You continued down the rabbit hole of strange drugs later in the season and you
experimented with the
truth serum to see if an interrogator who gives you this truth serum can actually get information out of you.
I was actually surprised by how effective, in my opinion,
it was like you... you just
shit
the interrogation technique she used was very
clever, right?
Like it's not what you expect like in the movies, you have like a [James] Bond villain who's like..
and you just get brainwashed
and say everything, but the way she approached it was very clever.
Yeah, it was clever, and it was really fun, 
like, I just felt like I am the most funny person ever right now
so I'm just gonna give you material...yeah
and she...
...she, yeah, didn't play bad cop and I think at one point I asked her to, you know...
...I was like hey, could you stop being so nice?
I don't remember that. I don't remember much after.
I think when she asked me who the president was.
They kept giving you more
They're like, "give him a little bit." You're like, "I'm pretty fucked up!" and they were like, "give him some more!"
I was like damn! They pumped you full of that shit.
There was a funny moment where the guy was, like, you know
this is... this is more than... I - I'm not gonna give any more
And at that point I was like I could take more and - but I don't remember it, that was the scary part
It was that they could have told me I had said anything and I wouldn't know if they were wrong or not
That's pretty scary
and
the thing about midazolam,
which is the truth serum that I was administered, is that there's an antidote for it that works quite quickly and so
all of a sudden, I just come to and I'm like...
No way! I always wondered if that was possible
It was weird
It was like
Just to go from completely fucked to sober
I find that interesting
I didn't know how much time had passed. 
I just immediately was like "hey!"
"What happened?"
And I was forming memories again all of a sudden
But the...
... so the way that she got you - the game was that
you had information you're trying to conceal from her she was trying to get it, like, for example, that you had a sister
I guess was one of them
Yeah my sister's name.
Your sister's name!
So her approach wasn't to be like tell me your sister's name like you would see in a movie.
It's what... like
She would wait to your super smashed and be like so your sister Jessica is a dentist for a living?
And then you would be like "yeah"
That's what you... you know? You like... it's really clever
It's really tricky, you had to really be sharp
and you had to not just be living in the moment
to keep the information
they basically just dull your brain to the point of...
... you're just
agreeable
Well, yeah all your inhibitions are gone
you're not holding anything back because you're...
it's not aware of what you should be holding back
you're just living in that exact moment where there's nothing else to be concerned about.
it's like the puppy-dog mode
We just got a little puppy, he's our truth serum all the time.
What do you - what do you think after doing that, do you think that...
..that serum is is it an effective way to get information from someone?
I think that it is an effective way to get information
 
I don't think it's an ethical way, and I should... with the caveat that I don't... I'm not sure it's effective because studies that were real studies
not just "Michael's experience" have shown that you get some pretty unreliable stuff people will say all kinds of lies as well
Did you lie at all during it?
No, I didn't really lie. I told obvious jokes but I didn't, like...
I can't - I can't see lying in that state of mind
it's just unreliable
It was hard to it was hard to construct a
lie that I knew was a lie
but I maybe could have or someone
as has been shown in prior studies they can just
confabulate all kinds of made up stuff
Just like a dreamlike state where you're just following some random thread in your head
There's also the ethical dilemma of can a person be forced to
confess
against themselves
right, if what you have to do is torture someone or administer drugs intravenously to get the truth
is that really the way we want to get the truth?
What's more important? And ever since the days of torture, you know,
we've been a - hey, you cannot self-incriminate
if we have to resort to that it's not worth it, and there's something kind of beautiful about that.
Yeah totally
Oh, it's completely unethical
I just found it was it's really interesting to see because truth serum always seems like something that's just ridiculous, like how does that...
How could that possibly exist? But that real-world application of it it was like, oh, that makes sense
Yeah, I mean, truth serum is a terrible name because it makes it seems like some fictional sci-fi drug
that like, finds the truth, in reality it just makes it harder to conceal the lie.
I think the most interesting thing that you confessed to while on the truth serum is
that you prefer making Vsauce videos to
Minefield, that slipped right out.
I had no memory of that ever happening. It wasn't until I was...
...one of our writers was like driving me home like months later
And he was like, oh, 'cause I wasn't supposed to know what I'd said 'cause they wanted me to watch the footage back on
camera, and he spilled the beans
Did you watch the whole thing back?
I watched the whole thing back, yeah.
And you were really genuine - the interrogators were like "Michael, do you prefer doing Vsauce or Minefield?" and you're like you were just very
passionately in favor of Vsauce in the show
I felt - I felt bad 'cause you know, if I hadn't have been under the effects of midazolam I
would have given a more diplomatic
answer
But you know I think you know the truth should be out there, now I love making minefield, but as you can imagine
Minefield has a deadline, it's got schedules, it's got all of the-
Vsauce somes out one when it comes out, when I'm ready.
I thought it was a great moment because it really exemplified how
unguarded you were
Yeah, totally.
