never too late.
You know, it's never too late to ask a question.
What is in this? And Max Jacobson is like, number one, vitamins.
Number two, there is enzymes.
And then finally, don't freak out, but the last ingredient, it is placenta.
- Huh.
- Placenta.
- [CHUCKLES.]
- Placenta.
So JFK walks out, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah, to that podium.
He says, hey, Tricky Dick, hey, Tricky Dick, get ready, get fucking ready.
Are you ready? I'm the best at TV.
Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Kennedy shot Nixon with rhetoric, and Nixon is defeated.
So now JFK is President of the United States, all right? So you got RFK as his right-hand man, but he's got another right-hand man, his left-hand man, Dr.
Feelgood.
He's getting the pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Jackie Kennedy, his wife, she's like, what's going on with those shots? He's like, hey, here, I get them in here.
[LAUGHTER.]
- Here.
- Here.
Here.
[INDISTINCT.]
And so he's got Jackie doing it.
But but Kennedy's dealing with a lot of problems, okay? Problem number one, the Cold war.
Kennedy is gonna meet with the bald man from Moscow, Khrushchev, and he's like, I need that I need that boom-boom juice you give me.
And then Feelgood goes, kapow.
Then it happened.
They meet in Vienna, Austria.
Uh, I am genuinely quite drunk.
[LAUGHTER.]
Where were we in the story of JFK and his drugs? - [LAUGHS.]
- JK! Wait, please keep calling him JK, 'cause that is his inish.
So J-Mother-Loving-K and Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and Truman Capote, they're all getting the Dr.
Feelgood crazy shots, and RFK is starting to get a little worried, 'cause he's like, what's going on here? Is this the White House or is this a trap house? [LAUGHTER.]
So RFK is the brother of the president and he's an amateur sleuth, and he's like, I'm gonna find out what's in this thing through medicine testing.
And then beep-bop-boop.
[LAUGHS.]
Beep-bop-boop-ba.
Beep-bop-boop, out come the results.
It's meth! [DRAMATIC MUSIC.]
This is fun.
I wanna keep drinking and talking about this stuff on camera.
Do you mind if we do a little more? Honestly, I really don't.
I'm having a blast.
All right.
- All right, ready? - All right, let's do it.
Now, just to catch you up, just to previously on "JFK" Yes, please.
The president, John F.
Kennedy, was on meth.
So RFK goes to his brother and he says, you're getting meth, Jackie, Jack, John F.
Will you accept this offer of help today, JFK? Blown away.
What else do I have to say? And John F.
Kennedy is like, I don't give a flying fudge.
I don't care if it's horse piss.
You know what Miracle Max does? He makes me get over my physical problems to be the best person I can be.
It's crazy.
So RFK, Robert, Bobby, well, what does he do? He confronts Dr.
Max Jacobson and he says, listen, you're gonna stop treating my brother, you something that rhymes with bike.
Okay, and that's not what he said.
I honestly don't want to say what he says, because, frankly, it's anti-Semitic.
And then RFK says, my brother's gonna be president for eight years, and then I'm gonna be president for eight years, and nothing's gonna stop us.
Nothing, 'cause we're the Kennedy's right? And this is Camelot.
Nothing could go wrong.
Nothing.
Nothing! Nothing.
Nothing.
But basically afterwards, Dr.
Feelgood calls Kennedy and says, your brother, Bobby Kennedy, gave me 1960s anti-Semitism.
And you know what I say to that? I say no thank you, and I'm not gonna work with you anymore.
So so now John F.
Kennedy's he's not good.
And he's like, I am exhausted from my Addison's disease.
I need help.
So JFK calls up Dr.
Feelgood and he says, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm fucked up, all right? I need that sweet, sweet magic medicine.
Make me feel good, Feelgood.
And Dr.
Feelgood's like, sure, I'm a stone-cold lunatic and fraud.
I will do whatever you want.
JFK and Feelgood meet at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, and so JFK gets one last super dose, and JFK's like, wow, this is fantastic.
I'm gonna get naked and run around Carl-hil Carlyle Hotel doing literal cartwheels even though I continue to have basically untreated Addison's disease.
He's done cartwhile He's done cartwheels through the Carlyle.
Cartwheels through the Carlyle is a bit of a tongue twister.
A hundred percent.
Moses supposes his toeses are roses.
Boy howdy, you know? And the Secret Service look at each other and they said, we've got ourselves a real sitch-uation.
And so they say to each other, why don't we get a doctor who knows how to treat crazy people? The Secret Service calls a literal psychiatrist who comes and, pew, injects Camelot himself with an antipsychotic medicine.
He he sobers up.
He wakes up.
He's surrounded by medical doctors, and they say to him, Mr.
President, you gotta stop seeing this doctor.
And he's like, why? He makes me feel so good.
And the doctor's like, well, how 'bout this? You can't do meth anymore, because you're in charge of the nuclear warheads.
And JFK's like, you make a really good argument.
I'm done with meth.
I'm done with it, all right? I'm gonna live a lovely life where I just use normal doctor things like Advil and stretching.
And then he lives happily ever after.
Nothing bad happens to him.
[LAUGHS.]
And then in 1972, "New York Times" runs an exposé.
Exposé? Exposé? And Feelgood's like, I've got to Enron the shit out of these documents.
Shred, shred, shred, shred, shred, shred, shred.
He destroys all of his records and then he said, hi-ya, hi-ya, and then there was kind of trumpets and kind of a Morricone score, and he's gone off into the sunset, never to be heard from again.
This was wild The president was on drugs! - [CHUCKLES.]
- Okay.
Okay.
I'm done.
- Cheers.
- To Kennedy.
[PATRIOTIC MUSIC.]
He's on acid.
Everyone's on acid.
And the dolphins are, like, learning.
We can talk, now you talk.
John Lilly realized, wow, this works.
God, I wish I was born in the '60s! John Fitzgerald Kennedy, he's like, I'm riddled with Addison's disease.
Dr.
Feelgood's like, you're gonna get my super special magic elixir.
Pow.
This was wild.
[PATRIOTIC MUSIC.]
[PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC.]
How cool is this? Dr.
Drew, thank you for doing this.
Uh-uh.
- It's a great honor.
- I just want to say, like, it's not just cool.
It's surreal, 'cause, you know, before we were friends, obviously I was aware of you, Dr.
Drew, but I had been frantically preparing to get in an argument with you over, like, psychedelics.
You thought I was the no party guy, the bummed guy.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And then I realized, oh, yeah, you're cool, he doesn't he's not he's just a scientist.
Yeah, I'm a clinician.
I don't want to hurt anybody, and I want to give good advice.
You like pushing the limits.
I can't do that.
But I'm fascinated that you do it, and I want to hear all about it.
Can you say, "I'm Dr.
Drew, not let's get fucked up"? - He's not gonna say - [LAUGHS.]
All right.
- I'll say that.
- Ahhh.
And then he'll move his lips? I'm Dr.
Drew.
Let's get fucked up.
[LAUGHS.]
Greetings to you, children of the world.
It is I, Duncan Trussell, and tonight on "Drunk History," we're gonna talk about LSD and dolphins.
Cheers.
Cheers.
So in 1961, Dr.
John Lilly published an amazing book called "Man and Dolphin.
" He wrote, wow, these dolphins are smart.
They're not like what we thought.
They're not just sea rats.
They're talking to each other.
They're social, they're advanced, and we don't even know it yet, but I bet we could talk to these sweeties.
So yeah, there was a big dolphin boom.
Everybody's reading Lilly's book, and Carl Satan Carl Carl Satan is a cool name.
Carl Satan is so much cooler than Marilyn Manson.
[LAUGHS.]
I so hope someone watching this starts a fucking bad-ass band and renames themselves Carl Satan.
All right, Carl Sagan's reading this book, and he's like, whoa.
If dolphins can fucking talk, what the fuck, man? This book is blowing my mind.
So Sagan calls a meeting.
SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, their members before it even existed are like, shit, we all wanted to talk to these fucking aliens.
And they're all like, dolphins are these fucking mammals, man, and they live in the sea, they can talk.
If we can figure out how to talk to them, maybe we can figure out how to talk to aliens.
NASA's like, fuck man, let's do this shit.
NASA gives John Lilly a shit-ton of money.
So John Lilly starts a dolphin laboratory in St.
Thomas in the Caribbean in 1963.
It's called the Communicating Communications Research Institute, CRI.
So somehow John Lilly gets three dolphins.
And he's looking at them, he's like, all right, I'm gonna name you Pamela.
I'm gonna call you Sissy.
And I'm gonna call you Peter, and we're gonna teach you how to speak English.
So someone who works there, her name's Margaret Howe Lovatt, he says to her, listen, I wanna give you Peter.
You teach Peter how to talk.
Margaret says, I am going to teach you English.
He's like [IMITATES DOLPHIN NOISES.]
She'd be like, my name is Margaret.
And he'd be like [IMITATES DOLPHIN NOISES.]
- And like - Doesn't sound like her name.
No, it's a fucking dolphin.
Give him a break.
Imagine if somebody took you out of the Earth onto an alien spaceship and they're like, hey, listen, talk with your ass.
- [LAUGHS.]
- That's Peter's situation.
So so she wanted to be around the dolphin all the time.
Her bed is next to the dolphin aquarium.
She built her desk in a platform above the tank.
She basically moves into Peter's apartment.
So Peter seems to be learning, and Lilly's like, shit man, Margaret, I think you and Peter are hitting it off.
But here's the problem.
- Dolphins are sexual creatures.
- Uh-oh.
So it's like rubbing up against her, it's humping her leg.
He's like, look, look what's happening to me.
And and she's like, oh, wow.
Like, he needs to fuck.
So when Peter would get horny, they would, like, lift him out of the tank and put him in the tank with the two other girls, dolphins.
Nice.
And sure as shit, afterwards he started learning English better.
Margaret's like, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk time.
We can talk.
Now you talk.
Peter's like, fuck, I think they want me to say their monkey talk.
[IMITATES DOLPHIN CHATTERING.]
But I'm horny.
She's like, goddamn it.
Here we go again.
But moving a dolphin sucks.
And she's like, I didn't know I was gonna become a fucking Uber for dolphin fucking.
And at some point [LAUGHTER.]
At some point she's like, listen, guys, listen, we can't do this.
We don't have the time.
I'll jerk him off.
What's the big deal? Margaret started jerking Peter off in between lessons.
Do you think the handjob had a special allure for him? 'Cause dolphins don't have hands.
I think as a dolphin Peter was not stuck on hands or no hands.
He was just like, I'm from the ocean.
You, I don't know what the fuck you're from.
You're some kind of monkey thing.
I think I know what will make you happy though.
That's making me cum.
[LAUGHTER.]
- My career is over.
- What? My career is over, tonight.
[LAUGHTER.]
So where'd the drugs get into the story? Okay, so John Lilly's at a party.
He meets the wife of the producer of "Flipper," who gives him LSD.
Everyone's on acid.
John Lilly gets the idea, if we start giving acid to dolphins, I bet they'll talk to us.
[LOUD SIGH.]
- You all right? - I'm fine, man.
- You spinning? - I'm not spinning.
Yet.
I hate spinning.
Is there Do you have a solution to spinning, Doctor? Vomiting.
God, God, that's so evil.
So fucked up.
There's nothing else? Not drinking so much.
Goddamn it.
Where where did we leave off? So the lab, so the LSD.
[SIGHS.]
All right.
One of John Lilly's dolphins was traumatized.
It'd been hit by a spear gun, and it was afraid of humans.
He goes in the laboratory with a bunch of acid.
This'll be great.
We can talk to the dolphins! Let's talk to dolphins! He gives the dolphin acid.
The dolphin that was formerly scared of humans swims up to him and looks him in the eye.
There's a moment where it's like, wait, maybe this isn't about language.
Maybe it's something deeper than language.
And John Lilly realized, wow, this works.
Fuck this blowhole communication.
- This is something bigger.
- Exactly! It's not just the guttural sound you make out of your fucking hamburger tube.
[LAUGHTER.]
So John Lilly starts giving the dolphins acid.
Margaret is like, hey, John, do you mind not injecting Peter with acid? That'd be awesome.
I don't think he wants acid.
I don't want you to give it to him.
Margaret's like, I love this dolphin.
I don't know.
And Lilly's like, no, I'm gonna give Peter acid.
It makes them it seems to make them a little more, like, communicative, they're a little it seems to excite them in some way.
And he gave it acid.
So John Lilly is on acid.
So they're both tripping.
[PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC.]
So, ugh Eventually "Hustler" catches wind of the fact that Margaret is, like, jerking off dolphins and writes an article.
They made it like "Hustler" style.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Someone at NASA opens it up and they're like, what the fuck? I paid a million dollars to that asshole, and they're out there fucking the dolphins.
And so Carl Sagan comes in one day, and he's like, uh, I'm Carl Sagan, and I'm a very respected scientist.
I love space.
You know that.
I think space is amazing, but there's a couple of things I think are weird that are now happening in the universe.
Number one, jerking off dolphins.
And number two, giving them acid.
And you know what, John? When I said let's talk to fucking dolphins, I didn't mean let's teach them to speak English.
Let's learn their language! You don't go to Japan and kidnap a Japanese man and start jerking him off and giving him fucking acid and then ask him to learn English! John, I'm sorry, I'm angry, but really just think about it from my perspective, man.
The next time I go to fucking NASA, they're gonna be like, oh, yeah, sure, Carl.
Who you gonna jerk off in this experiment, aliens? An owl? A partridge? What's it gonna be, Carl? Oh, yeah, sure, we'll give you money.
Get the fuck outta here! [LAUGHTER.]
So the lab shuts down, 1966.
Peter went to another laboratory.
It wasn't a lab like the one he was at.
This was just a fucked up basic, shitty, goddamn dolphin lab.
Peter's heart was broken.
He loved Margaret.
So Peter swims to the bottom of the aquarium, and he dies.
He drowns himself.
Dolphins can choose not to breathe.
Yeah, Peter, especially.
And Margaret's heart was broken.
She was so she was really hurt by that.
- This is like the important point, man.
- Hmm? John Lilly's work led to a world-wide recognition of dolphins and whales as intelligent life forms.
And thanks to his work, they passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which kept dolphins and whales safe.
In spite of the peculiar twists and turns of this story, why was this important history? I think Peter taught us that no matter how bad it seems, like, you could make it better.
Right, like, he's like, if you believe in yourself, if you truly believe in yourself, you can get a monkey descendant to make you cum.
[LAUGHTER.]
Oh, God, I wish I was born in the '60s.
All right, so what are you gonna have tonight? I'm gonna have a Dr.
Feelgood Pepper.
- That's nice.
- What a drink.
Alcohol is a drug like any other, but it is given such special place in our culture.
Imagine if it was like, this cocaine, why, it's a one oak it's made in oak, one kind of oak, one barrel.
I don't think it's the best point I don't think it's the best point I've ever made.
[LAUGHS.]
Hello.
[LAUGHS.]
Something about saying hello that feels so fake.
Hey! [LAUGHTER.]
That's how I would do it, it's so terrible.
[CHUCKLES.]
Hello, I'm Jon Lovett, and today we're talking about JFK and Dr.
Feelgood.
- I wanna feel good.
- Let's feel good.
- You know? - Cheers.
Cheers.
So [CHUCKLES.]
JFK is running for president, and he's about to debate Richard Mother Trucking Nixon, and he is a mess.
He's sitting there and he's like, I'm riddled with Addison's disease.
He could barely speak.
His back hurts.
He's got one of his classic migraines.
Terrible set of symptoms.
Classic Addison's disease.
[LAUGHTER.]
So he's like, I can't go out there.
And his buddy is like, I know somebody who can help you, and his name is Dr.
Max Jacobson, aka Miracle Max, aka Dr.
Feelgood.
JFK's like, cool, get that doctor on here.
So in comes Dr.
Feelgood.
He comes in, and JFK's like, hey, I've got Addison's disease.
And Jacobson's like, I have the cure for that.
He's like, what? No one has the cure for Addison's disease.
And Jacobson's like, bah-bah-bah.
- You know, 'cause he's Jewish.
- Yeah, bah-bah-bah.
And he goes, bah-bah-bah.
Bah-bah-bah.
Bah-bah-bah, you're gonna get my super special magic elixir.
Give me your butt cheek.
And he gives him a, pow, shot.
And then JFK is like, holy moly! My body is working.
I feel like my old self again.
Hey, one question, um, maybe it's late to ask, but, hey, you know, never too late.
You know, it's never too late to ask a question.
What is in this? And Max Jacobson is like, number one, vitamins.
Number two, there is enzymes.
And then finally, don't freak out, but the last ingredient, it is placenta.
- Huh.
- Placenta.
- [CHUCKLES.]
- Placenta.
So JFK walks out, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah, to that podium.
He says, hey, Tricky Dick, hey, Tricky Dick, get ready, get fucking ready.
Are you ready? I'm the best at TV.
Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Kennedy shot Nixon with rhetoric, and Nixon is defeated.
So now JFK is President of the United States, all right? So you got RFK as his right-hand man, but he's got another right-hand man, his left-hand man, Dr.
Feelgood.
He's getting the pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Jackie Kennedy, his wife, she's like, what's going on with those shots? He's like, hey, here, I get them in here.
[LAUGHTER.]
- Here.
- Here.
Here.
[INDISTINCT.]
And so he's got Jackie doing it.
But but Kennedy's dealing with a lot of problems, okay? Problem number one, the Cold war.
Kennedy is gonna meet with the bald man from Moscow, Khrushchev, and he's like, I need that I need that boom-boom juice you give me.
And then Feelgood goes, kapow.
Then it happened.
They meet in Vienna, Austria.
Uh, I am genuinely quite drunk.
[LAUGHTER.]
Where were we in the story of JFK and his drugs? - [LAUGHS.]
- JK! Wait, please keep calling him JK, 'cause that is his inish.
So J-Mother-Loving-K and Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and Truman Capote, they're all getting the Dr.
Feelgood crazy shots, and RFK is starting to get a little worried, 'cause he's like, what's going on here? Is this the White House or is this a trap house? [LAUGHTER.]
So RFK is the brother of the president and he's an amateur sleuth, and he's like, I'm gonna find out what's in this thing through medicine testing.
And then beep-bop-boop.
[LAUGHS.]
Beep-bop-boop-ba.
Beep-bop-boop, out come the results.
It's meth! [DRAMATIC MUSIC.]
This is fun.
I wanna keep drinking and talking about this stuff on camera.
Do you mind if we do a little more? Honestly, I really don't.
I'm having a blast.
All right.
- All right, ready? - All right, let's do it.
Now, just to catch you up, just to previously on "JFK" Yes, please.
The president, John F.
Kennedy, was on meth.
So RFK goes to his brother and he says, you're getting meth, Jackie, Jack, John F.
Will you accept this offer of help today, JFK? Blown away.
What else do I have to say? And John F.
Kennedy is like, I don't give a flying fudge.
I don't care if it's horse piss.
You know what Miracle Max does? He makes me get over my physical problems to be the best person I can be.
It's crazy.
So RFK, Robert, Bobby, well, what does he do? He confronts Dr.
Max Jacobson and he says, listen, you're gonna stop treating my brother, you something that rhymes with bike.
Okay, and that's not what he said.
I honestly don't want to say what he says, because, frankly, it's anti-Semitic.
And then RFK says, my brother's gonna be president for eight years, and then I'm gonna be president for eight years, and nothing's gonna stop us.
Nothing, 'cause we're the Kennedy's right? And this is Camelot.
Nothing could go wrong.
Nothing.
Nothing! Nothing.
Nothing.
But basically afterwards, Dr.
Feelgood calls Kennedy and says, your brother, Bobby Kennedy, gave me 1960s anti-Semitism.
And you know what I say to that? I say no thank you, and I'm not gonna work with you anymore.
So so now John F.
Kennedy's he's not good.
And he's like, I am exhausted from my Addison's disease.
I need help.
So JFK calls up Dr.
Feelgood and he says, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm fucked up, all right? I need that sweet, sweet magic medicine.
Make me feel good, Feelgood.
And Dr.
Feelgood's like, sure, I'm a stone-cold lunatic and fraud.
I will do whatever you want.
JFK and Feelgood meet at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, and so JFK gets one last super dose, and JFK's like, wow, this is fantastic.
I'm gonna get naked and run around Carl-hil Carlyle Hotel doing literal cartwheels even though I continue to have basically untreated Addison's disease.
He's done cartwhile He's done cartwheels through the Carlyle.
Cartwheels through the Carlyle is a bit of a tongue twister.
A hundred percent.
Moses supposes his toeses are roses.
Boy howdy, you know? And the Secret Service look at each other and they said, we've got ourselves a real sitch-uation.
And so they say to each other, why don't we get a doctor who knows how to treat crazy people? The Secret Service calls a literal psychiatrist who comes and, pew, injects Camelot himself with an antipsychotic medicine.
He he sobers up.
He wakes up.
He's surrounded by medical doctors, and they say to him, Mr.
President, you gotta stop seeing this doctor.
And he's like, why? He makes me feel so good.
And the doctor's like, well, how 'bout this? You can't do meth anymore, because you're in charge of the nuclear warheads.
And JFK's like, you make a really good argument.
I'm done with meth.
I'm done with it, all right? I'm gonna live a lovely life where I just use normal doctor things like Advil and stretching.
And then he lives happily ever after.
Nothing bad happens to him.
[LAUGHS.]
And then in 1972, "New York Times" runs an exposé.
Exposé? Exposé? And Feelgood's like, I've got to Enron the shit out of these documents.
Shred, shred, shred, shred, shred, shred, shred.
He destroys all of his records and then he said, hi-ya, hi-ya, and then there was kind of trumpets and kind of a Morricone score, and he's gone off into the sunset, never to be heard from again.
This was wild The president was on drugs! - [CHUCKLES.]
- Okay.
Okay.
I'm done.
- Cheers.
- To Kennedy.
[PATRIOTIC MUSIC.]