John Mulaney Doubts Dinosaurs Existed: ‘We Don’t Even Know How Gene Hackman and His Wife Died’ | Video

The original topic of Wednesday’s “Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney” apparently had to be changed last minute due to some unforeseen circumstances. “This week’s topic was going to be the Pope is still alive, but in light of recent events, we had to pivot,” Mulaney told his in-studio audience in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Monday death of Pope Francis.

The subject Mulaney settled on instead? Dinosaurs. According to the “Everybody’s Live” host, he found himself beginning to doubt the existence of the prehistoric reptiles while he was recently reading a book to his three-year-old son. “I started to get a little creeped out because, like, I’m his main source of information. I’m his most trusted name in news, and I’m telling him, ‘These are the dinosaurs,'” Mulaney explained. “And I don’t mean this in any kind of Christian or political way, but are these things real? They don’t sound real.”

“Can we just step back and examine the central premise of dinosaurs?” Mulaney continued. “There were a bunch of giant lizards. Some were mean and some were not, and they ruled the world. And then they all died at once … That sounds like how a lie ends.” The comedian and host went on to poke fun at the scientific explanation for how dinosaurs went extinct, joking, “Scientists are now like, ‘We believe the dinosaurs were killed 66 million years ago by an asteroid.’ Stop. You don’t know that. We don’t even know how Gene Hackman and his wife died.”

It has, notably, been confirmed by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator that Hackman died of cardiovascular disease and advanced Alzheimer’s one week after his wife, Betsy Arakawa, died from rodent-born hantavirus. The mysterious-at-first circumstances of their deaths in February became the source of much confusion among the general public for several weeks, though, as Mulaney’s joke acknowledges.

The “Everybody’s Live” host did not want viewers to walk away Wednesday thinking he is some kind of anti-science guy. “It does feel weird to talk about anything anti-science right now. I don’t love it for that reason. Science and anti-science. It’s very politicized,” Mulaney observed. “It’s just with science — and I’m on your side and I respect you and all the things that you’re supposed to say — but you guys … you’re so needy. ‘We’re under attack.’ Just act cooler!”

To support his argument, Mulaney gave some tips to contemporary scientists. “Do you want to be less vulnerable, science? Get better messengers. The people they push out there like Bill Nye and don’t get me started on that Neil deGrasse Tyson,” Mulaney joked. “Don’t make that guy your front-facing dude! He dresses like he parks cars at the Magic Castle.”

You can watch the full “Everybody’s Live” monologue yourself in the video above.

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