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The following is a conversation with Joe Rogan, his second time on this podcast.
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He has inspired me for many years with his conversations to be a better and kinder person and has now been doing so as a friend.
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There s no one I would rather talk to on this 300th episode of this podcast on the 4th of July, both the anniversary of this country s declaration of independence and the anniversary of my immigrating here to the United States.
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A silly kid who couldn t speak English and could never imagine that he would be so damn lucky as to live the life I ve lived and to feel the love I ve felt from the amazing people along the way.
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from the bottom of my heart.
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Thank you.
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I love you all.
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And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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We got TheraGun for muscle recovery, Athletic Greens for performance, Insight Tracker for longevity, 8sleep for napping, and ExpressVPN for privacy.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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And now onto the full ad reads.
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As always, no ads in the middle.
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I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors.
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I enjoy their stuff.
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Maybe you will too.
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This show is brought to you by Theragun, one of my favorite tools to help muscle recovery and therapy.
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I ve had a few small injuries, and one that s just been taking forever to heal, and I ve been using Theragun to help with that.
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I guess it s called abductor leg muscle, aka groin pull.
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It s been a nightmare, because it s not really that injured, but it just takes forever to heal.
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and it takes a long time to regain confidence in order to do any kind of sort of 100% intensity training on the mat, so grappling.
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You can do all exercise, squats, all that kind of stuff, but grappling really requires you to have your body sort of in good working condition.
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And so for that, Theragun has been a huge help.
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huge, huge positive part of my recovery and therapy.
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So their Gen 4 is amazing.
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It completely releases tension using the percussive therapy, what they call, that they re known for, which goes deep, friends.
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It feels kind of awesome, not in a creepy way, but there s a nice screen and a smart app that guides you through the different routines.
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It s super nice.
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Get yours at therabody.com slash Lex.
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This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens, and it s AG1 Drink.
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I drink it first thing in the morning.
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I drink it twice a day.
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It replaced the multivitamin for me.
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It does a lot of stuff.
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You can check out the vitamins and minerals it got, and they keep innovating on the thing, too.
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So they re staying ahead of the science.
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I should also mention that it s delicious.
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It s kind of like a reminder to me that I have my life together.
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when everything else is falling apart, when nothing is working mentally or physically, it s just giant chaos, I m not getting sleep, the diet, it s a nightmare, and it s just, you know, I m putting my life through a grinder source at times, driven by the passion, the passionate pursuit of different,
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curiosities that I have.
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I just kind of Alice in Wonderland, I dive in and hang out with the rabbits, but without the LSD.
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And so given all that, the one place I can return to that reminds me that I have my life together, at least nutritionally, is a flight of greens, twice a day.
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and I even travel with it, they have travel packs, it s super easy.
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They ll give you a one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at athleticgreens.com slash Lex.
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Join me, brothers and sisters, in this nutritional pursuit of a stable, healthy life.
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This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data.
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They have a bunch of plans, most of which include blood tests that collect data about your body.
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The blood is a beautiful thing.
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It has both the current state of your body and the history of your body, but they also use DNA data, fitness tracker data, all of that using machine learning algorithms to help you plan your life out.
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If your life is falling apart, maybe like relationships and all that kind of stuff, they can t help you.
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This is just about your body, but maybe in the future,
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We ll be able to collect more and more data from not just the stuff below the neck, but the stuff above the neck too, meaning the brain.
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Getting not just the neuronal signals, but the cognitive stuff, so the high level, the things you re worried about.
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Maybe we ll be able to look in to the younging shadow of your mind, the unconscious, the subconscious mind.
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and find their large-scale data that reveals to you how you can solve that puzzle.
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Sort of do what psychiatry has always hoped to do, but do so systematically.
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I mean, we re probably really, really far away from that, because I think human biology is super complicated,
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the human mind is orders of magnitude more complicated.
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But let s focus on the human biology part, and that s what you need Insight Tracker for.
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You can go to insighttracker.com slash lex for a limited time to get special savings.
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This episode is also brought to you by 8 Sleep and its Pod Pro mattress.
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It controls temperature with a nap, it s packed with sensors, and it can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on each side of the bed separately.
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Now, the first part of that 55 degrees feels like heaven.
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Honestly, it s 100 degrees plus here in Austin.
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I ve been running outside, sometimes in the afternoon, in that heat.
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It really tests the mind.
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Really, really tests the mind.
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But I enjoy it.
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It s fine.
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It s just rough mentally.
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Physically it s good, but mentally it s rough, which is fine.
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It s a good test for the mind.
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Now, when I return, take a shower,
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It s so beautifully refreshing even in an air-conditioned room to lay down on a chilled bed.
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And then with a little bit of a warm blanket, it s just heaven.
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Whether we re talking about a power nap or a full night s sleep, it s heaven.
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You can get your Pod Pro cover in USA, Canada, and the UK if you go to 8sleep.com.
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This show is also brought to you by ExpressVPN.
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I use them to protect my privacy on the internet.
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I know you go to all kinds of shady websites.
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I probably go to them as well.
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There s no shame in it.
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We re in this together.
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Life is short.
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Why not enjoy it?
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This is bad country after all.
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But when you do so, you should take precautions.
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Use a good VPN, and I think the best VPN, my favorite VPN, the one I ve used for many, many years, religiously, before any of this podcast stuff has always been ExpressVPN, still has.
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a big, sexy button that when you press, it just works.
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And it works super fast.
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I mean, that s, I guess, what you want from a VPN.
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The connection is super fast, the interface is intuitive, it works on any device, any operating system, including my favorite OS, which is Linux.
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I use, most my machines use Ubuntu Mate, M-A-T-E.
0
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I just love the interface, and then based on Ubuntu, which is Debian-based,
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It s probably my favorite Linux.
0
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I used to use Susie a lot.
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I also used Gentoo.
0
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There s a lot.
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I mean, I ve used a lot of distributions.
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And how did this discussion about a VPN lead me to a discussion of Linux?
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I don t know.
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The point is, you can go to expressvpn.com slash LexPod to get an extra three months free.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here s Joe Rogan.
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Charles Bukowski said something in a poem called Style about art.
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He defined art saying, style is the answer to everything, a fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing.
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To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it.
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To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.
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What do you think he meant by that?
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Do you agree with this?
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A dangerous thing with style is art.
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He said bullfighting can be art, boxing can be art, loving can be art.
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Have you ever made love and it was art?
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No, I m not asking.
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Every time, bro.
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Opening a can of sardines can be art.
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I think there s something to that.
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Yeah, I think – I call the way people live life art.
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Like I wrote a foreword to my friend Cameron Haynes  book and – which is right now the number one selling audio book in the world.
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And one of the things that I said was that he practices an art that very few people appreciate and it s the art of the maximized life.
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and that the discipline that he displays in his life and through his practices and all the things that he does,
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It s so difficult to live the way he lives that for someone like me who understands it and knows what he s doing and appreciates it and appreciates how insanely difficult it is to have a full-time job and run ultra marathons, get up at four o clock in the morning, run a full marathon before work.
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Like that s the kind of shit that he does when he s training for these 240 mile runs.
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at the same time being a father, a husband, having this full-time job, also being the best bow hunter on earth, lifting weights.
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It s like, how does a person do this?
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So in a way, discipline is art too.
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Yes, discipline is art.
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Yeah, I think it is, because it s beautiful for me to see.
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When I see someone who s really, truly disciplined, like a David Goggin, someone who just truly maximizes the grind, I feel like there s an art to that.
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And there s an art to kindness.
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Like there s people that are really kind and really sweet.
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And when I m around them, it s beautiful.
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It s like there s an art to them.
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No matter what.
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Yeah.
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They still, they got, you know, the world can throw a bunch of shit at you, but through all that.
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Some people are just great at it.
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Yeah.
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And it s a thing that you learn how to do.
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And it s pleasing for other people to see.
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And that, I think, is where the art is.
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Well, I think Bukowski also said, and I m just a Bukowski quote generator today.
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I love him.
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I love him very much too.
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He s a dark and troubled and fascinating and a weird person, like Hunter S. Thompson.
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He said, what matters most is how you walk through the fire, I think.
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So there s a bit of the Ken Haynes in that too, David Goggins in that too.
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What do you think he meant by that?
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Well, how you walk through the fire, I mean, you can walk through the fire complaining along the way, or you can walk through the fire and create an example for everyone else so that the trials and tribulations of their own lives seem trivial because they re comparing themselves to the way you handle things.
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Or the way you handle things with grace and dignity and discipline can show other people that they can handle their own life this way.
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And there s beauty in that, there really is.
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And there s so much inspiration to be gathered from other people if you re a charitable person, if you re charitable and compassionate and you can look at people, even people that I don t like, I try to look at the best aspects of how they live their life.
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and recognize those aspects, admire them, give them credit for it.
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There s something that we can all get out of watching the way other people live their lives.
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So I got a chance to see you walk through the fire a little bit privately and publicly this year in January.
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I gotta ask you about that.
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So there s like generic conversations about sort of cancel culture and all those kinds of things.
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But as a human being, this to me is fascinating.
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Sort of there s the N word highlight video, there s the criticism of the different guests, whatever the side is on the COVID pandemic.
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And you, I mean, there s a mass amount of attack on you.
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outside of being a public persona, outside of being a comedian, podcaster, you re also a human being.
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So how did you survive that?
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How did you sort of walk through that fire?
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Because you seem to do it with grace.
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I used mushrooms.
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That was one way I did it.
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Really.
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As Andrew Huberman would say, what was your protocol?
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It was probably less than a gram every day.
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Every day.
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Yeah.
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And I did a lot of really hard working out.
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But also, I mean, there s a great benefit to going through anything difficult.
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And if you re aware, in advance and during,
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like anything that s gonna happen that s very difficult and troubling.
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The great benefit is it gives you an opportunity to grow, gives you an opportunity to express yourself under pressure, to show your character, to show who you truly are, and it gives you an opportunity to see how you handle a very difficult situation.
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It also
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was fascinating as a person that s involved in media, right?
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Because what we re doing right now is media, even though, you know, it seems like podcasts seem like we re just having a conversation, right?
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SPEAKER_00
And they are.
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And in that sense, it s kind of the purest form of media.
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Because what you re doing is you re, you
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you re doing it without any fanfare, you re doing it without any, there s no executives looming over your head or network or big meetings about ratings or any of that stuff, but it is media.
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But what I got to see is the wiring under the machine of how the rest of media
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would try to take me out.
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And when CNN would just be playing things over and over and back and forth, it was wild to watch.
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What was also wild to watch was people s responses, because I gained two million subscribers during that time.
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The podcast never got bigger.
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SPEAKER_00
It just kept growing and growing.
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SPEAKER_00
It had never been bigger than it had been at the end of all of it.
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I just made it bigger.
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And, you know, ultimately, when if you ve fucked up in the past or made mistakes or done something wrong,
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that gives you an opportunity to discuss those things and to apologize if you feel the need to apologize, and also to just address it.
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And so people under that kind of pressure, it s an opportunity for them to understand how you think about things honestly, how you actually honestly think about things.
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And there s no more honesty that you get out of a person than when that person is under extreme duress.
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So I think in that sense,
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I mean, it s horrible to say that it s a benefit, that it s a good thing that it happened, but it was a benefit.
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Can you see how it can break a person?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_01
I ve gotten the chance to experience small attacks here and there, ones that get to the core of things, like even just talking about Russia and Ukraine.
0
SPEAKER_01
to Stephen Caulkin or Oliver Stone, looking at different perspectives, you gain a relative, for me, feeling like a sizable number of people who really don t like you.
0
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And say things about you that...
1
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are that may be cut deep for a reason I don t understand why.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s just my own psychology.
1
SPEAKER_00
What s also because you can t defend yourself because they re saying it and you re not there and you don t have any opportunity for a rebuttal and if you do have a rebuttal you re doing it publicly and you re opening it up to the whole world to chime in and there s a general
1
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tendency that people have towards negativity when they re interacting with strangers online, especially about controversial subjects.
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And even if it s only 10% of the people, it s one out of 10.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s a lot.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s a lot of negativity when you re dealing with thousands and thousands of tweets.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I think, maybe I m just a very self-critical person, but I hear their words and I probably, somewhere deep inside, see the truth in the criticism, in some aspect of the criticism.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that s why it hurts.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it s one aspect of you, but when you re reading it, it s boiled down to this one thing, as if that one thing defines you totally.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like if you ve made a mistake, if you ve said something that you shouldn t have said, or if you said something and maybe you should have considered it more carefully, given the gravity of the situation,
1
SPEAKER_00
You know that that s just a part of being a person and it s also part of being a person where you re communicating with things publicly in real time thinking out loud which is what we do.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know it s complex and most people don t do it and you re gonna have these you re gonna have genuine hot takes where people just.
1
SPEAKER_00
see what you said and go, why did he say that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Fuck him.
1
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t know anything about, he doesn t live in Ukraine.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s people that are gonna have takes on that in that way.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then there s also gonna be these disingenuous people who just use any kind of controversial topic or subject as an opportunity for them to get clicks or views.
1
SPEAKER_01
But the number of those people can be quite large.
1
SPEAKER_00
Quite large.
1
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And so going back to, do you think it can destroy a person?
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Because I kind of worry about this.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you re, in many ways, but in this way, an inspiration, that it didn t seem to have destroyed you.
1
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I kept doing shows.
1
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I kept doing stand-up.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ignored everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t read any of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it is possible to just ignore it.
1
100%.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ignored it all.
1
SPEAKER_00
I knew it was there.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like your family didn t bring it up?
1
SPEAKER_00
My family was very aware of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
My wife was aware of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was the conversation like?
1
SPEAKER_01
If your wife is aware of it, is there like a rule?
1
SPEAKER_01
Don t pretend it s not happening?
1
SPEAKER_01
No.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, I tell her, don t ever read art.
1
SPEAKER_01
Pass the green beans.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t ever let her read negative articles to me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t want them.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t care.
1
SPEAKER_00
I go, that s a person s opinion.
1
SPEAKER_00
You take a person s opinion, you write it down.
1
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t give it any more relevance.
1
SPEAKER_00
That person could have had that opinion in silence.
1
SPEAKER_00
They could have had it with some friends at dinner.
1
SPEAKER_00
They don t like me, whatever.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to read it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to absorb it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t even know them, especially if I m not there, and especially if it s some
1
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biased and it s not an objective opinion of me.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s this – they have a narrative and they want to stick to that narrative and they want to write an article and they piece it all together and make it look like a piece of shit.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s their prerogative.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re completely allowed to do that.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I shouldn t absorb that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I shouldn t take that in.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re not supposed to be taking in the opinion of the world
1
SPEAKER_00
You re supposed to be taking in the opinion of small groups of people that you encounter so that you get an understanding of how you make them feel.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then maybe you say to yourself, maybe I come across too rude, or maybe I come across too insensitive, or maybe I could do better in this way or that way.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s how we sort of shape our personalities, and that s how we develop our social skills.
1
SPEAKER_00
when the people don t know you, and they have this like distorted narrative of you.
1
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, there s fucking millions of people.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s so many people.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can t be saying, I mean, millions of people that are like communicating about something, like during the height of the, you know, the attempt to cancel me or whatever that is.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how many people were involved in that.
1
SPEAKER_01
People take this kind of stuff seriously, but the problem is the false narratives take hold, and then you have meetings, you have groups, it builds on top of each other, and there s this outrage, and then it reaches you at some point, and it can just have these destructive effects.
1
SPEAKER_00
It can, but it also sometimes doesn t, and in my case it didn t.
1
SPEAKER_00
It didn t work.
1
SPEAKER_01
What lessons did you draw from that?
1
SPEAKER_01
Mushrooms, exercise?
1
SPEAKER_00
Mushrooms and exercise.
1
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Exercise is critical.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t think the mushrooms by themselves would have worked.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that s the thing that I use for everything, is the brutal exercise.
1
SPEAKER_00
My exercise routines are horrible.
1
SPEAKER_00
And because of that, everything else is easier.
1
SPEAKER_00
I create my own bullshit, and my own bullshit is so much harder.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s not just that, it s also sauna and cold plunge and these torture sessions.
1
SPEAKER_00
Enduring those, when you endure those, it makes enduring other things much easier.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s also an understanding of what s happening.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, you have to know, like, media.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have to understand, like, what the hot take, you know, YouTube, social media, podcast, ecosphere,
1
SPEAKER_00
is doing, like if they re talking about, you know, Lex Friedman said this, and we have to comment on that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you know, Lex gets cancelled in all capital letters on a YouTube clip.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if you you watch that, you re fucking crazy.
1
SPEAKER_00
What are you doing absorbing all this negativity?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s not good for you.
1
SPEAKER_00
You are you, you know, you, and you know, generally, if you ve made a mistake, you know, generally, if people are upset with you.
1
SPEAKER_01
You posted this awesome video on your Instagram of a woman who was being interviewed in late 1920s, maybe?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
And she s close to 100 years old.
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SPEAKER_01
So she s lived through the Civil War, through World War I. She was at the time living through the early days of the Great Depression.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I was just looking back, what have we as a human civilization in recent times survived, especially in the United States?
1
SPEAKER_01
You re talking about the two World Wars in the 20th century, the Great Depression, the Spanish flu, the pandemic at the beginning of the 20th century.
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SPEAKER_01
What do we do in the United States?
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SPEAKER_01
9-11?
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SPEAKER_01
If you think of what are the traumatic events that shook our world, it s 9-11, it made us rethink our place in the world.
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SPEAKER_01
The pandemic?
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SPEAKER_00
Pandemic is a huge one.
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SPEAKER_00
One of the bigger ones, because it also accelerated and exacerbated our anxiety, which people have a certain level of anxiety already, especially sedentary people.
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SPEAKER_00
They have a very high level of anxiety already because I don t think they re giving their body what it needs.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t think they re, you know, your body has certain requirements in terms of movement, and when you deny your body those requirements, I think there s like a general level of anxiety that exists in almost everyone.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then you have people, obviously, that have mental health issues.
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SPEAKER_00
And that also exacerbates the anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
The lockdown exacerbated the anxiety.
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SPEAKER_00
Losing loved ones to the pandemic exacerbated anxiety.
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SPEAKER_00
And then there was the division, the different schools of thought.
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SPEAKER_00
The people that were never gonna get vaccinated no matter what.
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SPEAKER_00
I ain t trusting it.
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SPEAKER_00
People that thought there was microchips in there.
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SPEAKER_00
People that thought that Fauci s the demon.
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SPEAKER_00
And there was a lot,
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SPEAKER_00
And there s also like political leanings.
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SPEAKER_00
The right wing people tended to not want to be vaccinated, whereas the left wing people, for whatever reason, all of a sudden are trusting pharmaceutical companies like explicitly.
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SPEAKER_00
It was weird.
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SPEAKER_00
It was a weird time.
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SPEAKER_00
And I think over time, as it gets analyzed, and we break it down, it s gonna be one of the weirder moments for shaping human culture.
1
SPEAKER_00
And unfortunately, for throwing gasoline on this already burning fire of, you know,
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SPEAKER_00
conflict between the various factions of thought in this country.
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SPEAKER_00
It s already a weird time, you know, post-Trump.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like the Trump era is also going to be one of the weirder times when people look back historically about the division in this country.
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SPEAKER_00
He s such a polarizing figure that so many people felt like,
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SPEAKER_00
they could abandon their own ethics and morals and principles just to attack him and anybody who supports him because he is an existential threat to democracy itself.
1
SPEAKER_01
But don t you think it s not a cause, but maybe like a symptom?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like it s going to get, you said it got real weird.
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SPEAKER_01
Maybe it s going to get weirder.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think it s gonna get weirder.
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SPEAKER_00
He s gonna run again.
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SPEAKER_00
You think he wins?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, he s running against a dead man.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, I mean, Biden shakes hands with people that aren t even there when he gets off stage.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think he s seeing ghosts.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
You see him on Jimmy Kimmel the other day?
1
SPEAKER_00
No.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, he was just rambling.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he s, if he was anyone else,
1
SPEAKER_00
If he was a Republican, if that was Donald Trump doing that, every fucking talk show would be screaming for him to be off the air.
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SPEAKER_00
And by the way, I m not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form.
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SPEAKER_00
I ve had the opportunity to have him on my show more than once.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ve said no every time.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to help him.
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SPEAKER_00
I m not interested in helping him.
1
SPEAKER_01
The night is still young.
1
SPEAKER_01
We ll see.
1
SPEAKER_01
If I have him on, The Night Is Still Young?
1
SPEAKER_01
You think I ll have him on?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think you ll have him on.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_00
Why do you think that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because you ll have Putin on?
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SPEAKER_01
And you re competitive as fuck.
1
SPEAKER_01
No.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think ultimately, I mean, you ve had a lot of people that I think you may otherwise be skeptical, would I have a good conversation, which I think is your metric.
1
SPEAKER_01
You don t care about politics, so can I have a good conversation?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think you had people like Kanye on, for example, and you had a great conversation with him.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think you, I think- Yeah, but Kanye s an artist.
1
SPEAKER_00
But Kanye doing well or not doing well doesn t change the course of our country.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but do you really bear the responsibility of the course of our country based on a conversation?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think you can revitalize and rehabilitate someone s image in a way that is pretty shocking.
1
SPEAKER_00
Look at the way people look at Alex Jones now, because Alex Jones has been on my podcast a few times.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, how do they, which direction?
1
SPEAKER_00
The people that have watched those podcasts think he s hilarious.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they think that he definitely fucked up with that whole Sandy Hook thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
But
1
SPEAKER_00
He s right more than he s wrong.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he s not an evil guy.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s just a guy who s had some psychotic breaks in his life.
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SPEAKER_00
He s had some genuine mental health issues that he s addressed.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s had some serious bouts of alcoholism, some serious bouts of, you know, substance abuse, and they ve contributed to some very poor thinking.
1
SPEAKER_00
But if you know the guy, if you get to know him, like I have, I ve known him for more than 20 years.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if you know him on podcasts, you realize, like, he is genuinely trying to unearth some things that are genuinely disturbing for most people.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, this is a guy that was telling me about Epstein s island
1
SPEAKER_00
fucking decade ago, at least, he was telling me about.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, what?
1
SPEAKER_00
You re telling me there s a place where they bring elites to compromise them with underage girls and they film them.
1
SPEAKER_00
Really?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, what?
1
SPEAKER_00
Cut the fuck out of here.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, no, President Clinton s been there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Everyone s been there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, what?
1
SPEAKER_00
It sounds like nonsense.
1
SPEAKER_00
And not only is it true, but people keep getting fucking murdered for it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Did you see that latest Clinton advisor that got murdered about it?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hung with an extension cord, shot himself in the chest 30 miles from his house, and they re calling it a suicide.
1
SPEAKER_01
And now even Elon Musk is asking, where s the clientele list?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
We should probably see who s been to that island.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we should probably see who s been to that island.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there s probably more of those kind of things out there that haven t been exposed.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but sort of to push back, you had those conversations with Alex Jones.
1
SPEAKER_01
Wouldn t you be able to have the same kind of conversation with Donald Trump?
1
SPEAKER_01
That s the problem.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, it s not the problem.
1
SPEAKER_01
You revealed that Alex Jones is a human being, he s fucked up, he has demons in his head, he s obviously chaotic all over the place, but there s some,
1
SPEAKER_01
wisdom to the perspective he takes on the world, even though he is often full of shit, he is able to predict certain things that very few people are willing to bring up.
1
SPEAKER_01
So isn t Trump the same way?
1
SPEAKER_01
Fucked up person, egomaniac, whatever personality things you can talk about, isn t it worthwhile to lay it out?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like who s going to, if you listen to interviews of Trump, who has the balls to call him out on this bullshit?
1
SPEAKER_00
Chris Wallace did.
1
SPEAKER_01
No calling out somebody on their bullshit is easy when you re just being adversarial, but as a person who is genuinely Empathetically trying to understand.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think you re really good at that like you pulled a man off.
1
SPEAKER_00
He would genuinely be there
1
SPEAKER_00
You know what I m saying?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I think he ll be putting on a performance.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that s... You don t think he can break through that in like 30 minutes?
1
SPEAKER_00
I d need more time than that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he doesn t do any drugs.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s the thing about Alex.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can get Alex high, get him drunk, and he ll start talking about interdimensional child molesters.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, and then you get the real Alex.
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you have somebody else on as well to introduce chaos, like Alex.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would have to be just me and him.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would have to, that would be a focused thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would have to like really take time with Trump.
1
SPEAKER_00
But also I m not well versed enough politically to know all of the corruption that s been alleged and to understand
1
SPEAKER_00
what the whole Russiagate stuff, what s real, like, how much of it, it s clear that there is more than one organization that s involved in communicating with Russia before the 2016 election.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it s pretty clear that the Clinton administration was involved.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s pretty clear that the Trump administration had some communication with some people in Russia.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s pretty clear that Hunter Biden had some very suspicious dealings in Ukraine.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there s a lot going on there, man.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s hard for anybody to parse.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s really hard for anybody, and especially to have an objective assessment of exactly what s going on, and then to be able to do that and broadcast it publicly.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s quite a project.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think if you really want to do that correctly, it s something that I would have to research for a long time and to really, really, and I don t have that kind of time.
1
SPEAKER_01
Not for maybe for certain, for certain people that you re really curious about.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like you have that kind of time for Bob Lazar.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
But maybe not for Donald Trump.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, that s different.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because Bob Lazar, what he s talking about, I wanted to know, with the Bob Lazar thing, I wanted to know, first of all, I want to be around him and see if I could smell bullshit.
1
SPEAKER_01
Did you?
1
SPEAKER_01
No.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, I didn t, man.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s what s weird about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Not only did I not smell bullshit, I went over all of his interviews.
1
SPEAKER_00
He hasn t done a lot, but he s done enough.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he s done them over the course of 30 plus years.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s alarming how consistent his story is, which is really weird when you think about you re talking about back engineering alien crafts and working on a, you know, a top secret government test site that s carved into the side of a mountain and to camouflage it from satellites.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s such a wacky story.
1
SPEAKER_00
But the guy really did work at Los Alamos Labs.
1
SPEAKER_00
He really is a propulsions expert.
1
SPEAKER_00
He really is a scientist.
1
SPEAKER_00
Did he really work on back engineering UFOs?
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_00
But the way he described their motion is exactly like what s been observed by some of these pilots that have these videos that they ve captured.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I just love that, like, NASA
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve been hearing from a bunch of folks who they re legitimately like funding research and there s people really taking the seriously of UFO sightings, investigating them, like adding more and more sensors to collect data from just observing.
2
SPEAKER_01
at higher and higher definitions.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s cool to finally see that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he was one of the early people, whether he s full of shit or not, that kind of forced people to start taking these topics seriously.
2
SPEAKER_00
Or at least forced people to have conversations about them and maybe attempt to debunk them because it seems so preposterous, but then get sucked down the rabbit hole.
2
SPEAKER_00
and start going, hmm, maybe.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s the thing is, like the Fermi paradox, like where are they, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And when you take into account just the sheer raw numbers, the vast majority of people objectively assume that there is life out there.
2
SPEAKER_00
the vast majority.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, if you really take into account what we understand about the universe itself, what we understand about the concept of infinity, and the way Neil deGrasse Tyson has explained it to me is that not only
2
SPEAKER_00
are there life forms out there, but there s you.
2
SPEAKER_00
You are out there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Infinity is so large that Lex Friedman exists, and doesn t just exist, but exists an infinite number of times.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like the amount of interactions that cells and molecules, the same exact interactions that have happened here on Earth have happened in the exact same order an infinite number of times in the cosmos.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, first of all, it s not certain that that s true.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s possible.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like Sean Carroll, you know, especially with quantum mechanics, based on certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, that s very possible.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the question is, can you access
2
SPEAKER_01
those universes.
2
SPEAKER_00
How far away are they?
2
SPEAKER_01
The more sort of specific practical question is, this local pocket of the universe, our galaxy, or our neighboring galaxies, are there aliens there?
2
SPEAKER_01
What do they look like?
2
SPEAKER_01
Are they, so you can have this panspermia idea where a much larger, like daddy civilization,
2
SPEAKER_01
like rolled by and just planted a few aliens at a similar time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like Prometheus.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, a different, you know, throughout the galaxy.
2
SPEAKER_01
And those are the ones we might be interacting with.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re all kind of dumb as we are relatively, you know, maybe a few million years apart.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then those are the ones we re interacting with.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then we have a chance to actually connect with them, communicate with them.
2
SPEAKER_01
Or it could be like much more wide open and you have these,
2
SPEAKER_01
gigantic alien civilizations that are expanding very, very quickly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the interesting thing is when you look up at the sky and you see the stars, that s light from those stars.
2
SPEAKER_01
we might not be seeing the alien civilizations until they re already here.
2
SPEAKER_01
Meaning, like you start expanding, once you get really good at expanding, you re going to be expanding very close to the speed of light.
2
SPEAKER_01
So right now we don t see much in the sky, but there could be one day we wake up and it s just like everywhere, and they re here.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, because of the amount of time the light takes to reach us.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and then the thing that I ve been really fascinated by is these
2
SPEAKER_00
alternative forms of transportation that they re discussing, like the ability to harness wormholes and the ability to do things that a type three civilization is capable of.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had Michio Kaku on my podcast recently.
2
SPEAKER_00
Fantastic.
2
SPEAKER_00
Love that guy.
2
SPEAKER_00
He s so good at taking extremely complex
2
SPEAKER_00
concepts and boiling them down for digestion and saying them in a way that other people can appreciate.
2
SPEAKER_01
And not being hesitant about saying wild, crazy shit that s out there, but grounded in what s actually possible.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he s all in on this UFO phenomenon now.
2
SPEAKER_00
He s like, now the burden of proof is for people to come up with some sort of a conventional explanation for these things.
2
SPEAKER_00
He goes, because these things are defying all the concepts of physics that we currently know in terms of what our capabilities are and propulsion systems and so many other things that, you know, what we know about what current science is capable of reproducing as far as what we know.
2
SPEAKER_00
The problem is like these military projects that are top secret.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, how much money do they have?
2
SPEAKER_00
They have a lot of money.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it possible, and maybe you could speak to this, is it possible that there could be some propulsion systems that have been developed and implemented that are far beyond just the simple burning of rocket fuel, pushing the fire out the back, which forces the rocket at extreme speeds forward?
2
SPEAKER_00
That s something that does harness gravity, something that can
2
SPEAKER_00
Distort space and time and can make travel from one point to another like preposterously fast Well, not only is it possible I think
2
SPEAKER_01
it s likely that that kind of stuff would be kept a secret.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s just everything you see about these, about the way either if it s contractors like Lockheed Martin or if it s DOD, the actual departments of defense, they operate in complete secrecy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Just even looking at the
2
SPEAKER_01
the history of the stealth fighter, just even stealth technology was kept a secret for a very, very long time.
2
SPEAKER_01
And not until you re ready to use it and need to use it, does it become public and not officially public, it just is being detected out in the wild.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s going to be a process where you re secretly testing it and that might creep up, which is maybe what we re seeing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then it s waiting for the next big war.
2
SPEAKER_01
the next big reason to use the thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so yeah, there s definitely technologies now.
2
SPEAKER_01
There might not be propulsion technologies.
2
SPEAKER_01
There could be AI surveillance technologies.
2
SPEAKER_01
There could be different kinds of stealth drones.
2
SPEAKER_01
It could be also in cyberspace, like cyber war weapons, all that kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re obviously going to become secret.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m very skeptical lately.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the reason why I m skeptical is the government keeps talking about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
The Pentagon keeps talking about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
NASA keeps talking about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
In which direction are you skeptical?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m skeptical that it s their aliens.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think most likely it s a smoke screen.
2
SPEAKER_00
And most likely these are some sort of like incredibly advanced drones that they ve developed that they
2
SPEAKER_00
want to pretend don t exist.
2
SPEAKER_00
That seems the more likely scenario.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because otherwise, my take is like, what s the benefit of them discussing these things?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, what s the benefit of them discussing these things openly?
2
SPEAKER_00
These are, you know, what the way they described it off world crafts, not made from this earth.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, why?
2
SPEAKER_00
Why would they?
2
SPEAKER_00
Why would they tell us that?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, unless there s an imminent
2
SPEAKER_00
danger of us being invaded and They want to prepare people so they don t freak out as much, you know Like maybe freak them out a little bit say that publicly the New York Times article the Pentagon Discussing it all these different things.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s the waters.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, let people know that this is a thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, or
2
SPEAKER_00
My take is like that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think they do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think they tell us.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think the government has a lot of contempt for the citizens.
2
SPEAKER_00
I really do.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think they have contempt for our intelligence.
2
SPEAKER_00
They have contempt for our need to know things.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I also think they think that they are running us.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not we re all in this together and the government works for the people and the government is of the people.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think they think that way.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the basic idea is you can t trust the populace to govern itself because we re a bunch of idiots.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think that s accurate.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, they re not wrong, but they re also idiots, power-hungry idiots.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t think everyone s an idiot, but I think there are enough idiots that it becomes a real problem if you re completely honest about everything you do.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you don t want to let everybody weigh in about things that are incredibly complex and that most people are ignorant of.
2
SPEAKER_00
And on top of that, there s this machine of intelligence.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve recently been reading a lot about the KGB, about the FSB.
2
SPEAKER_01
several things sparked my curiosity.
2
SPEAKER_01
So one, I m traveling to Ukraine and to Moscow.
2
SPEAKER_01
And because of that, I started to sort of ask practical questions of myself, just travel and all those kinds of things.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I started reading a lot about the KGB.
2
SPEAKER_01
Jack Barsky has a book on this.
2
SPEAKER_01
I talked to him.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you start to realize, you probably looked into some of this, but you start to realize the scale of surveillance and manipulation.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now, a lot of them also talk about the incompetence of those organizations.
2
SPEAKER_01
The usual bureaucracy creeps in.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the point is, it seems like there s no line they re not willing to cross for the purpose of gathering intelligence.
2
SPEAKER_01
for the purpose of controlling people in order to gather intelligence.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now this is MI6, FSB, there s not much information about the FSB or the GRU, but the KGB, so we re always like 20 years behind or more on the actual information.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I start to wonder, so I have not officially been contacted by any intelligence agency, but I start to wonder, well,
2
SPEAKER_01
Did I, is there somebody I know that s doing that undercover CIA or undercover FSB, undercover anything?
2
SPEAKER_01
You probably do.
2
SPEAKER_00
Have you asked yourself this question?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, for sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
People that have been on my podcast.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, for sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you think there was actual, a guess that may have been?
2
SPEAKER_00
A hundred percent.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh man.
2
SPEAKER_00
I would imagine.
2
SPEAKER_00
Would you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
I have suspicions.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you care?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is this, I mean,
2
SPEAKER_00
It depends on what they re attempting to do, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like if I felt like there was some deception involved and they were trying to use the podcast to manipulate a narrative in a deceptive way to trick people into things, yeah, I would care.
2
SPEAKER_00
But this is exactly what, those are the kind of things they do.
2
SPEAKER_00
They do plant narratives.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I would imagine, if you have the number one podcast in the world, that people would wanna infiltrate that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s probably meetings in all major intelligence agencies about, okay, what are the large platforms?
2
SPEAKER_01
How do we spread the message?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, that s the thing that really emerged when we re talking about during my cancellation, that there s a clear – there s no objective analysis of this in mainstream media.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s clear narratives that they re trying to push forward to whether it s to
2
SPEAKER_00
promote certain ideas, or to diminish the power and reach of people who are mavericks, or people who aren t connected to a system that you can t compromise.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s where it gets dangerous, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Where it gets dangerous is when someone has the largest reach, but is also completely detached.
2
SPEAKER_00
And
2
SPEAKER_00
clearly is independent in the sense of independent thinking, has on whoever he wants.
2
SPEAKER_00
But your mind can still be manipulated.
2
SPEAKER_00
I guess I can.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I guess everybody can be manipulated a certain way.
2
SPEAKER_00
I manipulate my own mind, I m sure, too.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I also spend a lot of time thinking about what I think.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t just accept things.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like the UFO thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was all in for a while, and now I m like, man, something smells fishy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And now I m thinking, here s my problem with the UFO thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want it to be real so bad.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s my problem with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m such a sucker.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want it to be real so bad, you know?
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s a problem for me, because I m aware of it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so then I stop and think about, like, what is my desire for UFO truth to be exposed?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s because it s fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, that s what it is.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I have a desire for it to be real.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I mean, I ve talked to a bunch of folks about this, so those with connection with DOD, and they do draw lines between people that are full of shit and people who are not.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of people in the public sphere that they say are full of shit.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, for sure.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you have to kind of tell the difference.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, CNN, watch them talk.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, even, yes, that picture.
2
SPEAKER_00
Everybody knows.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I mean, it s on the UFO topic.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, the UFO topic.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s certain individuals that are like, okay, they re just like using this.
2
SPEAKER_01
In fact, like people who are not full of shit are often very quiet.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Which is why, you know, even Bob Lazar is an interesting story because he was trying to be quiet for the longest time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, he was worried about his own life, according to Bob, and that s why he went public with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And initially, the first videos he did with George Knapp, they hid his identity.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then he felt like that wasn t enough, and he really needed to expose his own identity just to protect his life.
2
SPEAKER_00
Which is a great story, you know, so you gotta go, well, that seems so juicy, I wanna buy into it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s where I get nervous.
2
SPEAKER_00
You don t know, you don t know who to trust in this world.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
How do you figure that out?
2
SPEAKER_01
How do you figure out who to trust in your life?
2
SPEAKER_01
You re Joe Rogan, a lot of people want to be close to you, CIA agents.
2
SPEAKER_00
FSB agents People that were friends with a former CIA agent.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Mike Baker has been on my podcast a bunch of times allegedly former former think about that He s air quotes former.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t believe his former.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m sure he has some connection to him I also believe he s a good guy, but I gain a lot of very intelligent and well-informed insights from him as to how things work and you know, I
2
SPEAKER_00
I think, you know, I m sure he doesn t tell me everything about everything, but he s told me enough where I think I can understand things better from talking to him about how the way, you know, the elves
2
SPEAKER_00
work under the machine.
2
SPEAKER_00
What about friends?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you know if you can trust?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, most of my friends are old friends.
2
SPEAKER_01
Time.
2
SPEAKER_01
So time is the thing, like just going through shit together.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and also people that, you know, first of all, comics.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can trust comics?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Comics are pretty trustworthy.
2
SPEAKER_00
The good ones, the really good ones.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s not that many of us.
2
SPEAKER_00
If there s a thousand professional comics on earth, I d be stunned.
2
SPEAKER_00
I d be stunned.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t even think there s a thousand, like real professionals who you get booked all the time, headline weekends at clubs and theaters and arenas.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then there s levels to that, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
There s like the guys who are middle acts who kind of like barely scrape by,
2
SPEAKER_00
And then, like, how many headliners are there?
2
SPEAKER_00
How many, like, really funny headliners that I would say, you know, Lex, you tell me you re going to be in Cincinnati.
2
SPEAKER_00
Hey, this person s playing at this club.
2
SPEAKER_00
Should I go see them?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, like, how many people would I give the recommendation to?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then how many people sell out theaters?
2
SPEAKER_00
How many people sell out arenas?
2
SPEAKER_00
How many, there s not that fucking many.
2
SPEAKER_00
So those people, like at the levels of comedy where you, you know, you ve been doing standup for 20 years, there s a certain amount of honesty and a certain amount of understanding of each other that we all have.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so that process of becoming a great comic is like humbling in the way like jujitsu is humbling.
2
SPEAKER_01
Very similar.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like there s, you ve taken, you ve eaten so much shit that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
that somehow, even if you re insane, even if you re chaotic, even in the way, even if you re full of shit, you lie a lot, all those kinds of things, underneath it, there s a good human.
2
SPEAKER_01
You could be surface bullshitter, but on important things, you re trustworthy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Hopefully I mean if you re not then people shy away from you and there are people like that too that are really successful But that are that are what I call islands I ve talked to other comics about that like you don t want to be an island because there s these people that aren t attached to the rest of the community and they re doing well on their own and Usually they have like one opening act they bring with them on the road they ve worked with forever and they don t have comedy friends and They re those people are miserable because they can t relate
2
SPEAKER_00
sometimes fame in itself is
3
SPEAKER_00
isolating.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you have to actually do a lot of work and make sure you don t, it doesn t isolate you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because if you become successful, people start wanting stuff from you.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then sometimes you want to push them away because of that, as opposed to connect with them.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I don t enjoy it when people want things from me.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
You just ignore it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s fucking too heavy.
3
SPEAKER_01
They want too much.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s too much of a disproportionate relationship.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s too unbalanced.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because there are people where you could tell that they re working towards something.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re working towards an angle.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they want to be close to you because you will benefit them.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then there s other people that are just,
3
SPEAKER_01
There s not that many of us, and so we all want to hang out together.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of the podcasts I love the most is this podcast I do called Protect Our Parks.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a thing I do with Ari Shaffir, Shane Gillis, and Mark Norman.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s so fun, because we just get obliterated, and we talk so much shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s conversations after that podcast where I go, hey, man, we got to cut that part out.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because like Shane will go too far go too crazy, but we re just making each other laugh and it s just fun And it s like that kind of camaraderie between real comics is very precious to me My favorite part of that is like the non sequitur stuff from Mark Norman You guys get so trashed that you don t even understand what the hell he s talking about, but it s funny to the listener
3
SPEAKER_00
Cause he s still on point.
3
SPEAKER_00
That guy s sharp.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s got that Mitch Hedberg quality.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, he s such a, such a dedicated comic.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, he loves comedy so much.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s one of the things I love about him.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s like comedy.
3
SPEAKER_01
He gets excited.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like he loves it.
3
SPEAKER_01
As does Shane and as does Ari.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you know, they really love it and it s um, that s so so there s that like I have friends in that way and I have martial arts friends who are some of the Also the thing about being humbled how things like jiu-jitsu will humble you martial arts friends are there also I they know
3
SPEAKER_01
They know who s been through it.
3
SPEAKER_01
They know who really has gone through the gauntlet and emerged on the other end a better person.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you said there s very few of us.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s have the goat discussion.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re not going to pick anybody, but who are the greats of comedy?
3
SPEAKER_00
Who s the greatest comic of all time?
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t think there is a greatest comic of all time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it Norm Macdonald?
3
SPEAKER_01
Norm Macdonald was one of the greats, for sure.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, by the way, actually on that topic, what do you think about is, I think as a person who is fascinated by the fear of death and death, I think it was a truly genius thing to release a special after you re dead.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how that works.
3
SPEAKER_00
I haven t seen the special of you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s called, I think, Nothing Special.
3
SPEAKER_01
Which sounds like something normal to say.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s basically him in front of, I mean, I imagine he wouldn t have wanted it edited that way, because it s made to look nicer than I think he probably would have preferred it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s him in front of the screen, like in a Zoom call.
3
SPEAKER_00
Doing jokes without lap cold.
3
SPEAKER_01
Really?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and somehow given his Like dry dark humor it works because it s almost making fun of itself almost making fun of that hole that we were stuck stuck alone inside
3
SPEAKER_00
And because he s still acting as if he s in front of the audience and is almost making fun of the fact that this is what we re forced to do.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s quite genius.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s really well done.
3
SPEAKER_00
The jokes are really good, but it also makes you realize how important laughter is from the audience, the energy from the audience.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there s also an intimacy because it s just you and him.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because you re listening to it, you know there s no audience.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s, I don t know, I think it s quite genius.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he s of course, there s certain comics that are like,
3
SPEAKER_00
Not only are they funny, but they re truly unique.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re not in terms of friendship and all that kind of stuff, but in terms of comedy, they re an island.
3
SPEAKER_00
Mitch Hedberg probably is that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course, a lot of people then start to imitate them and so on.
3
SPEAKER_01
Steven Wright.
3
SPEAKER_00
Steven Wright.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s like people who are like, you know, Dave Chappelle, who s like probably one of the greats, but he s just like raw funny.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if he s an island.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s just raw.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I know what you re saying.
3
SPEAKER_01
An outlier, a unique individual.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he s just great.
3
SPEAKER_01
Norm was definitely unique in his greatness, like there s only one Norm, you know, who s got a very specific style.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is there a reason you guys weren t, it doesn t seem like he was, you guys were close.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I loved him.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was great.
3
SPEAKER_01
I always enjoyed talking to him.
3
SPEAKER_01
We just didn t work together that often.
3
SPEAKER_01
We weren t around each other that often.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s all it was.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it wasn t like, it was, I loved him though.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was a great guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had a funny story about it, Norm.
3
SPEAKER_01
Twice, just randomly, I was on airplanes next to him, seated right next to him.
3
SPEAKER_01
Just totally random.
3
SPEAKER_01
And one time,
3
SPEAKER_01
We re on this airplane, and we re having this talk, and he s like, yeah, I quit smoking.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was smoking a lot, and it s just terrible, terrible.
3
SPEAKER_01
Smoking s terrible for you.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we have this great conversation.
3
SPEAKER_01
We get off the plane, and he sprints towards a store and buys cigarettes, like in the airport, and is lighting it on the way out the door.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I go, I thought you quit smoking.
3
SPEAKER_01
He goes, yeah, I did, but all that talking about smoking made me want to smoke again.
3
SPEAKER_01
So before he s getting through the door of the airport, he s lighting it up.
3
SPEAKER_01
He can t wait.
3
SPEAKER_01
He can t wait to get that cigarette in him.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was just so crazy and impulsive and loved to gamble.
3
SPEAKER_01
He loved gambling.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in that way, he embodied the joke.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like you can t even tell.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s certain people just like live in a non sequitur.
3
SPEAKER_00
ridiculous, absurd, funny way.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that was him.
3
SPEAKER_01
Non-stop.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was nothing artificial about Norm.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was who he was.
3
SPEAKER_01
His brilliance was his essence.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was who he was.
3
SPEAKER_01
But in terms of the greats,
3
SPEAKER_01
The godfather of it all is Lenny Bruce.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I have a bunch of Lenny Bruce concert posters at my house and photos that I have framed, and Whitney Cummings actually gave me this brilliant photo of him when he got arrested for one of the times when he got arrested for saying obscene jokes.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was the most important figure in the early days of comedy because he essentially gave birth to the modern art form of stand-up comedy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Before that, it was a bunch of guys that were like hosting shows and they would tell jokes.
3
SPEAKER_01
They would just like, you know, two guys walking to a bar, that kind of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he would talk about
3
SPEAKER_01
social issues.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, he would talk about life, he would talk about language, he would talk about laws, and it was just, he was the very first guy who did modern stand-up.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what s fascinating is if you go and you try to watch it, if you try to watch Lenny Bruce today, it doesn t work.
3
SPEAKER_01
because society has evolved.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, in many ways, art is a window, especially like pop culture art or modern, you know, at the time, culture art.
3
SPEAKER_01
what art that discusses culture is a window into that time period.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a little bit of a time machine.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you get to like, you have to put yourself, like, what was it like to be in 1963?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, what was he, in 1963, what was this like to hear him say this?
3
SPEAKER_01
And the
3
SPEAKER_01
The civilization that existed in 1963, although it looked pretty similar, they re all driving cars and they re all wearing suits and it seems normal.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a different world.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the things that he was saying that are so taboo are so normal today that they re not shocking, and it s not that good.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not that funny.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you have to do the same kind of stuff for, like, there s D.H.
3
SPEAKER_00
Lawrence has a book called Lady Shadowy s Lover, and I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was one of the early books, I believe at the
3
SPEAKER_00
over a century ago that was very controversial for its sexual content.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s sort of one of the great books because it dared to actually talk about a woman cheating on her husband and do so in the highest form.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the same thing with Gulag Archipelago, talking about some of the darkest aspects of human history right when all of that stuff is forbidden, when it s banned.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because now it s like, you know,
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, we all know this history, but when in the middle of it, when you re risking your own life, when you re risking your book being banned or burned or you being in prison, that s when it matters, like taking that risk.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and no one took that risk more than Lenny Bruce.
3
SPEAKER_01
Lenny Bruce was arrested many, many times.
3
SPEAKER_01
And ultimately, it wound up costing him his life.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, he died on the bathroom floor shooting heroin.
3
SPEAKER_01
and trying to cope with all the lawsuits that he was going through.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, this guy was constantly being arrested and constantly going through lawsuits.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then his comedy deteriorated horribly.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s some footage of him towards the end of his career where he essentially would go on stage with legal papers and read from the legal papers about his case.
3
SPEAKER_01
From then, it s Richard Pryor.
3
SPEAKER_01
From him, then the next great is Richard Pryor.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he had the most profound impact on me when I was a kid.
3
SPEAKER_01
When I was 15 years old, my parents took me to see Live at the Sunset Strip, which is Richard Pryor s concert film.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I remember very distinctly being in that audience.
3
SPEAKER_01
and laughing and looking around at all the people in the audience who were like falling out of their chairs, just dying laughing, just swaying back and forth.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was laughing hard too.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, my God, this guy s doing this just by talking.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I thought of all the great movies that I d seen that I loved that were hilarious comedy movies.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, nothing that I ve ever seen is as funny as this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And all he s doing is talking.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that planted a seed in my head for my love of stand-up comedy and my curiosity about the art form.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s what got me interested in watching it on television and then ultimately going to open mic nights and then eventually doing it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve actually been going to open mics a lot recently, just listening.
3
SPEAKER_01
For psychological examinations of people?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, it s actually really inspiring to me to see people
3
SPEAKER_00
that some are funny, some are not so funny, unapologetically trying, putting it all out there, night after night, eating shit.
3
SPEAKER_00
My favorite is when you re talking about five people in the audience, and the jokes are just not landing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they still, I don t know, it feels like even just empathetically, there s few things as difficult as that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
I still remember those days.
3
SPEAKER_01
Many comics will say this, and I think Dane Cook was the first person I heard say it publicly, that if he ever had to go back and do it again, like from scratch, doesn t think he could do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Doesn t think he could endure the struggle of open mic to, you know, ultimately to success.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the numbers of people that try it and fail versus try and succeed are off the charts.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if there s any other art form that has such a low rate of success.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because it s psychological, it s torture.
3
SPEAKER_01
It is torture, and it s also not something you can learn.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, here s the thing, like, if you, you play guitar.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can learn to play guitar.
3
SPEAKER_01
Someone can teach you the chords.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you do it, you could do all along the watchtower.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could play it.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t teach someone how to do comedy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you think you re funny or not, or can you still figure it out?
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you still learn?
3
SPEAKER_01
You can figure it out, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you start being unfunny and become funny?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it s possible.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not easy, though.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna have to eat a lot of shit.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re gonna have to eat a lot of shit, and you re gonna have to examine why you re not funny.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you re gonna have to spend a lot of time with uncomfortable thoughts and try to figure out what it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, what s missing?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, could you edit your stuff and make it better?
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you need to do drugs.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you need to get involved in psychedelic drugs and rethink the way you interface with reality itself.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you need your heart broken.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you need to be in love.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe, there s a lot of maybes there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, maybe you just need more life experience.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, when I started comedy, I was 21 and I was a moron.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had no information.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I could do impressions of people and I could talk about sex.
3
SPEAKER_01
Those are the things that I was interested in back then.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, if I was talking philosophically, I didn t have a philosophy, I didn t have a unique perspective on life.
3
SPEAKER_01
I hadn t experienced much.
3
SPEAKER_00
So every time you bomb, it forces you to introspect, to ask questions of yourself, and then that s how you actually develop a philosophy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of what you actually believe.
3
SPEAKER_01
You learn through doing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think you could say that about podcasting, too.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I m certainly way better at having conversations than I ever was when I first started doing comedy.
3
SPEAKER_00
or excuse me, when I first started doing podcasts.
3
SPEAKER_00
You should stick with a kid because one day you ll be able to interview Donald Trump.
3
SPEAKER_00
You d be mad enough to handle that conversation.
3
SPEAKER_00
How hard is it to do?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I ve been really curious.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s been on my bucket list because I m terrified.
3
SPEAKER_00
I want to do everything I m terrified of.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you have to do standup?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, but I do want to do like one five minute open mic.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why don t you do Kill Tony?
3
SPEAKER_01
How hard is it to do five minutes, would you say?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, it depends on, you know, how long you ve been thinking about doing comedy.
3
SPEAKER_01
It depends on how you look at things.
3
SPEAKER_01
And also depends on your style of comedy, like the most difficult style of comedy is like, I think, like Stephen Wright style is probably the most difficult style of comedy, complete non sequiturs.
3
SPEAKER_01
one subject doesn t lead into the next, there s no flow to it, it s just, I noticed this, I noticed that, and then there s this, and then there s that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s hard to memorize, and it s really hard to piece together an hour of non sequiturs.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s easier because you can rely on the joke, it sits more with the joke.
3
SPEAKER_00
like, whether you re funny or not is on the actual material versus like the timing and the energy, the dance, the audience, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because like, if you don t have the raw jokes, like Steven Wright does or Mitch Hedberg, then you have to, it s all about the delivery.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, that they either kill or they bomb.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it random?
3
SPEAKER_01
Whether they kill or bomb?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the beginning, I mean.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re essentially a different person every day of your life.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re similar, but you re more tired, you re more rested, you re exhausted, you re refreshed, you have vitamins and food nourishment in your system, you just get your heart broken, you haven t slept in days.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re a different person all the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you go onto that stage,
3
SPEAKER_01
You re in the neighborhood of who Lex Friedman is.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re in the Lex Friedman neighborhood.
3
SPEAKER_01
Which Lex Friedman am I going to get?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Energy levels.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
It depends.
3
SPEAKER_00
It all depends.
3
SPEAKER_00
But oh, the other thing with Kill Tony is it s videotaped.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you eating shit is on there forever.
3
SPEAKER_00
Forever.
3
SPEAKER_01
The world can see it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it s one of the most important shows in comedy.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s the most important show in comedy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because first of all, it establishes
3
SPEAKER_01
stand up in a sense that, like, for the open micers, for the people that are starting it out, it establishes that the most important thing is to be funny.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, this is what the art form is all about.
3
SPEAKER_01
And there s a lot of insecurity attached to that, a lot of fears.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so to alleviate some of those insecurities and fears, people will
3
SPEAKER_01
Decide that the message is more important and they ll pretend that you know, like you have to have like You have to have you have to be Socially aware that you have to promote things that are positive in your comedy, which is bullshit They re all the people that say that they re all bad.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re all bad at comedy and that s where the insecurity is It s like they can t just kill
4
SPEAKER_01
So they have to pretend that they re supposed to be socially aware, and that being socially aware is an important part into society.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, let me explain something really clearly.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s not a fucking person on earth who s ever changed their life because of a joke.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s not what they re there for.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re there for jokes.
4
SPEAKER_01
The people that say that...
4
SPEAKER_01
They say that socially important comedy is the only comedy that s necessary, the only comedy that you have to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
That is just because they suck.
4
SPEAKER_01
That is it.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like the cop out is that they can t do the real comedy.
4
SPEAKER_01
They can t crush.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not like someone goes from being
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, take like Shane Gillis, one of the best comics up and coming right now.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s fucking fantastic.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can t recommend enough seeing that guy live.
4
SPEAKER_01
I work with him in Irvine, and I hadn t seen like his whole set.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was crying.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, he s so good.
4
SPEAKER_00
I heard he s a racist.
4
SPEAKER_00
I haven t listened to any of his material, no.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s so good.
4
SPEAKER_01
And his comedy is just all just trying to be as funny as possible.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s not a chance in hell that guy s just going to go woke and is just going to start promoting some sort of, you know, socially conscious agenda that s, you know, facetious and just a bunch of nonsense that he s trying to elevate his own personal brand and virtue signal.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s not going to happen.
4
SPEAKER_01
The thing about Kill Tony is, in that because you only have one minute, and because it s live, and because you don t want Tony shitting on you or everybody else shitting on you, everybody s just gearing up to try to be as funny as possible.
4
SPEAKER_01
And no one cares if you are gay, or straight, or Asian, or black, or trans, or non-binary.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nobody gives a fuck.
4
SPEAKER_01
Are you funny?
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re funny, you re in and everybody loves you.
4
SPEAKER_01
You could be 80, you could be 20.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nobody gives a shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
You could be a woman or a man or ambiguous.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nobody fucking cares.
4
SPEAKER_01
Are you funny?
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s the most important thing for a community of comedy to really promote comedy, just funny, just be funny.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so in that sense, Kill Tony is a real cornerstone of comedy.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a reminder what comedy is supposed to be.
4
SPEAKER_00
That said, even the funniest stuff has underneath it some wisdom that comes out of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But that s not the primary goal of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, it might be inspiring and fun.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, Tim Dillon s a great example of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s got some amazing insights in his comedy.
4
SPEAKER_01
But still, it s fucking comedy.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s all about the funny.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s all of the funny.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s got, he s the best at doing that, especially in a podcast form, about weaving like really important points in with hilarious, you know, obviously just, you know, just jokes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let me ask you, speaking of Tim Dillon, a chaotic fucked up individual.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can we go to your childhood real quick?
4
SPEAKER_00
A brief stroll.
4
SPEAKER_00
So your mom and dad split up when you were five.
4
SPEAKER_00
from a younging perspective, if you look at your subconscious, what impact do you think that had on you in forming who you are as a man, as a human being?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, at the time, I thought that my father was like a hero.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, he was my dad.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think every kid thinks like that about his dad.
4
SPEAKER_01
His dad is like, your dad s your protector.
4
SPEAKER_01
Your dad is like the coolest guy in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s what you like.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everybody wants to be like their dad, especially if your dad is like an imposing figure.
4
SPEAKER_01
I remember one time me and my cousin got in a fight over nothing.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was like over who s tougher, King Kong or Godzilla.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, over nothing.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s an important, but yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Actual fight, actual physical fight.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I punched him in the face.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is when you were like five?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Which side were you on?
4
SPEAKER_00
King Kong.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was wrong.
4
SPEAKER_01
Godzilla s like way bigger.
4
SPEAKER_01
Godzilla s 500 feet tall and he shoots fire out of his mouth.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Are you sure?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s an argument to be made.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not all about size, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, there s no argument to be made.
4
SPEAKER_01
500 feet tall versus 50 feet tall.
4
SPEAKER_01
One s a gigantic dinosaur.
4
SPEAKER_01
One is a stupid monkey who gets shot down by a plane.
4
SPEAKER_01
You don t think a monkey can ride Godzilla?
4
SPEAKER_01
No.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t kill Godzilla with a plane.
4
SPEAKER_01
That shit wouldn t work in Godzilla.
4
SPEAKER_01
Killed King Kong.
4
SPEAKER_01
King Kong in the new movies kept growing.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s getting bigger and bigger.
4
SPEAKER_01
He got to the point where he s as big as Godzilla.
4
SPEAKER_00
It just feels like King Kong is stronger.
4
SPEAKER_00
Stop.
4
SPEAKER_00
Back take.
4
SPEAKER_00
Back take.
4
SPEAKER_00
Immediate back take.
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t think there s a back take?
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a difference between human weapons and two animals going at it of a different size.
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t think there s, in the jungle, a smaller animal can take on a bigger animal?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like a monkey versus a
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s see, a lion, monkey versus a bear.
4
SPEAKER_01
What?
4
SPEAKER_00
Who wins?
4
SPEAKER_01
A monkey versus a bear?
4
SPEAKER_00
Not a monkey, not a monkey.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s the strongest ape?
4
SPEAKER_00
A gorilla.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, but gorilla, okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
Gorilla can t do back takes.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m thinking of like a smaller, you know what I m saying?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because in Jujitsu, you see this all the time.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember that scene in Talladega Nights?
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you know Talladega Nights?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Where the little boy s talking to his grandpa, I ll be all over you like a spider monkey.
4
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, spider monkey, I was thinking,
4
SPEAKER_01
There s some animals, like here s a better example, a wolverine.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wolverines chase wolves and bears off of their kills.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they re not very big at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re just so ferocious.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they re so durable.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like it s very hard to kill a wolverine.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s videos of like cats, like not actual cats, like domestic cats or domestic dogs starting shit with much larger animals.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if they re ferocious enough,
4
SPEAKER_01
Well pit bulls are a great example of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Pit bulls are small, like real game bred pit bulls are like 35, 45 pounds and they ll kill much larger dogs.
4
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, you were on King Kong s side.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Get the shit out of your cousin.
4
SPEAKER_01
I remember he said to me, uh, like I thought it was in like real trouble.
4
SPEAKER_01
Cause I remember my cousin s mom was yelling at me and it was like, you monster, all this crazy shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, um,
4
SPEAKER_01
my dad got me alone, and he said, tell me what happened.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I told him, you know, we got in a fight, we were arguing, we were King Kong and Godzilla, and I punched him in the face.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he goes, did you cry?
4
SPEAKER_01
I go, no.
4
SPEAKER_01
He goes, good, don t ever cry.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I remember that, like, whoa, okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I remember thinking, all right, I m just gonna start punching people.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because, like, obviously my dad thinks it s a good idea if I go running around punching people as long as I don t cry.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, I remember certain things about, you know, and also, like, this is, again, like, we re talking about
4
SPEAKER_01
watching Lenny Bruce and getting a timeline of what the world was like back then, this is a different world.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, in 1970, this would have been 1972.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a different world back then, man, like a really different world.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s some of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
So Carl Jung talked about the shadow, it s the unconscious, where you have dark stuff and
4
SPEAKER_00
oftentimes you use it to project.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s stuff that you re very self-critical about yourself, but because it s in your unconscious, you use it to project onto others.
4
SPEAKER_00
You see it as flaws in others.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s a good way to, like whatever, I think there s a quote, like, everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s a nice way to investigate yourself, like something that pisses you off.
4
SPEAKER_00
you start asking questions of your own mind, and that s how you bring it to the surface.
4
SPEAKER_00
But anyway, from that, those are formative years.
4
SPEAKER_00
From that time, is there still stuff in your unconscious you think you haven t examined?
4
SPEAKER_00
Some dark shit?
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t think so.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t, I m not aware if it is, because I ve looked, you know?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like if someone, you know, someone says, you know, I left something over your house.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, where d you leave it?
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, all right, I ll go look.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ll get a real thorough looking.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I m pretty sure.
4
SPEAKER_01
Pretty sure it s not there.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think I ve looked.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it certainly had an effect.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think the positive effect also was compounded by the fact that when my mother married my stepdad, who s a great guy,
4
SPEAKER_01
who was a hippie, very different, we moved around a lot.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so the bad thing about that was I didn t really develop long-term friends.
4
SPEAKER_01
The good thing about that was that I was forced to develop my own opinions about things.
4
SPEAKER_01
Instead of adopting an opinion of the neighborhood and the group about anything, I was forced to form my own thoughts and opinions about almost everything.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so it made me much more of an independent thinker.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that on top of the fact that, you know, losing, you know, my quote unquote hero very early on, and then having to form my own opinions about things, it left me with a very, very independent streak, you know, in terms of, and if I hadn t done
4
SPEAKER_01
The things that I got interested in, martial arts and then comedy, if I hadn t gotten interested in those things, I would have been fucked because I was just too independent for normal jobs.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was too independent for school.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just didn t want to listen to people.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was too feral.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just didn t want to sit still.
4
SPEAKER_01
If I was with the wrong parents, especially today, I most certainly would have been medicated.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s so many possible trajectories you can imagine where you would have not been the person you are today.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is probably one of the best possible trajectories.
4
SPEAKER_00
This particular storyline you re living through was one of the better ones.
4
SPEAKER_01
This timeline is as good as it gets for someone like me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is there advice you can give to people, to young kids that are living through a shitty situation of any sort, a tough life?
4
SPEAKER_01
Find a thing you like.
4
SPEAKER_01
Try to find a thing that you really enjoy.
4
SPEAKER_01
Try to find a thing that you re passionate about.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like an activity.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
For me, early on, it was drawing.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was illustrations.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was comic books.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to be a comic book illustrator.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then it went from comic book drawing and illustrations to martial arts.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it was just another thing that I was very, very passionate about.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that was my vehicle out of my dilemma.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was my vehicle out of my own anxiety and trauma and my own issues and insecurities.
4
SPEAKER_01
Find something, find a thing that you genuinely enjoy, because getting good at things you genuinely enjoy is extremely beneficial for young people, because it lets you know that, like, everybody thinks they re a loser.
4
SPEAKER_01
Every young person thinks they re a loser, at least a young person in the situation I was at.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, I didn t know I wasn t a loser until I started winning, until I started doing martial arts.
4
SPEAKER_01
Martial arts taught me that, like, I could get better at stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
that it wasn t, I wasn t really a loser.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just was someone who was like in a fucked up situation.
4
SPEAKER_01
But you could channel all that energy that you have as a young person into something and get better at it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then all of a sudden people admired me.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was like, this is crazy.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I went from being someone who was incredibly insecure,
4
SPEAKER_01
and basically a failure to someone who was really successful at this one thing that was very dangerous, that other people were scared of.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that gave me immense confidence and also a real understanding of the direct correlation between hard work and success.
4
SPEAKER_00
And a kind of understanding that you re not a loser.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
That there is some diamond in the rough.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
And also an understanding that you can t listen to people.
4
SPEAKER_01
Cause even my parents didn t want me to do martial arts.
4
SPEAKER_01
They didn t want me to fight.
4
SPEAKER_01
They didn t want me to do stand up.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s like, you have to understand like who you are.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then in the face of other people s either criticism or,
4
SPEAKER_01
you know, lack of faith in your ability to succeed, you push through and there s great benefit in that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then you realize that you can kind of apply that to other things in life.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can apply that to critics, you can apply that to social media commentators, you can apply that to a lot of things.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, what about...
4
SPEAKER_00
Young people in their 50s.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, can you give advice to like imagine you re sitting you re sitting back probably still here in Texas in your 90s looking back what advice would that guy give to you today or like people in
4
SPEAKER_00
you know, people that have done some shit in their 50s, you ve gone through a hell of a life, there s potentially some incentive to settle down.
4
SPEAKER_00
You got a great family to relax.
4
SPEAKER_00
But maybe there s some incentive to still do epic shit, still be David Goggins running in the middle of the desert, screaming shit into a camera.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re David Goggins, you have to be David Goggins.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t think there s a path for that guy that exists at this stage of his life other than that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you think he ll be 70 and still screaming?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
A hundred percent.
4
SPEAKER_01
A hundred percent.
4
SPEAKER_01
If David and I are alive, we re both 70, he s going to call me up and say, stay hard motherfucker.
4
SPEAKER_01
Guaranteed.
4
SPEAKER_01
Guaranteed.
4
SPEAKER_01
So lean into whatever the fuck you are at this point.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, if you re enjoying it, but if you re not enjoying it, rethink your life.
4
SPEAKER_01
Try to figure out why you re not enjoying it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You still think it s possible to shift things in your 50s?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re alive, you can get better.
4
SPEAKER_01
No matter what.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no matter what.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re alive, you can shift things.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, if you re 90 years old, and you know, you have a month to live, you can apologize for the things you think you did wrong.
4
SPEAKER_01
And maybe sort of reconcile and shape relationships that you have with the people that are around you better, so that they feel differently about you after you re gone.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I always love people in their 70s who are like, like getting back into dating or something like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was watching a video about a woman who s in her 60s who just started powerlifting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Nice.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And same with jiu-jitsu.
4
SPEAKER_00
You see people get into jiu-jitsu.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like a white belt that s like 70.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of, if you re alive, you can get better at stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
And
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t think people are happy if they don t have puzzles and complex tasks and things that are interesting to them, whether it s an art project or whether it s learning something completely new like stand-up comedy, like doing things that are difficult is –
4
SPEAKER_01
It s as much of a nourishment of the mind as food is a nourishment of the body.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think you need things that are puzzling to you, where you have to find your own human potential in the difficulty of the task and work your way through things, at least for me.
4
SPEAKER_01
For me, I mean, I can only speak for me, because I m the only life that I ve ever lived that I m aware of.
4
SPEAKER_01
And in my life, that has been 100% constant.
4
SPEAKER_01
I am a very happy person, and I have never had a moment where I m not doing difficult shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
Ever.
4
SPEAKER_00
What matters most is how well you walk through the fires.
4
SPEAKER_00
You just keep starting fires for yourself to walk through.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, they don t necessarily have to be fires, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because fires are like kind of out of control.
4
SPEAKER_00
Lukewarm tasks.
4
SPEAKER_00
The surfaces.
4
SPEAKER_01
Tasks.
4
SPEAKER_01
Give yourself something, an arduous, difficult task where you re challenged.
4
SPEAKER_01
Challenged mentally and challenged physically.
4
SPEAKER_01
One of the great things about being challenged physically is it s also mental.
4
SPEAKER_01
The people that don t understand that have never really been challenged physically.
4
SPEAKER_01
People that think that physical challenges are just like, just physical.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just
4
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brute grunt work.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not.
4
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It s emotional intelligence.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s understanding your desire to quit and, you know, conquering your inner bitch.
4
SPEAKER_01
All that stuff is – it s mental.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s playing out inside your head.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there s a mental strength that you acquire from that that you can apply to intellectual pursuits.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the people that don t think that are the people that haven t attempted them.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there s an arrogance to people that only pursue intellectual exercises, only pursue intellectual things, and don t pursue anything physical.
5
SPEAKER_01
That the physical stuff is base, it s grunt work, it s primal, it s not necessary.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t think that s accurate.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t think that they re – I mean, obviously, there s people like Stephen Hawking who have no opportunity to do anything physical, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
His physical dilemma is keeping us – or was keeping his heart beating.
5
SPEAKER_01
But for most people, I think you can really benefit from physical struggle and you benefit from it in a mental way.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think that is overlooked.
5
SPEAKER_01
that s unfortunately overlooked by academics and intellectuals who, they make excuses for why they re fat and lazy or scrawny.
5
SPEAKER_00
They don t need to be, it s not even about the fat or all of that, it s like literally there s something about the physical challenge that s really good for you, especially if you re academic, especially if you do intellectual types though.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s this great roboticist at MIT, Russ Tedrick, he runs Barefoot,
5
SPEAKER_00
to and from MIT every day.
5
SPEAKER_01
I love it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like 7 to 10 miles each way.
5
SPEAKER_01
Barefoot.
5
SPEAKER_00
Barefoot.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, he studies legged locomotion, legged robots.
5
SPEAKER_00
For him, it s also interesting how the human body moves.
5
SPEAKER_00
He sees the beauty in all movement.
5
SPEAKER_01
What do his feet look like?
5
SPEAKER_00
you know, calloused.
5
SPEAKER_00
Destroyed, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
No, just calloused.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re nice.
5
SPEAKER_00
They form a nice- They re nice?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s not like I gave them a foot massage.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I mean, they look, and I don t have a foot fetish, so I don t, I m not able to correctly evaluate another man s feet.
5
SPEAKER_00
I apologize for this.
5
SPEAKER_00
But they don t look fucked up.
5
SPEAKER_00
Does he run on concrete?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he runs all surfaces.
5
SPEAKER_01
And he does everything completely barefoot?
5
SPEAKER_00
The running part at work.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so one of the things he has to do is fit into society Which means he has to change clothes and appear normal, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
So does he wear like zero shoes?
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, he s not foot type shoes.
5
SPEAKER_00
No because that s like very Happy Wokey type of thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh.
5
SPEAKER_00
No like he doesn t he s barefoot when he s running and then he wears like normal Looking stuff like dress.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s working his way up to running barefoot
5
SPEAKER_00
So he was significantly overweight.
5
SPEAKER_00
And his advisor, this other famous person at MIT who was a roboticist, took his own life.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that made him, that made Russ face his own mortality.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you start to ask big questions about your well-being, like, holy shit, this ride can end at any moment.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so he started taking his sort of physical well-being seriously, but as a result of that, not that he d become like shredded,
5
SPEAKER_00
but he s also discovered the intellectual value, the humbling value of physical exercise.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s not preachy about it at all.
5
SPEAKER_00
I actually rarely hear him advise it to anyone.
5
SPEAKER_00
He just does it as a, almost like meditation or something like that.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s definitely a form of meditation, and you can attest to that, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
You do quite a bit of running.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a thing about,
5
SPEAKER_01
You kind of, almost like a mantra gets formed and you get into it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was great here in the Austin heat, 100 degree weather.
5
SPEAKER_00
That tests you.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know what I love to do outside?
5
SPEAKER_01
Pull sleds.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s my thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
I love to pull sleds outside.
5
SPEAKER_00
In the heat.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I did today.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I love it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you re also, your wife is incredible, you re in a relationship, you re married, you have a great family, what advice would you give to me and to others like me who are dumb fucks and have not found a relationship?
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, you re a great guy, so this definitely doesn t necessarily apply to you, but be someone who someone would want to be in a relationship with.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of people out there that want a great partner, they want someone in a relationship,
5
SPEAKER_01
Why would someone wanna be in a relationship with you?
5
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you bicker a lot, maybe you re jealous, maybe you lie, maybe you re cruel, maybe you don t have a sense of humor, maybe you re not kind.
5
SPEAKER_01
What is it about you that people would not enjoy being around or that people avoid?
5
SPEAKER_01
Fix that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, this applies to me as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like you said something with Kam Haines.
5
SPEAKER_00
One of the things you admire is the discipline it takes to sort of juggle so many things and do it successfully.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not sure I m very good at that.
5
SPEAKER_01
So juggling all this hard work and then also a relationship.
5
SPEAKER_00
Also relationship, also family, all these kinds of priorities.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that requires having your shit together.
5
SPEAKER_01
It does.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a different thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s also, you ve got to find the right person.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of people who settle for sexy.
5
SPEAKER_01
They settle for hot.
5
SPEAKER_00
They settle for the wrong person.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, you can get hot and nice.
5
SPEAKER_01
They re out there.
5
SPEAKER_01
But don t get hot and mean.
5
SPEAKER_01
Hot and mean s not fun.
5
SPEAKER_01
Then you get Amber Heard.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know?
5
SPEAKER_01
You get hot and mean.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can be deceived by perfect symmetry.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you don t think it s a good idea to record your partner?
5
SPEAKER_01
I think you should record all conversations.
5
SPEAKER_01
The CIA s doing it, no matter what.
5
SPEAKER_01
I assume that every conversation I have is recorded, because I m pretty sure it is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Even when we had dinner with Alex Jones, he was recording.
5
SPEAKER_00
I still remember that.
5
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know that was recording.
5
SPEAKER_00
He might, you know, it d be funny if he is the CIA.
5
SPEAKER_01
He could be.
5
SPEAKER_01
Could be.
5
SPEAKER_00
That d be the ultimate joke.
5
SPEAKER_01
My advice about relationships is be somebody.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then also, like,
5
SPEAKER_01
Find someone who you can grow with, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t want to be with someone who doesn t share your value.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t want to be with someone who makes excuses.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t want to be with someone who s lazy or who s spiteful.
5
SPEAKER_01
You want to be with someone who s like genuinely kind.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s one of the things that I really love about my wife and she s very smart and she works hard.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s like she s a dedicated disciplined person, which is also really nice.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s why one of the things I like the most about her She s so nice.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s always smiling
5
SPEAKER_00
And that energy is great.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, you ve seen us together.
5
SPEAKER_01
You ve hung around with us.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s fun.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s a lot of fun.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, she makes you just feel great to be alive.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s good to have people like that around you.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s happy.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s a happy person.
5
SPEAKER_01
She s happy to be around.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s the kind of people that you could have in your life as friends and as coworkers and as lovers and wives and husbands.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can find those people.
5
SPEAKER_01
They re real.
5
SPEAKER_01
And when you find those people, your life is better.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like to have a good tribe,
5
SPEAKER_01
is very important, to have a good tribe of people.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think if there s anything that I m very, very fortunate about, it s the people that I m around.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have very good friends, and one of which is you.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s so valuable to have quality people around you because it makes you want to do better because you admire the hard work that these people put in, like Mike Kamhaines or Goggins or many of my friends, and people that are generous and people that are curious and people that are honest.
5
SPEAKER_01
They inspire you to do the same, and it s extremely valuable.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s one of the most valuable things, is to surround yourself with positive, healthy, friendly, generous people.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s why I cut out Tim Dillon for my life.
5
SPEAKER_00
I broke up with him.
5
SPEAKER_00
I thought you guys were getting married.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, it s over.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s none of those things.
5
SPEAKER_00
The Texas nonstop, the nonstop conspiracy theories.
5
SPEAKER_00
The non-stop mocking of of my Eastern European origins It s just not healthy for me Plus he s physically abusive and towering figure both emotion boy physically No, I love him.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay worked out.
5
SPEAKER_00
He would be a house It s got a large frame, you know, so if I interview Putin, what should I ask him?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh
5
SPEAKER_01
How s the cancer?
5
SPEAKER_01
How s it doing, buddy?
5
SPEAKER_01
That s question number one in Russian.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you think he has cancer?
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t think so.
5
SPEAKER_01
The narrative is terrifying, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Dictator of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world who also has cancer and just invaded a sovereign country.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s a terrifying narrative, because that s what we re all afraid of.
5
SPEAKER_01
Someone who has nothing to lose, who just decides to let loose a nuke.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I do think, maybe it s projecting, but
5
SPEAKER_00
If I had cancer, or if you think about leaders that have cancer, you re facing your own mortality, I would think he would be more focused on his legacy, and dropping a nuclear bomb is not good for legacy.
5
SPEAKER_00
I do believe he wants to be remembered as a great leader, as a lot of leaders do, as a lot of even dictators do, and I think he wants to figure out a way
5
SPEAKER_00
to pull out a win so he can say that whatever this thing was, whatever this invasion was, was good for Russia, was good for the nation.
5
SPEAKER_00
He ultimately made it a greater nation than it was before.
5
SPEAKER_00
And perhaps he could justify an escalation of war to be that.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I don t, and it s just the cancer thing concerns me so much because it s been so often part of this propaganda that s been told about Putin that he s sick.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s always, people kind of wonder that a lot about, especially dictators, but you had that even like,
5
SPEAKER_00
with Hillary Clinton and obviously with Biden, that narrative is stickier.
5
SPEAKER_00
So for some people it s stickier.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, that narrative is transparent and obvious.
5
SPEAKER_00
But the degree of it is a question with Biden, as it is with everyone.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like what s, you know, how healthy is this leader?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s a question people often ask.
5
SPEAKER_01
Sure, always.
5
SPEAKER_01
They were doing that about Trump too.
5
SPEAKER_01
The thing about Putin, though, is his appearance is altered, where he looks very bloated.
5
SPEAKER_01
His body doesn t look much bigger, but his face looks puffy and swollen.
5
SPEAKER_01
I had a friend who had sarcoidosis.
5
SPEAKER_01
And they prescribe prednisone, which is a type of a steroid.
5
SPEAKER_01
And one of the things that would happen when he was on it is his face would get really big.
5
SPEAKER_01
It was like, he would blow up, like swell up, maintain a lot of water and inflammation.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s what it looks like when I m looking at Putin.
5
SPEAKER_00
So actually, like if you re sitting with him, one question is about health.
5
SPEAKER_00
Has Biden been asked that kind of question?
5
SPEAKER_01
No, like without mockery without Fox News like the mainstream media treats him with kid gloves in a way that I ve never seen It s it s so obvious.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s something horribly wrong with his cognitive function Well, I had to push back.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if it s horribly wrong.
5
SPEAKER_00
You don t think it s wrong I think it s no I think there s uncertainty to which degree I
5
SPEAKER_00
It s wrong.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would love to there to be a serious like conversation about with him In fact, I actually have to now look because of course Fox News will mock his like Decrease declining.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes mental health and then I
5
SPEAKER_00
I would love sort of an objective discussion.
5
SPEAKER_00
Are you aware of this?
5
SPEAKER_00
What are you putting in place?
5
SPEAKER_00
Are you yourself?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because if I was a person with declining mental abilities, you have to start thinking about that kind of stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
Who is around you?
5
SPEAKER_00
Who are the advisors?
5
SPEAKER_00
What if you stop being able to see the world clearly?
5
SPEAKER_00
I would be transparent about that kind of stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, you would be but you re also would never be a politician.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because you re too fucking honest.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, yeah, but actually from a conversation perspective It would be nice if that kind of discussion was that it would be but all jokes aside with Putin I would ask questions about
5
SPEAKER_01
democracy versus what they have.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, without any disparaging descriptions of what is going on over in Russia, it s clearly not a democracy.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s
5
SPEAKER_01
They, I mean, the way he has it set up, the elections are a joke.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s... So he would push back.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s not clearly not a democracy.
5
SPEAKER_00
He is still very popular.
5
SPEAKER_00
So majority of people are huge supporters of Putin inside Russia.
5
SPEAKER_00
The people that push back against that would say that that s because any serious opposition is pushed out of the country.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
So he gets arrested and murdered.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
But yes, that s a really, really good question.
5
SPEAKER_01
The value of dictatorships.
5
SPEAKER_01
One of the things about the United States that s fascinating to me is that every four years, unless it s four to eight years, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Someone does two terms.
5
SPEAKER_01
But every four years, there s an opportunity for someone to be new and completely inexperienced at the most difficult job in the world, which is ridiculous.
5
SPEAKER_00
So the interesting thing is,
5
SPEAKER_00
it actually makes sense after eight years, you ve gained the wisdom.
5
SPEAKER_00
You would actually be a pretty good leader to keep going.
5
SPEAKER_00
But there is some problem where the power gets started getting to your head.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so like from Putin s perspective, I think he genuinely wants the best for Russia.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t think he s lost his mind in terms of like, it s all about greed and so on.
5
SPEAKER_00
Same as Stalin.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think Stalin, until the end of his days, wanted the best for the Soviet Union.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s not like you become, Hitler I think lost his mind during the war, like where it was like he wasn t seen clearly at all.
5
SPEAKER_00
What Putin believes is that he is actually the best person to bring out the best.
5
SPEAKER_00
for his country.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now the problem is maybe refreshing the leader is in fact in the long term the best thing versus every leader believes they know what s best for the country.
5
SPEAKER_00
Our point is to keep refreshing it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s the case for democracy.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s the case for the system we have that creates natural, maybe emergent balance of power.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think it makes it evident that there is no clear-cut, real right way to do it, and that if you had the perfect person in, having them for 12, 20 years would be amazing.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you had a perfect...
5
SPEAKER_01
benevolent leader who clearly only cared about the people, was doing their best and striving hard and got great satisfaction knowing that he is a dedicated civil servant that only wants to lead the country in a way that s going to benefit the most people in the most profound way.
5
SPEAKER_01
But
5
SPEAKER_01
We have a dirty political system.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s completely corrupted by money, completely corrupted by influence.
5
SPEAKER_01
The fact that, you know, the lobbyists, I mean, there s an area outside of Washington, D.C.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s one of the richest areas in the country and it s where the lobbyists live.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s so much money involved in being a lobbyist.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s so much money involved in special interest groups and how much of an impact they have on
5
SPEAKER_01
who gets elected and what decisions get made once that person gets elected.
5
SPEAKER_01
We know this, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
We know it s not for the people by the people.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s just not what it is.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, this country is an experiment in self-government.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if we could do it all over again, I would say the most important thing is to have laws in place to keep money out of politics and to make it a heinous crime for someone to influence laws and policy
5
SPEAKER_01
based entirely on the amount of profit it could generate for a party or for a company that is investing in a candidate.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s fucking incredibly dangerous, and it s corrupt.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that corruption has been accepted.
5
SPEAKER_01
We ve just accepted that this corruption exists, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
Last question.
5
SPEAKER_00
If Putin asks to see this watch, what do I tell him?
5
SPEAKER_00
What would you give it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Should I let him see it?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because we know what happens with a Super Bowl ring.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think a Super Bowl ring is unique.
5
SPEAKER_01
He could buy a watch like that pretty easy, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
But this particular, isn t that a power move?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So this is the watch you gave me as a story.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would probably share it with him, the story.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then maybe he d go, can I see this watch?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then he puts it on and says, thank you.
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you say no?
5
SPEAKER_01
You go like this.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there it is, bro So many words I m gonna have to find translations buddy, bro I guess bros brother.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean if he takes your watch, I ll buy you another one.
5
SPEAKER_01
It feels it keep him going I ll just give you the same exact watch Well, first of all, thank you for this.
5
SPEAKER_00
I really wanted to talk to you because in
6
SPEAKER_00
in a couple of days leaving to Ukraine and Russia.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I hope I ll be back in one piece and drink whiskey with you once again.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I hope so too.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m nervous about you going over there.
6
SPEAKER_01
I know journalists have been killed now.
6
SPEAKER_01
But they don t know jujitsu.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, I think you ll be okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I think there s certain things you do in life that just kind of your heart pulls towards that so much.
6
SPEAKER_01
What s your objective over there?
6
SPEAKER_00
I m not somebody who thinks about objectives clearly.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just something about me says I need to go there.
6
SPEAKER_00
But to put in loose words is to try to understand what that world is now.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I remember what it was years ago when I was there.
6
SPEAKER_00
I know my family, I know the generations of family that was there on that land in Ukraine and in Russia.
6
SPEAKER_00
and the soul of the people, the love that s there, the beauty of the culture.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I want to see what it is today and what this war has created, both the anger and the love in the people, and just hear them out and just talk to them.
6
SPEAKER_00
No recordings, none of that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Maybe a little here and there, but mostly just for me and to see.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, sometimes it s just
6
SPEAKER_00
something pulls you to a place.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I also, because I m able to speak Russian and some Ukrainian, I do want to try to have these, a couple of the political leaders involved, talk to them.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I have all the right connections.
6
SPEAKER_00
Everybody has said yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
Of course, you don t know the likelihood it finally happens, but I want to at least have that possibility there.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes you have to go to a place to really understand it.
6
SPEAKER_00
You can t just read about it.
6
SPEAKER_00
You can t just talk to the people that are living there.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have to be there.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I ve never been in a war zone.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve never been in a land that s been damaged and
6
SPEAKER_00
wiped by the weapons of war.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I just wanted to feel that because so much of that land is, I remember when everything was flourishing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, corruption, all those kinds of things, but people were there and the culture was flourishing and people were happy.
6
SPEAKER_00
There was lots of struggle, but they were happy.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now people are extremely angry.
6
SPEAKER_00
there s hate in the air on all sides.
6
SPEAKER_00
I want to see that.
6
SPEAKER_00
I want to understand.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes it just pulls you, and you have to go.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it doesn t make any sense, perhaps, but you just got to do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
What s the timeline?
6
SPEAKER_00
Of when I m going?
6
SPEAKER_00
How long?
6
SPEAKER_00
One way.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t have a plan.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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So I m hoping back in a month.
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But also not, just to clarify, I m not somebody who seeks risk.
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And like you re somebody who seems to be terrified of bears and sharks.
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So you don t, like, so why go swim out?
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Why go surfing?
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Why go swim out in the ocean?
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So I m somebody that s the same, probably with sharks too.
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I m not taking unnecessary risk.
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But certain things that just mean a lot to you, you take the risk.
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And so, a little bit of risk willing to take to discover something about myself, honestly, is probably what it all boils down to, trying to understand myself.
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Because so much of me is from that place.
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Well, this is the beautiful thing about America.
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is it s like stitches together all these different cultures.
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Everybody came from somewhere else.
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And you try to understand, in order for me to be a good American, I need to understand who I was, where I came from.
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Nothing reveals the spirit of a people better than war.
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It s like there s something about this conflict that really cuts all the bullshit.
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This is who we are.
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This is who we are as a people.
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So I want to see it.
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I want to understand.
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And like I said, when I come back, drink some whiskey with you.
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All right.
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Well, I hope that happens.
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I really do.
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And I hope you re safe over there, and I hope you come back with whatever insight you re
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you re trying to achieve.
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Thank you for doing this conversation.
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My pleasure, brother.
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Thank you for everything you ve done for me, for the support, for the love, and everybody around you.
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Thank you for everything you re doing for everybody around you, for giving back, but for just giving and being kind to everybody.
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I love you, brother.
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I love you, too.
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Thank you.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Joe Rogan.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now let me leave you with one of Joe s and one of my favorite quotes from Miyamoto Musashi.
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Once you know the way broadly, you ll see it in everything.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.