In this episode, I sit down with author, speaker, and author of the new book, "A Man in the World" to talk about what it means to be a man in the world, and why it's important to have a healthy relationship with the world. We talk about how important it is to be mentally and spiritually healthy, and how we can all work together to make the world a better place. It's a great episode, and I hope you enjoy it, and that you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it. This episode was produced and edited by Alex Blumberg, and produced by Rachel Ward, with additional editing and mixing by Patrick Muldowney. Our theme song is Come Alone by The Weakerthans, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Our ad music is by Build Buildings Records, recorded live in Los Angeles, CA. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms! Thank you so much for your support, and we'll be looking out for you in 2020 for our next episode, coming soon! Timestamps: 1:00 - What do you think of this episode? 2:30 - What does it mean to you? 3:40 - Why do you like it? 4:10 - How do you feel about the podcast? 5:20 - What would you like to live in a cave? 6:15 - What are you looking for? 7:00 8:30 9: How do I feel about your day to day life? 11:00 | What is your day? 12:00: What is it like? 13:30 | What do I miss? 15:00 / 16:40 | What's a cave man? 16: What does a cave person do? 17: Is it a cave guy? 18:00 // 17:40 19:20 | How does it feel like a caveman ? 21:10 | Can I live like that dream? 15, what are you missing? 22:40 // 15:30 // 16: How can I be a cave people? 21, what do you want to be better than that? 20:00 +16: What kind of cave person? 14:30 + 17:00/16:30 / 17:10 20?
00:01:58.000Even in Christianity, Christ says, in the world, but not of it.
00:02:03.000So, like, trying not to be defined and determined by other people's opinions of you, the systems and structures that are set up around you, particularly if you question those systems and structures and think, well, I don't trust that system, I don't agree with that.
00:02:21.000And I think there are certain people, you know, that do have a monastic tendency that should be meditating, that aren't equipped for the material world.
00:02:30.000And one of the great things that makes me sad about our times is if you don't have economic and productive value, then you're a nobody.
00:02:37.000There are some people that don't know how to resource themselves.
00:02:40.000You've found a way of turning yourself into an economy, of creating a kingdom.
00:02:43.000I found my own way of like, oh right, I can make my mental illness work for me.
00:03:25.000And this guy lives in the Elastic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
00:03:31.000Hmm hundred miles from the nearest human and he lives there with his wife and he lives in this little log house that he's sort of built himself and he Thrives up there.
00:03:42.000It's very strange because we're attracted to these people like like to just go.
00:03:48.000Like what's what's your life like and Do you miss people?
00:03:52.000He has like a VCR and he plays old movies And it's a fascinating thing because I think when you watch someone like that, you always run it through your head, like, could I live like that?
00:04:43.000It's designed to be nomadic tribes people.
00:04:47.000My podcast that I do as a suggestion by you, I had on as a guest Yuval Noah Harari.
00:04:54.000He wrote that book, Sapiens, and he does a lot of that anthropology stuff and says about that we're designed to live in tribes of about 75 to 100 people, or at least that's what chimpanzees do.
00:05:05.000When they get bigger, there's normally a conflict and a separation and a splitting, that nomadic tribes would Follow the food sources that were available to them.
00:05:14.000So, in a way, if you can replicate that or get close to that in some way in your own life, it would make sense that it would make you happy.
00:05:24.000When you're saying that about the guy who's 100 miles away from the nearest person, I thought there's people that live in suburbia that mentally are 100 miles away from the nearest person.
00:05:32.000Really, your life is you sit in front of a screen, you don't connect with people, you've not spoke to people for days.
00:05:38.000You know, I think about this when people make these desperate attempts to connect through.
00:05:42.000Dogging is a thing in my country where people meet up in lay-bys and just have anonymous sex, masturbating in public.
00:06:06.000It could be, you know, I think it's a kind of heterosexual thing or homosexuality.
00:06:08.000You can do it wherever your persuasion is.
00:06:10.000There's a particular place with particular people.
00:06:12.000And, you know, the lights go on and people jerk off and, you know, you can have sex.
00:06:16.000And I'm sort of thinking these are desperate attempts to...
00:06:19.000Find some connection to nature to sort of drop anchor and hit your primal self to get into who you are because you wake up and you've got to do your job and you've got a screen in front of you and you're a consumer and you're not living in the world anymore.
00:06:34.000One of the things I get from listening to your podcast is like oh you're a person that's questing after with the whether it's the archery or the DMT looking for what Is it that we're meant to be as humans?
00:06:44.000And I'm doing that in my own way, having unfortunately written off substances because of my stupid, stupid mistakes in my 20s.
00:06:51.000I can't go into the DMT ayahuasca world as much as I would like to.
00:06:54.000And I want to find, how is it that I be me in this world?
00:06:57.000And yeah, I don't think it is through isolationism.
00:07:00.000I don't think it's like, right, I'm going to try and get an island and fuck this.
00:07:14.000Can we pull back from what seems more than ever, like some kind of apocalypse with, you know, your current president, no disrespect, and with our country, Brexit?
00:07:22.000It's sort of like a weird time of frustration.
00:07:24.000Fracture and the manifestation of ugliness, stuff bubbling up.
00:07:27.000I feel it like dark unconscious matter bubbling up, man.
00:07:30.000I was in the airport traveling to here and I was in New York and just the people that are working the lines when you put your cases through, people seemed heavy and low.
00:07:41.000If you're British, Donald Trump's just something that, you know, you kind of make jokes about and you hope that there isn't going to be a nuclear war, but he seems like a sort of a comic figure.
00:07:48.000But here, I sort of sensed, oh, there's pain.
00:07:51.000Now, I know there's a lot of people that obviously like him, enough to have made him president of the United States, but I think even in those cases, he speaks to a particular rage, something that wasn't being addressed, the failure of neoliberalism, the lies of the last 30 years of a kind of politics that was just about management and not about giving people truth.
00:08:10.000How can our individual journeys inform our social and tribal journeys and our national journeys?
00:08:15.000And is there even hope anymore for such a thing as the United States of America or Great Britain?
00:08:20.000Or should we start looking at smaller projects?
00:08:22.000Because, you know, if the United States of America and Great Britain lead to colonialism, mass capitalism, consumerism, ecological meltdown, if that's what you believe in, then maybe we need to look at breaking down some of these great institutions.
00:08:34.000I wonder if what's going on is that our biology and what we've been sort of programmed to for the thousands of years of living these tribal existences where in these tribal existences we had these small groups of 50 to 60 or 100 people plus that this is the new thing and then part of our chaos is our trying to adapt to the new thing it's almost inevitable we've created this Incredible way where we can get food to people,
00:09:03.000so more people had babies, more people stayed in these areas where they're not growing food, and then you're dealing with these massive numbers of people, you know, in LA, 20-plus million.
00:09:14.000And we're trying to figure out, like, how do we get along?
00:09:17.000How do all these different ideologies coincide?
00:10:20.000I think each of these movements are to benefit a particular aspect of the system, a particular class, a particular strata, a particular economic class.
00:10:54.000Mostly we are getting along in these weird groups.
00:10:57.000And even with whatever static that we have with each other, even with the weirdness of it all, the diffusion of responsibility that comes in these gigantic groups and you see things happening, you just get away from them.
00:11:09.000We still, for the most part, are getting along in this weird new world.
00:11:16.000I think human beings are really, really beautiful and brilliant.
00:11:20.000And I don't think, oh God, this is such a mess.
00:11:22.000What I think is that we're trying to inhabit systems that are not designed for us to live within.
00:11:29.000And I think that, yeah, people are getting on.
00:11:31.000But I also think, don't you think there's a lot of tension in cities that everyone's one right turn or one traffic light away from getting out of their car and smashing someone in the face?
00:11:48.000I feel like we're being forced to live on a particular aspect of our consciousness, a particular bandwidth of where we're kind of a bit frightened, a little bit too much desire.
00:12:07.000I'm getting in a nice car and I'm out of here.
00:12:09.000But I remember the feeling, and a lot of people are living like that, where the tension's up in their face.
00:12:14.000And so, yes, I agree that people do muddle along, and that, I think, shows you that we're not as in a Darwinistic model or some of the ideas derived from Darwinism, rather, like the selfish gene and the Richard Dawkins idea that people just want to survive and we just want to kill and fuck, and this is what propels us forward.
00:12:30.000I think, no, we're cooperative, collaborative, artistic, imaginative, beautiful people.
00:12:37.000But we've created systems around the worst aspects of our nature.
00:12:51.000And I feel like if we were to break down those kind of systems, live in smaller assemblies, smaller groups...
00:12:58.000Where power is as close to the people that it affects as possible, where people would vote on, well, this is how we want to use our resources.
00:13:04.000This is how we want to run our street, our hospital, our prisons, our schools, our systems.
00:13:23.000I think you should probably start a cult.
00:13:25.000You've got a good idea about how to run it and how to keep the resources in the community.
00:13:30.000I think that also this discontent that we have is a sign that people being upset with how this is and the momentum of the way things have sort of established themselves today, that this is like what we need.
00:13:42.000This is the momentum and the motivation that we need to try to improve upon things.
00:13:47.000I think we're uniquely qualified to do that today because we're talking about it.
00:13:51.000So you could be the doom and gloom guy today, I'll be rose-colored glasses.
00:13:54.000So I think that this tension that we have, even a guy like Donald Trump or Brexit, I think the good thing about those things is that people are looking at What they don't like about the way we're running the world, what they don't like about our culture.
00:14:07.000And they're getting upset about it and hopefully we'll sort it out that way.
00:14:12.000And that being completely content with everything and everybody just sitting on the couch and smiling all day, it doesn't necessarily lead to progress.
00:14:20.000I think we're more informed now than we've ever been before.
00:14:23.000So I would hope that with our ability to communicate and being more informed now that we have the potential to move towards a better society.
00:14:33.000But I also think that what's important in the world is who has power.
00:14:38.000Power being the ability to effect change.
00:14:40.000I'm not one of those people that I'm not baffled by what happened with Trump.
00:14:45.000I feel, oh, there's an indication that a good many people feel extremely angry and disenfranchised, the same as Brexit in our country, and I recognise and I understand it.
00:14:53.000Similarly, I don't think, oh, wouldn't everything be zippity-doo-dah if Hillary Clinton was President of the United States?
00:15:01.000That's what the previous 30 years has been like in your country, my country, managerial politicians with no vision, We've seen the failure of recent promises that were offered by administrations recently.
00:15:13.000I think that what Trump is, what Brexit is, is a big fuck you to the system.
00:15:20.000And for me, in a way, these things are good because I believe the people that feel those things are right.
00:15:26.000And I would like to see more power delivered to ordinary people, genuine change happening.
00:15:31.000But I think it won't happen unless you sort of look at, well, where is the power really?
00:15:35.000The power really is with people that this system works for, a sort of a particular corporate elite, a particular strata of, I don't know, politicians and bureaucrats.
00:15:44.000And I hope that what these sort of cataclysms of recent years lead to Is devolution of power, new systems.
00:15:53.000Because even in the time that I've been in your country on this trip, Joe, you know, there's been that mad sort of massacre that, you know, that's...
00:16:19.000I think the system is coughing up these mad events, and there are patterns, and there's things that we can read, and there are things that we can change to improve it.
00:16:26.000Well, he's certainly a part of, the guy that was that shooter is certainly a part of our society, right?
00:16:30.000So if we have a sick culture, You know, I mean, there's evidence of it.
00:16:34.000I mean, it's not a completely sick culture.
00:16:43.000So, this thing that you're saying, like, that people looked at Donald Trump as a big fuck-you system, the tipping over the apple cart, I think that's absolutely what people were hoping for.
00:16:53.000And then there's a bunch of people that just love saying fuck you.
00:16:55.000There's a bunch of people that when fuck you is flying around, yeah, fuck you, they just get in it.
00:17:50.000But what comes out of all these things is the discussions and the intense realization that we have real problems.
00:17:56.000We have real problems with the way we're communicating with each other.
00:17:59.000And I don't necessarily know if the solution...
00:18:02.000I mean, it would certainly be a solution for those involved if you get a hundred amazing people and everybody just starts a co-op in Maine somewhere.
00:18:08.000I mean, yeah, it would be great for those involved.
00:18:11.000But for all of us, I mean, even while that, I mean, it's almost like that monastic lifestyle we're talking about.
00:18:15.000If everybody just isolates, it's all going on around you.
00:18:18.000If you put your phone in a drawer and never use it again, and you stay off the grid and you get your water from a spring, all those people out there are We're still drinking water with antidepressants in it, and there's a bunch of fucking smog that people have to deal with.
00:18:31.000There's a bunch of problems with hurricanes now because the water's warmer.
00:21:58.000And what I like, increasingly what I think is that when you talk about that, mate, the cheese grater on the sole, that's the phenomena of the West.
00:22:06.000You know, that's what people in our countries are going through is...
00:23:34.000More freedom to behave, more freedom to communicate, more freedom to excel with this capitalist society that we're criticizing today than any human beings that have ever lived ever.
00:23:42.000There's a lot of negative about it, 100%.
00:23:45.000But it's also, there's a lot of benefits and positive about it.
00:23:48.000There are a lot of soulless people that are just counting numbers and throwing them on a hard drive somewhere and buying yachts.
00:24:59.000Well, that can't exist under one banner, I don't know.
00:25:02.000Yeah, but the problem with people saying no homosexuality is that they're deciding about freedom, other people's freedoms to exist, other people's freedoms to behave and to express themselves the way they want to.
00:25:15.000And the real problem with that is a lot of the people that want to control other people's freedom, they're really, the reason why they're doing it is they're trying to suppress their own urges and desires.
00:26:14.000You want to learn all of this fascinating stuff and fulfill yourself.
00:26:18.000You've created a road for yourself to do that.
00:26:22.000But not everybody can and more people could.
00:26:25.000And I think there'll always be resistance, there'll always be corruption, because it's in me.
00:26:28.000I shouldn't spend another second condemning Donald Trump, because I've got an arsehole in me.
00:26:33.000I'm a greedy person that wants attention and wants people to love me and buy my book and take care of my interests.
00:26:39.000But your introspective thinking has led you to stop that path.
00:26:42.000I mean, that's essentially, you saw the flaws in hedonistic behavior, and you hit the pause button.
00:26:49.000And you're thinking about it, and that's very attractive to people, because we all see that in ourselves.
00:26:53.000And when you talk about what I do and what I've done, the most important thing that I've ever done is surround myself with people that I love.
00:27:00.000I have a really good group of friends and interesting people, and that leads to more.
00:28:14.000So you're right about that, that we exist in these relationships with one another.
00:28:18.000And I suppose what I have sought out is to connect with people on the level of the damage, on the level of the wound, on the level of the vulnerability.
00:28:26.000Not in a pessimistic, let's wring ourselves out into the gutter way.
00:28:30.000No, let's recognise that we're flawed, but that together we can create supportive, compassionate, loving communities.
00:28:37.000And for me, the starting point for that is a life that is...
00:28:42.000Predicated on spirituality as opposed to materialism.
00:28:45.000It's predicated on what my consciousness does when I stop thinking, what my consciousness does when I meditate.
00:28:52.000Now, I don't have the advantage of the DMT experience in the Ayahuasca.
00:28:56.000I'm fascinated by it, listen to it a lot.
00:29:15.000Kundalini's one of the things, I believe, in this particular tattoo up my finger by Mark Mahoney of Shamrock Tattoos Los Angeles is the Kundalini Serpent as drawn by Carl Jung, one of the great early figures of psychoanalysis that the...
00:29:28.000Fire in the belly, the animal energy of survival, the energy of creativity, the serpent energy, the reptile energy that's deep in our DNA when we were lizards, when we were creatures that crawled on our belly and lives in us still, can be coronated.
00:29:41.000The serpent, the snake within can become crowned.
00:31:03.000You know, like the Ewoks, how they've made the most of the woods, you know, they've built little huts and stuff, and maybe they'd have little, I don't know if the Ewoks had another couple of thousand years, maybe they'd have built little Ewok trains.
00:31:13.000I don't know what they would have done.
00:31:27.000This is how we know it was a dream, because there was a moment where I had you in side control.
00:31:30.000Now, from that moment, I moved towards a choke, and you did something where you arched and flipped over very acrobatically and very elegantly.
00:31:38.000I don't even know if it's an actual move or not.
00:31:39.000It was very, very beautiful, and I thought, ah, right, yeah, it's going quite well, this rolling, but it seems that Joe Rogan is better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu than me.
00:31:48.000But even in the dream world, that seemed like something I had an understanding of.
00:31:52.000Well, jujitsu, what's brilliant about it and what's interesting about it is that the more time you put into it, the more you understand the moves, the more moves you acquire, the more moves you drill, the better you get at it.
00:32:09.000As your vocabulary increases and your ability to...
00:32:13.000Like, even if your vocabulary is very broad, if you don't talk a lot, you'd probably have stumbling conversations, right?
00:32:20.000But if you get used to talking all the time and you're having a conversation with someone and the words kind of flow.
00:32:26.000But if you're talking to someone and they're weird and they bark out things and they talk over you, it's awkward and herky-jerky, much like jujitsu.
00:32:34.000Jiu-jitsu is almost like a kinetic language.
00:33:25.000You get your arm, you know, you tap out.
00:33:27.000As long as you're willing to tap out, you have to be willing to tap out, you'll get through it okay.
00:33:33.000And if you get injured, you just get it fixed and take six months off, you'll be back.
00:33:37.000I like that kinetic language thing you said.
00:33:39.000That really makes sense to me, because I feel like when I'm doing it, I'm like a person that's going, Hello, could you show me the way to the train station?
00:33:51.000Yeah, I'm so slow, like, and other people are like, well, sir, I'll point you in the right direction, you could go a thousand ways, why I couldn't do it!
00:34:02.000Sometimes I look at videos of them Gracies or something and marvel at their effortless capacities and charisma.
00:34:08.000You should watch, just because you're enjoying it, watch current top of the food chain jiu-jitsu guys like Hoffa Mendez, watch some Marcelo Garcia, watch some of the young guys coming up, Gary Tonin.
00:34:20.000It's fascinating to watch them apply these new strategies to this old language, because that's really essentially what it is.
00:34:28.000What you're seeing is these new approaches.
00:34:35.000Like, boxing, although it's very complex and it doesn't seem as complex to someone on the outside, but when you watch a guy like Floyd Mayweather or Sugar Ray Leonard or someone who's just a master at their craft, you see how complex it truly is.
00:34:50.000You see all the different nuances to it.
00:34:56.000Whereas jujitsu is this fucking tangle of bodies and possibilities and potential.
00:35:03.000There's so many different ways to approach it.
00:35:05.000There's people that are chokers, there's people that are arm lock guys, there's people that like to get you with their legs, they're triangle people, and they all have their own little way of approaching this conversation.
00:35:14.000So you've learned a few sort of grammatical pathways through that kinetic language and think, right, I'm going to master that particular area.
00:35:21.000So watching videos online is like watching a video of Alan Watts talking.
00:35:26.000Or Terence McKenna or Timothy Leary or whoever it is that you think is fascinating.
00:35:31.000You hear them talk and it develops new pathways and possibilities for your own thinking.
00:35:36.000It's one of the things I was going to say earlier.
00:35:38.000When I was thinking while we were having this conversation about the future and about possibilities and about civilization, with all due respect, what you and I are doing, both of us, this is a very rudimentary way of trying to figure this out.
00:36:04.000But when Henry Ford created the Model T, he didn't intend it to race against a LaFerrari.
00:36:09.000He didn't know what the fuck a LaFerrari was.
00:36:11.000But if he didn't make that Model T, the LaFerrari wouldn't have been possible.
00:36:15.000But you can't go back and go, Henry Ford fucking sucked, dude.
00:36:18.000Ride this piece of shit with its leaf springs and its stupid tires, you know, and then get in a 2017 Corvette ZR1 and you go, oh, okay, this is where it's at.
00:36:28.000No, it's like all these things have to be in place for the next evolution of it to advance.
00:36:53.000Not just you and I, but the people that are listening to this, and the people that are having their own podcasts, their own conversations, and doing TED Talks, and writing books.
00:37:00.000We're all a part of thinking this out.
00:37:03.000And these little pieces All fit together slowly but surely and create this mosaic of ideas and potential.
00:37:10.000And what we're experiencing now is just what we can experience in this realm, like in this world, with this life that we are currently stuck in.
00:37:19.000And then someone, 50 years from now, will be looking back at our stumbling conversation, trying to figure out a way to engineer society correctly, and they'll have a much better way of doing it.
00:37:29.000I think that's a very beautiful, progressive argument.
00:37:31.000I agree with much of what you've said, except to some degree, Joe, even things I've heard on this podcast, say when you have Graham Hancock, I particularly enjoyed it when you got the more sanctioned academic guy on there and Graham felt like,
00:37:46.000you know, you bastards, you're the people that say my shit ain't real.
00:37:50.000Well, Graham's such a rebel, you know, it's fascinating to see these people, you know, attacking him for his ideas and his research, but now having less and less ground to stand on.
00:37:59.000You know, Graham's ideas have been more proven in the last 10, 20 years than ever before.
00:38:04.000They keep finding these new civilizations and finding this new evidence that human beings have existed on this continent far longer and that they're traveling all over the world for far longer and the civilization is probably quite a bit older than we thought.
00:38:16.000That's right, and so we don't therefore know that this idea of continual progression, linear progression, is the only one.
00:38:25.000It is possible that when it comes to the realm of consciousness, ancient people knew something that we are struggling to understand.
00:38:35.000And I recognise that your Model T to Ferrari metaphor is a good one.
00:38:41.000And actually, speaking to young people now, I do feel that they're kind of more switched on.
00:38:51.000But what I feel is, and this might just be my personal narcissism, but I like to think of myself as the pinnacle of consciousness, that there isn't some other realm, even though, God, I want that DMT so bad.
00:39:25.000You can say that, Joe, but also an integral part of my recovery is the idea of surrender, and I think that's an integral part of a lot of spiritual belief.
00:39:35.000It's an integral part of DMT. Yeah, I bet.
00:39:49.000If I can find some people with 20, 30 years in recovery, clean time, that go, you're allowed to take DMT, I'm like, fucking hand me the pipe.
00:39:58.000You don't need their advice or their sanctioning.
00:40:03.000And by the way, you don't even need DMT. No.
00:40:05.000You don't need it, but you seem like you want it.
00:40:07.000Yeah, because I love the transcendent.
00:40:10.000I love it because I've known and I've always known that this experience of being in a body in the conscious individualistic mind and remember I've taken loads of acid when I was a kid as well.
00:40:21.000This is just we're just reading one bandwidth of data with our sensory instruments that there is limitless consciousness and limitless reality.
00:40:35.000Is the concern that if you fell into it, like whether it was mushrooms or whatever it was, that if you fell into that experience again, that it would lead you in a downward spiral of addiction?
00:41:08.000At a time when people are struggling with ideologies, at a time when people are struggling with religion because the bad things about religion are so obvious, the bigotry and the violence, those things are so clear to us, even though there are many, many beautiful things about Islam and many beautiful things about Christianity, our focus tends to turn on the bigotry and the hatred that is present or used out of those ideologies.
00:41:33.000And can be used as a code to unravel your connection to your own individual experience, your own self-centeredness, your own self-obsession.
00:41:41.000Now this might not be a problem that you have.
00:41:42.000This might be the line that separates us.
00:41:45.000Me, I'm self-obsessed and I have to...
00:41:55.000Or you're a sex addict and that's a harder thing to admit because it can be rewarding if you're into adult human females in a culture like I was.
00:42:02.000But if it ultimately leaves you lonely and unable to have a family and you feel like you're having a negative emotional effect on others and yourself, then you need to admit it's a problem.
00:42:11.000The second thing is, could your life be better?
00:42:15.000And the third thing is being willing to accept help from others, and whether that's a community or from your understanding of a higher power.
00:42:22.000Now, I happen to have, I believe in God in the sense that I believe that there's limitless consciousness, that my individual consciousness is connected to something that I can't understand, that no one can ever understand.
00:42:32.000And again, as I've heard on one of my own podcasts, as a matter of fact, Yanis Varoufakis, who led this political movement in Greece, he said, we will never know whether consciousness preceded matter or matter preceded consciousness.
00:42:43.000And in a way, it's irrelevant now because spirit, this quality, is here.
00:42:48.000It's here and it's a big part of what human beings are.
00:42:50.000And it isn't dealt with by consumerism and it isn't dealt with by contemporary politics.
00:42:55.000People don't talk about love, kindness, togetherness, but these are the dominant things in our lives.
00:43:00.000That's what's most important to me, the people that I love.
00:43:02.000Like you said, the connections with the people you have that become your reality.
00:43:06.000But a political system that reduces you to a component of an economic machine is never going to fulfil you.
00:43:12.000So what What I now believe is that what I think this book can do is give people a guide to reaching their own spiritual truth because it's completely non-prescriptive.
00:43:22.000It's like your version of God is going to be different from mine.
00:43:24.000Your personal inventory that you draw up will reveal the truths of the way you see the world and the problems you've made.
00:43:30.000The communities that you belong to will support you and you can change your patterns, you can make amends for your past, you can continue to stay present and a vital part of this program It's prayer and meditation, continued connection to the moments you don't lose yourself in your past or the projections of your future.
00:43:46.000Now, whether or not that prohibits me from experimenting with psychedelics in the long term, you know, for me, the jury's out, because I do want to, and Bill Wilson, the guy who founded these fellowships, was fascinated by acid, and even when he was sober, I took a lot of acid, and I think that guy was a prophet.
00:44:37.000Everyone should know what is the impact because your mum treated you that way or your dad did this or this sort of shit happened to you at school or you were abused.
00:44:44.000You're still carrying it in your consciousness.
00:45:08.000The program of your class, the program of your school, your family, your culture, your time.
00:45:12.000And this 12-step system can debug you from it, and it's not anybody else telling you what to do, because it's your own version of a higher power, it's your own version of a truth, except it's guided by the idea, become free, connect to who you really are, and become benevolent and loving to others.
00:45:27.000You know what I think is really important that you said earlier about there's no political system or no politicians that are talking about love and values and caring and a sense of community.
00:45:40.000I think that's the solution to what we're fearing about Brexit and Donald Trump and the rise of the Just this turning of the apple cart, this thing that people are seeing right now that they don't like, and the hateful rhetoric that people are most disturbed about,
00:46:07.000Isn't it possible that if people decide that that didn't work out, whether it's Brexit or Trump, that the response to that would be the rise of this ideology, the rise of someone who's going to talk about love and community, someone who's going to be genuine?
00:46:23.000I mean, we don't have that person now, but it doesn't mean that that person can't exist.
00:46:27.000And we've only had 45 different presidents.
00:46:29.000We haven't had every single version of what's possible For a human being to be interfacing with the entire civilization of the United States of America.
00:46:38.000I think it's pretty clear what that system delivers.
00:46:40.000I think that those power systems are evolving in this direction.
00:46:43.000I think that this is, if not the pinnacle, I think it's possible that there are better versions of a president, but I think that systems that are that centralized will always deliver inequality.
00:46:51.000I think it's impossible for them not to, and I think that they should be evolved, altered, devolved in a sense, broken down.
00:47:00.000One of the things that I think is positive about cataclysm in politics, something like Brexit, like when Brexit happened and when Trump happened, I felt this sort of, I'm a bit, I'm a trickster, I'm a comic, I live in mischief, I live in the madness that's just behind reality.
00:47:14.000And I thought, in a way, this is good, not for...
00:47:16.000I know people's lives would be negatively effective, and we've seen the rise of divisive politics and quite old-fashioned ideas about ethno-nationalism and that kind of stuff.
00:47:26.000But the good thing is, precisely as you say, Joe, that it does open the conversation up for someone to say, hold on a minute, I think we've just left out love, kindness, unity.
00:47:45.000We're not forced to address things are going wrong.
00:47:51.000You know, I talked to my friend Sturgill.
00:47:55.000Do you know Sturgill Simpson, the musician?
00:47:59.000And he sent me this text message of a conversation that he had with Dr. Rick Strassman.
00:48:04.000Dr. Rick Strassman is the guy out of the University of New Mexico who ran those clinical tests on DMT. He wrote the book, DMT, The Spirit Molecule.
00:48:12.000But he was quoting, when he was talking about the times that we live in and how fucked up everything is, he was quoting this...
00:48:21.000I think it was a monk who said this, that we are constantly in a fight between 49.9% and 50.1% good and evil, and that they fluctuate back and forth, and that we feel like...
00:48:39.000We are just like a speck of dust because we are both a speck of dust and the most important thing in the world.
00:48:49.000Because the actions of one individual literally can influence the course of the human race, the course of our civilization.
00:48:57.000And that this period of flux is what creates growth and change.
00:49:01.000And the tipping of the apple cart, and the positive thing about having someone like Donald Trump, and I don't like Donald Trump more than I like Hillary Clinton.
00:49:09.000And what Hillary Clinton represented to me was this lifelong politician who didn't support gay marriage until 2013. What she was to me, what she represented to me, was an obvious magician.
00:49:20.000Someone who I could see them pulling the cards out of their sleeve, and I'm supposed to not pay attention.
00:49:47.000When we have what's essentially a popularity contest to see who controls nuclear weapons, it's insane.
00:49:53.000It's literally insane and that the only way this is gonna change is by having this incredibly upsetting moment for everybody where they're looking around going what the fuck is going on and then new ideas get introduced and I don't know what Those new ideas are going to be or who's going to introduce them or how someone is going to come along within the next three years and Challenge this current system in a way that's appealing not just to the right and to the left But maybe in some
00:50:24.000way to just human beings maybe in some way to human beings they realize like what's what's we're not going to get by in this world by enforcing right-wing politics and ideas and and and This sort of ideology or left-wing ideas in politics or ideology,
00:51:14.000Near the beginning, you talked about this idea, the percentile of good and evil, the good and evil with both of us.
00:51:19.000Now, this great quote by the Russian author Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil runs not between creeds, religions, and empires, but through every human heart.
00:51:30.000Now, here's a personal theory that the reason that idolatry is bad, like that it comes, like, you know, most religions say don't worship individuals, is precisely because they understand that.
00:51:40.000Don't make one individual have too much power.
00:51:43.000Even now, historically, we know that Gandhi had skeletons in the closet.
00:51:46.000Great, great Gandhi, this wonderful, great hero of bringing down the British Empire, bringing about freedom, you know.
00:51:52.000Although, interestingly, Gandhi said, there's no point us kicking the British out of India and then replicating their systems.
00:52:38.000I agree with your analysis of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump entirely.
00:52:42.000I think that the reason that you have a mad option like Donald Trump being successful is because people had had enough of those cheap tricks and cards up sleeves and financial corruption.
00:53:42.000Gosh, what I'm trying to say here, Joe, is that when we recognise that we're all flawed, that we're all fallible, we have to sort of think, can we build systems that tend towards the better aspects of our nature, not the worst aspects of our nature?
00:53:57.000Can we recognise that any politician in a position of power for too long will make mistakes, will be flawed, that power has to be spread out as much as possible and as close to the people that it affects as is feasible?
00:54:10.000Yeah, there's always going to be an issue with someone being able to acquire a hundred billion dollars like the Amazon Jeff Bezos guy like that that is going to corrupt people It's gonna it's like why would you first of all?
00:54:48.000I would like to tell my stockholders that we have cause to celebrate, and we have a 20% increase in our bottom line this year, and everybody's looking good.
00:55:37.000And I think it's also you get caught up in the momentum of whatever you're doing, you know?
00:55:41.000Whatever you're doing, you just get caught up in it.
00:55:43.000And, you know, if you're doing something and you're trying to get better at it, whether it's make better paintings or acquire more wealth.
00:55:52.000These are quests, and you try to get better at these quests.
00:55:57.000And that's a real issue with human beings.
00:55:59.000And I think it has evolutionary roots.
00:56:02.000I think it has roots in our need and desire to make better structures and shelters, to make better weapons, to make a better civilization so that we can stay alive longer, so that we can ensure that our children will be alive longer.
00:56:15.000I think there's roots in that that are sort of...
00:56:18.000Just sort of bastardized and twisted in this world of ideas where you're talking about like money and stocks and bonds and mutual funds and hedge funds.
00:56:32.000It's almost like we have these ancient instincts for constant improvement that just these human reward systems, they just get corrupted.
00:56:43.000My theory on this idea is that we have biochemical drives, as you have just described, that compel us to move forward and to survive.
00:56:54.000But we also have a culture that's continually stimulating fear and desire in order to cast us in a particular economic role, that of consumer.
00:57:04.000And the reason that I believe that this program, and indeed this book, Are important is because it is a code to awakening, a code to becoming conscious.
00:57:14.000And once you are conscious, you aren't beholden to the same systems.
00:57:17.000So much of our behavior is a result of what we don't know about ourselves.
00:57:25.000Because there is that biochemical imperative to get more, to survive, which as an addict I experience and have experienced in extreme.
00:57:32.000Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex till there's no more.
00:57:35.000Getting out of my head till it's inconceivable that I could do that anymore without killing myself.
00:57:40.000Wanting status and power and prestige.
00:57:43.000See, the reason that I think this system works outside of addiction as it's currently recognised is I've had to work it in all sorts of ways.
00:57:49.000Once I got rid of drugs, I got obsessed with sex.
00:57:52.000Once I get a hand on sex, I start being obsessed with what other people think of me.
00:58:17.000Do you also feel that like less concentrating on yourself and less being self-obsessed has allowed you to have more open communication with other people and more healthy Back and forth fulfilling communication with other people, which literally makes you happier.
00:58:32.000Whereas you thought that being obsessed with yourself and being obsessed with success and adulation or sex or whatever those other things were that you were obsessed with was going to fulfill those needs and they weren't.
00:58:53.000When you're in there choking each other, as weird as that sounds, there's a bond between those people that are in those classes all over the world.
00:59:02.000They recognize this community in that, as well as it being an extreme pursuit, as well as it being something that is developing your human potential.
00:59:12.000You're also creating this really intense community of like-minded people.
00:59:25.000I think that's very important, and in a way, it's a return to what we were saying at the beginning of our conversation.
00:59:31.000That there are certain anthropological requirements that, you know, you need to feel like you're part of a tribe.
00:59:37.000You need to feel connected to one another.
00:59:39.000And in my very limited pop-in-there-once-a-week experiences of BJJ, when I've, like, done classes with other people instead of just the one-on-one with the instructor, because he looks after me, do you know what I mean?
00:59:51.000Delicate because he's brilliant but when it's with like other people that are a similar beginner level there's moments of real intensity within it but afterwards a sense of fraternity and love and closeness and like some stuff that I'm not familiar with not used to being close to men in that kind of way and it's amazing and beautiful and probably very very natural and important and a side of my life that I didn't explore because I did download the myth of our time that you are an individual and And you carve your own
01:01:19.000So, like, I see it as an ongoing thing, that my life now is how can I convey ideas that I think will help people in a way that is accessible?
01:01:30.000And knowing that my role in this is to make sure that I don't slip into the egomania again, because I would love to be a cult leader on some days.
01:01:39.000Thinking about it, though, and being aware of it is one of the most important steps, because we're all a work in progress.
01:01:46.000I mean, there's no perfect person out there.
01:01:48.000They don't exist, and we've already discussed this kind of ad nauseum.
01:01:53.000I never met anybody who wasn't, and I never met anybody who doesn't vacillate at least a little bit, where some days you're better than other days.
01:02:00.000And those days where you're not as good, you feel uncomfortable about it, and those would lead to better days.
01:02:05.000When you find yourself slipping, those slipping moments are actually critical, because they give you some self-awareness.
01:02:12.000You realize, well, I fucked up, you know?
01:02:13.000I yelled, fuck you out my car window when I shouldn't have, or whatever it was, you know?
01:02:17.000Well, again, this system is what provides you a way out of that.
01:02:21.000Like, you know, the recovery system, this 12-step system, is that you would not rely on one person to be perfect.
01:02:27.000You recognise everyone is fallible, but together as a community, we can start to have better objectives.
01:02:33.000And in an instance, like, I fuck up all the time, but the step nine and step ten are about...
01:02:39.000Making amends when you make a mistake.
01:02:43.000If there's a moment where I shout fuck you at somebody, or I go shuffling back a day later, go listen to this thing where I said fuck you, that was wrong of me, that must have affected your feelings.
01:02:53.000It's hard to find someone in traffic though, you gotta find that guy that you yell fuck you at.
01:03:01.000And a lot of my fuckies, maybe it's on a phone call, maybe it's in a shop or whatever.
01:03:05.000I mean, in a way, it's about, I suppose, becoming a benevolent force in this world.
01:03:09.000If I tend towards that better 50.1% as opposed to the 49%, then I'm becoming a progressive agent or a benevolent agent as opposed to another person intoxicating the pool.
01:03:22.000I think it's a microcosm of what we were talking about earlier about society itself, is that one day in the future, look, the way we behave today is light years past the way they behaved during the Inquisition.
01:03:33.000I mean, in the future, I imagine, especially today, because people have so much access to the way other people behaved, we have so much data.
01:03:44.000On just written words, listening to people talk in podcasts and speeches and watching videos, there's so much more data than there ever was available 100, 200, 1000 years ago, that in the future, we're going to have a much better way of communicating based on the learning and growth if we survive,
01:05:15.000And you know, one of the things that's helped tremendously is this podcast.
01:05:18.000Being able to have these long three-hour conversations with people, you sit down and talk to them with no distractions, it doesn't exist anywhere else.
01:05:38.000I mean, it is just a conversation still, but you're right is that it's sort of an accelerated form of it.
01:05:43.000It's like if you, you know, you could kind of apply it to everything else.
01:05:47.000If you spend enough time doing it, you know, you're just, you're going to get better at it and you're going to, a lot of the podcast is thinking, right?
01:05:55.000And it's examining your own behavior and examining the way you interface with other people.
01:05:59.000And I do more of that than I ever have before.
01:06:02.000What do you want to change about yourself?
01:06:05.000Just keep going the same way I'm going.
01:06:07.000Get better at being nice, get better at being honest, get better at being loving.
01:06:12.000I mean, it sounds all hokey, hippy bullshit.
01:06:16.000I want to have better relationships with my friends, better relationships with my family, better relationships with people that I don't even know that I meet.
01:06:24.000I mean, I just want to interface with the world in a more positive way.
01:06:28.000One of the most important things to realize is all the interactions that we have with each other are dependent upon two individuals or more, right?
01:06:34.000But it's you and whoever you encounter.
01:06:37.000And the way you encounter them is going to change the way they behave to you.
01:06:42.000And everybody always wants to put it off on the person who behaved a certain way to them.
01:07:43.000Suddenly you're liberated and your path changes.
01:07:46.000Now, Joe, when you were saying just then, mate, about wanting to help more people, do you have any particular projects that are specifically about that?
01:07:53.000Obviously, this podcast is a tool for education, but do you have anything that's specifically like, right, I'm going to do this thing, like, I don't know, taking martial arts into communities type stuff?
01:08:58.000I'm very conscious that my thing at the beginning of this was about airline travel and the low-frequency anxiety I experienced in airline workers.
01:09:06.000It certainly wasn't a comedic bit, but it was cultural analysis and did to a degree reveal that I'm in the middle of a press junket and that's my life at the moment.
01:09:12.000I could just as easily have told you about bees.
01:10:23.000Alright, I'll tell you about my area to show you that sort of thing.
01:10:25.000I talked about when I got heavily involved in politics and I found myself on TV shows and doing rants on telly and getting into political arguments.
01:12:37.000But what I've done is I've found things, I've approached it from a different angle of pointing out the things that I did wrong in my political campaigning, where I floored and fell into my ego.
01:12:47.000I do a good long bit about the birth of my daughter, purely from the perspective of watching a birth, like a commentary, a sports commentary.
01:12:59.000I don't use the beat, the rhythms of sports commentary, but just actually describing what happened and what it did to my mind to be present at the birth of my daughter, to experience something that's so divine, but so animal, tearing flesh, roaring and all that stuff, but it's like God is in the house,
01:13:15.000So I do a bit on that, but every time I build it up into a point of divinity, I undercut it with, like, you know, how sort of mad it looks and the obvious stuff that I guess you'd go for.
01:13:26.000And the whole show, Rebirth, which I'm doing for Netflix, I believe, at some point soon, is called Rebirth.
01:13:33.000And the point of it is how having the baby is meant I've been reborn to myself.
01:13:38.000But a lot of it's about recognising the limits, because I think I got very narcissistically involved in politics, the same way I'm possibly getting narcissistically involved in spirituality right now.
01:13:47.000Because I still have this yearning, this thing that wants to change other people's lives, change the world, in inverted commas.
01:13:54.000You know, but like the comedy comes from recognizing my own flaws within that.
01:13:58.000Do you do any sort of like really difficult exercise outside of jujitsu?
01:14:04.000Do you ever get involved in, you know, any like yoga, like intense yoga, like long periods of time, like 90 minute hot yoga classes or running or anything where you like really have to push yourself physically?
01:14:16.000I run, and I listen to your podcast sometimes, and Sam Harris' podcast sometimes, or whatever, and I do do yoga, but it's interesting that you specifically say push yourself to the limit.
01:14:28.000Why do you think that's an important part of it?
01:14:29.000I think there's a freeing aspect in pushing boundaries, and the physical boundaries, because it's exhausting, and not just exhausting physically, but mentally too, because there's a strain on your body's desire to quit.
01:14:41.000Your mind's desire to seek comfort and that in pushing past that you find this freedom and you also find a vulnerability in who you are as a person.
01:14:51.000It's very difficult to think greatly of yourself and to be egotistic when you know that you're so fucking tired you have to put your hands on your knees and you're heaving and you know and then you have to keep going and then don't be a pussy come on keep going and so you don't You realize who you are.
01:15:07.000You feel yourself for who you really are as opposed to like adulation and looking at yourself as this thing that's above it all.
01:15:16.000Like you realize the flaws in your mental process, the flaws in your physical abilities, and I think it's very humbling.
01:15:24.000I can see that doing that in a bodily way would be useful, but to tell you the truth, the trouble for me, and I think a lot of addicts, is not that, like, of course there's self-obsession, but self-obsession isn't usually about, I'm fucking great.
01:15:45.000And I think you're right that in physical exercise is really, really important.
01:15:48.000The level to which I do it, I always feel better.
01:15:51.000It's not my, like, I have to work even to bloody do it.
01:15:54.000I'd rather spend all the time thinking or doing something like thinking and fucking.
01:15:59.000But you know the thing, it is thinking.
01:16:00.000That's what's confusing about it to people.
01:16:03.000It's thinking, but it's thinking in a very different way.
01:16:06.000There's thinking when your body's at rest and you're just using your mind, but there's also thinking when your mind is trying to manage your body under extreme stress, and that is also a mental exercise, and that's where people get it wrong.
01:16:17.000People look at people that exercise, and especially people that work out really hard, and they think of them as meatheads or as someone who's base or primal and unevolved.
01:16:27.000But I feel like there's a high level of mental evolution involved in being able to push yourself.
01:16:56.000Possibly be comfortable for them, right?
01:16:58.000I'm looking at their saggy arms and their old legs.
01:17:01.000This is not like some graceful person who's able to do this easily.
01:17:04.000This is a person who's really struggling.
01:17:06.000And in real struggle like that, there is a mental energy that's involved in forcing your body to go through these uncomfortable motions that I think is very freeing.
01:17:17.000I think you're right what you said as well about balance and possibly what you're saying is that I'm a person who will benefit from more of that.
01:17:24.000I see a guy in the gym once and he said, don't stop exercising.
01:17:45.000I know you do the yoga, you do the Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you do the running.
01:17:48.000I think it's very important to have different forms of exercise, different forms of mental activity, different forms of stimulation to live...
01:17:54.000Because this is what this machine is designed to do.
01:17:57.000And again, I... Return to the problem of capitalism is that it reduces you to your role within an economic system, as opposed to, why not get up, go for a run, do a bit of fishing, wander around, shoot some arrows, do whatever it is you're into, and spend some time meditating, spend some time exercising,
01:18:14.000spend your time in loving physical combat.
01:18:16.000Well, the reason you can't is because there's no fucking time, because your job is to stand on the line, or in that...
01:18:43.000Limitless contraction possible within consciousness and what you said, one idea can change the world very quickly and that's why these systems regulate the kind of information that's available and the way that it's transmitted and also the fact that it exists within the same economic model.
01:18:59.000As long as you're making money, as long as the money is getting directed in the right way, people will let us talk about real radical stuff.
01:19:07.000It's possible for us to say, hey, you should break down the system, you should devolve.
01:19:09.000I had this good conversation with this guy called Peter Tatchell.
01:19:12.000He's an Australian gay rights activist who lives in the UK. And he said, like, when you're talking, like, this is with no disrespect for the great civil rights heroes and the people who have had civil rights struggles, but he said, in his experience as a gay rights activist, he goes, in the end, they will yield.
01:20:06.000These are the points where there is vulnerability.
01:20:08.000I'm not suggesting that we all organise ourselves into a radical crew of, you know, tax avoiders or mortgage renegers or whatever, but...
01:20:16.000Well, but even though you and I are both doing well, like you said before, we're not in that weird, you know, upper stratosphere where you're living on the Hamptons and some fucking hundred acre ridiculous seaside mansion where you're...
01:20:32.000Helicopter and private jet everywhere, and you're worth $100 million.
01:20:57.000Yeah, and it's weird because those things happen, they tend to happen in sort of, if they happen in, if you've got that money through entertainment, maybe you're still sort of, you've got some connection to your roots and who you were.
01:21:07.000Entertainment and art, maybe, you know, you're still connected to the source.
01:21:11.000But when it's like, you know, tech and finance, yeah, you've got a vested interest.
01:21:14.000My friend Jason Siegel, the brilliant actor, goes, you know, you think all that stuff's about you, the jets and the billboards and stuff, but it's just the symptoms of other people making money out of you.
01:21:25.000It's not about you at all and you're part of a machine.
01:21:30.000It will run out of energy and as soon as you're not providing, you're out.
01:21:33.000And I was doing some promo for this book that I'm still trying to subtly, occasionally promote in this freewheeling conversation at Facebook.
01:22:06.000You know, David Foster Wallace, your great American author, in his book Infinite Jest, postulated a world where all stadiums were named after brands, where countries and regions were named after brands, and it's sort of happening.
01:22:39.000At first, when they started to name football stadiums in our country, you still remembered the name of what it used to be before sponsorship, but we start to forget that it was ever anything else.
01:22:49.000We start to forget we were once warriors, we were once connected to the earth, our gods were once eagles and stags, now our gods are the T-Mobile Arena!
01:23:27.000Hey, so I learned an important lesson off you, and this was it.
01:23:31.000After I came on last time, you were doing a very big UFC event in, I think, Vegas, and my mates from the gym that I go to, the Genesis Gym, what I've already mentioned, they were coming over for a stag do.
01:23:45.000They didn't ask me, but I thought, oh, listen, I could further inveigle myself into this little crew of martial artists by hooking them up with Joe Rogan tickets.
01:23:54.000And I thought, yeah, Yeah, I'll do that, like ever the politician.
01:23:57.000So I text you, Joe, you hook up my mates with this thing.
01:24:00.000And you went, oh, okay, who are these people?
01:24:38.000Well, the reason why I ask, I always ask, is because sometimes people say, look, you don't have to do this, but they've been bothering me about it.
01:25:12.000No, I don't think I'll give him your number.
01:25:15.000It seemed like I might be overkilling it.
01:25:17.000It made me look at my own motivations.
01:25:19.000And I suppose that's a, you know, anything that...
01:25:21.000Carl Jung, the great Carl Jung, the mystic and one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis said, anything that crosses your path that you didn't intend for, that is God, in inverted commas, an opportunity to learn.
01:25:32.000So this is how I try to approach my life now.
01:25:35.000It's like, hmm, I didn't plan for that to happen.
01:25:39.000So like, you know, I'm sure them guys would have been fantastic, although they did later show me videos of what went on, and I think it was a stag do, and they were carrying on like idiots, crawling up and down corridors, drunk out of their minds, so perhaps it was for the best.
01:25:50.000But generally, I'm sure that nothing would have gone wrong.
01:25:52.000But when I look at my own motivation, ah, what are you doing here?
01:26:06.000Down the line maybe I will ask again, yeah, actually, Joe, could you sort these guys out with tickets for this or that?
01:26:11.000But I'll do it with the right motivation, the right connection.
01:26:15.000Now this, again, as I keep saying, this journey from unconsciousness to consciousness is what has been the myth of my own life.
01:26:21.000I think we have to, whether or not we're in just limitless chaos in an ever-expanding universe without meaning, without point, without love, you know, maybe that is the way, you know, that A lot of people see the world that way.
01:26:43.000What did I learn from being a hedonist?
01:26:46.000What did I learn from being promiscuous, from being a drug addict?
01:26:50.000And it all seems to make a kind of sense.
01:26:53.000It all seems to be guiding me towards something.
01:26:56.000And that thing does seem to be love, service, kindness, awareness, not trying to manipulate people, not trying to get shit off people all the time.
01:27:05.000And I feel like it's sad if people don't get to do their own version of that journey because they're on the cheese grater or because they're pursuing some myth, some code from their childhood that they're not good enough or that they don't deserve to be happy or they can't achieve anything.
01:27:21.000Whether it's the rung of booze or drugs or the rung of staring at social media the whole time or the rung of hatred of others or the rung of being caught in bad relationships in a crap job.
01:27:30.000For me, I think that we can accelerate that evolution.
01:27:33.000I think that there are codes that can slip through in the same way that an Amazon can spring up in 15 years and be this great economic monolith.
01:28:04.000You know, and what we were talking about, too, about being a hedonist and doing things wrong and fucking up and what can you learn from them.
01:28:12.000I think every time you fuck something up and every time you do something badly, there's a lesson that you get out of the weird feelings of failure, of discontent, and those lessons are extremely valuable.
01:28:23.000You know, a person who doesn't make mistakes and a person who doesn't do anything wrong, they never learn shit.
01:28:28.000You don't learn anything from doing everything perfectly every time.
01:28:34.000And the more bold and brash you are, and the more you take chances, and the more you put yourself into these weird positions, even in these, like, you know, I'm sure when you were a sex addict, and you're in this hedonistic, you know, whirlwind experience,
01:28:51.000you're still, you're taking in all this data, and you're taking all this, and the hollow feeling that you had that you didn't like it is what propelled you to your new stage of consciousness once you emerged from it.
01:29:04.000Every so often, like, because it's, like, pleasure-laden, an orgy, I mean, that's the point of it, I mean, there's flesh everywhere, there's bits of it that are brilliant, I was noting, hold on a minute, this isn't working, and this is a thing that I thought would really, really work.
01:29:17.000You know, like, sometimes, the great gift of promiscuity is you get to experience all the intimacy with all of these strangers, and it seems exciting, and the type of sexuality that I've always had is more about worship than any kind of domination.
01:29:31.000You know, so it's not about, like, I want to control you.
01:29:33.000So, like, but, like, you know, so all these wonderful experiences and encounters, but within it, this kind of ongoing seam of loneliness, unignorable, and also, this is the thing, when you get the things your culture tells you you should be doing and you experience them,
01:29:50.000Now you know you can stop chasing the carrot because you've had a bite out of it and it's like, hold on a minute, it's bullshit.
01:29:55.000Like, you know, It's a hard one to learn because anything that's got an orgasm at the end of it, there's a degree of pleasure to be had.
01:30:01.000But it takes a while to recognise the emotional cost on me, the spiritual cost on other people, the fact that it's preventing me from becoming a father, from becoming a husband, from settling, from becoming rooted, from becoming actually whole, from becoming a man, from becoming connected.
01:30:45.000As a baseline, disabused of the idea that the material world will give me anything, that it will ever fulfil me, that I am responsible for my own connection, and that my role here is to serve other people and help them.
01:31:00.000If my objective in life is, what can I do to augment myself, to make myself better?
01:31:05.000Even self-improvement, I agree with all of that.
01:31:12.000In order that I may be of service to others rather than, because then I'll just look great in this armchair.
01:31:17.000Yeah, the self-improvement is about being better at what fulfills you the most, which is almost always establishing community.
01:31:25.000So don't you think then, Joe, that we could do something that's a bit more explicitly that, You already have this huge community around the Joe Rogan experience.
01:31:34.000Is there something in it that would bother you?
01:31:38.000Couldn't there be something that wouldn't cost you that much that might be sort of wonderful?
01:31:42.000Do these things not float into your world?
01:31:44.000Aren't people going, you're an influential figure, you're unusual.
01:31:47.000You have this strong male energy, but you're very open to learning.
01:32:25.000I mean you're doing it right now by communicating in a way that you're going to get to way more people than you're going to do it in a physical sense.
01:32:32.000You know, by spreading these ideas and communicating online in a podcast and allowing people to download it for free and getting into your phone and your head and, you know, you're jogging and you're driving your car, you're getting ideas into way more people's heads than you ever would by physically being there.
01:32:57.000I mean, I do comedy shows for a lot of people, but I mean, physically being there and doing something and organizing some sort of thing, that's where you venture into some weird cult thing.
01:33:20.000Maybe you're right, Joe, but I think it's an interesting thing to observe.
01:33:23.000I do think that's right, and I do meet a lot of people in England that go, yeah, yeah, I heard you on Joe Rogan, or I listen to Joe Rogan.
01:33:29.000People talk about it, and it's interesting because it's accessing information that people would not otherwise.
01:33:36.000People come for the fight stuff or come for the entertainers, but then they're getting hit with Graham Hancock or some neurologist or whatever that you're getting, or some behaviouralist or whatever.
01:33:46.000Well, I think the wide variety of guests is very important, too.
01:33:50.000For me, personally, because otherwise I'd get bored.
01:33:52.000If I only talked to comedians or only talked to MMA fighters or whatever, or even only talked to scientists, I'd get bored.
01:33:58.000You know, I like talking to a bunch of different people.
01:34:01.000You know, I mean, I didn't plan any of this, so the way that sort of un...
01:34:06.000Unfolded is is been pretty organic to use an overused word Tell me please just briefly is there something about the phenomena of Conor McGregor that is unique?
01:34:56.000You're going to see a bunch of people try to mimic that.
01:34:59.000And in a sense, he sort of mimicked the people that came before him, like the Chael Sonnens and the Muhammad Ali's and the people that were really good at talking shit.
01:35:26.000I think that was a very important character-exposing fight because he lost a fight, he got humbled, and then he jumped right back on the horse and then wound up winning, and then he comes back and blows Eddie Alvarez out of the water to become the first two-division concurrent champion in the sport.
01:37:09.000I mean, you can say easily that Mayweather was taking those rounds off, and I agree he was.
01:37:13.000And you could say that Mayweather was bringing him to deep water because he knew he would exhaust him, because he didn't give him enough time to train for it, because he really only gave him two months.
01:37:19.000It was very brilliant on Mayweather's part.
01:37:21.000He knew that he wouldn't be efficient, he would tire, all those...
01:37:24.000Kinetic, big, explosive movements that Conor likes to do.
01:38:00.000I mean, he didn't really have the proper opportunity.
01:38:03.000In only being able to prepare for two months and only having this one professional boxing match, there was a lot of things stacked against him.
01:38:10.000And yet, I feel, although he clearly lost, he performed admirably.
01:38:15.000I don't think it hurts his stock in any way.
01:38:31.000And if Nate Diaz and him decide to do it one more time, I think that would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the sport.
01:38:36.000Because I think Conor has eclipsed the sport, largely.
01:38:40.000And maybe for now, maybe someone else will come along in the next year or two that does it.
01:38:45.000I mean, look, Conor's only been around for a few years.
01:38:48.000I tweeted to him in 2013 or 14, I forget what it was, when he had won a big fight in the UK. And I said, you know, congratulations on an amazing performance.
01:38:59.000I really hope to see you in the UFC someday.
01:39:04.000So in four years, he's gone from being this unknown fighter that only the really hardcore fanatics, like myself, knew about, to him being this worldwide phenomenon.
01:39:16.000He's the biggest combat sport athlete, not just of today, ever.
01:39:38.000When you look out, when I interview him at the weigh-ins, In the UFC in Vegas, you look out, you see nothing but Irish flags.
01:39:45.000You see people screaming and cheering and singing.
01:39:48.000Mandalay Bay during the fucking Floyd Mayweather fight, which is not even the venue where the fight was being held, Mandalay Bay was packed bumper to bumper with Irishmen walking down the hallway cheering and singing songs in sync.
01:40:21.000But then, like, there are Often great geniuses in sport, but to have that, like you say, he used romantic ideas of Ireland and his own Irishness, that became an important part of his perception, but it's obviously resonating in a very,
01:40:36.000very powerful way to have that kind of devotion.
01:40:41.000Ireland's a very important part of the equation as well, because their appreciation and love and support of him is unprecedented.
01:40:49.000I mean, I've seen Brazilian fans that love Jose Aldo, and I've seen Brazilian fans that love Anderson Silva, and they're worshipped by their countrymen.
01:41:00.000But it pales in comparison to the amount of love that Conor McGregor gets.
01:41:44.000We can equate, we can work out, we can judge, but there seems to be some ingredient, even in Conor McGregor, that you can't quite pin down.
01:41:49.000Yes, there's the greatness as a boxer, yes, the Irish people, but there's also some flavour is being caught.
01:41:55.000I wonder if you can ever pre-empt or understand these things.
01:41:59.000But the work of Joseph Campbell, the work of Carl Jung, the work of these people that say, there are unconscious archetypes, there are unconscious themes, there are stories that are running below the surface, patterns, coordinates that can be connected to...
01:42:13.000Some people, well, notably the profession of marketing, know how to harness these energies.
01:42:18.000If you have enough people feeling they're not good enough, they will spend money trying to feel better, whether it's the purchase of a car or a coffee or whatever it is.
01:42:28.000One of the key ingredients is make people feel not good enough.
01:42:31.000If you can re-harness and redirect people's sexual energy so that their sexual energy is directed at products and consumerism, then you will sell your product.
01:42:41.000Such a shame to waste this force, to waste this knowledge, to waste this energy just to turn people into consumers, just to turn everything on this planet into a commodity, when what we could be doing is using this energy to imagine new worlds, to imagine new systems,
01:42:57.000to use our greatness, to use our greatness to, I don't know, Joe, love one another, to create new tribes.
01:43:04.000I mean, I don't know if you, boy, you tied a lot of things together there.
01:44:35.000All those people, those 15,000 plus people that saw that fight, who knows how much energy that gave them to then go forth and pursue their own dreams.
01:44:45.000Because that's a big part of what heroes represent.
01:44:48.000What a big part of someone who's accomplishing anything spectacular.
01:44:52.000It's not just that people get to watch it and get this thrill of watching this experience, but also that you get energized to go and pursue your own ideas.
01:45:02.000But I think an integral component of the mythic figure of the hero is sacrifice.
01:45:10.000I'm in no position of bloody world judge Conor McGregor at any stage from any angle because people that are brave enough to do that is fucking unbelievable.
01:45:16.000But what I've felt, while it resonates with us when someone is willing to sacrifice themselves, is because it temporarily makes us recognise, when someone's willing to die for what they believe in, whether that is these civil rights leaders we mentioned before, Malcolm X knew he was going to die for doing that,
01:45:36.000Gandhi had a good sense that he was going to die, he did it anyway, because what he believed in was more important than what he was as an individual.
01:45:44.000And I think that when that happens, it reminds us, ah, there's something, like you say, inspire.
01:47:19.000He woke up in the pod and thought, oh fuck, all of these things that are coming from my heart, this truth, isolation, alienation, the kind of things that he was singing about, that in itself became a product.
01:47:32.000The machine can take people talking about that, connecting to people's deepest fears of inadequacy and worthlessness, and it can turn that into a product and sell it back to them.
01:47:41.000I think you're getting caught up in money as always being a negative.
01:47:45.000And I think Connor has actually embraced the money as a part of the narrative.
01:47:49.000And I think, you know, another person who's done that without bragging about that is Manny Pacquiao.
01:47:54.000And Manny Pacquiao, who's made hundreds of millions of dollars in the same form, has actually used that to spread wealth throughout the Philippines and hands out money to people.
01:48:03.000And he's famously generous in that regard.
01:48:07.000And I think what Conor's done is it's part of his hero mythology.
01:48:10.000He's sitting on a throne on a pile of gold.
01:49:08.000I don't see Conor McGregor as the terminus of this point.
01:49:14.000I see this as an opportunity to critique what the culture is telling us and what the culture is doing to us there.
01:49:23.000I understand that with money you can acquire goods and services, but what I'm saying is that out The ultimate system for evaluating worth has become about commodities instead of, perhaps, about beauty or about love.
01:49:39.000I'm not saying that Conor McGregor should give away all his money and start marching around and be the new Jesus of Ireland, although that would be fucking fascinating to watch unfold.
01:49:46.000I'm saying that isn't it a disgust, question, is it not a little unfortunate that greatness is ultimately given to us as a product, that that is how it is received, that's how it's understood?
01:49:59.000Is it possible that there will be other ways of demonstrating greatness, as he does when he's fighting, or as Kurt Cobain did when he was playing, but ultimately the dominant thing, the dominant puppet ear, the thing pulling the strings, is the dollar.
01:51:41.000And then that in itself becomes about what is the subsequent mutations of hip-hop as it becomes sort of claimed by a dominant system.
01:51:49.000It becomes about jewellery, bling, particular attitudes.
01:51:53.000Do you not see what I'm saying that there's a sort of almost like a trend things get pulled into a Certain strand a certain way of being it does but it doesn't have to like it didn't with some guys like the really like here's a perfect example one of the best rappers ever Nas Nas never fell into that Nas remains one of the best lyricists of all time remains brilliant all of his rap has meaning it's creative it's interesting and He doesn't fall into all the bullshit and the bling,
01:52:22.000although he has plenty of money, and he has all the trappings.
01:52:26.000He's got this sort of style about him where, I mean, I believe his father was a jazz musician, and he grew up with art in his family.
01:52:35.000And he's an artist, first and foremost.
01:52:38.000Although he's a brilliant rapper, he's my favorite rapper.
01:52:41.000I think that he's never really fallen into all the bullshit, bling, mansions, all that stuff, like the display of it all.
01:52:49.000I mean, he has these things, but it's not the primary display when you're talking about Nas as an artist, as a magician.
01:52:57.000And because, again, I suppose what I'm interested in is how cultural movements start off, it seems, by saying something that's important and powerful, whether it's punk or hip-hop, becomes a voice to the disembodied or a way of conveying, not disembodied,
01:53:13.000disenfranchised, becomes a voice for them.
01:53:17.000Punk, very observably, because it was a relatively short-term movement, bands like the Pistols and the Clash and all this stuff, these bands come out of...
01:54:05.000That can just be the architecture of it or the aesthetics of it.
01:54:09.000And I'm saying, as long as we have a system that is ultimately about making money and turning everything into profit, and I'm not saying this about any of the individual artists.
01:54:35.000Is there something different that could be done here?
01:54:37.000Can something truly glorious be done here?
01:54:39.000Like, when you describe that moment of Vegas temporarily being overwhelmed, not as it has been in recent days, by tragedy, death and blood, but in a glorious spirit of Ireland and a hero, that isn't it unfortunate that that energy can't be literally used to create...
01:55:34.000You need people to put together a press junket and a world tour.
01:55:37.000And then you need people to organize the pay-per-view.
01:55:40.000And then, the real ultimate result is the inspiration that all the people that watch it get.
01:55:47.000The inspiration, the entertainment, and it's completely up to the individual whether or not they pursue greatness or whether they just pursue money.
01:55:58.000It's the trappings of greatness with no money.
01:56:01.000There's the sadness of someone who dies great but penniless and homeless.
01:56:05.000And then there's the guy who just threw it all away for money and never realized his full potential, which is equally sad.
01:56:11.000But I think that in that, is it like that...
01:56:14.000We are showing a particular aspect of our own conditioning there in believing in the myth of the individual, that the individual will always triumph.
01:56:23.000If you have greatness, you know, but like, no, you did say, like, the great person that dies penniless.
01:56:27.000You know, it's a kind of a shame that we don't create benevolent systems that are helpful to the vulnerable.
01:56:34.000Right, but you're talking about sport, right?
01:56:36.000If you're talking about sport, it is completely...
01:56:39.000I mean, look, there has to be some sort of a support team behind the individual.
01:56:43.000But it's completely dependent upon the individual.
01:56:45.000If you don't have John Kavanaugh, you don't have the straight blast gym, you don't have Ido Portal and Dylan Dennis and all the different people that train Conor, you don't have Conor.
01:56:55.000If you have all those things, it's entirely dependent upon the one individual that takes that knowledge and goes in there and performs.
01:57:02.000That's what's so scary about it, and that's what's so rewarding to people that watch it, because they know it's so dangerous.
01:57:08.000It's so crazy, it's so fraught with peril to be the one that so much lies upon.
01:57:15.000The weight on his shoulders is massive and that's one of the most substantial things and the most impressive things about Connor is the way he handles the weight of the pressure.
01:57:25.000That he goes in there and does this in the giant big moment.
01:57:30.000That he stands there in front of everybody and throws his arms out like he's the king.
01:57:34.000And then everybody goes fucking crazy.
01:57:51.000I don't ever want Conor McGregor to listen to this and think like, Falk and Russell Brands criticizing me if I ever see my elbow his head off.
01:58:01.000Fucking shoulders on that son of a bitch.
01:58:32.000The system exists all day long, 24-7, 365. The system's going on this weekend in Vegas.
01:58:38.000There's going to be two world title fights.
01:58:40.000There's not nearly the amount of attention being paid to these two world title fights this weekend as Conor McGregor pulling his dick out and taking a piss in a punch bowl.
01:58:49.000He could do that on pay-per-view and more people would watch it.
01:59:03.000It's a matter of one person figuring out the frequency that this system operates on and showing this unbelievable performance inside that system.
01:59:38.000He wasn't some person who, for whatever reason, was gifted with this existence.
01:59:45.000He worked his way through it, figured it out, and once he got to the greatest stage in the world, when the pressure was at its highest, he's shown like the brightest star in the universe.
01:59:54.000And that's what's so exciting about him.
01:59:56.000Yes, I think he's beautiful and fascinating.
01:59:59.000But my question is about commodification.
02:00:45.000I think mostly about what I'm interested in is God and oneness.
02:00:49.000And I think that greatness is a representation of God.
02:00:53.000I think that what is coming through Conor McGregor or Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix or Dorothy Parker is some kind of beauty that that person is the perfect vessel for.
02:01:14.000Here is some moment that pulls us all together.
02:01:17.000Now what my curiosity is about DMT is that does DMT make you experience that oneness or that loss of self in a way that's kind of religious or spiritual?
02:01:36.000I shouldn't say as intense as anything, because there's not a word that I could say that's going to come out of my mouth that's going to do it justice.
02:01:51.000When you have a DMT experience, you're literally having a conversation with God.
02:01:56.000You're experiencing something that's everything and something that's infinitely powerful and infinitely wise.
02:02:01.000The way I've described it is like you're seeing this insane Infinite world of complex geometric patterns that are made out of love and understanding.
02:02:32.000Now, you yourself just said it starts to feel like it's about loving and oneness, Joe.
02:02:38.000So that level of consciousness exists.
02:02:40.000So my belief is that our systems, whether it's our athletic systems, our entertainment systems, and certainly our economic, political, and social systems, should be as close as possible to To that feeling, that that feeling should be our guiding light.
02:02:55.000So I'm not criticising Conor McGregor, the great genius, like I'm fascinated by and adore, or Kurt Cobain or anyone.
02:03:01.000I'm just saying, isn't it odd that you have personally experienced in your way through DMT, and I have through yoga and meditation and all the shit I'd done when I was a kid.
02:03:09.000This sense of oneness, this love that seems to transcend my personal form and everything I believe in.
02:03:14.000And yet when it comes to our systems for organizing this plane that we live on, the material plane, the choices we make are not about that love and understanding.
02:03:32.000But what I'm more interested in is why are our systems not more representative of the divine, pure truth that we can access through spirituality?
02:03:42.000Well, I think our systems are based on the monkey need for survival and this sort of...
02:04:10.000There's a lot of people that go down to South America because they have this romantic vision of what a shaman is going to do to them and that they're going to go and experience.
02:04:18.000And then they encounter some shyster who really just learned how to make ayahuasca to prey on gringos.
02:04:24.000I mean, that's a big part of the narrative that a lot of people experience when they go down and do that with the wrong people.
02:04:30.000And that happens, may I say, because of systems of commodification, materialism and profiteering.
02:04:36.000It does, but it also happens because people are just looking at an opportunity.
02:04:52.000It's starting to foment in my mind just over the course of this conversation.
02:04:56.000It's like, like you said earlier, there's the potential for good and the potential for bad in all of us.
02:05:01.000But I see our culture as a magnet, and the magnet is pulling out the worst stuff.
02:05:07.000And what I think is it would be possible to have a magnet that was pulling out the best stuff.
02:05:12.000But it has some of the best stuff too, like what happened in Houston.
02:05:15.000They have this giant hurricane that comes down in Houston.
02:05:17.000My friend John Dudley went down there and brought supplies and was feeding people and organized a bunch of other people to help and do the same thing.
02:05:25.000And there was a ton of people that were doing the same.
02:05:27.000A ton of people that were donating their time and their money and they were using their boats to help get people out of their homes.
02:05:33.000And there's a video that I saw that was an amazing video, these two guys talking after, they didn't even know each other, and they were being interviewed, and they were saying that the love that they experienced helping all these people, pulling them out of the wreckage of this horrible natural disaster, that it was like nothing they'd ever felt,
02:05:49.000that this love was amazing, that all these people were being completely altruistic, they were being completely generous, and just helping, and just, I think, in times of crisis.
02:05:59.000Are you familiar with Sebastian Junger?
02:06:02.000Sebastian Junger is an amazing war journalist and he wrote a great book called Tribe.
02:06:08.000And his book is essentially all about how human beings really only feel at their best and their happiest when they're coming together to overcome something.
02:06:21.000And so that in this moment of overcoming this incredible natural disaster, blame it on industrial capitalism and global warming, blame all that on the fucking hurricane.
02:06:33.000At the end of the day, it's a force of nature that no one saw coming.
02:06:36.000There's no one that pulled that trigger, right?
02:06:38.000There's a guy in Vegas that pulled that trigger.
02:06:40.000But there's no one that pulled the trigger on that hurricane.
02:07:23.000So this guy, so the shooter, of course we all have individual culpability, but similarly he is a product of our culture, he is a product of this, again, system.
02:07:34.000So there is one form of analysis that says there are meteorological disasters that are detached from reality, and of course meteorology is its own fucking thing.
02:07:43.000And individual free will, there are some neurologists, I'm sure you know, say that doesn't even fucking exist.
02:08:14.000We're aware of it, which is one of the reasons why altruistic behavior, kind behavior, loving community, all these things are rewarded because we do understand that those do enforce a better way of people behaving and that real determinism, like people, like, if you really truly don't have free will,
02:08:32.000Well, we know that we would like people to behave kinder because whatever factors that play into people going out and behaving in a nicer, kinder way, they're a part of that.
02:08:48.000The role of us as individuals finding our own Conor McGregor, our own greatness, our own heroism, to create as much as possible a space for that altruism, a space for that philanthropy, a space for that togetherness.
02:09:01.000To create those moments, like you said, with that hurricane.
02:09:15.000I don't fucking feel great about myself because of other people's applause or verification.
02:09:20.000Because we are all flawed, because we are continually going to battle between the monkey in us, the primal little creature in us, and the great angel within us, what if we have an agreement on a social level that what we're I think?
02:11:10.000I think that what we live in is the manifestation of our most primal desires.
02:11:16.000Greed, or not even necessarily greed, survival.
02:11:18.000And I think that if you extrapolate on that system, you end up with what we've got.
02:11:22.000But I think an alternative way of being, something that might be a corrective path for us, is to look at those feelings that you describe of the altruism in that hurricane, the feeling of greatness in an individual and the way an individual can pull communities together, It's not a binary choice.
02:11:37.000I know the world's more complicated than that, Joe.
02:11:39.000But I suppose my quest, and indeed, fuck me, my book, is about how I individually have got my head and I wrench myself away from selfishness and greed and pride on a daily basis and pull myself towards altruism and love and self-betterment,
02:14:12.000He's opened up that sweet chick place.
02:14:14.000Potentially, if his company sells soon, I don't know how that happens, or if he comes public, he could be what they're saying is hip-hop's first true billionaire.
02:14:25.000His net worth that says that celebrity net worth is like $17 million, but that doesn't include all the companies he owns and has been investing in for a long time.
02:15:10.000I mean, it shows you that they can figure out a way through just their art to get to this weird position where, I mean, if Nas really does make a billion dollars, like, fuck.
02:16:42.000I'm having this experience where I'm sort of...
02:16:44.000Part of the book is about trying to explain how, in the addict's mind, you're trapped in this constant cyclone of self-obsessive thought, and the outside world seems to somehow distance you, and you can't connect to it, right?
02:16:55.000So as well as explain how to go through the steps, I talk through, like, this is what it's like to be in my fucking head.
02:17:01.000So I'm like, this is me out of my dog, and my dog causes all these problems all the time, and I run into these people...
02:17:07.000And I say, all I know, like, you know, and I run into them, and I start, I don't want to go and talk to them, because I feel sort of self-conscious, because they look kind of, like, cool, and I think, oh no, I've got to go over there and talk to these people, I'm going to feel inadequate.
02:17:16.000All I know is how I feel, and that's all I'll ever know, unless I learn, I can learn a new system for being.
02:17:22.000Bill, this guy, comes over and says hello, while I stand now on the goose shit, we're on this sort of riverbank, vaguely embarrassed by Bear, my dog.
02:17:34.000Joe Rogan, a former mixed martial artist, commentator, comedian and host of the world's most downloaded podcast, is himself an interesting example of new emerging models of masculinity, a fusion of right-wing individualism and new age tolerance, a fierce autodidact.
02:17:49.000He has become a champion of American libertarianism and is to me fascinating because he's clever and a good fighter.
02:18:45.000The thing is, you know, like, this is why I don't take drugs, is because I've drunk quite a lot of caffeine there, and I'm sort of slightly scared of going back to, like, my normal life, you know, parachuting back into that.